RP Feature Suggestions

I want my weapons to have the same amount of visual customization as my character. Long have I had to endure MMO's that give me ugly looking weapons that I can't change.

I like this idea. It adds more uniqueness to characters. That way even if two characters have the same weapon, it could look completely different.
 
Off the wall skills that everyone possess and can oddly improve. Waiting for a group? Juggle. Got a few extra coins? Gamble. Throw your voice. Jump rope. Turn people into frogs. (EQ2 boo hoos I hear already. LoL) Dancin'! Um, rapping? Maybe not, but you get the picture. Fluffy better than nerfy.
 
hmm Illusions. There aren't many in EQ2 but EQ now days is majorly filled with a variety. Tiny little faeries to hulking demons. And yes, even frogs. Heck, even a scarecrow.
 
I'd love to see the sitting, laying down and other various emotes. It just helps to bring situations more alive and interesting.

Another neat one would be the bardic music, being able to play different instruments and play the songs. Maybe have a list of songs you can learn or have learned via instruction, travels, etc... and when you go to play that song it -actually- plays music. That would be awsome.

Visual customization is another big one for me as well, I'd like to be able to not only customize my characters appearence but also their clothing and weapon, so their gear actually fits the character.
 
Whatever they do, be sure everything will be IC... You won't see the dancing you find in WOW. You won't see an emote to smoke if you haven't bought (or made) a pipe, tobacco, and a match or two...

From what I've read this game will be an RPers paradise. I hope this holds true or Simu would have severly dissappointed me. They have been working so long and so hard on this game I would hate for all that to be disrupted because they didn't take the time to polish it up.

The RP systems should allow for the sitting on any ledge, laying down anywhere, but especially on any bed you find. I like the idea of treating gear & weapons as shells to accept the power of Wyr so you can look the way you want was a huge step in the right direction.

In GS there was a tent you could go to and have plastic surgery to look different, I like that idea in this game too.

I would like the abilities of surnames you can share with your friends/guild if you like.

The ability to change your given name would be nice too... Even be able to hide it from others until somebody heard you say it or somebody else say it.

Have a birthday, and age that goes up approperately (like the new system in GS). Age approperate races etc - elves can be young at 200, and sprites are old at 30 etc.

The ability to lie about anything. Have your shown given name as "Strider" and your true name is "Aragorn" for example. Have your given age & birthday be 4/3/02 while your true birthday is 12/3/65. etc.

Spells to mask your true idenity.

non-lethal PvP would be nice - (see Bind, Web, Silence and 'thump' in Gemstone IV). Good way to shut up whiners and keep them in line.

A 100% PvP system is actually very self-regulating after a few years. You don't know if this guy you just attacked is actually Tsin's alt. Tsin could make you wish you were never born... It is a very cowardly thing to do to jump on your level 100 alt and pound the felgercarb out of a noob, but you still lived in fear of it. And if anything, that's why you have Game Hosts and Game Masters - to regulate thing kind of thing.

Something I'd like to see (Not a RP thing) is a system that does NOT rely on needing a mouse. Something I liked about FFXI was that I could play the entire game without touching my mouse. OR I could play the entire game without touchiung a keyboard (just use a game pad).


And the #1 most needed thing IMO to make this game a great RP game. Ban OOC talk. Ban it outright. Let you whisper to somebody in OOC if you are in vicinity of them, but no area-wide ooc chat. I ruins the game. Make sure there is a 'warp to so-and-so' spell so RPing people can get to somebody and shut them up if they refuse to stop talking OOC, as a first resort. If you tried to sell something in the normal thought net, you would probably be dragged out of town and killed. "Pull your amulet!" would come flying into personal thoughts - it was a great system. Self regulating. Everybody knew you sold stuff on black net. You asked for help on white net. If you didn't, you were chastised at least, and killed outright at most.

I never understood why Gemstone banned OOC chat and looked so down at it until I started playing MMOs. It's dumb - nobody speaks IC at ALL if you allow it at all, nobody will be IC ever. In Gemstone they added a OOC whisper system that I think ruins spirit of it. I really do. Screw having "RP" servers... ALL servers should be RP... there should be one or two "OOC" servers.


The reason a 100% PvP system is self-regulating, is that there is concequences to your actions. In LOTRO I can complain all I want at somebody, somebody can complain in /advice about ooc issues all day and nobody can stop it. If there are ways to shut them up, and ways to esecalate it higher if necessary, that person will know... Last time I tried to sell something on regular amunet, a sorcerer found me, and stunned me for 20 minutes (it used to be unlimited, if the infraction was big enough you could be stunned for hours and nobody would unstun you - or they'd be stunned too LOL) I'm not going to make that mistake again. This way turns higher levels, people that have played the game for years and were treated like this when THEY started playing, it turns them into regulators themselves. GMs could look at the log and see that it was justified, and went on their merry way if they were called.
 
I like the idea of the non-lethal PVP.... that'd be a great addition, especially to a PVP server... my biggest issue with PVP tho is the constant gankfests... you get some tool in a maxed out toon camping the newbie areas, and rarely, if at all, does anyone thats high enuf to kill him even try....

Those 15yr old gankers are also the ones that will abuse any "non-lethal" abilities we'd get.... in the old MUDS it wasnt a big deal, because its mostly adults that play them... kids these days just dont seem to have the attention span, or literary capabilities
 
Well I played GS from the age of 13 on. I never really abused my powers. But there was always somebody to set you straight if you were being a jerk too.

There's no benefit to killing somebody in GS (except, i suppose, in GS platium), and you would get into trouble by a GM if you were just killing left and right or even incompasitating somebody left and right.


But GS was different, in the amount of time it took to get to level 30 in Gemstone, it would take to get to max level in most MMOs. There were people that were level 250 before the capped it to 100. And even now level 100 is something that would take you playing 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, literally 6 months to get there.

If you spend that much time to max level, you will know a thing or two about the game, about the people, about the rules, and will not take the responcability lightly. It takes most people years to max level. 10 million fame was when you could thump lower levels in case they were getting uppity. But if I did it to a random nice guy, I'd get webbed for 10 minutes or their alt would fog to me and blow off my leg and leave me on the ground stunned for 10 rounds in a hunting area.

Another great thing about GS, is there was virtually no way to know what level somebody was if they didn't want you to know. They could be wearing starting gear and be level 100. Or they could be wearing uber gear and be level 10. The only way to tell is the low levels couldn't use certain metals... but after 25 that stops completely.

You don't screw around when there are reprocussions to your actions, and especially if you don't know if you just insulted Tsin or lowbee noobpants. When you are untouchable, people are more prone to be little jerks. They get into a anomous mentality.

There were some little jerks in GS, but they were either blown into kingdom come every day, learned the rules, or left the game. Some people RP a little jerk which is perfectly fine. A good friend of mine was a hot tempered Sorc that would regularly blow off my arm and beat me to death with it on a regular basis if I spoke out of turn (I'm not speaking figuratively here... He would quite literally blow off my arm with limb disruption, pick it up and proceed and beat me to death with it - I love GS), but on another character he was a nice empath who made friends easily.

Gankers will be quickly approached by GMs and told to go to a 'fallen' server which has no OOC, PvP, scripting, or any other rules.

*edit for clairty* I refer to Tsin because he was a high level wizard with a rather nasty bolt. He was a prominent member of Gemstone Society. There was an invasion of the Landing once that had mobs that would morph to whomever they first came into contact with. Tsin walked by one such mob and it became a Tsin morph. Nobody could kill it and it rampaged on for quite a while. It took Tsin to finially kill his own doubleganger.
 
Well I don't know about banning ooc talk at all... I personality like having the ability to talk ooc if nessassary or even just to talk with friends (though thats ussually just using tells). Sometimes I might ask for a tip occ that my character would never ask.. something involving game mechanics for example. I don't ask such things in the regular channels, like say, whisper, shout.. etc.

Maybe there should be an ooc chat channel, and you have the ability to turn it off or on if you so desire. That way those people that don't want to see it don't have to and the people that want to see it.. or need to ask a question, tip, etc can without disrupting anyones gaming.

Regular channels, like say should be kept IC whenever possible though.
 
The problem with leaving an ooc chat is people are dumb. How often does somebody say something in 'ooc' and somebody else responds in 'common', 'regional' etc. Even if that is not the source of your OOC, people will still see the OOC and keep with that spirit through the entire game.

I'm not talking about you need to keep in the corney "thy, thou, yore, wherefor" felgercarb, but no talking about game mechanics, no talking about your damage in numbers, no talking about the damn football game. That stuff is why god made Instant Messengers.


Anyway, not like it will ever happen on most servers, but as long as there's a server that it IS enforced, that's the one I'm going to play on.
 
The problem with leaving an ooc chat is people are dumb. How often does somebody say something in 'ooc' and somebody else responds in 'common', 'regional' etc. Even if that is not the source of your OOC, people will still see the OOC and keep with that spirit through the entire game.

I'm not talking about you need to keep in the corney "thy, thou, yore, wherefor" felgercarb, but no talking about game mechanics, no talking about your damage in numbers, no talking about the damn football game. That stuff is why god made Instant Messengers.


Anyway, not like it will ever happen on most servers, but as long as there's a server that it IS enforced, that's the one I'm going to play on.

If there was a strictly 'No-OOC at all!' thing, it'd piss me off, and I wouldn't play. Why? Because that's nonsense. It's not like having a separate channel would mess anything up. Sheesh, I RP and I still find your view on this subject to be, like, a little bit insane.
 
If there was a strictly 'No-OOC at all!' thing, it'd piss me off, and I wouldn't play. Why? Because that's nonsense. It's not like having a separate channel would mess anything up. Sheesh, I RP and I still find your view on this subject to be, like, a little bit insane.

I think I see where he's getting at though..

Sort of like the "give them and inch and they'll go a mile". His way leaves nothing to question. "Is the trade channel ooc?" "No." "Is the global chat channel ooc?" "No." "Is the-" "None of them are ooc!"

Global chat channels are normally turned off by most roleplayers. Why? They're cluttered with ooc gibberish. This means they get to being practically useless anyhow. The ooc channel mentioned, you can almost bet on most roleplayers not using it for a single thing. Trade channels and/or looking for group channels can be placed in an ic way, or something close to it. I always told people "You didn't put enough fire into that advertisement! Here, let me try.." and I would put my advertisement in a way that attracted the roleplayers. An at least somewhat ic call out for help. The advertisements for items that always caught me were the ones playing it off like truly selling a good and not just "wtb/wts Sword of Might".
 
I guess all I'm getting at is that Simu needs to take HJ down the same road as their other games: The game is 100% IC unless the server specially states there is OOC. Not the other way around. "RP" servers are full of the same OOC BS most of the time.

If there is an easy way to play Gemstone IV for free for a short time, please do so. You will see what I'm talking about. It completely ruins the atmosphere if you have people saying, "Dude! I just did 1050 damage with sidewinder!" "Awesome!". You won't find that in GS4 - same thing would read, "Nice! I just hit a kobold harder than ever before with sidewinder!" "Great!"

It just keeps the slang and other felgercarb out of the channel. The OOC channel, even if you can turn it on and off, promotes OOC talk in the entire game. You would be surprised how little you want OOC chat when you live without it for so long.


All I'm saying is OOC chat in any aspect ruins the ambiance of the game, and ruins the game in general for me. I come to a game to get away from football scores, computer jargon and 'dudes' & 'awesomes' of the real world.

As for chatting with your friends, there is no way to monitor the group voice chat they are sugguesting, just get into a group and use that. But leave the text as IC as possible.
 
I guess all I'm getting at is that Simu needs to take HJ down the same road as their other games: The game is 100% IC unless the server specially states there is OOC. Not the other way around. "RP" servers are full of the same OOC BS most of the time.

If there is an easy way to play Gemstone IV for free for a short time, please do so. You will see what I'm talking about. It completely ruins the atmosphere if you have people saying, "Dude! I just did 1050 damage with sidewinder!" "Awesome!". You won't find that in GS4 - same thing would read, "Nice! I just hit a kobold harder than ever before with sidewinder!" "Great!"

It just keeps the slang and other felgercarb out of the channel. The OOC channel, even if you can turn it on and off, promotes OOC talk in the entire game. You would be surprised how little you want OOC chat when you live without it for so long.


All I'm saying is OOC chat in any aspect ruins the ambiance of the game, and ruins the game in general for me. I come to a game to get away from football scores, computer jargon and 'dudes' & 'awesomes' of the real world.

As for chatting with your friends, there is no way to monitor the group voice chat they are sugguesting, just get into a group and use that. But leave the text as IC as possible.

Voice chat is fine since it does not affect anyone else besides those who consent. Unlike OOC chat...yuck. Even if it is in a channel you can turn on and off you may still see it in the world whether you consent or not.
 
unfortunately... voice chat would also ruin any RPing ability, unless you can talk the way your character would... but for those crossdressers out there, they'll have a hardtime managing that. VC is also a bad idea in that not everyone can participate, or _WANT_ to participate, but if its in the game, it will eventually become required in most groups such as it is in DDO. You'd be the oddman out if you didnt run VC. Another problem i have with VC is that everyone talks differently, and its often very difficult to understand someone, especially if they dont know how to properly use a mic (i for one dont want to teach them)... It also takes a huge chunk out of immersion.. you have to turn down your normal sounds, to keep from causing feedback in your own mic, and also to hear your groupmates... no thanks.

The general problem is that regardless of the options, if it IS an option, it will be used, and if it makes life easier for the general populace, then will become the norm... this applies to OOC channels, voice chat, even certain abilities in the game (Look at the leadership abilities in EQ1 now... if you dont have maxed out leadership, you can guarantee the group is going to demand you turn over leadership to someone else that does have it)... Shouts, OOC, open channels in general will all most likely become OOC if OOC is allowed at all. And since there cant be a GM in every channel, and in every zone, 100% of the time.. you can pretty much expect the majority of the chat to be in OOC, unless the populace itself demands IC chat at all times, and has a method of controlling that.
 
Years ago when I played Gemstone III I learned you simply don't talk OOC openly. It was a pain sometimes, avoiding such talk, but it was rare that anyone broke that particular silence.

Today I can't go online with one of the big boy MMO's without seeing a near constant stream of OOC talk usually involving reference to ones intelligence or sexual orientation. You get this equally bad on some of the so called role play servers the big boys maintain. Usually its in a global or local chat so that the number of people monitoring such nonsense is maximized.

So I can see idea and motivation behind limiting OOC chatter. I can even say I support the idea to some extent. But I would still want to be able to chat either through whispers/tells, group/party chat, or on a guild channel in any way I see fit and necessary in order to say what I want/need to.

Such as "Okay Guild we're looking forward to seeing everyone here on Friday at 9pm eastern time for our attempt at taking down Castle Fangmoore! Jimidean, thats 6pm where you are on the left coast, can you make it by then?" This kind of planning, can't be coordinated effectively without OOC, so having an absolute no OOC at all rule would be extremely limiting.

Now before you start poking holes into me with sharp pointy things, I do have to say I don't know to what exent the developers are planning different types of chat channels. I don't have info as to whethere there will be guild channels or not, but I would have to believe there will be.

Aelwulf
 
A feature I would like to see is the hand-me-down magical weapon.

Currently in WoW or EQ or LotRO there are plenty of magical weapons that pop up as Bind on Equip. Meaning once you put the sword in you grimy hand it is yours forever after and you cannot trade it away to another player. You can of course trade it away before you equip it, but that's not where I'm going with this.

I would like to see a magical weapon such as the "Golden Scimitar", that is your typical bind on equip item. I then equip the item, and begin to use it, and it is still the "Golden Scimitar". But over time, and many levels of my characters constant usage, favoring this weapon above all others, that the legend of Aelwulfe and his "Golden Scimitar" spreads. One day, long after I first equipped it, it suddenly becomes "Aelwulfe's Golden Scimitar"! And maybe it picks up some minor random effect such as +1 to fire resistance or +1% to overland movement speed, or +1% to lockpicking skill and it is known as "Aelwulfe's Golden Scimitar of Swiftness" or something like that.

Having stuck with my "Golden Scimitar" for many levels (absolutely past its optimum usage for my level) the weapon, which would normally be just another beat up old "Golden Scimitar" ready to be sold for 43cp to a local merchant, is now a relic of legendary usage. It is now "Aelwulfe's Golden Scimitar of Swiftness", AND is has surpassed its bound status to once again be a tradeable item. I would then be able to trade it away for profit or give it away to some lower level friend to help him or her along on their way.

Maybe it binds to its next user, or becomes infinately tradeable. But what it does is it spreads the word that there is a character named Aelwulfe who once did great things with his "Golden Scimitar". It has no true impact on the world economy since it was first spawned so long ago, other than apparent value a player might attach to a certain minor effect (someone who does alot of lockpicking might put or pay more value for the effect of +1% lockpicking skill). If the game somehow limits the number of "Golden Scimitars" allowed in the world this one would still count toward that number, so it wouldn't become a balance of power issue (at least not that I can see).

Of course my character could just hang onto the sword. And one day, sitting around an encampment resting with some younger adventurers I could pull forth "Aelwulfe's Golden Scimitar of Swiftness" sure that its unique name will then start the requests that I once again retell the story of how I, Aelwulfe, once battled the spider-demon Fvit on the harsh plain of Cant with nothing but my courage and the "Golden Scimitar" that now bears my name.

That's a Role Play Feature I'd like to see.

Aelwulfe
 
A feature I would like to see is the hand-me-down magical weapon.

Currently in WoW or EQ or LotRO there are plenty of magical weapons that pop up as Bind on Equip. Meaning once you put the sword in you grimy hand it is yours forever after and you cannot trade it away to another player. You can of course trade it away before you equip it, but that's not where I'm going with this.

I would like to see a magical weapon such as the "Golden Scimitar", that is your typical bind on equip item. I then equip the item, and begin to use it, and it is still the "Golden Scimitar". But over time, and many levels of my characters constant usage, favoring this weapon above all others, that the legend of Aelwulfe and his "Golden Scimitar" spreads. One day, long after I first equipped it, it suddenly becomes "Aelwulfe's Golden Scimitar"! And maybe it picks up some minor random effect such as +1 to fire resistance or +1% to overland movement speed, or +1% to lockpicking skill and it is known as "Aelwulfe's Golden Scimitar of Swiftness" or something like that.

Having stuck with my "Golden Scimitar" for many levels (absolutely past its optimum usage for my level) the weapon, which would normally be just another beat up old "Golden Scimitar" ready to be sold for 43cp to a local merchant, is now a relic of legendary usage. It is now "Aelwulfe's Golden Scimitar of Swiftness", AND is has surpassed its bound status to once again be a tradeable item. I would then be able to trade it away for profit or give it away to some lower level friend to help him or her along on their way.

Maybe it binds to its next user, or becomes infinately tradeable. But what it does is it spreads the word that there is a character named Aelwulfe who once did great things with his "Golden Scimitar". It has no true impact on the world economy since it was first spawned so long ago, other than apparent value a player might attach to a certain minor effect (someone who does alot of lockpicking might put or pay more value for the effect of +1% lockpicking skill). If the game somehow limits the number of "Golden Scimitars" allowed in the world this one would still count toward that number, so it wouldn't become a balance of power issue (at least not that I can see).

Of course my character could just hang onto the sword. And one day, sitting around an encampment resting with some younger adventurers I could pull forth "Aelwulfe's Golden Scimitar of Swiftness" sure that its unique name will then start the requests that I once again retell the story of how I, Aelwulfe, once battled the spider-demon Fvit on the harsh plain of Cant with nothing but my courage and the "Golden Scimitar" that now bears my name.

That's a Role Play Feature I'd like to see.

Aelwulfe

It's like you read my mind!

...

Y'know, like if you waited until after I read your post to do it...
 
Wow... That's a really really good idea. It would be very difficult to do in this game since you have wyr that basically does the exact same thing but with legends of the past. - You can keep your sword from day 1 to level 100 if you want to. - It would be easier to implement (or at least see in general) in a MUD, but with a /tell system it's not so great of a system...

With GS if I was looking for somebody I could cast locate looking for them and if they weren't in a certain radius it wouldn't work. But it would give me a general idea of around where they were... So if the locate says they're around Ta'Vaalor, I'd go there (no easy feat - takes about an hour to get there), re-locate, find their location, go there - they could be gone... It is very very difficult to actually FIND somebody, let alone talk to them (the area-wide chat -thoughtnet- would only turn on if you rubbed your amulet, and would turn off after a certain time). After you tracked them down, then they could sit down with you and discuss their deeds.

With a typical MMO it's...
/tell Aelwulfe "hey dude, I just bought your sword."
/tell randomnoob "cool, I had a lot of fond memories of that sword"
/tell Aelwulfe "cool... later"
/tell randomnoob "later"



Here would be a nice thing:

Bards & Loresinging
Bards loresing to an item to find out its magical properties. Since the powers of the item can be largely null until you equip it with wyr...

You have used a sword for many months/years/decades, and decide it's time for a change. So you take your "Valendros's strong sword of firey arcane truth" and unslot your wyr from it - it becomes "Valendros's sword". This sword has many options pinned to it - it can have +5 perception, +10 lockpicking, +2 fire damage, +8 ice damage... Each of these is gained by certain actions you've done over the months you've had it... You vanquished 9500 ice foes so it gives the native ice damage... You've disarmed 900 traps so it's perception can be upped.


So you take your sword and do one of two things: A) drop it in front of a kobold, the kobold snatches it up... OR B) just drop it somewhere, and the trash system notices it's a vaulable item and assigns a proper leveled mob - one that is currently being hunted by somebody...

Either way the person defeats their foe, and finds "a sword". Just a normal everyday sword with 2 slots for wyr... but swords like this never drop from this kind of mob... They take it back with them to town and bring this rather strange sword to a bard. The bard sings to it and it lists the accomplishments you have access to, The bard tells of your many deeds and what the sword has been through.

The sword is still "a Sword" but there's an extra slot that wasn't there before and a wyr already slotted in it. The Wyr provides the abilities the bard told of. Slotted, it becomes "Valendros's icicle". Remove the wyr and the sword is just "a sword" again.

They can slot it in a spell to grant other powers... Say they slot it in their fire wall spell - when they cast the spell it says "soandso casts Valendros's Bane" instead of "fire wall" - the wall of fire also deals dart damage in addition to its fire damage because one time you faced down a fleet of dart-blowing natives and lived to tell the tale.



That's a way they can do it in this current system methinks. Either way, I wish there was a way to do the game without a /tell system. "Hey dude, I just got your wyr" "Cool man"
 
Aelwulfe said:
Such as "Okay Guild we're looking forward to seeing everyone here on Friday at 9pm eastern time for our attempt at taking down Castle Fangmoore! Jimidean, thats 6pm where you are on the left coast, can you make it by then?" This kind of planning, can't be coordinated effectively without OOC, so having an absolute no OOC at all rule would be extremely limiting.


Well we always just had a "please everybody meet at 9 elvan" and we knew 9 (E)lvan meant (E)astern.

There's things you have to do with multiple people in Gemstone as well, and we always seemed to be on time for things, even without OOC chat. I'm telling you - spend a month in a game without ANY ooc chat and you not only learn to live without it, you begin to hate the fact all the dumb MMOs provide it. You'll find just how much it disrupts the game atmosphere.

But for guilds, have a FFXI Linkshell community-type of thing, provided by the game maker. You can post messages on a web site rather than inside the game. And you can have information about each person in the guild that updates automatically because it's linked to the game itself (eg levels, crafting skills etc).
 
2 things..
One, I thought HJ was already toying with positional voice chat as a primary form of communication in HJ?
Two, I thought we'd build up weapons and armor as a form of crafting and indeed could hand it down or sell it to folks after we've advanced it enough or got tired of it?
Interesting points. I'm anti OOC tho', more so if we're going to have to listen to people. Even with filters, some fat guy in Ohio playing a hottie elf cleric / bard.. Just isn't very RP to me.
 
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