Guild Wars 2

Algreg.3629:

nwn wasn´t more of a rpg than GW2. What made it rpg were the enthusiastic people running servers and gamemastering campaigns in nwn.

NWN was fundamentally engineered around roleplaying. It had a dungeon master interface so that it could replicate it’s D&D roots, to all intents and purposes NWN was dungeons and dragon with dice rolls handled autonomously and 3d graphics instead of DM’s descriptions.

And Dungeons and Dragons is the WoW of RPG’s – maybe not the first or best, but certainly the most well known.

Ryuujin.8236:

Algreg.3629:

nwn wasn´t more of a rpg than GW2. What made it rpg were the enthusiastic people running servers and gamemastering campaigns in nwn.

NWN was fundamentally engineered around roleplaying. It had a dungeon master interface so that it could replicate it’s D&D roots, to all intents and purposes NWN was dungeons and dragon with dice rolls handled autonomously and 3d graphics instead of DM’s descriptions.

And Dungeons and Dragons is the WoW of RPG’s – maybe not the first or best, but certainly the most well known.

Yes, but those isn’t all reasons. I mean, nwn was caracterised because people played it with the idea in their mind THAT’S a roleplaying game (althought they have more tools), but here people doesnt have that mind, or maybe there is so many people, is difficult to see who wants to RP like we did on NWN, for example.

For my part, I’m a RP’er from Baruch’s Bay and… Well… Yesterday I was roleplaying with some friends at Wayfarer Foothills when some extrange guildies (not from mine) appeared… Doing a Crossover of Warhammer.

WTF? Khorne? Really!? I tried to talk to them via whisp but it was uselles: They told me ‘Hey man, we roleplay whatever we want ,so kittenoff’. So then, I tried to talk to them via roleplay… They tried to powergame and kill my char (Yeah, a whisper’s agent assasin speciallized on traps and melee combat being killed on hands of a “chaos warrior” who no one knows and no one cares… Stop dreaming, kid xD) with one shot. So, there is another problem: People is trying to impose their characters over others, and that cannot be. IF you plame a game with its lore, you’ll learn that lore, and then you’ll RP with that lore at your back, not with the lore of other games _

For me, GW2 is such a great game for RP, but people is who makes it a bit unplayable
Edited by moderator: post edited as it was breaking one of the rules of conduct

Jack of Tears.9458:

@Naoko; That’s how you play an’ see the game, again yer making these huge statements what are supposed to include everyone … an’ they don’. I develop a personality for my character; I treat her like what she is, an explorer an’ adventurer in Tyria. But, see, she isn’ an adventurer because the game pushed me inta the world killin’ monsters … I’ve met bartender PCs, Soldier PCs, Guards, Entertainers, Nobles, and more. People what wouldn’, an’ don’ call themselves adventurers … but Terra took the title because that’s how she sees herself, as an explorer an’ adventurer tackling the world an’ writin’ about her experiences – with a little embroiderin’ – along the way.

An’ I have grown attached to her; when I play the game I do it as if I were her; I make decisions like she would, I pick me path the way she would, an’ I gripe ta myself the way she would. I’mma actor (roleplayer) an’ she’s the role (character) I play while in the game world. An’ you’ll meet allota RPers what do the same thing. The Growin’ and Progressin’ ya talk about happens In Character, I don’ need numbers ta tell me how she’s changin’ as a “person”.

You’re right in describing it. You are not wrong, but your description of “roleplaying” is touching another different element/point from what I shared.

My point: Role-playing is when you be someone who you are not. You role-play as someone whom you can never be. Therefore, player skills are secondary. It’s because it’s not about you as the player, but the avatar you own that progresses in that virtual world. You’re the actor in a movie but you don’t need actual eye reflexes to dodge an incoming arrow. In fact, the actor doesn’t need to have any reflex skills to act in dodging an arrow.

RPGs are like in storybooks and movies but you roleplay the character and make own story. Character progresses, they evolve, they become stronger. Not refering to the lore, but the individual progression. That’s what RPGs since the 90s are.

GW2 lacks the “rpg” nature. Yes, we indeed role-play as the avatar during story to defeat Zhaitan but after that? A good mmorpg makes stories between players, not between us and the npc. If it’s between us and the npc, it would be a single player game.

It makes a good themepark mmo. All the rides are given to you. We choose the rides we want to ride. After we experiences all the rides, we get bored and have to wait for them to add more rides (expansions). The themepark has some special event from time to time, which is good. GW2 makes a very good mmo on that part but not as mmo-rpg.

The reason why I made a comparison of gw2 to console games isn’t because of solo issue. It’s because the game mechanic very much like it. Jumping puzzles are just like those action-games. Attaining extra clothes are just like unlocking costumes in those fighting-base games or spiderman. Legendary equipment are very much like trying to get a platinum trophy in ps3 for 100% completion in everything.

GW2 is, in my opinion, an MMOAction title more than an RPG at all.

Typical RPGs (PnP D&D) focus on the player characters more than the world. cRPGs (computer or video games) typically build a world as a back drop, and then focus on the player characters (emotes, lore designed armor with diversity in options, styles, story and more).

Action games focus more on the game world and then throw the players in.

I feel GW2 focused and still focuses more on the game world than the player characters. This is evident from the moment a character steps into the game world. A Norn for example stands there dressed as a human in stark contrast to his/her NPC counter parts (whom all look and are dressed like Norn). So it seems to me, that the attention and care went into making the world and less into the player character.

There’s other reasons as well; but that’s the easiest that can be seen.

From the players stand point on Role Playing – I personally find games that focus more on the player character than the game world easier to RP in. Games like Star Trek, Champions Online or EQ 1 or 2 – would be far better suited to fill any RP I wished to take part in.

Anyway, that’s just my opinion on the topic.

The role playing game part was ruined once it became all about making money. MMOs have trained the mind of players into believing that if they just get more exclusive pixels, and level their characters to 299, their lives will be complete. MMOs in general have become elitist games, where words like ‘role playing’ and ‘fun’, have been replaced with ‘farming’ and ‘working’. But it’s not like there’s no hope left, as there are still plenty of players who haven’t forgotten the word ‘fun’. It’s just that they don’t have as big of a voice, because they are busy actually doing something, whether that is playing the game or going about their daily lives.

No one does it because at the end of the day in MMOs You are doing the same thing over and over and over again.

It’s hard to RP we are going to grind these same mobs out again today.

Adine.2184:

whatever you say. You still need to brush up on your lore big time though before you go making an ignorant statement about the guild wars again which ended in 1070AE

Ignorant…brilliant choice of words….un-informed. I got to a point last night in my story where it broke it down to after the chaos of destruction that the world broke off into their own guilds of survival and warred with each other for various reasons. Mind you that is very short summary… their presentation was more specific and dark.

How was I off the mark ? in the WvW I think of the servers names as being the name of the specific guilds. Or is it because you, in your interpretation, tend to think about the WvW as an extension of the ongoing story in PvE…. which I would wonder where Eir, Kaithe, or Logan an the others are hiding in the WvW maps. I haven’t seen them.

No…I don’t know the lore. It’s why I am playing and playing a role, my role, through the game. Hitting all the towns, villages and conflicts along the way to hear the stories they have to tell. And jumping in WvWvW to (YES MY OPINION only) go back in time pre 1070 when you said the wars “stopped” and lend my talents to my “Guild” to help better our chances of the day.

I am however glad to see your passionate about it. That’s a good thing. Seems to me you are an example of what I was speaking about. A player immersed in the world in their own way to play out their role in the story.

@Jack of Tears… I can say I wish i knew you in game. Seems running through the wonderful world of Tyria would be entertaining as hell if not straight fun.

I believe gw2 is a great game, but it spread itself too thin. For those who like having various things to do, it’s a great and wonderful game. For those focused on certain aspects of the game, you hit a dead-end really quick and it’s very dissapointing. I can see both sides.

On a different note about MMOs, the thing that keeps me going back to MMOs is the community and the friends I make. You don’t know how happy I am sometimes if I have a bad day and see someone online that I can go venture with or if I could just immerse myself with the people around me and make new friends.

This MMO lacks good communication mechanics/features in the game. The only way to actually make friends is to
1) Dungeon with them and have a good fun run.
2) Run Plinx with them over and over again and say “Oh hey, it’s you again.”
3) Friends of friends when you party with each other…for dungeons, and farming so 1) and 2) again
4) Guildmates. You are either invited into a guild, meet members of a guild that seem nice and join them, or start your own guild and invite members and you all become great friends. However did I forget that you can’t talk to friends from other guilds if you aren’t repping them? And even then, you would only work together if you wanted to dungeon, or farm…plinx or said very few good farming places.
5) You meet a friend through /map chat
6) You run into someone while venturing

Out of all of those options, the most viable way to make friends it through dungeoning or joining a guild. For dungeons, we lack a good LFG system, so you end up having to party with people you dont agree with sometimes. For guilds, there’s not much of a benefit being in a guild other than buffs, which you can freeload from any big guild you rep. And that’s socializing through the wrong means.

We have the Mass, and there are Multiplayer options, and we do have to be Online. But by all means, we just all bought one game to co-op with some real-life friends bundled up with lots of people in one huge instance. By all means, we could have just bought the game separately and have npcs doing the dynamic events with us, dungeon with us, etc. Because gw2 doesn’t provide a great design for networking.

My…$0.02.

Roleplaying being forgotten isn’t something new. It has been forgotten ever since graphical MMOs became a thing.

Even in Ultima Online and Classic EQ, for every one person RPing were 50 that weren’t. And I don’t mean people roleplaying in the sense of modern RP. I mean they were grinding for loot (or in UO mostly skill levels) back then too.

The RPG is very much alive on Tarnished Coast. I bounced around between quite a few of the ‘popular’ servers and the community is pretty bad… just my opinion. TC, other than being the unofficial RP, also seems to be home to alot of casuals. So theres not much people gear checking but we still get all the dungeons completed and have a good time (which I’ve noticed alot of other servers do not have a good time and rather it be a job).

If your looking for a server of lewt d00ds and XxK1LLeRmAgExX, then theres lots of options to join if your not into immersion. Some of the other servers felt like I was in a call of duty chat room heh.

Naoko.7096:

RPGs are like in storybooks and movies but you roleplay the character and make own story. Character progresses, they evolve, they become stronger. Not refering to the lore, but the individual progression. That’s what RPGs since the 90s are.

Bang. See there’s the rub. We’re talkin’ about the same thing, you, me an’ some ah these other gaffers, what we’re snaggin’ on is this – an’ I get ya! Yer poundin’ yer nails inta the 90’s gamin’ form an’ refusin’ ta go any further … an’ my group had the same problem for years. But gamin’ systems are changin’, movin’ forward, tryin’ different an’ very strange things; an’ allota players love it. (a lot of us old … er, experienced … players are hard ta win over, no doubt about) I have ta drag me players kickin’ an’ screamin’ inta new systems … but once I get ‘em there they see that it ain’ near so bad as they thought. (An’ in more’n one occasion those fell inta our regular game rotation.) But it is a shift in the way ya look at things.

I wouldn’ try ta RP in an MMO the way I do in ah PnP game, jus’ like I wouldn’ try ta MMO at me table, but ya can bring parts ah the one inta the other – most important, the spirit. Ya do give somethin’ up when ya go from Table gamin’ ta Computer gamin’, ah course ya do; but ya gain some stuff in the shuffle.

(Nothin’ wrong with DnD by the by, I used it for a long time – though I’ll stick with 2nd edition before gettin’ sucked up by 3, 31/2, 4, 4+, 4 special, 4 extra, 5, 9, and Wichimcallit editions)

( Before getting into the bigger portion of this post, I just want to say that I think the RPG element could be improved in Guild Wars 2 by adding more interaction, such as sitting on chairs, benches, rocks, etc…, to fishing and doing handstands or a multitude of different variations in what we currently have at our disposal. )

I remember when I got Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire for the Nintendo 64. I spent countless hours on that stage where you fly the snow speeder to defend Hoth, just flying around. I had my own adventures in my head, sometimes involving communication between snow speeders as we navigated the frozen battlefield. I was playing in my own little world.

I feel the more modern day users of the net have defined game play in RPGs as something much more concrete, much less abstract. It’s something akin to a person that’s only played Halo for the X-Box, being given a computer to play a MUD.

Since the days of Dragon’s Gate and UO, I’ve gone about on my own personal adventures. Sometimes they would tie into the game’s quests/side quests. Often times though, I’d find myself wandering the world as much as is allowed by the game. In UO I was a Shadow Ranger, that basically implies I was roaming the land via stealth. He had no discernible “end game goal”. He never received that “epic loot”, but he was able to sneak, forage, craft materials, and wasn’t a bad shot with the bow on your average foe. This was all expressed not so much by a pre-defined background story, but by playing the game. The experience is what developed his story and even his title.

Guild Wars 2 does define the general character role more so than UO did or the MUDs before it, but it’s not keeping me from going on an adventure and building up the character in the many facets that the game allows. Even now, though I don’t always talk in character, I will usually act as I wish for them to act, so long as it’s allowed by the game, to fit their current “role”. The same could be said for games like City of Heroes.

On an alternate note, yet related to the topic, I could sum up that the community defines the general RPG element of the game. This community can be anything, from a small circle of friends, to the entire map chat channel in a given region, given that we can communicate over those great distances. How much imagination do you wish to use? To me, RPG is never forgotten so long as I’m here.

As I type this, my character is currently sleeping under some trees and what could be described as, a starry night sky.

Zimlobo.3962:

I consider myself as someone who approaches GW from an RPG point of view. I would not attempt to use these forums to have a conversation about role playing. There’s far better “walled gardens” out on the web for that. I have seen a few people attempt to start a conversation about character development as apposed to simple level gain… the response is usually along the lines of Go back to SecondLife

Here’s an example of what’s possible with just a dash of lore. Start a guild that is made up of only Asura Engineers (Not engineering! Keeping with lore the profession should be magic based. Example: Zojja; elementalist.). The role playing writes itself, we have all the tools. You can have geniuses, apprentices, and a group focus on crafting rare items (invention). Slap together a guild hosting site and you’re off and running. Occasionally you could party with a Human, Charr, Sylvari, and Norn for an adventure (better rounded group play), but ultimately you are loyal to your guild and it’s community and exclusivity.

MrDmajor.7084:

I always viewed “RP” people as fringe members of the gaming community.

How come hardcore RP people don’t just do the Second Life thing (or whatever it’s equivalent is), and buy an island lol? Second Life seems more in step with what you’d want.

And there it is, SecondLife.

MrDmajor.7084:

How come hardcore RP people don’t just do the Second Life thing (or whatever it’s equivalent is), and buy an island lol? Second Life seems more in step with what you’d want.

Because they enjoy the game as much as you do, but want ta add somethin’ extra ta the pot. Not everyone has ta play the game the same way … that’s okay .. I won’ tell ya ta go back ta Halo because I wanna rp an’ you don’. We all got our way ah enjoyin’ things, an’ its really nobody’s place ta tell us we’re doin’ it wrong if we’er havin’ fun an’ hurtin’ no one in the process. The conversation we’re havin’ isn’ “can ya rp in GW2”, ah course ya can rp in GW2; it’s “how easy is it ta RP in GW2”, an’ that’s were some ah us disagree.

Now go back ta Halo an’ think on that. ;P

nightmunch.4923:

Adine.2184:

whatever you say. You still need to brush up on your lore big time though before you go making an ignorant statement about the guild wars again which ended in 1070AE

Ignorant…brilliant choice of words….un-informed. I got to a point last night in my story where it broke it down to after the chaos of destruction that the world broke off into their own guilds of survival and warred with each other for various reasons. Mind you that is very short summary… their presentation was more specific and dark.

How was I off the mark ? in the WvW I think of the servers names as being the name of the specific guilds. Or is it because you, in your interpretation, tend to think about the WvW as an extension of the ongoing story in PvE…. which I would wonder where Eir, Kaithe, or Logan an the others are hiding in the WvW maps. I haven’t seen them.

No…I don’t know the lore. It’s why I am playing and playing a role, my role, through the game. Hitting all the towns, villages and conflicts along the way to hear the stories they have to tell. And jumping in WvWvW to (YES MY OPINION only) go back in time pre 1070 when you said the wars “stopped” and lend my talents to my “Guild” to help better our chances of the day.

I am however glad to see your passionate about it. That’s a good thing. Seems to me you are an example of what I was speaking about. A player immersed in the world in their own way to play out their role in the story.

@Jack of Tears… I can say I wish i knew you in game. Seems running through the wonderful world of Tyria would be entertaining as hell if not straight fun.

I am what you call a lore hound and i give my characters profiles based off lore past and present . You may disagree on its importance but i find lore to be paramount to a good character as i said before .

The RPG side doesnt get catered to as much as the spreadsheet/number crunching crowd. I’m guessing devs see these people that will play the game the most and they have to cater to them or lose them to other games.

It always amazes me that there are a number of ppl that play MMOs that dont actually want the rpg side. Why not just play FPS games and skip all the grinding and stat min/maxing if thats all you want to do?

Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies were RPGs. Your choices there were very much based on who your character was, not about optimization. To change this in modern games, they really need to move away from linear story based elements as heavy as they are now.

Computer RPGs, be it in single player or MMO form (though this applies more to the latter since in a SP RPG you can typically “imagine” you are whoever you want and there is no one to stop you), are not made for Role Play. This excludes typically fan run and maintained “shards” that have strict supervision and lore enforcement.

Of course people try to do that in various MMOs, some are more suited then others, but it always comes down to the fact that since there is no equivalent of a DM from table top RPGs to watch over, maintain, enforce, reward and punish players for their efforts, the results are typically hilariously drama generating and typically end with a multitude of conflicting concepts about the lore, not even mentioning rips from other works of fiction.

That is not even mentioning that without said DM to keep the world interesting and provide challenges, most RP in MMOs brings itself to playing house or exploring the same dungeon for the 100th time, more reminiscent of LARPing with a grindy element then actual PnP like RP, only with more players. Most NWN RP servers for example are mostly people just larping with each other, with some “evil” stuff going on on the side.

No company that wants to make money would carter solely to RPers (again, there are some MMOs that did it better then other. Most of them are now defunct or a shadow of their former selves, surprise surprise) and it is hard to blame them, since typically mentioning that no, you cannot play Lord Vampire Brooding Demigod BMF since it does not fit to the game world gets you called an RP Nazi and immediately ignored.

On a personal level, “imagining” your own personal storyline or whatever is by all means possible. Hells, if you have a few like minded players you can probably have some fun on agreed upon rules between yourselves. On a grander scale it is not viable for any MMO that wishes to make money. I am fairly certain that anyone who ever ran a “unofficial” server with enforced RP rules or played on one for a longer time can see why. There is no enforcement of character concepts, there is nobody to make the world react to the “meta” RP situation, there is nobody to resolve conflicts, etc. The players themselves, for various reasons, are typically unable to come to any consensus.