Hack and slash or Living

[mucera]

most mmorpg?s could have been good for rp.
but then people decided thats its kewler to just kill everything,sell the loot and level up.
me for my part,yes i will have a pure merchants char.
and when you get wounded in that `wartorn`city,then i will be there to sell you bandages:)
for the fighting,its not the same as hackn slash.
you can fight doing rp or you can just kill all in sight.
if you think the g is the most important letter,then you can play any game.
you still want to play ps?cool with me.
but when one day we meet ingame,and i try to sell you some wares,please don?t tell me you dont have cash cauze u just bought that uber weapon and that your off to kick some azz now.
thats all i ask for

[derwoodly]

People of PS listen to me!  Yliakum is at war! Now is time to prepare.

Jewlers make magic jewelry to protect us in combat!

Bakers make bread, so we will be able to fight in combat!

Blacksmiths make swords for combat, they shall not be decorations!

Bards sing songs of victory in war!

Woods[edit: woodsmen I mean] chop trees to make spears for war!

Priest anoint us so we will be victorious in war!

Why you ask? Because evil is here.  You may not be able to see it, but I assure you it is at our doors!



This is the way I see PS and any RPG for that matter.  I personally have never heard of a fantasy game or book or movie that does not involve some sort of combat. Combat is the core, sure you need other stuff, but I am not going to heat my castle with a fire ball spell.  I am not going to heat my castle at all. Why because it is not real, and it does not need heat.  Unless of course being cold causes my virtual character too loose in combat.  However! I might complain of the cold in the chat window just to make use of the R in MMORPG.

[lynx_lupo]

Woods chop trees to make spears for war!

I\'ve NEVER heard of cursed suicidal woods!


Of course combat is an important part of the game, but it wont be the core one.

[knightvision]

I agree with Cthulu.
I think that the trade skills thing takes up too much time in many games when you really want to be advernturing, quests conspiracies wars etc...
People spend hours clicking on a rock to mine, how is this fun? At least in battle you have to make decisions - it is more interactive.
I have played the-game-that-shall-not-be-named and NWN to death and what destroyed them for me was that after the quests were done the only thing left was trade skills and that got repetitive and boring fast.
I would like to see things like cities being raided by monsters and everyone having to defend the city from them.
I think skills are good but it would be better if they just increased as you leveled up instead of having to go to a mine 10000 times to be able to mine a different metal.
People who want to bake bread all the time are sad. What do they get out of this?
I have done this in game-that-shall-not-be-named and it really does get pathetic after a while. You start questioning yourself. \"Why am I wasting so much time on this crap? I want to do something exciting not bake ****** bread on a PC!!!\"
Go knit a jumper or bake a cake in real life. If you just want to chat to people use IM. Why do you JUST want to be a trader? What is the point to this? You want to live in a medieval fantasy realm and bake bread? Hmmmm.... did you miss the part about \"fantasy\"? That means that there are things that arent \"normal\" which you are missing out on because all you do is bake bread. In fact one could argue that you don\'t actually want to play a fantasy game if all you do is bake bread. You want to play a baking game. With other people who like to bake bread by clicking on an oven and walking to a field to get wheat. Exciting!

The fact is that you cant fight monsters and people with axes and swords in real life. That is what makes it entertaining.  Hack and slash is the underlying premise of MMORPGs. Go and read any good Fantasy novel - what is it about? I can bet that the majority of it involves action. If not war between races then espionage and political war to control land. That is what makes a good fantasy story. Look at all of the good ones - Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time etc... None of these focus on trade skills. It is all about adventure.

[Kramy]

I bake bread IRL. I have to agree with you on some parts, but I disagree about baking bread being useless. That\'s the whole point of this game. Hack n\' Slash, but if you don\'t want to you can become an uber-merchant and sell wares to people all over the land, or bake bread for the hack n\' slashers that are protecting the city.

It\'s up to you. I\'ll probably be a hack n\' slasher, but atleast I appreciate the cooks.

[knightvision]

I worked in a bakery for 7 months myself. I quit because the early shifts were driving me bananas (I had to get up at 1am). I guess thats partly why I have this thing against baking - I\'ve done it IRL and it just isnt my thing.
I can understand people doing it to prepare food for battle, but people getting off on it as the main aspect of their gaming style leaves something to ask about their real social life. The more I tend to drift away from games and have more of a social life and hobbies, the more I just want a  quick fix when I do play a game and that means action thick and fast. I think I have been influenced a lot by the game Enemy Territory. Before this came out FPS\'s were all about killing. But ET introduced the strategic team based style of play, giving players highly specialised and individual roles to play. The medics, engineers, and spec ops roles vastly separate ET from Counter Strike. I think that if this style of play could be applied to RPG battles it would be a highly enjoyable experience. I have heard a lot about shadow bane heading in this direction, and I think it would be cool if Planeshift  eventually adopted that style for battles.
I am probably getting a bit off topic there, obviously I am pro hack n slash, but I still feel there is a need for the Living skills just implemented so that they complement the fighting rather than focusing the game on them.

[druke]

I am not trying to insult the \"roleplay\" croud. I would just like to point out that the next generation of PS is reported to have only two things to do, buy stuff and kill stuff. This sounds like the dreaded hack-n-slash to me.

... but roleplay is already here friend, role playing doesn\'t need that, thats why many of us are already roleplayers. you dont need anything to roleplay the fighting and magic, hmm well when done in certain ways that just helps roleplay as well.

as for trades to help combat, that just sounds like everquest to me, so i dont need to say anything.

in general i think what people who write rp games desire for players to spark there own enthusiasm in whatever they what, wether hacking away or living as a trade or scholor, one thing we\'ll all do subconsiously or openly is make a story, why our charater is great and the chronicals of him thriving in the world. if you think that is too much for someone also take to mind that not every great person is famous/imfamous.

[druke]

i hope i was able to translate my subconsious thoughts to words, please question anything unclear

[lynx_lupo]

It\'s very good. Here\'s an :emerald:  

[Kramy]

Druke, I completely agree with you.

[Serphet]

Originally posted by druke
...
 you dont need anything to roleplay the fighting and magic, hmm well when done in certain ways that just helps roleplay as well.
...

I couldn\'t agree more so

[mucera]

you?re right druke.i agree totally.
what i wamt to add is that hack?n slash is not fighting monsters.
trying to say that,obviously,fighters fight,mages grill little monsters in some dark cavern,etc etc.
nothing wrong about that.
BUT if someone runs around ONLY slaying monsters without the slightest interest in rp,only because he wants the coolest weapon,or because it is his idea of relaxing,then that is cool too me as we all seethe game different but please respect other peoples view of the game while online.

don?t run into a group of rp?ers saying ey thats my spot,or yeah the bulls won again they roxxor.
if people respect each others opinion of the game and act that way,there will be room for everybody to enjoy the game.
i hope i made some sense.i tend to write a bit confusing in english:)

[lynx_lupo]

It makes sense, rest assured. But we still end up with the human factor, which is even more terrible in such games.

if people respect each others opinion of the game and act that way,there will be room for everybody to enjoy the game.

I had a dream....

[mucera]

thanks lynx,for giving me hope;)

(yeah,take your big foot and step right on me.)

who knows? there are still miracles.

HALLELUJA   *G*

[knightvision]

Yeah im all for rp.
I used to play on Fraghaus Krynn server on NWN (http://www.fraghaus.com/).
I played this dwarf named Jorsef Bryorn who was too big for his boots and doing some detective work about a kender who had been doing magic against the laws of the Church of Light.
It was common for me to go around boasting about my exploits in beating monsters and wenching. And my connections to the dwarvish gods. And I constantly refered to the dwarven city Thorbardin which was all but unreachable.
Then I went around smiting monsters and collecting tree branches to fund my adventure.
I teamed up with a human bard and a kender bard. They almost convinced me into becoming a dwarf bard, to make a trio but it didnt really work well in battle So I just became a singing fighter dwarf.
Then I lost my tradeskills book and quit because my smithing was so high that I couldnt take going through the whole process again.
In summary rp is cool but trade skills are time consuming. Additionally the amount of time spent on trade skills could be reduced to increase the amount of rping.  I find that there is actually more communication between players who are adventuring together rather than mining, harvesting, smithing etc... How can you talk as much if you have to keep clicking on a rock? If there was some automine feature you could be talking about anything while simultaneously mining. I personally find mining and other trades to go something like this:
- at the start you are asking people for directions and talking. Possibly some rping.
- then you start levelling up and just going back and forth from the mines carrying the load of stuff.
- eventually you are mainly going by yourself to mines, not communicating much unless someone is selling something at the mines.
- end result - loner who spends 90% time mining and smithing and 10% talking to people when they are selling something. Someone asks you to go adventuring - you either ignore them or say \"Im mining\". Damn that\'s fun... not
That doesnt seem like much rping to me.