WoW stuff

[paperclipchains]

So I'm thinking about all the RP fighting talk and aside from the fact that it cements in my mind that RP fighting is a terrible idea, it reminds me of my WoW days.

In WoW it's not that uncommon for people to RP fight. Like, through emotes. In a MMORPG. With a built in complex combat system.

This has always been a pet peeve of mine, possibly

Comments

[dimitrinabokov]

This has always been a pet peeve of mine, possibly because I presume the reason for this was that people felt they had a better chance at winning if they were writing rather than playing the game, as their character could be a ~total badass~ even if they weren't particularly good at PVP.

Keep in mind, the person could also be aware they've got a pretty shit internet connection. PVP is kinda hard when you're rubberbanding all over hell's half acre. Or if you've got my university's WONDERFUL infrastructure, which suffers the occasional "whoops, we seem to have misplaced the internet, hope you weren't doing anything important!"

They could also want to try and write out actual combat. I mean, I never leveled very far (or RPed in WoW), so I could be mistaken, but I'm going to go on a limb and assume the moves "beat with chair," "kidney punch," "eye gouge," "groin kick," and other sorts of moves probably aren't learnable skills (and yeah, even in the time of knights, beating the other guy with your fists was still pretty common. Anything to knock him off balance was acceptable, up to and including groin kicks). There's a greater potential for suck, sure, like people shrugging off a claymore through the sternum, but it does allow more freedom than PVP, for better or worse.

If you aren't willing to lose, why are you picking fights with other players?

How do you know text based RP immediately equates to being unwilling to lose? Outside WoW, in City of Heroes/Villains, I saw plenty of pre-arranged text-based fights for plot purposes. And people lost to move the story along the way it was supposed to go. Sure, you'll always get the wankers who never want to lose, but it's not like PVPer's any different. I can't count how many times some level 30+ prick kept spamming my little level 10 or 12 for a duel. Or how many times I caught Alliance 80s just running around the starting town for the Forsaken, just to take advantage of the newbs who don't realize not being able to see level = VERY BAD NEWS, and just see something shiny for them to attack.

In a balanced game with a fair but skill-based system, why on earth would you resort to the arbitrary and chat-clogging text systems that take about 50 times as long?

Refer to the above comment about wanting combat outside the constraints of WoW's limited skill system (it's not infinite) or for plot purposes.

In a setting where the combat is integrated, why shouldn't you be expected to back up your character's skill with your own?

Because maybe some people just aren't good with PVP? Maybe they're just casual players? Seriously, they're just as entitled to their pretendy fun times as anyone else.

Duels are fun, yo.

To each their own. And even if you really like them, they're probably just like anything else. Ice cream is great. Eating nothing but ice cream would probably get old after a while. Hell, some of those text-based combat RPers might just be PVPers enjoying a little downtime.

Maybe not bad RP, but if you ask me, definitely bad form.

I'd have to disagree there. Strongly. Bad form would be trying to RP fight with somebody who doesn't want to, who prefers PVP instead (and says as much), but refusing to take "no" for an answer. RP-fighting with someone else who wants to RP-fight is perfectly fine.

[youngwilliam]

And it's (usually) easy enough to mix the two styles.

You do a qualified emote of what your character is trying to do, you run the command for the quantified system mechanic (doing whatever the system has to offer that's closest to what you're claiming your character is doing), you do a follow-up qualified emote of the results (based on the system mechanic's output).

Basically an online version of the standard, "I slash at his knees! [insert die-rolling] ...and I miss".

[paperclipchains]

How do you know text based RP immediately equates to being unwilling to lose?

I don't - but I can guess. Have you played WoW? Or witnessed this phenomenon?

[dimitrinabokov]

Yes, I've played, though I never had much luck actually finding RP of any kind (on the RP servers no less).

[paperclipchains]

I feel like if you had maybe seen this phenomenon you would understand.

[dimitrinabokov]

Not really. It was just as popular on City of Heroes/Villains, and ESPECIALLY for anything played out inside Pocket D (where all powers and abilities were disabled by default).

Anyway, I need to get some sodding sleep, last time I enjoyed any shuteye was the six hours I got on Sunday >_>

[paperclipchains]

CoH and CoV kind of lack the repetutation for being as... well, terrible.

[dimitrinabokov]

...hahah. You ever hear of Stephiroth Jenova?

[paperclipchains]

... I am intrigued.

[dimitrinabokov]

In a nutshell: she's the super beautiful daughter of Sephiroth and Jenova, and Jenova lives inside her head like a split personality, and if you have sex with her it makes you immortal.

There's LOADS of awful RP to be found, it's just that you start to get used to the minor stuff like super tragic pasts, the teenage supergeniuses / superstars / BEST HERO EVAR, phase out the smut players / supergroups (there were usually at least three actively recruiting anytime I was on there, I wound up shutting off everything except local chat, tells, and messages from my supergroup), and then you'll only notice the REALLY bad ones.