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

[shadow_otm]

You're assuming that WoW PVP has ever been a fair, balanced system. Besides, Rping out a battle is more open and descriptive rather than just mashing buttons at each other.

[paperclipchains]

It's one of the best balanced games out there, man.

[dv8nation]

I agree. Get good gear, use your talent points well and don't pick fights you can't win and you'll do well.

[appalachias]

It's got good balance, yeah, but 1 vs 1 will never be truly fair. Some classes are just designed to wreck others, and that's fine. Sometimes your warrior might lose to that mage, sometimes it won't, but you shouldn't expect to win everything every time.

[zydee]

I have no answers for you besides that it seems clear to me that the RP fighters in that situation don't actually want to have a possibility of losing.

The problem comes in when both players are equally unwilling to lose.

I used to get a kick out of seeing people come into MUDs I played writing their bulked-up Conan teenagers as utter bad-asses when I knew perfectly well that a new player's skills even after chargen are low-to-mediocre. Then, when actual ingame bad-asses refused to treat them that way, they'd throw the awesomest fits. "But I'm described as bad-ass!" "Sorry, we have an actual ingame PvP dice system that says otherwise." I could not imagine why someone would write a PC description that was so patently the opposite of what his skillsheet said, but I guess it made their e-peens feel longer.

I loves me a bit of emoting/posing during a duel, but I'd rather the emotes support what the ingame dice rolls are doing than take their place.

[paperclipchains]

Honestly? Everyone I've witnessed has featured two players equally unwilling to lose. And it just went on forever. When people did take hits it wound up being this long drawn out affair where they were nursing their wounds a month later and it was an excuse for that antiseptic bandage thing.

I loves me a bit of emoting/posing during a duel, but I'd rather the emotes support what the ingame dice rolls are doing than take their place.

This.

[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

[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).

[summertimesongs]

I find typing out RP battles way more fun. Besides, sometimes it approaches a fight between two characters of astronomically different levels, like me on a level 80 against a level 60 which happened once. That's not fair for dueling; I'd smack him around easy. So we typed it out. It was more fun and more enjoyable.

[paperclipchains]

With different levels it makes sense, I think, but I've seen so many people specifying in their RSP that they weren't ever going to PVP fight so don't even try.

Why make a combatative character in that case?

[savemefrombadrp]

I know of text-based (with combat code) games and you do get those who are unwilling to lose, in those. But by and large, I haven't run across that many of those. A wise man once said that if a person is concentrated solely on winning in such a game (text based RP), they need to re-evaluate why they're even playing that game.

With WoW, I'd imagine it's full of people unwilling to lose, simply because they're conditioned by video games of the past that they *must* win. Because otherwise The Computer™ wins.