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54% (18)Hello! I'm an amateur multimedia artist who's been looking at BYOND due to its status as a hub and IDE for multiplayer indie game development.
I'm very disappointed to see that the overwhelming majority of games on BYOND, especially those more advanced in gameplay and worth playing as ordinary games, still mandate heavy RP in the game design itself for no clear reason and even theme basic game mechanics around said RP requirement, as opposed to producing a good game first and foremost and setting RP depth requirements per server later.
This is a self-defeating design theorem that traps the player environment in an uncomfortable wedge between a game and a chat room, failing to excel in either because these elements conflict rather than complement.
RP IS RUINED BY COMPLEX GAME MECHANICS
Games with advanced and contrived mechanics fight with RP for the player's attention and cause both elements to be compromised because each bogs down the other. For instance, if you're a Bartender in Space Station 13 (one of the most obtuse games I have ever played), then you need to use the elaborate chemical mixing system whenever you're asked for a drink. It would take a real bartender no more than 10 seconds to mix any drink he has the ingredients for, while it can take you several minutes. And you have to keep chatting in-character and somehow handwave or explain why this is taking so long or to excuse any mistakes your presumably-professional bartender makes.
Enforcing RP in a complex game arbitrarily limits the game's player base to players who are both adept with the game mechanics AND fond of RP.
It makes no sense to be roleplaying a character when I the player need to know how to do x rather than my character.
DETAILED GAMES LIMIT RP
Games that have extensive world-exclusive lore or a strict race/class system (e.g. Sigrogana Legend 2) necessarily require the player to write an entirely new, fairly indepth character just for that one game, who remains consistent with their ingame traits, the bible of game-specific lore, and any arbitrary rules imposed by the GM's. This is way more effort than a game has any right to demand from every single player.
Games that enforce permanent death (another popular thing in BYOND) furthermore expect this much effort to be placed into a character who will inevitably vanish forever and be effectively banned from the game, possibly within minutes of creation.
ALLOWING PLAYERS TO DO THINGS EXCEPT NOT
RP-heavy games generally technically allow players to do whatever they want at any time, with only written rules telling players not to do specific things "out of character". Shouldn't barring players from acting "out of character" be part of the game code rather than in direct conflict with it?
Space Station 13 in particular lets "good" players straight up shoot one another with guns and throw spears at each other, except according to the rules that's a no-no in all circumstances. If that's the case, shouldn't the game code prevent "good" characters from directly attacking anyone not known to the character as hostile? The rules already specify in great detail precisely what objective circumstances allow you to attack someone (e.g. if a vampire or changeling is witnessed attacking someone then the AI et al are allowed to go after them) and the game already has extensive mechanics for manipulating your identity (e.g. you can display as someone else when wearing a mask + their ID and using a voice changer.)
I really hope to see in the future more BYOND developers focusing on producing creative and fun games and not on awkward and unfun roleplay environments, because it's massively disappointing as it is.
If I do experiment with BYOND's IDE - which I hear is supremely unwieldy - then I may try to produce such a thing myself, but I don't have any hosting options available so don't hold your breath. =/
ID:1867105
 Jun 6 2015, 2:25 pm
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Jun 6 2015, 3:08 pm
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Kumorii
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Let the player play how the want - don't force them to roleplay if that's not their thing. I understand why the enforcement is there with certain games, I just disagree.
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Players can do a lot more when they manually describe their actions, than what a computer game can ever be programmed to specifically do. There are infinitely many things you could describe in words that even an open source game like SS13 will never include. This is the appeal of tabletop roleplaying. Writing your own story is great power that comes with great responsibility, and that responsibility can only end up between the players and the moderators, because if the world is meant to have a strictly medieval setting, players should be punished for talking in memes or whatever.
That said, BYOND isn't powerful enough to run more action-oriented games where you engage in a world where you can actually see things happening in real-time. The artists around here aren't going to draw enough for that, and the programmers can't write code from scratch, so you could blame the community too. If you don't like it, then do something about it. The more you write to complain, the less people will care what you're saying. Make a game you think is good. It's possible to make an original game with BYOND if you start with "New Environment" instead of "Download Source". I have several offline games and one dead/open source roleplaying game (Hazordhu) so I know things. | |
It comes down to one of many gamer's primal wants in game. When we play a character in a video game, we want to become that character and take control of the world they live in. In the professional game development field, gameplay is (for the most part, aside from sometimes the graphics in mainstream titles) king. Experienced game developers already know this, but give inexperienced kids the power to build worlds and govern them how they want and you're bound to run into a few problems surrounding poor execution.
Even in mainstream RP games, either the roleplay is deeply ingrained into the immersion of the game as a whole, such as in the Elder Scrolls games or roleplaying IS the main game mechanic, this is mostly seen in games like IMVU, GAIA Online and other virtual visual chat rooms. It comes from many game developers playing games like WoW and Mabinogi and going, "You know what, this would be better if I could have more control of the world." and so they ham-handedly make an attempt to do so in their own project, 95% of the time without any polish to make it pretty at least. There's absolutely an over-saturation of mandatory roleplaying in many games developed on BYOND, the real question is when polished projects are going to become common enough to steer people away from the stagnating niche they're developing in currently. NEStalgia really got the ball rolling, but games like Severed World and a few other projects in the pipeline right now are what are going to at least get the culture changing. It won't fix all of our problems with it, but it'll get us moving in the right direction, in my honest opinion. | |
Kaiochao wrote:
Players can do a lot more when they manually describe their actions, than what a computer game can ever be programmed to specifically do. That's my point: Why are you making a fully operational game like Sigrogana Legend 2 and then slapping on heavy RP? It renders one or the other completely superfluous. Roleplaying isn't a game; it's an improvised story the players cooperate to write. You should skip BYOND entirely and just go to IRC or Spring.me if you want to RP. If you don't like it, then do something about it. The more you write to complain, the less people will care what you're saying. Ignoring that I just said I was heavily considering doing so, I hope the rest of the BYOND community is not as anti-intellectual as you're coming across here. If it is, then it'd be best if I spent my time and efforts elsewhere. Hugboxing is not conducive to quality product and quality communtiy. | |
Why are you making a fully operational game like Sigrogana Legend 2 and then slapping on heavy RP?In my experience, starting off with a graphical chatroom isn't bad, but some players will eventually get bored unless you give them a sense of direction. That's why some strict-RP games have a theme and actual gameplay mechanics; just to keep players interested and giving them things to do. I've never played Sigrogana Legend 2, but I imagine that's why it's more than just a chatroom. | |
RP IS RUINED BY COMPLEX GAME MECHANICS Lol. SS13 is definitely a detailed game but it's not really at all difficult. Making bombs for instance as a Scientist. There are several steps, but you can learn them all just by asking another player in-game to walk you through it or reading a guide on a wiki page. After all, the game is meant to be a space station simulator. If everything could be done with the click of a button, that'd take away from the immersion the game is attempting to pull off, and the last thing you want in a role-playing game is a lack of immersion. In a role-playing game, yes, I'd rather have to build a bomb step by step in a way that seems substantial rather than just pressing a "make bomb" button and having one appear in front of me. DETAILED GAMES LIMIT RP WoW fits this description and people seem to enjoy RPing in that quite well. It is indeed limiting, but it's only an issue if the players don't like it. For example, I think League in a lot of ways limits what should be possible in a MOBA game, and you can actually see which ways it's limiting by comparing it side by side to Dota 2. However, League is still by a significant margin the more popular game, so should Riot redesign League so that it's less limiting even when their 6 or 7 million concurrent players are satisfied with it? If people in Sigrogana Legend 2 aren't complaining about too many limits, you're essentially fixing what isn't broken by removing the lore. In fact there are even role-players who ENJOY having some lore set up for them to work with from the start rather than them having to create every minute detail themselves. ALLOWING PLAYERS TO DO THINGS EXCEPT NOT This is the only good point you made in your OP. I've always stated that it's ridiculous that developers of role-playing games didn't combat griefing via code. They create games in which each player has all the tools at their disposal to cause havoc in the game, and then employ 5 or 6 admins to keep the peace. What's wrong with taking the option of griefing away in the first place? If I'm a player logging into, let's say a medieval fantasy game, and my class is "Peasant" or something, there's no real reason I should have the actions or commands that allow me to walk up to the King and shove a pitchfork up his butt instantly killing him. Instead, remove that option, and only enable if the players are playing a "Revolt" round or something where the entire point of that particular round is for there to be an uprising of peasants to kill the King. Otherwise, if you know you're going to ban players for randomly killing the King, DON'T GIVE THE PLAYERS THE POWER TO RANDOMLY KILL THE KING. | |
Ultimately, I think this boils down to you specifically not liking roleplaying games. By combining both mechanics and an environment that encourages (or forces) social interaction you almost always end up with a game with some kind of emergent gameplay or 'metagame'.
By this I mean... having an IRC chatroom or whatever and just roleplaying in there will not be nearly as interesting as roleplaying in an actual game with mechancis, visuals, etc. I don't think you realize this. There's no oversaturation of roleplaying games on BYOND, that just so happens to be what people -like-. | |
Doohl wrote:
There's no oversaturation of roleplaying games on BYOND, that just so happens to be what people -like-. Well, to be fair we only have a small handful of actual games. There just happen to be three or four games with a thousand different hubs each due to code leak. | |
Or because... that's the kind of game they want to make?
What's that, you make chairs for a living? You fucking pleb, you don't make beds because your mind can't handle it. - Your logic. | |
For me rp is not my thing, i played a couple of the rp games like eterina, which is good graphically but in my own opnion falls short due to needing to rp to game skills. But i don't mind its just not my kind if game.
My thing is end game content, rather than. Which was said instead of complaining fo some thing about it. Which i have been making concept drawings and planing out while i learn dm html5 and java. Seeing doohl's game really inspired me a lot and gote to take my buns off the sodelines and actually join the development side of byond and not just being part of the player base. So even though there a lot of rp games right now i've seen some that are not rp that im exvited to try while i learn and develop one of my own slowly. | |
Complex mechanics doesn't ruin RP. Part of roleplaying is learning how the system works. I've seen RP games with little to no mechanics. The game wasn't fun and people spent more time arguing than playing. Some designers fail to see loopholes. There shouldn't be strict rules because limit mechanics should be coded in.
Look at Star Wars Galaxies. It provided a strong roleplay environment. More importantly, the game was well structured. There's no need to ask what you can or can't do. | |
Without any game mechanics, how exactly would you design a role-playing game which isn't just a chatroom? Wouldn't a game like Second Life meet your criteria as being the perfect role-playing game?
Even games like HrH, revered as one of the purest role-playing games on BYOND, had complex game mechanics. | |
If I do experiment with BYOND's IDE - which I hear is supremely unwieldy - then I may try to produce such a thing myself, but I don't have any hosting options available so don't hold your breath. =/ Ignoring that I just said I was heavily considering doing so, I hope the rest of the BYOND community is not as anti-intellectual as you're coming across here. If it is, then it'd be best if I spent my time and efforts elsewhere.  | |
While I do "role play" while playing a game to get into it. I think every game that designs all elements around role playing are ridiculous and flawed. It no longer becomes a game but a social chat room. The game should have things in place to role play- jobs-powers-customization. But leave it at that. Let the player decide how he wants to play.
So many byond games suffer for this. However even more suffer for having bad controls or no controls at all. Check out my game in development, I'm trying to make a rpg that isn't that RP focused. Kinda like severed worlds but not as good:P I think severed worlds has the right idea in terms of game design and structure. Yea there's room to be diverse from that but not in making it RP based you'll just have the tiniest niche audience and will never grow. Though people can have fun making the game they want. I personally won't play it. But as long as they enjoy what there doing. It's hard to define how much RP is too much for me though. | |
A bad designer will make a role-playing game where role-play is forced and required because the game's design isn't good enough for people to want to role-play and play simultaneously IMO Chance/Doohl have improved a lot over the course of working on Eternia. I think you focus too much on the product representing the person, rather than being a learning experience. | |
They're not games, they're glorified chat rooms. Get em outta here.
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And what? Actual chatrooms can stay? Madness.
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Lugia just likes to here himself talk... a lot...
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