English

Hello all!

I must admit I've only been playing Ryzom for about a week, and despite doing fairly extensive research on the lore I have little in game experience. I'm sorry if this post is premature or irrelevant, but I think it could be, so I've decided to share it anyway. I've also discussed it with other players and they seem to agree so far, so I decided to ask all of you.

Do you think Ryzom (perhaps not all of it, but specifically the english-speaking community) needs a bit more casual roleplay, independent of political turmoil and religious difference?

Don't get me wrong, they're both great motors for driving a story arc and forming guilds and factions. However, they're also incredibly intimidating to start off with if you're new to the game or new to RP. Playing along those lines requires extremely ind-depth knowledge about every faction, the power struggle between them, and every current detail relevant to their situation.

Mostly, people who aren't inordinately enthusiastic about roleplay don't want to talk about that. They want to meet other characters, share their story and learn the stories of others, form links and relationships and just generally socialize, the serious stuff comes after (or it comes in smaller, more approachable doses).

I think perhaps the political angle and high level of roleplaying in the english community has sort of alienated the rest of it from roleplaying altogether. In several days wandering around Fairhaven I've only met one other roleplayer, and that was through repeatedly asking in the "region" chat whether anyone was interested.

What are your thoughts on this, homins? Is this a false impression, or could we strive as a community to recreate more casual roleplaying revolving around the characters themselves and how they relate to one another? I think it could help bolster the RP community by creating links between them but also by getting more players who haven't tried it before into the concept (I've already explained what roleplaying is to two players and they've shown a lot of enthusiasm).

+1

I'm one of the two who just discovered casual roleplay thanks to Tig. I aways thought it seemed intimidating with all the political and faction drama.. as he said, it involves way too much to know for someone coming in late in the discussion.

Plus, in the real world not everyone cares about politics and just wants to chat with their friends about whatever. As it turns out, it can be really entertaining to make up stories about your in game adventures as seen through your character's eyes.

I think it would be awesome if more people were open to giving new life and dimension to their characters.. it really is a lot of fun! Just a casual chat in the Fairhaven bar can be a great time (and a welcome break from digging).

Hope to see more of this soon :)

A good point, Tigelaar!

Recently I was involved in a discussion about how to encourage young homins to enter the stage of politics. Be it between guilds, between factions and races, in military conflicts or in governement positions. It was certainly a valid point that everyone agreed upon, that it may seem like a daunting task for young homins to get into politics on Atys because of the long history that has involved in over ten years of real life time. The fact that until end of 2012 there were three different servers which travelled along different versions of a similar storyline certainly make it even harder. We are still in a phase of consolidating the three in-game memories of those three different histories into one global memory.

Bolstering casual roleplay would certainly provide a better foundation for new players to be interested in the happenings on our beloved planet. Quite frequently I see guilds recruiting new players and start off by outfitting them almost too well, and then trekking them around the world in just a weekend. In my opinion there's much opportunity lost to do some storytelling, and to alert new players of the fact that Atys is a very rich and complex world which is worthwhile to be explored slowly and consciously.

From my own experience I must honestly admit that sometimes I don't feel like roleplaying just because I logged on, I know the ttimeframe I'm able to play that evening, and I have certain goals in mind, and if I'd stop and roleplay I'd not accomplish that goal. Most of the time I don't have such goals and am quite relaxed, but then I'm not the one who tries to level hard. (I'm playing for about three years, iirc, and I'm still below 150 in any fight or magic level). And I guess, the lower the level, the more the urge to move along and level up.

Casual roleplay - but also gentle ooc introduction to the game - may show the way to new players to acknowledge that Ryzom's appeal does not come from running around as a 100% master and jack-of-all-trades, but from the atmosphere, the team play, the conflicts, the ability to influence the storyline (should scale proportional with the time invested). A highly subjective opinion, of course.

Welcome to Atys!

Irfidel, for me I believe you hit the nail on the head when you said "ability to influence the storyline". Having spoken to a few roleplayers they have reported a sharp decline in the number of ideas brought forward during meetings, in particular the Fyros meetings. The main reason they stated was because the ideas were not listened to. If there is no result from people generating ideas, eventually the ideas will stop.

This casual roleplay looks interesting and I believe it could get a lot of people more interested in roleplay. However a lot of players look to activities in turns of two things: The joy in doing them, and the outcome that arises from doing them. Until the latter is fixed and players ideas are in the very least responded to (some are just being outright ignored which is just rude) many will simply not be bothered with roleplay.

Lets hope whilst you put the effort into getting people roleplaying the event team picks up and starts responding to player ideas.

I'm very much for casual roleplay as such, and yes, it probably might get more new players into RP. Virg, though, touched a delicate subject. Casual roleplay is just casual, of course, but if you say that from that every other thing might evolve (hopefully), the question at the moment is how it can evolve. And it seems that the outlook, even if we don't touch the subject of "ability to influence the storyline" both Irfidel and Virg mentioned, is somewhat limited by the lack of a healthy grounding, so to say.

The discussion Irfidel mentioned also pointed out that - while we have players of all factions - in the various countries and languages you might find one or maybe two large guilds with many players and of all levels, and they will help young players not just with gear, but have the opportunity to be around almost non-stop. They can keep freshlings busy in all sort of ways, they can care when needed etc. Other guilds are pretty small, often just one or two or maybe three players, and they can't give that support. The large guilds will loose people on the long run, but win new ones, too. They bring in friends, they will make friends, partly because of their size. Not all of them will be roleplayers, sometimes the tiniest part of them is, but they keep the fundamental fun by offering the entertainment of being with your old and/or new buddies. The small guilds will be static, or wither, because they can't offer anything like that.

So far, so good. The example we had at the discussion were the Free Souls, a big, neutral Tryker guild stemming from Leanon, which made the merge without much losses and still is pretty strong. Part of their strength, in a way, is their neutrality - while they are involved in politics, they don't favour a faction. They also are strictly non-PvP. In that way they are smooth; there is not much source of friction. Yet we do need friction to keep some sort of story which is not just limited to "the Kitins are coming, the Kitins are coming". I like the Souls a lot, yet it's a bit like the terrible vision of the Eloy from H. G. Wells' "Time Machine". It's nice to be a flower child, but if everybody is a flower child it's not a world I want to be in. In fact, the idea of just countless cheerful get-togethers, jolly hunts and happily-ever-afters would easily be my idea of gameplay hell.

So what I think we need - and I have not the slightest idea how we could get there (again, for all servers had that at least at one point in their past) - is great guilds with a religious and ideally a national grounding they stand for, which can do all the things only great guilds can do, with charismatic leaders, with fighters and artisans, with members who care for each other and for freshlings and not only support them, but also inflict them with a code of morals and beliefs, for that is urgent need for every sort of roleplay from a certain point on. I don't mean that every player should be forced into politics and military action, and I definitely don't mean they have to be trained as religious fanatics and bloodthirsty nationalists. But the game is so much more than just "let us all be friends", which - on the long term - would be the end of it, with all players converted into neutrals, Rangers, and Trytonists, and many others driven away by boredom of just waiting for the next Kitin invasion.

Well, sorry for delivering such a wall of words. So yes, please do casual roleplay - do it a lot! - but over that try not to forget that on a longer term there is more than just this, and that without the different ideas and ideals Ryzom offers we all might be caught in a daily soap game.

Enjoy Atys, and a hearty welcome.

+1


Very mixed in English speaking community and rather segregated (each group doing its own thing with support of event team and the occasional overlap - French are possibly more holistic (different nations each having a specific role in an event) but no idea really - try posting to the French speaking RP Forums as well, there is a translate tab you can click to see how the respond

+1

Hi. Forgive me for being so mentally dense on this subject, but I was wondering exactly what you meant by "Casual Roleplay," and Im asking for specifice definition.

What is the difference between 'Casual RP' and Hard core RP? or Casual RP and Light RP?
Would getting involved with the dev team, setting up an event, living, breathing the event be considered hard core? I think yes, but is it casual too?
Is writing a story in forums for some time and adding to it every several days considered hard core RP? Or is it casual? Does it become Hard core role play when the dev team adds to the story like the one on "Capturing a kitin?" or some other story?
is Casual RP just engaging in pvp for a while, then going back to your regular business of leveling after the pvp is over? Or is that light roleplay?
is it casual roleplay to go around using the emote: "<so and so> warns Naema of her impending death?" Or is that Light RP? Same with attending a politcal meeting 1 time?
Just looking for clarification is all,
Thanks

I recently joined myself, looking for somewhere to as you say "Casually Roleplay", a relaxed environment where I dont have to game so hard and can spend some time developing characters and really getting into the lore. Its been about a week for me and I am trying to take a slow and steady approach. I do have a real-world journal for my character to document things that happen to me, and I write it from a viewpoint of the character to make the in-game elements seem more accessible.

So anyway, find me in-game Tiglaar if you ever want to! It looks like I will be around Fairhaven for a while!

That goes for anyone else, this is my first post in the forums so I dont think I know any of you unless we met on Silan! Cheers!