Created 100 days ago
by
HfxTenor
Gamer, Singer, Trainer, Storyteller, and all-around swell cat.
Been playing WoD since the original VtM came out back in 1990, though I've been into rpg's since the D&D red-box in Grade 6.
First book I ever read: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (yes, I have the hots for sinister female leads thanks to this novel)
Favourite Movie: The Sound of Music
Favourite Computer Game: Any adventure game by Sierra On-Line, particularly the Gabriel Knight series.
Merit: 6 Flaw: 3
- Currently 5.00/5 Stars.
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MMO
RP
WoD
Categories:
World of Darkness Blog
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One of the biggest challenges that CCP will face with WoD is the struggle to try and balance immersion with game mechanics. This is a struggle that many MMO’s face, and most give up on. With their stated goal of having a heavy social or “coffee house” element in the game, CCP seems to be heading along the path of actually endorsing and promoting the role-play aspect of their MMORPG.
Mention the word “role-play” to most video-gamers, particularly MMO players, and you will usually be greeted by a chorus of groans and eye-rolling. I’ve always been puzzled by this reaction, considering their favoured game genre – MMORPG’s – has an inherent expectation of role-playing right in its title. Over the years, I’ve made an interesting discovery:
A gamer’s predilection toward role-playing seems to be dependent on how they were first introduced to the genre: either through actual role-playing games (pen-and-paper or LARP), or through video games such as Final Fantasy, Zelda, World of Warcraft, etc. For the sake of argument, I’ll refer to them as Role-Players and Gamers, respectively.
As a result, when you ask a Role-Player to define “role-playing” they will tell you something like “the process of assuming the identity of a fictional character and participating in an interactive story experience with a group of people, with one person serving as story-teller/impartial judge”. A Gamer’s reply is usually quite different, and tends to sound something close to “a videogame that includes levelling up stats and earning better and better equipment so that you can successfully complete battles and challenges.”
Gamers and Role-Players both want effective/fun game mechanics, great graphics and sound, high game performance, and so on. Role-Players also want a vibrant and mature story that can be heavily influenced by their individual actions and decisions, and thus gives them the sense that they can actually change the course of the meta-plot. Gamers seem to be content as long as the game challenges them and rewards them enough to make them competitive with, or better than, their fellow players.
Gamers out-number Role-Players by a very large margin. It makes more financial sense for developers to cater to the larger community, and so role-playing, story, choice and consequence tend to get cast aside or overlooked. The Role-Playing communities in MMO’s end up huddling together and making their own fun. With this simple fact in mind, I’d like to present two ideas to spark the imagination on ways that role-playing can not only become the norm in WoD, but also encourage Gamers to become Role-Players too (yes, this is possible)!
1. Make RP Meaningful, not just to the Player, but to the Game Mechanics and Story
As a Role-Player, one of the most frustrating aspects of an MMO is repetitive game-play.
“Hey, I just killed the leader of the Black Spiral Dancers! YES!!! Go me!! What an accomplishment!! I’m awesome!!! Wait a second...it just re-appeared out of nowhere!?! Now someone else is killing it faster and with more ease than I ever could!?! I’m not special at all.....why did I even bother.....? My entire existence is a LIE!!!!!!!!!!!!! OH CRUEL IMAGINARY WORLD!!!!!!!!! /wrists...”
Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic, but still – you get my point.
How do we solve this? Bioware is on the right track with SWtOR, with their deep storylines and focus on choice and consequence, but they haven’t quite found the sweet spot yet. It’s still basically an XP and gear grind, they’ve just hidden it behind a really good story. When my quest leads me to kill Sgt. Jendo-Shal, I know that thousands more Republic Troopers are still lining up to kill the sinister Sergeant as soon as he magically comes back to life in a few seconds after I’ve left the room. What if you killed them and they never came back? Everyone would know it was you, you’d become famous (or infamous) through the game’s community! dialogue option without even reading it, any time they get a choice.
Yes, perma-death for NPC’s could be game-breaking, which is why the developers would need to be sure to make essential NPC’s un-attackable or un-killable, but maybe it’s just a simple matter of changing the NPC’s name when they respawn? Sgt. Jendo-Shal was slain, so their Lieutenant has been promoted to take their place, for example. Would it take some tricky programming? Maybe, but this is just an extreme example. Maybe that minor NPC you helped starts spreading the word that you’re amazing and can be hired for special jobs. Suddenly you start getting offered new quests from characters you’ve never met, quests that other players may never see because they just pick the 1st dialogue option without even reading it, any time they get a choice.
2. Publicize our RP sessions to the rest of the players in the game.
What if the rewards of an exceptional session of RP were that your actions during that RP actually changed the course of one the game’s storylines? Anyone exploring that storyline would subsequently learn through NPC dialogue, or overhead gossip, or newspaper articles, or quest text how your character’s actions influenced the change in the game’s stories. Maybe the developers decide to publicize it on the forums, or on the game’s website? Who wouldn’t want to have that happen to them? Suddenly Gamers get interested in “having their name in lights” as well.
In other words, when people realize not just how fun and personally rewarding role-playing can be, but that it can actually be rewarding in terms of gameplay we encourage those people who might normally scoff at RP to actually give it shot.
What do you think the developers can do to encourage people to try RP and the social aspects of the WoD?
13 Comments
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1 Merits
Khazia
81 days ago
As a former avid WoW player I have a little bit of experience with roleplaying. I played on an RP server sometimes and met some who would roleplay. However, I don't think I was ever impressed; it strikes me that most people must be bad character writers and thus when creating a wholly new personality and background for their blood elf paladin the result can be quite shallow. It's not helped by the fact that the races and classes in WoW are often not really believable too, prioritizing game mechanics over story considerations. What actually happened to me is that a lot of people roleplay mean characters, that seem to be based on some sort of behavior rule that often has them be inflexible, or it just masks hostile behavior. As if it's okay to be a racist jerk if you mask it behind your blood elf's contempt of trolls, even if you use language that is directly based on discourse about races from the last few centuries. There's sometimes mean-spiritedness in the people that are roleplaying imo.
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-2 Merits
Wobblehd
95 days ago
Bind oil and water? Odd, it's called an emulsion. A rue is by far the most tasty way to do that. A little melted butter/fat from meat in a pan, lowish heat, stirring constantly, add the flour cook long enough to get the pasty taste out. Slowly add your liquid, hot rue, cold liquid/hot liquid, cold rue. Add spices,. .yummmmmm! Little thyme, white pepper (you did already saute your onions,mushrooms, garlic...right?) even a little sauted red peppers, It's called gravy. I can make mind blowing gravy. Not so hard. Now I am 1) hungry, and 2) sad I didn't make roast pork with gravy and taters today. And sadly I can add amused that someone realized 80+ % of WoD will be gamers. Hfx your blog rocks. I also worked at a copper tubing factory that had a pig fat (imported from germany!) and water emulsion that cooled my machine. A whole lot less tasty and fun. And it grew algae (or something...) if you let it sit unagitated too long. Working metaphor? Possibly. I am oh so looking forward to how the Dev's work this out. Balance is going to be important. EQ1's tank, healer, CC/buffer + anyone else for damage SUCKED. On a side note, its good to have an example to explain, such as this game or that game. One of the best ways to explain something is to relate an experience you have had. Its hard without the other experiences....if you question that, explain sex to a virgin, someday. I think that is the reason for the SWToR, or game of the week bit. I am hoping the Dev's make really, really good gravy, it will sure be fun to find out.
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1 Merits
Radical
99 days ago
@OP 1) I think that rather than how a person was introduced to the genre, To begin with the desire to roleplay in the PnP sense of the word depends more on a person's desire to be immersed in and explore a very different reality which is something that I searched for before even discovering VTM or AC(My first MMORPG), and even then I think my approach to Roleplay is closer to Dramatic Story World Simulation rather than simply following someone elses storyline in a linear fashion so there is also the question of "What is Roleplay?" and in depth even amongst P&P RP people, different people would give you different answers.(for example the differences between Storytelling in WTO and STing in VTM) 2) In my mind something becomes more real/immersive when a person can feel himself inside the situation and ideally could attempt to do whatever s/he sees fit in reaction to the scenario. (the 'You can't do that because that is not how the story goes' is a real immersion breaker). So considering the above I think a game with an unpredictable outcome has considerably more immersion than a game with a predictable outcomes/outcomes. An Open-PvP MMORPG is an environment with many unpredictable inputs (the Players) and if you give them enough freedom also unpredictable outcome(the Players) with the Storytellers/Developers acting more as arbiters of the rules and occasionally introducing new things into the game that indirectly induce a different motivation in the players...(this is not Quests, since quests force the players directly into actions by telling them what they HAVE To do to complete the quest) About SW:TOR, Maybe I'm not naive enough but Bioware's Choose Path A or Path B to get Outcome C with a cosmetic influence of either choice A or choice B doesn't really impress me and more often than not it is not really a choice.(except maybe the choice of Do the Quest or Don't do the Quest )
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2 Merits
Nigama
99 days ago
Also a very relevant blog post from an Eve player about 1 year ago exactly - http://www.ninveah.com/2010/02/to-be-or-not-to-be.html He really does a great job at looking at some of the reasons why role playing ISN'T fostered in most MMO's, and imo, that's the best place to start making the game promote instead of hinder RP.
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0 Merits
Amenat
100 days ago
The role play MMO hybrid, to me, would be that you can get weapons and items by finding them and doing favors for armor. Any npc you ask if they have a task for you for anything you want or store up the favor points and money. If you kill an npc, a name change and slight appearance change is a great idea to me. The quests for the higher up npc or players have bigger gameplay impact than the street bums or normal guys. That's what I like about VtM:B; even though it was a direct story line to the end of the game but I like the style. Random quest generation should be there. Not the lame, kill 3 rats, find a gnome, ect. E.x. You want an alliance. You ask the leader and he asks you to find out some information on a guy who is believed to be a hunter. Stake him out, confirm suspicion, kill target if needed and report back. Instead of having a predictable outcome, it varies a little. Would take a little longer, may be tricky programming but it would be awesome to see that much role play aspect to an MMO. The quest doesn't affect overall unless you did something like storm a stronghold. It gets reported in newspapers, mail system, tv reports or announcement shouts. Only the most important events should be announced. Especially if players can replace NPC's or construct a sabbat or any kind of political climbing. Anyone who wants to join politics of the masquerade they would need such info.
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0 Merits
Rick Gentle
100 days ago
An extremely unfortunate, though extremely accurate, synopsis of the situation. We can only hope that White Wolf/CCP will remain true to the standards of roleplaying (as opposed to gaming), but this is a promise I have heard many times before, and way too many companies, as you note, choose the second, more popular, and more-money-making option. Perma-death on PCs is one thing (which is what CCP is looking at, apparently), but perma-death NPCs is another thing. I don't think it would encourage the gamers to roleplay, I think it would just make them bitch all the more, when only one person in the guild has had the experience of ousting the nefarious Evil Overlord. It would also put a great burden on the developers of the game to keep coming up with new content, and a lot of companies - though I'm not sure White Wolf or CCP are like these companies - want to publish their MMO and let it run on automatic, making them money without too much further development. "How do you bind oil and water?" Introduce another chemical. (I forget my high school chemistry.) Maybe White Wolf and CCP have the right juice.
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2 Merits
Nigama
100 days ago
Meh. Why did you have to compare the WoD MMO to the Game that's the Flavor of the Month? Jeez, that really bugs me. Few months ago people couldn't tell me enough about what features should be in the WoD MMO from Skyrim and how the WoD MMO could improve on those features. Now everything I hear is about SWToR.. you know most of what is done in SWToR was done years ago, and better, right? Why aren't we talking about "Emergent Roleplay," what that will look like and how it can happen. I think that'd be a better and more constructive combination. How specifically CAN CCP integrate roleplaying into the game mechanics so that roleplaying is something that people will do naturally? (-1 Flaw)
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3 Merits
Tikuto
100 days ago
It was like this for alot of Ultima Online players (first MMO). There are in-game organizations that maybe even now are still enacted. http://wiki.moongates.org/Europa_Role_Players_Association - Question the stigma of role-playing and their motivation. They may give insight. Refering to UO it was not so stricken to quest-grinding, level-dinging, resource-chomping. You really could be free to chill but, still, there was always peer competition. That competition is the stimulating play which may actually be discouraging immersion role-play yet it appeases. How can social and competitive MMO-gaming [really] work together? I don't know that one sorry but I do know something in parallel to this is, well, like in StarWars:TOR now it is an RPG with a dedicated e-sport PvP. Almost always there is a traditional problem with that: stat-based unbalanced contenders. RPG and PvP. Any e-sport knows unbalanced gaming is an unfair sport. Balance and Control verifies it as a Fair game - an acceptable game. 'How do you bind oil and water?' (It can be done). If existing MMO game elements do not work together - DO NOT TRY TO MAKE THEM HAPPEN! - Social engineering in competitive gaming. It can be done. There as other stuff I was gonna spam but I forgot, to be honest....
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