How important are roleplaying features to you?

[Morreion]

The Daily Grind: How important are roleplaying features to you?

It's strange that when our favorite game genre has "roleplaying" right in the title, the topic of roleplaying in-game can produce such varied and divisive opinions. On one end of the spectrum, some people consider it to be not much more than a group of people sitting around and talking endlessly instead of actually playing a game (which, to be fair, is not always far from the truth). On the other end, some people point to the fact that roleplaying is right in the title, and that if you don't care at all about the flavor you might as well not be playing the game genre in general (which, to be fair, is also not always far from the truth). And there are always the people who want to just play the game and don't care if you say "pull boss" or launch into a quick diatribe about slaying this foul mountebank.

Lots of reader comments on this article worth looking at.

Personally, it drives me crazy when a game does not have simple RP tools such as an open /emote script (can't find it in Aion yet), a good amount of emote gestures, and the ability to interact with furniture (being able to sit down, something WAR skipped entirely). These features were in games many years ago but they seem to be skipped a lot these days.

As much as I think WoW has brought about the mass dilution of MMO community, they at least have the above tools mentioned.

It would also be nice if there were designated RP servers in games. I don't care if the ruleset is exactly the same as every other server, just designate one as RP-friendly so people who care about that know where to go.

I appreciate games with rich lore, such as LOTRO. That helps spur RP in me. Lore is an indirect RP tool.

[EchoVamper]

You know, I stumbled onto a table in Arkarios Village, Poeta the other day...and all of a sudden my character was sitting down. When I checked it out...there actually was a little cog icon that allowed one to sit down at the picnic table. Surprised me!

From one of the reader comments: I think that LotRO is a move in the right direction with this topic. It doesn't have any official RP servers, but it is a very thematic world and then adds to that a mix of RP tools that players are welcome to use. This includes things like player housing (which needs a lot more work that I hope they'll get to), being able to designate your character as roleplaying (which changes the color of your name), character bios, an adoption system, and most especially the music system.

Is AI in the industry advanced enough that NPC interaction with players could be a stimulus to role play? The thematic IPs do have some great opportunities there if they would just take them. Aion has done a reasonable job of incorporating their lore (mini-videos, ceremonies etc.); it's a shame they do not enhance that with some basic tools for creative communication.

[Loendal]

Unfortunately, you run into dollar signs again. Every single animation and interaction must be envisioned, created, programmed, failsafed, debugged and implimented. These are generalized terms (And I'm probably using some of them wrong ), but the point I'm making is that you, as a company, have to pay for these things to be done to add to your game, which could produce many additional man-hours that must be paid for. This will either a) increase the cost to make your game and/or b) increase the time to release as all these little features are tested and worked in. Yes, you could use hundreds upon hundreds of mini-videos and specialized animations, but it's going to cost money to develop and produce them all, and after release, people won't care about them anymore. Translation: Why bother implementing them in the first place?

It could be something as simple as using a free-floating camera port to make a dramatic flourish and entrance into a city pulled right from live data. That has to be done right or the effect will be lost and complained about. Even when it's absolutely perfect, people will still want to skip it after the first time. MMO players are some of the most impatient people in the online world of games.

I really hate being this cynical towards some of my favorite types of games, but I've seen so much done wrong that the only way I think any of us will ever get what we want is if we make it ourselves and that's just not all that fiesable without an "Adventure Construction Set" - like program. They had one back in the old C-64 days, why can't they do something like that now?

[Morreion]

Oct 9, 2009 9:56:58 GMT -5 Loendal said:

I really hate being this cynical towards some of my favorite types of games, but I've seen so much done wrong that the only way I think any of us will ever get what we want is if we make it ourselves and that's just not all that fiesable without an "Adventure Construction Set" - like program. They had one back in the old C-64 days, why can't they do something like that now?

Actually, that would be a big breakthrough, having a toolset to be able to customize your own game (or an instance or server in an existing game framework similar to Neverwinter Nights) would be a next-generation step, and that might be what we need at this stale point.

[EchoVamper]

Reminiscence incoming:

Years ago there was a company called Fantasoft that made games on the Mac platform. That was the age of tile games, and they had two...Realmz and Exile. The company was owned by a guy named Tim Phillips. I dabbled a bit, and got to know Tim. One of the diehard customers made a character editor for it and he honored it and actually helped the guy distribute it. Then he made a Scenario Editor called "Divinity" and let people create their own scenarios. A really nice guy with some nice ideas...and a great attitude. I called him a couple of times to get key codes...always got him on the phone. I think he was running the company out of the basement.

I know that's not much more than a trip down memory lane and has borderline relevance to the modern industry. Maybe someone like that will emerge...a "players' developer" of sorts and THAT will be the next great leap forward...one can hope I guess.

[Loendal]

There are a few things like a construction set out there, but you still need to know how to do the modelling, skinning, animating as well as more often then not are forced to use their game mechanics for combat, trade and so on and so forth.

Another drawback of any construction set I've found out there is that you must link it up to their servers and if you want any sort of autonomy, you have to pay a hefty fee. Otherwise you are forced into their server structure, which means if their server dies or they don't like your content, they have rights to remove it.

I don't really have time to dig up links at the moment, but I can go digging later (or perhaps tomorrow, depending on workload tonight).

I had a NWN Module I had going for a while, never got any visitors, but I was well on my way to creating my own little world inside a D&D framework. Then NWN II came out and the editor was too difficult to use (And I would have to had totally redone most of my script work, essentially making me have to start from scratch anyway). Then I became a Daddy... Goodbye copious amounts of free time!