Bro, do you even Role Play???

And you really want to latch to a tongue in cheek comment from my post, don't you?

If you must know, the "pestering" part is because a visit to a mage or merchant with the kind of permanent magical items my character craved for often wasn't in the DM's plans; you don't exchange potions and scrolls for amulets or enchanted rings at the grocer. Not that I regret anything about it; the DM was typically someone from the same group that made me give up on even attempting to create a script for the adventure, and instead learn to just detail the scenario and NPC motivations and create everything else as we went, so unpredictable they were

(Good times, when I could have a whole weekend just to play RPG; finding that kind of free time nowadays is impossible.)

 

I've found an article that reminded me of this thread and took an action accordingly lately, so I'm going to respond here.
I am all in favour for roleplaying, however I think there's different views on the subject. I am far from claiming anybody in this thread would be bad at roleplaying, but I tend to see that people often use this as argument as long as it benefits them, but soon as it means a hinderance, they happily toss all the roleplaying crap aside. In this concrete context, have you ever used voice communication to coordinate an attack in a MMORPG? Roleplaying means you must not do that. Your character has no means to know what happens outside it's vision! Have you ever transfered ressources from one character to another during the heat of battle in order to support your guild mates? Again, this shouldn't happen. You shouldn't even know and far less cooperate and coordinate with people your character doesn't know and yet this is done nearly every time. Roleplaying is likely one of the worst arguments you could use to promote your point. More often than not, people don't even have concrete in-character reasons to take hostile actions!

Now for the realism part. Again, I enjoy a fantasy setting that bears enough resemblance to our own earthly experience that I can easily predict what's going to happen after an action without having to know the game's mechanic. So, yes, (optional) 'full loot' would seem beneficial here. On the other hand, as somebody already noted, other parts of combat consequences are far from realistic as well. You simply 'respawn' and there's no consequences to you or your character. I doubt that has ever happened (apart from some religious occasions, b ut I hope non of us has a 'god complex' ). Why have one without the other? It even harms your means to have any other purpose than 'e-sports'. You can not effectively remove an opponent from the environment, so there's no way to 'moderate' the community through the community. After you threw down the gaunt to defend the maiden's honour, there's no deeper impact of your victory. Increasing the loot does little to change this. You'd have to ask for people to loose a severe part of their skills/experience and be 'downgraded' to say the least. I'm not sure realism is the best point for your cause either.

If you want the developers to consider the feature, I'd say your best bet is in numbers. If enough people showed their trust and support, I doubt that you'd run up on deaf ears. Yet, that very interrest and support seems to be lacking (e.g. zero interrest in that inquiry). It's not that there wouldn't be a few very vocal and active supporters to the request, but they appear too few, either because they do not coordinate well, or because they really are too sparse within the number of people who couldn't care less. My suggestion would be, go get people. Convince them that upfront payment is their best chance. At the very worst case, they helped support a nice project. Once you have enough people who actually support the game, go and focus. Make every one of them have an impact. This is what I consider would be the argument that could get it through.

Before people go to hue and cry, I'm personally not opposed to the subject. The opposite is true. I have fond memories of playing a MMORPG with open full loot PvP (where you even could have impact, since people lost part of their 'experience/level/skill/what have you'), so if anything I'd be remembering a more hardcore environment. The reason I'm not as much a fan of that anymore is the constant rise in 'bots' and their impact. If you play honest and the other guys simply have a dozen fully equipped high end fighters by the time you 'finished' one (while sitting around IRL and chilling), odds are you're going to loose that uphill battle (not to mention that their computer enhanced combat reaction speed doesn't help the cause either). Fortunately for me, there's other equally entertaining activities Sota offers me

P.S.: I'm somewhat amused that nobody mentioned the strange emphasis on armour-passive skills in relation to roleplaying and realism. I'm sure non of us could envision Tracy Hickman sending out Caramon Majere completely nude, armed with two battlespears and when he takes a blow, the sword barely leaves a trace, because his profiency in defence (Tactics and Polearms) had somehow turned the skin into Plate Armour. Don't get me wrong, I can envision that alignment to 'Earth' could alter you skin in a fantasy setting, I just don't see that for any kind of knowledge of combat. This is equally true for shields! Both, a shield itself and knowledge on how to handle it shouldn't increase your armour (damage resistance), but rather decrease your chance of getting hit (damage avoidance). Not even acrobatics (light armour) would somehow manage to amplify the effectivity of armour in any kind of fantasy novel I'd read. (And yes, I'm not going to leave this as 'negative criticism', as I plan a suggestion in the related thread, I'm just not finished writing it up ).

Just my two cents.

 

I habe not roleplayed because we are in test mode. Right now our focus is on testing. The reason devs let you in game is to test and report bugs to help development of the game. We are in pre alpha far from release .

U MAD BRO?

 

I played Ultima Online from release and through the Trammel addition and I can tell you that the game was forever changed when they added Trammel. Players felt completely safe in the non-pvp version of the game and so they stayed there unless they specifically wanted to fight. Something else happened though and it ruined the game for both sides, a sense of community was lost. You no longer needed to negotiate with that player killer to leave you alone and you didn't need to jump onto ICQ to rally the troops anymore, Trammel was completely safe and player killers 100% avoidable. Players then focused on loot instead of community and on forging gold instead of friendships.

While the game does need safe areas if it is ever made to be 100% safe at all times then a huge component of thrill, fear and excitement is lost... as is reason to be active with the community for protection(safety in numbers). In Ultima Online entire guilds were forged of players aligned to one side of the fight. Many guilds boasted being anti-player killer while others were PK only guilds and being in a guild had great benefits. After Trammel guilds slowly deteriorated and players did their own things more often than not... no longer afraid of dying. A little fear can be a good thing!

 

I have very fond memories of the sense of community in Ultima Online. OverLord, you are absolutely right, Trammel/Felucca changed the actual feel of the whole game. Don't get me wrong, I was one of the guys that regularly ended up as a corpse when it came to PvP/Pking back in the days as I had problems connecting to the servers from Europe and wasn't really into PVP anyway, but the introduction of Trammel killed this exciting sense of danger while leaving the guarded areas. This sense of danger was what divided UO from other games. There was something 'realistic' in loosing your belongings, and as much as I liked the easy-going way of just repairing your stuff in the first place when you were killed by another player, none of the games I played since UO gave me that experience. I understand that to most players the 'Diablo'-factor of a MMORPG is the most important thing - getting better gear, more gold, the next little gimmick, but I still miss the realistic approach of actually taking risks and succeed (or not) depending on your friends and your community.

Oh, and first post by the way, so hello everyone ;-)

 

Welcome, Ruadh!

 

You do realize that this was a great example of how, for players, getting an advantage in PvP greatly trumped roleplaying or realism, right? The game had chat limitations for a reason, and external programs like ICQ helped players avoid those limitations and coordinate in ways that were completely unrealistic for the game. And, of course, it was not the only example of a desire for PvP prowess making players break character.

As for the rest, highly subjective. I will never again play a game with non-consensual PvP; that is how much I grew to hate the very concept after attempting to get used to it for over a decade. If SotA ever allows other players to attack my character without my explicit consent I will never play online (the same way I have a Star Citizen pledge but have already decided to never play online).

 

Who, what, why?

Who says it trumped realism in a fantasy world more than guild or party chat? When has a military force (or outlaw gangs if you rather) ever chosen not to use existing technology to facilitate communications when there was a net benefit to employing the technology? An argument can be made that leveraging existing technology is realistic and prudent RP.

What is the reason(s) purposeful chat limitations were present? You probably disagree but I am less certain that it had anything to so with a conversation about how more robust chat features would allow unrealistic coordination. I am going to place my confidence in the likelihood that they either did not think it was necessary, worth the resources to develop, and/or didn't see a reason to create competing features that would always be inferior to third party software.

Why does everyone seem to think that they have the corner on defining RP for everyone else? We all could afford to lighten up and be more tolerant to alternative RP styles. It is one thing if the host (Portalarium in this case) sets out standards of conduct or rules of play; however, that is not the case in the context of this conversation. Further, RP is not the only way to play SotA and SotA is not a simulation nor is it intended to be.

 

Welcome Ruadh!

 

Which, to the best of my knowledge, didn't exist in early UO. Hence the heavy dependence on a third party messenger program to coordinate things.

Only if said technology exists in said roleplaying environment. To the best of my knowledge, instant communication is/was extremely limited in Britannia.

Keep in mind that I'm not saying that players shouldn't use this kind of resource; I'm merely saying that, when players do make use of such resources, they are consciously choosing to break RP elements in the name of efficiency or convenience.

To the best of my knowledge, immersion. Though UO is from early enough that bandwidth might have been a concern too.

A chat system limited by in-game distance is quite more complex to implement than a more global chat system, so I doubt the development resources might have been a concern.

Cuts both ways. My point of view is that open, non-consensual PvP is the absolute antithesis of roleplay.

 

Then advocate for your viewpoint and spare the lectures about how others are breaking character by using ICQ... I starting using ICQ when I got involved in the RP community on a UO server. My ICQ contact list is dominated by RPers I met in UO. I started using Ventrilo on a server hosted by a UO RP guild. I started using IRC on a UO RP freeshard. Does this extend to web forums?

The point being that I didn't find your post (or many of the posts in this thread) to be very tolerant. It is one thing to affirm your point of view or direct attention to a different perspective. Much of this thread to include the OP is quite another...

 

Removed a bit of off topic stuff... carry on.

 

I think/hope that you misunderstand Silent Strider (assuming that I understood him ).
The whole point of the thread is about others forcing their means of 'roleplay'/'fun' onto others through NON-consensual PvP, because of the various reasons they claim to exist (and under different circumstances and in a different environment I'd agree and appreciate a good amount of them). Roleplaying is one such reason they mention, so it's only fair if they try to force their roleplay on Silent Strider, Silent Strider would lecture them on his idea of roleplaying.
It's a common phenomenon that people gladly assimilate the 'beneficial' parts, but simply try to ignore the 'negative' parts that would be nessesary for an equilibrium. And even if it doesn't fit your idea of roleplaying, it is quite a common aspect that 'realistic' communication is one such important aspect. In the world of SotA your AVATAR is limited to the possibilities of communicates that exist. Hence if you played as your Avatar, so would be you. There's several means to improve your communication, such as the Noble's Magical Discourse Orb.

 

I'll be the first (maybe I haven't read the entire thread) to say that if there won't be full loot I won't be sad. Mostly because I never played UO so I never experienced the full loot system. But I'll say when I hear full loot, all I get are terrible images of me just going around and gathering materials for crafting something like iron for swords or wood for furniture. And suddenly some random high-level person just runs to me kills me and takes all my stuff; from the clothes off my back, to the materials I was gathering. Or, even worse, an image of me with a magic weapon I got from adventuring in dangerous and difficult dungeons, or even made myself with a forge and my hands, getting killed by a high-level player and having it taken from me, with no way to get it back. If we're talking about realism; if I just got knocked out and robbed by some random guy, I would want my stuff back pronto! If there's going to be full loot in this game there has to be some consequence for the PKer, and (imo) a way to get back my stolen items. Otherwise I can see them being free to kill whatever noobie they want, taking their stuff with no recourse. Like maybe I can ask another player whose the same level as the PKer to help me find and defeat him to find and get my things back. Or I can have them put on some wanted list for PvP bounty hunters to find and kill, for a price of course. Maybe if I'm really desperate (or just completely enraged) I can hire assassins to track down and kill the guy and take HIS stuff away for an even bigger price. Or hell since we're in a world where you can summon skeletal allies to defeat your foes. Maybe I enact some ritual to summon a creature to kill the person and retrive my stuff and in return I owe that creature (evil or otherwise) a favor (quest) I have to do. Since I doubt a creature of imense power would need some gold the pay the electric bill. I don't know it just seems like if all I can do is just shrug my arms and say "Oh well, thats SoTa for ya." I would feel cheated out of my hard earned items. Especially that magic weapon. But hey maybe I'm just an idiot with no idea what I'm talking about. I will say this, if full loot makes in to the full game, I'm leaving my gold somewhere safe and only take some gold when I need it. No way some ganking PKer is getting all my gold in one kill.
*phew*
Rant mode: OFF

 

You kind of proved the point that rp is important until it gets in the way, and I'm not even sure you noticed.

 

Call it the way you see it. I was following the conventions of the RP community I was RPing in at the time. I can leave it at there is absolutely no universal agreement about what the "rules" of RP are and it is generally accepted in a large community without enforcement of a convention that some are more hardcore while others are more casual.

I've RPed in both and personally prefer something closer to the hardcore end of the spectrum than the casual end; however, I don't expect everyone to follow the same conventions nor do I want to be forced to RP according to the conventions of the most hardcore RPers. Am I going to start all over and develop a new character every time one of my PCs die? Absolutely not but I know some who do. Am I casting RP aside because it got in the way by resurrecting? Some say "Yes" and most say "No". I appreciate the option in Diablo III and occasionally play Hardcore but I am not forced to play Hardcore in Diablo III.

Options to play as you choose and reserving judgment for those who make a different choice than yourself tends to be the best manner to proceed on this matter. I am not a perfect example but I feel it is the best way to try to behave and is the best way for a healthy community to exist in SotA.

 

RP happens with or without game mechanics. Often, the best RP is in spite of the mechanics.

 

Yes, individual players can and will be creative about expressing their play style. Be that as it may, RP (and PvP) communities flourish when game mechanics are designed with RP (and PvP) in mind. That doesn't mean RP (or PvP) has to be the primary or exclusive concern when designing, just that it is considered. I, and many in this discussion I suspect, have played games or on servers that were designed for more than the most casual RPer (PvPer). RP (and PvP) servers have their merit but we have been told that this will not be the case in SotA.

So that leaves us with designing a game for ALL play styles. Just as PvPers advocate for features for PvP, RPers advocate for features for their play style; however, neither should be forced to play according to the most hardcore ruleset of the other community unless that is the vision for the game. Portalarium seems to be attempting to design a game for multiple play styles that play on the same server so ALL play styles need to accept that the other exists.

 

When I play Command and Conquer I could RP a Marine that never leaves a man behind, not even their dead.
When I play Battlefield 4 I could follow the Geneva Convention.
When I play Ultima I could go in and slaughter every innocent possible.

How ever I wish to play I can. Wait, no I can't. I can not go into one of the Ultima games and play it like a FPS. I can not expect a RPG story from Battlefield 4. No matter what I do, no one in Command and Conquer is going to care about the question "what is a Paladin."

SotA is what it is, we can RP our hearts out. We can not change the game to fit our RP. They are looking to make SotA appeal to a broad base but what is the primary, even secondary, focus. What is most important.

Anything in direct conflict with that focus is going to take a back seat.

 

I dont mind roleplaying - I feel like if i'm playing SotA, i'm automatically roleplaying -- but i personally dont think that means you have to use "medieval-ish" language that generally isnt very well done anyway - i prefer to use modern language -- that doesnt mean i'm not roleplaying though. If we were to throw this game back into the past, would the people of 1500's europe then use bad latin to 'role play'?? LOL
But I am certainly tolerant to those that want to speak that way, I just hope they are as tolerant of my lack of 'thees' and 'thous'...