Even if you make that option, and give "Hero" characters a glowing gold aura and some stat boosts, it won't populate the world with heroes.

Wysardry used a weak rhetorical question to draw attention to the core of this matter: The notion of heroism that we're trying to capture with a cheesy, contrived mechanic is actually dependent upon story. Single-player games do this by actually having a story, and MMOs do this by pretending that everyone's the hero of the story, even though 99% of the "chosen ones" are getting whaled on by tougher "chosen ones" every day.

This is a fanboy's pipe dream, and the psychological drive that compels people to grind in MMOs. Everyone on this thread, with a few exceptions, is thinking of a hero dynamic from the perspective of the hero. When you visualize a game with a really good hero system, that system serves, in your mind, to make YOU the badass invincible dude who can tank any attack and defeat any defense. No weapons will touch you, your attack animation is some kind of backflip, and all the enemies drop coupons good for a free blowjob back in town.

The other players will not look up to the hero with admiration and awe. They will not ask him to lead them. They will not talk about how great he is when he isn't around. They will hate him. They will accuse him of abusing what amounts to an exploit in the game. They will talk smack on him, and form whole social alliances to ruin his shit whenever they can.

Contrary to most anime and fantasy fanfiction, heroism isn't based on the alignment of the stars, or on a good witch's dying wish, or on being mistreated when you're young. Heroism cannot be given to someone in a human society. Nobody will respect that. Every hero will be the know-nothing asshole fresh out of West Point who is suddenly given command of a squad of battle-hardened soldiers. He will get fragged.

The ubercharacters will arise all by themselves, based on their dedication and hard work and subscription fees, as God intended. They will lead guilds, and newbs will join those guilds. If the ubercharacter has the proper personality and is actively involved in the game, he will be admired. He will be listened to. He will be recognized as a significant person in the game world. He will have fancy loot.

When a character wins a significant event, it might be appropriate to give him a suit of armor appropriate to his style of play, making him even more spectacular and recognizable. Then, let that character be retired with some kind of backstory, and the unique armor set released into the world, to be dropped by badass monsters. "Hey, my guild went into the Deep Wild last night and a Horror Golem dropped a 'Helm of Screaming Vengeance'. I looked that up, and it's the helmet from LordDarthX's suit that he got back in 2007, when he won the contest to open the second expansion. It's awesome, and some other guild says they've got three of the other pieces and will trade us sixteen hectares of pastureland for it."

That's as close as you can get to a hero in an MMO without breaking the hell out of the game.

Interesting Iron Chef. I don't really disagree with your assessment... in that ubercharacters will distinguish themselves in one way or another in a mmo setting. What I am asking is if it makes sense to have a game mechanic support it and/or enocourage it.

You seem to be saying making or allowing some arbitrary player to become a hero won't work. I'm inclined to agree, but that has more to do with how a character would become a hero in the game. It cannot be something that only requires time, to be sure. It probably involves levels, quests, reputation with npcs for sure, but going back to the karma thing... it could also depend on the player's repuation with other players. Players can vote with their karma points. Would lead to people actually recognizing and awarding whomever they deemed as heroic.

I don't know about everyone else, but when I play an MMO, yes sure, I would like to be a hero... but I don't feel like one ever. I don't necessarily need to be though. I think of it just like there are guild members and guild leaders. People will naturally follow good guild leaders (eventually). I think it could work the same way with heroes. The aim is to enable the players to choose the heroes in their story, not deciding it for them, which is what you seem to be implying.

I'm more interested in the psychological implications atm. Do the rest of you think that regular players would hate "hero" characters because of jealousy etc? I mean, technically speaking, hero status is available to anyone, and it also comes with bigger risks (possibly the biggest risk of all)... is that not enough to satisfy the majority of regular players? I would hope that when someone sees a hero the are awed because they know it takes a lot of skill to get it and maintain it.

I think jealousy is a big part of any grind ladder. Even in less grind-intensive games, like EVE (I'm a bit of an EVE fanboy lately), there's a real rancor associated with seeing stronger players. You get info on a guy, and he's been playing since 2003, and you think, "Hell, there's no way I'll ever stand up to that sunuvabitch," and anything he does to you, be it stealing your ore, nuking your ship, or hijacking your kill, is just like cheating.

I guess that some kind of "elected hero" system based on reputation points could be great, but I can't think of any way to make it work right. Maple Story tries it, but players just buy fame from one another.

At the end of the day, whatever you put into your game will either be random or it will be representable in a spreadsheet. If it's random, it'll alienate players. If it's a spreadsheet, players will grind it.

Try this: Make hero status something that only a really powerful Guild can bestow. Don't make it a guild power, but make it so you need a dozen high-level characters to make a one-use spell that hero-izes someone.

[Fanboy rant] The high-tech heavy assault ships in EVE are impossible to get by yourself. I guess you could save up for a few months and buy one at a retarded price, but the only real way to get them is to have a mining corporation get the minerals, then have a production corporation's three best research guys each produce a few of the components, the have another highly training production expert actually assemble the ship. These guys, having dedicated months to building the construction and mining skills to obtain the materials and construct the thing, do not have the skills to fly it, so another highly specialized pilot actually gets in the thing and commands the weapon, shield and computer systems to use it in battle. It takes five or six guys to deploy one of those ships, but once it's out in space, it's worth a dozen normal cruisers, and will kick asses up and down the solar system. [/Fanboy rant]

So if your hero system requires a whole boatload of work that no single player could hope to complete on his own, then work, time, dedication, and social standing will all conspire to decide which character is granted the hero status.

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I guess that some kind of "elected hero" system based on reputation points could be great, but I can't think of any way to make it work right. Maple Story tries it, but players just buy fame from one another.

I was thinking that player karma is not visible to the client... might stop the buying of reputation. But anyways, yes it definitely would need a system that was not easily abusable, which is not easily done.

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At the end of the day, whatever you put into your game will either be random or it will be representable in a spreadsheet. If it's random, it'll alienate players. If it's a spreadsheet, players will grind it.

I would hope, that some sort of single-player instance challenge would be a part of this... like a test of trials, which would require player skill and not pure grinding. Of course, this depends on a "levelling" system that is relatively flat in order to not trivialize it. Or it could be balanced at the top level of play and gear. Also, if you did include perma-death (or other penalties for heroes) as part of it... it makes the whole prospect of grinding much riskier and potential to backfire. Basically I believe that many of the 'end-game' problems are created simply because you can do anything given enough time with no repercussions (ie the grind). That is really the heart of the problem.

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Try this: Make hero status something that only a really powerful Guild can bestow. Don't make it a guild power, but make it so you need a dozen high-level characters to make a one-use spell that hero-izes someone. ... So if your hero system requires a whole boatload of work that no single player could hope to complete on his own, then work, time, dedication, and social standing will all conspire to decide which character is granted the hero status.

Good point.

/Makes a note to try out EVE sometime =D