(03-21-2015, 04:46 PM)Meena Wrote: I will point out my observed experiences with roleplaying a Villain.I am one of those people who would be extremely hesitant to let anything bad happen to my character... in the hands of others. Why? Well maybe I'm a control freak. If I wanted to play a psychologically damaged person because of rape/torture/insert reason here, because I thought it would be interesting or fun to explore, then I would have rolled them that way, or contacted a villain character from the outset to plan a storyline.
The issues stemming from the villain side in FFXIV is that everyone I and my friends have roleplayed with - being it in kidnapping, torture etc has never accepted to letting anything bad happen to their character.
it is -very- difficult to be a villain when people are not willing to deal with the consequences of being a target but expect you to be subjected to their point of view. Hence why the whole 'rape, torture' thing exists, you might see that more often than not due to the constraints on most players.
For example when A few friends of mine were interrogating a law enforcement character they refused to let maiming, damage - psychologicla or physical mark their character in a permanent way.
The street goes both ways, and for villains? because we are the bad guy - people want us to lose no matter what.
If, however, I rolled an everyday person trying to overcome their past of slavery (just as an example) then I npc everything, and put it into their backstory. That way I can control what happened, how bad it was, and how it helped shape them into the person they are today. I am not interested in exploring themes of heavy, current, psychological trauma on this character, and in fact, to do so, would ruin my enjoyment of playing the character.
And thats a tricky thing in MMOs. I've had characters become broken, become uninteresting to play.... and just lose all their IC enjoyment due to interactions with others. Yet you've already put ALL this time into them OOCly... so now what? It can lead to frustration and burnout.
Typically, I don't get involved in villainous plots because it feels one of the two sides is going to leave feeling frustrated, and i'd not like to feel responsible for breaking someones character, just as I hope they wouldn't try to ruin the enjoyment I derive from playing mine.
Tl;dr: sometimes its just better to npc your characters antagonist (whether that antagonist be hero or villain) as a means of achieving your chracters goals, as pc vs pc clashes can create the bad kind of drama.
