Hello everyone!
So - I played (very little) SWToR, and I've just started TESO.
While I am not (and never will) advocate for breadcrumb trail quests that lead you around the world - there is an aspect of these two games that I am enjoying immensely.
Namely - though I am not a role player, they sort of force me to think about the decisions my avatar makes.
I'm playing a Templar in TESO - I've sort of decided that I'm going to play him like a Paladin. At every twist and turn, I'm presented with choices. For example, some barrels are just "look through it and take stuff" - while some others are "steal what's in here" (with associated potential penalties). Well, I'm a paladin. And so while I didn't really think about it as role playing, I've decided that being a Paladin and stealing is just wrong... so I'm not stealing stuff.
Quests are also offering some compelling choices... for example, you are presented with the option of letting one character kill a "less than desirable" character or intervening and turning that character over to the authorities. As a Paladin... it just felt right to intervene.
What do all of you think about (again, NOT quests that lead you around by the nose) game mechanics that encourage "role playing" type choices - without actually doing so in a "hey, you gotta role play" way - like the stuff I listed above.
I'm finding that it is one more thing that ties me to an avatar.
You just described how I usually play my characters. I barely consider myself a role player, very light but I do tend to have my characters disposition (or alignment) determine how they are played and the decisions they make. So, if I have a paladin type character I would do pretty much what you have described but if I play through that same scenario with a rogue type character, for example, he would probably steal everything he could get his hands on. =) Some games offer more opportunities to follow those paths than others but if there are mechanisms in Pantheon that help foster that... all the better!
The basics of RP is that your character has its own personality which is not necessarily isomorphe to your own.
So every time you play in character, e.g take decisions and act like your character would and not like you would, you are RPing.
And RP is a necessary condition for immersion - it is your character who is Inside the world, it is no more you watching a screen a clicking on buttons.
People who don't even do this basic and fundamental RP are not immersed in the world. They call their characters "toons" and are driven by other motivation than immersion - loot (which is a symbol for wealth and singularity), power (which is a symbol for domination), gaming teh game (which is a symbol for superiority) etc.
The tenets for Pantheon are clearly targetting more the type of players who have this fundamental in character RPing drive rather than the type which is in it for the pixels.
For instance I have been EXTREMELY irritated by the PoP expansion in EQ because it violated all and every element of the world's consistence , of RP and of immersion.
Druids killing Tunare ? Paladins killing Mithaniel Marr ? What kind of logics and characterisation is there in this BS ? How can one take seriously this whole story about worshipping Gods when the first thing one does is to go and kill the God one worships ?
It was already bad having Dark Elves killing Innoruuk in Hate and SKs killing Cazic Thule in Fear but PoP threw every sanity in the storyline overboad.
It was actually even worse !
If you refused this stupidity and continued playing in character, you had a penalty !
Not only your own God would hate you even if you did all he commanded but you didn't get the right keys and were forbidden access to areas that your character would want to visit.
It would have been easy to keep the consistence and belieavability but the developpers were just too lazy and didn't care about their virtual world the least little bit.
Nothing felt right anymore and this was the major reason why I left EQ during PoP .
I would be a pro-role player as well, and I viewed EQ's faction system as an early implementation of that idea (basically your actions have consequences). I wouldn't be opposed to an alignment meter of earlier RPGs in addition to faction either that your actions influenced - Lawful Good, True Neutral, Chaotic Evil, etc.
The difficulty I see in implementing a system like this in an MMO is it would be hard to create an Evil character (as most players would be "Good" and want to help out their starter cities for rewards) outside of killing A, B, C, D - NPC which would then destroy your faction and make your in-game experience more difficult, unless, there were cities that were evil cities specifically developed to only allow for certain alignments.
I just don't see this working on a grand scale in an MMO as it would take to many developmental resources away from other aspects of gameplay as each city/NPC developed with alignments.
So, unless I'm 100% off base and alignment would be easy to implement - I would be ok with just sticking with a complex faction system.
RP is as those before me have said, an act and consistent decision making process by which your character abides. I have played many characters at the same time both on a mmo and on paper. Each character i operated had a distinct personality and set of beliefs which guided them-whether by thought or subconsciously. When characters break away from a traditional set of rules there must be a reason. Why would a dark elf and a wood elf run together? if there is a good back story and the actions still show the strife then it keeps the game in perspective. You cannot code morality and dictate actions. Well you can try but then lets just push a button and watch the AI interaction. It takes players that want to live in the game. The people that destroy a game are the power players. They come in to a game and run off the good people and then leave for the next new game.
I thought about power players a lot when i was leveling several characters in Vanguard at the end of its life. I remember a text based game called Dragons Realm. In that game your skills would level as you performed tasks. the problem for power players came when they were power grinding(often using scripts) the character would get overwhelmed and even one mob or simple action could cause them problems. The brain would shut down and they would become helpless. for regular players learning would slow down but if they would rest it would clear up. That gave time for more chat RP.
Another game dragons gate had time out penalties during training. The problem was when you got higher level, your character could be out for a week and that does not promote RP. They should have let people stay in the city during that time.
Anyway I am not sure if there is a good solution to the deeper problem in your question.
be well
Rin