Feedback:User/Vorkan/Flag / Profile
Flag / Profile | |
|---|---|
| User | Vorkan |
| Categories | Mechanics Player interaction |
Guild Wars 2 will be a social game, and there is already a lot of freedom concerning character customization in the game.
But what is really still missing would be a description that you can add to your character. Equipping your char with nice visuals is fine, but some text to read would make it so much more interesting to browse through people while you're in a city.
This would make everyone truly unique. This profile or flag would of course be voluntary to fill out, but I think many players would make use of it. The most common and obvious use would probably be for Roleplay, enabling me to add a description about my character. Things that aren't visible in the game itself, like certain scars, jewellery or simply the way he walks, talks, acts or how he appears in general. One could limit it to this, or it could be taken a step further, giving people the opportunity to write a little profile text that could include anything about their IRL person as well, or something about their playstyle, their interests, or whatever they wish to share with people.
The flag/profile should also be freely editable at all times and maybe include a status message or a headliner and some extra text.
There are of course dangers in this system, as people could use it for advertisement or inappropiate content in general, but that is nothing that is worse to handle in a profile-text, than it is in a chaotic chat, and it's a lot easier to ignore, since players could simply switch the option of the flag off, or not read it if they don't want to.
I think this is a great tool that adds no harm, but a lot of possibilities to the players, while at the same time being rather easy to implement into the game I imagine. At worst, people might ignore it, but I think the opposite will happen.
Especially Roleplayers will be attracted by this opportunity for character customization through text, since it is really lacking in most other games, where you are indistinguishable from others, apart from the visuals of your character.
Most of all it adds another social component to the game at little to no cost.
An example of how this might look in the game:
I am hanging out in Divinities reach, looking at other players, when I notice one player is marked in some way, when I target him. There might be a little star or other symbol next to his character portrait, letting me know that he has a flag /profile that I can read if I want. I could then click on this symbol to make his flag pop up on my screen in a little window, so that I can read whatever he wrote.
The status-message or headliner might say "Looking for Roleplay": The main text might read as follows: "The person before you seems to limp a little. If you closely, you will also notice that his hands are bandaged."
The text could of course be a lot longer, depending on the limits of the system, but this way I could know that his character might attract my characters attention, and I would have something that I could use to talk to him, rather than just saying "Hey, your armor makes you look like an interesting fellow."
The same goes for ooc-interaction. People could list their favorite bands/movies/books, their age, their area or whatever they want. The possibilities are vast, but I would recommend making seperate dedicated areas for roleplay-information and ooc-information, if you choose to include both.
