The term hero loses its meaning when everyone in the mmo can be a hero. If you're tired of gathering, stop gathering and do something amazing in the game. It doesn't matter if it's a scripted official feature or not, just something that makes everyone else say, "Wow, that guy has no life!"

True heroes go above and beyond the standard.

not everyone gets to be hero. not even in MMOs.

besides, some people simply like to make stuff. who can blame them, really?

Originally posted by Ecoces

not everyone wants to be the hero, MMOs back in the day (not now where everyone is about the "phat lootz") were about a persisant world that your character lived in.

 

a persistant world where you could be what you wanted.

Oh how I wish they would come out with a game like this again :(

To the OP the problem nowadays is that every game is trying so hard to make you be the HERO and only the hero.   They are not making games like SWG-preNGE, Eve Online where the economies are 100% to near 100% player driven.  There just isn't any complexity anymore.  No one will take a risk, they all just want to use the path of lots of shiny items and quests.  *sigh*

In my opinion, the main flaw of most MMOs these days is the attempt to make everyone feel like a hero. Notice I said feel like one, not actually make them one. When everyone is a hero, then no one is a hero. Being a hero means being able to act above and beyond what an average individual is capable of. Despite what developers try to make us think, In an MMO this is measured against other players, not NPCs.

MMOs used to be about participating within a virtual world. Staking out your position and making a name for yourself and leavign a lasting impact on the game world if you were skilled and dedicated enough to excel. These days MMOs are about being hand fed a generic instant hero gruel where nothing anyone does is unique or special.

Quite honestly, in all my years playing MMOs I've never felt as unique or important within a gameworld as I did as a crafter.

I don't think there are that many MMORPGS around that don't have you colllecting or mining something.  Crafting and adventuring should not be the only two options.  In many of the mmorpgs out there, those are really the only two functions though.  The more variety and options, the more interesting the mmorpg. In Star Wars, before NGE, they had dancers and other classes that didn't adventure, and they still leveled their character. Most MMORPGS don't let you level up unless your PVE'ing.

I'm looking forward to Skrymm, Guildwars 2, and Star Wars: The Old Republic. I'm not expecting much deviation from standard gameplay, though. All of them will still allow you the option of collecting stuff and/or adventuring.

Originally posted by eyelolled

I would really like to see an MMO that had armor damage and weapon damage that could only be fixed by crafters and the like. It could have open world PvP with gathering nodes in the PvP area so gatherers and would need to hire mercenaries to guard them whilst they collected the materials needed to repair the items and build new items.  Food would also be actively required, and food gatherers would need to have protection as well. Grouping/guilding would be nearly essential for success but not forced.

 

Quests/dungeons/raids would need to impliment crafters into the party, so items can be actively fixed during the adventure, essentially making a crafter as a support role. Crafters would still be able to fight, heal, lay traps, etc but couldn't carry bulky weapons leaving them as mainly just support but not really bored either.

 

I think this would make the heroes feel like heroes, while the crafting felt more beneficial. I would think this would help, but I don't claim to have it all figured out either.

id play the crafter in that game so fast.

Originally posted by Ecoces

not everyone wants to be the hero, MMOs back in the day (not now where everyone is about the "phat lootz") were about a persisant world that your character lived in.

 

a persistant world where you could be what you wanted.

This

One of the main reasons games like Star Wars Galaxies are looked back upon so fondly, and even rabidly in some cases, it because the game allowed for and attracted a much more diverse group of people than your typical hero-only theme park.  What you end up with today in MMOs is a one-dimensional group of players who are just interested in combat and loot. 

When you introduce non-combat classes and deep crafting, you attract a lot more people which in turn makes gameplay more fun for most players.  Typically the type of players who want to be medics, scientists, crafters and entertainers are the more artistic and perhaps intellectual group of people, and what you end up with is a closer approximation to "real life" because you have different kinds of people playing.

I personally enjoyed the aspect of having the choice to craft or play non-combat roles as much as I loved combat.  In SWG I had a main combat toon, and a main crafter toon.  I would switch between them, depending on my mood, sometimes for weeks at a time.  For me it made the game a thousand times more interesting than just running around doing combat quests and PvP all the time.  I made a ton of friends, developed symbiotic crafting/business relationships, and talked to tons of people each day.  These days, besides guild chat, who do you talk to? 

I think this is the main thing modern MMO developers are ignoring these days.  These new games tend to only attract those people who would be just as happy playing an FPS game a lot of times, and it excludes everyone else to the detriment of the entire game community and experience.  I'd like to start seeing some of these community elements come back to modern games, even if we can't simply jump into a full AAA sandbox game.  There is plenty of room to make these themeparks more attractive and deeper without compromising what attracts the combat players.

Games need something to break up the combat,You do any activity enough it becomes boring and not every players is competive.

While i don't understand why some people like crafting especially the run to the node click run to the node click run to the node click over and over  for hours,Hey this work i am paying 14.99 a month do work? I do understand the need for crafting and other actives in a game just as long they don't turn into a job.Plus crafters make a world come alive and create enconomy

My personally i rather professions that activities,I would prefer see stuff like monster hunter,Bounty hunter,Tamer,Rancher than Blacksmith,Weapon crafter,gemcrafter,miner.Examples of Profession

-Monster Hunter-You get points for killing monsters and certian amounts of monsters,You go around the game world killing rare monsters.

-Bounty Hunter-You get  points for killing bad players and npc.Creates a ingame sherif/Police guild

Tamer-You get points for catching animals and monsters.You can sell pets non combat and fighting pets

Ranchers-You get points for raising and breeding animals.You can sell mounts racing or riding to other players

I don't understand why games choose to all have activites mindlessly boring.They are some interesting choices for non combat activities.

Interesting thread. Wtih direct regards to the OP, well no not everyone wants to be the hero so that playstyle should be catered to, but yes there is alot of trivial crap in mmorpgs.

Going off on a tangent somewhat but still in keeping with the general theme of the thread...

Personally I don't think we should all be heroes no. Ironically most of the people I would call the "heroes" of mmorpg games that I have encountered have been the guys and gals who do the crafting and/or who power the social side of the games worlds and work with and for (and sometimes against) the communities of these worlds.

Some dude who goes and wtfpwns a raid, over 9000 people have already wtfpwnd before him, is not exactly heroic to my mind.

If you have an open, dynamic and player driven world (aka a good old fashioned sandbox) then you can get "heroes" and "villains" as players carve a name for themselves in the games world. In most mmos though, you are just going through the process everyone else can do with ease, so it is harder to feel heroic.

I also find it somewhat amusing that many people who are no doubt seeking to be "the hero" in games are also completely and utterly adverse to any risks or dangers in them outside their control. "Haha I am Gwain the mighty, I shall slay the dragon and save yon blushing maiden. But only if I can hide in safezones and there is no risk of me losing my mighty sword of pwnage. The black knight must be disabled before I ride out!"

I also have to add that for me, in the classical sense of the term, it is hard to have heroes without villains, and precious few games allow their players to be villains.

This thread is a good example of why heroes seems to be non-existence...because many views heroism differently.

One says that heroes are those who goes above and beyond (which is very selfish and self-centered) --- But I say, that heroes are those who humbles themselves in service for others.

If you think about it, nobody becomes a hero on their own. Even a poor merchant or crafter plays a part.

This thread made me think ... warcraft started to become a lot less heroic when heroic dungeons were released.

---

Originally posted by chrisel
Have you ever played Anarchy Online, preferably 'vanilla' days? You had to understand both the game mechanics (skills) and how to get into gear. Not just right click some items bought at auction house then click 1 2 3 in PvP. No, you needed skills on a whole different level than these easy peasy MMO's offers today. Too bad; MMO's today are offering no challenge other than patience. And that sucks. Anarchy Online made me feel 'heroic'. So have WoW from time to time; WoW offers so 'tight control' of the characters it really makes me feel I am IN control of a character, not sending orders to a toon, which then responds like seconds later (LOTRO), which is totally boringest.

---

I have played DAOC, SWG, EQ2, WOW, Lineage2, Horizons, PotBS, Ryzom, Percect World, AoC and many others.
I play for fun, entertainment, this comes in many forms, challenge, gameplaymechanics, interaction, immersion, progression.
I am not a singledimension focussed player - this is most boring to me if there is no diversity in the gameplay.
Diversity refreshes the enjoyment instead of going overfeed with a single gameplay element and lose any fun and feeling for it and getting insane of boredeom.
You cant increase "herosim" above a ceratain level, it will get repetitive, old and boring if you have played games that way for most of your playtime.
Players will find out that "iconic" and "heroic" gameplay focuss only leads to another WoW threadmill.
I see myself as adventurer, the world offers many adventures to me, combat, puzzles, riddles, exploration, lore, story...the more a game offers the more i can have fun and entertainment (of course i must like the setting).

Have fun too!

Originally posted by chrisel

Since when did you have the feeling of being a hero and not some kind of lame mushroom gatherer or some other ridiculous tradeskiller? I have just played Lord of the Rings Online, and mind you, I am a fan of the lore, but that specific game is one of the best examples whats totally wrong with the genre; you're barely an adventurer, and certainly no hero!

This is not an attack on LoTRO, but an attack on the whole genre; for what kind of game do deliver in the department when it comes to being a hero? Bah, barely none. I have played alot of MMO's (countless), and even though I have put down a ban to play World of Warcraft in my house, that's one of the few games where I have been closest to feel like a "hero", with Anarchy Online as 2nd (before Shadowlands expansion).

I am totally fed up up with games offering no thrill, but only a "grind" based mostly around some kind of PvE mechanism; either be getting gear OR materials for some kind of gear. This is even further enhanced by the lame fact that most games even FORCES us to do PvE to get the "good" PvP stuff. Yeah, I remember back when I used to play WoW. Best weapons were from PvE. Forcing PvP'ers to do PvE to be competetive in PvP? Where's the logic in that??

Are there any change in the horizon? Probably not. Well, there seem to be one game that will break this nonsense focus upon "trivialism" up once and for all; Star Wars; The Old Republic. Let's see if that will deliver. Hopefully.

For I am not playing MMO's just to yawn from trivialism; I am playing them to get a kick from the thrill!

I guess I'm not sure what you are asking for here.  On the one hand, you are basically saying that crafting is a waste of time, and that you should be busy doing 'hero stuff', and on the other hand, you are complaining that today's MMOs are boring and shallow.

What more Hero do you want?  You already run around these theme parks and pretty much kill stuff and save the universe.  In my opinion there is too much Hero, and not enough virtual world.  People should have the choice to be a hero or not.  Doesn't it get old running around and being on a server full of heros all the time?  It does for me.

There are good points here, and it made me think about one of my other posts in this thread.  One of the reasons I loved my non-combat characters so much was that they made my combat character that much more exciting and adventurous.  Of course the opposite was true too.  When I chose to craft or play a scientist toon in SWG, it was a very welcome different type of gameplay from just combat.

Also, a lot of people who don't understand why anyone would want to craft, entertain, role play or otherwise are victims of the WoW "touchstone".  Quite frankly, the whole genre has become a treadmill of grinding to level cap, collecting loot, and then grinding dungeons, as fast and numerically efficiently as you possibly can.  These games have been reduced to fancy Excel Spreadsheets to many people.

Non-combat and other community classes and features create a virtual world, and they give people reasons and means to socialize.  Someone who prefers a sandbox (or hybrid) game isn't trying to rush through it as fast as they can and get to end game.  They are planning to spend a year, two years or more playing the game, and they are more interested in being part of a virtual world, then they are an end goal.  They sort of "live" there, in the same way some people hang out on message boards (like this one), or engage in other social activities.  I guess the key words here are "creative" and "community".  These aspects are sadly gone from MMOs today.

SHADOW BANE I dont know about "hero" but there was no game that was as intense as that. I still remember drinking coffee in our player built city when this super powered (thats what it seemed) Warrior blasted through our gates and just started killing people, I mean really mowing them down, I remember our captain saying "I will put him down" running out there with his sword and board and just getting destroyed, finally it took about 20 of us to kill this bandit , WOW what an adventure what a HERO he was!!!

Originally posted by MindTrigger

One of the main reasons games like Star Wars Galaxies are looked back upon so fondly, and even rabidly in some cases, it because the game allowed for and attracted a much more diverse group of people than your typical hero-only theme park.  What you end up with today in MMOs is a one-dimentional group of players who are just interested in combat and loot. 

When you introduce non-combat classes and deep crafting, you attract a lot more people which in turn makes gameplay more fun for most players.  Typically the type of players who want to be medics, scientists, crafters and entertainers are the more artistic and perhaps intellectual group of people, and what you end up with is a closer approximation to "real life" because you have different kinds of people playing.

I personally enjoyed the aspect of having the choice to craft or play non-combat roles as much as I loved combat.  In SWG I had a main combat toon, and a main crafter toon.  I would switch between them, depending on my mood, sometimes for weeks at a time.  For me it made the game a thousand times more interesting than just running around doing combat quests and PvP all the time.  I made a ton of friends, developed symbiotic crafting/business relationships, and talked to tons of people each day.  These days, besides guild chat, who do you talk to? 

I think this is the main thing modern MMO developers are ignoring these days.  These new games tend to only attract those people who would be just as happy playing an FPS game a lot of times, and it excludes everyone else to the detriment of the entire game community and experience.  I'd like to start seeing some of these community elements come back to modern games, even if we can't simply jump into a full AAA sandbox game.  There is plenty of room to make these themeparks more attractive and deeper without compromising what attracts the combat players.

What would make me happy is a game that lets me build a crafting empire and go to war on the same character.  Note, I don't expect to fly to the top of either a crafting profession or a combat spec that way.  I would expect that bouncing back and forth between them (and between various aspects of both) would lead to an extremely slow mastering of anything.  But it wouldn't bother me a bit, I'd be too busy *gasp* enjoying the game to worry about how I was 'progressing' in it.

Originally posted by MindTrigger

I guess I'm not sure what you are asking for here.  On the one hand, you are basically saying that crafting is a waste of time, and that you should be busy doing 'hero stuff', and on the other hand, you are complaining that today's MMOs are boring and shallow.

What more Hero do you want?  You already run around these theme parks and pretty much kill stuff and save the universe.  In my opinion there is too much Hero, and not enough virtual world.  People should have the choice to be a hero or not.  Doesn't it get old running around and being on a server full of heros all the time?  It does for me.

 

In most games, crafting is a joke, yes. I would happily support a game where you could be a "heroic" crafter as an option to be the heroic "soldier". Todays MMO's have too much trivial crap in between the starting session in crafting to where I feel like a true crafter. *points finger at both WoW & LOTRO*

Well, I have forgotten ONE great game, that has the right "touch" over it; Darkfall. I am not good at all with twitch-skills, but that game sure delivers when it comes to thrill. And when I killed someone there, which nearly never happened, I truly felt "heroic". Even though I sucked big time (lol).

Darkfall; a great game killed by tons of meaningless grinding, topped with even afk grinding to "get there". If it wasnt for that, I would have stayed. I just got totally fed up with being killed all the time.

.

I think there is a fundamental flaw with everyone trying to be a "hero" in MMORPGs.

The problem is that "heroism" is almost always defined by your relation to your peers.  If you are an accountant that stops a bank robbery by clubbing the robber on the back of the head with a crowbar, then you're a hero.  If you're a soldier that saves his friend by shooting an enemy combatant, then it's just an exciting and traumatizing day at work.

Civilians at home may view the soldier as a hero, but to his fellow soldiers, he's just their compatriate, no more a "hero" than any of their other compatriates.  The reason for this is that ALL of those soldiers do things that the laymen may consider "heroic," so heroism has a new standard among them.

The same is true for MMORPGs.  When you're in a world where everyone is slaying dragons, saving villages, and rescuing damsels in distress; then doing these things won't make you feel very heroic.  It's different in a SPRPG, because in those games you exist in a world of "average folks" where you are the only one with any real ability to change things.  It's easy to be a hero there.

But in MMORPGs, you essentially live in a world of heroes.  To actually feel like a hero in an MMORPG, you would have to do something to really differentiate yourself from everyone else, typically at great personal risk to yourself.  Like dying and losing a lot of exp/loot to save your group.  Or leading a small force to victory in PvP through excellent tactics and leadership skills.

Originally posted by Madimorga

Originally posted by MindTrigger

One of the main reasons games like Star Wars Galaxies are looked back upon so fondly, and even rabidly in some cases, it because the game allowed for and attracted a much more diverse group of people than your typical hero-only theme park.  What you end up with today in MMOs is a one-dimentional group of players who are just interested in combat and loot. 

When you introduce non-combat classes and deep crafting, you attract a lot more people which in turn makes gameplay more fun for most players.  Typically the type of players who want to be medics, scientists, crafters and entertainers are the more artistic and perhaps intellectual group of people, and what you end up with is a closer approximation to "real life" because you have different kinds of people playing.

I personally enjoyed the aspect of having the choice to craft or play non-combat roles as much as I loved combat.  In SWG I had a main combat toon, and a main crafter toon.  I would switch between them, depending on my mood, sometimes for weeks at a time.  For me it made the game a thousand times more interesting than just running around doing combat quests and PvP all the time.  I made a ton of friends, developed symbiotic crafting/business relationships, and talked to tons of people each day.  These days, besides guild chat, who do you talk to? 

I think this is the main thing modern MMO developers are ignoring these days.  These new games tend to only attract those people who would be just as happy playing an FPS game a lot of times, and it excludes everyone else to the detriment of the entire game community and experience.  I'd like to start seeing some of these community elements come back to modern games, even if we can't simply jump into a full AAA sandbox game.  There is plenty of room to make these themeparks more attractive and deeper without compromising what attracts the combat players.

 

What would make me happy is a game that lets me build a crafting empire and go to war on the same character.  Note, I don't expect to fly to the top of either a crafting profession or a combat spec that way.  I would expect that bouncing back and forth between them (and between various aspects of both) would lead to an extremely slow mastering of anything.  But it wouldn't bother me a bit, I'd be too busy *gasp* enjoying the game to worry about how I was 'progressing' in it.

But you see, the kind of game where you want to BUILD a community is the one you aren't rushing through, because who cares?  There is no "end" to rush to in a virtual world MMO.  You just do your thing, and you are free to take your time, or not.  Early SWG made leveling a toon a pretty fast thing to do which had some great side effects.  Because you could level skills fairly quickly, people experimented with all kinds of professions and combinations of skills.  One day you could be a Bounty Hunter, which you may play for months, then you could simply decide to be a smuggler or jedi, and change. 

The point is that leveling your character was not the point of the game.  Being in the world was.  I loved it.