RP Community Wish List

[Yospeck]

So I thought instead of a dozen different threads on what we'd like to see implemented into game it might be better to give BioWare a single thread (possible sticky if people think it's worth it) to list all the stuff we'd like. We had something like this back in the day on the SWG forums and actually proved to be useful as SOE did actually in time tick a few of the things off the list. It'd be nice for BioWare to actually put the RP back into RPG because whilst this is indeed a decent single player RPG that you can play with friends, it does feel that most RPers feel that the game hasn't necessarily met its potential for being a good MMO for Roleplayers.

 

So I'm going to keep an updated list made from your suggestions of what things you feel are missing in SW:TOR, everything from the minor gripes to the deal breakers. What I would suggest is as well of just highlighting an issue maybe we actually say why we'd like these changes. Based on feedback I may try and prioritize these as to what the community finds the most important (though of course this is going to be hard as what affects one person may not be an issue for the next, but we'll see how it goes). I'd say keep these RP related as there will be enough people making noise on other issues, so lets focus on the rather small community we have over here.

 

I'll get the ball rolling with a few of my own issues but please post your own as a reply:

 

 

Customization

 

More "Alien" Skin Tones: The variety of species available in the Star Wars universe can be represented by a simple skin tone change, specifically humanoids. However, even such species as Zabrak still follow a more neutral tones and lack some of the more alien colours.

 

More Playable Species: This I think will come in time, but walking around the Galaxy seeing how many species exist in game only seems to be a reminder of how few playable species there actually are, especially the more "alien" species.

 

More Social Clothing: It's very limited the type of items out there that can be worn as social clothing, having attended a "Cantina Night" it was pretty clear how many people had been forced into the same clothing.

 

I will add into this "Uniforms". Having played SWG where entire massive Imperial guilds would be dressed in Imperial Officer and Stormtrooper armor, it has become apparent how much these types of groups are not catered for in SW:TOR (less so the Republic side as the Trooper armor appear to be available) because the class role are trying to be forced. The fact that the Imperial Trooper armor (like the one the NPCs wear) is only available on the CE Vendor means we'll never see the "Stormtrooper" guilds we've seen previously as only a handful of their members will ever have CE (the gear is Bind on Pickup btw so cannot be traded).

 

Naming Policy: A more pro-active approach to reducing the non-RP names on RP servers would be very much appreciated by the RP community. Obviously there is a manpower issue here at this stage, but hopefully this is something that will be addressed in future (which in my opinion would mean they should have it in place now even if it is not enforced).

 

 

 

Social

 

Chat Bubbles: Any place where there are a number of RPers talking at once eg. a social area like a cantina, or an RP event, the text box scrolls at a ridiculous rate. Having experienced this first hand our group was forced to go into an Operations group so we could talk (meaning we weren't being social with people around us).

 

Sitting on Chairs: A big deal for most. especially those who frequent cantinas, but even for those wanting to RP in other buildings or generally not have to constantly be stood up. Having tables in a cantina is pointless if you have to stand next to the chair; it feels ridiculous.

 

Remove/Lower the Instance Switch Cooldown: For anyone who has organized masses of players before in an event, either a server event or trying to organize stuff between various guilds, the cooldown is going to be a real problem and hinder RP events. I have no idea why this restriction/cooldown is even in place.

 

Having an "RP" Flag: Not everyone is in character 100% of the time, and sometimes we do like to just play the game. So it would be useful to have an RP flag up so that others know "Hey, I can approach this person and RP with them."

 

% Code for Emotes: In WoW/SWG it was possible to use the %t in an emote and it would put in the name of whoever you were targeting. A really nice little feature that made RP more accessible.

 

/slash Dice Rolls: A lot of old school RPers come from a tabletop RP background, where dice are frequently used to show the randomness of different encounters/choices/results when it comes to RP. A simple /roll100 or /roll20 would be a great feature that the RP community can use.

 

Biography Tab: RP is a social medium and players like to make it obvious to the players they are RPing with if there is anything they may know/should be able to identify about the person they are RPing with. A publicly viewable 'Biography' tab when click someone would be an excellent addition.

 

Cross Faction Communication: I'd propose keeping the no-CFC settings as they are by default, so as to keep with BioWares approach that this will reduce harassment (the main reason it exists). However, I would like to see:

• Cross Faction Emoting
  
• A "White List" (see below)

 

The white list works like an ignore list where you can add people to it with a slash command. By default the enemy faction is "ignored" and we can receive tells from them, etc., but by adding people to your own list you can then talk to them in game via private messages, etc. As this system is completely userside the player wont receive whispers from anyone they don't want them from.

 

 

Gameplay Changes:

Note: These are the bigger changes that, in reality, will probably never get addressed as it changes core things to do with the game. However, that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be identified.

 

Old Instances: There are so many rooms and areas that would be great locations to RP in that I would love to see these rooms become freely available. When you enter one of these instances you can either go into your group/class instance or a "Public" instance where other people can go without the need of a quest. So many rooms and potential RP locations are locked off due to the linear story-arc provided, it would be amazing to get access to these places.

 

NPC Faction Points: Some of the locations in game would be great to RP in, but they have a lot of mobs in those areas so it no longer becomes an option. Being able to earn Faction points to become "allies" of these NPCs so that they no longer attack you would be great. This has already been seen in previous games such as Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies and World of Warcraft, and adds an extra dynamic to RPers and the types of guilds they may choose to make.

 

 

 

Possible Bugs:

Note: These may not actually be bugs, and BioWare may throw out a "working as intended", but they are things that appear to be "broken" as far as the RP community is concerned.

 

Repetitive Emotes: Some of the /slash emotes once performed have a tendency to just keep going until you move eg. /bow, /paranoid. It would be nice if these only happened once.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Yospeck

[Yospeck]

Reserved

[Yospeck]

Second Reserved

[sosolidshoe]

Great idea Yospeck, I do hope Bioware pay attention, but my cynical side is telling me that the shadowy hand of EA is resting firmly on their shoulder and would rather the game was populated with gear-addicted automatons than RP'ers.

 

The issues with Imperial uniforms and armour in particular is a massive bugbear for me - the only Orange uniform jacket that appears to exist is Agent-only(class-specific Heroic reward, bind on pickup, from "Toxic Bombs" on Blamorra I believe), the only other one I've seen so far is the Hammer Station variant, which is a Blue item and so will be useless for actual gameplay within a few levels. The CE-only Trooper armour, though, actually feels like a bit of an intentional "up-yours" to RP'ers - it's pretty hard to believe that a company which has so many professed roleplayers working at it didn't consider even for a moment that they would be seriously dampening Imperial RP with that move.

[Krimmzon]

Lack of search function in the search forums be praised...

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=63520

[Cabod]

Chat issues are a top priority, in my opinion. The general chat channel is not localized enough to be of any use. Even without RP, it is next to impossible to talk to the person right in front of me.

 

Just about given up on the general chat channel and its turning me into an isolationist.

[Sivri]

Stop repetitive emotes: I know emotes repeating can be stopped if you jump/step back etc just as it finishes, but still. If you do /bow, it keep repeating forever and it looks more like your character is doing aerobics. This is the case with many of the emotes, /rude and /paranoid does this as well. Would like them to just do it once, and I suppose maybe you could make it like /paranoidloop to give people the option of looping the emote.

 

More ways to sit/stand: Sit-able chairs should take priority, but - I'd very much like to see more ways to sit and stand. Npc's can lean on tables and walls, in fact they can do a while lot of passive things that we can't. Especially for the sitting I think there should be more than just that one very horrid way with the open legs and ugh. It just looks bad, really.

AoC had a lot of variety in this, as did Lotro, both very good games for RP and even from a non-rp perspective it brings more immersion into the world.

[Xenirath]

I would like the ability to do the Night at the Roxbury dance on trooper. Those shore leaves aren't long enough, need to get some action before fighting lunatics with blasters.

 

Wouldn't mind more emotes, but the looping is annoying. /bow *randomly bounces*

 

"sorry, I have tremors. If i don't hop i keep bowing." - "Yes Ive gone to the doctors, they cant figure it out either."

[tehjai]

A command to place target's name in emotes; this works in WoW a la:

 

"Sally hits %t over the head with a roll of duct tape" while targeting Jim will read "Sally hits Jim over the head with a roll of duct tape".

 

Not a game breaker, but a similar command or shortcut would make emoting much, much easier, especially when and if you deal with characters with alt-codes in their names.

[Yospeck]

Lack of search function in the search forums be praised...

 

Sarcasm aside, yes I did do a scan of the forums (though no I didn't use the search feature) so apologies for overlooking it. Having checked your list though it does seem to be a little inaccessible in my opinion and everything just being thrown into one big list just ends up being an easily ignored wall of text. Saying that we want something changed but not really explaining why wont help BioWare understand as to why it is such an important feature.

[Cancrizans]

Great post, thanks for taking the time to make this! Having even half the stuff on this list would make the game a lot more RP friendly.

 

I was disappointed that the server descriptions on the server selection screen specifically mentioned that no RP naming rules would be enforced on RP servers. : / That is a direct invitation to disrespect the RP nature of the server!

 

IMO they can't add usable chairs soon enough, that alone would make RPing a lot more fun, when you could sit at a table in a cantina or hang out in a spaceport etc.

[Cancrizans]

If you do /bow, it keep repeating forever and it looks more like your character is doing aerobics.

 

This gave me a good laugh, thanks.

[Krimmzon]

Sarcasm aside, yes I did do a scan of the forums (though no I didn't use the search feature) so apologies for overlooking it. Having checked your list though it does seem to be a little inaccessible in my opinion and everything just being thrown into one big list just ends up being an easily ignored wall of text. Saying that we want something changed but not really explaining why wont help BioWare understand as to why it is such an important feature.

 

Oh, don't worry, that sarcasm was definitely not pointed in your direction as an insulting way, and I meant no hostility. But really, it's not like anything we ask for is rocket science, and it's not like we know something Bioware doesn't about why some changes need to be made. Useable chairs? I think they know why we want that. Just pointing out the other thread as perhaps a resource.

[Hendar]

I have a suggestion, add not being able to use speeders on the fleet. Not only does it cause a lot of lag but it doesn't make it very RP friendly when you have two guys on a speeder ontop of the table you're RPing at. Just screams griefing.

[Yospeck]

Oh, don't worry, that sarcasm was definitely not pointed in your direction as an insulting way, and I meant no hostility.

Then we're cool

 

As for no speeders on the space station. I think we have to be careful about requesting things that would hinder the bigger community, which this would. They wont put in features that benefit RPers at the expense of everyone else... and why should they? We don't pay the bills, we're small, but sometimes I think the things we'd like are small things (I'm not a programmer so I don't know how hard it is to implement even the smallest change).

 

Some of this stuff is a no brainer, and we have to look at it as either:

 

a) BioWare have their own idea of what RP is and we have to show them they were wrong

b) BioWare don't really care about the RPers and make stuff in spite of how it affects us

 

In all honesty either could be right. EA is about making money, RPers are in no way the biggest contributors to the subscribing masses and I very much believe they have the "they will just deal with it/work a way around it" when it comes to bad features.

 

We can't move mountains, we know this. We can't ask for things that will completely change the game, but I think pebble by pebble we can get something done. My biggest issue is that by missing so many of these features that should have been in at launch, simply by adding them BioWare will feel "yeh we put some things right" and give us the bare minimum, even if it is a long ways off ideal.

 

The reality is that RP, PvP or PvE this game is lacking in many different ways in comparison to the features of its competitors (and these are features that its competitors had in at launch); the biggest thing SW:TOR has going for it right now is that it's new and it's about Star Wars.

 

There is a lot missing, and this means our stuff is probably at the bottom of the list.

[Majspuffen]

An old, fine saying;

 

"Give a PvE-er a new instance and he'll be happy for a week. Give an RPer a pen and a paper and he'll be happy for months."

 

 

Thus far I'm incredibly disappointed in this game as an RPer. I haven't roleplayed properly since TBC (World of Warcraft), but even when not roleplaying I found myself "in-character", using chairs when I could etc. Lack of chatbubbles and sittable chairs is painful, but Bioware has promised both those things "in the near future". Patience is a virtue, I suppose *GRINDS TEETH*.

 

Having an "RP" Flag: Not everyone is in character 100% of the time, and sometimes we do like to just play the game. So it would be useful to have an RP flag up so that others know "Hey, I can approach this person and RP with them."

 

This would be a very neat feature indeed. Shouldn't be too hard to implement either, just add an icon to the portrait and that's it? On a similiar topic, would be nice to see something like "FlagRSP" (Addon in wow) in the game so we can describe our characters to others and provide a small biography. I believe SWG had this as a standard.

 

Stop repetitive emotes: I know emotes repeating can be stopped if you jump/step back etc just as it finishes, but still. If you do /bow, it keep repeating forever and it looks more like your character is doing aerobics. This is the case with many of the emotes, /rude and /paranoid does this as well. Would like them to just do it once, and I suppose maybe you could make it like /paranoidloop to give people the option of looping the emote.

 

More ways to sit/stand: Sit-able chairs should take priority, but - I'd very much like to see more ways to sit and stand. Npc's can lean on tables and walls, in fact they can do a while lot of passive things that we can't. Especially for the sitting I think there should be more than just that one very horrid way with the open legs and ugh. It just looks bad, really.

AoC had a lot of variety in this, as did Lotro, both very good games for RP and even from a non-rp perspective it brings more immersion into the world.

 

Agreed with everything. Some emotes looks good being repeatable, such as /fidget... but the majority doesn't.

 

 

 

My own suggestions:

Currently, I only have one thing that I can think of;

Give us more beverages! The cantina in nar shadaa only sells -one- drink? Please. I don't care about increased stats, I simply want them for the RP-value. WoW had this and even non-rpers had fun with it.

Edited December 27, 2011 by Majspuffen

[Alvi_Leiz]

Hello I love this post.

 

I suggest that this request will add to the possibility of adding a command to roll the dice. For example / roll 1d20, / roll 1d6 + X and so on.

 

The game has many possibilities for the roleplayer.

 

Out: Sorry for my english.

[Yospeck]

My own suggestions:

Currently, I only have one thing that I can think of;

Give us more beverages! The cantina in nar shadaa only sells -one- drink? Please. I don't care about increased stats, I simply want them for the RP-value. WoW had this and even non-rpers had fun with it.

 

Apologies for debating what is a suggestion (maybe it isn't my place), but I really don't see the need in this. When I order a drink from the barman I don't actually purchase anything as that is RP from the players point of view, everyone around you can't actually see what it is that you have bought. From an RP perspective there's so much that we do from behind the screen that everyone else can't see that I don't see why this would be an issue. Biggest example is a guy RPing as a girl, no one else can see the reality so what difference does it really make? If it's not being a different buff then what difference does an icon on a menu really make if no one apart from the player can actually see it?

[Devlonir]

Great list, agree with most of it and it really is well thought out and well written as well.

 

One thing though, on the Social clothing thing. This really is way too early to call. Most RPers are in their mid 20s right now, except for a few who wanted to experience the entire game and story first before going into RP themselves, but also those rushed themselves through content and probably don't have all the Social Points yet.

 

7 days after official launch is way too early to call a lack of gear options to customize look for Roleplaying. I actually consider the amount and quality of the gear pretty high standard and would prefer the game to have good looking gear instead of more gear.

I can understand where it comes from. But calling 'not enough gear' when probably 80% of the gear options haven't even been seen yet is way too soon in my opinion.

 

For the rest, great list! Well written and all. This one deserves a sticky.

[AstralFire]

This may be a repeated thread, but I actually agree with almost everything in this thread, whereas the last thread I didn't like at all.

 

However, at 50 with a developed character, you do have enough options, visually - keep that in mind, please.

Edited December 27, 2011 by AstralFire

[StealthNerf]

What I want is nothing in game, but server forums. Makes it much easier to get to know other rpers.

[Madrick-]

I for one would like to have customizable ship interior with market access and full crafting stations. Having to run back to home planet to add mods or put thing up on or to buy an item from the market is a major pain.

[StealthNerf]

You can add mods from anywhere. Just press control + right click on an item.

[Yospeck]

One thing though, on the Social clothing thing. This really is way too early to call. Most RPers are in their mid 20s right now, except for a few who wanted to experience the entire game and story first before going into RP themselves, but also those rushed themselves through content and probably don't have all the Social Points yet.

 

7 days after official launch is way too early to call a lack of gear options to customize look for Roleplaying. I actually consider the amount and quality of the gear pretty high standard and would prefer the game to have good looking gear instead of more gear.

I can understand where it comes from. But calling 'not enough gear' when probably 80% of the gear options haven't even been seen yet is way too soon in my opinion.

 

I'm not saying there aren't a lot of items in game, but the majority of items seem to come from random world drops/operations, which aren't easy to acquire Social items. Randomly grinding to try and find clothes that look nice can be a bit of a pain. My guild has a couple of people at level 50 now, quite a few 40+ but even myself at level 25 I have seen every planet (bar Illum right now) and explored most of them far and wide (just means running past mobs ). I've seen the majority of what is available apart from all the random world items and all the craftable schematics (though have seen all the trainable schematics off the crafting trainers for Armormech and Synthweaving).

 

The "Social Vendors" are in each cantina on every planets main capital and sell one set of Social armor (some of them are gender locked, eg. the Dromund Kaas "Formal Wear" can only be worn by men), and some of them look absolutely ridiculous (Alderaan "Ulgo" set). Take into account the higher the level the higher the "Social Level" requirement to purchase these items, so some of them aren't even available to a lot of players yet who quest solo therefore making them quite inaccessible.

 

The vendor buy items consist of Light/Medium/Heavy vendors all of which are fairly standard looking items, nothing particularly social looking (the Medium/Heavy armor looks like armor) and most acquisitions/commendations vendor only have the odd few items and no full sets (sometimes selling pants with no matching chest). I just want some clothes we can wear without having to try and collect a wardrobe from random drops.

 

However, at 50 with a developed character, you do have enough options, visually - keep that in mind, please.

 

And that for me is the problem, why should we have to grind to level 50 before we start getting some more options?

[AstralFire]

Okay, I take back everything I said about visuals. PvPers currently have ZERO VISUAL OPTIONS.

 

:|

 

I can't even change my lightsaber crystal color.

Edited December 27, 2011 by AstralFire