A good reason not to have dragons, trolls, fairies, etc.

[Kythag]

First off, you will never be vindicated, zanzibar!



I have to agree about the elves thing, dammit.

:\\

I do have to say that there are no D&D series called ElfLance, however. Still, the overdone dragon argument is flawed. Wow, all this to prove that the PS staff is human.

[Trinx]

When I got Guild Wars I did not think \"oh another game with dragons.\"

When I got WoW I did not say \"Oh another game with dragons.\"

Or the countless other D&D computer RPG games I played with what?  Dragons.

Besides the only thing cooler than slaying a dragon is slaying a Balrog in my book.

People do not put games back on shelves or not play them based on the presence or lack of one creature.

Unless maybe it had elves, dwarves, humans, orks, etc.  But only let you play humans.  Then I would be like WTF?  I wanna play a ork!

Nor have I ever specifically looked for a game containing a specific creature.

Especially MMO\'s the only thing I look for is variety.  Give me 100 classes, 200 professions, and 50 races.  I would drown in the bliss.

[zanzibar]

Originally posted by Draklar
Ironically that\'s the first off-topic post ^^

You\'re wrong.  Instead of talking about reasons to be original besides originality, people are talking about which is worse to have - dragons or elves, about what parts of the game are original and which aren\'t, etcetera.  That\'s all off topic.



One of the things about Daggerfall was that it did take advantage of more obscure creatures in the vein of the ones you\'ve suggested time to time.  The thing is, it did have conventional dragons -- however dragons were extremely rare to meet!  You could meet dragon whelps every so often, but the only way to meet an actual dragon was through ONE daedra related quest which would only maybe appear at random only maybe if you had a certain reputation.  That made the meeting a highly prized event, worthy of entire webpages with screenshots and all.



Still, even if you have \"dragons\" or \"elves\" in the game, but very rare and/or very different from conventional ideas about them, you\'re still starting with the preconceptions people have.  Instead of it being new, it\'s something which is to a large part evolving out of something else.


\"What\'s in that cave?\"

\"A dragon.\"

\"Oh, that sounds hard.\"

\"Dragons here are different from what you might have heard of.\"

\"Oh?\"



Do you see the problem?  The sense of newness and experimentation is diminished.  Anyway, staying on topic is hard since there seems to be a lot to ramble about.

[derwoodly]

The Zanzibar post was the first post that was totally off topic, in my humble opinion...

PS is not the first fantacy MMORPG out there.  No one will log on and be completely surprized about any of the PS world no mater what the creatures look like.

I completely agree with Trinx on this one: \"However creating a creature similar to a typical mythological fantasy creature and calling it by a weird name does not = original content.\"

My gripe with the whole originallity issue is that if you use the stereotypical characters then it is much easier to roleplay your character.  I do not think you have a completly original world and have good role play at the same time.  These two goals do not mesh well with each other.  The PS lore is only 5 or 10 pages of typed text.  Draklar could rewrite the lore in a weekend and poof, PS is now a world with Dragons and Orcs and most PS players would call it a step up in development.  The whole world in a cave thing could just be one of the things oldbies can talk about... I remember when...

[Trinx]

No what people are talking about is why is there a hlaf cocked approach to originality.  As well as a half-cocked approach to the reasons for originality.

I find the subject is on topic.

[zanzibar]

Originally posted by derwoodly
The Zanzibar post was the first post that was totally off topic, in my humble opinion...

PS is not the first fantacy MMORPG out there.  No one will log on and be completely surprized about any of the PS world no mater what the creatures look like.

I completely agree with Trinx on this one: \"However creating a creature similar to a typical mythological fantasy creature and calling it by a weird name does not = original content.\"

My gripe with the whole originallity issue is that if you use the stereotypical characters then it is much easier to roleplay your character.  I do not think you have a completly original world and have good role play at the same time.  These two goals do not mesh well with each other.  The PS lore is only 5 or 10 pages of typed text.  Draklar could rewrite the lore in a weekend and poof, PS is now a world with Dragons and Orcs and most PS players would call it a step up in development.  The whole world in a cave thing could just be one of the things oldbies can talk about... I remember when...

Psst.... I started this thread bro, I think I\'m in a good position to know when it\'s gone off topic.


Giving old concepts new names is good in a way.  It means that people have to rediscover what it is they\'re dealing with.  Instead of knowing you\'re dealing with a hydra, you\'re dealing with a multiheaded carkaras or whatever.  What\'s a multiheaded carkaaras?  Be damned if I know!  But once I see one, I\'ll think \"oh, it looks like my preconception of a hydra\".  Or some such.


So there is a real difference created by simply changing the names of old ideas.  It\'s subtle, but there.

[derwoodly]

In keeping with the unusual civility of this thread, I will withdraw my off topic comment.

Changing names is not a bad idea and I agree with you that it adds mystery.  However, PS is saposed to be a role play game.  If everything is new and strange then you will get a lot of out of character questions about the lore of the game.   Even if PS had developed an engaging an interesting history that was published prior to the games development, players would still borrow from D&D and LotR.  But PS does not have what I would call a well developed history, so most players will find it hard to be in character 100% of the time.

In short you need something for players in character to talk about.  Currently that is Ubers, and beer mugs.

[zanzibar]

Originally posted by derwoodly
In keeping with the unusual civility of this thread, I will withdraw my off topic comment.

Changing names is not a bad idea and I agree with you that it adds mystery.  However, PS is saposed to be a role play game.  If everything is new and strange then you will get a lot of out of character questions about the lore of the game.   Even if PS had developed an engaging an interesting history that was published prior to the games development, players would still borrow from D&D and LotR.  But PS does not have what I would call a well developed history, so most players will find it hard to be in character 100% of the time.

In short you need something for players in character to talk about.  Currently that is Ubers, and beer mugs.

I\'ve never played WoW, but my understanding is that the people who play it are already very familiar with its world before they play.  It is also my understanding that the game is almost entirely \"out of character\".

I\'m sure there are other examples.

I think we can easily conclude that things being new and strange does not encourage \"OOC\" behaviour more than things which are familiar and cliche.

[derwoodly]

Originally posted by zanzibar

I think we can easily conclude that things being new and strange does not encourage \"OOC\" behaviour more than things which are familiar and cliche.

If by \"we\" you mean *you* then I can agree to disagree with you on this point.

I think that OOC vs IC behavior is a complex issue and not linked to one specific item that can be dismissed or proven with a thought experiment.

[zanzibar]

Originally posted by derwoodly

Originally posted by zanzibar

I think we can easily conclude that things being new and strange does not encourage \"OOC\" behaviour more than things which are familiar and cliche.

If by \"we\" you mean *you* then I can agree to disagree with you on this point.

I think that OOC vs IC behavior is a complex issue and not linked to one specific item that can be dismissed or proven with a thought experiment.

Yeah yeah yeah, but someone said that too many new things would encourage OOC behaviour.  I adressed that with a convincing (IMO) counter example.  I will not agree to disagree unless you explain your position intelligently.

[derwoodly]

I have not played WoW either so I will draw from my EQ days as to why I think the standard issue fantasy world is better than the Dr. Suese one.

When playing a wood elf my character would run from a player who was usually playing a Troll character.  When talking to him I refered to him as simply the \"monster\"  This activity actually disrupted game play but it was in character and added to my fun.

I was not alone in this kind of light role play.  In a strict role play environment I would not associate with a troll at all and he would have crushes my bones to make soup.  Or was that the Ogers, no matter.  The point is for me this was easy to do and every one arround me unstood what I was doing.  

When I tried something similar in PS, I had different results.  My fledgling warrior who refered to all mage characters as \"evil\" and dishonoralbe in plane shift I got more ooc explanations about the lore of the game than people playing allong with me.

I had similar experiences in Shadowbane on their role play server.  If stuck to bland and colorless conversation I was fine. If I tried to get confrontation based on saposed in game rivalries things got ugly.  Well, in SB things were ugly most of the time.

So from my point of view, standard lore is better than unusual lore for a MMORPG.

[zanzibar]

Originally posted by derwoodly
I have not played WoW either so I will draw from my EQ days as to why I think the standard issue fantasy world is better than the Dr. Suese one.

When playing a wood elf my character would run from a player who was usually playing a Troll character.  When talking to him I refered to him as simply the \"monster\"  This activity actually disrupted game play but it was in character and added to my fun.

I was not alone in this kind of light role play.  In a strict role play environment I would not associate with a troll at all and he would have crushes my bones to make soup.  Or was that the Ogers, no matter.  The point is for me this was easy to do and every one arround me unstood what I was doing.  

When I tried something similar in PS, I had different results.  My fledgling warrior who refered to all mage characters as \"evil\" and dishonoralbe in plane shift I got more ooc explanations about the lore of the game than people playing allong with me.

I had similar experiences in Shadowbane on their role play server.  If stuck to bland and colorless conversation I was fine. If I tried to get confrontation based on saposed in game rivalries things got ugly.  Well, in SB things were ugly most of the time.

So from my point of view, standard lore is better than unusual lore for a MMORPG.

Your conclusion doesn\'t make any sense.  You\'re talking about what seem to be very different communities, and then you\'re making a huge jump to blame those differences on the existence of trolls.

No.  It doesn\'t work.  You can\'t make this conclusion based on what you\'ve put forward, and you\'re ignoring what others have said previously in this thread and others.

[stfrn]

Originally posted by derwoodly
My gripe with the whole originallity issue is that if you use the stereotypical characters then it is much easier to roleplay your character.  I do not think you have a completly original world and have good role play at the same time.  These two goals do not mesh well with each other.  The PS lore is only 5 or 10 pages of typed text.  Draklar could rewrite the lore in a weekend and poof, PS is now a world with Dragons and Orcs and most PS players would call it a step up in development.  The whole world in a cave thing could just be one of the things oldbies can talk about... I remember when...

Actually, the PS docs are very long. The books ingame are just a small part of what has been written atleast a year ago now. As elements are added to the game, more of those documents will be unvieled, but it is hard to make sure we can live up to our promises.

There is famaliarity in the \"common\" fanatasy. That is why everquest took what DnD took from what LoTR took from .... But we do not need to limit ourselves to what has been done before.

[derwoodly]

I am not sugesting PS be limited to a D&D world.  You can add all you want, but from my point of view, PS does not have one 10th of what D&D started with. This of course is my point of view, as a developer you are priviliged to more information.  If I am alone in this then I am wrong. If the majority of PS newbies are as lost as I, then I think your role play idea will never really come about.

[zanzibar]

Originally posted by derwoodly
I am not sugesting PS be limited to a D&D world.  You can add all you want, but from my point of view, PS does not have one 10th of what D&D started with. This of course is my point of view, as a developer you are priviliged to more information.  If I am alone in this then I am wrong. If the majority of PS newbies are as lost as I, then I think your role play idea will never really come about.

With D&D, you need to make up the stats, a background, and some art for each creature.

In Planeshift, it\'s a process which is way above my head but includes coding, modelling, and 3D artwork, all of which is complex and requires some pretty nifty education.

And besides, there is a thread where people submit their ideas for new creatures.  It\'s HUGE.  Ginormous.