Quote:
Originally Posted by Krieghund
Shout and say are a spatial channels. It is bad manners to be out of character in the spatial channels.
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The whole point of shout being in character and /ooc being out of character is that people can turn /ooc off and still have a global chat channel.
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One of the problems VG right now is that /ooc and /shout have different ranges: /ooc is "region wide" and /shout seems to be chunk wide. With chunks going down all the time in beta a whole bunch of people have gotten used to using /shout for stability issues and that mind set is still with us.
I would really like to see (and this may be something the RP community sets up) a set of region wide in-character channels other than shout (which gets terribly over-used). Of course, some would argue that any region-wide communication is inherently OOC since even the /shout range is unrealistically big (shouting from the back of the Tursh dorms across hills, a 40 acre farm, and Tursh village might be a tad difficult in RL).
/start ramble
I guess the trick is to find a "least obtrusive" way to allow long range, in-character communication. Without some communication across adventuring parties, you don't really have the kind of community building tool that makes an MMO thrive; you just have (as in real life) a bunch of 3 to 6 characters enjoying a quiet stroll through the countryside (punctuated by the roar of attacking beasties).
I should say that I am at best in the RP-lite school and realize that there are a whole number of different and conflicting needs that need to be addressed in-game (this is inherently incomplete):
- There's the hard-core group of role-players who really want to have that real world isolation from the wider community in order to immerse themselves in a "scene" whether it be in town or while out adventuring. It's acceptable for someone to walk into the scene but not for characters in the next county to butt in.
- Then there's people who like to role-play their characters in the context of the wider community. They may still be hard-core about separation of IC and OOC but are willing to forgo total immersion for the community aspects of the game (they are willing to accept the notion of "magic" communication across huge distances but still want to be talking to other characters, not other players).
- Then there are the RP-lite crowd, who (like me) enjoy a bit of role-play when they trip over it and don't want to interfere with other's enjoyment of role-play; however, the rest of the time they are ok with non-immerse game mechanisms.
I would actually say that the last two may be closer to the pen/paper crowd who see the scene in their heads and use the paper maps and figurines as a tool to help everyone coordinate the pictures in their heads.