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A roleplayers thoughts on ESO
Aermord
Member Posts: 17
As we know, ESO is currently receiving mixed reviews. In short those who call themselves hardcore MMORPG players complain that the game is not looking "enough" like an MMORPG and those who've played the single player Elder Scrolls series complain that it's not enough "Elder Scrolls".
Both standings are quite silly, really. You should know that if you play a single player RPG, the story, the NPCs, everything evolves around you, the single player. The term "multiplayer" should really spell out quite clearly that ESO can never be like a single player game. There are other players and you as a player will simply have to suffer the lameness of having to face other player characters with silly names such as "Bob3255" etc. It is almost inevitable that as an Elder Scroll player, you would feel that the game looses some of the immersion you would be used to from the single player RPGs.
For the "hardcore" MMORPGers it must be frustrating to see something new.. To experience a new approach to things that doesn't evolve around deviations of 95% of the other MMORPGs out there. Of course ESO will share some stuff with the others, but being an MMORPG player with your eyes focused firmly on the end game, running through the world you would miss all the things that an Elder Scrolls RPG would have to offer. The exploration, the lore (books everywhere), story and the immersion. Yes, I think ESO will be an immersive game. Just the fact that the default view of the world is 1st person you will get the chance to experience the world through the eyes of your character instead of as a hovering entity linked by an invisible cord that forces you to float after your character at 3rd person distance.
I think some of the most important tools for RP will be present in ESO. There's the lore.. The impressive HUGE amount of lore in the form of a history having been defined by this RPG series. The world will have a strong developed history and on that foundation the theme will make sense. Second there's the immersion in the game. The default 1st person view will allow you to experience the world through the eyes of your character. When you will fight enemies, you will feel that they will be trying to hit you.. not just a 3rd person character. These two RP pillars will most likely be firmly rooted in the game (but the immersion part much likely not as much as in the single player RPGs). The third pillar you'll need is an ability to communicate. To catch the attention of another player through either written words or emotes. I hope the game will contain this.
Last but not least.. I hope that there are still players out there who got a moment or two to stop up and communicate. Lately it just seems harder to actually get another player to stop and talk to you in MMORPGs. They are all so busy, running around trying to get to the end level to experience all the fun they are so certain they will find at that point. But I've come to learn that if you can get a player to stop.. and talk (though it is getting more and more difficult).. You might experience fun you've never dreamed of, and I think that ESO got the potential to become one of the best immersive places out there for roleplayers. As long as you realize that you cannot have everything from a single player RPG and that it just might not look the same as the traditional MMORPG.
Oh.. And I hope that if you run by someone talking to you, that you will stop and give RP a chance. Could be that someone was me. :-)
If you read this far.. drop me a PM if you are interested in becomming a part of an RP group when the game launches. Perhaps we can work something out.
Comments
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Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Dude to be honest I am so hyped to get in this thing and start finding out about what it means to be the race/class combination that I am going to play that I am literally chomping at the bit, going out into the web, watching videos, reading lore sites, and of course playing Skyrim.
I never played this game EVER before. A friend gave me Morrowind a long time ago and I remember playing it for just a short time before putting it down because it was too big. I was an MMORPG player at the time, playing alone just didn't appeal to me.
Now though, with the opportunity to play this thing alongside others, I am seriously ready and willing to hop in there and learn and do as much as I can to bring, at least the people I end up dealing with, a real Elder Scrolls experience when they come into contact with me.
I know that others will be playing the game for their own reasons, and I respect that too. The underlying lore, after all, is based on a gigantic war where races are struggling to maintain their place in a kingdom where not being in power can amount to some pretty bad stuff. So I will fit these people right into my concepts and keep on rolling.
Meanwhile, getting people to stop and talk is as simple as hitting your . (period) button, freeing your mouse, and sending them a tell. I talked to a couple of people while I was playing and they all answered. Tells are big and bright and red and so you really don't miss them.
Talking during combat though, is just not feasible without stopping what you are doing and performing those actions. And I'm fine with that really, teamspeak or not, because a lot of what is said during high stress moments could probably go without saying anyway.
I think that the people that are going to RP in this thing are going to take the time out to do that in the city or when facing a situation where they can't, or don't feel safe going into alone. In those situations it will probably be quite easy to stop, hit that period button, and say what it is that you want to say out loud, provided you are grouped. I also think that's reasonable given all the other pluses that you have already mentioned, the lore, the first person, etc....
Some things just don't go together and keyboard chatting while playing a first person shooter is one of them.
Still, this game isn't even that fast. There is plenty of time to stop and say what you have to provided you don't expect to be able to do that and fight at the same time. And I am only talking about at the lower levels. Who knows how long a fight will take once you got some ass behind you.
Finally I think that a lot of the roleplay is going to happen whether a lot of people want it or not because, at the end of the day, the game is set up to, at its very least, follow the lore of the war over the white-gold tower or to put the player in a situation and mindset where they have to come into contact with that war in some way and where that contact will have meaning. As long as you don't put too many predisposed conditions on how people should be acting or talking, it should be fairly easy to just see the people that you run into as individuals in this land where you also happen to be.
As long as you stay in character, pretty much, it is a roleplaying game.
my two cents anyway.
Well ESO can blame only itself if the players have mixed feeling about the single/MMO player aspect. They put that confusion in there themselves by having a single player story in an MMO. You know?
Player: "Ooh I am special?! There is a destiny for just me?"
Prophet: "Erm... well about that. Not really. I am currently telling this same stuff to about a thousand other players. Thank god I'm just a projection so I can be at many places in one go. But you do have a destiny. It's just that a hundred thousand other players happen to have the exact same destiny."
Player: "Oh... ok..."
Well with that out of the way, let's concentrate on the RP side and possibilities. Let's start with my basic checklist for RP tools. I haven't played the game beyond the tutorial, so maybe one of you who have spent more time can answer these:
I played the beta...it was actually a lot of fun. I honestly think it's going to be plenty enough Elder Scrolls and it IS a MMORPG. In fact, I predict Elder Scrolls Online will be THE single most successful MMORPG to date.
I do agree with you that more people should be more social :-)
Generally speaking, they are only two kinds of static narrative; single player focused, and inherently terrible. So any game that is going to include static narrative content can and should treat it as if it were single player.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Which brings us to my point: Why do MMOs need static narrative content?
As in more successful than World of Warcraft?
I hope you are not serious. Because if you are, you're going to be very, very wrong.
I don't disagree with Tom. At the same time though I am a firm believer in the idea that you have to pick things that go together and that you can't just throw everything but the kitchen sink onto the pile and expect the average player to be able to make that into something worth the money spent creating.
ESO comes from a single player IP and so putting us all in a bootcamp where we were taught what different weapons, tradeskills, spells, races, and gods were about would have been counter productive to the happiness of their main playerbase.
As for that list of things, well, I am not one of those roleplayers that believes that good roleplay is dependent on having my buddy watch me act out an entire play using game mechanics, and so I was not as interested in a lot of that stuff as some other might be, and no offense to them.
I would think though that if you are that kind of roleplayer, like perhaps Tom might be, that you would have sought all of those things out during the three days that you had to play instead of just coming back here and listing them as items that you believe detract from your ability to roleplay.
Me, as I said earlier, my stuff is more internal. When you run into me in the game you will be running into an Orc, Altmer, Redguard, etc....who acts like you might expect an Orc, Altmer, Redguard, who has chosen whatever particular fighting style, path of worship, homeland, etc... to act.
That's plenty enough to keep me entertained without having to force you to watch me eat a sandwich, again, no offense to people who like to do this. So while I was busy using that Beta time learning how to hit stuff, harvest stuff, and build stuff, my entire roleplaying experience was building in the back of my mind and being accented by quests like the one that one Orc girl on the docks gives you where you get to learn a lot about how Orcs think and operate.
I guess what I am trying to say is that, from what I saw, there was a little bit of everything in there for everyone, and so to take exception to only one part of the whole shebang and call that the end of all happiness is probably not looking at the thing objectively.
And for that reason I give the "I am the chosen one" line of quests a pass. They are for Elder Scrolls IP fans, plain and simple.
As for that list of other items, well I have heard that there are a ton of emotes in the game but I guess the rest will remain to be seen.
I do know that when you are standing there like this one friend I used to play EQ with and messing around in your bags while everyone else is waiting for you to pull, it shows you messing around in your bags LOL. I like that one.
He said MMORPG not Hack and Slay, so yes he could be right with this statement
Because RPG fans tend to enjoy narrative content, and no developer has yet figured out how to design a game in a way that allows for a compelling dynamic narrative. If the storybricks system in EQN works well, it may be the first. If the game world actually responds to your actions, and players who have different past actions receive different present responses when dealing with the same NPCs, you are having a narrative experience even though it is unscripted, so sufficiently advanced AI will negate the requirement for a script, once it exists.
We can't just rely on players to provide narrative content without a dynamic world and advanced AI, because frankly, most players suck at doing so.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Yeah, the lack of any form of chat bubbles is disappointing. They're pretty important when it comes to the chance of instigating random, spur of the moment RP, in addition to general fluid RP whilst moving about/interacting in the world (As opposed to continually looking at that little text box in the corner of your screen). It's going to be tough to do so without them.
But as they say, if there's a will there's a way, let's hope we find one...