From an outside point of view, the fight would be powergamey. But it was between us and we knew how we wanted the fight to end and how to play off of our actions. It was powergaming because I had Smoke use his arm to have metallic sucker punches and a vice grip chokehold. You had Greg pulverize Smoke's ribs with metal fists. But it was good rp because it was a compromise and we both knew we wanted a draw and that the only reason it went that far was because we weren't broken up. Greg had to find a cybernetics person to fix his destroyed neck components which took close to a week to find the person. and I don't know how long it took for him to recover. Smoke was hospitalized for a week and then moved onto crutches I believe. Lesson here is that it's bad to be sticklers about RP like most of the coomunity is. It's good to reach compromises with who you RP with and make decisions together so that both parties can be happy and have fun RPing the aftermath. Because if we hold ourselves on such a high platform of standards, how will new players ever climb up? Will they want to? Or will we just scare them away? Or do we always want to just be the same couple of veterans talking in the forums? But yeah, cybernetics do have some positives to them. The limits to their strength are the designs and the will of the user.
I remember when I used to RP on the server. Playing as Dynyl, having arms replaced like it was nothing. Looking back at the cybernetic arm somebody offered to make... with a... Yeah no I'm embarrassed to say they actually agreed to make a taser arm for me. Don't be Dynyl.
The issue is exactly how impressionable new folks might be. They are only just arriving, have no idea what is powergaming and what isn't in the server; what they see will shape what they percieve as powergaming or not. If they see this "awesome cool fight with power prosthetics" they might just believe it so and want to get prosthetics that are just as awesome as they are led to believe. We are not setting high standards to scare off new players. We are giving examples of what is good and what isn't so they follow in on our footsteps. There is a reason mods step in to halt the more outlandish things that happen on the server. There is a reason we have a whitelist. Between the two of you, with both of you within agreement, you can do what you want, so long as it doesn't start some up-manship game with the rest of the community of how awesome you are. Folks here are so far in agreement that the mentality of "robo limbs are awesome!" is something we don't want to encourage because, as I pointed out, it destroys the entire point of losing limbs as a thing to be avoided and becomes something encouraged. Dyny can be made as case of cybernetics done well, actually. I never once looked at Dynyl and thought "oh damn, he is part robot and he is awesome!" He was miserable. He took drugs constantly to stay sane and to keep his own body from rejecting his artificial limbs. He struggled. His limbs would break under pressure and he would need a completely new arm later, even when his arm blasted itself tazering a guy (I remember that). I am not privy on how often you had new limbs replaced, and perhaps it was a bit over-the-top, but the character making a case of "yeah, I got robotic limbs, but it didn't fix my life" he did it really well.
All of this. If I had met a non-suity Floran during my first days on the server, Crowliss wouldn't have needed the massive rework I've given him. I simply looked at Petaldancer and went "Oh, /this/ is how you RP Florans correctly."
