Flagging as "Ready to Roleplay"

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Comments

  • Jurixe said:

    I appreciate the issue behind this idea, which is to make it easier for newer players to get immersed into the game by interaction with other willing players.

    That being said, I don't think this is the way to do it. The main charm of Achaea in general is that it is (meant to be) a roleplay-intensive environment. Something @Carmain is fond of saying is that roleplay isn't an instance - it is all the time. When you are logged into your character, you should be roleplaying. Sure, that's not to say everyone does it all the time, but that is the standard you want to be enforcing. 

    I heavily dislike the implication that there will essentially be an admin-sanctioned RPON/RPOFF mode. It just further drives a wedge between the 'RP' and 'non-RP' people. As others have said, what is RP anyway? Is it just special events like rituals or tea parties where people suddenly decide to start using special emotes? What about the rest of the time, aren't you roleplaying too? Do you need to use special emotes to -be- roleplaying? What about the people that have it off all the time - does that automatically mean they're not worth interacting with?


    Just a couple points.

    • Achaea is not a roleplay-mandated environment. People are free to basically not RP - that's fine. It's not interesting to some people just like PK isn't interesting to some people. We just don't want people interrupting other peoples' immersion by talking about basketball or something in public spaces/channels. It makes no difference to me whether people have fun PKing, hunting, RPing, crafting, chatting, being political or whatever - I just want them to have fun and hopefully add to the "net fun" of everyone else. 

    • I don't see special emotes as being a single bit more "RP" than standard emotes fwiw. They may be more interesting/more complete descriptions of what someone is doing, but that doesn't make it better RP to my mind, any more than flowery writing is inherently superior to or "more real" than simpler Hemingway-esque writing.
  • KresslackKresslack Florida, United States

    I like it. Maybe similar to SPARWHO, RPWHO could list those interested and you'd maybe have to remember to turn it back on after leaving realms and returning.



  • CaladbolgCaladbolg Campbell County TN
    Tohran said:

    This might set a dangerous trend of flags, such as flagging for PvP ala WoW. Though... hey, that wouldn't be so bad! Kinda sick of getting killed today.

    This is why I joined mark.


    Daklore said:

    Being logged in, in and of itself, should already signify a willingness and readiness to roleplay. I mean... it's a roleplaying game... Might be excusable for newer players to the mud to not really understand that, but... I mean... that's the whole point of the game.

    I'm just old. And crotchety. And dammit kids, get off my lawn already! *shakes cane in the air*

    Daklore has a point, I personally thing the flag for rp will make people feel that if there not flagged for rp they don't have to rp at all.

    but on the other hand I think the point of achaea is what you make of it.

    if you want to play achaea to kill people Achaea is a pk game, with other elements (like rp)

    if you want to roleplay on achaea it's a roleplay game with other elements (like pk)

    if you want to use it for a chatroom, then it's a chatroom game with other elements (like dying to hunger)

    And if you want to type out sexual things to other people inside a house with a phased serpent watching and writing everything down in a little black notepad.. then well.. it's that too.

  • Silas said:

    Roleplay in Achaea is at its best when it happens spontaneously and people go with the flow. Both these ideas seem counter productive to that. Not a fan.

    Although I get that there's this thought that not joining RPWHO would say "I'm OOC right now" (I feel it's very unsubstantiated, comparing it to how SPARWHO does not particularly prevent people from sparring without joining SPARWHO, but I get that there's a boolean nature to it), I don't get why adding this will suddenly prevent people from roleplaying spontaneously.

    Will all of you stubbornly decide that unless you and everyone else involved is in this list, you just aren't going to roleplay with them? Furthermore, will you refuse to roleplay spontaneously anymore?

    Honestly, if this feature is so wildly successful that it literally overwrites the current culture of roleplay, I say that's even more reason to add it in, since that would likely require a lot of people having a lot of fun with it before that would happen, and that sounds like a positive thing to me.

    More likely, it will not completely overwrite the current roleplaying structure. At best, it will likely end up being a tool that could add interaction that otherwise currently doesn't exist. If people misuse it, then the administration will probably realize it was a failure and delete it. At worst, they won't, but you will probably continue being able to do whatever it is you currently do in Achaea anyway.

  • Sarapis said:
    Jurixe said:

    I appreciate the issue behind this idea, which is to make it easier for newer players to get immersed into the game by interaction with other willing players.

    That being said, I don't think this is the way to do it. The main charm of Achaea in general is that it is (meant to be) a roleplay-intensive environment. Something @Carmain is fond of saying is that roleplay isn't an instance - it is all the time. When you are logged into your character, you should be roleplaying. Sure, that's not to say everyone does it all the time, but that is the standard you want to be enforcing. 

    I heavily dislike the implication that there will essentially be an admin-sanctioned RPON/RPOFF mode. It just further drives a wedge between the 'RP' and 'non-RP' people. As others have said, what is RP anyway? Is it just special events like rituals or tea parties where people suddenly decide to start using special emotes? What about the rest of the time, aren't you roleplaying too? Do you need to use special emotes to -be- roleplaying? What about the people that have it off all the time - does that automatically mean they're not worth interacting with?


    Just a couple points.

    • Achaea is not a roleplay-mandated environment. People are free to basically not RP - that's fine. It's not interesting to some people just like PK isn't interesting to some people. We just don't want people interrupting other peoples' immersion by talking about basketball or something in public spaces/channels. It makes no difference to me whether people have fun PKing, hunting, RPing, crafting, chatting, being political or whatever - I just want them to have fun and hopefully add to the "net fun" of everyone else. 

    • I don't see special emotes as being a single bit more "RP" than standard emotes fwiw. They may be more interesting/more complete descriptions of what someone is doing, but that doesn't make it better RP to my mind, any more than flowery writing is inherently superior to or "more real" than simpler Hemingway-esque writing.

    He'd come to Cyrene for cupcakes, his thick, scaled tail twitching lazily to and fro.  He'd been wandering aimlessly from the Delos artefact markets the way non-com credit whores are wont to do, when the thought struck him.  Cupcakes.  Cupcakes would go just fine with this new lifevision mask and flower pot, the Xoran thought.

     
    Snow.  A blizzard.  He trudged through the ruins of Centre Crossing, reduced to rubble yet again by restless warrior savages from the Bastion of the North, eager to plunder Cyrene's famed snowglobe artefacts, a technology the savages had tried, but failed to emulate.  Just then a soft, willowy voice with a velvety timbre called out "Yo!  Want some pie?  It's going to decay soon".  It occurred to the Xoran that he'd been wise to choose the flower pot over spectacles of whitesight after all.  The graceful dwarf handed him a thick slice of blackbird pie and downed a shot of warm brandy, daintily picking bits of pie from her beard with an aristocratic lack of self-consciousness.  Let Ashtan come, he thought, I have this flower pot, and it resets.   

  • Flowerpots are Mhaldorian, thank you very much. We have zoos, not greenhouses.

  • NimNim
    edited June 2014
    Silas said:
    Nim said:
    Silas said:

    Roleplay in Achaea is at its best when it happens spontaneously and people go with the flow. Both these ideas seem counter productive to that. Not a fan.

    Although I get that there's this thought that not joining RPWHO would say "I'm OOC right now" (I feel it's very unsubstantiated, comparing it to how SPARWHO does not particularly prevent people from sparring without joining SPARWHO, but I get that there's a boolean nature to it), I don't get why adding this will suddenly prevent people from roleplaying spontaneously.

    Will all of you stubbornly decide that unless you and everyone else involved is in this list, you just aren't going to roleplay with them? Furthermore, will you refuse to roleplay spontaneously anymore?

    Honestly, if this feature is so wildly successful that it literally overwrites the current culture of roleplay, I say that's even more reason to add it in, since that would likely require a lot of people having a lot of fun with it before that would happen, and that sounds like a positive thing to me.

    More likely, it will not completely overwrite the current roleplaying structure. At best, it will likely end up being a tool that could add interaction that otherwise currently doesn't exist. If people misuse it, then the administration will probably realize it was a failure and delete it. At worst, they won't, but you will probably continue being able to do whatever it is you currently do in Achaea anyway.

    It's about the mindset it encourages. If you have an 'RP on' flag, you're advertising to new players that you're only really RPing when you toggle it on. Most new players will come from much more casual games, where OOC is tolerated; adding a flag like this is very likely to reinforce that sort of mindset in new players, which is bad for the long term direction of the game.

    Easily solved with something like adding a task that says "type HELP RPLIST," and then in HELP RPLIST something that explains the command, and explains that you are always IC even if you are not on the list. Bam, problem solved.

    I mean, newbies sometimes come in thinking they can talk about computers or microwave ovens in public channels, and then they are quickly pointed to HELP INSANITY, and usually go "oh, okay!"

    In other words, you're right that just adding this command without any explanation from anyone could lead someone to think that not using it means you're OOC. That's a valid assumption as any other (for example, that it's used to get mudsex, that it's used to get Gods to RP with you via denizens, that it's used to play roleplaying games within Achaea, like some sort of RP-in-RP thing (i would so do that)), and it's important to realize that in order to know what expectations need to be set.

    But saying that it should not be added because people can take it the wrong way means we shouldn't add PVP commands because people might assume this is some crazy senseless PVP game where you just go around killing whoever you want, whenever you want, however many times you want.

  • Still not convinced that there are not more elegant ways to solve the problem that this is intended to address.


  • Silas said:

    Can we not just have a section of the forum dedicated to discussing and planning IC events? 

    Forums aren't a sufficient tool for passing info to the playerbase in general. Most players don't use the forums regularly or at all.

  • Nim said:
    Silas said:

    Roleplay in Achaea is at its best when it happens spontaneously and people go with the flow. Both these ideas seem counter productive to that. Not a fan.

    Although I get that there's this thought that not joining RPWHO would say "I'm OOC right now" (I feel it's very unsubstantiated, comparing it to how SPARWHO does not particularly prevent people from sparring without joining SPARWHO, but I get that there's a boolean nature to it), I don't get why adding this will suddenly prevent people from roleplaying spontaneously.

    Will all of you stubbornly decide that unless you and everyone else involved is in this list, you just aren't going to roleplay with them? Furthermore, will you refuse to roleplay spontaneously anymore?

    Honestly, if this feature is so wildly successful that it literally overwrites the current culture of roleplay, I say that's even more reason to add it in, since that would likely require a lot of people having a lot of fun with it before that would happen, and that sounds like a positive thing to me.

    More likely, it will not completely overwrite the current roleplaying structure. At best, it will likely end up being a tool that could add interaction that otherwise currently doesn't exist. If people misuse it, then the administration will probably realize it was a failure and delete it. At worst, they won't, but you will probably continue being able to do whatever it is you currently do in Achaea anyway.

    I think that no matter what was implemented, I can pretty much guarantee it's not going to do any overwriting of RP culture in any major way. At best it would be another incremental addition that hopefully nudges things in the right direction.

  • CarmellCarmell Eastern Washington

    Wow Halos I think that guy had a longer talk with Whalos then I get to have with you at times.

  • I always thought achaea should try to implement some kind of group based event system. Like randomized tasks (from a predetermined list) set to houses and cities monthly/yearly. Maybe some kind of bulletin board in town squares for individuals/groups to sign up for smaller tasks like clearing a denizen town from some kind of pest, maybe a dungeon to explore/etc.

  • HalosHalos The Reaches
    Carmell said:

    Wow Halos I think that guy had a longer talk with Whalos then I get to have with you at times.

    Stop flipping your rp flag off and we'll talk!


    A frenzied cleric screams, "Like more than one halo!"
  • My initial reaction is that I am against this for most of the reasons that people are already.  Like Iocun/Greys, I feel that I am in the realms pretty strictly to RP, even if it's not top notch highly involved and perhaps just on a family clan, I'm still here for that.

    On the flip side, when I was the MoW of Cyrene... people standing around who I can think can actively help me defend the city give me a "tell rinzai on my cell phone KEKEKEKEKEKE" irritate the hell out of me because I kind of expect (foolishly I know) that everyone in the realms is here in a similar mindset/capacity that I am. I don't think this flag would help that out though.

    I believe that I would prefer things as is, instead of introducing a mechanism for someone to justify insanity.



  • "Bash up to a respectable level." That is the problem. What constitutes a respectable level? If they are 3450% or my level, I doubt if they are the least bit interested in me. I've been ignored in raids, because I am 0% to the raiders. I don't really want to talk to yet another person who tells me about pygmy kidnappings, so I can't blame the raiders for not wanting to talk to me.


  • @Eratta

    Personally, anyone below level 60 just doesn't look serious to me, and anyone 70 and over looks like they're going to stick around.  Otherwise, you looka bit like a throwaway character.  The effort involved in doing that is fairly minimal and ensures that you have to access to at least one decent skill.  Generally, you're good enough to have in (at least a defensive) raid group then if you know your basics.  You'd be surprised how effective spamming your main bashing attack or something else useful can be if you're in a decent sized group.

    I'm not saying you have to be artifacted or even tri-trans, just that a certain level of investment in bashing up to a level where your credits have given you access to at least the main skills in one tree of your skillset means that you look serious.  Like someone who wants to play the character instead of having just turned up and seeing if people are likely to adopt you as their buddy.

  • I can understand the desire to make Achaea more attractive to new players, but honestly I don't think this is the way to do that. If someone is "looking for roleplay," it abounds at every turn in Achaea. Making players have to do less to find or engage in it makes no sense to me. In short, the best roleplayed experiences are those that are actively sought through roleplay itself, not ads or flags, which feel a lot like Achaea's lowering its expectations rather than easing a transition into a realm itself. 

  • edited June 2014

    What would an RP tag actually look like though

    Funny things 


    Can we pls not do it this way

    The lack of appropriate #matthewy on those OOC clans makes this otherwise-accurate portrayal altogether unrealistic, Whalos.

    More and more convinced that the only way to deal with this problem for newbies is to just somehow encourage existing players to be nicer and do more roleplaying/convene people together including newbies. I do think adding the city hangouts to landmarks is a passive, low-stakes way to help a newbie out. Granted, they may cruise on in and find someone testing out aliases on someone else/AFKing instead of actively roleplaying. But they are more likely to find roleplay at Farrier's while we are in between getting smashed by Ashtan than they are bumping around Shornwall by themselves or something, so it couldn't hurt.

  • @Vansittart‌ I understand your position, but you have to understand that it is hard for players new to the game to understand. People keep saying this game is great, so do I just take your word for it?

  • You're all silly, paranoid, and elitist. You're even throwing hoops at people when I swore people agreed hoops are really dumb.

    And it's not even a hardcore RP mush. It's an RP optional game.

    This is too much for me. My brain hurts, I'll go back to sanity recovering things like studying @Synbios's alien nature.
  • Nim said:
    You're all silly, paranoid, and elitist. You're even throwing hoops at people when I swore people agreed hoops are really dumb.

    And it's not even a hardcore RP mush. It's an RP optional game.

    This is too much for me. My brain hurts, I'll go back to sanity recovering things like studying @Synbios's alien nature.

    >sanity recovery

    >studying my alien existence

    Pick one. There is no both. I ate it a while ago.

  • I like the idea of the opposite. Such as 'don't RP with me' I'm not a huge fan of the RP, play the game for the combat, and having a way to not RP with random people who are sending me RP tells in the middle of a fight would be sweet. 

This discussion has been closed.