This is a call...

This is a call that goes out to all current and past players of DH. I am beginning to compile information for a well, project. Not that hard to figure out what. This is what I need.

I need to know /everything/ that was liked about DH1

I need to know everything that was not liked about DH1

I need to know everything that was liked about DH2

I need to know everything that was not liked about DH2


If you know players who used to play but no longer do? Please direct them to this post. I can be PM'd, you can post here on this thread, but regardless it is time to start talking. I hate to put it this way, but haste is needed.

Just a bit of a start...I'll probably have some other things to add later.
~~~~~
Everything that was liked about DH1:

• The feeling of independence. Not independent like a faction, but the feeling of freedom to pretty much do what came to your mind. Have an idea for an event? Go for it.

Everything that was not liked about DH1:

• That IC consequences were not given out for character actions when something was obviously needed.

• Even with the freedom, the complete...chaos that occured sometimes, things that made no sense to the actual story as a whole.

Everything that was liked about DH2:

• That IC consequences were given out for IC actions when it was appropriate, like for something big and/or important.

Everything that was not liked about DH2:

• The need to go to staff for everything. The feeling that while people were playing their characters, than it was not players driving the story, but the NPCs - so everything felt out of the players' hands.

• Over-emphasis on the use of NPCs.

• The over-reliance of +checks, even in everyday RP. From what I've seen and heard from others as well, a good number of unneeded OOC arguments came from these. This could very well be because the system is rather opaque and we haven't had any clear perimeters on how to use it.

• Just...+checks in general. Even with the earlier tweak they still seem random and unreliable. I've played on a few other games where the system was transparent and you could actually see the roll and the numbers that popped up for it. Something transparent rather than a vague ABILITY CHECK: <word and percentage> might be better.

• The overly scripted feeling.

Liked from DH1:
As already stated, the freedom to do as one wanted.
The scope and the feel of the game.
The smaller need for staff involvement.
The use of Temps to fill in when needed and to keep a battle/scene in balance.
The use of Judges to resolve disputes.
Early on, the clear theme (see below).

Disliked from DH1:
The unfettered income and the massive amounts ot credits available.
The ability of two players to hold a major fight with out the need of other PCs.
- As in the use of +fleet command, to bring massive troops to a planet.
The ease of amassing huge armies and then using those armies on a single PC.
The ease of setting up massive defenses.
The number of massive Capital ships and the ease of getting them.
The lack of a theme as time went on.

Liked from DH2
(I have not played there but have read the threads and talked to players)
The Skill selection and the Level systems
The clearly defined sides.

Disliked from DH2
(same note as above)
The +check system
The need to have staff at all situations
The lack of scope in which to play on and in.
No clear guidelines for the Independents nor any roll for them in the game.

Things I liked from DH1 that I dislike in DH2 The freedom involved and the ease of getting around to the major locations even without a ship.

Things I didn't like in DH1 that I haven't noticed in DH2 The space system left you nowhere to hide in the stars if your opponet's knew the ame of any of your ships and sometimes people would get into OOC arguments then take IC actions against the other person and claim it was motivated ICly by events that occured weeks or months earlier. and get away with it. The ease of getting major warships. The fact that Force sensitivity was decided in chargen.

Things I like more in DH2 :Levelling system and the fact that Force sensitivity is not decided in Chargen. The space system and what I've seen of the fleet sizes.

Things I dislike in DH2 : We don't have enough people to man multiple factions and we really need to expand the grid and get the systems to support the factions into play ASAP.

What I like from SWDH2
1. I like the +Level system with the way +voting works.
2. I like the way you pick two skills at a time in both Chargen and when you level.
3. I like the Combat system.
4. I like the general Theme as what it has been explained to me.

What I don't like from SWDH2
1. The heavy reliance on Staff involvement.
2. That there is only one location to play in and around and that is very limited.
3. I do not like the +check system at all. It is disruptive to RP flow, creates way to many OOC comments and complaints, feels more like a board game than a MUSH.
4. The skills that you have should be able to be used with out the calling in Staff to see if you fail or not (combines the Staff involvement and the +check system issues).


Edit to add: Oh! I like the Hooks thing. I think that has great potential.

Thinks I liked about DH1:

First and foremost, FREEDOM, which was largely enabled by the existence of code. This is the core of most of the things that I liked about the game:
-It was possible to dominate politically in different ways, be they militaristic, influential, economical, etc. Politics was complex without relying on any arbitrary strictures from staff.
-Because of this freedom, it was also possible to work for one of the political dominators, as a spy, pilot, et cetera.
-The freedom created a natural and organic story. It never felt arbitrarily constricted to 'good guys' or 'bad guys,' or other arbitrary factions. A character could have as complex or as simple affiliations as the player desired.
-The freedom of military conquest and combat in general meant that you could spontaneously have conflicts. Indeed, spontaneity was the soul of the game. Very little required staff permission or assistance.
-It was possible to effect change.

Things I disliked:
-The economy was not managed very well, and was unmanageable by the endgame. Staff measures to reduce the sprawling fleets really just made it so existing fleets were unchallenged. Since at the very endgame it became literally impossible to do battle, this reduced the freedom and spontaneity.
-A character could commit atrocities on Saturday, and by Friday the people he had slaughtered would welcome him as a hero. The coded political system is one of the things I was simply not a fan of, though this is as much the fault of the players as the system--no doubt myself included. I feel this is mostly a failing of having factions that are preordained to be Good or Evil.
-Some of the freedom had a tendency to lead to OOC conflicts.
-Too many +escapes.


Things I liked about DH2:
-I was a fan of the two-class leveling system. I believe I suggested it to Gulp, so I am perhaps a little biased.
-There were some good ideas out there, unfinished, but there in potentia. The new economy, a revised space combat code...

Things I disliked about DH2:
-+check. It is terrible.
-Anonymous staffers filed warnings against you for unspecified violations and refused to even inform you of the charges in question, and blamed growing discontent in the playerbase on a few vocal players complaining about it.
-No coded systems at all. Everything bigger than person-to-person combat required staff involvement. There is no way to effect change.
-The factions were part of the structure.

When I was supporting the idea of DH2, I was supporting what was, in essence, an evolution of DH1. The old systems would be there, but some of them would be updated. It would naturally be a work in progress, but it would err on the side of being too similar to DH1.

That was my idea, anyway. That way, as changes happen, if it doesn't ring well with the playerbase, it can be quickly reversed. The only changes would be those that were well documented. Things would be thoroughly playtested, not just for bugs but for enjoyment. That way, when a player is dissatisfied with something, he doesn't assume that it will just be implemented at a later date because the existing code is incomplete--if it was there before it is there now.

As it turns out I was entirely mistaken in this view of what DH2 would be. It was not an evolution but a revolution, if you will: everything was wiped clean, old systems removed without warning or reason. It was as different from DH1 as DH1 was from Elendor.

Unfortunately, that basically meant that DH2 ended up being pretty Elendor-like, except that instead of Elendor, where the playerbase is content to play milkmaids and never do anything, this was DH1's playerbase. When I told people to join the game, I told them (most were former Elendorites) how awesome DH1 had been. You could do stuff. There was no milkmaid mentality.

Can you imagine playing on Elendor expecting to be able to sneak around and engage in politics and have battles spontaneously and use one of the 20 classes that we have on DH1? Instead of having admins there to carefully explain that, yes, you can play a soldier, but you can't expect to go out bashing orcs every day, and a lot of your RP will be non-combat, the game is practically begging you to play a badass Scoundrel/Pilot who expects to go beating things up and get in trouble and fights all the time, surviving not just by prowess but also by his wits, his ability to avoid fights with his cleverness and stealth.

Unlike in Elendor, where if you tried to play a character from the books you were gently corrected, in DH if you tried to play Han Solo you were given an enthusiastic "hell yes!"

And yet, for all that, DH2 didn't actually really let you do any of that. It was like Elendor with a bad +check system thrown in.

I'm going to go with everyone else on this one:

Liked about DH1:
- Freedom to do stuff for yourself and others without needed to be babysat by staff.
- Free-form space system.
- We had some awesome, epic RP that captured the theme of Star Wars.
- Initial start was awesome - the backdrop of the metaplot largely powered by players allowed people to either participate or do their own thing.
- The ability to have massive warfare.
- +Temps. I don't care how much Grip hates them, they were awesome.

Disliked about DH1:
- Political systems were silly. Even the new one.
- No NPC reaction for people doing stuff, good or bad.
- Lack of constancy between staffers and rules.
- No real guidelines for massive warfare and naval warfare, leading to confusion and world-sacking in hours.
- Stagnation in metaplot after a while, if not loss of it entirely.
- The Economy.


Now, I haven't played DH2, but the general consent is:

Good: two-class system allowing for flexability, Storytellers sometimes running cool events, NPCs aren't blind and deaf to people's actions.

Bad: +checks for everything, too much staff involvement in everything, ability to do little to nothing but wait for NPCs to give direction, no space, no epic feel, rushed and scripted.


Now, a lot of the bad can be fixed. The playerbase is awesome, with many talented roleplayers that don't need to be spoon-fed a plot. Most of them are also mature enough to RP without needing a +check for breathing. (Most.)

Some of my favorite scenes ever had little to no code involved. Celly, you're my homebucket.

I should probably add a thing, here:

Most of the code that I liked a great deal in DH1 was excellent primarily in that it was subtle, but provided a useful feature. It wasn't ever ostentatious. Stealth just hid you from the room list; fake IDs and disguises just checked against relevant skills whenever it was relevant. It simply and effectively did what it needed to do. It did not require any gimmicks. It was never the focus or the point.

Contrast this to code I was never particularly fond of, the political code. The entire focus of political RP was based, not on any sort of campaigning or cleverness--it was based on nothing more than the political stats of everyone involved. When there was RP about it, it was very clearly based on the code. I remember more than a few times when the RP consisted of the candidate in question waiting around at the polling booth for people to vote, and then when the person who tipped the scales voted, the RP was all about how this one person's vote created a victory.

So, most of my favorite scenes didn't have much to do with code directly, but a lot of them wouldn't have been possible without it. I don't generally want a scene to be interrupted with code, but sometimes a scene is only really possible because of a successful disguise and forgery, or because of a little spying on an earlier scene, and those are usually the parts I enjoy.

Liked about DH1:
- The opening theme. Rewriting the lame prequels? Cool! Used gritty future? Cool!
- Vast majority of the code. I preferred the way military strengths, etc were spelled out via code and not arbitrary like other places I've played. (Example: General X is losing this battle? Let him pose in 3 more non-coded capships that his character would have held back in reserve!)
- Especially the political code for elections and the Senate. I'm more of a political type and actually had stuff to do on DH1! Like a previous poster said, most of the code from DH1 just needed tweaks, not to be thrown out completely. Don't let reputation speeches stack and spam, don't let non-citizens have a large influence on elections (SOME influence might be okay), etc.

Disliked about DH1:
- The endgame theme. Superpowerful clones, sleek technology, Battlestar Galactica with lightsabres, etc.
- Economy. Investments netted way too much cash, especially with the broken property system. Base business income more on a business skill and coded interest rates, for example.

I don't play DH2. Zero interest in the theme. I'm just a mourning lurker.