Well, I can't speak to the level 30 versus level 50 thing, since my angle on levels mattering doesn't have much to say on that. If you have the backstory that you're a ninja and you have levels in the class, then you are what you say you are and let's go from there. I'm not going to look at the relative levels and say, "welp, you're a trainee and he's the expert, 'cause he's got 20 levels on you." In a relative way with nothing else in consideration, sure, he might be somewhat more skilled when judging by level alone. I can't stress enough how, for me at least, level is but one of several elements in determining plausibility, and it's not even the most important one.
L'yhta often wears clothes that you wouldn't associate with someone of her level of power. I fully expect people to respond differently to her when she's in a hempen camise and spring skirt with no visible weapon than when she's decked out in her combat outfit, with high Allagan jewelry, a cashmere robe, and a staff that glows like a shooting star. Likewise, she reacts differently to people based on their clothes, too.
Again, for me -- and I sure don't speak for anyone other than myself -- the snap judgment involving character level is in the absence of any other information. If I don't know anything about your character, and we've never RPed, and the first thing you do is come up and threaten to smash L'yhta's face in, I have exactly two things I can work from to inform how she reacts: your appearance and your character level. The first is obvious and the second I finesse on the basis of "hey, she's a skilled adventurer, she can get a read on threats based on how they carry themselves." (Again, I'm excluding other sources of information, such as you emoting that you explicitly try to act less tough than you are.) If you're decked out in awesome gear and are level 50, she's going to react rather differently than if you're in hempen gear and are level 1. Note that nowhere in here does she know class or level in any way as an IC thing.
So, in the example given, L'yhta's snap judgment is going to go along the lines of, "this person is a fairly skilled combatant who's currently unarmed and unarmored." Where things go from there depend on what she's wearing and doing, her mood, and so on. It also depends on the emote, but for a person who's clearly attempting to RP and doing so within the bounds of their level, I'd generally offer at least the courtesy of an OOC tell asking what's up and where they're planning on going with this. I would presume if we were actually going to get into a fight, there'd be some OOC discussion about that first, too -- what the intended outcome is and how we plan to resolve it, for instance.
Now, again, I'm speaking of a fairly specific situation in open RP (albeit one that is sadly fairly common -- if not so much in XIV at least, since we're awesome ). If we're talking about RP in general, it's all about plausibility. Level is but one of many factors of plausibility -- there's compatibility with lore, sensibility of story, proportionality of responses, the Three Thing Rule, how well a character concept fits together with itself, and so on. I realize not everyone includes level in their factoring of plausibility, and that's fine. Rarely do I find that it overrides other considerations, since there's usually something else wrong when it comes to plausibility when a person wants to call down meteors or instantly chop limbs off.
I'm not a big fan of "how well do they RP" as the final determiner of plausibility, since I've seen some talented writers write some extremely unbalanced characters and get unhappy when they don't get to win all the time. Like I said, for me, plausibility is made up of a lot of different things. Level just happens to be one of them. So, to answer your final question, I never use role-play skill as the singular measure of the power allocable to a character, unless you're wrapping up everything I put into the plausibility bucket under that banner.
Also, I want to say that I've never once in XIV actually had the situation of the low level character in starting gear getting in my face with threats and claims of superiority. That sort of behavior seems to be reserved for Certain Other MMOs, though I may just not see it as much since I don't typically RP in the big hotspots for IC reasons.
(06-29-2015, 10:46 AM)Glioca Sargonnai Wrote: Further, Freelance, I don’t think that just a look (at someone’s character level) can be a good judge. Glioca, for example, carries herself very nonchalantly, and looking at her, people would have a hard time thinking she was a swordswoman who also used conjury to supplement herself as she fought. She’s usually in pants and a loose top, and rarely wears full plate, the closest she's come is now that she's in armor plated boots, but cloth everything else. She looks more like a bum/pirate right now than she does a skilled paladin, but that’s precisely what her character levels say she is.Â
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Her character levels also no longer reflect that she’s more skilled in conjury than she is with sword fighting. How would you gauge that disparity just by looking at my cumulative character levels? Would your character assume she’s a better swordswoman than anything else? If (huge if) we got into a fight,would you decry me using conjury one-handed, as she often does, with her rune-covered sword as a kind of focus to cast? Would using more than one set of skills be considered god-moding?  At what point do we cease to look at character levels and look solely at someone's role-play skill as a gauge of how powerful they are?  Are we all just too bitter because of past experiences, and letting those experiences cloud our judgments a players, and therefore shut ourselves out of potential interactions that could be fun just because someone doesn't 'measure up' on an OOC level?
L'yhta often wears clothes that you wouldn't associate with someone of her level of power. I fully expect people to respond differently to her when she's in a hempen camise and spring skirt with no visible weapon than when she's decked out in her combat outfit, with high Allagan jewelry, a cashmere robe, and a staff that glows like a shooting star. Likewise, she reacts differently to people based on their clothes, too.
Again, for me -- and I sure don't speak for anyone other than myself -- the snap judgment involving character level is in the absence of any other information. If I don't know anything about your character, and we've never RPed, and the first thing you do is come up and threaten to smash L'yhta's face in, I have exactly two things I can work from to inform how she reacts: your appearance and your character level. The first is obvious and the second I finesse on the basis of "hey, she's a skilled adventurer, she can get a read on threats based on how they carry themselves." (Again, I'm excluding other sources of information, such as you emoting that you explicitly try to act less tough than you are.) If you're decked out in awesome gear and are level 50, she's going to react rather differently than if you're in hempen gear and are level 1. Note that nowhere in here does she know class or level in any way as an IC thing.
So, in the example given, L'yhta's snap judgment is going to go along the lines of, "this person is a fairly skilled combatant who's currently unarmed and unarmored." Where things go from there depend on what she's wearing and doing, her mood, and so on. It also depends on the emote, but for a person who's clearly attempting to RP and doing so within the bounds of their level, I'd generally offer at least the courtesy of an OOC tell asking what's up and where they're planning on going with this. I would presume if we were actually going to get into a fight, there'd be some OOC discussion about that first, too -- what the intended outcome is and how we plan to resolve it, for instance.
Now, again, I'm speaking of a fairly specific situation in open RP (albeit one that is sadly fairly common -- if not so much in XIV at least, since we're awesome ). If we're talking about RP in general, it's all about plausibility. Level is but one of many factors of plausibility -- there's compatibility with lore, sensibility of story, proportionality of responses, the Three Thing Rule, how well a character concept fits together with itself, and so on. I realize not everyone includes level in their factoring of plausibility, and that's fine. Rarely do I find that it overrides other considerations, since there's usually something else wrong when it comes to plausibility when a person wants to call down meteors or instantly chop limbs off.
I'm not a big fan of "how well do they RP" as the final determiner of plausibility, since I've seen some talented writers write some extremely unbalanced characters and get unhappy when they don't get to win all the time. Like I said, for me, plausibility is made up of a lot of different things. Level just happens to be one of them. So, to answer your final question, I never use role-play skill as the singular measure of the power allocable to a character, unless you're wrapping up everything I put into the plausibility bucket under that banner.
Also, I want to say that I've never once in XIV actually had the situation of the low level character in starting gear getting in my face with threats and claims of superiority. That sort of behavior seems to be reserved for Certain Other MMOs, though I may just not see it as much since I don't typically RP in the big hotspots for IC reasons.
The Freelance Wizard
Quality RP at low, low prices!
((about me | about L'yhta Mahre | L'yhta's desk | about Mysterium, the Ivory Tower: a heavy RP society of mages))
Quality RP at low, low prices!
((about me | about L'yhta Mahre | L'yhta's desk | about Mysterium, the Ivory Tower: a heavy RP society of mages))