Where will RP move????

[Chaman-bourru]

Mind me interveening in this discussion but i come here to represent the Rp friendly PvPer party.

On the grieffing part. You can organise RP events without being bothered much. Lots of guards everywhere, not that many players, and disccretion and such make it easier to have RP in open-world with minimal disturbance.

But regarding actual RP-PvP. What needs to be concieved is that PvP has some vectors that can't be dealt with easily and collide with the classical way of RPing (standing in front of someone and talking). That being you need to adapt and be tolerant to disturbance, clumbsy RPers or random grieffers.
The intrest of RP-PvP lies in two main things in my opinion. First it avoids what we use to call "the superman RP". You can't imagine the number of those their were in 2008/9. It was just silly to RP with them and swinging your hammer twoards their skull was what they deserved ! Second is the RP-PvP geo-politic.

RP-PvP geo-politics grants you the opportunity to PvP with attacking without having to talk for 15minuts and lose the advantages of surprise and first blow.
And RP argument between two players in a taverne could lead to an open-war between two guilds. The world was lively and their was a guild scale RP that led most of the guild wars. This made the world lively. Let me take a concret example.

During the first years we had this guild called Naerth, heavy PvP guild but with also a RP background story. They called themselves the Naerth Empire. Wrote RP announcements on Forum, the most known was that Conan, had personnally delegated the protection of Tesso to Naerth and thus the City was now under their law.
Three réaction possible:
1- Meh they are just brigands misinforming us ! Lets kick them out.
2- Oh well if conan said so i'll do as i'm told
3- OMG just stop playing, this isn't RP, it makes no sense, Conan would never have done that, and blablabla and blablabla.

Option 3 was sadly widely used and brings here the dilemma of RP and PvP. Integrate or Exclude ? If you played it cool and didn't exclude you could have both fun PvP in open-world and RP subjects to talk with and missions to lead or RP diplomatie chats. For instance i remember going with two guildie on a Naerth leader hunt and we led that in RP ofc was pretty fun and didn't feel as pointless as what i've mentionned earlier, the tea party RP.
Of course not everyone in Naerth was a RP, some where even complete morons but kept on a short leach by officers so a minor disturbance. Some weren't RPers but tried and some where. Here again, either the "true" RPers integrated them, or they were too far up their ass and excluded.

So what's RP-PvP ? It's an environnement, feeding RP as much as RP feeds PvP. But it requires tolerance and patience aswell as being able to adapt and not squeal because your char got spanked and that's not possible he defeated strom, the GGG, he can't get spanked just like that on a whim of an other character you spat on !
These days were awesome when you were into RP and PvP because both were linked an RP wasn't just a parenthesis detached from the rest of your gaming experience. We had guilds claiming zones and gathering there before heading to BRC or sieges. We had rivalries and pride. Epic battles and scheming.
When the "Emperor" of the Naerth "Empire" organized his wedding in an open-world zone all hell broke loose and blood was spilled other 5 diffrent maps. With RP-PvP you're choices have an impact on where you can go what you can do who you might face and who might want to retaliate.

Don't get me wrong, on that server not everyone where RPers but almost all the guilds had leaders RPing a bit and the only one that didn't was the vilain and everything worked well if you were tolerant enough to deal with the constraint enable open-world have.

Woot ! Wall of text ! It's so late i hope i made sense haha

[Urzra]

Woot ! Wall of text ! It's so late i hope i made sense haha

No worries, I understand what you are saying. I'd even agree with some of it. However, it all does hinge on tolerance, and that's something I've found extremely lacking in PVPers. Almost every time I've been involved in 'RP-PVP', the PVPers used it as an excuse to get easy kills and, in general, worked to remove RP as a viable play option because it didn't matter to them and took away time from their kill score. The mention in your post of how RP was cast aside to get in the first blow without '15 minutes of talking' is more or less a case in point.

As I said, this has been my own experience, and maybe it is different for players in a large Guild. For only a solo player or a small group trying to do RP? I doubt it would work out as well as you describe.

Ultimately, everyone makes their choices, but I don't see Role Players moving to a server where the overriding priority of those playing there is to get kills (PVP Servers), as opposed to a server where the overriding priority of those playing there is teamwork (PVE Servers).

[Kurt2013]

That may be fine for highly-organized events where you have a large enough number of people uninterested in RP that you can keep enough non-RP guards standing around. But how does that work for open-world and small-group RP (say 3 people)? Granted, you can't kill a griefer on a PVE server, but at the same time, they cannot mob up and wipe you out as well as grief you, so it does have some additional safeguards in place. All they get from interfering is a waste of their time, as opposed to a PVP server where they are actually rewarded every time they disrupt you.

As I said, my experience with this kind of RP is probably coloring my attempt to see how it could work and others obviously have gotten something together, as well it may just be my own preferences for less-organized RP encounters. I'll defer to those who enjoy PVP with their RP that they can make it work, but for those who don't necessarily want PVP every time they RP, it seems going to a PVP server isn't what comes to mind as a good idea.

Simple, it only works as long as you are not looked for and keep in empty areas (and monitor the player search and combat log). As soon as someone is out there for you, it does not work anymore (like you say).
Thus limiting the time and zones available (for example you can forget the duel zones for rp and high evening time). But you learn to be sneaky, when you level up on a pvp server and usually you are left alone even on Fury, if you prove not a good target (especially if the rpers go on coffee break for 15 mins on resspad or simply port away).
It both comes with pros and cons...

On Aquilonia it was rather not a problem since most except a few known i**** or trolls respected the rp tag and you could even petition harassment (and imo it worked...). Different now on Fury though.

@Vehl: I for one do not care much for integrating pvp with rp, because it tends to summon the drama demon and stops being fun. Apart from the obvious limitations the game mechanics and zones offer. I prefer my rp well detached from the game mechanics when it comes to random rp and stories, still what you describe suits and serves well for an event or even a climax or starting point of a story (it all depends if the pvp is enforced or not and with whom you play)

[Religolibri]

Oh Vehl that post brings a virtual tear in the eyes of Reli. The game was even deeper on this pvp RP server.

Today on fury somebody complained because my character has said, while doing a sword fatality "Nothing can beat the teaching of the aquilonian legion. NOTHING YOU HEAR ME !"

Unable to understand just a little bit of roleplaying it's so disappointing. *sigh*

[starhunterceo]

For me its an issue of scripting.

If you can't have the surprise you can't have the fear.

Without the fear rp changes.

Death no longer matters.

That uncertainty comes with some risk of outside interaction. But it makes rp really come alive.


I've 5 years of stories in rp which have been way more active on PvP servers. Since moving to pve land the sagas almost died completely. Many many posted examples.