(10-18-2013, 01:03 PM)Isis Wrote: What is the hesitation with playing a criminal mind, or any "baddy" for that matter?
The hesitance is that (1) some people just feel bad playing baddies! Real life morals come into play and make people go soft. (2) The (often justified) fear that people will blur IC with OOC. It's hard to be a dick to people IC when you sometimes get screamed at and outcast for it OOC even though any bad blood was only intended to be IC. (3) Bad guys are short-lived. Everyone wants to see them killed or imprisoned for their crimes. Eventually, your character will be thwarted. A lot of the white knights you mention have the mentality that the good guys should always win, and thus the villains are stopped long before they should be because the "heroes" will get upset OOC if the villain has the upperhand, will sometimes stoop to powerplaying and godmodding because they don't think the villains should ever win, etc. Villains don't last long before being forced to change, being killed, or being imprisoned.
Quote:Are there any with characters like the one described in the second observation? If so what inspired you to go that route as opposed to the other?
I play/have played both, so I'll answer for both. First off, I simply like variety, hence why I play characters on both sides of the spectrum. The character Faye, who was first played in a forum, was actually meant to be a villain. However, when I started RPing in MMO's and made Fae in TERA, I quickly realized that it's hard to have your main character be a villain in an MMO. It goes back to what I said about villains being short-lived. In RP forums, you can easily have several characters, and no character must be your main. In MMO's, however, people tend to focus on a fewer number of characters, and one character usually gets significantly more playtime than the rest. In an MMO, if your character is killed or thrown into prison for life, you're left with the question of, "Do I delete this character, do I just stop role-playing him/her, or do I fork over the money for a race/appearance/name/gender change to make a new character?" In forums, however, you can have a ton of characters, there's no gameplay aspect so your character won't have a level and equipment bound to him or her, etc. It's not a detrimental loss when you must stop playing a character. Good guys (or at least, not villainous characters) are easier to main in MMO's. It's for that reason that I don't main villains in MMO's, and good guys are also just fun to play!
Quote:Are there any with characters like the one described in the first observation? If so what inspired you to go that route as opposed to the other?
Because villains are just as fun to play, if not more fun, than heroes! Also, antagonists are necessary for an interesting RP community and a shortage of people are willing to play them, so I'm happy to step up since I enjoy it anyway. I do have an alt who's somewhat of an antagonist (not a major villain--she doesn't haven't any huge goals and is not inherently evil, she's mostly just a menace to the people around her). Unfortunately, I haven't had time to RP or even level her yet, but I hope to soon since I've noticed a severe lack of antagonists and villains.Â
Quote:Do you agree or disagree that there needs to be some sort of balance struck?
Obviously, things won't be much fun if one side is too prevalent. There will be less variety among characters, and less conflict if one side can easily defeat the other. But on the other hand, we can't force people to play characters they don't want to play and both sides don't need to be perfectly even.
![[Image: NCtCate.png]](http://i.imgur.com/NCtCate.png)
