Anime Tropes appearing in Roleplay

[DaveM]

I understand your emphatic and experienced-based rejection of the concept of prestige and anything like it.

But why would a simple -add-one-line-to-profiles- and picking one of four powerlevels cause harm?

(Not saying it's a brilliant idea, but would like to hear anlysis on why this is likely a bad addition)

In this system you could have an epic mage, a hero warrior and hero infiltrator, and a couple of others.

[Clovis]

Because Power Levels suck.

[Aadora]

So it's hard to want to make someone who is just "alright" at what they do, because these characters that have fought the Lich Kings armies, stormed the Citadel and fought to bring his downfall... suddenly can't even handle a single ghoul by themselves.

And what's the problem with that, exactly? Although there are better ways to resolve smaller-scale fights like duels, in my opinion, I think that rolling for combat events is both practical and, more often than not, thematically suitable. Looking at history, there have been poor soldiers, mediocre soldiers and good soldiers, but you'll find that the only really "great" soldiers seem to be the consistently lucky ones. Battles - especially the large, thrashing mêlées of the sort we often see in big combat events - are inherently chaotic and frenetic things. Armour can largely negate serious damage unless you get in a lucky hit. Hell, look at the Game of Thrones fight Xigo linked - Bronn only touched the guy with his sword three times, and one was a killing blow after the fight was won. The first two were lucky hits, and although Ser Vardis was obviously a skilled warrior, Bronn won because he fought dirty and got lucky.

Now transplant that scenario into a pitched battle of the sort you'd see in a big event. Skill and experience become meaningless because at the end of the day, if you or I went back in time, somehow snuck up on Bruce Lee back in his prime and smashed a brick over his head, I imagine Bruce Lee would still get knocked the frick out. In a battle, if you slip up, you're going to get cut, and if you get cut, you're probably going to bleed and die. You don't necessarily become a better fighter or a more worthy soldier by surviving a lot of battles. You're just luckier than the rest, and sometimes, your luck can run out. And I think luck is a hell of a lot more important than skill in that kind of situation, so if a ghoul gets a lucky hit in and you slip up, you're dinner. The Scourge wouldn't use them if they had no use other than to be sword buffers for dashing heroes.

Anyway, in case it wasn't clear, I think rolls represent this kind of chaos perfectly. It's why I love tabletop.

Edit: Thousandth post. Hot damn.

Well look at our fight last night. The rolls went pretty well with everything that was goin on. Voragh was doing really good at dodging and so was Crona, until slowly they got tired as the rolls got lower and lower, and they weren't dodging so much any more. And when it came Voragh had enough I rolled a 100 to finish him off.

That kind of thing makes sense, but let's say a gnome with a broken bottle is fighting a giant tauren in an entire suit of armor covering him from head to toe. The gnome is some guy who has been digging tunnels for a few years, only coming up for food, or water. His combat experience is next to none. The tauren has fought many times, including the entire war in Northrend. The Gnome goes to stab him with the bottle... rolls a 100. The Tauren thinks about just letting his armor take the hit? Rolls a 1 for defence... Apparently his armor shatters or something.

It's not about the skill that you would have in a chaotic battle, it's about the common sense that your very skilled warrior suddenly can't get a grip on how to fight, and takes hit after hit and misses time after time, to someone who just picked up a pitchfork they found nearby one day while farming.

And most of the time there isn't really chaos int he battles. It's like

*Line of enemies in front of you.*
*Throws a grenade at them*
*Apparently it's a dud...*

Next turn:

*Line of enemies still there.*
*Shoots at them*
*It pings off their armor*

They attack you:

*Farmer hits warrior with pitchfork*
*Warrior's armor shatters and he gets stabbed.*

Sometimes roll fights make sense but, in my opinion? That's not very often. Since I haven't seen any real chaotic battles. Especially with

ALL THE TALKING GOING ON.

You see, it ties together!


How could you have lost your skill because of chaos in battle, if you have the time to have a full conversation between strikes?

[Cressy]

I find it strange how power level/scale is always deemed necessary for playing a character.

[DaveM]

Everyone would have access to their epic, and to their heroes, but because not all characters can be those, such a system (overstatement to call it a system) would generate more situations with lesser characters thrown in the mix, more underdog situations. - would be my argument.

"It's strange", "It sucks", "It doesn't work", "It's bad", okay. Why?

[Harmonic]

I understand your emphatic and experienced-based rejection of the concept of prestige and anything like it.

But why would a simple -add-one-line-to-profiles- and picking one of four powerlevels cause harm?

(Not saying it's a brilliant idea, but would like to hear anlysis on why this is likely a bad addition)

In this system you could have an epic mage, a hero warrior and hero infiltrator, and a couple of others.

Because then you're adding mechanics that not everyone wants to apply to a character, and again would make it so that stated character has "advantages" over others, which again isn't what the system is for. If anything, this post points out that people aren't trying to be humble with the options they are presented.

Giving them actual numbers to work with only bolsters the "strength" of the character, meaning all they'd have to say to my Warrior, who has been training just as long as any prestige in -his- class, "I have a reason I could beat you, look at all my bonuses, this is why I have the upper hand."

Most people do -not- agree this is how it should be. I see prestige classes as more of an alternate class, that has it's own flaws and merits like any other class, without being -stronger-. A good example of this is how D&D handles special classes. To be able to use one, you still have some requirements to fulfill, however, when you do it doesn't mean you're going to be stronger than any of the previously existing classes, it just means you're changing your skill set.


Edit: This should answer your why, Dave. It "sucks" because noone wants to be told that their character doesn't have a fair chance, and for good reason... they -should- have a fair chance.

[Clovis]

"It's strange", "It sucks", "It doesn't work", "It's bad", okay. Why?

Because it divides people. Guess what? I won't lie. If I was about to have an RP fight or even just casual rp with a character who is 'a vastly higher power level' than me....I'd just ditch the rp. Yeah, I said it. I wouldn't want to RP with someone who 'out classes me' just because they have a note in their Character Profile saying "MY PENIS FOOT IS BIGGER THAN YOURS".

I've gone out of my way to avoid Prestige Characters in the past for the same reason.


*And yes, I know that's 'Not how it's supposed to work' with Prestiges, but honestly? It kind of was how it worked in practice. I the way things are now. A characters strength is merit based, and it should stay that way. Just smack around people who do all the silly stuff Xigo was talking about earlier.

Wow this thread got off topic.

[DaveM]

Except all players would have the same total number of "advantage". Just not all characters, to kill the trend of 10-badasses over-loading a situation.

It seems a lot of replies are incoming about the prestige system. I don't mean that.

I mean elite shadow-hunters and epic warriors being fine.

Edit: But I'm getting a strong feeling that "I won't RP with anyone that outclasses my guy" -is- the reason we have the spiral of powerlevel inflation.

[Harmonic]

You're missing the point. Again. Prestige DOES NOT MEAN it's a super-power class. It's not about how many a player can have, or if I have a prestige too, it's about how these classes -still- are beatable by any other class.

Edit: Really... Clovis said it best. Most of this is to avoid pissing matches that consumed the past.

[Anski]

Yes, it would cause harm, DaveM.

The harm would be wrought in a massive shift of unbalance. We have a very firm policy on not forcing people how to RP, which includes a standard rolling system. The concept is as simple as you put it, but the resounding effects will be a far reaching backlash on the staff and cause a schism between players. We threw away the prestige system on the major grounds of a single concept: All characters were created equal. I know for a solid fact that Grakor would not stand for any power level of characters, he shut down the previous system because of this. It is unfair to anyone to have one characters inherently stronger than their own. People may come to great disagreement with this, but it's the only way that this all can work. All of our remains of the prestige system are boiled down to 'variant' classes. The term variant meaning that they are not better or worse, but different than the standard eight classes given to us by Blizzard.

We do not take Death Knights as a stronger or better class, but that they are different. This contrasts with Blizzard's implementation that they are a Hero class, meant to be automatically better. We do not do this. Snap-regulating characters to be stronger or better FORCES you to make characters who could be incredible at one thing be inherently bad because you can't make them your epic character. When in a fight, any roleplay experience of getting better or training is out the window because the person you're fighting just decided to select epic for that character, and they will defeat you in roll combat, because that's the way it is. This stems from the problem that Prestige characters just made a few forum posts and were better than your character, no matter how long you've been playing them.

Players should simply learn humility in battle and be willing to accept defeat on the grounds of making a better story for all involved. I understand your heart is in the right place DaveM, but this is not such a huge problem that it warrants such a massive system change as such. It's just a topic that is getting posted in a lot based on a few observation. As I said before, it is a quick fix for a very minimal problem, and will end up causing such a rift between everyone that I myself won't really want to deal with all of that, nor will the rest of the staff, nor will anyone on the server itself.

I apologize if this post seems hostile, I don't mean it to be, i'm just listening to Marilyn Manson.

...

[Rosencrat]

Let's get off the topic of prestiges and get back to the main point of the post: Anime-esq fighting styles.

We have the variant system now. It's a good system that has worked, is working and will continue to work for the foreseeable future.

[DaveM]

If you insist that every character ever should be equal-odds beatable by any other character, then you -want- the phenomenon in the OP, since whenever -one- character in a situation ups the implied powerlevel, everyone else is almost automatically matching it. You're also insuring that there are no RP situations in which there actually is such a thing as differently-powered characters (unless between RPers who can trust each other with such).

Note: Explicit powerlevels actually has nothing to do with variants or prestige, but in fact exactly to OP fighting and the wider phenomenon of powerlevel inflation.

Edit: Posted without seeing Anski's reply.

[CappnRob]

I see your point, but I don't believe he's talking about one way of handling combat and violence being good and another way as being bad. He's talking about people behaving, and handling/representing violence, as though they're in a shounen anime when they're in a setting that actually has much more in common with GoT (and yes, I know the gulf of difference between high/low fantasy, but still). Look at the struggle, the suspense, the drama of the GoT scene, and then look at how the Naruto fight is essentially people trying to out-flash and out-wit one another. Yeah.

This discussion is all about how people approach the medium of Warcraft. I know the shounen vs. realistic fighting thing isn't an entirely perfect comparison, but I think that the fighting half of the argument roughly boils down to this kind of fighting:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch4rc5W4dKY[/youtube]

. . . being more in-tune with the game world, more preferable on this server, and more enjoyable to play out, than this kind of fighting:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaHSIPYN45E[/youtube]

Not ripping on Tales of the Past, btw, it's a great machinima, but . . . yeah. Fighting is a little too DBZ. (Of course, my argument loses a little of its edge when you consider that the Wrathgate video I posted above is still full of lore figures, almost by default more powerful than any of our PCs, but just look at the difference in how combat is handled in either video.)

I'm not sure how the size of something's budget or audience correlates with the level of realism in its combat, either, Rob.

Eh, I mayhaps worded my post badly. I don't disagree with Xigo's post, in fact, I agree with it (Tales of the Past is well made for a machinima but it's above and beyond the acceptable limits of stupidity for me), but rather how he framed his post. The problem isn't "anime tropes", because western stuff does it too, the problem is the fighting itself and how it's presented.

[Anski]

That's not what i'm saying whatsoever, before you assume such. Please re-read my post as you're missing the point, particularly about snap-regulation.

[Zhaei]

Spoiler:

I think we have all agreed on a point here.