Comments on: No More MMO Heroes

By: Breaking From the Collective Tempo | Kill Ten Rats

Breaking From the Collective Tempo | Kill Ten Rats — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:46:11 +0000

[...] but spikes in the tempo to give some feeling of individuality are allowed. In group MMOs, we don’t have heroes like that. The tempo belongs to the group, and I believe (with all my research*) that successful [...]

By: Stridle

Stridle — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:21:14 +0000

after all the years of jumping back to front from MMO to Fps .. i really do miss the days of Playing Raven shield Pistols only and going and killing some tangos.. Clearing CT maps and the team work from complete strangers… flip side you have a MMO and you know some of these ppl for years in game.. and still dont go nowhere and it is a constant grind with little or not real satisfication.

By: moondog548

moondog548 — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:19:59 +0000

The word you’re looking for is “psuedopods”. :D

By: Ravious

Ravious — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:34:06 +0000

@Arkenor: DDO actually might come closer. I am in the beta (I think I can say that), but I want to wait until the new version is released (I have a static RL friend group waiting in the wings).

@Crimson Starfire: GW GvG does come close. When you go solo to take down henchies at the base, it feels pretty good. Or flag-runner fights…

By: Hess

Hess — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:22:26 +0000

The the few rare”hero” experiences I’ve had in LotRO were PvP situations (solo, group and full raid) where one person pulls through seemingly impossible odds and completely dominates (or escapes). Overall the PvP system in that game is just PvE but with a lot more wargs trolling for easy kills.

This is unlikely, if not impossible, in PvE play. Sure, you have good players and bad ones (group with a good minstrel vs. a bad one and tell me you can’t see the difference :P) but at the end of the day, as long as they can press hot-keys in the right order anyone can make it.

Mortal Online looks like an MMO that’s trying to incorporate a little skill but I don’t have high hopes for that one sticking around long or being appealing to enough people to make the community interesting.

By: Crimson Starfire

Crimson Starfire — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:45:34 +0000

I have felt like a 'proactive, reactive, intelligent' hero in Guild Wars PvP, but nothing compared to TF2. I remember analyzing this exact topic a while back and was left wondering what was stopping MMORPGs from replicating the same PvP experience TF2 can provide. If only Valve made an MMO...

By: Arkenor

Arkenor — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:28:10 +0000

That was why I liked DDO. Combat in that felt much more immediate, and positioning was much more important. I can thoroughly recommend it to anyone who wants to feel a bit more like their personal skill makes a difference.

By: Rog

Rog — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:25:39 +0000

The only times I’ve felt like I’ve had “proactive, reactive, intelligent” participation with an MMO group, it’s always been in small-team situations in challenging circumstances (usually designed for more players).

The original WoW Endgame dungeons (Stratholme, Scholomance, Blackrock Depths, and to a lesser extent Dire Maul) provided opportunity to take a smaller group for some serious on-the-fly craziness.

Since then, dungeon design has been scaled in such predictable fashion, or worse, scripted. Good for story and presentation, but not as good for gameplay. And that’s true not just for WoW, but pretty much every MMORPG since. =(

This is why I still spend so much time in the FPS games. Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, Unreal Tournament 3 and a host of Half-Life 2 mods, all with better team dynamics than most MMOs. I miss the persistence when I play these games, but for sheer visceral fun with friends, they’re hard to beat. PvP especially, from my perspective I can’t fathom why people both PvP’ing in MMOs, the gap between quality content is so huge.

By: Letrange

Letrange — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:48:22 +0000

Actually I find this to be the case in MMOs as well. The problem is you need to wade out beyond the kiddy pool of WoW to get there. FFXI has provided that feeling many times while I was playing it. Quite a few times player skill can pull victory out of the jaws of defeat. The effectiveness between a party of people that know what they are doing and are on the ball is incredibly different from one that’s not.

By: bonedead

bonedead — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:20:43 +0000

I think this may be my problem with MMOs. I’ve got the FPS, it is possible to win for your whole team, mentality. Those moments are what I strive for and they are just so rare in MMOs. I don’t even have to be competing in a match to get the moments in FPSes, I can just be in a public server. It just happened the other day, I’m the last CT and the bomb gets planted, I make my way to it and kill 2 guys with my rifle ammo, switch to pistol and kill the last 2, reach the bomb and defuse it one second before it blows up. WINNER! That just doesn’t happen as often in MMOs because they’re designed against it. If I was capable of mowing down 4 other players on my way to cap a flag in WAR then my class would be getting nerfed soon.

The closest I’ve come to making it happen on a regular basis in an MMO is when I stack the deck in my favor. By playing with friends and building good duos/trios. In DAoC it was a Zerker/Shaman combo and WAR was a Runepriest/Runepriest combo.

Maybe I’m just a dick but I want to be the winner and I want my team to know it was because of me, but I also want to feel bad if I don’t win to motivate me to get better.

P.S. Balls