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Do any MMOs make you feel like a hero?
GameMonger71
Member UncommonPosts: 122
Maybe it is the MMOs I have chosen recently. Maybe it is just me. Or maybe it is the fact that it is a MMORPG and not just a single-player RPG, but I really want to find a game that makes me feel like my individual actions matter in the larger picture.
I have played many MMOs but I do not remember the last time that I did not feel just like one of many "clones" running around killing x, y, or z or fighting another player as he bunny hops around me in spastic fashion in PvP to gain some "edge" on my meager gaming skills.
In WAR I feel like one of the masses with little overall impact even when my "team" does something. In AoC, EQ2, Shadowbane and countless others, I feel some adventure as I journey the lands but my actions rarely, if ever, feel heroic.
I want my tank to make a last stand that matters, my mage/healer to wield magic that amazes bystanders, my rogue to sneak through society unknown yet much discussed for his skills. Do any MMOs offer even the slightest hint of individual heroism in the story/mechanics or is it too much to ask of the genre?
Thanks!
Comments
This is the kind of thing they are shooting for with SWTOR, actually.
I remember back in 1999, folks kept asking me if I was stockpiling food. I always answered, "No, I'm stockpiling ammo and making a list of people who are stockpiling food"
From my experience only small indi mmos have given me this feeling. This is probably due to having a smaller player base where players know most of the other players. Its like small towns and New York city.
Some mmos make me feel like being an hero... *cough* WoW *cough*
WOW made me feel like a hero when i quite.
WoW made me feel like smashing my face repeatedly into a sidewalk.
I gave it a week, I'll admit. Then I uninstalled that piece of simplistic linear shit and never looked back.
I remember back in 1999, folks kept asking me if I was stockpiling food. I always answered, "No, I'm stockpiling ammo and making a list of people who are stockpiling food"
LOL its the thing that every single MMO out there has been shooting at, but nobody, including the SWTOR, have been able to get to yet. SWTOR is still being designed though, so we might be lucky enough to fix it so it will rock.
LOL its the thing that every single MMO out there has been shooting at, but nobody, including the SWTOR, have been able to get to yet. SWTOR is still being designed though, so we might be lucky enough to fix it so it will rock.
Well...Bioware is famous for their writing, and although Drew Karpryshan isn't on the SWTOR team, he has assured us that the writers in charge of the game are doing a great job...which is nice to hear.
I have a feeling the "heroic" feeling of the game will be more intense than we've ever experienced in an MMO.
The writing is not what I am worried about with this game....but time will tell.
I remember back in 1999, folks kept asking me if I was stockpiling food. I always answered, "No, I'm stockpiling ammo and making a list of people who are stockpiling food"
City of Heroes
FFXI, When I walk around Cathedral, Valkrum dunes, or even Yuhtunga jungle, and I see a party in trouble, since my main job is DRG my main sub Is WHM so DRG/WHM 75, I go and heal them and then save them from a wipe...or i just stay for a while and if some one pulls an extra gob or aggros I save the party. I don't know it makes me feel like a hero
Guild Wars.
Not sure why, but I feel the map and campaign systems are very well done. In WoW if I'm hanging around Goldshire with my max level character, I don't feel at all out of place.
If I go to a starter area in Guild Wars after finishing 20+ campaigns, I feel I've travelled back in time and have no place there.
In a land of heroes, no one is a hero, but the normal average guy.
Same thing about giving you "uniqueness", when everyone runs around as carbon copy classes, wearing the same 2-3 sets of armors for their level and the 2-5 hairstyles/faces...
Heroes and uniqueness is something that won't work in the current crop of MMORPG's.
"and when everyone is special, no one will be" Syndrome
Guild Wars because the object is for you to save Tyria,Cantha and Elona from evil. You get really nice armor sets and weapons at end game for your characters. There are also many areas in Guild Wars where you can farm for really nice weapons as well. You can choose to hero/hench the missions or join a group to accomplish your goals. One of the best things I liked about Guild Wars was the story and lore of the game.
Sorry I do not want to be a hero in a MMORPG, I do want action/conseqence into this genre, but a hero, sorry got tons and tons of games already out there that offer gamers that feeling. MMORPG should NOT be about YOU being a hero, should be about YOUR COMMUNITY making a difference in within the gameworld. Being a HERO is for single player games atleast for me it is.
Why merely FEEL like a hero when you can BE one in City of Heroes?
Well, its all up to your imagination. City of Heroes gets the award for really *trying* to make me feel like one. The NPCs even walk around town speaking of your deeds
Did I feel like a hero though? meh, I just dont know. Not really from what I can remember.
I jsut remember standing there thinking it was all just a setup. If I didnt help that lady get her purse she would just sit there and fight forever with the fake thug NPCs. If I intercede and save her, then a moment later I see that same lady/citizen fighting again with the thugs.
It always seemed fake too me.
I felt like a hero in many single player games you know but not really in an MMO in PVE ever
Now in PVP I've felt like a hero when I've helped friends get revenge on a griefer.
Well if that counts, I guess I've felt like a hero in pretty much ever game I've played. I'm always the guy my friends call on to gank the gankers
The only game I have ever known to make a single player feel like a hero is SWG, right after it came out. This is only because the Jedi system was so perfectly done so that only a select number of players could become one. And if you were lucky and became a Jedi, your massive amount of power was heard about everywhere and you truly were a hero.
The onyl way a game can make you feel like a hero is by giving out special powers or bonuses to a few people to make the "special" compared to the rest of the MMO world. The problem with this is that stupid gamers that just want easy power, get jealous of the people who were lucky enough to become a hero. So like in SWG, after enough complaining they revamp the game and linearize it. I personally love the idea of the Jedi in the first SWG, maybe one day another game will come around where a system like this exists.
~*(MMOs)*~
ATD3, ACEO, AoC, AO, AC, CO, COH, COV, DAC, DR, DDO, EO, EVE, EQ, EQ2, Flyff, GW, HG:L, HO, KO, L2, LotRO, MS, MUo, PotBS, PS, RagO, RF, ROSEo, Ryzom, SB, SWG, TLA, TMO, V:SoH, WO:AoR, WOW
you can get whatever you want within reason out of the MMO genre atm people round here just suck at finding the right MMO for them i have found
those MMO's do exist you just havent found it yet go and look trough the list of relesed and open beta games thats on this site and dont dismiss the ones you havent heard of or have low populations i gurantee you will find what you are looking for and if you dont you didnt look hard enough or you were far too unrealistic in your wants/expectations
EQ1 made me feel like a true adventurer... I dont think any MMO has made me feel like a hero.
Grymm
MMO addict in recovery!
EQ,SWG preCU,L2,EQ2,GW,CoH/CoV,V:SOH,
Aion,AoC,TR,WAR,EVE,BP,RIFT,WoW and others... no more!
Back in 1997-1999 Ultima Online did. Course, back then players actually talked to each other in game more than just "LFG for XXX quest, PST" and after joining the group "Hi" and that's pretty much it. In my view communities back then actually....well...communicated with each other.That allowed for actually stories about people to circulate through a server. Ultima wasn't a themepark quest hopping game. The elements that made up Ultima allowed for heros and villains to exist. Asheron's Call fosters this too to a lesser degree.
Now days games are made in a 1-2-3 directed content manner which, in my opinion, doesn't really allow for that feeling of being the hero or villain to happen. It's all about logging in, running a few quests or raids and then logging out. You need, I think, those sandbox elements that give people a sense of ownership in the world. Elements which have been left out of games with the introduction of "second generation" MMOs and really with EQ in the first generation.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
Not sure about feeling like a Hero, or Villain for that matter since I usually play on the Evil side.
MMOs fall under the little fish in overpopulated pond category, i.e. if everyone is special then no-one is.
I would settle for a game that made me feel like a person rather than a generic class/race stereotype. Most NPCs tend to give the same cliched reactions depending on how effort the developers put into creating player customised dialog. That's why things like player housing are imporant, even if you can't make much of an impression on the environment or the NPCs, at least you can still have your own place.
In one of my favourite STNG episodes '11001001', the AI 'Minuette' that has a wonderful conversation with Picard where he compliments her on enhancing their interaction with knowledge about his cultural origins & she explains that even while they speak she is simulataneously accessing his personal files.
I don't expect MMOs to become as sophisticated as 'Minuette' for quite a while, but it would be nice to find a game where you didn't just feel like just another face in the crowd.
Just my opinion of course.
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
Take the Hecatomb? TCG What Is Your Doom? quiz.
If you can gather around a mailbox with 30 other people, who can do possibly all the things you can do, then you are not that unique, and thus not a hero.
The problem with WoW players are that they are so set in their ways, which of course since they are still around, must be a way thats making them have fun, it also totally blocks their ability to think outside the box, maybe because its all they ever knew, maybe its just what WoW does to you, like it did to so many game designers out there.
You really need to think outside the box for real and state that nothing in the existing games, like WoW, works anymore. You need to come up with something new, something dynamic.
Back to the values like socializing, fun, exploration, intelligence
At least thats what my boss told me.....
As best put by Chuck Palahniuk - You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.
That is the problem with most mmo's today, we just kinda go through the motions.
You are not your mmo. You're not how much money you have in your guild bank.
gotta love fight club.
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We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives.
~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
shadowbane was a nice experience for me. i caused a war or 2. and people reconized your name most times. especially when you were always pking people in thier nation. i felt like a champion of death on death server..
FFXI takes the cake though. with the cutscenes and the actual work you put into your character, i felt like a hero.
in the case of the OP, i dont think there is an mmo out right now that might give you the exact feeling your looking for..