Is RP just a way for people to hook up these days?

[Verad]

In truth, I am directly responsible for the growth of the ERP community in Balmung. You may direct your bemoans and discontent to me.

 

You may call this implausible, but doesn't it feel better to have a scapegoat? So do it anyway.

[Val]

In truth, I am directly responsible for the growth of the ERP community in Balmung. You may direct your bemoans and discontent to me.

 

You may call this implausible, but doesn't it feel better to have a scapegoat? So do it anyway.

 

Not to derail but somewhat on the subject of ERP, I sometimes fondly think about those "books" that Val and Verad "wrote" and it makes me laugh every time.

[ckingch]

I have also experienced what Val has mentioned happening to him.  During the few times I do wander into the Quicksand these days, I often send a quick /tell to a person I see saying hello and asking if they want to RP, because you know half of them are just people watching or AFK.  Out of the ones that do respond, a few of them often tell me they are just people watching, then 30 minutes later I see them ICly flirting up lady characters there.  Here is one story I'll share.  My character bumped into a person, chatted her up.  It was all good.  Sea Captain land locked until she can get some new sails.  My character, who runs a tailoring and leather business saw dollar signs (gil signs?) and made an offer to get his business to do it, since sails are very large and take a very long time to make. 

 

Thought this was going to be the real deal in making a new friend, RPed a couple more times, and then she wanted to buy some new clothes.  Since the store is custom made to order, my character needed measurements.  During the whole measurement process she was hitting on him hard, until he finally caved and did the deed (he was not with his current lady at this time).  After that, never heard from them again.  My character's business never did make those sails and never got paid.  ;_;

 

Nowadays, he is often not given the time of day by any women not in his little circle of friends once they find out he is already taken and is just wanting to hang out and chat on his time off.

[Thorbought]

I personally don't see too much of that crazy sex-capades that are rumored to happen in Ul'dah. I see the hookers and stuff with their tags but no public ERP yet. I do notice that people seem to be a lot more forward and honest about what they want. It's not even the ERP that really bothers me but a lot of people seem to only play this game looking for relationships. I've seen a lot of people RP with me and lose interest once I tell then I am taken/not looking for a relationship. And it seems like with a lot of people that there is no such thing as good friends, you just HAVE to love each other at some point.

[C'kayah Polaali]

The Quicksand is a seedy bar in a decadent city filled with wealth. The fact that 30-50% of the RPers in there at any given time want to get their rocks off with someone else is entirely fitting with the scene.

 

I will say that it has gotten tougher to find serious RP on this server. Not because it doesn't exist, but because there's so many of us here that it's hard to find what you're looking for. In other games with smaller RP communities, I've played characters that have gone along with whatever plots I could find, simply because there was far less to choose from. On Balmung I can be choosy. On Balmung we can all be choosy. And I suspect a lot of us are a lot more choosy than we think we are, so things feel like there's a lot less going on.

 

And honestly, housing hasn't helped. I mean, it's great that there are houses people can go RP in, but it does tend to make a lot of the more serious RP happen literally behind closed doors, for better or worse.

[C'kayah Polaali]

I do want to add one unrelated thing. I'm not saying that the OP does this, but it's something I've seen a lot of, and that is people being extremely vague about the sort of RP they want, and I think that sort of vagueness leads to less RP opportunities.

 

Here's what I mean: A great deal of my RP revolves around dark/crime subjects, which is understandably not everyone's cup of tea. Sometimes when I don't have anything else going on, I'll take a character into the QS (or other RP hub) and look at people, looking for RPers. If they look interesting, I'll send them a tell. "Hi! What sort of RP are you looking for?"

 

Chances are, if they reply, their reply will be something in the lines of "Anything, really."

 

You see the problem here?

 

I'll typically send another tell, then, explaining: "I do a lot of dark RP and crime RP, and not everyone goes for that, hence me asking."

 

And chances are I'll get a reply that says "I'm really fine with anything"

 

At which point I usually drop it. These days, I usually drop it after the first "anything".

 

Because if I then come up with a hook and send it to them, saying "How 'bout my character sells yours a drug, and we can get a friend of mine who plays a Brass Blade to try to bust us, and there can be a fight..." or "An enemy of your character hires mine to try to rough your character up in an alley", they'll typically reply that they were more looking for some other sort of RP.

 

And these are often the same people who complain about not being able to find RP.

 

So my advice to anyone who's having trouble finding the RP they want: be specific. In your search text. In your tells to people. Come out and say what you want. You'll find it.

[Y'raya]

After years and years of RP of various types, I feel like there's a few different ways to look at everything discussed here.

 

For me the first thing would be why people aren't or are up front. Many people aren't "up front" because of the stigma against ERP. They're not being sneaky, or secret, they just don't want to get called out and shamed. And it's not necessarily that they're afraid to express these things in their real life, or go unfulfilled. Sex is a part of life. So why not a part of their character to? And if it's fun, it's fun! I mean, sure, it's a bummer to meet someone who only wants to tussle, but there's plenty of serious RPers out there who do it too.

 

Secondly, the method writers. Yeah, I said Method Writers. I'm making that a thing. Deal. There's a lot of people, myself included, who approach writing from a character out perspective, rather than story-first. Probably a lot of these writers started with RP too. We want to understand the character, live in the character, and really embrace that. Make the character feel like a full, fleshed out person. People have many sides to them, aspects of their personality, drives, desires, moods... and again. Sex. People have sex. That's a thing that they do. Sometimes, I hear, with the intent of making more people. But not always.

 

I think treating ERPers as some separate part of the community is and always has been weird, and I say always has after 12 years of World of Warcraft and 5 different RP servers all having the same amount of RP and ERP. Y'know, except for that one... which really isn't any worse than the others, it just has that one glaring sore on the face of a certain forest. But ignoring that one little building, that server is no different than all those others.

 

People ERP because it's fun. People RP because it's fun. And people do both of those things for so many other reasons, too. The only odd thing I find after more than a decade?

 

We keep making a big deal out of it.

[Tripfriend]

After 15 years of rps people who actually try to hook up tend to bring personal problems into these plots and constantly blurs the lines, resulting in community-shattering dramas that help nobody and kill off motivation, funs and joys. Those peoples are almost always celebrities.

 

Otherwise, it's just drama, drama, drama that never ends because people who erps find it difficult to remain emotionally detached, it's not like an actual forum or chat where people poof or assume a different identity to do sexy stuff constantly. People are incentivized to play their MMO and thus, log on constantly so erp community rarely have any cool-off period.