Psychochild's Blog

One of the problems you have with RP is finding other people. There’s all sorts of different RP types and styles, and it can take a while to find people you really click with. The RP community has tried to create ways for RPers to get together, but I think that developers can help this process along as well.

Let’s take a look at a few ways, shall we?
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Today’s post is going to cover the topic of the streaming podcast tonight: how to build a culture for your community. The podcast will start tonight about 8 PM Eastern at https://twitch.tv/Maulgrim

But I thought I’d talk a bit about culture and show the notes for the show.
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As I said yesterday, I think that RP could be a good focus for a game. In FFXIV, RPers form a significant portion of the playerbase. It became all the more apparent when they added the RP tag for people to use. But some of the more populated servers are the ones that have been dubbed the RP servers even if unofficially.

So let’s take a look at the good and the bad of RP in MMOs from a developer’s point of view.
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This week, let’s look at RP from a developer’s point of view. I want to look at things in the perspective of a developer and how we can develop a game to take more RP elements into consideration.

I’ll keep this brief tonight, but this week I’ll pick some of these topics to go deeper on.
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This week, I talked about RP from a player’s standpoint, how RP looks like to get into, to maintain, and to enjoy. Next week, I want to talk a bit about RP from a developer’s point of view. So, let look a bit at the subject RP between these two perspectives.

What’s RP like in that space between?
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Much of RP, all RP not just MMO RP, tends to be long term. In tabletop you have a campaign that usually lasts for several sessions to form a campaign. Forum RP generally lasts a long time due to the time between posts. And this attitude carries over into MMOs, to some extent. Not all RP is long-term, but I think people generally gravitate toward the longer term.

Let’s take a closer look at this and see how it fits into MMO RP where things tend to be a bit more ephemeral sometimes.
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I think most people who have been around MMOs for any length of time are familiar with elitism: the idea that what someone is doing is more important than someone else. This often takes the form of elitism for raiders, seeing themselves and what they do as better than the rest of the playerbase. They are the pinnacle of Bartle’s Achiever motivation, demonstrating mastery over some of the most difficult content of the game.

But wait… wasn’t I talking about RPers this month?
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I’ve fallen ill with a sore throat, so I’m going to be more brief for this post. But I’m not totally ignoring my duties as a blogger during Blaugust! I’m hoping for a little participation from you all here to help fill in.

So, let’s talk a bit about what RP means to you on a personal level.
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One of the interesting things about MMO RP is how often the RP is divorced from the mechanics of the game. While MMOs are generally known for having well-balanced gameplay, RP rarely is able to take advantage of the game mechanics as they rarely feed into RP situations. Even the combat is impossible since it tends to move so fast that you can’t get a good post in between swings, and you can rarely fight other players except in special circumstances.

So, let’s take a look at how mechanics and RP are divided.
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One of the first steps to getting into RP is to find some! And this can be trickier than you first think, as it’s not always obvious where you can find RP.

So, let’s take a look at what you can do to get into RP in an MMO like FFXIV.
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