Why can't I role play in an RPG?

Technopium

So, I tried making a charcter that I would enjoy, you know "play how you want" they say...

However, my charcter doesnt fit the Healer/DPS/Tank ... Because I did a Mag Templar with heavy armor who like to use Bows and Two handed weapons...

So thats my charcter (play how you want)... Well maybe in single player, but in a dungeon with others, they would kick me, make fun of me, or just saw I suck...

So, therefor this is not an RPG... we're just playing ROLES that Zenimax is forcing us to play...

FIX:

Add ANOTHER role for dungeons and call it JackOfAllTrade or MERCENARY or something... so we done HAVE TO follow a meta or Role...

ROLE playing does not mean "ROLE" as in Healer/dps/tank .... It is supposed to mean "PLAY HOW YOU WANT"...

Just my 2 cents... had time anyway since they put me in a BUGGED dungeon and when I left the group got a stupid large waiting penalty of 13 minutes...

AcadianPaladin

I get around that by mostly playing solo. There are tons of soloists in ESO and the game overall is pretty solo-friendly.

Another thought if you enjoy playing with others might be to find a social guild that enjoys going through easier normal dungeons without worrying about how efficient/effective they are as long as they make it through.

One final thought is that, with time and practice, almost any build can get pretty good. Much of it is player skill and experience. My bow/bow sorceress can do some amazing things that we never could have dreamed of a couple years ago. Same with my Bosmeri mages.

Nairinhe

You can play how you want. I've slapped destro on my stamblade, swapped sets and had a blast in normals with my BF.

Roleplaying and PVE are different activities and, while you can do PVE with your RP buddies, taking your RP build to PVEers will most likely mean they'd have to carry you. I wouldn't mind to carry someone, but I think it's impolite to knowingly inconvenience other players.

That said, I've heard there can be viable hybrids. Not optimal, but good enough for a PUG.

iksde

I really like how group finer was done in gw2
we had different bookmarks on any activity and any type activity
it was split for open world, raids, dung and ofc for RP's

here you could list your own group in which category you wanted and add description to this for what, for who you are looking and so you wont get group with randoms who wouldn't care for you, if someone might join you they for sure would be up for you want because you set up this in description of your group

or you would be able to join to group of RP's and all would be happy without annyoing anyone and be annoyed by anyone because people wont come to your group if they wont be interesed with what was listed for this group

Conduit0

Adding a non-trinary role to the dungeon finder isn't going to help. If your "play how you want" character can't hold their own in dungeons and is generally a detriment to groups no one is going to want to play with you. When you join a group you are expected to be able to carry your own weight, if you can't do that and still "play how you want" then you should stick to solo content or get friends to carry you.

VaranisArano

No offense, but unless your "Jack of all trades" or Mercenary can do decent DPS, its basically just another name for a bad Damage Dealer.

That's also not what "play the way you like" means. When ZOS last talked about it, they said: One of our mantras for ESO is "play the way you want," and in this case, it means any class can fulfill any role (tank, dps, support/healer)....our goal is for every class to be viable, not necessarily optimal, in any role without heavily relying on non-class skill lines."
https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/57025


So its clear that ZOS expects you to play a role when you queue up for group content like Dungeons, and that "play the way you like" means your Templar should be viable as tank, healer, or DD with a decent build, rather than being locked into a single role like Healer.

It doesn't mean that you can take a heavy armored Magplar wielding stamina-based weapons into a dungeon and expect to do great DPS. Unless, like, you've actually practiced and you do great DPS, in which case your groups shouldn't be complaining.

Aurielle

Technopium wrote: »

So, I tried making a charcter that I would enjoy, you know "play how you want" they say...

However, my charcter doesnt fit the Healer/DPS/Tank ... Because I did a Mag Templar with heavy armor who like to use Bows and Two handed weapons...

So thats my charcter (play how you want)... Well maybe in single player, but in a dungeon with others, they would kick me, make fun of me, or just saw I suck...

So, therefor this is not an RPG... we're just playing ROLES that Zenimax is forcing us to play...

FIX:

Add ANOTHER role for dungeons and call it JackOfAllTrade or MERCENARY or something... so we done HAVE TO follow a meta or Role...

ROLE playing does not mean "ROLE" as in Healer/dps/tank .... It is supposed to mean "PLAY HOW YOU WANT"...

Just my 2 cents... had time anyway since they put me in a BUGGED dungeon and when I left the group got a stupid large waiting penalty of 13 minutes...

You’re correct: this isn’t an RPG, it’s an MMORPG. Since MMORPGs will always be populated with individuals who will find the most effective gear/class/race combinations and set the meta for group game content, you cannot expect a Skyrim-esque RPG experience while completing group content.

If you want to play as a heavy armour wearing mag/stam hybrid Templar, you are welcome to. You might have to stick to Public Dungeons or form groups with like-minded people who don’t care if they can only complete the dungeon at a snail’s pace, though.

kargen27

Find a fun social guild. One of the guilds I am in have tried naked trial runs and all kinds of other stuff. Should be plenty of people that are willing to run a dungeon with your character.
Your character shouldn't want to be around characters that refuse to accept him/her anyway.

Hapexamendios

On your own you can do as you please. In a random dungeon you can't expect everyone to be accepting of that especially when you can't fulfill the assigned rolls. That's just selfish imo. Finding a group of like minded people is your best option.

precambria

You are playing how you want, that does not mean other people have to respond how you want them to....... if you RP as something which sucks, expect the world to respond in turn.

redspecter23

Play how you want, but don't expect to be optimal or even passable if you don't at least try to work with the mechanics a bit.

Adding another role won't help. Others have said it, but I'll repeat it. Regardless of what you call the other role, you'll be expected to perform. If you don't, it won't matter what you call it.

Try to find a group of like minded people and run with them rather than expect pugs to want to carry a roleplayer in content they aren't prepared for. I guarantee there are people that choose to roleplay through dungeons and you'll have a much better time with them than group finder. This applies to all playstyles. Try to find others that enjoy playing the way you do and it just becomes better for everyone.

Fennwitty

Find an RP guild. That's your best option.

Eedat

There are a ton of RPing guilds. I would suggest you link up with some like minded people if you want to do group content. You need to realize that group content is just that. Group. Therefore it's not about just yourself. If you want to do wacky inefficient stuff thats perfectly fine.It's not anyone else's responsibility to pick up your slack though. Find people who agree to those terms ahead of time.

Dracane

That would do what?
Now, it takes people a moment to realize the folly unfolding before them.
If they add a mercenary role, you brandmark yourself. That is like saying "Hello, I am not that useful, please just endure it."

So they could immediately vote for kick.
I see plenty of subordinate people using questionable setups in dungeons. We silently amuse ourselves and that is it. We just carry them along and good.

Of course, you should not join some very serious DLC dungeon and expect people to be fine with your 5k dps. But other than that, I can not imagine people being that problematic towards roleplay builds. Actually, even I play a roleplaying build as a tank that has nothing to do with any normal tank build and I clear all veteran trials and dungeons with it as a main tank.

Dracane

VaranisArano wrote: »

It doesn't mean that you can take a heavy armored Magplar wielding stamina-based weapons into a dungeon and expect to do great DPS. Unless, like, you've actually practiced and you do great DPS, in which case your groups shouldn't be complaining.

This is another point. I can understand that you would want your templar to be dressed in heavy armor. But why don't you use light armor for the stats and use the very expansive transmog system we have? It is about the looks, is it not? So just wearing actual heavy armor as a DD for the sake of it, does not make any sense to me when you can make your armor look and feel like the type you want.

AlnilamE

If you want to wield a bow and a 2-hander, why are you a Magicka Templar? Which skills do you need as Magicka that you can't use the stamina version? Stamplars are super fun!

And have you considered using the outfit system to hide the armor you are wearing and making it look heavy, even though it's not?

Or, if you want to continue as you are, have you considered adding Sword and Shield as a 3rd weapon and use that in dungeons to tank?

Dysprosium

Question-- why does where your attribute points get invested have anything to do in your role play?


As far as the armor--- the nice thing is - with outfits you can wear light armor and look like you're wearing heavy- so if you're wearing it for the look then you can, while still getting the passive bonus for light.

ExistingRug61

In the context of dungeons, its not so much that ZOS is forcing us into specialised roles, its that generally speaking building specialised characters is the most efficient way to complete content, ie: having dedicated dps and healers achieves better total dps and hps then having a bunch of jack of all trade dps/healers. As such then general idea of tank+healer+2xdps provides a generally solid composition to complete content. If there was another role added, I'm not sure how the looking for group tool would work to form groups with that role, unless as others have raised it simply treats the new role as a "bad" dps, or make it from groups of 4 of this new role (which potentially leaves you with a group composition that may not be suitable to complete content).

Rather, I would instead suggest either doing as others have suggested and find others willing to play in the same way and make your own groups, or, decide if you think your "character/build" concept can be adapted/optimised so that it can adequately fill one of the normal roles (most likely as a dps). In my experience it doesn't have to be the best, just viable, and most players are happy to let you do your thing. I say this as a player who doesn't has spent most of their PvE time using things like magblades with DW or other PvP characters as I don't really have any endgame PvE optimised characters.

If you do want to do this, say to improve the builds performance at a specific role, ie: dps, while still keep the overall character concept and playstyle, then perhaps there are some things you could change to help. But, feel free to totally disregard these if they don't fit how you want to play, as I am aware they may no longer fit what you want. Suiting what you want for the character is the most important.

- If your character concept involves heavy armour, is this because you must wear heavy armour, or do you simply want to "look" heavily armoured. If the latter then perhaps using the outfit system to give the appearance of heavy armour while actually using a more suitable armour type may help increase damage.

- Depending on how your build works in terms of skills used and gear availability and flexibility, there are a couple of approaches that I would be looking at:
1) If you are using stamina weapon skills in conjunction with magicka templar skills, then you would need to look at building as a true hybrid, so sets like Pelinals, Shacklebreaker, New Moon etc with tri glyphs and tri jewellery glyphs are things to consider. CP will be a bit harder as you have to split between mag and physical, but at least the way diminishing returns work mean its not as bad as it could be.
2) If you are simply using 2H and bow for how they look, but then all magicka skills, building full mag, while obviously not optimal with these weapons, should still be somewhat viable especially now light attacks and heavy attacks scale with highest stat. You only really lose out on light attacks being the other damage type so not benefitting from the same pen and CP as all the skills, and your weapon passives don't support your abilities as much as they could (although 2H sword at least is something). The biggest issue with this strategy would be magicka sustain, as you can't restore it by heavy attacking.

The second approach is similar to what I personally do on my "main" (dw/resto or dw/destro magblade) and it seems to get by (although I guess I have the advantage of still having a magicka returning heavy attack on that). Sure it gets some questions and its not like I am doing vet trials or anything with it, but its enough to pull my weight in the PvE content I do and as long as its doing that other players seen happy enough.

idk

Play as you want has never meant every possible build would be good. The build described pretty much goes against every aspect of the design of the game.

Years ago, in a casual guild, we had a player that liked his builds but they were notably weak. Fights took much longer when he was in the group.

The point is, you might find some people in-game that will deal with the lighter DPS, but with strangers, I would not expect them to be as forgiving all the time.

Thechuckage

Solo - play however you want.

Group - understand you are working with other players who have their own goals (not yours necessarily) and dont want to carry deadweight.

Seriously, once you mentioned dungeons, any point you might have been making flew straight out the window.

Danikat

Find an RP or casual, social guild and do dungeons with them.

I've been assured multiple times by my guilds that unless it will affect an achievement someone wants to get it doesn't matter what you bring into dungeons in guild groups, especially on normal mode. I've used my warden DD/healer when she was level 22 and equipped with random drops and whatever skills I needed to level up, my weird hybrid stealth templar, and when I mentioned in guild chat that I don't understand tanking and I'm not sure how to learn while levelling my DK tank I got "We need a tank, wanna come and see what happens?"

These runs either include 1 or more people who could probably solo the dungeon and so aren't worried about the rest of the group performing perfectly, or they're made up of people who aren't looking for a quick or easy run, they just want to do the dungeon informally with guild mates and see what happens. I've never done one where we didn't finish but I've done several where we died at some point and had to try again, where we wandered off in the wrong direction and got lost, someone fell off a cliff, we spent ages looking for treasure chests or whatever. It's a very different experience to the 'get in and out as fast as possible' attitude you tend to get using the dungeon finder and IMO more fun even if you are using a 'sensible' build.

Having said that during the Undaunted event I've also tried using my weird hybrid templar with no CP equipped in normal mode dungeons through the dungeon finder and so far I haven't been kicked from a group. I've got no idea what builds other people have been using and no one's asked about or commented on mine (in most runs no one speaks at all ) so you probably could even do dungeons that way without trouble.

Olupajmibanan

Dungeons and Trials are a PvE activity and RPing does not belong there. The exact same case are Cyro, IC and BGs as these are a PvP activities and RPing does not belong there as well. For RPing, there is overland content which is specifically adapted to casual gameplay or RPing in terms of difficulty.

Don't get me wrong, but if you enter winter olympics in a swimsuit, you wouldn't be welcome as well.

This is what "play as you want" motto means. No matter what way you choose or what build you come up with (be it heavy magicka templar with bow and a 2H), there is still content where you fit. But instead of enjoying parts of the game that are made for your playstyle, you complain about those parts that are designed for different kind of players.

WiseSky

If I Can PUG as a Tank with no Taunt, no weapons only using fists. Anything is possible.

Kiralyn2000

Because it's an MMO, not an RPG?



...snd many CRPGs I've played that are actual RPGs, you can't "play how you want", either - there may be plenty of choice-n-consequence, decisions to make, conversations to define your character (you know, role-playing?), but if you make a bad build you'll be stuck unable to progress past combat & skill checks.

vestahls

lol They promise you can play how you want, but they don't promise you'll enjoy it. Fake MMORPG.

Best chance is to find a guild, like others have said. Maybe not a straight up RP guild, as those can be more demanding than regular guilds in their own way, but find like-minded people. Granted they're... few and far between.

I've also started to adapt my build to be more like what I enjoy, rather than following the meta, but this is after years of playing the game, and having all the necessary buff foods and potions to compensate for the lack of DPS or whatever, in case I want to run with a group as an RP DPS.

Typically, if I sign up for a normal PUG, I usually play healer, but can play my RP build if I feel like it, but for vet I go for the meta. I don't do either very often though. Solo is the way.

Sandman929

Even in a solo RPG you can make something that absolutely doesn't work. If the challenges of a game can be overcome using anything, the game isn't challenging.

Muttsmutt

another day, another "why is my off-meta character not as good as meta characters?" thread...
is your enjoyment directly linked to your min-max performance by game standards?
then follow the meta.
do you legitimately want to roleplay?
then do it.

any build can work when it has a clear goal in mind.
not good at making builds?
ask for help.

oh also weaving. yea that one's set in stone.
a hodgepodge build can pull 20k with good weaving.
20k is more than you'll find in most LFG groups.

Cirantille

I dont get why would you trouble yourself on purpose.

If you want to wear heavy armour you can with outfit system, it will look like heavy armour.

If you want to use two handed, you can put skill point into stamina, you still use some magicka abilities on stamplar.

Every class has a few magicka buff etc skill you use in stamina version

VaranisArano

Sandman929 wrote: »

Even in a solo RPG you can make something that absolutely doesn't work.

Yep.

Kiralyn2000

Also, just because they say "play how you want", that doesn't guarantee that you can play all the content that way.

Like - you have a lot more freedom to play however in questing, but if you want to play top-end leaderboard-chasing Vet content, you have a lot less freedom.... except for the fact that choosing to play that content or not, is exercising your freedom to "play how you want" as well.

BXR_Lonestar

Technopium wrote: »

So, I tried making a charcter that I would enjoy, you know "play how you want" they say...

However, my charcter doesnt fit the Healer/DPS/Tank ... Because I did a Mag Templar with heavy armor who like to use Bows and Two handed weapons...

So thats my charcter (play how you want)... Well maybe in single player, but in a dungeon with others, they would kick me, make fun of me, or just saw I suck...

So, therefor this is not an RPG... we're just playing ROLES that Zenimax is forcing us to play...

FIX:

Add ANOTHER role for dungeons and call it JackOfAllTrade or MERCENARY or something... so we done HAVE TO follow a meta or Role...

ROLE playing does not mean "ROLE" as in Healer/dps/tank .... It is supposed to mean "PLAY HOW YOU WANT"...

Just my 2 cents... had time anyway since they put me in a BUGGED dungeon and when I left the group got a stupid large waiting penalty of 13 minutes...

"Play how you want" doesn't translate to play any content at any level how you want. You can play how you want with the storyline and the overland content for sure and get away with it, but when the difficulty ramps up, only the most efficient builds will be able to get through the hardest content. If your a DPS, you need to do your role well. Ditto tank or healer. A jack of all trades is simply a master of none, meaning that when the difficulty ramps up, your not able to do your job. That means that the other three people in your group are working harder than they should be, because they're effectively three-manning content designed for four players. You have to understand how irritating it is to be playing a team activity and one of your teammates is unable to contribute in a meaningful way.

The simple truth is that if you want to play higher difficulty content, the best way you can help any team out there (even if you are Pugging) is to lean into one of the three roles.