Goblin Squad Member
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I’m curious how we will be able to RP our characters. Will it be possible to type out what our characters are doing and saying, and then have the text appear above our characters in-game? Will our characters be able to perform emotes?
I understand the necessity of chat screens. However, I feel that is best used for OOC type chat, otherwise it’s too easy to get lost in all the text. I’m hoping that we will have a mechanism similar to my question above, that is also range related. Therefore if I’m too far away my character couldn’t ‘hear’ (as in I won’t see it on screen) what is being said, and I wouldn’t be deluged by what the whole server is discussing.
If I want to spy on someone in-game then my character will need to be close enough (and sneaky enough) to do so.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah, I'd like it if players could use a good range of emotes* and their default talk was just in a bubble above them, or broadcast only locally. Chat channels for a hex or group could be wider, of course.
* A basic set of emotes at the start, and more emotes earned with select badges or from superior characteristics.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I wouldn't mind seeing some actual effort put into emotes. I remember in SW:TOR I played for a few months and they had animations for meditate attached to several skills but no animation for the meditate emote...
But in general the emote/animation list is something that should start small and expand over time. Not release with tons and tons and tons of emotes. Too much other stuff to work on to start with. I heard they likely won't release player owned structures in the original release.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think LOTRO supports roleplay very well by having the following features:
-Custom emotes. There's an "Emote" channel specifically for this. If you begin any text with /emote, /em, /me, or /e, anything that follows will appear as a custom emote. This is extremely useful when you want to describe your characters' actions as well as speech.
-Embedded emotes. LOTRO has a TON of emotes. Some have animations, while others just spit out some premade text. If you being your emote with the name of an emote that has an animation, the animation will play in tandem with your custom text. So by typing "/sit drops into the grass and sighs dramatically." I end up with a custom emote that also performs the /sit action.
-Chat bubbles. There's an option to toggle on this feature, which makes everything you type in the general /say channel appear in gold letters above your head. It's a great RP aid, since it helps you see lines that you might otherwise miss.
Given the ability to make custom emotes, I personally feel there is little point in an MMO making emotes *unless* those emotes have animations attached to them.
The above list is what I would consider the bare minimum necessary to support RP in an MMO. It's possible to RP in MMOs that do it in other ways (Aion had no custom emotes, so actions had to be denoted by **'s, and The Secret World makes *everything* you type appear in a chat bubble above your head), but it's just not ideal. In the end, I stay with or leave an MMO based on how much fun the RP there is, so I think about these things a lot.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think it is fascinating that you think roleplaying is an act mostly akin to delivering dialog and stage directions, and not represented by what you do in the game or how you do it, or what guides the choices you make about what you do and how you do it.
Seems really superficial to me, to be honest.
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Goblin Squad Member
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They say that communication is 90% non-verbal and only 10% verbal. The speech bubbles and emotes that we’re speculating on add to immersion and role play enjoyment IMHO, and play a part in the overall depth of the character, along with our character actions and motivations.
Some might equally claim that it’s a superficial concern as to how our avatars ‘physically’ appear and how much control we the players will have over the look and design of clothing and equipment our avatars are wearing and crafting. If you proposed that all player avatars were identical with the name as the only identifier, I’m sure the players would quickly voice how important this superficial concern is to us.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Ryan, I think many players will be looking for the kinds of things Beacher is asking for in order to achieve the kinds of "performance art" RP. The kind of RP you're referring to won't require any game mechanics to support, so it's probably not the kind of thing people will spend much time talking about...
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think it is fascinating that you think roleplaying is an act mostly akin to delivering dialog and stage directions, and not represented by what you do in the game or how you do it, or what guides the choices you make about what you do and how you do it.
Seems really superficial to me, to be honest.
I fully agree, if the games goals line up with what a real person would be striving to, the line between roleplay and power gaming blurs as the ideas become one and the same.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I think it is fascinating that you think roleplaying is an act mostly akin to delivering dialog and stage directions, and not represented by what you do in the game or how you do it, or what guides the choices you make about what you do and how you do it.
Seems really superficial to me, to be honest.
Wow. Burn. Also, thank you for putting that far more eloquently than I ever could.
ETA: If I'm playing a character who has the goal "I want to be the sexy shoeless God of War", then a lot of decisions that would be powergaming are also roleplaying. If I'm playing a character that has the goal "I want to discover ALL the things", then many of the 'character sheet' decisions will result in a character sheet that is significantly less powerful than the mathematically optimized one in most circumstances.
I don't need /bow to show respect, and I don't need /gesture to show disrespect. I really don't think that typing those commands helps me to get into the mind of my character.
There is a great deal of underestimation of the value of expression during socialization going on. Superficial though it may be, it is no less superficial than wardrobe, character appearance, vocalizations, terrrain, weather and illumination. Let alone the animations associated with combat and crafting. Collectively all of this contributes to immersion in the Pathfinder / Golarion world.
A sizeable percentage of players spend inordinate amounts of time doing things purely for aesthetics in any game that permits it. Whether this be shopping for wardrobe items, furnishing one's house / shop / stronghold / lair or pestering the company craftscritters to unlock goldsmithing for shinies, these activities aid in the enjoyment of a game for many.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think it is fascinating that you think roleplaying is an act mostly akin to delivering dialog and stage directions, and not represented by what you do in the game or how you do it, or what guides the choices you make about what you do and how you do it.
Seems really superficial to me, to be honest.
Wow, I never thought I'd disagree so strongly with you. To me it seems to be the exact opposite of what you said. What you do and how you do it is the realm of power gamers and statisticians.
"I kill those goblins with my sword using power attack"
OR
"I craft a Ring of Protection +2 using my down time in the city"
Why? Because the goblins are there, are bad, and I like combat, it's largely why I play the game. Because I only have a Ring of Protection +1 and would prefer the AC bonus.
The ability to express yourself is important. To roleplay around the gaming table depends on how your character expresses himself through speech and "stage directions" as you call them. If I wanted to play a moody and silent fighter around the game table, and I didn't express myself with "stage directions" like leaning bored against a wall or dropping to the grass and sighing dramatically, people would think that I didn't have the capacity to roleplay. It's not like you have to justify your characters actions and verbalize his inner dialogue to the other players around the table. I think this is a sign of a poor roleplayer to have to inform the group why he feels a certain way or why he wants to do this. The rest of the group should know intrinsically why due to what their characters would have observed during the course of play.
I also think that the ability to express the character's actions in emotes is important, both in animated emotes and written emotes. I would make the example of the way how WoW manages this, as they have both of these.
For example, should I want my character to show respect or obedience, I can have him actually /kneel before someone. My character stays knelt and I can then /say whatever i want to say, having the speech animation also play (having speech animation is quite important to me, as it elaborates the character quite a bit).
The above example is quite a lot better than having to /e emote the kneeling part, so that it is left to the imagination. Though this option still beats the 3rd option, which is simply saying *kneels* in a chat bubble, as hopefully, the /e is only shown in the chat log, not in a bubble.
I would also say that for a game such as this, which seems to be made as the roleplayer's paradise, making sure that players can express their characters through verbal (i.e. emote) communication is very important. I understand that its impossible to animate everything, emote-wise, but there is no need for that either. Its enough that I can emote the fact that my character glances upwards at the raining sky while the rain drops fall down onto his helmet, slowly trailing down. Without a speech bubble for the emote, or extra animation. While it might be a flavour emote or superficial, I think it adds some depth to the character than instead of him just standing in the rain, not being able to animate him to do the emote or using text for it either.
Most of my time I play on a NWN player-persistent RP-only server (Arelith), where everyone there is a rp in a player driven world. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt for you guys to check it out, and see how they do the things there, as its just simply amazing.
Note that all of this is just my personal opinion.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah...I am not the biggest RPer, but with a masters degree in linguistics I can confirm that research does suggest that at most 30-35% of communication is verbal (Birdwhistell, 1985). Removing the means of 65-70% of human communication seems very counter to Goblinwork's "Primary focus of maximizing meaningful human interaction". Especially when all of that can be accomplished with a just allowing custom emotes to be created and shown in spatial chat channels.
I am not sure of the necessity of all Beacher asked for, but he was only highlighting what exists in another game...and what he would like to see in the game he decides to make home. I know GW has earned a lot of respect from the community for taking a hard stance against people who have complained about the direction of the game..."don't like PvP? Well, this game is not for you there are others out there you would like better, move along"...but, it sounds like you are scoffing at what most people consider RP...in forums dedicated to a tabletop RP game. Granted I do not use emotes in my tabletop games, but when I stand before a king in my P&PRPG, I state my character kneels...is that "dialog and stage directions"? Yeah, it is.
Anyways, while I might not need to bow to show respect in an MMO...I cannot imagine a modern MMO that does not let me. I hope the EVE analogy is not taken too far and GW realizes most people will expect to be represented by avatars that look and move like the living creatures they are intended to represent, not metal ships or statues. Granted, making legs that move while running and arms that appear to swing a sword while fighting are all superficial and not necessary in marking our relative spatial positions, most people will be turned off by an absence of animations.
I know when I was in the military, there was lots of "dialog and stage directions" (DnC is purely this); every ceremony was composed of this. These shared rituals might seem unnecessary and superficial (I know I thought that during the events of this type in the Army), but they are a tried and true method of building unity, social cohesion, and reinforcing social stratifications (which is why the military, churches, governments, etc use them)....and sometimes a /wave is just an easy way to say hello.
On the otherhand, emotes need not be superficial; Ryzom has a /point emote that is actually very practical for showing people direction...for whatever they might need it for...and it shares information that might not otherwise be easy to communicate.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I kinda agree with what Ryan says, in terms of "how one defines their character's identity". Namely the precedence of:
1. Actions on the world
2. Intentions & Decisions for these actions
3. Context and role in society of the character (superego)
4. The character's actual ego - self-expression of the player via all these performance things
So I think there's a good place for tools for 4. but ideally a RP in sandbox with a virtual world is extended to mean what the effect of the player is on the world and what emergent story the player is an act'or or author of?
But the personalisation tools for RP for communication are worth including if the players are the game's best form of content? Lol imagine if player settlements developed their own sub-cultures and forms of social etiquette at court for the in-group to learn to increase group cohesion, a barrier to outsiders (eg secret hand-shakes) etc or just as a mutually agreeable form of learnt social interaction! Eg "You know that place where they do a lot of bowing and hand-flourishing" during trade." :D
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think it is fascinating that you think roleplaying is an act mostly akin to delivering dialog and stage directions, and not represented by what you do in the game or how you do it, or what guides the choices you make about what you do and how you do it.
Seems really superficial to me, to be honest.
It is superficial, if a game needs emotes to be good or fun then something is wrong. People will judge you by what you do,or don't do,in the game.The time I spend using emotes is tiny compared with total game time.However I would like to see them in the game when you have time to do it.Like the /wave animation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Forencith: I think I posted then saw your interesting points and I agree with you: If there are ways for our avatars to express in conjunction with our verbal means it's a lot better than "run him through with a sword" animation of interaction possible!
I just speculate Ryan's post was highlighting in a combative manner the functioning of RP is already present and emotes and things are more like the icing & cherry on top? Although perhaps Ryan would agree the best cakes have these sorts of enhancements? I guess the future will have avatars that express facials of the basic emotional states that players can pull; but for now emotes and so on would be good to have. I know that's a big difference in the Far Eas with their hyper-use of emojis in texting (iirc one reason the iPhone did not initially sell very quickly due to lack of this functionality at that time).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I know when I was in the military, there was lots of "dialog and stage directions" (DnC is purely this); every ceremony was composed of this. These shared rituals might seem unnecessary and superficial (I know I thought that during the events of this type in the Army), but they are a tried and true method of building unity, social cohesion, and reinforcing social stratifications (which is why the military, churches, governments, etc use them)....and sometimes a /wave is just an easy way to say hello.
On the otherhand, emotes need not be superficial; Ryzom has a /point emote that is actually very practical for showing people direction...for whatever they might need it for...and it shares information that might not otherwise be easy to communicate.
I think that, like your /point example, many emotes could have some effect in the game. A /point could create a temporary marker, /sit or /rest can regen fatigue.
From my time in the military, I'd love it if some of the social undercurrents of Drill and Ceremony (D&C) could somehow be captured through emotes. A /bow could reinforce subservience to your settlement or nation leader, while a /salute does the same for a group or party leader (So if leaders have reputations, you might be making a recommendation/boosting their rep for a job well done). Various emotes like /scoff and /sneer could impact the relation/reputation between two characters as well. And the 12-year old who goes around /farting in town can quickly destroy his reputation with the NPC population.
While superficial roleplaying is kind of 'meh' for me, I'd like the mechanisms for social interactions, reputations, etc., to be more than columns of figures in a spreadsheet or table. If emotes or other in game actions could be useful, that would be great.
Just to be clear I'm not at all saying there won't be emotes and speech bubbles and whatnot. I was just commenting on how the poster seemed to imply that those things made the player able to "role play" vs actually playing a role in the game.
Playing a role and roleplaying are two different things in this context. Everyone plays the role when they're doing whatever they're doing. The specific mannerisms, vocalizations, etcetera that are performed while doing so is roleplaying. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Various emotes like /scoff and /sneer could impact the relation/reputation between two characters...
This is absolutely brilliant!
It gives players an intuitive way to tell the system what their opinion is of someone in a manner that is much more organic than clicking a + or - sign next to their name in some UI, and it also encourages players to breathe more life into their characters by using expressive emotes.
One of the key problems I identified when designing my own "perfect game" in my head over the last 25 years is how to get the player to inform the system of their motives and objectives. This is a very good step in that direction.
I believe there's a kind of Holy Grail related to requiring characters to explicitly inform the system of their Motives/Objectives in order to be accomplish those Objectives, and requiring the character to possess in-game objects in order to be effective (such as maps in order to know where you are, etc.) which can be taken away from the character if they are killed or captured.
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Goblin Squad Member
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IMO, roleplaying in a game is a combination of BOTH what you do and HOW you do it. Things like emotes are important communication tools to provide information to others sharing the environment about HOW and WHY you are doing things. Consider the following 3 lines....
"Gunther draws his sword and attacks the goblin"
"Gunther stares coldly at the goblin, draws his sword and swiftly moves to attack it."
"Gunther laughs loudly, salutes the goblin with his sword and casualy steps forward to attack."
In all 3 lines functionaly what's happening as far as gameplay is the same. A player is attacking a goblin with a sword, but which lines convey more insight to the observer about who that character is, what drives them, what motivates them to act in the world and what thier personality is?
Roleplaying is FAR more then simply doing things mechanicaly in a game, it's taking on a living, breathing persona... and that means expressing that persona as well. Alot of the rules for good creatively writing apply to role-playing as well. A good author doesn't TELL his audience what is happening, he SHOWS them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think a lot of this comes from the fact that in theme park MMOs since there's no persistence and little reputation that is meaningful, theatrics replace roleplaying.
In a sandbox you get to actually roleplay - there is persistence and lots of people will care about your reputation, so the theatrics become the topping, not the ice cream.