Often I will think about what makes a roleplay environment. What game mechanics are desirable to enhance the roleplay experience? Roleplayers know that roleplaying involves imagination, visualization and communication to effective roleplay. My question is what game mechanics can also be used to bring more to the roleplay experience? Vanguard for me is ideal for roleplayers, but what makes it more ideal over other games? I've heard people say they'd like to see a more roleplayer friendly game. What would make the 'perfect' roleplay game environment? I've listed a few small ones to start: Roleplay Tag - Shows there are roleplayers in the game. Official Roleplay Channel - /tavern is the unofficial channel. Channel Alert - message saying a roleplayer has joined the channel much like the guild alert. UI Character Biography - I always liked the ability to write a small bio that others could read by clicking on your character. This used with the roleplay tag would be nice. Campfire - I use my campfire purely for aesthetics and not the intended purpose which for me is pointless. Any other thoughts on this?
I want to echo Dhelmar here because all of his points, I feel would highly enhance the game. Back when I started playing VG on Florendyl there was a /RP flag that could be toggled on and off. I remember thinking at the time, "is it really a necessity to have a toggle flag that one is role playing their character on the official role play server?" But now, sadly, that toggle is gone and if I am not mistaken has been gone since Florendyl was merged into Seradon. Channel alerts would be amazing! Maybe a toggle command similar to the check box available in the guild UI window. SOE adding /tavern to the /autojoin list would be brilliant!! One major thing for me would be readable books containing lore. I believe that I suggested such back in a discussion regarding the abandonment of racial lore now that the racial starting cities are no longer an option for character creation. In the continental starting areas (at least I remember seeing them in the Cliffs of G.) there was an emissary from the various Qalian races on the mountain side. How about allowing a player to accept a quest from the appropriate emissary to their race and get their lore in book form...And! How about allowing folks, once they reached a certain faction level to travel to these areas and speak with the emissary from the other cities and get the respective books from them? This would keep the brilliant and amazing lore of the races a major part of the game and help to minimize the adjustment to the lore of the world by changing the racial starting cities as the work has already begun on those. And...while I am asking Santa...To have those books be items that could be placed in our halls and homes where folks coming in could access them and read them...oh my...that would be reason for me to start changing things about in my hall again! (and for those that know how much hair I pulled out getting that blasted place exactly as I want it, that's major!! )
I have played quite a few other MMOs in the past, and some of them had (variations on) an add-on that did roughly the following (depending on the particular game and add-on, of course): 1. It added a tag to the character with the add-on, indicating it belonged to a roleplayer. 2. It indicated the styles of roleplaying that player preferred, e.g. conflict/pvp rp, romantic rp, storytelling/lore rp, etc. 3. It indicated whether the player was always in character, only in character during "scenes", etc. 4. It gave a pop-up with room to denote character background as well as an expanded physical description. [The former, obviously, is optional, as some roleplayers may feel this should not be known in advance.] 5. It gave room to indicate family and close friends of the character. Such an add-on would be much appreciated by yours truly, and many other roleplayers I am sure! Sadly, my own programming abilities stop around the VCR level.
One area that I've wondered how it could be implemented is quests. I had a brainstorm on this and it's not necessarily for Vanguard. The guild leader or officer could assign quests to the member and create a story around it. One problem I've always had with that is that all the quests would become the same or all the quests would become obsolete in no time once they're all completed. Then I had an idea. What if the guild leader (officer) had an interface window where they could create a quest? Select the quest category (for Vanguard it could be adventuring, crafting or diplomacy). Select the type of the quest (locating or killing npc / gathering items, espionage / rescue / fulfilling a crafting order etc). Then from there break it down further. Select continent, npc, purpose.. maybe even create your own storyline for it. If the quest is good, it could be shared amongst other guilds. The guilds could then create their own storylines.
Oh here we go again!!! I like the idea of the books and being able to place them into the house. I would put Blackstone's background story in one and display it for others to see. Something else that would be nice is to be able to export (or import) the book to a file on your pc. We know that Vanguard won't be around forever, but hopefully a long time. It would be nice to have copies of the books saved where one could look back thru them. (As it is, I take screenshots of any good books I find)
I had completely forgotten about this, but recently the thought was called up from the cobwebbed corners of my mind... Un-soulbinding the purchasable titles! This would be a great and simple change that would allow guild leaders to present a title to those members being promoted. Or titles that could reflect acheivements, changes in back stories, etc., for characters.
I hope someone is still doing rp on the last server...when I will start playing I'm very interested to do it !!!! So few game left that allow a good lore for rp...the only one I enjoyed it's been LOTRO. And Ultima, of course...but it's been a long time ago^^
SOEmote - This could be a wonderful feature for VG once it's implemented. While I don't care about the visual parts, the voice would be a great addition for roleplayers. Roleplaying using ventrilo isn't the same as I want to sound like a gnome if I'm playing one. I haven't used this feature on the other games so I hope they have it where you can use the voice technology alone. I might make facial expressions while I play but they'll be more from what's going on around me irl. I also hope you can tweak the voice so all voices don't sound exactly the same. I haven't seen anymore about this for VG. Does anyone know when this feature is supposed to roll out?
