This is something that comes up rather often in one form or another, so I figured I'd form a topic about it to see how people feel about the issue. Basically it sums up to this: What takes a preference, roleplaying or game mechanics?

Levels
This one is a rather common argument. "My hero is stronger, because my level is higher". This would certainly hold true in a PvP fight, or when fighting against NPCs, but does this truly make sense from a RP point of perspective?

My argument against:
Levels are purely a game mechanic and should never be brought in as an actual roleplay element. It makes no sense, at all, that a Viper soldier in Millennium City is less of a threat than an exact same Viper soldier on Monster Island. This is just in place to keep the game challenging overall and to help you feel like you're getting stronger, without the enemies getting weaker.

You're not even rewarded with levels for proper roleplaying, so I don't see why this would ever become an RP element.

Missions
You've most likely seem them around; the people who take every mission they've done as a 100% guaranteed feat their character performed. They stopped the Qularr invasion, they were the ones who exposed Argent, they brought Poe to justice and stopped the New Purple gang, they took down Grond.

My argument against:
This is of course silly. Quests are supposed to make you feel special, but they have no relevance to RP. Just because you stopped the Qular invasion in the tutorial, or you took down Poe in a mission, doesn't mean it happened in RP. It couldn't possibly have, as there were literally -thousands- of other people who did the exact same quest. Now I know that the Millennium City Prison is like a revolving door, but surely they wouldn't let every villain escape a thousand times?

This one, to me, is simply a matter of separating in-character from out character. Yes, I did missions in Lemuria to stop doomsday weapons, and yes I went to Canada and killed Kigatilik with a raid. That doesn't mean Eaglesight has in-character ever done anything like that. He's relatively low power, and takes down thugs and crime lords in the west side. It's silly to claim you took down Poe, when everybody else above level 20 did too.

Duels
Perhaps the hottest roleplay vs game mechanics discussion you'll see around, duels. I don't really know why heroes keep getting into fights, judging by how often this discussion comes up it happens all the time, but that's not part of the problem. For some reason or another two heroes get into a fight. Words can't solve it, so it comes down to a brawl.

How do you solve it?

A giant rocket drops from the sky and a forcefield forms.

My argument against:
I don't see a duel as a valid way of solving an in-character conflict. Not only does it seem unheroic to resort to violence (though it does obviously happen in comics as well), but a duel is perhaps the most game balance prone area in the game.

If Wolverine and Cyclops were to get in a fight, who would win? I doubt you could say it beforehand, they're pretty even in the comics. In this game? Wolverine would win, easily, as he has regeneration; where as Cyclops has eye laser which does no real damage.

If you're trying to stick to a concept, you're already gimping yourself. As an archer, I have 3 'useful' attacks, and even those 3 attacks are hardly on par with other power sets. I can't outdamage regen, I can't cancel blocks, in short, my character just isn't tuned for PvP.

So why exactly does this mean that realistically in a conflict, my character would lose by default? Game balance gives me the short end, especially when up against a min/maxed character who swings a laser sword around, this is completely unrelated to roleplay.

Now I admit, the other option of emoting out a fight can be just as troublesome. Generally speaking, people don't like to lose, not even in a roleplay fight, and coming to an agreement on who would realistically win is a pain. It's also why I don't bother having fights with people I can't trust to be proper roleplayers about it, but that's not the point of the discussion.


What do -you- think about separating game mechanics and RP?

I agree with pretty much everything you just said ESPECIALLY the part about missions being OOC. In a "quest grinder" game, literally every player has to do the quests, and it makes no sense to consider it in character. Especially when you go to help out your friend who is a low level,and golly gee, didn't I already stop viper? I can't believe so and so came back to life AGAIN!! Geez, the Gadroon must have built a NEW spaceship, and so froth. It makes so much more sense just to treat missions as just playing a game.

There are some times you can get around this, if you have a group and you want to do missions and RP or something at the same time, but I usually push for something like "We went and fought Viper for a while" without a definitive outcome and without necessarily following the exact storyline of the missions.

{deleted post} Theik wrote:

Now I admit, the other option of emoting out a fight can be just as troublesome. Generally speaking, people don't like to lose, not even in a roleplay fight, and coming to an agreement on who would realistically win is a pain.

If you can't solve this in 5 minutes, dump the RP.

I'm serious.

Freeform fights when properly done are one of the best RPs I've seen, but they're rarely seen because a lot of people don't realize that it's the good of the RP that matters, not your character's win-loss record (which, btw, won't be affected by your RP loss as it only tallies PvP fights). Honestly depending on how the duel system works, I'd free-form the first few bits, and then start the duel.

To be frank, the dueling system in this game is kind of a joke, but I take it as such and move on. Granted I'm probably not gonna duel until I'm max level, but still.

The issue is that level is important, Superman is stronger then Superboy, yea if Superboy tried hard he may be able to smack Superman around, but Superman is on a different level. Yea, maybe Superboy trains and gets strong enough to be an even fight, he's 'gained levels'. You don't have to RP the missions exactly but yea, I think level should be a factor in RP, if only as 'wow I can feel my powers growing...' or 'Check THIS trick out' stuff.

Duels, I don't see the issue at all, there have been TONS of issues where over a major fight, or mind control, or whatever, Superman and Batman or whatever kick the crap out of eachother for a bit. It's not an indicative thing, if Captain Sparkle beats you down in one duel it doesn't go written in stone that Captain Sparkle is your better in every way from now until omega, maybe he got a lucky punch in, maybe he was just in the zone, or yea, maybe he IS better then you right now. So what? Loss shapes heroes just as much as winning, maybe your guy is REALLY mad Captain Sparkle kicked you across CC's dance floor (and who wouldn't be? Look at that name!) so alright, now you two have a rivalry, trying to show eachother how strong you are, he stops a bank robbing, you blow up a VIPER lab, etc. And heck, maybe later on you say "Alright Captain Sparkle, let's rematch, I can take you this time..." and duel again.

If Captain Sparkle gives you a super strength pimp slap into a wall it must be the mean stinky mechanics we should all ignore, since there's no way YOUR guy could lose right? Chances are (with most CORP RPers at least) if the scene has gotten to Captain Sparkle saying 'hey, you wanna throw down jerk?' to you, someone has promply peed in his cereal in a big way, or the scene called for it OOC. If it's crucial to your story that you beat up Captain Sparkle, then it should be known before hand so he can go "Oh right" and just throw basic punches, or such, while you rain down fire in him. Otherwise play it as it resolves.

Missions are OOC, I agree with that.

For Duels, I would ignore the silly rocket. However PvP is how I prefer to resolve my conflicts. I'm not the best PVPer around but I hate godmoding ad RPing fights takes forever and either ends up with someone godmoding or both end up equal as neither want to godmode. It's silly.

Level? We can't refer them IC. But I think they certainly do have an impact. If you want to RP below your level, fine. Even at level 40, Nightingale, being a normal (slightly enhanced, maybe) girl with guns, will probably never be as good as someone with awesome superpowers. She -might- be more skilled in battle however.

And that's what level really is. It's not raw power alone. It's a mix of power, experience, awareness, canny tactics, instinct, everything that makes a difference between a warrior and a noob with powers or weapons.

So yes, ultimately, I think level has its importance in RP. Like I said, one can RP below their level... but if I'm 40 and some level 20 guy comes up saying he's a god... well, they might be a god but my level 40 charrie can still kick their ass, despite being less powerful.. because they simply know how to fight better.

Also, I disagree with Theik on the point of NPC's and levels. To even survive on Monster Island, a VIPEr agent needs to be much tougher and skilled than one that hangs out in Millenium City. Clearly the organisation would send their better, stronger agents to the more dangerous locations.

Crimson brings up a point that I agree on with the 'Levels aren't just power'. In some games, levels are considered Age, after a certain point, so level one would be '18' while level 40 would be '57', or whatever. Since age doesn't apply in most cases in this game, just consider it an experience kind of thing, level 1 is 'Fresh hero, with absolutely zero experiences in the Hero world' while 40 is 'Battle hardened veteran whose experiences lead to developed tactics, skills, and instincts'.

{deleted post} Theik wrote:

Levels
This one is a rather common argument. "My hero is stronger, because my level is higher". This would certainly hold true in a PvP fight, or when fighting against NPCs, but does this truly make sense from a RP point of perspective?

My argument against:
Levels are purely a game mechanic and should never be brought in as an actual roleplay element. It makes no sense, at all, that a Viper soldier in Millennium City is less of a threat than an exact same Viper soldier on Monster Island. This is just in place to keep the game challenging overall and to help you feel like you're getting stronger, without the enemies getting weaker.

You're not even rewarded with levels for proper roleplaying, so I don't see why this would ever become an RP element.

Er... the VIPER soldiers are, presumably, better-trained, more experienced, and have access to better quality gear on Monster Island, where VIPER's got a major base of operations after a major invasion, than in Millennium City, where most of their ops have a much higher risk of discovery and failure. I don't see this as a problem, anymore than the idea that a human soldier in armor is tougher than a robot cowboy.

The only real problem I have with this is on the extreme ends. Some characters, by their RP, are not in the same league as level 40 characters, and wouldn't offer a useful contribution to, say, a fight with Doctor Destroyer. An XP lock would be ideal to fix that, but I understand that everything's more important for the devs right now.

OTOH, low-level characters who are significantly stronger than their level is something I have a hard time trusting. Sure, some players handle this reasonably (i.e. a bulletproof character, when the option's not available for pure balance reasons, is one of the most common concepts in the medium). I've also run into low-level characters on CoX who stated outright that they were immune to my level 50's invisibility, or worse still, magic in general. I've seen people whose backgrounds include single-handedly stopping invasions from threats they themselves describe as greater threats than any in game.

I also met Y2KING. >_>

Frankly, while I don't have a problem with people RPing a weaker character than the mechanics have for them, I've seen the high-power lowbie style abused so often that I react with suspicion each time I come across it. I've seen more examples of godmoding there than good RP from it.

My argument against:
This is of course silly. Quests are supposed to make you feel special, but they have no relevance to RP. Just because you stopped the Qular invasion in the tutorial, or you took down Poe in a mission, doesn't mean it happened in RP. It couldn't possibly have, as there were literally -thousands- of other people who did the exact same quest. Now I know that the Millennium City Prison is like a revolving door, but surely they wouldn't let every villain escape a thousand times?

This one, to me, is simply a matter of separating in-character from out character. Yes, I did missions in Lemuria to stop doomsday weapons, and yes I went to Canada and killed Kigatilik with a raid. That doesn't mean Eaglesight has in-character ever done anything like that. He's relatively low power, and takes down thugs and crime lords in the west side. It's silly to claim you took down Poe, when everybody else above level 20 did too.

Agreed across the board here. The devs really should have randomized names for most of these guys, or take the common nature of these fights into account (either by continuing the Crisis-style before/after of these fights, so I can't ever do it again, or better, have the fights be to keep these threats in check; it'd take a concerted effort of dozens or even hundreds of heroes to dismantle Destroyer's factory or suppress the riots and Metron both in Stronghold).

So why exactly does this mean that realistically in a conflict, my character would lose by default? Game balance gives me the short end, especially when up against a min/maxed character who swings a laser sword around, this is completely unrelated to roleplay.

In fairness, the RP duels I've done so far have ended "appropriately" with my character submitting to superior force. Platinum Fatale was lower level, melee, and invulnerability to my PFF back when PFF was better than all of that. This was partly because ICly, Inquest didn't want to fight hardcore, and partly because once his PFF is down, her inhuman strength overcomes his human-level toughness. It took her a while to get to that point, but she got there.

In a real fight, I'm pretty sure she'd agree that it'd go the other way almost instantly, since Inquest has telekinetic control over dead matter -- like her last meal, still in her digestive system.

Duels work if both players are mature about the circumstances of the fight, and fight to RP submission, rather than to mechanic conclusion. It works better than emote dueling (people around can see what's happening, the silly rocket aside), and with informal rules (in the above, if Fatale can get two-three melees in a row without Inquest knocking her back or down, she's clearly overpowered him to the point the fight's effectively over, even if she's not as pretty anymore).

Good RPers should be able to admit when their guy's going to lose. Bad RP, you should walk away from ASAP.

I don't have a massive post to add, though I will say this.

Character concept should matter in terms of how you treat a character. Jimmy with guns sin't necessarily going to based Kroxigor from Klygonia, the Space Ship Planet. That's a rather extreme example, but I'm sure you get me.

I take level into account, KINDA. That is, once someone makesi t passed... say... 20? I stop caring. I do get kinda anoyed when someone walksi n with Level 5 Jesus and supposedly one-shots me in a textfight.

On the subjecto f duels, I'm primarily a textfighter, though I -sometimes- use them to provide a visual aid for some attacks that get used. I.E., I'm textfighting. We enter a duel. I type "He then unleashes a barrage from his shoulder-m,ounted chaingun." While the duel stats and such won't effect the outcome of the text-fight, I find some people can deal with textfights better, provided there is a visual aid. Also, I hate that fucking rocket. I could care less about the Forcefield. I just ignore it.

The other thing I finally take into account? RP Skill. Even if you're level fucking 40, with the best buiold evar for PvP, if you try to textfihht me or duel me and just pull the instant ridiculous I whoop-ass card, I don't appreciate that. Infact, I've had the entire course of a fight change (I was originally intending to win, but I did not.) Just because of a truly beautiful post describing my ass getting handed to me in a non-godmoddish way.

Wilhelm Gains 10 internetz for this.

A real roleplayer, (and this has nothing to do with being elitist or whatever) knows that game mechanics should never, at no time, have relevance on your character, or anything that falls under this category. The only reason you should use a game for roleplaying purposes is to give you a visual aid to play out your story or develop your character.

{deleted post} DanteKardo wrote:

Wilhelm Gains 10 internetz for this.

A real roleplayer, (and this has nothing to do with being elitist or whatever) knows that game mechanics should never, at no time, have relevance on your character, or anything that falls under this category. The only reason you should use a game for roleplaying purposes is to give you a visual aid to play out your story or develop your character.

Meh. I feel the mechanics are a guideline so that people have a formalized frame of reference. With sufficiently strong RP and story basis, they're not needed (and in fact should be abandoned). I know a few players I trust enough to RP to that point, but if I don't know you, you'd better take as well as you give.

Also, on the subject ofm isisons, I do all mine IC, but with a twist.

I.E., when I took down Poe with 2 others, we weren't taking down Poe, just one of his (Unnamed and probab ly easily replaced!) top dogs. I do stuff like that.

I didn't throw Rhino in jail and shut down Dr. Moreau. We beat them back and they escaped. Moreau has so many manimals, he could easily move back in and resume his operations.

My last example might be a bit much, but you get the idea. In the eternal comic book way, some greater villains always come back.

{deleted post} DanteKardo wrote:

Wilhelm Gains 10 internetz for this.

A real roleplayer, (and this has nothing to do with being elitist or whatever) knows that game mechanics should never, at no time, have relevance on your character, or anything that falls under this category. The only reason you should use a game for roleplaying purposes is to give you a visual aid to play out your story or develop your character.

Sorry if Mike the Level 10 guy keeps talking about he he could kick my ass, he's getting a duel request before I mess with text fighting, sorry I'm not a 'real' roleplayer.

Excuse me... but you keep mentioning how noone likes to lose and assume that everyone who do text-fights per default will try their utmost to win no matter what and not settle for anything less?

Yeah, that's wrong. I can only speak for myself, of course, but I don't consider text-fighting a competition anymore than I do a normal conversation. Hell, I even tend to lose my fights more than win them.

{deleted post} Keymonk wrote:

Excuse me... but you keep mentioning how noone likes to lose and assume that everyone who do text-fights per default will try their utmost to win no matter what and not settle for anything less?

Yeah, that's wrong. I can only speak for myself, of course, but I don't consider text-fighting a competition anymore than I do a normal conversation. Hell, I even tend to lose my fights more than win them.

I never meant to suggest that. I meant that text-fighting with people you can't trust tends to end up with problems. Eaglesight will pretty much always lose a text-based fight against superheroes with actual powers, after some dodging around.

Duels. Lets look at this simply.


When you are in a bar or on the street (You. Not your char. You.) how long does it take before a guy can actually annoy you enough to swing a punch? Seriously.

Now take into consideration that your char also faces far FAR worse consequences of getting into a fight. The bad publicity, the shame and loss of face from being arrested for brawling, the fact that, if you cause enough trouble you better believe whole government agency will be tracking you down to stop collateral damage?

Now Duels do have their place. And people can only be pushed so far before they start to get physical, but its a sad fact that is true in so many online RP communitys that people are far to quick to resort to violence.

And as for duels used for dramatic plot elements.... Don't do it in public.
In Club caprice last night i heard one guy telling of how he murdered three people in the club (or one person three times, he switched back and forth a bit) Now maybe one of his friends WAS able to get the guy back on his feet and patch him up through magic or something, but why was this bloodthirsty creature still in the club?! Why hadn't he been arrested and locked up for everyones safety? why hadn't every super hero in the bar beaten him to submission to stop him? and why the HELL were they still letting him in? That's a lifetime ban even if the cops don't bother with him.
A hour or so later a duel was used to stage a public murder of a hero by a summoned demon. again the use of the duel function meant that none of the many heroes stood watching could actually wade in and save the guy. When the continuation of this story resulted in another demon appearing and threatening to kill everyone in the bar, again, no one was really able to respond, this group of people who had now caused two demons to appear in the bar and had resulted in one death were still wandering around in the bar. Why had they not been thrown out for the safety of the other patrons?


Frenzied berserk killings and Demons slaughtering your friends are perfectly acceptable (if a tad overly dramatic) story hooks. I got nothing against them. Just don't do it in public. and for the love of god DO NOT ignore the fact that there would be repercussions if the NPC's were able to react.

You avoid the repercussions if you do it somewhere quiet. after all, no witnesses? then who do the cops chase down? There are plenty of quiet corners in the city. Use those.


Huh, i just ranted, sorry. Long story short, don't fight unless you need to, and don't do it in public if at all possible, there is a reason "lets take this outside" is a cliché. its because anyone with half a brain knows to go fight somewhere with no witnesses. (that and they want to be allowed to go back in the bar and have a drink the next night.)

I don't agree with most of this.

Level, as a number, is clearly OOC. However, the idea that superheroes get more powerful as they learn how to use their powers, and that some are more powerful than others, is firmly embedded in comics and there's nothing "OOC" about it. As long as you don't use the knowledge of someone's level ICly (i.e., "Dude you are 10 levels below me clearly I am more powerful"), then I don't see the problem with it.

Missions... 99% of the server doesn't RP, so don't most of us just basically ignore all those other players anyway? And their characters? I mean since there are instances you can't see 19/20ths of the population anyway, even if you wanted to. Why would I go out of my way to imagine all those non-RPers are doing the same missions, "ICly", that I am? Surely they aren't. (By which I mean, they're doing them, but since they aren't RPing, by definition they can't be doing them ICly.)

So, when I play with my small # of RPing friends and we are doing missions together, we RP them. Obviously I wouldn't be slavish in my adherence to the mission story ("You can't have defeated Poe! I did!!!"), but it's not like, _outside_ of the mission, I do much RPing about the mission anyway, since most of them are trivial and not worth doing RPing about beyond the limits of the mission itself. While doing the mission, though, I will RP about it unless the other person clearly doesn't want to (in which case I'll probably drop team once we finish, since I play this game to RP, not to grind missions). Honestly though I've never tried RPing in a mission with another RPer and had them refuse to RP back with me, so I don't see it as a problem.

Duels... should be handled however the players want to handle them. If they want to just "pose" or "emote" the fight, that's up to them. If they want to let the "dice" control things (i.e., use the game system) that's fine too. My only thing there is, if you do decide to let the game system handle it, you let the game system handle it, and accept whatever the result of the fight happens to be. And if you do it with emotes, you have to be responsible and not decide that your character is completely immune to all forces in the universe...

Personally I wouldn't waste a lot of brain cells on this stuff. The game is what it is. You use what features are conducive to your RP to RP... and you ignore anything that is NOT conducive to it. That's how I always did things in COH, SWG, etc.

F

{deleted post} Keymonk wrote:

Excuse me... but you keep mentioning how noone likes to lose and assume that everyone who do text-fights per default will try their utmost to win no matter what and not settle for anything less?

Yeah, that's wrong. I can only speak for myself, of course, but I don't consider text-fighting a competition anymore than I do a normal conversation. Hell, I even tend to lose my fights more than win them.

Amen... I can think of plently more instances where I've lost fights on other games and some really wicked RP has come out from it. Most of these fights, I would like to point out with insufferable smugness, have been PVP fights, IC, using game mechanics.

I like loosing, and pulling fights! Because some really neat RP can come out from it.

I have to say I prefer solving my battles through PVP.. it actually has some action to it ya' know... actions fun... waiting for the other person to respond with some text isn't. I dont like doing emote fighting myself to be honest, just takes way too long for my liking and nothing happens besides text popping up. - But thats just me. I'm not going to say "RP-PVP IS BAD!" "EMOTE FIGHTING IS BAD!" and if I gave that impression, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. I can think of some really good examples of emote fighting I've seen, but most have frankly been a load of wank.

Like some people! I prefer to settle my IC coffuffles with some PvP mechanics!

But that dosn't mean I go around laying the smackdown on every superman I find thats a lower level than me with my guns' o glorly and 100% human clown 'gal! - I wouldn't start an IC fight with someone who had super powers! If it were someone in a power armoued suit! I'd give it a shot! Litteraly!

And if I did get into a fight with a spandex wearing man who shoots lazers out of his tits, I'd pull the fucking fight. I'd have fun doing it too. I'd settle it with PvP so he could knock my ass across the floor and have some actions doing it! And I can at least try to fight back! Maybe put up a reasonable fight with some guns, but ultimately, fail.

Then, when i've lost, I'd device some ways IC to make a serious comeback at a later point! Then go for a IC, PVP rematch! And of course, say OOC and IC what has happened to make me stand a stronger chance of winning!

But apprently, I'm not a real roleplayer anymore.

I agree with Fraktal 100%.

I don't pay a monthly fee for an RP chat room. I pay it to PLAY an MMO, and that means as my character does things, be it RP in the club or arrest Poe, then My. Character. Does. Them.

If you want to say I never arrested Foxbat, or never helped stop the Qular invasion, that's fine. I respect your right to act like a loon around me and ignore the people in game who run up to me and thank me for them. If you want to say you're SOOOOO much tougher than me because you want to RP superman at level 10 while I'm level 40. By all means. I'll treat you like a loon for thinking you're tougher and invite you to head over to Monster Island to show me just how strong you are.

Levels have easy ways to be integrated IC:

City of Heroes called them "Security Levels" and they represented the areas you were tough enough to go to (hazard zones) and the kinds of villians you should feel qualified to fight. As you "learn more about your powers" then you get promoted to higher Security Levels and you are advised to go after bigger and badder baddies.

Likewise, if you want to push someone 20 levels higher than you around, they're welcome to say something like "You're not even cleared to deal with half the stuff I do. Keep proving yourself and maybe you can".

I have no problems at all about both of us taking about having to arrest Poe, or stop another Gonraoad (whatever they are) invasion, or having to drop Grond. Villians escape, aliens will invade again, and big regenerating monsters regenerate.

Stretch the mind a bit and you'd be amazed at how it will flex. Be a slave to your perceptions and feel the appropriate bonds.

SH

{deleted post} Storm-herald wrote:

Stretch the mind a bit and you'd be amazed at how it will flex. Be a slave to your perceptions and feel the appropriate bonds.

That's a very nice quote, except you're the one who's a slave to your perceptions here. You're the one who states "It happened in the game, so it happened in RP" and "I don't see you as a level 30, so you can't have been here."

{deleted post} Storm-herald wrote:

I don't pay a monthly fee for an RP chat room. I pay it to PLAY an MMO, and that means as my character does things, be it RP in the club or arrest Poe, then My. Character. Does. Them.

Just like... the thousands of other people who took down Poe? What is the prison, made of cardboard?

{deleted post} Theik wrote:

{deleted post} Storm-herald wrote:

Stretch the mind a bit and you'd be amazed at how it will flex. Be a slave to your perceptions and feel the appropriate bonds.

That's a very nice quote, except you're the one who's a slave to your perceptions here. You're the one who states "It happened in the game, so it happened in RP" and "I don't see you as a level 30, so you can't have been here."

{deleted post} Storm-herald wrote:

I don't pay a monthly fee for an RP chat room. I pay it to PLAY an MMO, and that means as my character does things, be it RP in the club or arrest Poe, then My. Character. Does. Them.

Just like... the thousands of other people who took down Poe? What is the prison, made of cardboard?

Actually the major prisons are all under siege from inmates and powerful villains, including the one in MC where you fight Poe! Soo....yea it IS reasonable to say 'I beat down Poe but the bastard got out!'