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Original post by Oluseyi Having several heroes together is not altogether unusual or without precedent: Jason and the Argonauts. The difference is that each of those participants had gained reknown independently, and then banded together in pursuit of a genuinely mythical objective. MMOs, on the other hand, have players banding together pretty early on, making the "Chosen One" designation suspect, if not downright ludicrous. The solution would appear to be the antithesis of MMOs, at least as popularly considered: have players adventure fundamentally alone. Perseus, Hercules, Achilles, Jason, Ulysses... they all made their names as individuals, only then attracting groups of dedicated followers - and not in all instances. Of course, not everyone wants to be the Chosen One, so you can have career paths split such that players who take on challenges alone gain massive multipliers of reward, such that they quickly establish their legend. Players who just want to quest and adventure, however, can find a Hero who seeks men to join him.

I like this idea. I think Asheron's Call (last MMORPG I seriously played) did something in the same vein in some events. During the event, the "powers that be" took aside some of the people already of heroic status (those at the top of some of the larger pyramids in their "allegiance" pyramid scheme) and gave them special positions in the event. Nobody complained because, in a way, they earned it.

So, not quite the same, but on the right track.

Also, I don't think I saw anyone mention that if you made the point of the game something other than being a hero/adventurer, then not being a hero/adventurer wouldn't be as much of a problem. If it's a game about trading, or running a business, or something of that sort. These sorts of things were very popular back in the day, why aren't they being done now? (Of course, now the question is, how do you make being a hero fun? [lol])

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage Or just make people grind for it. Look at Maple Story. The exponential XP system in that game is nothing short of absurd. By level 50 or so, you have to kill thousands of the toughest monsters available to level, and it takes days, weeks or months per *ding*. A level 85 Dragon Knight in Maple Story is a god. There are about three, and they all got there by either hacking, macroing or sharing the character, but if you could make a system like that, then sure, there would be legendary heroes among the playerbase. EVE is tiered this way based purely on seniority. To fly a fully decked-out interceptor, you need about a year worth of directed skill training, and about a hundred million credits' worth of gear. So few players actively train long enough to become that strong, and so there are three tiers of society: Those who have been in the game for less than six months (newbs), those you have been in between six months and two years (players), and the few who have been in for more than two years (badasses). On badass in a light assault frigate can own ten newbs in cruisers. Those guys tend to be seen leading combat squadrons, running corporations and generally in positions of power and influence.

Have you ever played World of Warcraft?

Grinding is the single worst "thing" anyone has ever thought of, no offense intended.

Status in a game should be neither hard to obtain nor automatically kept. The easiest and best thing to base reward on is player skill - you get what you deserve, period. A dummy shouldn't be able to play for one year and get to the max level (by putting in amazing effort and WORK) while a better player has to play for a year to be able to stand on even ground. You can have character advancement without tying it to time investment. Tie it to player advancement (how much the player knows the game) and you're set.

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Original post by Oluseyi Of course, not everyone wants to be the Chosen One, so you can have career paths split such that players who take on challenges alone gain massive multipliers of reward, such that they quickly establish their legend. Players who just want to quest and adventure, however, can find a Hero who seeks men to join him.

Great idea.
But MMORPG players don't work like that. Everyone will want go the 'hero' path.
We'd have thousands of players playing the game alone until they become 'heros' or rather, until they become bored.

It is an interesting concept. Heros are the heart of fantasy literature.
I'm hoping for the development of a dynamic world where players change the future and set their own goals and a hero can arise based on their actions as related to the society that is created.

For example, if players work long and hard to create their village and it is prosperous and then one day it becomes threated, and one player steps up, or perhaps a group, or maybe many of the villagers, in some way do what it takes to save the interest of the village, maybe even sacrificing personal resources, investing the time, perhaps loosing a character if perma-death is present, THEN they will truly be heros in the eyes of the other players.

Sure it wouldn't happen all the time, and it might be on larger or smaller scales, but the point is that it CAN happen, it would be possible and that would be something great.

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Original post by Nytehauq Have you ever played World of Warcraft? Grinding is the single worst "thing" anyone has ever thought of, no offense intended. Status in a game should be neither hard to obtain nor automatically kept. The easiest and best thing to base reward on is player skill - you get what you deserve, period. A dummy shouldn't be able to play for one year and get to the max level (by putting in amazing effort and WORK) while a better player has to play for a year to be able to stand on even ground. You can have character advancement without tying it to time investment. Tie it to player advancement (how much the player knows the game) and you're set.

No way. If "player skill" is the measure, it's a twitch game. It has the same gulf between the strong and the weak, except that the weak have no hope of bridging it.

So there are two ways to do it: Twitch skill and RPG grind. One depends on player skill, the other on character development. The grind is an even, boring playing field. Twitch will always favor the same tiny fraction of the community.

And don't say you'll design a system that recognizes tactics and teamwork and strategy and rewards players based on that. Gamers will reverse-engineer your mechanics and find a way to grind the system. There can be no middle ground without a brilliant revolution. It's either a grind or a twitch contest.

Just get rid of heroes. It's a crutch for bad game design. The only quest you have is "Walk ten miles, stab three mice to death, then come back here for a tiny reward and another crappy assignment," and so you dress it up as, "The wise ones say you are the Child of Destiny, but I am uncertain. Your resolve must be tested. Across the blue mountain lies a cave infested by horrific abominations. If you have the spirit and will to best them in combat, return to me with proof. Then I may trust you." That kind of D&D escapist tripe is what's holding RPG games back, especially MMO games.

We grew up on Dragon Warrior and Zelda and Lord of the Rings, and we can't imagine anything getting done with a sword that doesn't have some kind of crappy fate-based plot behind the moronic unlikely hero. And so we always have to start out as the plucky, untrained youth, and we always have to wind up the hardened, invincible warrior, and the only way to make that trip is with a damn grind. I can't freaking stand it. It's your fault, SquareSoft, and Enix, and Bethesda, and all the other studios who made single-player grind games until the term "role-playing" meant, "You get XP for killing monsters." But now we can't stop, because the slot-machine mentality of the grind is solidly rooted in the minds of gamers. The whole lexicon and subculture is based on it. Minmaxing, spawn-camping, train to zone! So you have to have a grind for an MMO to have any kind of player base. But the grind sucks. People hate it, but they're addicted to it, and they can't enjoy a game that doesn't have it.

The best thing you can do is push that kind of thing into the background, and allow for specific, directed effort to specialize a character. EVE is the best I've seen. Character development is a linear, gradual process, so players spend their in-game time actually playing the game, but never worry about not levelling at the optimum rate. You get your grind fix every time that synthetic voice says, "Skill training complete," but you don't feel compelled to play forty hours a week, and you don't have to mildlessly slaughter mobs to get the levels.

It's the best community online. Even the jerks are real jerks, not just spreadsheet-crazed zombies who want this spawn point so they can grind. If they're stealing newbie miners' ore, it's because they're the kind of people who like to take things from the weak. That's a real sense of injustice, and you'd be surprised how good you feel when you get six rookie pilots in light combat ships and blow the living crap out of one ore-thieving battlecruiser, then make fun of his penis on local chat.

I honestly think the best way to handle this kind of thing is just to let the metagaming handle it. What you're really looking for are the people who make the special effort to actually have an impact in the world - those who rise above the stature of ordinary players (let alone the peons running the shops and handing out quests) and actually make a difference in their world. Those people exist; they earn their stature through dedication to the game, cleverness, and lots of politics. They're "heroes", or, more accurately, monarchs. They don't get any game-mandated play bonuses, but they have power. Sure, not everyone's going to be able to obtain that level of reputation, but on the other hand that reputation isn't necessary to experience all of the in-game content - it's just necessary to get in a position to come up with metagame content, like parties, fundraisers, singalongs, and the like. Typically you don't even get to experience much of the content you create, because you're so busy running things from behind the scenes. The people who aren't leading become grateful to the ones who are leading, because those people are making the extra effort to make everyone else's game more enjoyable. Everyone comes out happy, for the most part.

We already have that in almost every MMO game, though. Players who work extra hard, grind extra long, buy extra game money and super-rare items on eBay and otherwise distinguish themselves. Perhaps a leaderboard to recognize them would serve to ennoble their status, or a ranking system.

Gunbound, the little Korean trajectory shooter (what was the name of the archetypal artillery game? I had a Mac, and played Cannon Fodder) has a system by which the population is divided into ranks. The first fifteen or so ranks are exponentially separated point levels. 0-1000 is the newb "Fluffy Baby Chick" level, then it's "Wooden Mallet" until 2500, the "Double Wooden Mallet" to 6000, then "Stone Axe", etc. up to something like "Double Platinum Battle Axe". Then there are the elite ranks. The #1 player is like "Crimson Dragon" or something. #2-#5 are "Gold Dragons", #6-#10 are something else, and so on. That way, you aren't competing with other players from the start, but at the highest level of the game there are the celebrated and feared world champions, and everybody always knows who they are.

I think that's what's missing: Celebrity status. EVE's daily news articles often feature the destruction of a particularly valuable ship or the pod-death of a very powerful player (when your ship blows up you escape in a capsule, but if your "pod" gets destroyed you die and have to fire up a clone at considerable expense and possibly at a cost of some skills). This leads to a certain familiarity with the most powerful player-run factions and a reverence for top-end players. You see a ship cruise past you at a gate and say, "Holy smokes! It's DareCry! He's the mercenary that torched I.R.O.N.'s new outpost!" And then you take a screenshot of his ship with his little name next to it.

If you've got paparazzi following you around in-game taking screenshots of you, you're a hero.

Hmmm I'll use the WoW system since a lot of people have seen/played it.

What if a hero was introduced with a different branch for a skill tree. Now these skills would be hero skills and they wouldn't necessarily affect the player himself. Now I know this is border line Paladin here but what if the hero could unlock skills that would be auras? Maybe some sort of leadership that boosts people skills?

I know this is already being used by bards, paladin or any support hero but could it be introduced in a hero level where the hero has to sacrifice the skill points he'd usually place in his own skills instead of having to use them in his hero skills?

So in this way a hero would be vulnerable to certain things in game where a certain skill tree maxed out would help him but since he's a hero he couldn't achieve this level. Think of it as a hero who has to sacrifice everyday life to protect the ones he loves.

Iron CC what you're describing is exactly where I'm coming from, in a way. I know that my idea would glorify a hero and give him an unfair advantage in some ways but I remember back in the days of UO how I felt towards veteran players. This was back in 98-99... I was a total newb in the MMO world and/or the internet and I remember being saved by a player who knew how to play and had GMed 7 skills. I was so amazed and I always remembered him and to me he was a hero.

How about herogrouping? Instead of individual characters being heroes, you have groups be the heroes.

This way you can mix up casual-gamers with hardcore-gamers in a group and thus making everyone being able to become a hero indirectly. So if you are a casual-gamer, you can still be the hero even though you have not enough time to grind (the hardcore-players can do that part).

You would still need a way to prevent the hardcore-gamers being put in a single group, though. Note that with small groups the likelyhood of hardcore-gamers being in a single group is bigger.


When you grind, you grind for the hero-group, not for you as an individual. This makes being able to spend more time than others less of a factor to the chance of becoming a hero.

Summary: if you increase the groupsize, you decrease the impact of grinding.

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Original post by sanch3x Quote: Original post by lightblade MMORPGs are fantasy worlds brought to life, but it's still a "world" and nothing more. Hero is nothing but a status. Think...how many people out of the 6.5 billion people on this planet would you be considered as a hero. That is a 0.000000001% of the population. Out of the number of player in a game world, that percentage can only be round to 0. Therefore, no body in MMORPG shall be a hero. ... You're right, I guess since there are no space monsters in real life that I can't add them in a game. NEXT!

A hero is nolonger a hero if everybody is a hero.
Hero is a status in fame, in other word...your popularity.

If everybody loves you, then you're a hero.
And if everybody hates you, then you're a villian

BTW, not everybody wants to be a hero, a lot of people actually want to be a villian