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PSA: ToS 3.3 is srs bsns, profanity = account suicideFollow

#52 Apr 22 2017 at 8:56 PM Rating: Good
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The problem with RP in MMOs, is that (at least IMO), RP is better done in a pure-text environment without pesky visuals and stuff getting in the way. Also, when RPing... people take awhile to type (for some weird reason, most people I meet having typing speeds of <10 WPM), and the few times I tried to RP in a game environment, I found myself bored out of my skull waiting on responses.

In a Pure Text environment, I can easily alt-tab and browse or do something else while waiting on responses.

But yet in a game, I can't really play the game and then pause and respond, because that's difficult to do (I hate trying to have a Steam conversation, and those are just 1-2 sentence responses...) while trying to focus on what you're doing. When I RP, I do whole paragraph responses in MU*s. Yeah, try doing that while trying to do a "Kill x of y" quest... lol. Or worse, a dungeon. That just ain't gonna work.

So, it is easy to see why not many do the whole RP in MMO type thing... that, and I feel that RP is a lost art... you only see it in niche areas unless you go to a MU* designed for that. And the few people I do see trying to do it in an MMO... eh... like Seriha says.. a lot of people are terrible at it. #1 thing one ought to do is at least have proper spelling and grammar (except for actual dialogue), and most people fail horribly at that.

Edited, Apr 22nd 2017 10:56pm by Lyrailis
#53 Apr 22 2017 at 9:00 PM Rating: Good
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Honestly I feel like MU*s are just a better environment for good RP. The last time I did any of that was in a MUD, and the pure text environment really lets you play with the world and your character in ways a graphical game will just never let you do.
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#54 Apr 22 2017 at 9:05 PM Rating: Good
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Callinon wrote:
Honestly I feel like MU*s are just a better environment for good RP. The last time I did any of that was in a MUD, and the pure text environment really lets you play with the world and your character in ways a graphical game will just never let you do.


^^
This.

If I had $1 for every time I saw people trying to pose their characters (even in non-adult RP) and wasting several minutes trying to get it look JUST right, I'd be a very rich man.

That, and "RP Gear".

Does nobody have imaginations? Seriously. I always wondered that... I've been Pure Text RPing for... like 15 years now, and I've never needed graphics to tell me what someone looks like (well, eh, usually). As long as someone's @desc is written reasonably enough, I can form a good picture in my head, and the particular MU* I go to, there are some people who even have art done of their character(s). I myself even have a few pics that I can show people.

But other than that, it's just pure text. And it works, and works well. You can make your character look like anything you want it to, you can do anything you want (well, within reasonable limits; nobody likes a Mary Sue), without constraints or the need to grind special items to make your character look just right.

Now, I get Glamours and Transmogrification... that's something else entirely. But I'm talking about stuff like men sitting around in pink dresses in Goldshire... oi.
#55 Apr 23 2017 at 1:03 AM Rating: Good
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Well, I've certainly felt the rise of MMOs have hurt MU*s because the graphical elements allow shortcuts like not needing to write descriptions. On the other hand, I can't deny some aspects are better. This is just the video game equivalent of books vs. movie adaptations, really.

I know one of my RP strategies is to actually anticipate what someone's reply will be and already start writing a pose. Sometimes it's way off, but others just a bit of tweaking here and there can convey intent. Of course, when I'm working on MU*s, text input limits aren't nominally a thing (they exist, but require thousands of characters to trigger the overflow), whereas many MMOs only accommodate a few decently sized sentences. In that vein, writing a novel probably isn't good, but sometimes it is unavoidable. Overall, I'd have something similar to this post written up in under 5 minutes with reading a similar length reply included.

Netspeak does no favors, either, and I suspect this more prevalent among younger gamers nowadays than it was when I was a teen thanks to cell phones. And I do know I can feel motivation tank when I'm pumping out 4-6 80 character lines just to get less than one line in reply.

Any further critique ventures more into mechanical limitations, like combat being real-time. Can't have a nice inspiring chat when you gotta mash that rotation perfectly. :/
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#56 Apr 23 2017 at 5:31 AM Rating: Good
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Seriha wrote:
Well, I've certainly felt the rise of MMOs have hurt MU*s because the graphical elements allow shortcuts like not needing to write descriptions. On the other hand, I can't deny some aspects are better. This is just the video game equivalent of books vs. movie adaptations, really.


I don't think I would compare RP in MMO vs MU* to Movie and Book... I get what you're trying to say I just feel the analogy is a bit... off.

Maybe, I don't know... playing D&D in Neverwinter Nights vs playing D&D on Pen&Paper (or some people call it Table Top). That might be a better analogy.

Quote:
I know one of my RP strategies is to actually anticipate what someone's reply will be and already start writing a pose. Sometimes it's way off, but others just a bit of tweaking here and there can convey intent. Of course, when I'm working on MU*s, text input limits aren't nominally a thing (they exist, but require thousands of characters to trigger the overflow), whereas many MMOs only accommodate a few decently sized sentences. In that vein, writing a novel probably isn't good, but sometimes it is unavoidable. Overall, I'd have something similar to this post written up in under 5 minutes with reading a similar length reply included.


5 minutes? Heh, I'm lucky I see 10 minute response times in most of the places I RP, lol. Some RPers, while good, can take up to 15 minutes and it just takes forever to get anything done. Me? I'm about 3-5 minutes myself. And in a good RP, I can hit the buffer of the MU I play at rather regularly, and it's like... 5-6? lines? Something like that? I don't pre-type poses, though...

Quote:
Netspeak does no favors, either, and I suspect this more prevalent among younger gamers nowadays than it was when I was a teen thanks to cell phones. And I do know I can feel motivation tank when I'm pumping out 4-6 80 character lines just to get less than one line in reply.


Yeah, people like that tend not to be too popular in the place I go to.

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Any further critique ventures more into mechanical limitations, like combat being real-time. Can't have a nice inspiring chat when you gotta mash that rotation perfectly. :/


*blinks* people do actual in-game combat within RP? I've never heard of that, but I suppose stranger things have happened. That kinda... limits what you can do. A good 400-some character pose as to what your character is doing is going to work far better than doing a 1-2-3 rotation in a game lol.
#57 Apr 23 2017 at 7:30 PM Rating: Good
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*blinks* people do actual in-game combat within RP? I've never heard of that, but I suppose stranger things have happened. That kinda... limits what you can do. A good 400-some character pose as to what your character is doing is going to work far better than doing a 1-2-3 rotation in a game lol.

Admittedly, I haven't seen it tried since annoying macros in XI. Though, the consequence is more a matter of not being able to get mobs to pause their scripting when you wanna get dramatic. It can kinda sorta work in PVP if regens aren't in play, but then you've also got conditional reactions skills where... yeah.

Quote:
5 minutes? Heh, I'm lucky I see 10 minute response times in most of the places I RP, lol. Some RPers, while good, can take up to 15 minutes and it just takes forever to get anything done. Me? I'm about 3-5 minutes myself. And in a good RP, I can hit the buffer of the MU I play at rather regularly, and it's like... 5-6? lines? Something like that? I don't pre-type poses, though...

I suppose MUDs have shorter buffers, further depending on what branch you utilize. I do more of my play on MUSHes or MUXs, where the output is actually significantly larger. Probably to the tune of a full page of text. Even so, it's not uncommon to see some needing 10 minutes for a response cycle and a 6-liner. So, I can relate. I've also got my own personal rule where if I do get into RP, I don't do anything else attention intensive (like RPing in yet another window, playing a game I can't pause, etc.). I wind up finding it kind of rude, especially when replies get mixed up or you know someone is giving a half-***** effort.
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#58 Apr 23 2017 at 9:11 PM Rating: Good
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I suppose everybody is different, but I routinely do 2-3 RPs simultaneously if there are any available, lol.

But yet, I type 70 WPM and I can easily focus the attention when and where it is needed. One thing I don't like doing, though, is playing games while RPing, even the kind I can pause on a moment's notice. Just something about playing games I find distracting. Music, forum posting, etc is fine... just I can't do games.

And yeah, I play on a MUCK... I think it's like a 500-600 character buffer. But then I use a nice MU client that makes it easy to pull up what you sent last, cut off what got through successfully and send a 2nd with the rest of it.
#59 Apr 23 2017 at 9:20 PM Rating: Good
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And yeah, I play on a MUCK... I think it's like a 500-600 character buffer. But then I use a nice MU client that makes it easy to pull up what you sent last, cut off what got through successfully and send a 2nd with the rest of it.


COMPLETELY USELESS TRIVIA:

The MUDs I worked on had a max string length (command line inputs) of 1,024 characters and max input lengths (room descriptions, help files, anything that might need paragraphs) of 4,096 characters. Honestly these limits were arbitrary, but they seemed generous enough to handle whatever needed to be handled. Overflows were rare.
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#60 Apr 24 2017 at 11:50 AM Rating: Good
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The MUCK I play at, uses some sort muckcode program that allows for longer descriptions, you can enter one paragraph at a time of up to 500-600 characters, but you can make the whole thing however long you want (AFAIK). It's basically a string of separate inputs, but when you look at the person/object/room/whatever, it dumps it all at once (but in separate paragraphs).
#61 Apr 24 2017 at 11:54 AM Rating: Good
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Lyrailis wrote:
The MUCK I play at, uses some sort muckcode program that allows for longer descriptions, you can enter one paragraph at a time of up to 500-600 characters, but you can make the whole thing however long you want (AFAIK). It's basically a string of separate inputs, but when you look at the person/object/room/whatever, it dumps it all at once (but in separate paragraphs).


Sounds useful for heavy RP, and I can see an easy way to make that work in the code. It's definitely something we could have done if there'd been a call for it. MUDs tend to be more combat focused though and enormous walls of text would be a hindrance to that.
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