In most of the games i have played in the last decade, especially MMO's, ive begun to notice the simple elements that make the game replayable or not to myself. these basic building blocks which create the entire gaming experience. one of them is the hero vs normal person aspect. there are games out there where you can go and slaughter a whole field of NPC's and once you step into an arena its like Clash of the titans. there are games where you have to tackle one obstacle at a time otherwise your going to get gang raped, and next thing you know your looking at your dead corpse.  ive played games where you fight a giant and kill him because he wasnt smart enough to use his fat foot and squish you.

ive noticed that the simple idea of being a HERO complared to be a normal person actually makes the biggest difference in a game then almost any other component it has.

Latly all i see is threads and posts and questions on larger scale components that have so many individual components that its hard to describe one from the next because they are so different. sandbox to you could mean housing, crafting, and a hard learning curve. sandbox to someone else could simply mean you have the choice in what you do from day to day.

its those simple elements that make up the actual game that need to be perfected, not the overall idea.

in my experience, i have found that being an average person within the gaming world instead of another hero is more fun and more likely to keep me coming back for more. and overall there are often more things you have to do with being a normal person then being a hero.

my quesiton for the community is what would you guys like to see more of, and how would you like to see it? i mean anyone can log into WOW ( i dont mean to put wow down because it is a fun game) and run around and kick ass. would you rather be someone normal that actually has to take things more cautiously? would you rather have no fear and run around like a god, or would you rather have to think about where your putting your foot next so you dont step on a land mine?

to me its the simple elements like this that build a game, that create a gaming eperience and determine whether its fun and replayable or if its end goal is over a simple idea such as gear or a title.

I think playing a thief is the right thing to do. You see something, is your, get it.. maybe run to avoid the older owner.  But magic is interesting, levitate,  mezz people, you can steal more stuff with that powers. Also a good fireball can be really helpfull in a bar fight... 

You are correct.  I've seen this trend for a while now (that developers are focus on bring out the heroic feelings for the players).

But in truth, in any grand story and whatnot, you have either a handful of heroes, or just one main hero.  And in MMORPG, it generally means NOT THE PLAYER due to the fact that you are but a contributer for the cause these NPC heroes are going through.  Sometimes it may be fun to play as such, but sometimes the story doesn't allow you to feel heroic when EVERYONE are doing the same contents and having similar class paths and whatnot.

I tend to think of it this way:  When you read a novel that draws you into the story, do you often ask yoursel one of the two questions:

1.) If you are the hero/main character, what would you do?

or

2.) If you are there, at the same place and same time as the hero/main charater, with your own unique ability, what would you do?

In general, most if not all MMORPG design is basing on the first question.  But I rarely see a MMORPG design based on the second question, but in general, if a MMORPG's design is to answer the second question, then being "average joe" is just as fun as being the hero, since you can be someone in the back helping the hero, and during which create your own story.  Adn these can all help create a more immersive world and story for MMORPG.  By doing this type of design, you are creating not a game, but a world, and I believe it is more fun to do so.

In an MMO I want to be a normal person, not a special unique snowflake. Ill play a single player game for that.

Since I  am normal in normal life. Being a hero in MMORPG  is a nice variation :)

When I  started playing MMORPGs I  enjoyed being a human. Today I  pick the more unusal races as they just feel more "distant"  to reality and is a better "escape".

to me, sandbox means being able to play YOUR own story while everyone else is playing thiers.  This does mean interaction at those points where each person's story intersects, but also means there is less of an overall story.  the Storyline becomes background, like a war that affects all but in different ways.  Some players may elect to be not involved, others at the edges, and still others on the front lines.  That to me is sandbox.  Themepark just locks you into a story and you follow it where it brings you. 

So, normal is my answer.

Ideally a game that is an mmoRPG would allow players to make that choice for themselves. I remember feeling let down by AoC's insistance that I was THE singular hero of the game world and my coming was written in the stars, blah blah blah. Supposed to be a mature game but that whole 'you're the central heroic figure of the story' felt kinda disney-ish and, imo out of place in an MMO.

Normal, please. If over time, due to my actions, my character's growth, etc., I 'become' heroic, that's fantastic. But if everyone starts off as a hero, where do you go from there? If you start off at the top of the mountain, what's left to climb? Plus, it's the whole 'if everyone is special, then no one is special' thing.

Normal. Put the tools/systems in the game that allow players to define conflict and let my peers elevate me to the status of Hero or Villain. The pre-programed accolades spouted by npcs mean very little to me. Having some other player PM me with "Hey man, that was pretty cool" means alot more.

I am normal, thank you very much.

Hero. I am normal nobody any day for free already.

Always loved Dynasty Warriors, because I was able to mow through hordes of mobs, making them fly in all directions. :D
(Thats why I DONT like the direction CO went.)

Hero, definitely.  Fighting huge clumps of enemies instead of 1 mob at a time, and finding challenge both in being overwhelmed by the underlings and in having powerful villains to fight my hero.

The big mistake of this thread is that WOW is a terrible example of Heroics vs. Difficulty vs. Reward.

The way a hero game should work is just like City of Heroes:

1. You're a hero.  You'll face anything from huge packs of minions to smaller packs with leuitenants to the elite bosses, and sometimes archvillains.  This provides tremendous fight variety, and is very heroic.
2. You choose your difficulty.  You can choose to make those minions pushovers by playing missions on low difficulty, or you can amp things up and make each fight a true challenge.  It's your choice.
3. Reward befits challenge.  Higher difficulty settings are necessary to achieve the fastest rate of advancement.  Unlike in WOW, where a higher-level mob might take +100% longer to kill and award +20% XP more than an even-level mob (thus making it drastically inefficient to fight hard stuff.)

But I suppose if I wanted to make a thread where everyone said they wanted to be boring mundane normal people, I'd use WOW as an example too.  Fairly biased, but then that's the point, isn't it?

Doesn't matter to me actually and depends on the rest of the game.
I played WoW for many years and had fun, and there you are definately a hero. Currently I'm enjoying FE a lot, and there you are a normal person.

So, if hero or normal... I don't care. :)

Originally posted by Axehilt

Hero, definitely.  Fighting huge clumps of enemies instead of 1 mob at a time, and finding challenge both in being overwhelmed by the underlings and in having powerful villains to fight my hero.

The big mistake of this thread is that WOW is a terrible example of Heroics vs. Difficulty vs. Reward.

The way a hero game should work is just like City of Heroes:

1. You're a hero.  You'll face anything from huge packs of minions to smaller packs with leuitenants to the elite bosses, and sometimes archvillains.  This provides tremendous fight variety, and is very heroic.
2. You choose your difficulty.  You can choose to make those minions pushovers by playing missions on low difficulty, or you can amp things up and make each fight a true challenge.  It's your choice.
3. Reward befits challenge.  Higher difficulty settings are necessary to achieve the fastest rate of advancement.  Unlike in WOW, where a higher-level mob might take +100% longer to kill and award +20% XP more than an even-level mob (thus making it drastically inefficient to fight hard stuff.)

But I suppose if I wanted to make a thread where everyone said they wanted to be boring mundane normal people, I'd use WOW as an example too.  Fairly biased, but then that's the point, isn't it?

Choosing difficulty always feels like an Iwin, or an I like to beat my head against a wall, button to me.

If you can scale the difficulty down, it's an I win button. If you can scale the difficulty up, it's a beat your head against the wall for no reason button.

I like a no button approach. There's the challenge, you can beat it, or you cannot, no buttons.

Of course I want to feel like a hero. That is not a guy working at the car wash or wall street, but a guy fighting monsters and saving princesses.

But I do not need to feel like THE hero in the story. So, heroic in that I'm slaying monsters and delving into deep dungeons not sitting at an office desk, but not THE hero saving the world.

I want to be Indiana Jones, not Super Man. So maybe, not a hero, but an adventurer?

I could still be a super hero, and play a sort of Indiana Jones role, like I'm adventuring and fighting villains, but the earth won't blow up in 5 minutes if I screw it up. That sort of thing.

Even in so called "linear" games you are what you make of yourself. Yes im tired of dumb "save the world quests" but at the end of the day some people you can call good players and others you cant. Can i be a villain?

At this point I would welcome stepping into the shoes of a protagonist that is more or less "normal" having to use my wit to solve the problems facing my character. Having to make difficult decisions which effect my character's life and the lives of others around him, and letting those decisions impact wether my character is a hero or a villain. Just being a cookie cutter hero doesn't do justice even heroes are faced with decisions that have less than reputable outcomes.

Originally posted by blackangle

In most of the games i have played in the last decade, especially MMO's, ive begun to notice the simple elements that make the game replayable or not to myself. these basic building blocks which create the entire gaming experience. one of them is the hero vs normal person aspect. there are games out there where you can go and slaughter a whole field of NPC's and once you step into an arena its like Clash of the titans. there are games where you have to tackle one obstacle at a time otherwise your going to get gang raped, and next thing you know your looking at your dead corpse.  ive played games where you fight a giant and kill him because he wasnt smart enough to use his fat foot and squish you.

ive noticed that the simple idea of being a HERO complared to be a normal person actually makes the biggest difference in a game then almost any other component it has.

Latly all i see is threads and posts and questions on larger scale components that have so many individual components that its hard to describe one from the next because they are so different. sandbox to you could mean housing, crafting, and a hard learning curve. sandbox to someone else could simply mean you have the choice in what you do from day to day.

its those simple elements that make up the actual game that need to be perfected, not the overall idea.

in my experience, i have found that being an average person within the gaming world instead of another hero is more fun and more likely to keep me coming back for more. and overall there are often more things you have to do with being a normal person then being a hero.

my quesiton for the community is what would you guys like to see more of, and how would you like to see it? i mean anyone can log into WOW ( i dont mean to put wow down because it is a fun game) and run around and kick ass. would you rather be someone normal that actually has to take things more cautiously? would you rather have no fear and run around like a god, or would you rather have to think about where your putting your foot next so you dont step on a land mine?

to me its the simple elements like this that build a game, that create a gaming eperience and determine whether its fun and replayable or if its end goal is over a simple idea such as gear or a title.

Good post, my preference has been more towards games where you were I'd guess more heroic as you put it.  I recall playing SWG recently for a free trial and found it very difficult to take on multiple mobs, I always was incapped by the second before I could kill him, now I didn't have any uber gear just the jedi robes given and was sometimes taking on mobs two levels lower than me.  Now when I play LOTRO depending on my character I can take on up to three similar levelled mobs and survive often but that is not a given either I could depending on circumstances spend a night getting killed time and time again costing hefty fees for repair and some effect to combat ability for a time and that's as far as I like it taken.  I recall playing COH when it released and it was my first experience with a game that featured experience debt and it was one of the things that drove me from the game.  The desire to advance and level is going to be easily one of the strongest attractionto a game designed that way and as such it just for me became a cheap way to keep me playing the game which ultimately didn't work as it's the only mmo I've ever played that I never played long enough to experience what would be "end game" content for the game.
 

  I think alot of those issues depends on the game as well,  it makes sense for my hero in LOTRO will be able to take down more than one orc or goblin at a time as we've seen it done in the lore but if I was playing say Star Trek online I don't expect to often run across mobs of two or three similar powered ships and win very often but at the end of the day I don't want to be punished for losing in a game because ultimately that's what happens and there are just too many factors that can effect that as well.

  I mean imagine playing a game with perma death and during a battle you lose connection, it happens so much I wonder if some who want this type of gameplay really consider that.

It depends on the game's setting and premise.

A normal dude in a world like Diablo 2 would die faster than a Fallen hit by a Frozen Orb.

But in a more gritty, low power setting, normal is the way to go.

If I got my choice, I would choose normal, but exotic.... meaning, the normal vulnerabilities and low power, but with some abilities that grow as I progress through the game.  In a way, a "normal" dude that becomes a hero.

The other thing to remember, is that being a hero is not just defined by the amount of firepower and damage you can throw out and take.  Being a hero in myth and literature is often defined by the person's ACTIONS.  I think many Devs have forgoten this.

I'd like to start off as a nobody and become a hero or villian based on my actions. The game should be challenging every step of the way though. I believe realism is in order as it applies to fantasy.

For example, at a lower level challening might be wildlife predators. Basically animals who have an edge through ferocity and natural weapons, such as claws and teeth. Smaller animals mind you, such as wolves, bears, and things of that nature. Once you're an accomplished hunter, which will be recognized by the town you live in, you'll likely seek more challenges elsewhere.

I think the next logical step is something with more intelligence, such as thugs, bandits, and other criminals. Helping a city and kingdom rid their land of these ruffians will make you a local hero. As you progress, so will the skill of the common criminals.

The next logical progression is skilled humanoids, such as soldiers, mercenaries, assassins, and so on. In addition to the intelligence the prior bandits had, these people will also know what their doing with their weapons of choice. They'll also work together when available.

The next logical progression would be magical humanoids, the supernatural, and creatures of myth and legends. You've proven this far that you can handle any man or humanoid with any skill in fighting, so the only way to challenge yourself now is by facing those with magic and otherwordly abilities.

Lastly, you'll progress to take on the toughest foes in the world. These foes will be masters of their craft. Master Wizards, Sorcerors, Blademasters, Paladins, Dragons, and whatever else.

So basically, I outlined a natural progression of challenges that takes you from being a local hunstman, to a local hero, to a well-known hero, to a legend, to practically a demi-god.

Ihmotepp: "But I do not need to feel like THE hero in the story. So, heroic in that I'm slaying monsters and delving into deep dungeons not sitting at an office desk, but not THE hero saving the world."

Yeah, absolutely!

Ihmotepp: "If you can scale the difficulty down, it's an I win button."

Hmm, did you play COH?  It wasn't like that at all.  There were 5 stages of granularity between "I Win" (where the game basically told you "grats, you're amazing!  Here's your toothpick of a reward!") and head-wall-bashing (where if you manage to beat it the game's like "holy shit man...props...here's some amazing XP, you deserve it!")

If you didn't like the extremes, chances are you'd like one of the 3 options in the middle.

WOW is basically the "no button" approach, where things are balanced so easily that there are very few challenges  in the game.

I suppose I do believe that you can have your 10 quests in a quest hub, with one of them being the "challenge" quest, or even 5 of them.  But you'll notice how this reduces the efficiency of content design - the designers made 10 quests, but whether you're a pro or a noob you're only really getting 5 good ones out of it.  With a global difficulty modifier, the noob and pro both get the challenge (and hopefully reward) they deserve and they both get 10 quests.