Dev Discussion #53 - Roleplaying

"What systems and features make roleplaying fun? What features help remove hurdles and barriers?"

For me, the best facilitator of roleplaying is immersion. For example, a good chunk of my heavily modded Skyrim install is built around adding little features that improve immersion. Things like NPCs reacting with surprise if you turn invisible, freaking out if you have a reanimated minion or summon following you, things like dynamic taunts in combat based on your race, etc, are all things that naturally pull me into the game, and from there, roleplaying comes naturally.

It's the little things, like having animations for gathering ingredients, or drinking potions, or interacting with furniture. It's little things like being able to spontaneously hug your friends, or pet dogs, cats, horses, or whatever other mounts and friendly beasts exist. It's little things like "seeing your character wave in a friendly way when they greet a child".

Animation based immersion can apply in combat, too - things changing your movement animations when you're really injured, low on MP, or tired, to reflect your weakened state.

Things like seeing your character look wet in rain or after swimming, or maybe sweating a bit during really hot weather, or bloodied when they're injured, also help.

Beyond that, things like having some NPCs inside a food shop actively cooking behind the counter, or seeing NPC fishermen, or really NPCs just generally living their lives outside the scope of what the player does is a big help. Having some NPCs who just don't actually give a hoot about you and are just, you know, patrons at an inn or whatever, is pretty great, since not everyone's lives should revolve around you.

When spread throughout a game, little features like this become more than the sum of their parts, and they combine to form an experience that's great at drawing the player into the presented world. And once you've achieved that, roleplaying comes REALLY naturally. When I feel immersed in the world, I'm not just "going to talk to X NPC to spend money on some potions for this dungeon run". Instead, I'm going to visit the local shopkeeper to stock up on supplies for a risky expedition later. And in practice? There's a big difference between those two feelings.

When I play an mmo, I am always roleplaying. To me roleplaying is a combination of immersion and 'being in character when making decisions'. Because of this the biggest boon to my roleplay experience is when game designers make sure there are things that don't get in the way of immersion. There are a lot of things I can personally handle that would break a less experienced roleplayer's immersion that I have solutions for, but as a general rule if there are things in the game that remind me that I am playing a game, then it tends to knock me out of my immersion.

I'd like to put that in bold because I feel it is an under appreciated game design lesson these days. Immersive game play is as much about NOT getting in the players way as it is having systems to facilitate immersive interaction.

For example, videogame terminology in your world building makes your game less immersive. This is why things like Tank as a class name are really egregious. It doesn't matter how you try to dress it up. It is a trade off to do so. I don't care how you dress the lore. It doesn't stop being unimmersive and mildly confusing if there are ever other builds that can tank that are not main tank.

Non-interactive gameplay is another big pet peeve of mine. I don't play games to watch my character or npcs do things for me. There needs to be a certain amount of movement and allowance for flow. If my character is doing things for more than a couple of seconds without my input, it breaks my immersion and makes the entire flow feel dissociative.

Menu based game play is another problematic area. There are exceptions to this. If my character would reasonably be interacting with a book, computer, or bulletin board to perform the immediate action my character is taking (e.g. writing a ledger for a market place order) then menu based interactions are fine. Any other time you better have really well written npc interactions and dialogue or figure out a way to make your character do it in a consistent to world build way. For example crafting in FFXI is largely menu based but it's implemented in a way that makes it feel like the character is thinking their recipe up and casting a spell to synthesize the item in question and that there is some skill to it.

Zoom distance is another huge problem for me. In order to be maximally competitive in a PvP game you MUST play at max zoom. Max zoom is therefore the end all be all for a competitive PvXer like myself that also heavily role plays those moments. The more zoomed out, the more video gamey and dissociative the interaction. Currently, Ashes is out right terrible for roleplayers like myself because your max zoom requirements are too far out and lack any closeness to the character.

Tl;dr: Minimize video gamey terminology, have immersive gameplay that doesn't disconnect me from what my character is doing, minimize menu based game play especially when the action would reasonably be performative such as crafting, lower the current max zoom possibility.

Systems you can add that would increase my immersion

Full freedom of expression in color pallet choices relative to hair color and cloth based gear. (Feel free to stay away from colorful metal since this breaks other people immersion, but magic makes those things pretty easy.) Preferably with as large of a variety of hairstyles as possible.

Have female and male equivalents for all outfits. Nothing stops a guy putting on a dress or a girl putting on heavy armor. I'm not asking for hard work here just 'let people be ugly'. It's not your job to police what other people find beautiful as game designers.

Emotes or interactive household materials and furniture such as being able to sit in chairs, lay in beds, wash your hands, etc add a lot to immersive gameplay. Decent eating animations, toasting emotes, reasonable crafting animations are other large areas of immersion.

I do not use it, but having the ability to have chat text be in a 'default' and a 'script' color is quite helpful. Having black non-italicized text for standard messaging and an italic script with a separate color setting can be quite useful for in game gming text for such sessions. I don't think players should be able to force other people to see a rainbow of colors, but the 'script' text should have a different color decided in your own viewing ui options.