Persistent World Rountable: The Role Playing Experience...

#1 Ph4t l3wt

#2 How many people playing RPG games are after the role-playing and how many are just after game-playing?

#3 Originally I got into the game for Role-playing. Coming from the MU* background, that's the bulk of what there was. Unfortunately now, RP'ing doesn't even factor into the games I play. How long will players go around in "RP" mode while the bulk of the population are standing next to them going "Shut up dewd, the Yankees suck!"

Even games that have tried RP only servers haven't fared well. I think on the scale of MMOG's it's difficult to enforce RP'ing.

So now I probably fall on the Gameplay side of the fence basically because I have no choice. :)

#4 How do you "role-play" in a video game? By choosing actions from a multiple choice interface? I ask, because "role-playing" seems to be a hot issue with people who might play our game... Our game is persistent... it isn't a MMORPG... you can even play it single player.

I get the distinct impression that people scream: "Give me good role-playing!!!!", but really have no idea of how or what this is... In my mind, the best role-playing to date may have been Ultima 4...

Perhaps this comes down to being multiplayer chat only... where you adopt a funny speaking style and are "in character"?? If it's about interacting with the game system, then surely there must be ONE good example, somewhere ...

-Josh Ritter
Prairie Games

#5 I'll start this off with a few of my own opinions, that I'm using to drive the design and implementation of my gameplay mechanics in my own project.

Roleplaying is mostly avoided in games because it's simply not fun. It's not provided for in many cases, and in cases where it is provided for, the impelementation is clunky at best. What needs to change for roleplay to get back to it's pen-and-paper roots is for a broader "command set" or feature set to be implemented that allows for a deeper role-playing experience.

Some ideas along those lines that I'm looking to implement, and why:

1) Why is chat so "global"? I think chat should be folded into the game design and that way people can buy/make/trade communications devices that allow them to talk to others. Depending on the device, you have different ranges, and some(like computers) will allow you to chat on a global scale.

Doing this has a few effects on gameplay:
- Allows for the integration of chat into the "hearing" perception of bots, so if you're in an area talking into a phone, an enemy mob might just overhear you and decide to stalk/attack you.
- Allows for deeper Guild v Guild/Empire v Empire play by allowing an opportunity to hook chat into espionage skills such as hacking(to gain access to the chat stream), or stealth skills to get within hearing distance of conversations.
- May have the positive side-effect of reducing verbal harrassment by players, except on the global channel and in localized areas(where the players are close enough, and in some areas will be able to engage in PvP to alleviate the situation).
- Has a negative side-effect in restricting communications between friends on opposite sides of the map and/or from meeting at a predesignated area. Of course, that's what communication items are for(courier, phones, telepathy, homing pigeons, the ability to shout a little further than you talk, etc).

2) Emotes as roleplaying instruments: This also hooks into an AI discussion, but I'll start that roundtable seperate since AI also covers more ground than just this. What I would like to do with emotes is hook them into the AI so that in order to have a greater effect in certain situations, you would have to act a certain way. Case in point: If you're infiltrating a castle, and you're passing an officer while in disguise, wouldn't it be helpful to you to salute the officer in order to not arouse suspicion? Or Dancing or juggling to distract a guard for a second or two so your friend can slip past the gate?

Those uses for emoting would enhance gameplay, not only making the games less "mindless" and "hack and slash", but also making the roleplaying experience deeper, and lengthening whatever treadmill you are on. A few other things that this could benefit are:

- If you want to implement an alignment system that monitors players' actions, this is a good place to start.
- You can reward roleplaying by giving extra xp or skillpoints to those who use emotes to add to their gameplay, and also who use emotes to come up with alternative solutions.
- Gameplay takes longer, resulting in longer, deeper campaigns and quests.

That's it for this second, I have more to share, but I'll wait for feedback and for others to get a chance to air their opinions/ideas.

#6 The abiltity to affect the world you are in is allways a big bonus, esp in a persistent world, imagine walking with new group and saying "I did that!" Huge incentive to get out and do things. If there was a more dymnamic progession, it would suit it better, ok chossing what you want to do and be is great, but sometimes people don't understand the character they choose so if it was to improve your skills as you use them, such as the more you use axes you get better with axes and to an small extent melee. So the more you do something the better you get, where as in some modern RPGs it seems that you can build a house and get better with shooting!

#7 Heh jk with the last post. But really, I am not much of an RP'er although I have caught myself doing it every now and then. One of the biggest things (IMO) keeping people from Roleplaying an RPG are things that remind them they are playing an online game.

I think the idea is to escape into a believable world and become somebody else for a while, forgetting the everyday crap most of us go through, but things like nerfs and having to pay attention to a whole list of character stats sort of stand in the way of this. Most people who play games enjoy working out puzzles and solving problems (which I guess is basically what a game is). If the main scope of the game is a list of numbers, then many people will treat it as such. They will kill mob X for Y amount of xp until they are strong enough to go hunt mob Z.

What I would like to see is a little dose of reality in a game. Most of the time (I am guessing here because I have actually never done this) when somebody is hit with a huge flaming sword they tend to bleed everywhere and run away, or just die. It's unimaginable to me that a person can sit there hour after hour being smacked on with a 2-ton warhammer and simply rest for a few minutes and be right back in perfect health. Many of todays games simply aren't DANGEROUS enough. If I had spent my entire real life training to cleave people in two (from lvl 1 - 20) I would expect that maybe quite often some newbie would get in a lucky shot (especially if they are swarmed around me all hacking at the same time).

What ever happened to "hit location"? Remember that from MUDS? You get hit in the arm for 5987987 damage. It's not very often you see this in MMORPG's, these days it's strictly limited to FPS "one hit and your dead" headshots. Anyway It's just this unreality that keeps me (personally) from being drawn into a game long enough to "RP". Well that and extremely shallow and uninteresting storylines.

#8 @Matt: That's a good question, and I think it depends on the game/genre. How many people will want to roleplay in Matrix Online, compared to DAoC?

That may also be a moot point if the roleplaying mechanics are in there from the start, and encourage people to use them. The trick, I think, is getting the implementation of them to be either transparent to the player, or enjoyable, or a bit of both. When that is achieved, then the distinction between the "roleplayers" and "non-roleplayers" will blur, since they'll be roleplaying even if they don't intend to, but not in a way in which they feel forced to do it.

#9 """"- Has a negative side-effect in restricting communications between friends on opposite sides of the map and/or from meeting at a predesignated area. Of course, that's what communication items are for(courier, phones, telepathy, homing pigeons, the ability to shout a little further than you talk, etc).""""


That worked rather well in DAOC, and was probably one of the little things that I was most impressed with. When I see an enemy player and his name is "Troll Invader" instead of JOHN666ub3rd3wd just sort of draws me in.

"Troll Invader says something in a language you cannot understand"

#10

Quote:When I see an enemy player and his name is "Troll Invader" instead of JOHN666ub3rd3wd just sort of draws me in.

True, the name generator is a good start for getting a character ready for roleplaying. One of the things I liked about Anarchy Online was that you were given a name, and your screenname was an "aka" or nickname. Probably a good idea, especially since you can't stop ub3rd3wd's from making up those names entirely, would be to have a "normal" name generated and then have all the npc's refer to you by that name. Since the names wouldn't be unique(unless you had a massive name dictionary), you would get instances of mistaken identity in systems where npc memories are in effect, and that would cause some interesting situations ;)

#11 @Ted
That mistaken idea might be good, two guys smae race, same name, having an npc confused could be good, it happens in real life. The whole system would come unbalanced in a persistent world but if as you said if you have a log in name that is in the database, and are refered to as an another name. You might be able to get away with multiple instances of the same name with some nice coding in the npc's and thus having a more realistic naming scheme, because numbers and such shouldn't be in a name, uunless they are robots or something.

#12 Well I didnt mean the name generator (although I noticed a lot of people do use them and it seems condicive to RP), but I was referring to players of enemy realms. You weren't allowed to see their character's name, but instead only a name referring to their race and whether they were invading or defending (but people in your own realm showed their character name). "Highlander Invader" "Orc invader" etc etc. I couldn't tell you how much "shit talking" ruins my gaming experience, and preventing enemy players from communicating really did something to enhance the PVP.

#13 Hmmmm, that's a nice feature, I never noticed that... And yes, the trash talk does ruin that sense of immersion(unless it's part of it, but it rarely is). If I'm not mistaken, SWG has something similar to the language barrier? Another thing the language thing opens up are language skills, so you can have interpreters in your party when you go into other areas. I think that would add a nice touch, and even give rise to a few specialized characters who study language and tag along with groups for a price.

#14 Posted Response : Entr0py : Jun 25, 2004 12:15 CDT

In DAoC (Dark Age of Camelot), after and only after you kill an opponent, you will see the name of who was killed. It comes up as CharA was killed by CharB. But that is the only time you can get any character names from opposing realms.

General Response :
I had thought that in order to really bring about a deeper sense of realism that would support the "RPG" mindset, the game server would have to be very intense. There would have to be a good monetary system, crafting/merchant system, natural occuring disasters that affected economy (etc.) and the ability to choose your enemy (not just beacuse he comes from a different land). The enemy system would have to allow people from different realms to join up/band together for a common cause (whatever that may be).

I have just purchased the engine and upgrade shader engine. I am hoping to be able to design a game that will take most of this into consideration and be able to pull it off without affecting game play because a server might be overworked.

Just my 2 cents worth.

#15 Hmm, as I read through this thread I'm beginning to truly think that you can't have real RP in MMOG's.

To truly have real RP you need to be able to say and do whatever you wish. Tabletop games make that easy because you are basically acting, albeit with your spoken words, and you can do or say anything you wish. Muds and muses also gave the player full control over their actions and words with simple text. I know they say a picture is worth a thousand words, but I've seen some roleplaying poses in online text games that were just works of art. MMOG's really do not give you the full set of tools you need. Yeah a bunch of /emotes help, but more often than not they are used more for comedic value than for actual roleplaying purposes.

Also, the single biggest reason you just will not see true RP in MMOG's is simple. There are no consequences to your actions. To have great RP not only do you need to have the tools at your disposal, the world needs to react to your use of those tools. For example, I'm playing a Tabletop game and in the King's court and yell out, "Hey Queenie, nice jugs!" There will certainly be swift and likely unpleasant consequences to that action. That in itself forces players into realistic roleplaying. Yet in a MMOG that type of thing will not have a single effect on the player, if anything, they may be rewarded from the snickers and LOL's of their party members.

Tabletop games work because there is a GM to enforce this, MU*'s have admins and such that can as well. MMOG's are just too large in scope to deal with this. Automating it would certainly create more code than anyone would want to write and having real bodies behind enforcement is just cost prohibitive. Therefore, for the most part, MMOG's limit RP by channelling players down static "RP" quests, or even when the Dev team jumps into the world, it's so small and limited that it has little effect on the game.

IMO I just don't see the capability, given current technology or budgets, in large games to really implement RolePlaying. Smaller niche games catering to 100 or so folks might be able to get away with it just becuase a handful of staff could actually drive the game's plot and roleplaying and keep tabs on the players actions.

So...what can be used in a smaller scoped game to include/introduce RP to the game? There's a few things I think need to be implemented at a minimum.

1) The proper tools needed to RP.
2) Players garnering rewards for good RP.
3) Enforcement of RP realistic for the game universe. "Consequences to your actions."

#16 One of the things that kind of killed my enthusiam for one MMORPG (Shadowbane) was scalability of encounters. The initial encounters (snakes, spiders, etc) on the levelling treadmill were easy enough, but later encounters were harder to qualify. The situations which initially encouraged individual action and derring-do devolved into situations where some people did the actual work and others sat on the sidelines, becoming XP leeches. It's irritating when you're doing the work, and boring as hell when you're the leech. (Yes, a buddy of mine actually suggested that I remain a leech. Fast XP, but I could have cooked and consumed a four-course dinner during the process.)

Compare that with Guild Wars, or rather the alpha that was playable during E3, where the quests required a good mix of character classes and abilities to accomplish the goals, yet the teams were small enough that everybody had an impact. Moreover, there was no "dream team" combination of classes that trumped all mobs, least not that I found in the three days I was playing. The norm seemed to favor a balance of melee and ranged offensive capability (supported by buffs) matched with healing and magical support casting (which expedites the healing after a skirmish and can lend additional firepower to the shooters and scrappers). The key difference between the two games is that there was a better sense of scale, and even when you got your head handed to you, you could at least suspect there was a problem with your approach rather than a fundamental weakness or "uselessness" in your character. Moreoever, you had the opportunity to adjust your strategies and tactics, and then try again. Additionally, there was (perhaps) an unconscious element of roleplay involved. Speaking from my own experience, there was sort of a natural inclination for characters to fall into roles. Purely warrior types taking point, purely magical types acting as the artillery, the mixed classes backing up whoever was in the worst trouble at the time.

Plus, also speaking to the roleplaying angle, the wilderness between the quest zones really did give a feeling of adventure, where the character had nobody to rely on but themselves, where there were new things to be discovered and new critters to wipe out. I liked being able to explore without stumbling over other people. I just wish the town vendors could have been better implemented, or more of them being around.

#17 @Chris: Aside from the jugs example, which is more than correct since it'll be quite some time before we have adequate Natural Language Processing on that scale, I think we have the technology to get closer to pen and paper games right now. True, we don't(and won't for a long time) have the flexibility or freedom that pen and paper gives us, but at the same time we do have the ability to get a bit closer.

Rewards for roleplaying is a start. Maybe if the player chose their alignment, then the actions he executed would be judged better. "Sliding" or changing alignment through actions over time, may or may not bring about detrimental effects, depending on your game's goals. Maybe if they are a paladin and kill an innocent, they are penalized somehow, until it is clear to the "judging system" that the character is undergoing a "slide" and not just commiting something completely random.

The emotes have been around for a long time, and you're right, they aren't used except for comedic purposes, but that's because they're only there for the players to use with other players. And that's fine for the most part, but it's been also overlooked as a powerful roleplaying too. For instance, if you included hand-signals, then you can have guilds behaving like units, especially if they have the chat distance restriction. Emotes right now are simply like smileys in AIM, where they should have the same impact as casting a spell or using an item.

As for GM's or admins, there needs to be a better way to monitor people's behavior, and I do believe that if you build it into the gameplay, you can achieve a better result than we have now, though not as good as when you sit down in the kitchen with three or four friends and do some roleplaying. Roleplaying needs to be built into every part of the game design-actually, the game needs to be designed around roleplaying. Otherwise, it's just an after-thought, or will play as if it was. The rules and gameplay need to be built in from the core on out.

Same thing with the story. I've heard people say that you need to design your story around the features of the engine, but then that explains why a lot of these games are similar, and why there's so little innovation. Instead of saying "Okay, the engine can do this, so the story should say this", we need to be thinking in terms of: "Okay, the engine does this, and the story calls for this... How can I get it so that the player can do what needs to be done in the story?"

Otherwise, what you get are the bland stories and environments, because the developer walks into the project "trapped", and then that sense trickles down to the players as they play the game, because they know there's more to do, that can be done, but they can't do it even though they want to. Innovation requires that we work outside the constraints of our chosen engine, or push those boundaries back ourselves. The "can'ts" that the game dev community uses should be replaced with "how's", and that's how the innovations come...

#18 @Meatball: Good point. I, too, find RPGing in MMORPGs to be, at best, shallow. Now, if I happen to be around some of my old-skool diehard RP friends, we can have fun roleplaying, but that's because we're also from the MU*/MOO days of online interaction. We sit in the chat window and roleplay. The game itself might as well just be a simple text chat client for all that it helps us...

Sometimes, you can get away with roleplaying on the forums -- recount your adventures, and such. But again, while this occurs within the game context, it's entirely outside of the game space itself. (ie: We could just as well not play the game and RP on the forums or in IMs to each other. All we'd need was the raw source material of the game, like background, prominant characters, etc.)

Accountability is a good point. MMORPGs have to be static. Allowing the player too much ability will destroy the game for others, because while a small percentage of people will utilize this for sane RP, the rest will simply gimp the system.

There have been some good attempts at this, like Asheron's Call (during the beta, at least), Anarcy Online, and so-on. But the whole claim of "You might be interacting with an employee of MMORPGCorp who will incorporate your roleplayed actions into the overall game world!" has been made so many times now, I've yet to see any game that has made it work.

And even if you do, there will be people who screw with things just to grief. For example, in JumpGate there was a big RP event in which an important ambassador, played by an employee, was going to be escorted from one station to another. Appearently, somebody camped outside of the station and killed him even before he could launch his ship. (A then-current game bug that made ingle-shot kills real easy.) The whole hour/two hour planned out RP mission was then down the tubes, and the game mods were pretty upset over the whole ordeal.

No, I treat MMORPGs more like simple hack-n-slash MUDs. Roleplay has never interested me that much on there. Some games, like SecondLife, might actually change this, however, with the ability to freely modify the world.

#19 Second Life definitely has some good potential. And though I was extremely skeptical in the begining, the freeform nature of it is something that can catch on, though in limited forms, in other PW's.

The whole thing of having employees play characters is overdone, even though my early design docs called for exactly that. I think it should reside more within the rules of the system for the players to use, and through that they will be able to roleplay, even if they don't think they are. If it gets you more xp to emote as much as you can, won't you? If certain words are filtered around certain npc's, like profanity, and it causes situations that you don't want(like higher prices in the shop, or a refusal to sell to you for a while), you'd probably avoid that too. Of course, there's always going to be griefers, and no matter what systems and features we come up with, there will always be those who act out of character(including on pen and paper campaigns, and I've done that a few times myself, the most people do is stack the deck against you to kill you off, but that's like temporarily banning people).

#20 In order to roleplay a game you really need to have a deep understanding of the world, its cultures, and its history. All the players in the game world need to have the same basic understanding of that world. In AD&D players have gained this experience through books and dungeon masters, Matrix Online players through movies, World of Warcraft players through previous games.

Perhaps an MMOG focused on Roleplaying should be preceded by a single-player campaign. Imagine playing through Morrowind, then joining a MMOG based on that world. You would already have a good idea of how the gameplay worked, and of how the game world was setup.

I think attaining a rich roleplaying experience within an MMOG will be tough. A lot of game mechanics will need to change. For example, the xp treadmill. When you spend hours a night with the same people for weeks enduring the monotonous xp treadmill it is hard to stay in character. Eventually real world concerns and subjects are going to surface, if only to pass the time.

I have been in a strongly RP oriented guild in DAoC before. The RP environment was maintained by the guild leaders and the community. I chose the server because it was labeled "roleplaying" and was very satisfied with the gameplay. The Trolls and Dwarves on the server had even developed their own dialects. Developers should focus on making it easy for players with similar playing styles to come together on their own servers.

Entr0py brought up how stats can detract from the roleplaying experience, and I agree. I can't count the number of times I sat through debates on character building and stat placement while waiting for mobs to spawn. Maybe it would be a good idea to hide stats from the player. All skills and attributes could be learned through professionals and trainers. Character building debates could be broken down into something like, "If you want to learn how to pick locks, apprentice yourself to the locksmith in town." As oppossed to "Put 19 points into dexterity and 24 points into lockpick because the lockpick percentage is based on agility multiplied by 4 plus the lockpick skill."

I also like the ideas for reducing global chat that Ted brought up. This would also reduce the "smack talk" issue, since if you died you wouldn't have to worry about the victor sending you an endless string of tells about how great they are. Bandwidth usage would be reduced as well. Additionally mail, courier, and bulletin board systems could be implemented, especially for guild usage. Keeping guild communications within the context of the game would help with immersion, rather than forcing guilds to communicate through personal website forums.