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Where have all the Roleplayers gone?
Scot
Member LegendaryPosts: 24,459
What makes MMORPG's different from any other game? Why not play yet another Assassins Creed or Dragon Age? What makes MMO's different from other multiplayer games? The LoL of this world?
What do MMOs have to offer that they don't? Because if they offer nothing else, MMORPG's are doomed as a genre, in fact many would say we have already past that point.
There were two things, the roleplayers and the massive multiplayer in massive worlds. Without at least one of those you might as well play Diablo etc.
Over the years the roleplaying community was lost as MMORPG's were designed for other players. Now they only exist in roleplaying guilds, huddled together like Melniboneans as the waves of non-roleplayers crash about them.
Indeed the site we post on MMORPG has dropped its roleplaying forum. Do I blame them? Well it did not see much activity, roleplaying has moved on, it has become an irrelevance to MMORPG's now for so long just MMO's. But with its loss one of the only two features MMORPG's had which made them stand out was lost.
Yes, some MMORPG's still value roleplaying, but once its marginalised in mainstream, its gone from the genre. R.I.P.
So then we have the massive multiplayer in fact that's all we talk about today, because MMO's have nothing else to separate them from the herd. And that in turn is diluted, the playstyle of those who expect a ping when they turn around every quickly reached corner of these miniMMO's is the only one catered for, with but few honourable exceptions.
If your gaming genre has nothing to distinguish itself from other games, it ceases to be a genre, simple as that.
What do MMOs have to offer that they don't? Because if they offer nothing else, MMORPG's are doomed as a genre, in fact many would say we have already past that point.
There were two things, the roleplayers and the massive multiplayer in massive worlds. Without at least one of those you might as well play Diablo etc.
Over the years the roleplaying community was lost as MMORPG's were designed for other players. Now they only exist in roleplaying guilds, huddled together like Melniboneans as the waves of non-roleplayers crash about them.
Indeed the site we post on MMORPG has dropped its roleplaying forum. Do I blame them? Well it did not see much activity, roleplaying has moved on, it has become an irrelevance to MMORPG's now for so long just MMO's. But with its loss one of the only two features MMORPG's had which made them stand out was lost.
Yes, some MMORPG's still value roleplaying, but once its marginalised in mainstream, its gone from the genre. R.I.P.
So then we have the massive multiplayer in fact that's all we talk about today, because MMO's have nothing else to separate them from the herd. And that in turn is diluted, the playstyle of those who expect a ping when they turn around every quickly reached corner of these miniMMO's is the only one catered for, with but few honourable exceptions.
If your gaming genre has nothing to distinguish itself from other games, it ceases to be a genre, simple as that.
Comments
Well,
The first reaction here is people will blame the players and the newer generation.
No................... Developers changed the strategy, they decided to take control away from the player to tell their story..........Who told them to do that ?...........Their was no voting, they just did it !
Now you have to play mmos in the order they set for you.
Players now have to move left to right, or bottom to top across the screen. At the standard levels 10 then 20 then 30 players get to phase into a new zone to continue their story line.
FF14 and ESO are good examples of this. You must follow your own story.
MMOs are designed to be crazy easy.
Players get to Hack-and-Slash their way to end game......Why do you need any ones assistance.
Role play ?.....With who ?.....You don't need anyone !
So with the decrease of socialization opportunities, from the removal of downtimes, slow or long travel are no more, and the very "busy" nature of the game play (action combat) to making them largely solo experiences, (story driven questing) all have contributed to less role-playing opportunities as well.
I also feel the rise of voice chat has hurt as well, there was something charming about role playing an Orc, or Barbarian Battle mage when I first started playing MMOs and everything was text chat, but it just feels weird to me in voice chats.
Developers didn't set out to destroy socialization /role playing, its more of an unintended consequence of the design decisions made to "streamline" and simplify MMOs to make them more appealing to a larger demographic, "the game player" who I view as tourists to this genre.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
RP has always been a minority practice in these games.
As to voice chat, it is odd. When you roleplay tabletop, I might throw a few orcish tones in, but I sound like me, as do all the other players. That's fine, but when you play online and you hear others voices it is not. I don't understand why.
OP's first post is such a badly written post I loose all interest for reading it.
The optimisation of business leaves little space for it. As a developer, it is easy to profile how users respond to content. I'd imagine Blizzard has exact numbers on each encounter of Legion. They will surely use these when creating future expansions.
If players struggle on a dungeon encounter and never run the dungeon again, it's very easy to pick up on this as a developer.
Roleplay will be impossible to quantify. The technology isn't there to profile it efficiently. If you are a roleplayer and stop playing a game, the developer won't really have any numbers on it. In turn, even if developers want to focus on RP, they will have a difficult time justifying it to the publishers/shareholders.
True, but if we have to go back to Meridian 59 to find an example of a title that had a sizable amount of RPers then I think it's fair to say that RP does not define the genre, if that makes sense.
Tabletops.
The tabletop gaming market has exploded in the past couple of years and the void left for us RPers in MMO's is now being filled by Tabletops.
Its easier than ever to get into tabletops, its also considered "cool" now to tabletop thanks to programs like "Critical Role" with Matt Mercer, and obviously Geek and Sundry with Whil Weaton and Felicia Day.
Game Developers are really missing out on this market which has vacated MMO's over the past few years. Developers refuse to consider RPers - have official RP servers - forums for RPers - RP mechanics in games.
And its sad because you know there's this acronym we use on here that "mmoRPG" - yet the Roleplaying in these games is non-existent. This also has to do with the lack of emergent gameplay that exists now in MMO's and the focus on the internal story rather than the player making the story.
Tabletops provide an answer for all this, you get a world thats created for you, and then you get to live in that world and adventure through emergent events made by the DM.
I hope that MMO's will focus on the RP in the future, because there needs to be more in an MMO than "Imagination" - give us real features, real support for RP and then we will talk.
What always makes me like Star Citizen massive focus on this type of detail in the game world, is pretty much what RPers ever want due the realistic immersive game world, with the fundamentals of emergent gameplay that allows it. There's already some pretty heavy RP groups around that do pretty cool stuff and as things progress on the game (that is in dev, alpha) I only expect a growing RP community; as the game is developed with RP in mind (and is something a lot of people is unaware of). Side of that I don't see any other per say MMO with a RP focus like this one is shaping to have.
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
There is only one mmo that I know has a supported RP server and that's lotro Luarelin European server. EQ2 has rp servers as well but I don't think they are actually supported.
Pantheon should have Rp servers.
Anyone who picked up a wooden sword, played Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians were big time Role Players.
Thats where the craft came from. From playing with other kids in the real world with real toys. Making forts interacting with environment. Making something from nothing.
Then new generations came along, you know.... the "pale basement kids"
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
In my opinion
-voice chat
-group finder
-ridiculous clownish costumes (dressing as an astronaut in a medieval world...)
-competitive nature of newer mmos (attracting a different crowd than the old days)
-rp guilds which most of the time don't have interesting basis for rp or interested roleplayers
These reasons have ruined immersion to rpgs and the world feels like an empty shell. A mountain standing in front of a player in an mmo now is just an obstacle to his next achievement. Noone cares as long as they have the best equipment and kill noobs. I blame the companies, not the gamers. Newer generations of gamers are eating what they are being served.
Players now are like worker bees just going place to place to grab loot to bring back to the hive... I mean bank.
Are MMORPGs really the best way to roleplay anyway? How can massive and role play ever mix? The more massive the MMO genre became all niche interests, like RP, have been pushed out.
Will there be a return in RP? Probably not from AAA studios beyond ones that use an IP that is easier to RP with(SW,ST, Superheros).
Games like The Secret World, Life is Feudal and such show how a mature RP community grows if the game backs it up, is a type of playerbase that is usually made of long-term players and can keep games alive.
I've seen it on many game servers, when the game has nothing else to offer the players, RP grows. So there just not been on MMO devs side intention to create something with RP in mind, being the majority locked to the known working formula.
this
Sure, not all the roleplayers as in the title question, and not gone either since they're there from the start... but yep, both TSW's and LotRO's RP communities are amazing.