Guild Wars 2

gurugeorge.9857:

Actually it’s a huge mistake for an MMO to neglect its roleplaying community as Socializers are usually amongst the most “sticky” players, along with the “hardcore” Achievers (raiders, etc.). It’s the Explorers and Player-Killers who tend to be fickle (I say that as an Explorer myself – once I’ve “done” a game’s “Environment”, it loses interest for me).

So although I’m only a small percent roleplayer, I think the OP is quite right to ask for more rp-friendly stuff in the game, it can only do the game long-term good, given the relatively low cost of making such stuff.

Observe the effort Wildstar is making to show off its rp-friendly side (its amazing-looking Housing system, and its whole path dedicated to rp – the Builder).

As to the argument “oh you can rp with any tools”, yes of course, but when a game is graphics oriented, lack of rp-friendly things in the graphics/world-building is a negative.

But what is so RP unfriendly in this game?

It’s a matter of numbers (role-players are a true minority, and since we see so few, we assume the game is “alienating” them), and not a real problem, IMHO.

Star Ace.5207:

gurugeorge.9857:

Actually it’s a huge mistake for an MMO to neglect its roleplaying community as Socializers are usually amongst the most “sticky” players, along with the “hardcore” Achievers (raiders, etc.). It’s the Explorers and Player-Killers who tend to be fickle (I say that as an Explorer myself – once I’ve “done” a game’s “Environment”, it loses interest for me).

So although I’m only a small percent roleplayer, I think the OP is quite right to ask for more rp-friendly stuff in the game, it can only do the game long-term good, given the relatively low cost of making such stuff.

Observe the effort Wildstar is making to show off its rp-friendly side (its amazing-looking Housing system, and its whole path dedicated to rp – the Builder).

As to the argument “oh you can rp with any tools”, yes of course, but when a game is graphics oriented, lack of rp-friendly things in the graphics/world-building is a negative.

But what is so RP unfriendly in this game?

It’s a matter of numbers (role-players are a true minority, and since we see so few, we assume the game is “alienating” them), and not a real problem, IMHO.

I don’t think the game is “not RP friendly” as the OP has it – that’s going too far – but the call for more rp-friendly stuff should always be at the back of a developer’s mind. It’s not negligible.

It’s negligible in the first instance because, as you say, roleplayers are a minority. But the overall “tone” of a game can slip gradually from “virtual world” to “multiplayer lobby” if the rp side isn’t nurtured to some extent.

Lore and immersion are important, otherwise we might as well be emailing spreadsheets at each other.

Thomanson.4765:

How about….

1: Chat box control please? /emote is DARK GREY for frak’s sake. Let us change colors.
2: Make /block actually block emotes, so we can control spam.
3: Make /say and /emote ranges actually make sense.
4: Give us real user-controlled culling sliders, so we don’t have people vanishing in the middle of big rp gatherings
5: Chat-logging functionality would be nice (also useful for combat logging, i guess)
6: User Channels for communities
7: Housing and/or more interactive spaces in towns.
8: Sitting poses that actually work on….you know, chairs.

The things the OP mentioned are of little importance for RP, however this is. GW2 isn’t RP-friendly, that is just a given. ArenaNet doesn’t care for RP and probably doesn’t even understand it and I think we have a right to complain about that just as any subgroup of players. Not that I expect that that would ever change.

I don’t really think what the OP says is true… nor am I sure what it has to do with roleplaying. Guild halls, if they are done right, will appeal to everybody who has a guild (for an example). Also it seems they are spending quite a lot of time on story…. there’s always an event or living story chapter up it seems? I’d say much more than on PvP….

Star Ace.5207:

It’s nice to see roleplayers, but:

-That people don’t role-play that much is just a reflection of the game’s population, and what every player prefers (which they are entitled to.) Nothing in the game is inhibiting the roleplaying community other than it being a niche community, and that’s fine. People that have no idea of what role-playing is shouldn’t be forced to role-play, of course-they are OK in playing the game with no role-playing elements whatsoever.

-Though I don’t mind role-playing servers per se, again, nothing prohibits players from role-playing their characters and their world, in whichever server they are (for instance, not every player on Tarnished Coast role-plays, and I am not on TC and like to role-play my characters.)

-Role-playing isn’t limited by what the game allows or doesn’t allow, but by your imagination. The game can currently stop being developed, and you can still role-play even with the supposedly limited current story arc or lore. Role-playing is more dependent on each individual player’s imagination, willingness and commitment to role-playing his/ her character, than the limits of the game.

In fact, the game offers a rich universe in which role-players can create their own characters and adventures, and many dynamic events could be used to foster your imagination and create adventures/quests with your RP friends. Truth to be told, one can role-play with zero graphics and no GW2, so saying the game “discriminates” against role-players is something I really can’t agree with-it’s just not solely for the role-players, and that’s OK too.

I mean no offense to role-players, I just think role-playing can’t be limited by the limits of a game universe, but rather our own.

-

It’s not as if we NEED to have extra stuff like instanced houses. I mean, I can roleplay that the third house on the left of Divinity’s Reach Lower Promenade is my house too. But it would most certainly be nice to have some extra goodies to roleplay with. Especially emote-related. But like I said before, let’s just wait untill Anet has the most prominent problems of their mind like bug-fixes and living story content, and see what happens then. If we really needed all that extra, we would be roleplaying in another game like aforementioned LotRO and play GW2 like the non-roleplayers.

I see threads a lot like this one here and on reddit with alarming frequency. The only difference, usually, is that “RP” is replaced with “PvP”, “PvE”, or “WvW”

I will absolutely concede that ANet has devoted significantly more resources to game types other than RP, but it’s pretty important to remember that RPers make up only a small percentage of the playerbase. Since you’ve obviously visited this forum at least once (to post this), can you take a second to just imagine the whiny kittenstorm that would occur if ANet announced that the next patch was all about roleplay?

Now, to your points:

• Guild Halls – removed, until further notice. We have heard from the staff themselves that they have no intentions of working on them.

These were never removed. They existed in GW1, yes, but were never promised for GW2. Would they be nice to have? Sure. Also, I’m not completely certain on this, but I don’t believe that Guild Halls were in GW1 when it launched either.

• Epic end game stories and expansions removed.

I’m not entirely certain why you believe that this is a specifically RP issue. If your issue is about lack of lore, I’ll address it later. If you’re afraid that not having expansions means we’ll never see Cantha & Elona again, This Massively article should assuage your fears somewhat.

Michikyou.9617:

• No promise of new playable races or classes.

Arenanet learned long ago not to make these kinds of promises significantly before they are ready to launch. While they have been rather specific that there are unlikely to be new classes, I once again fail to see how you feel like a lack of new classes is an RP issue. It affects everyone. While you could make a strong argument that not introducing new races would be a primarily RP issue, there are certainly going to be a lot of very disappointed people in all parts of the game if we never see the much-speculated-upon Tengu or Kodan.

Michikyou.9617:

*Denying new areas until ‘PVP’ is perfected.

I think you may be surprised to know how many PvPers (especially sPvP) feel the same way. The grass truly is greener on the other side here. We all have our gripes, most of them legitimate, every time we see patch notes and the things we wanted weren’t included, but they did all this crap for (insert game type you dislike here). I promise you that most of us feel this way about our preferred way of playing.

Michikyou.9617:

• Removing important cultural aspects of GW from the game to create a more ‘unified’ and ‘Culturally sensitive’ community.

As mentioned above, Cantha is not off the table. I don’t pretend to know all the reasons that the Cantha District was scrapped, but I’ll wager it’s a lot less simple than most of us are making it out to be.

Michikyou.9617:

• Lore updated so slowly.

This is a very broad statement. I may need you to narrow it down a bit. Are you talking about living story lore?

Michikyou.9617:

• No promise of an official RP server for the thousands of roleplayers.

You are absolutely correct here. The existing unofficial RP servers would suffice. However, due to guesting, I think that RP name enforcement would be impossible, if that was something you were hoping for.

Aeonblade.8709:

Rhysati.4932:

ophidic.1279:

Except no one makes video games for roleplaying, so there’s no “discrimination”, people just expect too much.

Really? I think you are delusional. LotRO caters HEAVILY to its RPers: Player housing with full neighborhoods, customizable chat colors/fonts, chat logging built in, emote size and range quite extensive, up to like 7-8 full outfit slots, an actual /rp tag that changes your name color to show you are roleplaying, a bio that people can click on you to read, the ability to have children and a parent linked to your character, etc etc. Coupled with that, people get banned for harrassing RPers and GMs have been known to roleplay with the playerbase.

If LotRO is so great and amazing and the best at RP, why are you here complaining about something that is not even remotely acknowledged as GW2’s strong point?

I have no problem with giving RP’ers more tools to play around with each other, but if there are better options out there for RP and you know about it…well…It’s kind of your choice to be here!

Well since someone necro’d this…I wasn’t one of the ones that started complaining in the first place. I’ve actually been someone that tells those that complain non-stop about the dissapointing RP-support to shut up.

With that said, who ways I DON’T play LotRO? I have played it since release. I was simply responding to the other person’s incorrect declaration that nobody makes games that support RPers(as you know since you quoted it).

And with all that said, it is, indeed, my choice to be here. I like it here. I roleplay here. And, contrary to what you think, I don’t really complain about it either. Sure, I’d like some more RP support and see nothing wrong with voicing that, but I’m not crying and whining over it. I enjoy the PvE aspects as well.

Role-playing is not a strong suit of mmorpg, it’s ofline rpg thing. And RP in GW1 was much better because of instanced pve. Instanced pve in GW1 was a truly, ofline rpg content.

GW2 pve is open now, and it lost all RP strength.

Also exploring the world is ofline rpg thing too. And exploring is a big part of RP. For example…. Skyrim, or another TES game. You can see the difference between GW2 exploring world and Skyrim world. And look at the exploring world in GW1. It feels more like exploring the world in Morrowind, or Oblivion, or Skyrim, or Gothic 1-3, Risen and etc.

GW2 is a mmorpg, and mmorpg has it’s own strength, but RP is not on it’s list, unfortunately.

Role-playing game suppose to be for one person. Player must be the one, only one. Because RP it’s a story telling. And if it’s a story telling, player’s character must be the one who this story is telling about. And when player is not along, when he/she shares the world with other players, the world doesn’t belong to him/her anymore, and story-telling are loosing it’s strength.

That’s why Live Story doesn’t feel like RP.

GW1 with ofline-rpg quests was much more RP. In GW2 I can barely feel RP, because RP IS NOT A STRONG SUIT OF MMORPG. No matter how hard ArenaNet will try, they won’t succeed with RP unless future Live Story chapters will be more instance content, like Personal Story.

Personal Story (Story Mode dungeon) is the only one RP part of GW2. Other contents, are typical mmorpg.

I like role-playing as I’m a roleplayer myself but in all honesty GW2 isn’t really a rp game. Neither was GW1. Sure, sure you can rp but the game isn’t really set up for it. If you want to rp no one is stopping you however you may find a better rp environment in games that are designed for it. Something like NWN1 or NWN2 where they have private servers & where they have DMs watching over the playerbase to insure that everyone RPs.

Kreslin.6832:

Role-playing game suppose to be for one person. Player must be the one, only one. Because RP it’s a story telling. And if it’s a story telling, player’s character must be the one who this story is telling about. And when player is not along, when he/she shares the world with other players, the world doesn’t belong to him/her anymore, and story-telling are loosing it’s strength.

The exact opposite is the case. You don’t roleplay in a vacuum, you need other players. In a singleplayer game, you can play the role the game gives you, as much as the game allows, but that’s hardly roleplay. In a MMO, you can play any role you like, but there’s a difference in how much the game engine supports you in this. The engine of GW2 doesn’t even let you sit on a chair.

The OP’s statement may’ve been way off the mark but fundamentally GW2 is not an RP’r friendly environment, and this is a bad thing for it’s long term.

The singular most important feature RP’rs need is private space to call their own, such as a guild hall. Star Trek Online achieved this fantastically, offering both a guild space in the form of a starbase (Guild hall equivalent), for guild-centric events. And the ability to walk around inside your own ship and bring allies aboard – for meeting up with people in private.

GW2 has almost no private spaces whatsoever besides an impersonal, non-customisable home instance usually far removed from any centre of activity that can only take 5 people anyway. While I applaud many RP’rs making use of public locations (Such as the Seraph Rp’rs in the seraph fort in queensdale) they do sometimes attract people who just want to kitten all over everything who’ll harrass and get in the way if they see people roleplaying publiclly.

They could also afford to extend the range of emotes, a proper range of actions such as the ability to sit in chairs in the environment go a long long way to making the the world seem more natural.

it’s not like either of these things are difficult to provide, yet their absence is sorely felt.