Sunshine's Mod Blog

tarajenkins:

onewonderfulbug:

So there seems to be a rise in unsolicited /tells from folks who take exception at players looking like NPCs, and I feel the need to point out how silly they are.

Now, we’re “allowed” to act like Disneyworld mascots. They’ll permit us that. Harassment only comes if that unwritten rule is broken, and of course we deserve bullying then. No, fuck that noise hard. If an NPC player barges in on your personal RP or disrupts your events, that’s a bad ROLEPLAYER. The NPC part’s got NOTHING to do with that. You’ve got no business concern-trolling /tells to folks who are doing nothing but AFKing by the Aetheryte or a Marketboard while looking like an NPC, or are interacting with people who aren’t you.

What’s that? Because That One Nanamo was a bad, that means of course ALL NPC players are bads who must be dealt with before it’s too late? Then of course this means that all RPers are pretentious assholes like you, the random /teller! Right?

Nope, nope, nope. Ding-dong, you are wrong.

The irony is, I’ve never seen an NPC player roaming about with an RP tag on. I don’t use it, Sunshine doesn’t use it, Tara doesn’t use it. We roleplay among ourselves (rarely publically), or when approached by folks who want us to respond as the character we’re playing. But that apparently isn’t good enough for these folk. The reasoning is that they’re protecting immersion, but all they’re actually protecting is how THEY think people should play this game.

“Buh-but IMMERSION–” No. Stop. Stop right there. I love RP, but neither Balmung, nor any other server, is an OFFICIAL “RP server”. Squeenix was kind enough to give us an RP tag, but there are no official rules attached to it. In fact, they’d love to sell you some Scions outfits and hairstyles over at the Mog Station. We are a drop in the bucket in this playerbase. You want to curse the player standing on top of you while you sit and wait for an RP bite at the Quicksand? They might be cursing your nameplate for getting in the way of clicking their quest NPC. You want to howl about someone laying on “your” table as a tablecloth? Imagine how you’re intruding on all the non-RP players’ immersion of the OFFICIAL game storyline, by cluttering up multiple public chat channels with wordwalls of random original characters you never asked if they wanted to see.

Seriously, for those whose immersion jimmies are rustled that badly just by SEEING an NPC player, I have to ask: how do you function at all in this game? Those players over yonder with names completely out of naming conventions? That guy over there in the Cloud Strife set? Those official crossover events with completely non-related franchises? That time Yoshi-P threw your immersion out the 18th floor window? Did you explode? Do you stay up long nights, crying and gnashing your teeth, wailing into your pillow that your World Is Ruined Forever? Y'know what would be the reasonable, productive way of handling it? Moving the fuck on with doing your own thing, and understanding that game servers are a lot of different strokes for different folks. Learn to focus on YOUR strokes, because it almost seems you prefer bitching about other people doing things You Don’t Like than actually playing the game.

If it helps, from a roleplay standpoint, consider that your Extra-Special Everyday Joe (who shockingly sometimes has a non-conforming name themselves) really shouldn’t even KNOW a lot of major or even minor NPCs on sight, let alone by name, as many are encountered as the Warrior Of Light–a role that, as I understand it, is another no-no in srs RP circles. Even Hildibrand isn’t really all that famous, folks. That’s part of the joke. That’s why the Yellowjackets beat him up in 1.0 and made him cry for Mummy.

Then there’s the passive-aggressive presumed insult that NPC players need to work on their creativity so they can make OCs like the “good” roleplayers. It isn’t that deep, brotato. Personally, the three of us DO have OCs as well. But these are characters we enjoyed in the storyline, and wanted to see more of than the game allowed us to–and we love running into other fans of the character. Even then, it isn’t as easy as you’re trying to make it. There’s a challenge we enjoy in recreating these guys. To correctly reproduce them often requires maxing an alt in a very alt-unfriendly game in order to farm the right clothes, and in Tara and Sunshine’s case, maxing certain crafting professions. Before dataminers uncovered the character creation settings for NPCs, it also often involved running ten level one throwaways to an NPC out in the world proper for comparison–or levelling multiple throwaway rogues to get that One Rogue Quest NPC just right.

They’re a labor of love. Just like yours.

I have to say though, it’s bemusing to learn there are presumptuous folks who would judge us for this and snub us as lessers, because gosh, you do that like we’d want to interact with a dick in the first place!

You ignore us, we ignore you, and Nothing Of Value Was Lost. Or, I’ll see you around on my minor NPCs, whom you’ll be fine and dandy with until you eventually find out they ARE NPCs.

Please Look Forward To It™.

It’s like the influx of “you’re an imposter” whispers I got when I was questing on Yellow Moon back in the day. Always figured that was the same person on alts, it was so weirdly specific 6_9

The cool players have always FAR outnumbered the trolls, so :p

Not to mention I bought the lorebook BECAUSE its a goldmine for extra NPC info. (apparently Hildibrand was only 18 in 1.0. wat.)

I think the one time we open RPed was during that murder mystery Gold Saucer event and it was amazing. Outside that, the good experiences have vastly outweighed the bad thank goodness. Funnily enough, the last two players that took issue with me were a cat and a dragon chick with lalafell names.

But yeah. We aren’t in guilds, we don’t put up RP tags, and the most we do is two emotes and we stop.   We RP story lines privately.

And yes I’m extremely salty that originally to get Briardien’s glasses I had to level a crafting class to farm the Artisan’s glasses and dumped millions of gil to get them, and now THEY JUST GIVE YOU A LEVEL 1 DYEABLE VERSION.

Why we RP NPCs in FFXIV:

aethericseafarer:

noudenet:

orneryscion:

• Community events
• To assist others with their plots, should they desire
• For screenshots
• For a pleasant surprise during Dungeons, FATEs, etc
• FOR FUN.

Things you probably think we do but we don’t:

• We DO NOT force ourselves upon your roleplays.
  
• We DO NOT do it to deter from your plots.
• We DO NOT do it to disrupt the community.
• We DO NOT expect you to roleplay with us.
  

We do this to have a good time. Please don’t belittle us for having some fun; we are as considerate as we can be of you, your time, and your own experiences. Please be considerate of ours. :) We are here if you need us and all too happy to go about our own business if you do not! /o/

I cannot +Like this enough. If you don’t like it, just pretend we don’t exist, or that we are some weird cosplayers :V

In addition, it is not “uncreative”, as we all also have our own OCs that we adore. Also, it’s fun giving our own interpretation on an already established character, and/or having a fun challenge in trying to match the canon personality (or in the case of the Heavens’ Ward, adding a personality to a character who otherwise has very little canon information).

((Even though I’m not into NPC/lore figure RP, I still appreciate you guys for making people smile and letting us screenshot you guys. It’s always fun when I get to do dungeons with you all and go ‘Hay!! I AM WITH THE HEAVENS WARD or the numerous Haurchefants’. You guys are all cool as hell.))

We play these characters because we love seeing them! We enjoy the challenge of recreating them as well!

“We look like the least-convincing cast of Law And Order”
- Ian as Foulques Of The Mist 

ARR Briardien was easy enough to get his outfit…but he’s also wearing Artisan’s spectacles. As a player that never did crafting before, that was definitely the hardest part.  I didn’t finish the Scholasticate quests for awhile because I even fine tuned his character model to match properly. (His height is 75 btw, that was the worst part.)   

WORTH IT though! Me and a few friends from our Hildibrand group got requested to act ICly for a wedding, that was so fun. But that’s the thing, usually we’re only IC if requested or we’re grouped up somewhere like the Gold Saucer event, or someone asked us for a screenshot.

That being said, I don’t understand why a few bad eggs decided that it was ok to be rude us. One notable one was a Miquote with a lalafell name whining I was breaking immersion. As I stood by the Limsa market board/bell setting up auctions. Not saying anything. :l

(Source: papalymo)