What's wrong with RP-PvP and how can it be improved?

Argent Dawn
304

What i rly love about rp Pvp is when participants organise mass reports against the organiser saying hes trying to crash the sever :woozy_face:

Good ol db tactics

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305

Please tell me that was never a thing and you’re joking.

306

It wasn’t just db tbh but they did reach critical mass in the region…

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307

You could say perroy wears a crown of thorns…

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308

Lets unravel this here. Especially towards the very end, raids were full, the damn server was dying, especially during the last battle. Nothing could have been done to objectively salvage what was left of the massive experience we called “the drums of war.”

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310

Meant to post on my main, trying again.

311

Surely the question becomes whether WoW’s armed forces bunny-hop their way through battles, though? Whether legions of Sentinels blithely bounce their way through combat?

I’m sure it’s been said already in this long, long thread, but the big issue with RP-PVP, to me, is that victory or defeat will always be a reflection of player skill and not character ability (assuming gear restrictions are in place - if it’s unrestricted, it becomes a contest decided on toon progression or time played). One could go even further to debate Blizzard’s class/ spec balance or even latency, which are 100% OOC, yet which definitely play a part in deciding the outcome of an RP battle.

In theory, there’s nothing stopping a guild of players playing quadruple-amputee babies rolling around at high speed and gumming entire armies to death because their players are monsters at PvP. The lore, the setting, logic itself can be completely annihilated by PvP in RP.

That being said, if players consent to it, then unrestricted RP-PVP is no less valid, or authentic, than an arbitrary dice roll to decide the outcome. It’s also one of the few ways to communicate the chaos, pace and intensity of a large-scale battle - not really something I’ve ever seen captured through batches of raid emotes.

My biggest issue is with the use of duels to decide RP combat in random/ walk-up RP.

In the first place, quite simply, it’s meta-roleplay/ god-emoting. It allows the dueler to artificially limit the agency of other players, forcing them into a 1v1 bottle-neck where they have to queue up one at a time to attack a single character. Any RP where one player is writing for, or dictating the actions of, other characters is bad RP, if one even counts it as RP at all.

It’s completely illegitimate, and is entirely less valid than other forms of conflict resolution, because most duelers initiate conflict and aggression through emotes, then immediately hide behind duels when other players respond in like-kind. Consent becomes a major issue because there’s no way to refuse it, at that point, without also refusing the RP.

In addition, all the same problems that apply to unrestricted RP-PVP - that player skill/ gear progression/ class balance dictate wins/ losses, not a character’s choices or skill, nor narrative logic.

If, of course, dueling is an optional method of RP conflict/ combat resolution, the problem evaporates entirely, as then players are free to make their own choices, and consent to both the process and the outcome. But in every instance I have ever seen it, it’s evidence of an RP-to-win mentality which is rooted entirely in the ego and desires of the player, and has nothing to do with the RP situation or the characters.

312

I guess it depends on the characters/battle

Stuff like heroic leap does exist in WoW - maybe not as something the generic footman can use

I don’t know, the first WoW cinematic has a sentinel (?) specifically jumping around loads. They’re probably OK at jumping

In theory, there are any number of things you could do but won’t because it’s not good roleplay. It’s kind of a non argument really - “what if hypothetically something really dumb happened?”

IMO if someone is roleplaying a weak character in unrestricted, they can just avoid using the spells their character wouldn’t have access to

FTR I agree with the 1v1 thingv - it’s an OOC trick to use /duel to negate an CI numbers advantage because duels are 1v1 only

IC duelling = only good when it is one guy challenging one guy with no interference

Just as the vast majority of random emote fights are. There is no more RP legitimacy to Grumbo Darktooth achieving super saiyan 3 by the Wyvern’s Tail so that they can sustain a 3 hour emote fight where every attack hits the shoulder than some guy abusing /duel to cheese an IC conflict

Both are basically dudes just RPing to win IMO

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313

Step 1) Open thread asking how RPPvP could be improved
Step 2) Everyone starts PvPing in the thread
Step 3) ???

idk guys but I think I might have found the core issue :thinking:

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314

Fwiw it is kind of telling that this never happens. I also doubt anyone in the history of AD has brought less than the best gear they have, regardless of what that actually is.

Curious that one’s character power is always set to the maximum possible, no? A curious observation indeed.

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It isn’t. Two equally geared folks duking it out is 100% more visually pleasing and authentic than a 20 minute long wmote fight.

You can do that with any of the other systems too. People choose to discriminate with who do they want to interact with and respond to all the time. Free emotes can also turn one handed blademasters to be able to take on +20 people from multiple directions.

It’s almost like bad roleplayers will roleplay badly- Regardless of the system they use.

Standard system that comes with the game (like it or not).

Really? My experience is the entire opposite. I have never seen a person who prefers duel thirst for conflict and go around /dueling people.

I always see it used as a tool to put people who try to nonsensically push people around in RP back to their place- Or, more often, as a valid tool both parties agree upon and have a good day.

It’s the best mind trick yet.

If you don’t want to put effort into your character that’s your choice. The negliance to do that is your own fault, not anybody elses. And Blizzard’s class design has never been around 1v1- Some classes just have hard counters.

I don’t like this “reee, accommodate me!” Attitude people without gear/skill to back up their pawn shop warlord antics have. I prefer to make myself as accommodating as possible, by enabling all the systems - Including pvp, as a choice, by gearing up that character.

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Yeah, pfff, learn to titanforge your gear you weak slacker. If you do not raid mythic you shouldn’t be allowed to RP more than a footman anyway.

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I[quote=“Perroy-argent-dawn, post:312, topic:41360”]

In theory, there’s nothing stopping a guild of players playing quadruple-amputee babies rolling around at high speed and gumming entire armies to death because their players are monsters at PvP. The lore, the setting, logic itself can be completely annihilated by PvP in RP.

In theory, there are any number of things you could do but won’t because it’s not good roleplay. It’s kind of a non argument really - “what if hypothetically something really dumb happened?”
[/quote]

Well I wasn’t really saying that the kind of hypothetical situation posited was probable or even the problem itself, I was trying to take the issue to its logical extreme to demonstrate a flaw - that player skill and character ability shouldn’t be (and generally arent) transferable/ exchangeable from an IC standpoint.

Well they could do that but the question is more or less would they do that, and also, why would they do that? The whole point of unrestricted RP is that it’s unrestricted - full access to all a specs abilities and talents, and all the power that weapons, armour and artifacts confer. In what likely circumstance would someone enter, or want to enter, unrestricted PvP with restrictions? What would be the point? Whether you are RP’ing a character through restrictions or not, it’s sort of moot if every other player has embraced the unrestricted PvP part and jettisoned the RP bit. Your character’s defeat would still be, in a sense, OOC, a result of game mechanics not the enemy character’s IC choices. In fact, I suppose there’s an argument to be made that it’s restrictions that are the RP part of RP-PvP - the limits of a character’s strength, skill or intelligence. I’m not going to make that argument though, because I’m phone-posting.

In any case, the argument’s a bit semantic at this point - I’m not necessarily condemning unrestricted RP-PvP or saying that it can’t be narrativised but just stating that it’s not really an accurate reflection of a character’s choices, actions and abilities, and that it’s a mechanic - like a dice roll - rather than RP itself.

318

hey bro i have this REALLY cool troll-themed campaign you could check out…

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319

I guess we learn from supply and demand

if we limit the number and time to artificially create a new demand, the RP campaign economy will stop being so inflated with poor week long events that end in disappointments.
ofc we will have to gather a hit squard who can crack down on bootleg campaigns and snuff them out so as to better control the market and avoid another influx of pvp-rp events from start ups blissfully unaware of the madness they are subjugating themselves to. Really in the end we will save a lot of people from having to witness their events fall to pieces but the road there will be dark.

320

Have you by any chance met Grimace

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321

you don’t say? got a link? :eyes:

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And Grimace is a better roleplayer than 95% of AD. I don’t expect Grimace in every encounter.

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323

grimace appreciation thread when :chicken:

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324

Ding ding ding ding ding we have the right answer.

It’s almost like I said: Bad roleplayers will be bad, regardless of the system they use.