Ok whats with some of these roleplayers?

Ok so I recently moved to Virtue and I am not really into roleplaying. I mean I write my character biographies, have a concept, etc. but some of the stuff people do baffles me.

I am not trying to slam someone else's gaming experience, I am merely trying to understand. So thats what I came here asking.

Anyways, I am in Pocket D and I am running Gladiator matches for badges. I keep appearing next to this "couple" and I am catching their conversation. First let me describe their outfits:

Player A is wearing a school girl outfit, high heels, max boob slider, etc. Player B is also a female character with purple stockings, long legs, etc. Well when I started noticing the conversation they are flirting back and fourth and then eventually roleplaying making out. Granted I am popping in and out of arena so only catching bits and pieces of the conversation.

Eventually they are roleplaying, or maybe were the entire time, the naughty school girl getting seduced by the teacher. The teacher is female and so is the student. The teacher is telling the student if you get an A you get a special reward nudge nudge.

Then they start talking about being in a relationship and asking to be the other's girlfriend. So mind you we have two people roleplaying here two female characters making out, that are teacher and student, getting a bit graphic, and then being in a relationship.

From an outside perspective, this seems bizarre to me. I could understand roleplaying this with your wife or girlfriend in a real life bedroom situation, but in the game? Does this go on a lot in roleplaying?

The other thing that baffles me is its two female characters, I am sure one or both players are male. Does this have an effect at all? Or does the player fantasize the other is female?

I am literally trying to understand the behavior and maybe a poster out there likes to do this. What does it do for you? Is it simply fun? I can accept that.

If you have to ask...

...uh, well are you interested in that stuff or something?

Someone needs to get to the bottom of this immediately.

Hey Ulty, sorry I couldn't help ya out tonight.
My connection is really rough lately and I was just doing a little marketeering.

It's Pocket D.

It's Pocket D on Virtue. Hive of scum and villainy. All those horror story's about it are at least 1/2 true. You really have to ask this?

Also MMORPG.

Mostly Men Online Role Playing Girls.

I entered this thread prepared to defend the roleplayers on Virtue. Then I saw..

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ultimus Anyways, I am in Pocket D

And that's all I had to read. If you're new to Virtue, Pocket D in the evenings is where a few people go to solicit some strange roleplaying in the side corners. You're going to get the occasional person seeking attention by doing what you described -at which point you can either call on them to take it to private tells or just move on.

It doesn't happen so much that it's common, but what you've run into is why plenty of Virtue-ites joke about the D. Most roleplaying isn't like that, but some people have, *ahem* needs that they enjoy fulfilling in a superhero setting, I guess. It's why you'll see a lot of roleplaying events scheduled outside of the D.

I always hear about it, but I never run into that stuff in Pocket D on Virtue. It seems to essentially be a more complex version of conversations people have over the phone, or some of the chat on mIRC. And those are really just a more involving/interactive version of certain texts some people enjoy.

You mean it's almost like an actual nightclub including people hooking up and getting it on just out back? shocking!

(I really don't care about these things anymore )

Here is another way to look at role playing.

Back in the dark ages that were the early late 1980s and early 1990s, we didn't have nice graphical games. One thing we did have were MUDs (Multi User Dungeons) that were basically like somewhat dialed back versions of the MMOs that would appear later.*

In a MUD, you didn't have a player avatar for people to watch perform actions, you had to type them yourself. So, to communicate, you would type a lot of things like "smile," "hug," "bow," "laugh," etc, that in City of Heroes would seem excessive. Some of these games let you write a short description of your character, but identifying characteristics were lacking. So to compensate, you would perform a lot of actions, give your character a distinctive speaking voice, and develop mannerisms to help establish the "feel" of the character.

When MMOs became popular, "talking" became much more difficult. The text pours into a small window (in most games). And despite being heavily based on MUDs initially, MMOs quickly gravitated to a game model that more closely resembles a single player game that happens to involve a lot of people. Interaction and (intentional) drama between players became significantly less important than interaction with the environment, so to speak. A player's central basis for interaction became "quests" or "missions," and no longer relationships and intrigue with other players.

Roleplayers in City of Heroes are basically harkening back to an earlier era (whether they were participants in it or not back then). Text games had a significant "pretend you're someone else in a chat room" type of feel to them, and that's basically what these people are doing.

As for the sexual overtones some players bring to their roleplay, just chalk that up to some people wanting a type of fiction that's more intense than others.


[*I say "somewhat dialed back" because there are many things that were accomplished in text games MMos have never duplicated. As early as the mid 1990s, a few games existed that included injuries like lopped off limbs, poked out eyes, destruction of nervous systems, along with the ability to apply "first aid" to stop bleeding, and systems for ultimately healing the wound (sometimes first resulting in a scar which might also need aid). Some of the text games that are still around are extremely complex compared to MMOs. Essentially, an MMO typically dials back personal relationships and complexity in order to focus on action. Neither approach is really "better" in the end, although I often wish MMOs would look back at their MUD roots and actually give Role Players tools that would facilitate more interaction, like better control over the camera or even an animation panel that serves ONLY to animate a conversation between multiple parties.]

Virtue always has too much yiffing.

In particular, the arena area is apparently designated for ERP sessions. So hanging out there and using it for arena stuff, you'll be bound to bump into the ERPers more than the normal/not-so-normal RPers.

A location designed for ERP? That is ridicoulous!

ERP in public or ERP in harrasment will lyably get your account blocked or banned. ERP is not something this game allows.

So it should always be done in private... Now... the current chat system makes even the private tells visible in baloons above your head. So it is important that IF you ERP you do that in a mission or a private base. NEVER in a public area like Pocket D.

And that is aside of teh fact if ERP is a healthy thing. If it is really an attempt to rp... some go a bit too far. RP ending in that should be stopped in time. If one gets further... maybe you have a real life couple that gets off on it. But this too could be harrasment without even knowing it at the time.

Either way.. both should be done in private. Or risk being banned if anyone descides to tell teh devs about the details. (Who can see you chat log)

This is why you go to D on Union. We're saner.

Honest.

I can't say I approve of folks RPing anything in public chat that's sexual... however, I couldn't help but notice that you kept mentioning the fact that it was two female characters, Ultimus. I can't help feeling that such a detail should be irrelevant. Would this thread still exist had they been two same-aged opposite gender characters?

I mean c'mon, it's the 2000s!