Comments on The Common Sense Gamer: We Don't Need Another Herrrrroooo

EVE online, planetside. nuff said. Both succesfu...

2007-04-20T01:50:00.000-05:00

EVE online, planetside. nuff said. Both succesfull games, if not as much as the designers would have hoped.

But even in FPS or other types of solo games, not ...

2007-04-18T09:05:00.000-05:00

But even in FPS or other types of solo games, not even RPGs, you are the hero, even if we say "I don't feel heroic or make decisions", would we pick up a game were we played the ingenue? I can't see a game like that taking off.

Even if you play a scrawny kid like in a previous post, you're still the scrawny kid that stands up to evil and defeats it, not the sidekick.

That is one reason I don't like raiding vs small groups in MMOs, in a raid I'm a cog, I'm a victim of circumstance and of other players' mistakes. I think part of that might be to the nature of MMO fighting: the tank gets the hits, the healers heal, the dps dpsses. Real life combat is nothing like this. Maybe that is something that needs to change.

Only a couple games come to mind where I felt that...

2007-04-18T08:24:00.000-05:00

Only a couple games come to mind where I felt that heroic feeling with my character. Not to say I didn't have fun in other games, but my character certainly was not a hero in them. For me personally, I feel like a hero when I look at my character now in relation to those 1-10 levels. So when I am playing a game where I just keep higher level versions of the exact same abilities as I level, and I "feel" exactly the same at 40 as I did at 10, then I have not grown into a hero. EQ2 was an example of this. While it was neat to have guards salute you as you leveled, I never felt my character had grown any.

That's just part of the equation though. Another aspect that contributed to my feeling heroic was accomplishing what seemed impossible. I recall doing certain missions in EQ with 2 other friends that others had trouble with in full groups. Everything just clicked together and we all knew we had each others' backs and knew what to do. I felt like we were a group of heroes when we came out victorious. In DAOC I recall countless times my husband and I being told something was impossible to do with two, which only made us more determined to succeed. We may have died a couple times before successful, but we learned from the deaths and made it work. Proudly placing that trophy head in home....yeah I felt like a hero :)

So while I agree that part of what makes you a hero in game are your own actions and own perceptions, there also needs to be factors in place to help you along the path. But is it necessary to be a hero to enjoy a game? No, I don't believe so. But it's frosting on the cake.

I totally agree with the thought that it is an ima...

2007-04-18T06:55:00.000-05:00

I totally agree with the thought that it is an imagination thing. For me I feel heroic when I shift the balance. Perhaps being the group member that saved the day, perhaps figuring out how to solve a problem. Perhaps just by being there. Much of tose things is in my own mind.

Often I think people confuse Being Important with Being a Hero. Like for me (above) being the only Healer in a group makes me more important than heroic. (But in MY mind I'm still a Hero :D )Being a Hero es going 'above and beyond' and perhaps high level characters helping newbies is the best example of that.

"OK, so we all need to feel like a hero in an MMO....

2007-04-17T09:30:00.000-05:00

"OK, so we all need to feel like a hero in an MMO....no doubt about it."

I disagree. That vast majority of MMORPG (as a subset of RPG) players may want, or need, to be the hero but it's still a generalization.

Many single player games are more "interactive stories" than "roleplaying" experiences. I enjoy many games where I'm more or less just along for the ride and make few actual character decisions. Console and FPS type games exemplify this.

I don't believe the "storyline" problem in current MMOGs is something which can be overcome. Eventually, MMOGs will become a hybrid of Second Life, EVE, Puzzle Pirates, and Ryzom Ring where players won't log into a single "storyline" and play the hero but will enter a virtual world where people can gather to play whatever game suits their fancy, sell products and services, chat, or even create their own "content" or experiences.