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(Help the Developers) Whats your ideas to imrpove the Role Play value in the game?
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,400
Whats your ideas to imrpove the Role Play value in the game?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
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come on, nobody has a idea on how to improve the role play value in mmorpgs?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Create a world, and that is all you have to do really.
In UO you could move chairs, tables and all kinds of furniture. You could build a complete camp, dress up as orcs or polymorph into monsters, giving you the ability to create a scene for a roleplaying event if you wanted to.
An MMO catering to roleplaying should not try to do anything special, it will only succeed anyway if it has alot of freedom (as in open world), because it is this you need to roleplay.
Just create a world that immerses the players in it. Make them feel like they are the character, then roleplaying will occur. Even if it doesn't do it well, people still tend to roleplay anyways.
Well i'm going to go for the themepark genre (i think sandboxes can be RP'ed more than enough already):
A) Let the game have a certain logic . Don't make questgivers super high lvl , it makes no sense someone who could one-shot you asks you to kill some retarded mobs , it just makes the whole questing even more lame .
Also , i'm sick of being called a hero while i'm not , i think you should "evolve" through your lvl'ing , start a simple wanna-be "somebody" to a hero once you start being good enough to kill Bosses who were really hard to kill . Lets be honest, how can i be a hero while a random guard could destroy me in seconds.
C) A better lore illustration, what i mean with that is how they show you the lore. good cinematics can make you immerse into the situation a lot easier . (and for the MMo's who already have some => more never hurts)
D) Your actions should really matter , that's why i suggest for Themepark MMO's to become some sort of hybrids with sandbox-ish areas . A good example of that would be WG in WoW, it is sand-box'ish , what your faction does during the battle would affect things , winning would mean you have access to a certain raid, etc... Now just take that concept and push it further , a lot further!
An other way to make your actions matter is through the NPC-invasion events . Eg: in WoW once the LK would be killed for the first time there would be less random scourge invasions => killing him affected the world! While minimal a themepark has limitations when it comes to affecting the world as a player and i think every little bit counts!
Or certain events could be caused by player's actions. Other example , if you'd kill a certain faction's leader => NPC's from that faction would retaliate and attack cities of the other one and players are welcome to join that!
E) maybe even add "event-missions" where you could be rewarded by participating to these events . (eg : by killing "x" amount of mobs invading a city of your faction you get reward "y").
All these things would, if you ask me make the game easier to immerse into . Because once you start thinking about all the nonesense in Themeparks it gets hard to RP and this pseudo-dynamism would make that world more real and alive.
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Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.
well personaly i dont care for role playing i play mmos and have since ultima online began and i been playing most that are out there but the hole roleplaying feal neverhit me i am more of a relaist and just a gamer i love gaming but do not want to get into my charicters so much that i become them sory not my style i play wey wey to many i like to creat guilds play the game learn the game and have a good time talk some smack mess with some uptight no it alls and just have a all around good time i tried the roleplay servers and the vent chat and i laphed so much it made me nearly cry but hey to each there owne i dont knock the roleplayers they love it but its not my thing never has been never will be im just a long time gamer
You do know that you dont HAVE to comment on everything, right?
If you have nothing to say on the topic, then don't. Personally Im not very interested in who you are or how you play, if it is completely irrelevant to the topic.
You mean to say you could actually read and understand what he said?
But to be on topic. I think the other guys brought up a good point, it's important to know whether you are referring to a sandbox or theme park style mmo?
clothes, voices, social interaction,
To the caterpillar it is the end of the world, to the master, it is a butterfly.
Make all changes in the world persistent:
- no respawning cardboard mobs
- permadeath
- NPCs with actual "existences"/"personalities"
Also, infrastructure for:
- player quests, jobs, missions, etc
- limited terraforming
- construction
- "games"
Improving the role playing also requires players that, well, role play. All the mechanics in the world won't mean anything if people don't engage. But certainly, having the ability to change to world around you would be huge. Whether that's through building, or politics/government, whatever, it engages people. And consequences. How easy is it to play an evil character, when there isn't any price? When WoW introduced the deathknight, there was a teeny-tiny bit of that, but not remotely enough. If you can hook players' interest, then get them invested in their characters, the role play magic can happen....
And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
I always thought an accent filter for various races would make roleplaying a lot more fun for even someone new to it.
Example:
/say Hello, how are you?
Kabby say, "Ugh, Ow 're ewe?
Maybe not to that extreme. Have key words changed to fit the race of the persons character. The = Da for Ogres. Or Friend = Brood for some Hive minded race.
So when talking out loud, without having to know the accent for the race yourself, the game filters what you say to fit a roleplaying environment. Maybe even make a language skill that lets you by pass the filter, so an Ogre doesn't always sound like he is uneducated, with enough Language skill. Or even the ability to pick different accents like different languages.
Instead of making a static npc quest giver, have them do a daily routine or something different everyday (but maybe 4 or 5 different routes that are random) Example: I need to talk to Bob the lumberjack to complete my quest, well Bob has a location where he resides, works, entertainment, shops, you get the picture. So when I need to find Bob I have to actually look for him in the world rather than going to him in the same place everytime.
It makes the world seem alive since npcs are also so what dynamic in a random way if that makes sense.
Depends on your definition of Role Play. Serious Role-Players make are a very small minority; those that beleive in serious role-play, that focus on their background story, create one, speaking in character, emphasising their characters theatrics from a role-perspective in game-play, etc.
There was another article I read on this over the last year, but this is all I could find. http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/02/meaning-of-role-playing.html
any rpg these days i think needs a deep character customizing setup and builds so no two characters are the same.
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The ability to place items in the game world.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Before EverQuest came out I spent about 2-3 years on a MUSH called Shadowrun Seattle, roleplaying night after night, sometimes until the early hours, and it was awesome. MMO's, however, just can't have that level of immersion. For real roleplay to happen in a game, you really need a GM, lots of options available, the ability to change things in the world (which really only a GM can enforce), you need to be able to have the roleplay mean something and have something happen in response to that roleplay, and you need to be able to portray emotion through the graphical interface.
All of these things can't be done with an MMO, especially with themepark games where you're following a string of quests. You get situations where your character comes running into an Inn, screaming about orcs invading the nearby village, that we should do something about it - then get 'blah' response because most of the people have done that quest, or get the response of 'that happens all the time', or whatever else it might be.
Quests simply don't create a roleplay environment, things need to be unique to each character, and that's never going to happen without a team of GM's on hand to oversee things and create stories for the players to take part in.
I don't think there's enough players out there that RP to warrant features targeted towards them. However you might create an immersive game world, compelling plot, and the ability to place items in the world or perhaps create an instanced area of your own.
Steam: Neph
As people have mentioned one of roleplay's largest contributing factors is simply clothing. Beyond that, some peaceful minigames like poker or chess or in-game equivalents. Housing with furniture makes a huge difference.
But there are considerations as well which devs could "build into" their games to allow players to better facilitate roleplaying. There was a nice MMORPG.com column recently but things like marriage, tagging other players as family, allow shared last names across characters on multiple accounts.
But when it comes down to it a lot of stuff can be "faked". I would say the primary motivator of roleplay is simply settlement construction aka "player towns".
In my own opinion it has to be immersion, immersion and more immersion. If a game makes you feel part of a world and gets you into your character in a way that makes you forget about stat builds, gear grinding etc than that really helps. As an example take the class quests in wow that have been droped. Some of thoes quests made me feel that my character was unique despite the fact that there where 100+ other druids running round in the same armour. Or the Blood knight class quests, they made me want to play a class I initialy despised becouse it made me feel I was part of a larger story. Or a game like Oblivion. The quests in that game are like actual adventures rather than fed-ex or grinding mobs. I feel that if you present a world with griping contnent and the ability to make characters you enjoy playing then that would give the role-plyers the tools and freedom to do what they do best. Thats my opinion onthe subject anyway for what it's worth.
I know some people could care less about it but in game housing helps. A real house not a door that everyone clicks on to enter their apartment. SWG and Vanguard are good examples. Lotro almost got it but they put the houses out in the middle of nowhere and there's nothing to do in the neighborhoods. VG and SWG, especially SWG have player towns with crafting areas, vendors, etc. giving them a life of their own. For the few of us that do engage in real role play, it helps.
I'd be happy if they started by simply adding the clothing options that 2-D games had (computational complexiity, impossibility, hardware requirements, blah, blah, blah. I still want it).
Or, much more simple, allow players to set the tecture/model of the equipment worn to any model of their choosing.
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