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Do MMORPGs really need to be more "heroic?"
Creslin321
Member Posts: 5,359
Every new MMORPG in development seems to have this belief that MMORPGs need to be more "heroic." Apparently, players need to feel like their characters are absolute bad asses at all times. And it seems like even when an MMORPG tries to be more heroic, it's never "heroic enough" and the next one has to try being even MORE heroic. Here are some examples of this "heroic oneupmanship:"
UO: The grandaddy of them all, you literally had to kill deer and crap for a while to get your skills high enough to fight monsters.
EQ: That's not heroic! In our game you get to fight actual monsters like gnolls and orcs at like level 6, and you get to group with other players to fight powerful mobs later on!
WoW: Not heroic enough! In our game you can solo all the way to max level with any class!
Rift: You think that's heroic?!?!? In our game you have to seal a rift of death in the TUTORIAL!
SWTOR: Hahah losers! You're not heroic enough! In our game, players always fight three mobs instead of just one!
GW2: All you guys make me laugh. In our game you will fight a ginormous boss monster in the tutorial area!
Personally...I don't really care about this crap, and I think it almost hurts your sense of progression. At least in UO I could feel myself growing in power when I move on from deer to fight orcs, and then trolls, and then demons or whatever. Now, I do think UO was a bit too extreme with the "non-heroicness," but I just think other games put far too much of an emphasis on feeing "heroic."
I really don't have to feel like a total bad ass to play a game. After all, I know everyone else will be just as badass or un-badass as I am.
Thoughts?
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Comments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_u9Ttw5w6s
Heroic is an overused term. MMOs just need to be challenging and fun enough that I want to do it over and over again. How hard is that ? Apparently too difficult for most developers!
Grim Dawn, the next great action rpg!
http://www.grimdawn.com/
I've always thought that background and storylines that focus on the player being abnormally heroic and powerful are actually the antithesis of what MMORPGs are about, but that's my own opinion. The focus that's put on it just seems silly (outside of the superhero genre- and even there it doesn't work well)- I mean if my character was this super badass chosen one, why do I need to grind gear? Shouldn't those NPCs know who I am already and give me the tools I need to be their champion? And how dare they ask me to go pick flowers or deliver love notes for them?! It's just idiocy.
I would say current mmorpg's are TOO heroic.
Worst thing is ALL current AAA mmorpg's are heroic.
To be honest I am sick of all this 'epicess' ,heroic, world changing , and all this crap. Going to heroically slay 10 rats and then go slay a Dragon solo /facepalm
I also like UO emphassis on non-heroicness.
It was just so much more immersive and logical.
You could be after long-trainig great fighter or really good mage ,etc but you were not half-god you're in most of current mmropg's. I very much prefer that UO approach.
With current approach I am afraid that in mmropg's that will be released in 2018 my character will be killing dragons shooting lightings from it's arse and open time-continuum rifts in world fabric by belching
I think they need to make more MMOs that are fantasy based actually.
(what would be really ironic here is if I get tagged as a troll by that statement because if I did it would presuppose that I am being sarcastic and that in fact we do have more than enough fantasy based MMOs and that even MMO mods would at that point then even admit to that.)
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Since i'm a hero is real life, I prefer playing a humble crafter.
And no. Some of the best MMO experiences I've had were being a small cog in a massive machine. (fighter pilot in EVE, tank in War, 50 person raids in CoH)
Single player games are great for that 'one man has the power to save the world' bs.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
awesome.
I like crafting too but I never put much thought into why but I am going to go with that as my answer.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
LOL, I can only imagine the quests in 2018 MMORPGS:
"Good sir, please help me. You see, my farm has been overrun by rampaging half-dragon half-vampire half-werewolf (don't ask) demigods. Could you please slay them noble sir?"
Accept
0/10 Vampdragowolves slain
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I tend to agree. I think one of the best aspects of MMOs like UO is that the game is designed to allow the player to be unique rather than designed to constantly try to convince the player that they are heroic.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I pvp'd and pve'd in UO... mostly I was a merchant when I was playing. That was a full time job... between harvesting, actually crafting the items and keeping my merchant stocked. Of course having a good location helped.. but I was about as unheroic and common as one could be.
Favortie game of all time... UO.
The only thing about the "heroic" games that bother me.. and I know this will sound related to TOR but its not only TOR.
When I hear someone say that I did something that should be impossible... I'm like a god that walks the earth... the only one.. nobody has seen this before. Then I walk out of the instance and see the other 120 people that just got the same speech...
At that point Heroic becomes... common.
To me that's just part of one of the larger shifts in game design. Nobody can be different or better... because if they are millions of voices will shout out in terror and never shut up.
Me? I'm perfectly happy to be common and I don't mean the heroic version of common (see above) either.
Want to know what heroic or epic was to me in a game? Watching Og in AC run into a town and slay everyone there wearing nothing and using only a dagger and his magic. Or watching a player like Redeemer go into a base on Planetside with the standard loadout and killing everyone there. That was awesome. That was epic.
I actually do feel a huge disconnect with these heroic stuffs. It feels like my char isnt ever getting better because even at low levels, Im fighting uber strong enemies n stuff then at high levels Im still fighting the same stuff with a different skin.
I remember in RO youd start with killing friggin...blobs and worms. Then you go up to killing skels nd orcs and such and you really feel like your char is fighting stronger enemies.
And I disagree with all the new MMOs being like that. Didnt you guys see the video of ff14 where a LADYBUG roflpwnd a raid group? Now THAT is humbling and I thank square for doing that.
''/\/\'' Posted using Iphone bunni
( o.o)
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**This bunny was cloned from bunnies belonging to Gobla and is part of the Quizzical Fanclub and the The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club**
Yeah exactly, being really heroic is relative to your peers. It's only heroic if it's something uncommon that not everyone else can do.
If you live in a world full of superheroes...then you're not really heroic.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Lol yeah. It would be even funny if it would not be very sad at same time.
Seriously having world filled with thousads of heroes each saving world or at least towns and villages almost on daily basis after a while is so ridiculosely stupid that it leechs my willlingness to play tbh.
I am perfectly fine with being more or less common person in mmorpg. It still allow me to do something that is tottally impossible or very unpropable in real world. You know I live and work in a city in 21 st century , game still allow me to be warrior, mage, hunter , crafter , explorer , farmer in some totally fantastic fictional world - I mean finally 'achieving' to kill troll solo or with a friend(s) in non-heroic game is so much more satisfying than being "common hero" like everybody else in modern AAA mmorpg.
Not to mention it allows DIVERISTY and players being diffrent and not hero clones running over the world.
we're once again in a state of Vezzini (from Princess Bride), i.e. that word you keep using, I dunna think it means what you think it means.
Heroes don't have the innate ability to just kick arse and take names. Heroes overcome adversity and succeed when all the odds are stacked against them. And using that definition of heroic, yes the new games need to be heroic but aren't.
Most MMO's fail on the heroic stuff in my opinion, which is why I like SWToR in that requard. I remember playing EQ and going into a town at cap level and being two stroked by a town guard. Really a town guard? Really was disappointing to my ego there lol. I'm for building up from a peasant, but in the end I feel we should be above the average NPC.
I personally never got into UO as it seemed too lawless and the PvP had no reasoning in my opinion. I prefer the more stuctured PvP that DAoC had where you had a sense of community with the side you were on. In the end Dem hibbies and Albies must go!
Heroic will continue to feel empty of meaning as it becomes more cliche, as the dificulty of mob encounters contine to drop, and the rewards for it go up.
I agree... you can sell being a hero in a srpg but not in a mmorpg. When you see a thousand other unique world-savior superheroes around it just feels... lame.
Another way how the mmo mainstream devs got it all wrong. Instead of playing on the genre's strongpoints, one of them being that you can be just a dude hanging out with other dudes, they're trying to force "heroism" which is basically a single-player thing. It's almost as if mmorpg devs are seeing mmo as somehow inferior to srpgs and are trying to "improve" the genre by forcing alien, single-player stuff into it... such as rigid storylines and "heroism."
SWTOR, I'm looking at you.
Ironically, there are many hit single player games that don't force heroism on you while big-name mmo devs are still forcing that round peg into a square hole. It's just stupid. It's like they're saying "Our last game didn't succeed because we didnt' have enogugh heroism! Make the next one even more heroic!"
It reminds me of a story about a senile grandma who put salt into cakeby mistake and when everybody said it was awful, she deduced that she needs to put even more salt in her next cake.
Incidentally that "hero-this and hero-that" business is about the only thing putting me off GW2 at the moment.
Anyone that played old school AC on Draktide knew Og, knew Lava, knew Dark Kimono, Xanatos..and certain other players because these players made a name for themselves with the outlandish things they did and nobody else did. Same goes for Planetside. There were a maybe a dozen people in the hundreds of thousands that played that made a name for themselves and most everyone knew them. I can name these players because I had the opportunity to play with them - some were even in my outfit like Redeemer in the game Planetside.
You know it is funny that I can name these people from games years ago, yet I cannot recall one name from any recent games.
We Were Adventurers, Explorers and Soldiers
The game was just out of beta and 40 of my guild started playing. I was one of my group’s “Planet Side” testers/players, having beta tested it. We are 200 strong spread out now over 8-10 different games.
I would tune in the SWG channel on TS and listen, it was amazing to here the accounts of things across the galaxy as seen through the eyes of noobs. Everyone was a noob. I had to be a part of this.
I got the game and away I went. There were people everywhere. Cantinas were jammed, star ports as well. People running across Dath, no speeders yet. Fighting rancors and nightsisters. Squills and Tuskin Raiders were things to avoid on our home planet. The Corellian plains ands the swamps of Talus, filled with big cats and their babies was a great place for the CH, but a dangerous one as well.
The crafting was amazing as well, folks dedicated themselves to mining, harvesting or buying the best resources, looting or buying skill tapes, and the items they made were top shelf. We knew who they were and we haggled for the best price. Weapons, armor, BE clothing, foods, drinks, etc…
The fighting classes would hire out to protect crafters as they tended their harvesters, or just paid us to bring home the best meat or bone, when ever it would be located that month at various places across the galaxy.
The player cites became sophisticated and well thought out. We would hunt in groups to fund the treasury. Recruit top crafters to place their vendors so traffic in town would increase.
Entertainers formed troupes that would travel around and perform at events for hire. Towns would have celebrations, music, fireworks, dancing. The socialization was at its peak.
Bases became focal points for the GCW, defending and attacking, when one went “hot” hundreds of players would be on hand. Theed was a kill zone as was the Bestine-Anchorhead corridor.
Jedi were rare and as the game progressed, more found their way to the Force. But through perma-death, saber TEF and eventually visibility and the BH, showing off with a LS was a bad thing. Removing the BH gank squad made us Jedi more brazen and may have been the first sign of the down hill slide. Jedi should have remained in the shadows.
I remember traveling across many planets and stopping off in a camps on a regular basis. Players just out and about were never hard to stumble across. The Master Ranger camp was a sight to see. If they had a dancer, it was a chance to heal up a bit and move on. Before leaving you could often barter for a new pet or some food or drink. Few new I was a Jedi, it was much safer that way. Regular clothes, carrying a rifle or carbine, with my LS in the tool bar just in case I was not as careful as I thought I was.
Back to a big city, get your speeder, armor and weapon repaired. It was always nice to find a smuggler and get those new items sliced. Stop by the local cantina and enjoy some music and get a mind buff, hit a star port and have a doctor buff you up. Then back out to the open spaces, never far from action.
Player run night clubs sprang up, rented juke boxes, exotic dancers, beauty pageants and just a place to hang out, waiting for the next assault on the enemy or hunting party. At one pageant, with about two hundred in attendance, a beautiful young Jedi was competing, when a BH attacked, the fight spilled out into the street and raged on for 20 minutes before she managed to escape. I cannot imagine a more “Star Warsy” scene then a fight breaking out in a Star Wars bar.
You didn’t have to run around to find PvP, it would always find you if you were not alert. NPC’s could unmask you as well, and many times you would have to fight your way out of town. For a Jedi, that meant visibility for sure. Time o be extra careful. But if laying low was your thing for the moment, there were 100 places to go and things to do. Tend to your factors, restock, shop, socialize, hunt, the Vette, Theme Parks, The Warren, Black Sun Bunker, etc… The server forums served as After Action Reports that made the slow times at work more enjoyable.
New players would seek help, and many did help. Taking them under their wing, showing them the ropes, forging bonds, weaken by the tears of this dying game, and friend’s lists evaporated as gamers left for greener pastures.
You really carved out your own existence, the greatest Star Wars saga ever told, yours… and if you ran the course and wanted a change, you could start over, 31 more times if it suited you.
Many of us have moved on, others stay and pray that the greatness of this game will return. Still others, like me, pay for a month here and there just to check in and see for ourselves.
For me, there is a soothing, surreal feeling when I hear the opening music. I stand above my home on Tatooine, in Storm’s End, a town we forged from the sands in a place called The Valley of the Wind. I watch the twin suns set over the mountains and remember what the game was like. It truly breaks my heart to think of the friends lost and the good times we had, gone forever, like the sands in a storm. I wait a bit longer, check my empty friend’s list and log off.
Yes, we were adventurers, explorers and soldiers, and it was the best of times.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
Guards, in MMORPGs that have them, are always completely incongruous with the rest of the world. Because they want the player characters to be "heroes," but they need the guards to be able to protect the "heroes" and they are made exceptionally powerful to do this. So it turns out that you go and fight these gnoll hordes, but can always run back to daddy guard Nash if you get into trouble.
Meanwhile, the whole time you're thinking "Why the F isn't guard Nash saving the damn town???"
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Agreed!
While it is nice to feel "heroic", it certainly limits the scope of the game being played. It is tough to feel heroic when 90% (made up number) of the game inhabitants are heroic players as well.
SW:TOR had a red flag from the get-go with me. After you save the galaxy, what then? What are their expansions and such going to add to the game? Does a player keep on saving the galaxy time after time? Anything less would be kind of anti-climatic, don't you think?
Just about every book I've read starts with the "hero" from the beginning. Not a hero at all. They usually grow into the part.
Save the "heroics" for SPRPGs, please.
[EDIT]
My opinion, too- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Agreed Zekiah!
Final Fantasy XI...
No matter what level you are
No matter how much magical armor you wear
No matter how powerful your enchanted weapon is
Somewhere in the world, there's a bunny that will f*** you up.
Zek, I read the title, saw that wall of text and instatly fearedit being a disguised copy of Squad Broken.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre