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Why do we always have to be the hero
ThomasN7
87.18.7.148Member CommonPosts: 6,690
Just about in every mmo you are already guaranteed to beat the game and be the hero. It has been the same concept for as long as I can remember. What if you actually played a mmo where you were not the "hero of the day" right away. What if the end game story consisted of you getting your butt kicked and evil won. How would you feel ?
Today in mmos everything is laid before your eyes. All you have to do is follow the yelow brick road , grind easy tasks and eventually beat the game with little to no challenge at all. Sounds boring doesn't it ? I wish someone would come along and make a mmo that is worthy of a challenge. Like, oh wow I just got pwned because I failed to pay attention or maybe I just got pwned because it actually takes some thought to beat this scenario.
Can't I atleast earn my hero status instead of buying it ?
Comments
I agree, 1000 people on a server cannot be the hero. Why just not some geezer who can look after himself and get a bit lairy if he needs to, that is fine by me.
Chins
Isn't that how FE starts? The whole starting off at 40 and getting blown up, only to rez as a level 1 clone. Granted, they still try to push the "you are the last of your kind" story on you, but I think that has more to do with an established method of storytelling. That hero thing has been an RPG standard since before computers came along.
It would be like telling Hollywood not to make a movie with explosions, they don't know any other way.
It isn't that easy to define "challenge". There are many ways that a game can be challenging. Some people call a game more challenging if random events cause you to die/fail more often. Some people call a game more challenging if you are set farther back by your deaths/failures. Some people call a game more challenging if it takes longer to accomplish your goals. And some people call a game more challenging if you can't accomplish much on your own.
With these different definitions, you can't just say that you'd like games to be harder. For any one of these methods that you choose to increase a kind of difficulty, there are legitimate reasons why some people wouldn't want the difficulty to be increased that way. More importantly, for each of these methods, there's a consequence to going too far. Make the setback from death too severe and you discourage exploration and experimentation. Make the random chance more painful and you reduce the benefit of making smart choices and having skill. Make tasks require too many players and you take away opportunities for one-on-one interactions.
Also, I should point out that this is certainly not true. While the percentage differs from game to game, a small fraction of the people who play any particular MMO ever manage to "beat the game"... regardless of whether you define that as reaching the very end of the story or simply hitting max level. Early last year there were a slew of articles about the fact released by Blizzard that more than 70% of new players quit before getting past level 10. Obviously there could be a great many explanations for this, but I think it's obvious that nowhere near a majority of players hit max level, no matter how easy you perceive the game to be.
If you don't want to be a hero and instead want to be a common person, stick with real life.
Sandboxes are pretty good at letting players earn their status. But because a player's ability to gain access to content in sandboxes is usually dependent on their creativity and skill in things like dealing with other players, sandboxes remain niche. They're just too demanding of players' time and energy.
As for being heroic, I see precious little of that in MMOs. Big swords and fancy armor do not make a hero. My definition of a hero is that it is somebody who risks or endures pain and suffering for the benefit of others.
I think this is a problem tied with themepark MMOs. simple as that.
I wish they would make a game where players play as the bad guys. I don't mean bad guys that wanna destroy the world I mean more take over the world types. Or maybe have a game that has 2 factions the good and bad together. Where depending on what side you choose you got the good or evil side. That would be awesome I think.
What I actually want to see, is a game with three factions, where everyone is the bad guy, and the good guys are all npc's. Bring the wild wild west/ dark ages back to games.
Give factions a meaning, not working to the same goals with political disagreements. Why not make all factions hate each other, and the only reason they would be attacking the same NPC's is for control and power, not to save the world.
In the end, it is mostly semantics, a different story laid over a similar structure, but it just seems to make more sense to me, to be honest.
themepark = heroes
sandbox = losers....
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
CoH/CoV? Or do you mean fantasy based?
Well being the villian if you think about it for a second is really just being the hero from another perspective. Can we truly say that's anymore creative then what they've been doing. Since mmorpg genre day 1 I've always thought it would be cool to be the lowly whatever in a dungeon, you're hunted and you progress in some manner to become something more. That certainly isn't being the hero.
I'm not sure what is meant by being the hero. If you mean that your character becomes powerful, all games have that opportunity so people can have a sense of progress and achievement. But every game I have ever played, your character starts out comparatively weak and has to become more powerful over time.
Maybe the issue is that many games nowadays shortcut that journey, so you become powerful in a matter of only days or weeks. It was not always so. If you played original EQ, for example, you were going to remain weak for a fairly long time.
If you mean that the game somehow is centered around your character's personal achievements, I haven't played any mmos like that - just single player games.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I would like a game that's group focused like old EQ was. It made the world and the baddies seem so much more formidable when you knew that without help you would likely meet and early demise. I would prefer a world where the odds cannot be overcome alone, it just makes it feel that much more epic.
See while I agree with you, most players like being the hero. That's why I said a chance for good and bad sides. Plus I think it would make for better more meaning full pvp. Three factions would prolly be better too even though it would cost more money to make. At least with 3 factions land fights would be alot more back, and forth fighting.
Sad but true. Just because themepark MMOs are designed to be like singleplayer RPGs (all that storylines, cutscenes and etc). And you always playing a hero in SP
Would you rather play a damsel in distress sitting there waiting 100 played hours walking around a cell and eating hard bread until the hero comes to get you?
Nope I prefer the way Daelnor and I have talked about it. lol
What I would like is to get away from "traditional" mmorpg mechanics...
I don't want to take silly, boring and pointless quests and kill countless of npcs who do not even add to immersion, in mmorpgs they all seem just... lacking.
What I would want is to drag my friends to the game with me, make our own band, select from a range of realistic weaponry and roles (Can we go medieval, please?), form that group in game and sign up as mercenaries or fight for one faction.
Point is: We want mount&blade gone "mmorpg", we want a living world which we can change, we want "realistic" melee, we want to raid, pillage, kill npcs (poor villagers), take slaves (poor npcs), sell them, trade, and fight players trying to defend their kingdom.
We're just fine with "Oh, you died now... Well, you'll respawn in a -minute- and join the battle again, but you have to pay for repairing your equipment, or if you die too much and lose you can get a penalty to some ability for a while." Oh, and no epic items.
We?re all dead, just say it.
B...b...but then how will the player stay in the game, its one of the psychological reasons play games and even worse its only because society says it
I wont continiou cuz i will be banned for insulting the masses
Why is it that we always have to win right away. I just about every mmo you are destined to beat the game everytime. Why can't we have an end game storyline where the ending makes us lose so that maybe in the expansion we can be the hero or maybe in the next sequel ? Developers never make you earn your keep it is almost always handed to you on a silver platter with dumbed down gameplay.
I'd like to see a game where once a boss is dead it is dead to the characters who killed it forever, or the end boss dies and respawns and the characters who defeated it also respawn, but as level one. If I step on a spider I do not expect that exact spider to come back, unless of course I go back in time again.
For obvious reasons... Look at the popularity of rts genre vs mmorpg genre
Theoretically, as long as you finish the storyline, you've still beat the game even if you didn't "win," and you'd be rewarded in some way. The only difference would be an interesting twist in the storyline.
Guild Wars did this with pre-searing Ascalon.
I dont need to be a hero, I'm fine with being a random soldier / adventurer. In Rift you have to be a holy chosen one, that sucks.
So is your question 'Why do we always have to be the hero rather than the villian?' or 'Why are we always the star of the show?'
Why do we always have to be the hero rather than the villian?
Well, gameplay doesn't really change much. The only way real villianous gameplay could play out is in a pvp-centric game where the dominating 'faction' (heroes or villians) are in control of the rules, the npc cities, protecting the populace or taxing them so harshly they can barely survive and killing enough of them that they plead with heroes to wrest control from their captors.
Also, part of feeling like a villian is being able to cause whatever havoc you desire until a force strong enough stops you. MMO words need to become a lot more interactive in that regard.
Why are we always the star of the show?
You're always front and center on your screen. You're never going to feel like you're playing a game that's not about you whether you be world first 'skilled' or scooting your little ship around mining all the shinies. The story progresses without you because there are others willing to play the storyline so that if you can't, or won't, the things still have been done.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.