I'm sorry to hear that you have been treated with condemnations, Crick :(
But this can happen to RPers in any large MMORPG, even on "RP-servers", especially with new players who do not really understand what "roleplaying" is supposed to be.
Well, that, and way too "tolerant" GMs as well as Event-Team-Managers who support griefing by looking the other way, even if it happens right under their noses (sorry guys and ladies; you should really start to face the truth after all the years that players have been driven away one by one by similar circumstances).
I have to point out that there is an important difference between "saying this is RP" and actual roleplaying.
Sure, some of these people in fact fancy themselves as great roleplayers
* even if they also like to do emote-spams regularly,
* even if they "coincidently" only flame players from certain groups like specific language-communities, although some of the characters they flame are in fact reputable members of the same nation as the flamers,
* and / or if they will occasionally drag aggro onto members of guilds that they hate (although these guilds are of the same faction and have often been fighting alongside their own characters)...
These are actual examples.
RP you call that?
Yeah right. And Armas can fly.
----------------------------------------------------------------- -----
Like Salazar (and unlike Purg) I too remember the bad old times on Leanon when large-scale-PvP started and suddenly a lot of players phrased "RP"-hate-speeches in the chats like: "We pwn u Karas, lol!". What's "roleplaying" got to do with that? Still, some believed it was RP, because they just didn't know any better :( This is happening again today as we can see; and every time at least a few people will actually be hoodwinked.
Why do we not experience behavior like that within the German-speaking community on this now merged server anymore? Simple: players like that have systematically driven each other out of the game. And eventually when griefers can't find enough targets to grief any more, they themselves will then go search for better hunting-grounds elsewhere. Also there are always some players sticking together and continually motivating each other, mostly guilds, which makes them survive in the long run. Well, and some stubborn single individuals who just won't give up no matter what :)
This happened to what is now left from the German-speaking Leanon-community. We are the survivors. Plus those who joined us respectively joined Ryzom after the griefer-wave, and who then have been welcomed with kind, helping, open arms, so they are still with us - or will at least occasionally drop by from time to time.
We German-speaking roleplayers have learned our lessons from the disasters we have survived. We now prefer peaceful "let's all be friends and work together"-roleplaying mostly because we just don't want to see any more Ryzom-players leaving this game. Some think of it as the responsible-grown-up-way to act and look at things. Which is not breaking any roleplay-"rules" nor "logic"! And if we fight or engage in IC-discussions, it's usually in a moderate tone too. Well, OOC might be a different matter though, but you know how all forums can be like...
As a side note I'd like to mention that a good deal of the German-speaking roleplayers of today also are / have been pen & paper-RPers for years. Pen & paper RP belongs to the very few kinds of social games where you don't have to play against each other, but as a team versus the environment. Not even the game-master who fills the environment and NPCs with life verbally is playing "against" but instead "for" the players :) That also has an impact on our online-roleplaying-style I think.
So in my opinion that's why most of the German-speaking roleplayers you can find on Atys today are friendly people with mostly friendly characters. And most of us can read/write English too, even if not perfect ;)
------------------------
Someone once said "you can't mix up OOC and IC when you're talking OOC from player to player". In fact I believe you absolutely CAN go too far with mixing IC and OOC in RL, when for example:
* you as a human being in front of your computer really, really believe that a specific faction/group in a game you're playing is made of "the good guys"; so the motives of their NPCs and/or members cannot possibly be any other than altruistic and for the salvation of the world - everyone saying/believing otherwise must be an idiot
* you go to lengths to explain in details how things are on our RL-earth today (or have been in medieval times) and insist that all of this has to be the fundamental everyday-knowledge of all characters on a game-world where monsters, respawn, magic, teleport, immortality and magical healing is/are common...
* you insult, threaten and/or intimidate players OOC merely for the fact that they have chosen a specific game-faction, -race etc. to play, because this makes them a horrible RL-person in your eyes
* you flirt away just imagining (without even asking) that players look and "are" just like their game-avatars (especially gender-wise), and you verbally abuse them after realizing your assumptions have been wrong
* you start a brawl at an RL-meeting with people whose MMORPG-characters/toons belong to an "enemy"-guild
* you make a SWAT-team storm the house of a player after losing a PvP-battle or the like against them
These are actual examples of unhealthy things that have happened and are still happening.
The underlying fundamental problem might be just the same when players are griefing others and driving them out of the game using "RP"-methods and are justifying their behavior / words per "RP-reasons". Like by insulting players they meet for the first time by using formally correct IC-sentences addressed to characters/toons (assuming that this alone will make it "roleplaying"), depending on whatever little they believe to "know" about their targets. Now and again going wrong by that.
Mind that just "not receiving resurrection" usually is not a problem in itself, but the verbal abuse that comes with it or as an afterwards-excuse is - whether this comes camouflaged in an "RP"-style or not.
--------------------------------------------
It has already been mentioned in this thread: the Lore REALLY does not make Kami-diciples and Karavan-followers mortal enemies, nor Matis and Fyros (there are peace treaties in effect).
So your characters are not "forced" in any way to hate others who do not share the same beliefs or birth. It is not "bad RP" to be friendly, au contraire! For some of us it would be "bad RP" to IC hate members of other nations and factions after knowing and experiencing how all nations and both factions plus neutrals have been working together very often in the past for the purpose of saving all homins.
Marauders... well, maybe Marauders truly are mortal enemies of all the other homins. ;) Still the ones who insult others "RP-Style-like", who treat others badly or who pull every kind of trick to force others to behave similarly unsocial towards specific players/player-guilds are most often not playing Marauders, but are either playing fanatic Kami-disciples, fanatic Karavan-followers or fanatic nationalist.
Sorry to say, but in nearly all cases I have heard of or experienced myself it was PvP-lovers who chose to "roleplay" hatred even if they didn't have to, sometimes even though RP-logic would have demanded of their characters to act tolerant or even nice. Still they willingly chose to be insulting instead and to behave in griefing ways, hiding behind so-called "RP-reasons".
I have reasons to suspect that the majority of the players behaving in griefing ways absolutely deliberately intend/s to bully and hurt other players, that all they want is to "rule others" and feel great because of that, that a number of them purposefully aim at driving (at least some of) their targets out of the game, that they are fully aware of making up false flimsy excuses, merely trying to avoid punishment by falsely claiming that they "keep true to the logic/rules of roleplaying"...
Still, there's the "benefit of the doubt". Civilized people don't punish the innocent.
That's what "officials" always have to consider. So whenever someone is not clearly breaking the code of conduct, the griefer will get away just fine by claiming "it was because of RP" - and GMs won't even give them a warning. Nor explain anything to them, nor ask them to be nicer since Ryzom needs every paying player. No matter how many players will leave the game because of stuff like that. Well, Atys is by far not the only online-game-world affected by such sneaky griefers, but as Ryzom has a small - and still dwindling - player-community by now, the wounds are quite large in comparison.
It's understandable that GMs don't want to kick players out of the game, precisely because the community is already small enough - but if you don't get rid of griefers pronto, then these are the ones who will drive 10 or 100 times more players away... In my opinion it is high time to at least pull the "RP-reasoning"-rug out from under griefer's feet to make them stop. Love and peace on Atys anyone (except for Marauders)? ;)
--------------------------------------------------------
TL;DR:
Griefers claiming "RP-reasons" for verbal abuses are actually most often not even roleplayers or really bad ones, so don't fall for their tricks; and most German-speaking roleplayers are nice people, so come and meet with us - and let's change the world :)
But this can happen to RPers in any large MMORPG, even on "RP-servers", especially with new players who do not really understand what "roleplaying" is supposed to be.
Binarabi
It's really sad that the whole of Ryzom's RP-community has gotten this kind of reputation nowadays because of a few griefers abusing every kind of absurd "reasoning" (like "this is RP") to camoflage their bullying. Some of the worst behaviour in this game comes from rpers
... players who excuse all of this by saying it is role play
... it is hard not to think all rpers are like this
Well, that, and way too "tolerant" GMs as well as Event-Team-Managers who support griefing by looking the other way, even if it happens right under their noses (sorry guys and ladies; you should really start to face the truth after all the years that players have been driven away one by one by similar circumstances).
I have to point out that there is an important difference between "saying this is RP" and actual roleplaying.
Sure, some of these people in fact fancy themselves as great roleplayers
* even if they also like to do emote-spams regularly,
* even if they "coincidently" only flame players from certain groups like specific language-communities, although some of the characters they flame are in fact reputable members of the same nation as the flamers,
* and / or if they will occasionally drag aggro onto members of guilds that they hate (although these guilds are of the same faction and have often been fighting alongside their own characters)...
These are actual examples.
RP you call that?
Yeah right. And Armas can fly.
----------------------------------------------------------------- -----
Like Salazar (and unlike Purg) I too remember the bad old times on Leanon when large-scale-PvP started and suddenly a lot of players phrased "RP"-hate-speeches in the chats like: "We pwn u Karas, lol!". What's "roleplaying" got to do with that? Still, some believed it was RP, because they just didn't know any better :( This is happening again today as we can see; and every time at least a few people will actually be hoodwinked.
Why do we not experience behavior like that within the German-speaking community on this now merged server anymore? Simple: players like that have systematically driven each other out of the game. And eventually when griefers can't find enough targets to grief any more, they themselves will then go search for better hunting-grounds elsewhere. Also there are always some players sticking together and continually motivating each other, mostly guilds, which makes them survive in the long run. Well, and some stubborn single individuals who just won't give up no matter what :)
This happened to what is now left from the German-speaking Leanon-community. We are the survivors. Plus those who joined us respectively joined Ryzom after the griefer-wave, and who then have been welcomed with kind, helping, open arms, so they are still with us - or will at least occasionally drop by from time to time.
We German-speaking roleplayers have learned our lessons from the disasters we have survived. We now prefer peaceful "let's all be friends and work together"-roleplaying mostly because we just don't want to see any more Ryzom-players leaving this game. Some think of it as the responsible-grown-up-way to act and look at things. Which is not breaking any roleplay-"rules" nor "logic"! And if we fight or engage in IC-discussions, it's usually in a moderate tone too. Well, OOC might be a different matter though, but you know how all forums can be like...
As a side note I'd like to mention that a good deal of the German-speaking roleplayers of today also are / have been pen & paper-RPers for years. Pen & paper RP belongs to the very few kinds of social games where you don't have to play against each other, but as a team versus the environment. Not even the game-master who fills the environment and NPCs with life verbally is playing "against" but instead "for" the players :) That also has an impact on our online-roleplaying-style I think.
So in my opinion that's why most of the German-speaking roleplayers you can find on Atys today are friendly people with mostly friendly characters. And most of us can read/write English too, even if not perfect ;)
------------------------
Someone once said "you can't mix up OOC and IC when you're talking OOC from player to player". In fact I believe you absolutely CAN go too far with mixing IC and OOC in RL, when for example:
* you as a human being in front of your computer really, really believe that a specific faction/group in a game you're playing is made of "the good guys"; so the motives of their NPCs and/or members cannot possibly be any other than altruistic and for the salvation of the world - everyone saying/believing otherwise must be an idiot
* you go to lengths to explain in details how things are on our RL-earth today (or have been in medieval times) and insist that all of this has to be the fundamental everyday-knowledge of all characters on a game-world where monsters, respawn, magic, teleport, immortality and magical healing is/are common...
* you insult, threaten and/or intimidate players OOC merely for the fact that they have chosen a specific game-faction, -race etc. to play, because this makes them a horrible RL-person in your eyes
* you flirt away just imagining (without even asking) that players look and "are" just like their game-avatars (especially gender-wise), and you verbally abuse them after realizing your assumptions have been wrong
* you start a brawl at an RL-meeting with people whose MMORPG-characters/toons belong to an "enemy"-guild
* you make a SWAT-team storm the house of a player after losing a PvP-battle or the like against them
These are actual examples of unhealthy things that have happened and are still happening.
The underlying fundamental problem might be just the same when players are griefing others and driving them out of the game using "RP"-methods and are justifying their behavior / words per "RP-reasons". Like by insulting players they meet for the first time by using formally correct IC-sentences addressed to characters/toons (assuming that this alone will make it "roleplaying"), depending on whatever little they believe to "know" about their targets. Now and again going wrong by that.
Mind that just "not receiving resurrection" usually is not a problem in itself, but the verbal abuse that comes with it or as an afterwards-excuse is - whether this comes camouflaged in an "RP"-style or not.
--------------------------------------------
It has already been mentioned in this thread: the Lore REALLY does not make Kami-diciples and Karavan-followers mortal enemies, nor Matis and Fyros (there are peace treaties in effect).
So your characters are not "forced" in any way to hate others who do not share the same beliefs or birth. It is not "bad RP" to be friendly, au contraire! For some of us it would be "bad RP" to IC hate members of other nations and factions after knowing and experiencing how all nations and both factions plus neutrals have been working together very often in the past for the purpose of saving all homins.
Marauders... well, maybe Marauders truly are mortal enemies of all the other homins. ;) Still the ones who insult others "RP-Style-like", who treat others badly or who pull every kind of trick to force others to behave similarly unsocial towards specific players/player-guilds are most often not playing Marauders, but are either playing fanatic Kami-disciples, fanatic Karavan-followers or fanatic nationalist.
Sorry to say, but in nearly all cases I have heard of or experienced myself it was PvP-lovers who chose to "roleplay" hatred even if they didn't have to, sometimes even though RP-logic would have demanded of their characters to act tolerant or even nice. Still they willingly chose to be insulting instead and to behave in griefing ways, hiding behind so-called "RP-reasons".
I have reasons to suspect that the majority of the players behaving in griefing ways absolutely deliberately intend/s to bully and hurt other players, that all they want is to "rule others" and feel great because of that, that a number of them purposefully aim at driving (at least some of) their targets out of the game, that they are fully aware of making up false flimsy excuses, merely trying to avoid punishment by falsely claiming that they "keep true to the logic/rules of roleplaying"...
Still, there's the "benefit of the doubt". Civilized people don't punish the innocent.
That's what "officials" always have to consider. So whenever someone is not clearly breaking the code of conduct, the griefer will get away just fine by claiming "it was because of RP" - and GMs won't even give them a warning. Nor explain anything to them, nor ask them to be nicer since Ryzom needs every paying player. No matter how many players will leave the game because of stuff like that. Well, Atys is by far not the only online-game-world affected by such sneaky griefers, but as Ryzom has a small - and still dwindling - player-community by now, the wounds are quite large in comparison.
It's understandable that GMs don't want to kick players out of the game, precisely because the community is already small enough - but if you don't get rid of griefers pronto, then these are the ones who will drive 10 or 100 times more players away... In my opinion it is high time to at least pull the "RP-reasoning"-rug out from under griefer's feet to make them stop. Love and peace on Atys anyone (except for Marauders)? ;)
--------------------------------------------------------
TL;DR:
Griefers claiming "RP-reasons" for verbal abuses are actually most often not even roleplayers or really bad ones, so don't fall for their tricks; and most German-speaking roleplayers are nice people, so come and meet with us - and let's change the world :)
---