English

Even IF all Ryzom-players would play peaceful diggers, debates are prone to happen, IC as well as OOC, because characters are just like humans in that aspect that they will always have different opinions.

And as it is also "only human" that discussions will rather easily escalate (as you can see happening between Icus, Rollocks, Gunbra, Salazar and Zhoi right now), even if just because of misunderstandings. So the same thing will always happen between characters as they are being played by humans. Even in Hello Kitty Online players as well as characters cannot prevent fighting verbally once in a while, and some might even have to get banned for going too far even from games like that. The "system" is not almighty.

Your most brilliant argument is also the trickiest one: balance.

Yes! That's what a lot of "real" roleplayers strive to find. Even though everyone thinks differently and some may be over-sensitive while others might be extremely, maybe even overly tolerant. Roleplayers, even if they play extremists (like religious fanatics) or bad-guys (like Marausders) or totally crazy characters (like Sari) still want and even need to interact with other players IC to enjoy the full fun of roleplaying. Usually experienced roleplayers have learned to be considerate towards other players.

You can see how many roleplayers have suggested in this very thread to open "tells" while roleplaying just to ensure their conversational partners that "this is just IC/RP, I as a player do not want to grief you as a fellow player" parallel to roleplaying in the around-chat. The same thing has happened during our forum-"fight" between Icus, Gunbra, Salazar and Zhoi - please note the little OOC-comments that we applied here and there just to tell each other in a friendly tone how much we appreciate this IC-conflict :)

But there are also always RP-beginners, occasional roleplayers, a few ruthless roleplayers who might not mind driving certain other players out of the game, and also "OOClers" (as we use to call them in German). And there has always been this troublesome issue of said OOClers claiming to "play roleplay" (about which in reality they don't even know the most basic "rules") as nothing more than an excuse when trying to achieve ingame-advantages, sometimes in an unfair way.

Like ganking away silently and calling this "roleplay" when being asked or telling others off in the Universe-chat (or spouting mocking comments after killing peaceful diggers) and afterwards claiming that this was "just roleplay" and not grieving, but in reality they do not even know how to speak one IC-sentence.

How can you distinguish "real" roleplayers from "OOClers who don't even ever want to do real roleplay but will still use claim to do RP as a whitewash" so you as their fellow player and conversation partner can act/speak accordingly? Hm. I wonder.

Perhaps only by talking to these players for a long time thoroughly. Which unfortunately you might not want to do if you just felt "grieved", instead you might rather feel like running away from them. Or maybe by getting to know more about them ingame and via forum over some months. However you can see at one glance that all of these "solutions" are not helpful at all with raising your mood again after these people have dropped it...

Having said that: it might be a good idea to put up an official "how to roleplay"-thread in every forum that should explain all the unwritten rules and include all kinds of tips about how to show consideration and how to make sure that your fellow players will know that you are really "just doing roleplay" ;)