On commitment, role & type

I’ve had a few interesting conversations the past few days regarding commitment to characters, the role(s) that I play and my “need” to be “important”.  I’ve been mulling this over for a couple hours and think that perhaps writing it out might help.  It never hurts to have input from other players, either.

On a whim, I decided I wanted to roll a Troll to play with Kagrra, for no other reason than I wanted a Troll. (And of course to share Kag’s lovely company. And perchance to eat a plum, while I was there.) But none of the classes appealed to me. I rejected warriors and priests right off the bat and what am I left with?  DPS, by and large. I didn’t want to.

And when I really thought about why, it’s because they were “just” DPS. Yes, my very first serious character was a rogue (solid DPS class there, no getting around it) and I don’t remember having a hard time getting groups because Lus (who also played a rogue) and I had a healer/tank duo we ran with, so we were practically full as a group in the first place. However, when I am playing Anea and the guild gets together for a raid it’s very easy to see which healers and tanks go but it becomes a pick and choose game afterwards (so it seems to me) for the DPS. Lots of times the DPS will switch out to an alt and play a tanking/healing role or sit out altogether.

Whenever Lus and I look for groups, our line has always been, “it shouldn’t be hard to find DPS, they’re a dime a dozen!” And as I was looking at my little Troll-ling, I didn’t want her to be just a dime a dozen. Perhaps I had gotten “spoiled” (if that’s even the correct word for it) by being a key role and was used to being useful and helpful & being healy.

Sidenote: I wonder if this is just habit from playing Anea or something about my personality.

Brigwyn and I were chatting yesterday as well and my Troll conundrum came up and Brig helped me out by guessing that my hang up had to do with the purpose, reason, method and execution of the roles. The conversation flowed on to how he Brigwyns himself all the time and how I thought it was “a big deal” – he didn’t know why. In my opinion, playing a character up to max level – then deleting it – is a big deal. I can completely understand having many alts and devoting time to them, perhaps going from one to the other and rotating in your main along the way. Time invested and played is one thing. But they’re always there for me to come back to, should the mood arise. Brigwyn deletes his hunters when he’s done with them. The permanence of the deletion is what makes it a “big deal” to me.

He’s come up with a theory about why he doesn’t view it as a big deal and why I do: players could be divided into two categories. Those to whom their “Role” (read: character) is most important in the game and those to whom the Experience of playing is most important. He is clearly the latter and I would be the former. And if you judge from the Troll conundrum, it seems to be accurate. Furthermore, he postulates that time available for play could have something to do with attachment: the less time you have to play, the more the experience means to you. If you have more time to play, then you get attached to your character/role.

Now, I’ve simplified our conversation quite a bit (Brigwyn, if you want to add something to it or clarify my retelling, comment away!) and of course there will be exceptions to it. However, in the poll I took, it’s true. My poll consisted of Brig, Lus and myself, so please take the results of this particular poll with a grain of salt. However, his hypothesis turned out correctly. Both Brig and Lus are very busy during the day and they don’t have many hours to play during the week – they both state that they aren’t attached to their characters. I, on the other hand, am able to play all day everyday if I so wanted and I would be horrified if Anea got deleted and certainly wouldn’t do so myself.

So, gentle readers, what say you?  Do you find yourself gravitating to a certain role?  How does Brigwyn’s theory sound to you – are you in the “Role” or the “Experience” category?  Is Brig’s hypothesis about playtime and attachment correct?  Inquiring minds want to know.

(The above screenshot has nothing to do with this post, I just thought if you made it all the way to the bottom of this post you ought to have something with color to look at for your troubles.)

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