RP combat - emote or PvP?

[gabusan]

Emote fights is something you should do only when duels arent allowed.

[Jubmania]

I see emoting as a way to enhance and supplement the game mechanics, not supplant them. I had a great time once in SWG engaged in a speeder chase across the dunes of Tatooine, which was entirely emote-based, but the reason it was emote-based was the lack of combat mechanics while using a speeder. Similarly, I very much enjoy seeing combat between RP'rs where both sides are using descriptive emotes as they fight, an act which is admittedly far simpler when you can use macros.

 

Doing combat entirely through emotes, though, is pretty immersion breaking for me personally. Looking at the chatbox/bubbles and reading this epic struggle between two opponents, then looking up and seeing two characters just standing facing each other, motionless, and the whole thing just takes on a faintly ridiculous quality.

 

An example; bar fights in TOR. You -can- use your fists in combat, animations exist for using the basic attack with no weapon equipped, it just does virtually no damage. I see that as an opportunity to combine game mechanics with imaginative emoting, rather than a fatal flaw in the system that means you either full-emote or don't do it. The same is true of all the combat styles when you think about it; fights in the real world don't play out in the same way they do in MMOs, with both parties standing two feet apart and hitting each other until one falls over; there's movement, lulls in activity while the participants strategise, or reload their weapons, or gather their strength.

 

So, yeah, my answer to the question would be "both", ideally at the same time, with emote-only combat being reserved for fights which are literally impossible to represent through existing game mechanics.

 

I agree with you on most parts here.

[DuchessOfKvetch]

Forum rpers do seem to be largely in favor of duels. No one is gonna convince them otherwise. But it is interesting to see that there's a "hybrid" approach now - sort of a centrist take on things.

 

My former community eventually got to the point where it was very much in favor of the emote-fighting, when in towns - though a lot of that came about because duel'ing was disruptive to others RP'ing nearby.

 

My final words (hopefully) on the subject are that FFRP fights can be a wonderful thing - IF you trust the other person and they have sufficient skill and maturity. Thus why, perhaps, it only because the norm on my WoW server after the community was well established.

 

Plus, we had a lot of practice - some guilds would hold FFRP fighting sessions, just to get people used to how to do it well.

 

They are possibly the #2 source of OOC drama though - right behind OOC romance. It really does require skill, quick-thinking, fairness, patience and maturity. Something not always found in easy abundance. I would consider it, at the risk of sounding elitist, as an "advanced" RP technique. But by no means am I saying it is superior to other forms of solving conflicts. I simply mean that it should be taken seriously when you DO decide to do it through pure text.

[Sacredless]

I'd say, the third option. I enjoy DnDs a lot and I'd be very glad if something similar would ever appear in an addon of sorts. Working with stats and so forth gives me the benefits of PvP(i.e., no godmodding), allowing the freedom to develop the character and finally, it's still based completely on story.

[Skateraid]

Personally, I'd much rather PvP. I'm an RP-PvPer anyways, so it tends to be my cup of tea. However, I'm aware that not everyone is comfortable with PvPing. And while I absolutley hate text fighting, I will do it. I just prefer to text fight with people I know well, or have maybe spoken to OOCly. Reasons why I hate text fighting is not just because it takes so long, but there are people who will happily god-mode and not see the problem with what they're doing. So, for me it just depends on who is involved and the situtation. I'll do both, but I do prefer one over the other.

[Lascivar]

I have always opted for duelling over emoting the scene out when it comes to conflict, particularly in a game where levels are involved and to have one party whom is known around the server as being untouchable in combat, to be emoted to death by a level 3 godmoder.

 

In SWTOR the PvP is far from difficult as opposed to more "skill" based games such as Guild Wars or DCUO where your actions happen entirely when you time them, so anyone at an even level should stand a chance against another person if they put some effort into learning their class. (How could you RP being say, a Marauder that slaughters dozens of militia at a time and yet you don't know the first thing about the mechanics of your class?)

 

That being said, I have emoted out some conflicts before, but it generally revolved around assassination attempts and the fight that ensues after that (If they survived the attempt).

[Kolbenito]

I'd like to hear the general opinion on how to approach this. I myself prefer to actually duel/PvP, since this is a game after all, and in my opinion, if you want to play a character that's a good fighter, then try to actually get good at fighting.

 

Other people prefer to just play out fights in emotes, and while I respect it and play along if need be, I honestly don't see why when we're playing a game built around fighting.

 

I do feel, however, that a mix of the two is ideal. Emotes while actually dueling makes everything more interesting.

 

So, opinions, please!

 

PVP with a RP description of a Mortal Kombat finishing move.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Kolbenito

[Sivri]

I've always preferred Freeform Emotefighting. To me it's got several reasons behind it:

 

The main point is that I do not like to feel restricted by game mechanics. I find that having to make my character adapt to the abilities is giving me, it ruins a part of what I like about having my own character - The fact that I can decide how good she is with a couple of blasters. This of course also means that balancing my character becomes my responsibility, but when done right you can perfectly avoid the alley of Overpowered, and still have fun.

 

The restrictive feeling also steps in when you look at my own personal gaming-skills. I was never attracted to PvP, and to be honest I think throughout my MMORPG time I have won less duels than what you can count on two hands - simply because I haven't sought to have them. I find them boring and confusing, and usually it ends up with a rogue-type thing circling around you where I just go "stand bloody still when I'm trying to shoot you D:"

Or in other words: I fail ever so horribly at this aspect of games. And I don't want to make my characters ability directly dependant on what I can manage.

Something that I however do consider myself at least somewhat decent at, is writing. It's already an essential part of roleplay, and I am 100 times more attracted to stand and actually write out in full detail what my character does, immerse myself into the situation and so on. I find it fun, and with the freeform style I don't have any other limitations than the common-knowledge rules such as "Don't be an overpowered **** with poweremotes etc".

The very same restrictive feeling is also what makes me stray away from roll-emoting. Roll-emote might make some things increasingly fair in terms of who gets to do something, who gets to block and so on, but it strips away my ability to decide that my character might not be so great with blasters but when it comes to running and jumping around she excels.

 

Another thing is the point of segregating character from class. I do this to some extend, and I know people who fully keep their characters separate from what their class is. So you might have a human jedi who, in RP, actually is your average joe uncle Tom who might be able to pat you on the head with a hammer if he -really- has to.

In any fighting scenario that involves duels, they'd have to adopt skills that their character really doesn't have to even just have a slight shot at not ending up dead.

 

I also do not regard levels to be IC. I am possibly the slowest leveller in the world, because I do so much more RP and random things like running around in a circle and - now and then - falling off Coruscant because honestly the ground moved.

I don't see why for example average joe Uncle Tom should be able to win over my character because I am level 33 and he is level 50 - when what uncle Tom does is whacking a hammer at my helmet with the strength of a schoolgirl. Sure yes, being high level indicates that one puts effort into the character - but you can't see if the player behind the character wrote a 5 page background story for their character just from their level, and I at least prioritise the effort put into the character from a story perspective, where you worked out the strengths and the weaknesses in a characters personality and so forth, higher than how many level you have gained.

 

So comes the point about drama, and I'm sure many people have had their moments stood outside an inn or equivalent, and shouted their head off or heard someone shouting their head off at a guy who did an "outrageously impossible emote of utter doom and destruction" and the situation, since that emote, went OOC.

Yes, it happens - but don't tell me duels don't sometimes have the same problems. When it comes to freeform emotefighting, I really feel that the fact that there sometimes might be ooc problems because of character imbalance has been blown up to being a size of a problem it really isn't.

Most drama can be solved with having a simple communication line to your opponent(s). Be it whispers or party-chat, somewhere where you can ask when in doubt about something they do and vice versa. And secondly it can be avoided by remembering that you can't by default beat another character just because they look weaker. I think a lot of people almost get -too- carried away by the prospect of needing to win, and many will of course take pride in their character and want it to be the best. I've seen many "my character can do this" - "Oh yeah? But my character can do THIS" debates through times and I've never seen a single one of them having one person "win" that debate.

It boils down to some core points on how much the individual roleplayer wants to accept consequence, damage and so on. Once you find someone that thinks the same logic as you do, freeform emotefighting has some very epic potential. Perhaps one downside of them is that they can take six hours to finish.

 

What I tend to do is, first of all not get my character involved in fights all that often. I take fights seriously because I fully acknowledge that my character could be killed in a fight or have herself severely damaged that would affect how she'd survive the next fight.

When she then does end up in a fight, I make sure the opponent is someone who's a. using emotefighting and b. knows the "rules" associated with it, sometimes I'll even seek to agree on those rules before the fight starts. If I end up with someone who prefers duels, I'll have my character work more on getting out of the situation rather than actually fighting, same goes for if I find myself fighting Unresonably-Overpowered-Hothead and the person oocly has no explanation as to why they can say.. throw half a planet on to my characters head, etc.

 

I usually expect though, that people on RP-PvE realms would be more leaning towards Freeform or something closer to freeform, rather than duels. I'm also very aware that the two types do not blend all that well, as such I won't try to make them blend. Neither do I think one way to do it is more correct than the other, it's got everything more to do with personal preference and less to do with "My way or the highway".

 

... Sorry for the wall of text :3

[sosolidshoe]

Sivri, you make some interesting points, but I've never understood this assumption that many emotefighters make that "most" roleplayers feel as they do. When I'm playing a tabletop RPG, I might describe my actions, in some detail even, but I still roll the dice. Game mechanics have been core to the RPG experience since RPGs existed, and to me using an ability in a game like TOR which uses RNG for hit chance, armour penetration, avoidance, and damage amounts, is exactly the same thing as picking up the dice and rolling for each of those actions on the tabletop.

 

I don't feel limited by the game mechanics, on the contrary I find them to be an excellent way of providing a baseline to use in situations the game's "rules" don't provide for explicitly.

 

I mean, if you were playing a tabletop RPG, and one of the players insisted that they completely refuse to use dice, stats, or models, and instead wanted everyone to experience the adventure entirely through descriptive discussion, wouldn't you think them a bit odd?

[Sivri]

Sivri, you make some interesting points, but I've never understood this assumption that many emotefighters make that "most" roleplayers feel as they do. When I'm playing a tabletop RPG, I might describe my actions, in some detail even, but I still roll the dice. Game mechanics have been core to the RPG experience since RPGs existed, and to me using an ability in a game like TOR which uses RNG for hit chance, armour penetration, avoidance, and damage amounts, is exactly the same thing as picking up the dice and rolling for each of those actions on the tabletop.

 

I don't feel limited by the game mechanics, on the contrary I find them to be an excellent way of providing a baseline to use in situations the game's "rules" don't provide for explicitly.

 

I mean, if you were playing a tabletop RPG, and one of the players insisted that they completely refuse to use dice, stats, or models, and instead wanted everyone to experience the adventure entirely through descriptive discussion, wouldn't you think them a bit odd?

 

I think that's one of the areas where the various types of roleplayers "split" so to say. I've personally never done much table-top RPG, I tried it once but that is about 7 years ago now, back then it never really caught my interest as much as it probably would these days.

I think at some point a sort of different branching out from the play-styles happened, where the dices where left behind in favor of what you see today, though it doesn't mean there isn't a lot of people still using dices (I know a few, brilliant roleplayers)

 

I do see game mechanics as a guideline - but there is a point where game mechanics stop making a whole lot of sense because their job is also to make the game work, and less to follow the lore/setting - like getting resurrected when you die for example.

I think my biggest "Eehh" about using the game mechanics icly is that they're very strong, built to fit the hero that we play in the questlines. I see them more as a source of inspiration, but I'd never have my character use all of the game abilities she's given.

[dathmirx]

Regarding what Sivri wrote:

 

I think it's interesting to point out that you make it sound as if you feel the need to avoid fighting because freeform emoting lacks the general ruleset that is provided by game mechanics or dicerolls, and without rules, fighting is a hassle. Not trying to be an *** here, just an observation.

 

Also, I do not agree completely about disregarding levels in RP in a game that is built around it, considering the fact that people work hard to be able to roleplay a powerful character. I'm saying this as someone who levels -very- slowly as well, because I tend to RP more. I do value writing above PvP skills, but if I get in a conflict with a level 50, my smuggler being level 30, and that player wishes to duel IC, I wouldn't dream of claiming to be stronger than him, because he worked hard to play his part right (by leveling up). I think it's a matter of being respectful.

 

Lastly, I don't fancy having to communicate OOC while I RP to make things go smoothly, as is often required when you fight only with emotes. It takes away the immersion for me a bit.

 

Anyway, even though I didn't completely agree with you, it was an interesting read!

[Raphael_diSanto]

As a story and narrative driven RPer, the outcome of any duels I have is decided in advance between myself and the person I'm duelling, based upon what we feel will make for the best plot development and create the most dramatic story.

 

I'm not in this to prove my character is tougher than yours (or vice versa). I'm here to tell a story, collaboratively and cooperatively.

 

See, -I- don't care if my character is tougher than yours. My -character- might care if he's tougher than your character, but that's his deal, not mine. Separation of OOC and IC, here. So if we were to duel, I'd want to decide which made for a better story, that my character was tougher or that your character was tougher.

 

And if there's no story reason to do it, I don't duel.

[DuchessOfKvetch]

I have always opted for duelling over emoting the scene out when it comes to conflict, particularly in a game where levels are involved and to have one party whom is known around the server as being untouchable in combat, to be emoted to death by a level 3 godmoder.

 

In SWTOR the PvP is far from difficult as opposed to more "skill" based games such as Guild Wars or DCUO where your actions happen entirely when you time them, so anyone at an even level should stand a chance against another person if they put some effort into learning their class. (How could you RP being say, a Marauder that slaughters dozens of militia at a time and yet you don't know the first thing about the mechanics of your class?)

 

That being said, I have emoted out some conflicts before, but it generally revolved around assassination attempts and the fight that ensues after that (If they survived the attempt).

 

First off, I've never won a duel in my life, in this game or ANY game (yes, you pvper's can start laughing now). I am simply not a twitch gamer, don't really "care" about "learning my class", and have that "neural lag" disorder that is fairly prevalent in females of a certain age (I can actually count the seconds between when I tell my finger to click on something, and it actually presses a button). I grew up on text adventures, and I skipped the whole "arcade" experience, because I had poor timing and coordination even in my youth.

 

Of course, I am not indicating that us clumsy folks should be given any sort of break - but I do bristle a little when people assume everyone who "games" is somehow expected to have a certain skill level.

 

Having known actual handicapped gamers and some recovering from injuries - well, not all of us are simply that leet. And may never be again.

 

To that end, I don't really try to get into confrontations that would result in someone

"dropping a duel flag". I don't expect anyone to give me some kinda special treatment, because we ARE all kind of anonymous equals on here - or so I would think.

 

The funny thing is that I still enjoy pvp in group settings - when with friends - even though I die a lot more than anyone else. I simply find it amusing. But I wouldn''t enjoy being put in the "loser spotlight" constantly simply because of my poor reflexes, so I stick to team stuff where I can still help out as a lovely meat shield or glass cannon.

[DuchessOfKvetch]

Hrm going back to "game mechanics" here for a moment ...

 

Not all conflicts are "honorable duels". How do people handle backstabbing (of various sorts), attacking an already injured foe, poisoning, ambushes, and ganging up on someone else (ah, yes, the "gank" can occur even in RP)?

 

While the latter 2 can actually be acted out in a truly open-world pvp setting (which you rarely see in rp servers that are not persistent worlds), there are no easy provisions with duels that can provide a handicap brought on by existing injuries, and they would seem to certainly gimp people who play a class that relies on surprise attacks for its advantage.

 

I suppose these scenarios don't really fall under the same umbrella though, since they could be considered purely RP setups, and would require a lot of consensual OOC to play through.

[yutrio]

I feel it's very much depends on the situation. Both have their upsides and downsides to them. For the most part though, I feel I'd rather duel than emote fight simply because emote fighting tends to take ten times longer than a old fashion duel.

 

For me, it's a matter of immersion—I feel that fights should be quick, unless it's a long game of cat and mouse where it would make more sense to emote it out because that sort of situation is purposefully drawn out over a long period of time. Things like sword fights, and mostly anything involving melee/hand-to-hand combat should be short and swift—unless your character is terribly sadistic.

 

However, I've come across situations (mostly ones involving magic fights), where emote fights work just as well as duels. It also comes down to who you're RPing with as well. With friends, and people whose RP styles I've become accustomed to, sometimes emote fighting with them is great. It feels more personal—it's much more narrative driven when people can add some personality to a fight. However, if some random shmuck in a cantina challenges my character to a fight, I'll be dropping down a duel flag. (Although, most of the time I'll just walk away, but just for the sake of argument.)

 

With all that said though, emote fights involving more than 2-3 people at a time is never a good time unless it's somewhat scripted out in advance. From my experience, it devolves into a cluster... well, you know. It's just a bad time. For cross-faction conflicts, that's easily remedied with open world PvP, but for same faction... better to avoid it altogether in that case.

Edited January 17, 2012 by yutrio

[sosolidshoe]

I think that's one of the areas where the various types of roleplayers "split" so to say. I've personally never done much table-top RPG, I tried it once but that is about 7 years ago now, back then it never really caught my interest as much as it probably would these days.

I think at some point a sort of different branching out from the play-styles happened, where the dices where left behind in favor of what you see today, though it doesn't mean there isn't a lot of people still using dices (I know a few, brilliant roleplayers)

 

I do see game mechanics as a guideline - but there is a point where game mechanics stop making a whole lot of sense because their job is also to make the game work, and less to follow the lore/setting - like getting resurrected when you die for example.

I think my biggest "Eehh" about using the game mechanics icly is that they're very strong, built to fit the hero that we play in the questlines. I see them more as a source of inspiration, but I'd never have my character use all of the game abilities she's given.

 

Agree to disagree I suppose Although I will say that I've never had an issue with ingame death mechanics, I simply "make-believe" that the game is using my favourite mechanic; Out Of Action - my character's not been killed and resurrected, just rendered insensible, unconscious, or too injured to move, and any "resurrection" is just an abstraction of the time period within which the character would drag themselves/be helped to some form of medical facility in order to recuperate.

 

As for the raw mechanics making characters too strong, I suppose, but why not simply gimp any character who's not powerful? I have a character which is OOC a Jedi Sage(I wanted the ship and it's the only AC I'd not rolled yet), but IC he's a Czerka Corp sales rep, his only combat training is non-lethal fencing and he couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag, so I simply won't put anything more than the basic melee attacks and some medpacks on his toolbar when I'm RP'ing. Just because your character is level 50, Dark 5, Social 5 doesn't mean you must have all four toolbars full to the brim with super-awesome powers, geared out in full raid-purples. I suppose I just prefer applying my sense of proportion, decorum, and fair-play to the game mechanics as they exist, whereas you would prefer to apply those qualities in your own way.