Is attempting to Role Play that common?

Mintaka5

I tried role playing once...

As awkward as the creepy neighbor next door watching me swim in my pool when I was a kid.

kadochka

Hey @SantieClaws, I think I may had gotten an idea for a character?
So, ahem, I mayormaynot have found a couple copies of the LAM in-game while thinking about this.. and I thought it would be funny if I made, say.. a Breton male, with his personality being that he flirts with pretty much everyone (perhaps of both genders). Mainly cause I like to mess with my characters.. also, he could be a vamp?! And maybe a drinker..
I have all of Leila's info and pictures saved, so she'll still exist. She, however, no longer exists as a slot in my game. Rest in peace, dearie; I'll see you in your stories!
So think I'm ready to make a new char.. just need to pick a class and name!
Nightblade fits best, but is kind of unoriginal... I don't wanna do a DK or Templar, cause fire and (holy) sunlight. So.. I'd like Sorc or NB.. Gotta think of this from a story perspective, too.
edit: I have a magsorc... but no magblades! NB it is, I guess... I'll update with new info in a bit~
edit 2: His name is Aiden Frindiil, made him a NB. I may have leaned too much on the, uh, 'hot vampire' personality, but... need to go get a vamp bite now!

tamburello7

I think there's a definite handicap for people who want to roleplay consistently. Even if you don't stay in character the entire time you're in chat, just creating a character with a personality and back story is hard. The game is mostly easy to do solo, but in certain areas (ahem, Craglorn) you can't do PVE solo. Grouping is what people naturally fall into after a certain level, and if you're in a guild, that's all anyone wants to do. Unfortunately, I find it very rare (I've yet to find any actually. People say they will, but when it comes to actually doing it they have better things to do) for people who do dungeons or group PVE to actually stop and listen to questgivers, ask the questions that flesh out the story, and consider decisions based on what their character would think. I've done a handful of dungeons with activity finder and I couldn't tell you anything about the quest involved in any of them. As a healer, I had to chase my group the entire time, every time. It mystifies me really, because in my mind, that's the only way the game is enjoyable. Seeking achievement after achievement seems hollow and more like work. Stories are the thing that makes ESO fun. It shouldn't be a mad scramble to get to the end of the dungeon and sell your loot, and yet, that's what it seems like EVERYONE does. I wouldn't mind it if the same content could be soloed, but it can't (ahem, trials). I imagine there are others like me out there, but we seem to be scattered enough that it's hard to find each other. Limiting myself to solo content is going to get old quick.

Ansuzgardaraivo

@tamburello7
Isn’t that the case in most multiplayer games? Everyone is just RUSHING all the time and I just hate it. That’t why I never play any multiplayer game with random players.
Either I know you and I know we are both looking for a same game experience or I’d rather play with bots or solo.

Arunei

RP is getting harder and harder to find in ESO if you're like me and don't want to go to what's pretty much the only reliable place for RP, that being the Withered Tree in Riften. Housing is partly responsible for it, as people prefer to do their RP in places where trolls can't interrupt, but imo the biggest nail in the coffin for RP in ESO is how 1T introduced more instances. These days it's next to impossible to find RP outside the Tree; you generally need to have someone in one of your guilds or on your friends list you can TP to for a populated instance in other places.

That being said, if anyone wants to RP, I'm on PC-NA, though I can do stuff on Discord too. My signature contains very brief and vague outlines of the various characters I have, though some of them I don't really RP with or have only done IC stuff with them a few times. Anyone who's interested in asking questions or setting something up or anything really is free to PM me, either here or in-game. I'm always down to help people out who want to try RP or have questions, and meeting new people is fun .

Sylianwe

I love to roleplay. Though I must admit, it can sometimes be rather challenging to do so in a fast paced environment.

Feel free to add me for some tavern stories and adventurous encounters~

Platform: Xbox One
Server: EU
GT: Sylia Noctis

kadochka

Malfoy wrote: »

As a noble Dunmer, I can assure all visitors of an excellent time visiting my tavern - once it is finished.
Being a Vampyre and feared by most doesn't pay very well, regretfully.

You can find me as my alias GT MalekithMalfoy.

Free ale and sweetrolls for all!

Aw, wish I was on your platform..

Iccotak

I try to stay in character in general. This includes Discord adventuring together
If I want to roll dice then I will play tabletop D&D

StormChaser3000

I guess my RP is limited only to asking "Are you ready, mortal?" when I turn people into vamps by the shrine xD

Overall I'm curious to try it, but so far all RP I saw ingame (at taverns) was dreadfully boring. I can't read that stuff for more than 5 mins since I start yawning. That keeps me away from RP guilds and RP overall.

adriant1978

StormChaser3000 wrote: »

I guess my RP is limited only to asking "Are you ready, mortal?" when I turn people into vamps by the shrine xD

I once had someone whisper "bite me, my lady, I desire to share your dark gift" to my character when I was loitering at the shrine, and then bow after I'd done the deed.

I don't RP myself but it made a nice change from "u got bite".

LuciusOctavio

Nice topic,

Its hard to Roleplay 100%, there will always be something to break immersion. What I do with my Roleplay is extend it outside of the game, I built up a FB page, I built a webpage and my FB account is my character from ESO. I reply often, I help as much as possible to build my characters identity. So they actually exist.

Then its all about Story, have to have an incredible story to back your character. Thankfully ES has the perfect canvas for fan fiction stories. Potential is unlimited, a lot of ES stories have come from our own history.

I built a guild in game, callled The Holy Order of Arkay, its purpose is to rid Nirn of Necromancy, maintain Tombs through sanctification and establish Chapels all over Tamriel. Its the Parochial order of Arkay, I felt the priests needed more love in ESO as they seem a little asthetic.

https://breathofarkay.wixsite.com/hoa2332

https://facebook.com/hoa2332/

LadySinflower

I don't think my imagination is that good. ZoS has made up all of these quests for us to do and each one involves a story. If you're not doing quests you really can't physically (have your character) interact with many objects in the world. So you'd need other people to think up scenarios that you could go through without interacting with any of the NPCs or objects. And you have to go outside the existing storylines. Then you just end up standing around somewhere typing at each other, because it's nearly impossible to move around and type at the same time. I applaud anyone with the patience and imagination to do this.

LadySinflower

xAk_MoRRoWiNdx wrote: »

You can always NOT go into area chat and turn it off........
And you don't see the countless names along the vein of "sylvanas windstrider" and "blah blah blah targaryan" "Connor of Northern Shadows" or whatever? I'd say those are definitely RP'ers.....

Not necessarily true. My character has a lore-friendly first and last name that I picked from a name generator for her race. I don't RP any more than to do the quests in the game. She doesn't act a certain way based on a set of beliefs or a past I made up. She just finds out what the quest giver wants, goes, and does it. I give it no further thought than that. Just because I chose a fully-fleshed name for her doesn't mean I RP.

Gretzel

I've been roleplaying for 15 years and gotta say its mainly on PC. A lot of casual RPers give us a bad name by either being hyper-vanilla (just sitting around in a social setting and doing normal every day things in a fantasy setting where you could be anyone) or the other way around where XxXdarkSasukeXxX wants to be a demon warlord with cringy powers. You have to dig around to find good roleplay. Not enough great roleplayers out there.

Chadak

Gretzel wrote: »

I've been roleplaying for 15 years and gotta say its mainly on PC. A lot of casual RPers give us a bad name by either being hyper-vanilla (just sitting around in a social setting and doing normal every day things in a fantasy setting where you could be anyone) or the other way around where XxXdarkSasukeXxX wants to be a demon warlord with cringy powers. You have to dig around to find good roleplay. Not enough great roleplayers out there.

I seriously wish I could find RPers that enjoy the Elder Scrolls setting here in ESO.

All I ever find are the hyper-vanillas you mentioned that want to play commoners in towns and mostly spend their days patting themselves on the back for being superior to all other RPers because they 'don't need the crutches of being powerful to make great characters'.

I swear to god, if you want to play a normal adventurer that's good at what they do, half the RPers I manage to find will shun you and give you lectures about how your character is 'godmod' and 'overpowered' because you RP your mage being able to cast a Levitate spell or not collapse and need to be doted on for three RL days after casting anything at all.

Just today I had some joker try to tell me that one of my characters is 'extremely overpowered' because I RP him having a house and several million gold because he's a very successful commodities merchant as well as a reasonably powerful mage that can do ungodly gamebreaking RP-destroying things like cast a Levitate spell and TELEPORT TO LOCATIONS HE'S MARKED BEFOREHAND!

So yeah. If you're looking for RPers in ESO, OP, be prepared to have to wade through a lot of emotionally broken fools that hate Elder Scrolls but think they're the Lore Police, and that simultaneously condemn everyone that dares to play a character that's anything other than a psychologically damaged peasant with severe learning disabilities and a bizarre incapacity to function in the world they live in.

If you want to be their favorite person, play a sickly but perky bosmer that plays heartwarming pranks and can't walk straight without tripping. She will actually be gender fluid and you will be required to have her sustain a severe injury every time she leaves the safety of the town, which will require at least three or four other people to go on bizarre quests for weird plants to heal her because she's also apparently cursed and can't heal unless some moss blessed by Azura is used as her poultice. You will also be required to RP her being pregnant at some point (with twins) and she will be obligated to choose between giving birth to them and dying or losing them because she ran out of magic Azura moss and got injured-sick again.

Alternatively, play a sickly but wise argonian that can't hardly move or walk or do anything while constantly emoting about how old and decrepit they are and how sickly and gaunt they look. You need to make sure everyone knows exactly how sunken your watery, cloudy eyes are at all times.

If you really want to be treading thin ice, you may play a khajit thief, but they must have a heart of gold and be a stereotype, and they can't actually be very good at thievery. They should be RP'd as being extremely poor at all times and having no meaningful amount of intelligence or ambition to do anything except struggle forever with their skooma addiction and go on bizarre quests to fetch magic Azura moss for the sickly but perky bosmer.

thegreatme

There's also the matter of trying to have some kind of RP in public and having random trolls spend 30 minutes following you around heckling your group or jumping on tables to "dance seductively" while telling you your RP sucks and is boring because you're not ERPing, because apparently that's the only kind that counts, complete with ooc lists of lewd things they "think you should be doing". Yikes. Suffice to say my ignore list gets pretty long.

Then there's the other fun side, the 810+ CP PvP uh... "RPers" who just want to harass lower levels into dueling them for bragging rights and so they can go "look how much cooler and stronger my character is". You know, the ones who say "don't say your character can fight if you can't win a duel"?

I don't personally mind PvP Duels incorporated into RP, but I'm not out to just be someone's thinly veiled ego boost target either, and while I'm not out to play the "mega super saiyan blow up the whole world" OP character, game mechanics don't always support what a character is supposed to be able to do, and RP is more about story-telling than it is a... game mechanics measuring contest, to put it one way.

Arunei

@Chadak
Maaaaaan, you must not have ever gone to the Tree. The number of people there who actually DO godmode ridiculous characters, or play open Vamps/WW/Deadra/other socially unaccepted sort, rather than playing average people who happen to have skills and trades is astounding. In fact I haven't gone to that place in seven or so months now just because of how cringe it all became. Always some sort of drama, be it IC or OOC, going on out there too.

That being said, I have average characters like a bard and a healer, I have Vamps and adventurers, I have mercs. They all have their strengths and weaknesses to balance them. People who see a competent or established character as 'OP' are probably the ones also playing the super edgy all-powerful Vampire who orders blood from the tavern. Because, you know, Vampires aren't reviled and feared throughout Tamriel and generally considered KOS. Nope, it's 100% natural for a tavern to stock blood for Vamps.

@thegreatme
I never understood RP dueling. Just because my character might be able to win a PvP fight, or might NOT be able to, doesn't have any bearing on my character's actual combat prowess. OOC things like gear setup and CP have no bearing on my character's RP abilities. Just because I suck at PvP doesn't mean my character ICly sucks at fighting. People who equate OOC PvP and IC RP combat are those sorts who can't distinguish IC from OOC.

UppGRAYxDD

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Chadak

Arunei wrote: »

@Chadak
Maaaaaan, you must not have ever gone to the Tree. The number of people there who actually DO godmode ridiculous characters, or play open Vamps/WW/Deadra/other socially unaccepted sort, rather than playing average people who happen to have skills and trades is astounding. In fact I haven't gone to that place in seven or so months now just because of how cringe it all became. Always some sort of drama, be it IC or OOC, going on out there too.

That being said, I have average characters like a bard and a healer, I have Vamps and adventurers, I have mercs. They all have their strengths and weaknesses to balance them. People who see a competent or established character as 'OP' are probably the ones also playing the super edgy all-powerful Vampire who orders blood from the tavern. Because, you know, Vampires aren't reviled and feared throughout Tamriel and generally considered KOS. Nope, it's 100% natural for a tavern to stock blood for Vamps.

True enough. I haven't tried to do any RP there, mostly because I've heard that a lot of what you described congregates there and make people like me sad.

Arunei

It's frustrating, I'll tell ya. Even moreso because that place is practically the only hub you'll regularly find RP, since regardless of the shard you end up in, it'll usually be populated to some extent. It makes finding RP with new people really hard x__x.

thegreatme

Arunei wrote: »

@thegreatme
I never understood RP dueling. Just because my character might be able to win a PvP fight, or might NOT be able to, doesn't have any bearing on my character's actual combat prowess. OOC things like gear setup and CP have no bearing on my character's RP abilities. Just because I suck at PvP doesn't mean my character ICly sucks at fighting. People who equate OOC PvP and IC RP combat are those sorts who can't distinguish IC from OOC.

Yeah, and that's why I don't care too much for it. PvP dueling can be a fun thing to incorporate in. Can be. Doesn't mean it is. Like I said, game mechanics are sometimes far too limiting to what a character is supposed to be. I know it doesn't do my character justice ((especially when they keep nerfing my toon into the ground )).

Lot of PvPers that hang around Riften telling people not to RP characters who have skill if your game mechanics don't back it up. Which is completely idiotic.

Arunei

Sadly, 'completely idiotic' seems to be the main theme of things that happen in Riften in terms of RP in recent months, not just PvPers saying a character shouldn't be developed as a fighter if they can't win a duel.

felislykos

I'd like to get into RPing with people again. It's just finding the right places and people that seems to be an issue for me. Sometimes I sit in a tavern and wait to see if anyone will strike up a conversation with me

2Weenies

I'm a terrible "on-and-off" RPer, but I've always adored the Elder Scrolls lore and setting. I try my best to keep lore-friendly despite having a Khajiit Telvanni wizard who killed himself and returned as a lich just for advancing the field of study for magic and not take things too seriously. I don't do everything IC, but if I'm actually RPing with other folks or happen upon it, I immediately drop what I'm doing and jump IC to not mess things up. Also helps spice things up when a stuck-up, nosy Thalmor lady is judging you for public displays of affection while on the hunt for those that threaten the Dominion.

idk

I think the RP community in ESO is not very strong. There was a lot of interest before the game launched as Zos had stated they were building a system to strongly support RP by allowing them to flag themselves for RP and then the game would work to put them into the same instance.

However, weeks before the game launched Zos changed their mind and tossed what they were developing. While they said they would work on other aspects to help the RP community they never did. As a result Zos lost many prospective players at the game would no longer be RP friendly.

Of RPers from previous games that were interested in ESO only a few ended up trying the game and none stayed because Zos' decision which I think is the reason ESO lacks a robust RP community. No, I do not RP, but knew the community in previous games because some of my raiding friends RPed.

Grianasteri

I have been tentatively interested in RP for a while (been playing ESO for several years now), but never dipped my toe in.

I tend to already have story, a history, and idea in my mind for each of my characters (currently 12). So I am doing a little bit of my own RP for immersion purposes already. Sadly it seems console does not have as developed RP community to try it out.

Music getting blared down the mic is a regular annoyance. But I like to leave area voice on, because it can also be fun.

I've landed at a wayshrine before to find full blown dance parties taking place, with literally dozens of people dancing together around someone playing music. It was hilarious and great fun.

Also, I have performed an impromptu concert, playing my guitar over the mic for several songs, as a crowd gathered around to listen. I ended up with a couple of dozen folk listening. It was really rewarding, everyone was clapping and cheering when I stopped

TjPhysicist

tamburello7 wrote: »

I think there's a definite handicap for people who want to roleplay consistently. Even if you don't stay in character the entire time you're in chat, just creating a character with a personality and back story is hard. The game is mostly easy to do solo, but in certain areas (ahem, Craglorn) you can't do PVE solo. Grouping is what people naturally fall into after a certain level, and if you're in a guild, that's all anyone wants to do. Unfortunately, I find it very rare (I've yet to find any actually. People say they will, but when it comes to actually doing it they have better things to do) for people who do dungeons or group PVE to actually stop and listen to questgivers, ask the questions that flesh out the story, and consider decisions based on what their character would think. I've done a handful of dungeons with activity finder and I couldn't tell you anything about the quest involved in any of them. As a healer, I had to chase my group the entire time, every time. It mystifies me really, because in my mind, that's the only way the game is enjoyable. Seeking achievement after achievement seems hollow and more like work. Stories are the thing that makes ESO fun. It shouldn't be a mad scramble to get to the end of the dungeon and sell your loot, and yet, that's what it seems like EVERYONE does. I wouldn't mind it if the same content could be soloed, but it can't (ahem, trials). I imagine there are others like me out there, but we seem to be scattered enough that it's hard to find each other. Limiting myself to solo content is going to get old quick.

REALLY? One of the reasons I started playing MMOs like ESO (and SWTOR), moving away from WoW is the i find ESO, for example, lends itself SO MUCH better to roleplaying. Quests are actually interesting and even the minor ones are worth listening to. Mostly, it doesn't feel like a chore because everything is fully voiced so you're just listening to the guy talk..why skip over that?

I DO wish you could customize the quickslot emotes. I LOVE the actions but i wanna add a /s or a /yell to it. That, to me, is the one thing that's missing that i'd REALLY love. (p.s: if anyone knows an addon or smthg...). I'm on a PC but use controller to play.

I like what someone above said about Roleplaying at people who dont' expect it, lol. My current "main" was a follower of the dragon cult back in the late merethic era (so, in life - early nordic). While he didn't pledge himself to a specific dragon priest (not that he remembers, it's been a while), he did study necromancy and ultimately turned himself into a draugr, in service of the dragon lord - akatosh. After centuries in service of the dragon cult, and even more slumbering in tombs, he awoke at some point in the mid-late 1st era. He joined with the imperial army for a time, until the fall of the reman dynasty. Then wandered about and finally found himself in service of the aldmeri dominion. Mostly because he no longer trusts what has become of the Nords, the people who rebelled against the dragon priests and denounced the dragons as their gods. And still remembering the not-so-friendly nature of the early Ra-Gada, he is obviously no friends to the redguards. That being said, time has a way of tempering any passions, both love and hatred.

DrowElfMorwen

There is a RP group for Khajiiti I am part of--well, a social group that also has a weekly RP. And, I am part of a Saxhleel (Argonian) group that does the same thing, too!

Ithilis

You can also join Discord channel of a guild who does RP to look for roleplay if your guild slots are full.

Koldr

Yup, role playing seems to be in every mmorpg to some extent.