Unsure if in-game RP is right for me

[Cale017]

Hey all, a friend of mine is looking to get into FFXIV over the summer, and has been doing MMO RP for about a decade now. I'd like to join him to help him level and because he's a pretty good friend, even willing to make a new toon on Mateus in spite of my main being on Goblin. I've got a lot of tabletop and forum style RP experience, and would like to try in FFXIV as I've even written some stuff elsewhere about my character's antics and would already have a pretty good handle on what sort of character he'd be. However, a lot of my preference when it comes to RP is that there's a healthy level of combat involved on some level, either player v player or player v mooks, and I'm not sure about how well things like this could be executed. Sitting around in a cafe talking is fine and all, but between limited emotes and the /e being only half of an answer (its weird to see the character and not have them move for me) it sounds like RP is almost entirely social in this game. I don't see where there'd be room to try to, say, have touching dialogue back and forth in the middle of an Alexander fight even if it was an entire party of RPers who were agreeing to try and get some RP done in the raid so no one would get kicked.

 

Basically, this just seems very restrictive as opposed to forum style where I can just say where my character is and what he's doing. I'm not sure how much of what I like about RPing (heavy story progression and character development, healthy doses of combat) can even translate to in-game RP. I love this world and its lore, but I really need some help on whether or not I can even really interact with it in the way I'm envisioning.

[Unnamed Mercenary]

44 minutes ago, Cale017 said:

even willing to make a new toon on Mateus in spite of my main being on Goblin

 

Between the World Visit system and Cross-World Linkshells, you can pretty easily play/chat with your friend. The only added bonus of being on the same world would be if you wanted to have characters in the same Free Company or World-specific Linkshells. 

 

I think you may also have some misconceptions about roleplaying in an MMO. It largely works the same way as forum-based RP, just in smaller/faster posts (usually). It's more similar to say, roleplaying over Discord or other fast-chat/instant-messager style layouts, but with the bonus of an avatar and animated emotes/settings. 

 

While a lot of the RP advertised directly on the RPC tends to be more of the social kind, that's partially because everyone has their own preferences on how combat RP should work and it's not always as easy to manage it in a "there is no GM/DM running things" style that's walkup/random/stranger friendly. Which is a bit of a combat-RP issue in general, as it does get more complicated in terms of what you can down, power levels, "player consent" etc. 

 

But for example, the Grindstone RP Battle tournament has been running since the game launched back in 2013 every single week. You can find them every Saturday night at 10 EST/EDT (depending on daylight savings) by Fesca's Wash (Central Thanalan @ Balmung). And their typical combat RP is mostly a form of "bigger /random roll wins" for first to 3 wins RP Battle format. 

 

This isn't to say that other forms of combat-RP don't exist, but more that if you're looking to freehand everything without /random, you'll generally find that people don't always do that with strangers and typically won't do it unless they trust the other people they're RPing with. 

 

As for RPing inside a dungeon/trial/raid, you can, but I don't typically see this happening as most gameplay aspects are usually kept separate from people's RP for the most part. I've done a few in-character dungeon runs with premade groups, but I can't recommend using the Duty Finder to fill in spaces. (That's typically what we see people griping about or making reddit callout posts).

 

[Cale017]

Thanks for the detailed response! And no no, I would never try to involve people who aren't RPing in instanced content. I've been on the receiving end of a pair of a married couple playing paladin and white mage in Brayflox and it was just... it was bad.

I guess I'm mostly curious about how the combat RP would work in the first place visually? I know there's a 1v1 PvP area in the game, but this sounds like it's not happening there. Unless there's something I've missed the last few years, I'm not able to go around and randomly launch into my full ninja combo without a valid target, and even if its taking place in the Wolves' Den, it sounds like a recipe for having to wait a few minutes when someone mistimes a cooldown. Maybe I'm just overthinking it, but I tend to care about the details.

 

Outside of that, I'd just be worried about not being able to keep up with the emote system since I don't exactly have them all memorized and there's not exactly an action to match every situation, not that I could expect that from the devs. For instance, I'd likely end up playing something of a chaotic good thief character. If I were to try and steal from someone in a tavern, it's not like a brawl can break out. It seems like a disconnect between what's being said in the chat box and what's happening in game with everyone mostly standing around.

[Faye]

There is absolutely room for combat, action, and adventure, and I think that's the sort of RP most people enjoy the most. It's definitely not all social. Your character doesn't have (and frankly, in this game, can't) act out every single thing you want them to do, but that's where words come into play, the same you would verbally describe their actions in a tabletop game, or write them out in a forum RP or short story about your character. Despite having the visual of our avatars their surroundings, and having some emotes for them, MMO RP is still very much a verbal hobby.

You don't have to memorize emotes. You will become more familiar with them over the time, but ultimately, you don't need them. You only need to incorporate emotes into RP as much as you personally want to. Most people use them sparingly--some may not use them at all. No one will expect you to use them. And if you do use an emote in RP and it's not exactly what you imagined/thought it would be? Don't sweat it, that happens to people all the time. I can't count the number of times I've been RPing with someone and they stop for a quick OOC aside of "((...I didn't think that emote would look like that!))"

If you want your character to throw a punch at someone, you can just write that he throws a punch. You don't have to worry about going to the arena to PvP them unless that's your personal preference, or being able to target them with a skill that looks like a punch. I honestly wouldn't recommend relying solely on emotes and combat abilities to convey your character's actions because no one is expecting that--they might miss what's happening if they look away from your character for a moment.
 

If you wanted to, like in your example, RP fighting Alexander, you would maybe queue up with your friends and RP your scene out in the instance if it's something you could accomplish in the time limit, and then maybe afterwards smack around Alexander for fun. Or maybe you'd just find a setting in game you felt was the closest, and RP the scene out there and pretend to be fighting Alexander as someone DM's.

As someone who started out in forum and chat RP, all that's really changed for me is I write shorter and faster posts in MMO's, and I use less description in the times when the in game avatars and environments suffice well enough on their own. No MMO will ever be a perfect RP sim. It's still going to require some verbal description and some imagination/visualization just as forum RP or tabletop would, and when it comes to MMO RP, yes, some of that description will be a contrast to what you actually see on your screen. You just have to find some suspension of disbelief sometimes to ignore the setting not being perfect or the avatars not doing exactly what you want. Don't overthink it too much!

And for big scenes that really may not translate well in game--like that epic fight against Alexander--RPers will often arrange some Discord RP so they can be fully descriptive without the dissonance of the game getting in the way.