Actual RP in MMORPGs and World of Warcraft (split)
Callan S.:
Hi Frank,
The perma death question arrose from my question as to whether it's just the illusion of risk in mmorpgs? I'm worried there's an idea that it's not that it's an illusion of risk, it's just that perma death can't be implemented for reasons X, Y and Z. And thus, the idea goes, if you take away perma death, that doesn't affect the risk/it's presence, since the perma death had to be taken away? I'm way off in worrying about that?
Frank Tarcikowski:
Hi Callan, I think the question is what risk. Currently, dying in an MMO is an inconvenience, especially with regard to progress on in-game goals (next level, better piece of equipment, gold, etc.) Sometimes I get pretty upset when I keep dying in some stupid place because mobs are respawning all over the place and I can't kill them off as quickly as necessary and I'm going, "Stupid game, why the fuck is this quest marked yellow?!" (= adequate for my level)
But when talking about RP in terms of, I don't know, "story"? Exploration of Character and Situation? Then character death would indeed probably be best viewed as no risk at all. I guess? (Did I mention I don't really get it?) ;-)
- Frank
AJ_Flowers:
Quote from: John Adams on May 04, 2009, 06:26:53 AM
... but AJ confirms it's pretty much exactly what I expected.
It's pretty hard to find the good missions in all the kruft, but that is normal for the internet and was what I expected too. I still enjoy playing my friends' stuff or stuff that is advertised elsewhere as being a fun story game sort of experience.
Quote from: John Adams on May 04, 2009, 06:26:53 AM
What is a major pitfall of Story Before gaming? Railroading. I'm not at all surprised poeple complain about it in City of Heroes, it's been the core game design since Day One. All of these games are different flavors of "kill a goblin, get a reward" and that's all they are designed to be. A mission editor won't change it into something else. (I'm still really glad they released it and I have an itch to create a mission or two to see how far I can take it, but I have no illusions.)
In the home-made missions, a lot of people take it a step further and literally railroad your character in to falling for a trap or doing something stupid between missions. Or they tell you what you're thinking. Some people feel really violated by this.
Quote from: John Adams on May 04, 2009, 06:26:53 AM
So what if Capes was the inspiration for City of Heroes instead of Champions? Turns out I've put a lot of thought into that.
* Players would play heroes AND villains AND civilians. Each character type would provide unique rewards and interact with the other types in unique, story-reinforcing ways.
* Players would spend resources to create conflicts and earn resources when other players engaged those conflicts.
My villain burns a few points so he can dangle Mary Jane over the edge of 20 story drop. If I drop her and she goes splat! I get nothing in return, so I'll do it when your hero is rushing up to save her. If I drop her and you heroically save her, I get points. You would spend points to catch her, but maybe you earn a different kind of reward at the same time.
By the way, Mary Jane is played by Bob. Bob spends points in this situation for a "terrified scream" which inspires (buffs) your hero so he can punch my villain's head in.
All of this currency/economy is built around creating an exciting, genre-appropriate story with theme.
* Players would cooperatively assemble a scene from a large collection of parts, rather than travelling to a certain place in a huge, pre-defined game world.
"That was a great scene. Can we do one where Captain Awesome finds out who took the Gauntlet of Power?"
Set Piece: wrecked science lab
Characters: Captain Awesome, Firebrand, Penny McCord
Type / Subtype: Dialog / Revalation
etc.
The hard-coded bits would define not just the the set pieces but also which game sub-systems or mini-games would be in play and how the players would resolve the scene.
That sounds like it would be amazing! But, also, a ton of work, so not suitable for everyone. Some people have pointed out on MMO blogs that they actually like the "theme park" setup of an MMO because it doesn't make them have to think.
evilphd7:
For the past few years I have been in Second Life and trying to find role-play there. Second Life(SL) is unique among online games in that it is an online world (rather than a game) which allows land owners (who are willing to pay considerable $) to create their own worlds. While there are several role-play SIMS (a SIM is just a term for a specific piece of virtual realestate) in SL, there is very little actual role-play and I have spent years trying to figure-out why. SL has taught me that there are several elements role-play games need in order to be fun:
Cooperation: Players have to be willing to cooperate with one another. By "cooperate" I mean react to one another in a realistic manner (in-character only) and accept the consequences of defeat. For example, in a "real" world, one can't get away with throwing Mud at the King becuase, there would be others around to enforce rules. So everyone has to agree that "Jimmy" is the king and that there are certain ways one must behave toward the king. This is surprisingly difficult in an online environment because more often than not, there is no way to realistically resolve combat and zero enforcement of rules. This causes most RP to devolve into "every man for himself RP" where players only cooperate until the goals of their characters come into conflict.
Supervision: Someone needs to be in control of the RP and by "in control" I don't mean railroading (which is actually worse, in my opinion, than having no rule enforcement). I'm talking about some devine, all-powerful force to enforce the rules and consequences. In an ideal world filled with reasonable, honest people who aren't only motivated by winning at any cost, supervision would be unnecessary; unfortunately there is this extreme need to "win" and I find that a majority of players you encounter have no compunction about cheating or bending rules to achieve that.
The GM must not also have a character: In SL Sim owners universally create their own characters who have "God-like" powers (basically, script-immunity). They figure they've paid the money to create and maintain the sim and they have done most of the work... why shouldn't they control everything? What they don't seem to understand is that gaming is only fun for your players when the world is about them. The end result is that players eventually realize that the GM character cannot be damaged, toppled or removed so ... why bother playing a game you can't "win"?
Motivation: In order for a game to be fun, players need to feel that they have an impact on the world around them. This is one of my chief beefs with MMORPGs. I've killed Grendel, you've killed Grendel and yet he keeps popping up to be killed time and time again. Killing Grendel is meaningless. In fact, most accomplishments only have meaning in terms of accumulating items and experience from your defeated foes. In SL, unilke most MMORPG's, this basic motivation is gone. Players can have anything their Avatars can find (Unlike a game like NeverWinter Nights where a GM can control what players have and police their inventory). This sort of goes back to everyone playing by the rules.
So ...that was sort of long and rambling, but any thoughts on this others wish to contribute would be helpful. Ultimately, I'm trying to decide if finding RP online is even worth the bother. I'm not sure if the problem is that online environments simply can't have the basic elements required for RP, if my standards for RP are too high or if the average gamer is a personality so unpleasant that I'd rather not bother interacting with them.
Callan S.:
Quote from: evilphd7 on May 20, 2009, 01:55:43 PM
Supervision: Someone needs to be in control of the RP and by "in control" I don't mean railroading (which is actually worse, in my opinion, than having no rule enforcement). I'm talking about some devine, all-powerful force to enforce the rules and consequences. In an ideal world filled with reasonable, honest people who aren't only motivated by winning at any cost, supervision would be unnecessary; unfortunately there is this extreme need to "win" and I find that a majority of players you encounter have no compunction about cheating or bending rules to achieve that.
What I often see is that these 'rules' are usually a string of ambiguous words and non explicit context that requires sympathy toward them, for some sort of sembalence of following their intent to occur. But the people who write these rules typically don't see any ambiguity in their rules, so they see no need for other peoples sympathy, so they demand aherance to the 'clear cut' rules. Which in practical terms is demanding sympathy. People who were sympathetic but get no recognition of that, are incensed. Some people just leave, others remain but just don't give a shit about these 'rules' anymore because its impossible to do so, unless you want to sympathise with someones ideas who doesn't recognise you as being sympathetic (not the best of relationships). These people play to win at any cost, typically because they know from experience any sympathy towards the ambiguous rules isn't recognised and certainly not met with any sympathy back.
Probably one of the best objective tests for whether rules are ambiguous is if you programmed them into a computer program - if the program can follow them as you intended, they aren't ambiguous. Otherwise your writing rules that demand sympathy towards their intent, but without any recognition that the other person cared. That's just not functional.
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