Character uniqueness

[eTaylor]

19 minutes ago, Finn said:

I completely agree a character doesn't have to be completely different to be a realistic and good, in-dephtly developed one. But one thing I've always struggled to wrap my own head around is why are 90% of characters on the server supermodels? There are obviously a lot of people who don't go that way, but I think far too many people try to create their characters above-average looking and it has always bothered me for some reason.

I think this is mostly determined by the people you surround yourself with

[knppel]

2 hours ago, Finn said:

above-average looking

The irony is:

In gta's character creator any such attempt is doomed to fail anyway, as we're stuck with these two torso models for our chars (male and female, that being the two options).

 

This tends to be ignored as we all know we're limited here and will have to compromise and use our imagination, but this base game design is what causes the reception by other players:

Unless you dedicatedly /examine my character to also observe eventual flaws in their physical appearance, you'll simply receive my character by their superficial looks.

And here, that's the joke, the same ragdoll on all characters ensures that no matter how hard we try, characters will look average. Not above, not below, but all exactly of the same average size and shape.

2 hours ago, Finn said:

why are 90% of characters on the server supermodels

Needless to point out, this ragdoll's body shape is indeed not representative, but it's what we see ingame, and visuals make a vast difference.

In Red Dead recently for instance differing body shapes were an option and it absolutely eliminated this issue as even "average" looking chars slightly differed in shape and physics, not just face.

One town marshal was a very short man so we mocked him for that.

 

The thing is that if you observe characters closely, i.e. their behaviour or at least /examine, you can get to find out characters actually do not all look like models (in the imagination of their creators at least).

The just do so ingame as that's what gta's character designer does.

Pretending it's players doing this is silly, to say the least, and quite dellusional: As mentioned even if I rp 300 lbs you need to spot my emote or examine me to notice that, and then use your imagination on which I can not rely.

 

Obviously, as for the original topic, here's where stuttering comes into play to set a distinctive mark for my character that's actually a grey mouse but doomed to have a model body anyway.

Edited March 23, 2023 by knppel

[DLimit]

4 hours ago, knppel said:

The irony is:

In gta's character creator any such attempt is doomed to fail anyway, as we're stuck with these two torso models for our chars (male and female, that being the two options).

 

This tends to be ignored as we all know we're limited here and will have to compromise and use our imagination, but this base game design is what causes the reception by other players:

Unless you dedicatedly /examine my character to also observe eventual flaws in their physical appearance, you'll simply receive my character by their superficial looks.

And here, that's the joke, the same ragdoll on all characters ensures that no matter how hard we try, characters will look average. Not above, not below, but all exactly of the same average size and shape.

Needless to point out, this ragdoll's body shape is indeed not representative, but it's what we see ingame, and visuals make a vast difference.

In Red Dead recently for instance differing body shapes were an option and it absolutely eliminated this issue as even "average" looking chars slightly differed in shape and physics, not just face.

One town marshal was a very short man so we mocked him for that.

 

The thing is that if you observe characters closely, i.e. their behaviour or at least /examine, you can get to find out characters actually do not all look like models (in the imagination of their creators at least).

The just do so ingame as that's what gta's character designer does.

Pretending it's players doing this is silly, to say the least, and quite dellusional: As mentioned even if I rp 300 lbs you need to spot my emote or examine me to notice that, and then use your imagination on which I can not rely.

 

Obviously, as for the original topic, here's where stuttering comes into play to set a distinctive mark for my character that's actually a grey mouse but doomed to have a model body anyway.

Aside from the OOC body-shape design that we mechanically observe... there's still more super-models than non-super-models, at this point, from an I.C. perspective. More women have examines and/or faces that are perceived to be "above average", with many choosing not to be average or below average.

[Snoof]

2 hours ago, DLimit said:

Aside from the OOC body-shape design that we mechanically observe... there's still more super-models than non-super-models, at this point, from an I.C. perspective. More women have examines and/or faces that are perceived to be "above average", with many choosing not to be average or below average.

Think this is just a universal truth of roleplay unless you're doing it in a setting where people are incentivized to be anything else. One of the big reasons people do RP is to lead a life that's more action packed/interesting than their own and young, beautiful people are usually perceived to be the ones who have the most going on for them. Even more so if you're talking female characters. I don't think this is ever actually going to change unless middle-aged, fat and balding somehow becomes the new 'cool' in real life.

 

Side note though, I personally cannot for the life of me look at any character created in the GTA V character creator and think of them as above average looking, the faces on these things are rough, and the things the game's shading do to them should be considered some sort of war crime. I'd say anybody who reaches average looking has done an extraordinarily good job.

[subway244]

I consider my character unique as much as every character is. He suffers from paranoia and occasional seizures due to an infection in his brain, and as far as his criminal history goes, I've RP'd that he was involved with an anarchist cult in his past. Afterwards, his involvement with LCN led him to reckon death was around every corner, which led further to his mental degradation. Add that to the fact that his partner was involved with a shadow intelligence corporation, and is actively being hunted down by a top-level Russian criminal.

 

I've spent around 1 1/2 years RP'ing all of this. None of it was fabricated or exaggerated. I started my character essentially blank, his only backstory being he worked as a business analyst in New York, his father was involved with the Italian mafia, and he had a genetic tendency to sociopathy due to others in his bloodline. Other than that, he was quite boring when I made him. He became "unique" due to roleplay that I never asked for, but was given to me and I ran with it.

 

I've also RP'd quite heavily with another person's character, where their premise is that they believe they're re-incarnated, and they also suffer with schizophrenia. It developed and came about over time with this other character, and once it had fully manifested itself, it was treated with the consideration for realism it deserved. It provided solid, weeks-long RP for the psychiatric wing of PHMC, rather than being "ohh look at me, I'm edgy and schizophrenic."

 

Even still, I don't like the idea of putting my character, or even characters like this other one I referenced, in the boat of people who INTENTIONALLY go against the grain. However, we are "different" from people who make characters for the sole purpose of RPing financial gains/losses, which is something equally as prevalent in the legal scene as it is in the illegal. Not to bash people who do that, but it's just our style to put personality development over IC asset gain.

 

I think what separates our "unique" spin on our characters from those who intentionally do it to be "different" without actually RPing the changes or causes, is that to even find out this shit about our characters ICly, you have to be close to them. On the outside, my character and the other one I referenced are just normal people. They dress in normal, often blue-collar clothes, drive a nondescript SUV, work a normal 9-5 job. From the outside looking in, their situation is completely normal, and you won't find out jack shit about them unless you're a cop. I even doubt if you were close to them, if they'd tell you.

 

In short, our uniqueness is reserved for ourselves and our own narrative, as it should be, and as it would be IRL. It's not made to be flaunted and shared ICly to everyone they meet, because that's honestly just cringe.

 

It's almost like the Henry Hill dynamic from the end of Goodfellas. Here's this seemingly basic middle-class family living in a nondescript suburban house. You'd have no way of knowing this guy was a New York mob associate and informant, and he sure as hell wouldn't tell you he was.

Edited March 23, 2023 by subway244

[pateuvasiliu]

On 3/19/2023 at 8:59 PM, Gallagher said:

but Tony Soprano and Walter White (two well-written characters that everyone will know) are relatively normal blokes

Walter White is a Nobel-level scientist, he is most certainly not a normal bloke.

 

A better example would be Jesse Pinkman or Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman.

[fortieznshortiez]

unique don't mean shit tbh with you. it doesn't have to be unique to be authentic, and authentic is the only thing that really matters for gta RP at a base level, the rest can come with experience. unique traits and quirks are a nice touch for good roleplayers to add to their characters to make them stand out a little, but unique dont mean fuck all without authenticity. without authenticity to your roleplay you look like some mary sue 0 depth dork. i been on gtaw for 4+ yrs and all i gotta say is, the last thing people gotta worry about is being unique. focus on having good roleplay and making an authentic feeling character first and foremost. there's hella people that don't even understand how to roleplay instead of play a role and treat it as literally ROLE-playing. there's also hella people that are just incapable of any socially interesting concepts or creating a character that isn't just an extremely bad adaptation of some yara yara desu anime bitch.

 

honestly IMO the most "unique" characters are always the worst characters because their players just end up identifying by that "unique" trait and it makes hella dorky. the best and most unique feeling characters just be the ones where someone's rping some average ass person with nothing really interesting going on in their life but they got a good portrayal of personality and there's actual layers and depth to the character for you to explore through the interaction with them. vika and frank marsh's player i always forget his forum name usually got the most unique characters on the server and they usually just be playing broke as fuck chaotic bums 90% of the time which is far from a unique concept, literally nothing special about them and that's the charm because they do it well.

[Midnights]

My char Clyde has the biggest head in the whole LS so hes unique

[sparky]

On 3/23/2023 at 9:14 AM, Finn said:

I completely agree a character doesn't have to be completely different to be a realistic and good, in-dephtly developed one. But one thing I've always struggled to wrap my own head around is why are 90% of characters on the server supermodels? There are obviously a lot of people who don't go that way, but I think far too many people try to create their characters above-average looking and it has always bothered me for some reason.

we're all ugly fucks irl you think we wanna rp that too? 💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

[Mecovy]

On 3/20/2023 at 8:11 AM, Mythology said:

It usually is close hidden from the player portraying it aswell.

 

RPQM should really step it tf up.

Gonna tag yours here whilst referencing the main post somewhat also. 

People are deaf, it happens irl. Thanks to the age of idk, keyboards and typing being deaf isn't exactly a limitation like it once was in the professional setting. Even more so by the fact phones can record whats being said around you and both type it out for you, and automatically translate it. Courts in the united states are increasingly seeing deployment of such technologies to help when stenographers aren't about. Doesn't take a genius char to RP pirating it and setting it up for themselves in their day to day/professional uses. That's absolutely not an "RPQM" case, in fact i'd argue it'd be more unrealistic for you to report a deaf person as your in essence saying its not realistic for someone to RP like that. (Not you in specific but you mention the RPQM should step it up so yours is the perfect tag).

 

Now for the rest of the cases, split of models/not yeah that's something i'd consider fair game to report.. but like... when you report 200-300 people, you genuinely can't expect to get a reply within the same 2-3 months? Cause it seems this abundance of nice looking characters is far more than 10 or 20 etc. This idea of proactive hunting doesn't work because as Invictus pointed out, RPQM doesn't RP with the players. RPQM can't easily determine from a glance the genuine from the lookalikes. Which is why it relies on player reports, as ideally that player would know more about the player and the character and provide them detail to make a judgement. RPQM doesn't exist to deal with what people don't like seeing, its there to deal with the issues which affect groups or long term RP.