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[Mizhara]

I don't want to be moderated, but:

It's a fucking game.


RP is secondary to CCP, and this argument will not change the programming mechanics of what constitutes Incarna. It's silly to me, because it's similar to the argument that we had when "talking pictures" came out versus silent films, or black and white to color.

The fact that the coming changes are inevitable, and not meant directly for the RP crowd, that doesn't mean it's impacts on RP can't or shouldn't be discussed.

[Ammentio Oinkelmar]

I don't want to be moderated, but...

Please take a look at this thread, Monsieur, you might enjoy it.

[Lyn Farel]

Physical avatars do not annoy me. I have the same imagination potential with or without it. But I prefer with it though, it is a much richer basis for common interaction in common places (like stations, corporate generic halls, etc). It is not very good for virtual realities or fancy places, though, but this will probably continue to be done on special channels even after Incarna (like for example a place on the surface of a planet, or whatever).

[Aria Jenneth]

I do not like purely text-based interaction. Why?

It's said that the camera, as in cinema, etc., is condemned to forever show us too much. The lack of same in games, however, suffers from the opposite: the lack of a camera is condemned to show us too little. As a longtime tabletop roleplayer, high on my list of frustrations with the medium is the difficulty of getting everybody on the same page as far as what a scene looks like and what is going on.

This is not such a problem if there is only one person, a writer, acting on an environment, so I agree with Mizhara on the power of text when I am reading a book. However, the moment you add a second person, inevitable differences in imagination become crucial.

Consider a crowded bar, like The Skyhook on a busy night. Who is sitting next to whom? In what order? Are there vacant stools in between? How many can sit at that table, there? What colors are the bottles? If I stand behind Mizhara, am I then over Kyoko's right shoulder or her left-- or am I still ten feet away?

Without a thousand finicky little details, your visualization will not match mine. Everybody's vision of the bar and the spacial relationships of objects within it, as they /emote, becomes kaleidoscopic.

NwN had static faces and limited emotes, but it at least made it easy to keep track of who to ask to pass the bottle of habsmefaaj. This was a massive boon to RP, since physical relationships became ever so much clearer. All the actors occupy the same stage.

Now, I do worry that Incarna's advent will drop interactions of the sort Mizhara describes into the "uncanny valley." NwN avoided that neatly by lying way over on the far side of it, graphically-- your characters provided markers and a certain amount of visual data, but, with characters less emotionally expressive than your average cartoon, your imagination had to provide an awful lot. Incarna won't be like that; it's going to be pretty near photorealistic, so CCP is going to have its work cut out for it if it wants us to empathize with our avatars rather than be creeped out by unsettlingly not-quite-human qualities.

[IzzyChan]

Unless CCP includes a /picknose emote, I am unsure of what to think of it. ._.

Give me back my meatball hair you jerkz.

[Louella Dougans]

Positive aspects:

considerably easier visualisation of relative positions of characters.
dolls r fun.

Negative aspects:

limited range of actions - severe consequences.
be there or be square.



But really, I'd need to see it in action. The amount of stuff shown so far is just not enough to form much of an opinion.

[Seriphyn]

Consider a crowded bar, like The Skyhook on a busy night. Who is sitting next to whom? In what order? Are there vacant stools in between? How many can sit at that table, there? What colors are the bottles? If I stand behind Mizhara, am I then over Kyoko's right shoulder or her left-- or am I still ten feet away?

Without a thousand finicky little details, your visualization will not match mine. Everybody's vision of the bar and the spacial relationships of objects within it, as they /emote, becomes kaleidoscopic

+1000000000000

[Louella Dougans]

example would be:

Characters A and B have an "altercation" in a venue.

Characters C and D are also present.

Character C is in A&B's group, and agrees that A and B had a big dust up.

Character D observes a bunch of people standing around staring blankly at each other, and for reasons known only to them, records it on fraps or whatever.

A topic appears on IGS, wherein A, B and C relate the goings on.
D turns up with the video, and says "they are all liars, nothing happened."

That sort of thing will eventually occur when incarna appears.

[Aria Jenneth]

A topic appears on IGS, wherein A, B and C relate the goings on.
D turns up with the video, and says "they are all liars, nothing happened."

That sort of thing will eventually occur when incarna appears.

Heh-- yeah, probably. Some will depend on how communications are handled: if /emotes like "A sucker-punches B in the gut" appear as floating text over an avatar's head (ala older Bioware games), FRAPS should just end up confirming it.

... at the cost of realism, however. Of course, the day of real-time internet lip-syncing is probably a ways off yet. 

[Saede Riordan]

I'm really hoping people will be mature enough not to cause that sort of issue.

[Casiella]

I wish I could share your optimism.

Instead, I will simply note that I will do my best to cooperate appropriately with folks around me.

[Louella Dougans]

People (used to) argue the exact same thing regarding the use of chat channels.

"that didn't happen, you didn't really get out of pod and do all that" is what they said.

So, based on that, someone somewhere is going to say that these things didn't happen the way participants said it did.

Or they'll spin in circles while being talked at, or some other really, really petty action like that.

[Wanoah]

People will find reasons to argue, that's a given.

I think the main concern with Incarna has to be that it will simply turn out to be a bit shit. Not an RP implication, just a meh implication. Much as I like the idea in theory, and as much as it's the next thing that will make me resub (again) I still haven't seen anyone make a real case for it. What's it for? What does it actually add to a spaceship game? How will I have fun with this? Will it ever be anything more than a briefly interesting alternative to ship-spinning? It has the potential to become something very cool indeed, but then so did many other abandoned facets of Eve that were introduced with much fanfare. /VoiceOfDoom

[Ulphus]

Much as I like the idea in theory, and as much as it's the next thing that will make me resub (again) I still haven't seen anyone make a real case for it. What's it for? What does it actually add to a spaceship game? How will I have fun with this?

It will add to RP in much the same way voice fonts did.

It will be awesome!

[Mizhara]

Another thing to consider is the trolls.

Right now, RP channels are largely well moderated and fairly simple to keep the worst trolls out of. Dock and start RPing with someone in a station, and you can be fairly sure there'll be someone trundling up and spamming "trolololo RPLOL!".