08-13-2013, 05:38 AM
Greetings there, this thread has been made in relation to the poll found here: http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread...007&page=1
So first of all, I need to admit that I sort of borked up the poll questions. It should have said "Which character would you feel the most comfortable around" instead of the whole "Who has the most potential" thing. Although, I really see the two as similar questions (Which is why I did not redo the whole thing) but again, it is up to you if you take the results seriously after this.
So the day before I posted the poll, I was in a skypecall with Raul and Doj, talking about something completely unrelated to it, flying around on a transport of mine in New York. I met an LNS dread near Manhattan, who was talking just like the second guy from the example screens I gave in the poll thread.
After some chitchat, I carried on, but I had the sudden urge to ask the two in the call if they had ever had this strange feeling, upon which they pretty much said "Nah, it is only you."
But have you ever had that feeling, when you are SURE you are not the only one. Not even in the sense that Oh there are a couple of others in Disco, who share my opinion, but that it is more like at least every third person has this sort of view on capital ships.
The question I asked was simple. "Guys, is it just me, or do you feel much less comfortable around caps, who talk as a single person, without using their captain's name?"
So yeah. That was one of the two reasons I posted that poll. The second reason I will touch upon just a bit later in this same thread, but the first one remains the main one.
I do not think of myself as an expert when it comes to roleplay. English is my third language, I have seen what people can do if they have enough initiative and lately I have developed a sort of "On or Off" approach when it comes to ingame RP. Either I devote myself to it completely or fully, immersing myself in it. That, or I simply do not. A good example are my older characters, specifically built just for encounters with other characters, as opposed to my, say, my Xeno, on which I pretty much communicate via engagement notices, or my LNS called "You what, mate?".
I simply cannot do anything in between. It either feels like a half-arsed roleplay attempt or an overly complicated pvp session otherwise.
Regardless, I am really surprised about myself, that the only reason why I would want to RP less with someone, is because they do not tack on the name of their character in their post. It simply feels...weird. It does not feel right to see an LNS- tagged ship NOT using the name of the captain in his posts anymore.
The question is, why?
When I first joined Disco, it was some very old version (The only thing I remember clearly about the two weeks I spent playing it, was that the Osiris, or at least its turrets, was sold on California Minor) and I remember sure as hell that people flying caps did not do this.
When I started playing much more actively back in 83, that was the time when I started noting people RPing their caps like that, so the question is simple. What exactly happened during that time to make people start RPing caps like that?
We all know Xenos did not start out as hillbillies, ingame or lore-wise. It was Jihad Joe's character, who started doing the whole "YEEHAW'' thing, so perhaps that was the same situation?
Roleplaying a cap is hard at the best of times, but it may also become ragequit-eskly annoying at the worst of them. Things have become a bit less tense as we progress on, true, but people still seem to have some sort of bias against caps.
Every once in a while you see posts or ingame rage about players in snubs being shot in capital ships. They scream GAAAANK and OMGUD COWARDS around. However (as far as I have seen with the Torpedoes) nobody bats an eye when you bring 13 bombers to rape every cap you see in sight. Even more so, they cheer your group on as you do, both ingame and on the forums.
And mind you, it is easy to evade capital ship fire in a snub, but it is almost impossible to evade bomber fire in a capital ship, making the whole fairness argument mute even more than it was already. I am not going to go into the discussion of what is fair and what is not, because that is a very objective thing to do, resulting in unneeded poo slinging over who has the ''right'' opinion.
The thread already had some discussion about the roleplay need to point out your characters name, since it would feel wierd to call someone after the name of the ship, however after some time playing on my LNS (On which I always mention the name of my commander), not many seem to take that into account anyway.
I always found it very silly, how people constantly spam the same name in their posts, asking myself just why would they do that, if the captain would be the only person onboard the ship to have access to the public comms channel (While the crew tasked with communication would keep things in check with docking rings, stations, other ships and so on), and I distinctly remember PMing someone once, asking "Why would you do that, it is not like your damn cook will suddenly start talking" or something along those lines.
So you can see just how surprised I was about myself, when I caught myself wanting to interact with someone less only because they did not name their commander. Is this a good thing? Is this fixable? Should this be fixed? That is up to you to decide and discuss.
While on that note, the thread did surprise me a bit more with some other comments. I am not going to bother looking them up as I am about to go to work, so I will just say that they were something along the lines of:
I understand that this may have been directed only at the third LNS example, but somehow I cannot shake the feeling that it was meant to include the second one as well.
Look, I understand that any RP community will always have a faint brush of elitism around them, but are we really so jaded that we will think less of a person's ability to interact ingame and contribute their ides solely because their style of RP is not the same as the norm?
And if so, just what is the norm? Who sets it? How do we upkeep it and how does it change with time. Funnily enough, come to think of it, I do not seem to express the same distaste to those flying 5k transports. It seems I enjoy the experience with them no matter if they use the name thing or not.
So is this really just cap-related? Do we want to pin much more RP-quality onto them just to have a reason to hate them? I understand people used to do this, because caps had the ability to overpower any other ship, but does it still remains the same now, when anyone can come out on top given enough time just based on their ship loadout?
Really, I have no simple answer to this, but you are more than welcome to try.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, I am pretty sure that the whole situation has something to do with a person's "Respect towards their own RP". I acknowledge it, but I really cannot think of what to say about it. The third LNS in the example is pretty much asking the same thing as the other two, but you might say that the reason you would not like to talk to him is because he has little value to his own RP if they use no punctuation and have bad grammar. Even more so on purpose, if we are not talking about people who simply have troubles with English as a language.
EDIT: I will also quickly note that I know what you guys expected me to say during this thread. That we are putting too much emphasis on the grammar instead of the RP the person contributes, which is the reason why I added the third LNS in the example to begin with. I was, but this has been analysed to death before, so I feel it was simply a matter of needing to acknowledge it, instead of putting focus on it. The third LNS example is just a necessary reminder and has nothing to do with the questions I've raised in the text above.
So first of all, I need to admit that I sort of borked up the poll questions. It should have said "Which character would you feel the most comfortable around" instead of the whole "Who has the most potential" thing. Although, I really see the two as similar questions (Which is why I did not redo the whole thing) but again, it is up to you if you take the results seriously after this.
So the day before I posted the poll, I was in a skypecall with Raul and Doj, talking about something completely unrelated to it, flying around on a transport of mine in New York. I met an LNS dread near Manhattan, who was talking just like the second guy from the example screens I gave in the poll thread.
After some chitchat, I carried on, but I had the sudden urge to ask the two in the call if they had ever had this strange feeling, upon which they pretty much said "Nah, it is only you."
But have you ever had that feeling, when you are SURE you are not the only one. Not even in the sense that Oh there are a couple of others in Disco, who share my opinion, but that it is more like at least every third person has this sort of view on capital ships.
The question I asked was simple. "Guys, is it just me, or do you feel much less comfortable around caps, who talk as a single person, without using their captain's name?"
So yeah. That was one of the two reasons I posted that poll. The second reason I will touch upon just a bit later in this same thread, but the first one remains the main one.
I do not think of myself as an expert when it comes to roleplay. English is my third language, I have seen what people can do if they have enough initiative and lately I have developed a sort of "On or Off" approach when it comes to ingame RP. Either I devote myself to it completely or fully, immersing myself in it. That, or I simply do not. A good example are my older characters, specifically built just for encounters with other characters, as opposed to my, say, my Xeno, on which I pretty much communicate via engagement notices, or my LNS called "You what, mate?".
I simply cannot do anything in between. It either feels like a half-arsed roleplay attempt or an overly complicated pvp session otherwise.
Regardless, I am really surprised about myself, that the only reason why I would want to RP less with someone, is because they do not tack on the name of their character in their post. It simply feels...weird. It does not feel right to see an LNS- tagged ship NOT using the name of the captain in his posts anymore.
The question is, why?
When I first joined Disco, it was some very old version (The only thing I remember clearly about the two weeks I spent playing it, was that the Osiris, or at least its turrets, was sold on California Minor) and I remember sure as hell that people flying caps did not do this.
When I started playing much more actively back in 83, that was the time when I started noting people RPing their caps like that, so the question is simple. What exactly happened during that time to make people start RPing caps like that?
We all know Xenos did not start out as hillbillies, ingame or lore-wise. It was Jihad Joe's character, who started doing the whole "YEEHAW'' thing, so perhaps that was the same situation?
Roleplaying a cap is hard at the best of times, but it may also become ragequit-eskly annoying at the worst of them. Things have become a bit less tense as we progress on, true, but people still seem to have some sort of bias against caps.
Every once in a while you see posts or ingame rage about players in snubs being shot in capital ships. They scream GAAAANK and OMGUD COWARDS around. However (as far as I have seen with the Torpedoes) nobody bats an eye when you bring 13 bombers to rape every cap you see in sight. Even more so, they cheer your group on as you do, both ingame and on the forums.
And mind you, it is easy to evade capital ship fire in a snub, but it is almost impossible to evade bomber fire in a capital ship, making the whole fairness argument mute even more than it was already. I am not going to go into the discussion of what is fair and what is not, because that is a very objective thing to do, resulting in unneeded poo slinging over who has the ''right'' opinion.
The thread already had some discussion about the roleplay need to point out your characters name, since it would feel wierd to call someone after the name of the ship, however after some time playing on my LNS (On which I always mention the name of my commander), not many seem to take that into account anyway.
I always found it very silly, how people constantly spam the same name in their posts, asking myself just why would they do that, if the captain would be the only person onboard the ship to have access to the public comms channel (While the crew tasked with communication would keep things in check with docking rings, stations, other ships and so on), and I distinctly remember PMing someone once, asking "Why would you do that, it is not like your damn cook will suddenly start talking" or something along those lines.
So you can see just how surprised I was about myself, when I caught myself wanting to interact with someone less only because they did not name their commander. Is this a good thing? Is this fixable? Should this be fixed? That is up to you to decide and discuss.
While on that note, the thread did surprise me a bit more with some other comments. I am not going to bother looking them up as I am about to go to work, so I will just say that they were something along the lines of:
Quote:Well, at least they are trying...
I understand that this may have been directed only at the third LNS example, but somehow I cannot shake the feeling that it was meant to include the second one as well.
Look, I understand that any RP community will always have a faint brush of elitism around them, but are we really so jaded that we will think less of a person's ability to interact ingame and contribute their ides solely because their style of RP is not the same as the norm?
And if so, just what is the norm? Who sets it? How do we upkeep it and how does it change with time. Funnily enough, come to think of it, I do not seem to express the same distaste to those flying 5k transports. It seems I enjoy the experience with them no matter if they use the name thing or not.
So is this really just cap-related? Do we want to pin much more RP-quality onto them just to have a reason to hate them? I understand people used to do this, because caps had the ability to overpower any other ship, but does it still remains the same now, when anyone can come out on top given enough time just based on their ship loadout?
Really, I have no simple answer to this, but you are more than welcome to try.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, I am pretty sure that the whole situation has something to do with a person's "Respect towards their own RP". I acknowledge it, but I really cannot think of what to say about it. The third LNS in the example is pretty much asking the same thing as the other two, but you might say that the reason you would not like to talk to him is because he has little value to his own RP if they use no punctuation and have bad grammar. Even more so on purpose, if we are not talking about people who simply have troubles with English as a language.
EDIT: I will also quickly note that I know what you guys expected me to say during this thread. That we are putting too much emphasis on the grammar instead of the RP the person contributes, which is the reason why I added the third LNS in the example to begin with. I was, but this has been analysed to death before, so I feel it was simply a matter of needing to acknowledge it, instead of putting focus on it. The third LNS example is just a necessary reminder and has nothing to do with the questions I've raised in the text above.