A rant about my concerns/vision for the RP community

    This is just a rant, regarding my concerns with the RP community, I worry about there being so many individual RP clans all going off and doing their own things apart from each other, all wanting their own villages, castles and towns, and I get the appeal of having their own little Fiefdoms. This is in no way an attack on people that want to do this, but I hope you'll give me your ear, or eyes as it were for a moment.

    I think it is going to be a detriment to the RP community as a whole if we all split up and do our own thing (And yes, I know that a lot of our lovely groups have already made joint efforts to at least reach out to each other), I believing having a dozen towns all over the place with 5-10 people is inferior in everyway to a city state, this is the first walk around type MMO like this, where we can control the narrative.

    My thoughts;

    Build a city, something great, something awe inspiring, like Minas Tirith for example, keeping all the RP'ers in a central location, a whole city of us, that allows for people who want to be guards, people who want to be shop owners, people who want to be second lifers, the farmers, the explorers and hunters, bar owners, military RP'ers, build up a core and then, once we have numbers, we can set up villages to fit continuing growth, allowing for more RP options, travel and the like.

    Just picture Minas Tirith for a moment, built into a the side of a mountain, at the very top you have the Throneroom, that's where the council sits, all the leadership from the clans. The have the church, up a little higher, for our Monastic friends, the next level made up of the homes and living areas, a bar or 2, the next level made up of a shopping district, like the Elder Scrolls Oblivion capital city, both brick and mortar shops and open air stalls, with living quarters mixed in, then the bottom level, some living quarters, maybe another bar or 2, and the military quadrant, close to the gates so we can form up larger groups for defense, for dungeon runs so even as RP'ers we don't have to give up on some aspects of the game. Then have some farms and scattered houses outside of the gates, allow for almost every type of RP, and have it all close and readily available, almost around the clock.

    It would bring attention to RP as a whole, it might bring people who are in the fence in, and even normal players, it could be great. I truly believe having all 100-200 (Or more) of us in a central joint will be better for the whole RP community then 5 RP'ers every 10km squared out, we would be able to accomplish so much.

    It's just my thoughts, weaponized in a rant. But yeah, I am planning on throwing myself into PxD pretty hard, and all into the RP, so I want to make it the best RP for myself and everyone I interact with. Either way in the Alpha I am gonna be experimenting to see what it possible, and in EA if I find its possible, even solo I will build towards something like this vision I have. A wonderful vibrant community with all the tools accessible for brilliant, seamless and fun roleplay and the same for gameplay.

    I truely look forward to making all of your acquaintances, this game has a lot of potential, I really can't wait! :love:

    Really there is several layers to this though especially in regards to Language Barriers, Time Zones / Server Shards & Main Server Locations playing a part in this to some degree. We also do not fully understand the technology involved / A1 had most people not experiencing any real 'ping' issues or massive latency in general so perhaps server location is not really going to be an issue, but the total population on that server will dictate new people joining etc. This is relevant to people 'banding together' to achieve what your talking about, personally I think the city state of like minded people will take years regardless how you approach it initially and that is part of the natural, organic beauty of Player Driven Gameplay, some groups will fall apart and be absorbed by others.

    We have to face the reality that MF are not willing to 'narrow their customer base' in regards to this being a Role Play Focused Game, but 'Light Role Play' is their regardless as you are literally playing a character in a low-fantasy medieval setting sandbox. Some community members will choose to embrace this and create an immersive and RP inclusive environment for everyone else, others will just want to run around going LOLZ LETS BONK STUFF, just how it goes.

    Language barriers are easy enough to get around, in EVE we used translators, even in my smallest corp we had a guy who could speak French with out Neighbours, and text based communication is easy as pie to interact over, so I don't forsea language barriers actually being all that detrimental. I was wondering about ping issues, I know some people were talking about it with Asmon cause he had a bunch of people and massive buildings and wasn't having much of an issue.

    I get that, but referencing EVE (Sorry, just was my life for 13 years, haha!), Providence came together pretty fast, and held together for a really long time, still is technically together now, tho it's not the same self-regulating entity it was.

    Yeah I suppose your right, still tho, was just a rant, put my thought out into the ether as it were, I have just spent so long doing RP that I have seen groups with a lot of promise just die out due to not having the numbers to self-sustain, a lot of groups I joined in EVE died cause they either did the Icarus thing, or they didn't get their hands on enough "content", and the ones they stayed together and actually provided the content, were the massive groups. I don't want people to lose/missout or have their PxD experiance ruined or subtracted from, for the same reasons I have seen for years, and one of the easiest ways to stop that happening is to keep people together, just like IRL.

    Hey there!

    Late to the party :D

    I think it would be awesome to see a roleplay city-state or even region where it's all roleplay communities within a Homevalley maybe. I think coordination is important, and there has to be a level of planning and organization for that. Most roleplay communities are not as tightly knit, guilds/clans usually are the organization, where rp communities are more loosely aligned.

    If this was an idea, I'd recommend getting together clans, at least the ones who plan to be on NA or an EU shard, and let them discuss this among their leaders. EU may still want to remain on EU and NA on NA so it may be a split vison. The RP community so far is small, but I expect it shall grow overtime.

    You would want to already have that structure/organization in place before the community balloons to be the most successful.

    I read your 'rant' (not to say I'd call it that ^^) and I understand ...but I just thought I'd put in a word to allay your concerns:

    I think there are some big cities already developing: Eltarii's character is a citizen in the 'Golden Company' (did I get the name right?) which seems like it's doing things on a major scale already. 'The Monastic Order' has plans for operating across multiple shards. I think PxD game mechanics is set up for large communities and characters who are part of large communities will be much better off than characters in smaller communities. Hence, despite everyone's tendency to "go off and do one's own thing", people are really being encouraged to form communities and work together. Just putting a word of reassurance: I really believe there will be a lot of potential for RP in PxD and I'm looking forward to it!

    Love <3 your passion and vision by the way: keep with it! :thumbup:

    There's a lot of potential in what you propose, but as people have mentioned, a lot of considerations need to be taken into account. One thing I have noticed that hasn't really been addressed before is what I'll call "genre". When we speak about RP in general, it's about interactive storytelling. We want to tell our stories and get immersed in our characters, live their lives, and meet awesome new people. The degree to which these stories connect to the lore of the game we're in varies based upon individual desire. The tone of the storytelling itself varies. Some people want a very dark and vengeful story. Others want their characters to escape drama and trouble and live a happy life cooking and smithing. We want different genres of RP the same way we watch different genres on Netflix.

    When you spearhead this effort to build the RP City-State, this all needs to be considered. How do you bring such disparate tastes together to work towards one goal? It's not impossible, but the person who leads the charge on this needs to be capable of sharing their vision in such a way that every person involved can not only picture their place within it, but desire their place within it.

    Really, the lack of a leader with the vision to do what you want is the issue. When I create communities, I do it because what I want doesn't exist yet. To achieve this vision you want, you either need to be the leader and capably communicate it to all these different types of storytellers, or find a leader you can support who can do those things.

    What you described in your "rant" is that perfect vision that everyone has about the roleplay they want to see and experience, but in reality it sadly is a far fetched idea that most likely will never happen, but at the same time not impossible.

    I could see this happening, but not with a great leader on top of it and in order to be a great leader you probably have to be either part of a big community already or be a content creator that has a big community, because those people have already banded together and have their "leader".

    The other thing to understand is why do we have small towns and villages every 10km apart. The main reason is because most of the people join with their friends and create their little communities, because they want to represent their own group. If you and your 5 buddies become a part of the massive 100-200 people community then you just a number, but everyone wants to be the hero of their own story. I want to be the inn keeper that everyone knows, I want to be the best blacksmith in the town, I want to be that fierce warrior that everyone talks about, I want to be part of the council etc.

    While it is possible, I believe the small villages all across the map is not a bad thing either, because that allows you to have the RP opportunities while on the travels, gives you then the stories to tell around some ale in the inn in the big city.

    Overall, same as you, I think such thing would be impressive and I would love to see that, but me personally, I would still want to try my own little corner community before joining, as an outsider, such big community and trying to find my place in all of it.

    Also late to this party.

    I love your idea of forming a city state. I just question whether it is feasible. One of my characters is on Danu shard Kerys province, Dovalon region. The place is teeming with settlements all over. Population is very high. In fact, I found myself having to actually spawn into the game in Tremen because the pop in Dovalon was too high. I think that is number of players logged in because my wife was able to spawn into Dovalon no problem a few hours later.

    So even without trying to form a city, we're encountering some population caps in the most populous regions. Our clan has somewhere around a dozen members so far, and we're running into problems with finding land for new plots due to neighbors being so close. How would we even manage for a city?

    I would love to see settlements in the same region cooperating to form a larger whole for influencing the world. I hope that will happen!

    RP Community Ideas and Expectations?

    I'm envisioning a roleplay (RP) community with some structured mechanics to enhance the experience, similar to systems like Roleplay Redux for Conan Exiles. Here's what I have in mind:

    Mechanics for Capture, Damage, and Cursing: Implementing these mechanics would introduce consequences and depth to RP scenarios, moving beyond the current reliance on gentleman's agreements.

    In-Game Economy: Developing mechanics for trade, rare items, drops, and unique resources can add meaningful layers to RP, encouraging interaction and collaboration. I've seen how groups use unique regional resources to drive RP, and this could expand that concept.

    Communication Tools: An in-game bulletin board, letter writing, notes, and signs could greatly enhance communication and storytelling within the community.

    Proximity Chat Issues: The current system, where proximity chat allows hearing nearby conversations, can be disruptive. Introducing a talk/shout function would help manage conversations, especially in crowded areas, making RP clearer and more immersive.


    Aside from that I'm not sure what to want or expect. So far my experiences have been good. but there doesn't seem like many good ways to be antag or something without thieving PVP/harm mechanics or something.

    Curious how you all get around some of these things I mentioned in your rp?

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