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How to be a hero in a persistent world
Dubhlaith
Member Posts: 1,012
I just recently found time to look at the humanity week audio tour (Against the Wall: Humanity in Guild Wars 2), and while I found it very interesting, and I very much enjoyed the voice acting, I am growing more concerned about a trend I am seeing in the development of Guild Wars 2.
Here, they talk about us being heroes.
"... making it feel like youre humanity's champion in its darkest hour ..."
This sort of talk, combined with what we know about personal stories, has me quite concerned.
We cannot all be the hero that saves the world. We can't all be best friends with the same nobles (or commoners, or peasants). Even if there are a hundred different ways the personal story can go, or five hundred, with all the races, there will be probably thousands playing alongside one another.
My question is how Anet will reconcile personal stories with the persistence of a living world, which is what it seems like they are trying to create, and what I would love to see again in a MMORPG.
How can we all be heroes, and not crowd the world in a ridiculous fashion, as is the case most more recent MMOs?
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
Comments
Just act like a hero. The devs cant do everything for you. Be helpful,gracious,and protect the less abled players.
Acting the hero in any multiplayer game only works until the 'Hey, me too!' and 'Hey, I did that too!' problems inevitably set in.
At least with more dynamic content again that will hopefully become a shrinking issue rather than a growing one.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
I think you are taking them a bit too literally and also forgetting that there are 4 other races to choose from. In lore humanity is doing the worst out of the 5 races. They lost ascalon, they lost countless in the destruction of Lion's Arch and really are fighting for survival. So I think to feel like a hero for humanity will feel far different, then being a charr or an asura etc.
That is what they are getting at I think.
In a land where your race is nearly wiped out, and you're constantly being attacked by hostile beings who drastically outnumber you, aren't there a LOT of chances to be a hero?
Look at any war. They're crammed full of heroes, and heroic actions. That's just the times you're living in.
If centaurs are invading a village, and 10 players work together to fight them off, then they were all just heroic. Heroes together!
Everybody (Even the other 4 races) in GW2 is living in heroic times, a time when large groups of the population have to work together and fight back against the other forces.
(Now, the question about being THE hero, well, the personal storyline is different, yeah, your concern is a little more valid there, but I think it's perfectly possible to be a hero in the open world without it meaning other people are not)
I share your concerns. This cliché hero crap reminds me of AoC, where everyone is 'the chosen one'. ( Hilarious Zero Punctuation review: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/138-Age-of-Conan )
This idea is almost gamebreakingly unimmersive in my eyes. One of the basic pillars of the archetype roleplaying game concept is having the freedom to be what you want, not having good alignment and a generic heroesque story forced on you. It's an affront to people's imagination and a killer blow to RP minded folks, whether they are active roleplayers or not.
Having no pvp out in the open, persistant world isn't helping much either in that regard; it takes away the option for some people to be evil or just opportunistic thugs and with that, taking away the possibility for others to be the vigilantes who deal with said no-good gankers.
The persistant world will be like you say: the various, predictable PVE challenges and all your helpful server buddies.
Yup, I am very concerned in regard to some aspects to GW2 V_V
edit: Zomg .. you have the same Otherland quote in your sig as I do. It certainly is one of the greatest book-derived wisdoms I ever read
My brand new bloggity blog.
Well there are 2 ways you can do it. Either everybody is a hero or nobody is. I definitely prefer the former. You don't have to be a nobody just because there are other players playing the game. It's all about perception. But there are some players which want to be special and stand out from the rest. This is what you will not get in an MMO. Plus heroes are not some stupid attention seekers. Heroes don't do good deeds simply because they want to be rewarded in some way be it fame, money etc.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Why is this such a concern? The thing about the Personal Story in GW2 is that it's "personal". It is your story that you go through and your actions that effect it, not anyone else's and they can do this because it's Instanced, not Persistent. ArenaNet is also trying to make people fell like heroes, like their actions actually matter, in the persistent world as well. This can be achieved with the game's dynamic events. So you & anyone one else will be considered the Town of <insert name here>'s hero, for an hour or so, if you take it upon yourself to help defend it from invaders and I think that's a fantastic step forward from what I'm currently experiencing in LOTRO.
If this is such a gamebreaking concern to some people, then why play these kinds of MMO's in general, since they all have you going through pretty much the same set of quests as most other people? All I can say is that I'm glad I don't have this kind of mindset, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to enjoy Mass Effect as much, since millions of people are also playing the role of galactic hero Cmd. Shepard.
Exactly!
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
I dont think the OP understands that the entire personal story is instanced. So as you play through your personal story you are the hero and the only other players in your personal story are players that you invite in and even then they are only helping you become the hero. Of course the personal story is just a small part of the game with dynamic events taking up most of the content as far as I know.
As far as being a hero in dynamic events. Like others said above me, you and those who helped in the event are the hero until the event resets and the town or whoever is attacked again.
I am kind of a Guild Wars fangirl, and I do understand that the personal story is instanced and I know how instancing works.
The problem is this:
They say they want to bring roleplaying back to the MMO. I heartily support this notion. But while the dynamic event system seems to function in a way that would help this immensely, the personal story seems to have the opposite effect, and so their focus seems torn. How can I roleplay with other players if we both have the same best friend NPC, and in my world, the NPC does not know the other player, but in that player's world, the NPC does not know me. The very notion kills roleplaying.
And yes, this problem has existed in many previous MMOs, and roleplayers basically ignored the fact that in the game world, we had all killed <evil monster> or done <heroic deed>. Anet is talking like they want to remove this barrier to roleplaying, but it seems like they are going to magnify it.
See, this is the problem. In a single player game, it works fine. I am Shepard. I save the day, people love me, people know me. The relationships I have are mine and mine alone, because I am not sharing them. This is exactly why that sort of thing should never happen in a persistent world. I absolutely cannot be the only one in the game world to have these friends, to have done these things, but the game will attempt to make it look like I am.
I am not saying this is bad for the game, as I am sure it is going to be incredible. My question speaks to roleplaying, as I think only Dark Pony has understood so far. How can we roleplay with other players in a world with an even more specific storyline that most. This is indeed much like AoC, where we cannot all have been the hero of Tortage. It just would not make sense.
Therefore, to roleplay, we have to completely ignore an entire section of the game while doing so. Games should not be designed with this problem, and most especially not if they say they want to "inject roleplaying" into the genre again.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
But the personal story is basically a co-op single player game of it's own, so why shouldn't it work as fine as Mass Effect? Let's say I decide to save the orphanage instead of the hospital and my friend decides to do the same thing during his/her own personal story. Does that make my experience any less important, any less personal because the other part of the game is persistent? If you say it does then why should it be any different if during the Meass Effect 2 Geth loyalty mission, if I decide to wipe out the other Geth faction's beliefs and my friend happens to do the same thing. Why should my single player role playing experience be affected, by other people's singleplayer role playing experience. Why are you so adement in your belief that because a good portion of the GW2 world is persistent, your own singleplayer role playing experience won't mean a thing because other people are experiencing the same heroic adventure? Even if said heroic adventure is shaped by their actions.
I would like to know what exactly it is you're hoping for, because from the looks of things, it seems like you want something complete unrealistic.
We clearly do not mean the same thing by roleplaying. In a single-player game, roleplaying is done through story choices and interactions with NPCs, to tell a story. In a MMORPG, roleplaying is something that you do with other players. When I log into a game world, I take on the role of a character I create, and my interactions with others are done as if I am this character. That is roleplaying.
The personal story seems to be an effort to achieve single-player roleplaying, but that effort is hindered by the fact that it is not single player, and in the end, your role is defined by your interactions with other players, not with NPCs. Perhaps this is, as they have mentioned before, an effort to get people to identify with their characters, and they will have a way for this to mesh with the persistent world well, but that does not seem to be the case.
The problem existed in GW1, which is one reason I would think they would be trying to do something different with GW2. In GW1, you have a great story, and good single-player roleplaying happening, but actual MMO roleplaying, and this is the key you seem to be missing, with other players was virtually non-existent.
Of course it did happen, some, but as in other games, people mostly ignored the campaign plots with respect to their own characters while roleplaying. I could not roleplay with you and not ignore the story, because if during the course of a RP conversation, you mention you had to watch Prince Rurik die, well, I might be a little freaked out, and understandably so, since I also watched him die. Of course, I also had to kill him again later. But so did you.
Does that make sense to you now? Single-player and multiplayer RPGs must and should follow different rules due to the simple fact that in a multiplayer game you will be interacting with others, and you cannot both have done the same thing. We can't both be BFF with Lord Faren, just as we could not both have killed Shiro (again).
In most older MMOs this was not even an issue. But in most newer theme-park quest-based MMOs, roleplayers just act like the quests they did never happened, and tell their own stories. I suspect this will be the case with GW2, and I suppose that is fine. But from Anet's own discussion of roleplaying, it sounds as if they want roleplaying to come naturally to people, for in-character conversations to be the norm rather than a rarity. I think single-player storytelling mechanics are a detriment to this, and my original question was thoughts on why Anet chose this route, what it means for roleplaying, and/or ideas for how this could be remedied by either player actions or through something Anet will/could do (they might actually be, and just not have mentioned it).
I suppose you could only understand what I am saying if you have roleplayed with other players in a MMORPG before. It is not really the same animal as roleplaying at a table with your friends. If you do not understand what I mean, if you have not done it before, then perhaps none of this makes any sense and you do not see either a problem or a contradiction. Maybe it is like jazz. If you have to ask, you'll never know.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
The problem is, what they're trying to do with branching storylines and epic story and other SRPG trappings basically leads to this sort of dichotomy.
My advice is just do what I'll do. Do the personal story, sort of internalize it as in 'Oh, that was a nice story they told me', and totally RP whatever the heck you want to.
Concentrate more on the character, and don't have them talk about their instanced adventures. Split your brain in half!
So you can say 'Oh, I totally fought back the Shatterer, and that was pretty epic', and other people can be like 'Oh, maybe I was there! Was it that one time where (etc)', and you can pat each other on the back.
Just refrain from saying 'So I totally brought everybody together to defeat that Elder Dragon'.
A less that complete, ideal solution, but one that is perfectly doable.
I know I'll be concentrating more upon who my character IS, rather than what they did.
My pyromaniacal Charr Elementalist... (If you can't solve a problem with fire, the problem is you're not using enough fire) my Asura Guardian (The problem with other races being guardians is that it requires logic and quick, insightful thinking to be a philanthropist. Otherwise you'll make poor choices at inconvenient times. Like that Logan Thackery chap.) and so on.
I think that quests and slaying the Big Bads in MMORPG's have always been a hindrance to roleplay immersion and that it required a need for compromise or ignoring things, not only in recent MMO's, or with the story immersive quests like you'll see in GW2, SWTOR or CATA.
That big bad named dragon you and your comrades slew in an epic battle in UO or EQ? Why is it flying and hopping around again within the hour? And why are you off to slay it again with your comrades, what's heroic about slaying it again and again?
You saved the village? Good for you, but why are these other people getting the exact same quest to save the village you already saved, and why does this village need to be saved again from the exact same danger that you saved it from barely a few minutes ago?
Right... try to integrate that with your roleplay without using a bit of creative imagination.
So, these problems have always been there as soon as MMORPG's arose, with the quests, dungeon instances and the named boss mobs that are ingame. So most roleplayers just didn't include those within their roleplay, how they slew the demon god and saved the world... for a few minutes, at least, until it spawned again.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
have you played guild wars?
everyone is the hero. And in most mmos and games you are the hero/villian.
It wont be a problem. Anet wouldent do it if it was going to make the game lame.
The problem is they are trying to make GW2 more of an MMO experience than what GW was which might collide with the whole "hero" thing. I think that's what the OP means. In an MMO you should become a hero by your actions and then be recognized as one by other players not because the game tells you so.
Yes I do understand where you're coming from, but the problem is that you're wishing for Guild Wars 2 and other similar quest-based MMOs to become "sandbox games", where the players define the world and the conflicts within said world. Saying that interactions with NPCs is something that should be disregarded, in an MMO is unture, for most quest-based games. It is about the journey and how you reach its conclusion and what decisions you made to get there, that defines these role-playing games.
If it's player driven content & conflict you want, then stick to the persitent world or World PvP and disregard the personal story. It's not like it's forced upon you. But if you want to continue this pointless conversation, with yet another rebuttal, then it's pretty obvious that quest-based MMOs are not for you and that you should stick to sandbox games. That way you won't have to worry about other players ruining your RP experience with quest line inconsistencies.
Personally I don't really see the big deal about hardcore RP'ing in MMOs, since games are just for fun. So as long as I can play a good RPG, how I want, then no matter if it's singleplayer or multi-player, I'll still enjoy the experience.
I find this "hero fixation" in games boring and childish.
I've been playing RPGs since D&D first came out and me and my gaming buddies never fell for the "YOU ARE HERO" spiel. We played (and still play) all kinds of characters - weaklings, villains, anti-hero types, cynical pragmatists, dumb jocks, fantasy nerds, stuffy nobles, clueless peasants... and yes even a hero or two. In fact i find playing a "hero" type character the most boring of them all and never could get why some players always insist on playing paladins and going all thous and thees and making an ass of themselves. Yes, we used to laugh at those hero guys.
I suspect this is because of the old-school american comics industry where you had "heroes" and "villains" and pretty much nothing else worth mentioning. I grew up on european comics and could never understand the appeal of those hero dudes - it just seemed so droll repetetive and predictable. Hero fights villain. Saves the world. The end. (Honorable exceptions ofc - there are some surprisingly deep and awesome us superhero comics from the golden age)
In the beginning of D&D there was this awesome new type of gaming called "RPG" and you could sense that the writers for this genere were struggling for a story paradigm for this new medium. Sadly, under the banner of TSR and the most popular RPG called D&D they decided to go for the "hero" story of the Lord of the Rings etc type even though literary fantasy genre had quite a lot more to offer... and to be fair some rpgs did offer a different way of looking at things - Ars Magica and World of Darkness which were huge commercial succeses are notable examples proving that there can be something beyond that tired old hero world-savior.
And now we're here in the mmoland.. still stuck with the four-colour hero paradigm. Yawn. I play mmos to be an inhabitant of a shared fantasy world and if I occasionally happen to land a hero role then so be it but I cannot help but vince every time I read that dreaded word "hero" in some new mmo promo text. I mean come on.. I cannot imagine anyone being impressed by being a "hero" in a computer game anymore. It's just dull.
I mean come on.. If american comics could crawl out of that four-colour hero pit (thank you Batman, Sandman and Watchmen) then I see no reasons why fantasy mmos couldn't... And especially considering that the very technical basis of the genre (it is MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ffs) is inherently antagonistic towards hero-world saviours to the degree that the devs must have the programmers (and our creduility) standing on their heads with such ridiculous gimmicks as is instancing and (gasp!) phasing.
Then lucky for you that CCP, the creator of probably the best sandbox MMO, are making World of Darkness (the MMO). I personally don't mind playing a hero as long as I can define my hero, but it doesn't mean that I wouldn't love to play an MMO based on the World of Doarkness, where the term "hero" really shouldn't be uttered.
A correction on that last one, the main characters in a LOT of books, tv shows, games, (superhero) comics, superhero movies - as good as every one - etc are still heroes, small heroes, everyday heroes, 'doing the right thing', you name it.
For the very simple reason that people like protagonists in their stories who are like that. which they can sympathise with or admire, and that's often the 'heroic' kind, in whatever small or large way their heroism shows.
As for such things in MMO's, what's the big deal? People can still ignore the 'heroicky'-ness in the Personal Story and such and pretend that they're just a fetch or kill task with some (to them) meaningless text dialogue tagged on, just like they do with other MMORPG's.
They're just things that are addressed to your avatar, not to you, the way quests and NPC's treat your avatar as a hero, while your own stories and big tales ingame are gathered separately.
Seems to me that some people have a problem with the whole themepark paradigm with its heavy quest focus, but that's not really new as we've seen more often on these forums: some like sandbox MMO's so much that it's to the extent of dislike for themepark mechanics.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
You are confusing the issue - hero or no-hero (or "high fantasy" vs "low fantasy") have nothing to do whatsoever with themepark vs sandbox.
What is the difference between so-called "high" and "low" fantasy genres? Well it is very simple - in high fantasy the protagonist is THE hero - the one around whom the world revolves. He is the center of the macrocosm. He dictates the destiny of the "outer" world around him.
In "low" fantasy, the world does not revolve around the protagonist. Like in the real life, the world does not really care. You can be a hero in "low" fantasy but it is your heroism and is more akin to the heroism of a guy who saves a child from drowning or stops a mugging rather than the megalomaniac napoleon/hitler kind of "heroism" where the world breathlessly hangs on your every action.
For example, Conan is the exemplar of a low-fantasy "hero". Although he is a pretty tough mofo, slaying evil sorcerers left and right, his actions (except later when he gets some political power) do not really affect the world at large. He is very very human in that respect - even if he manages to rescue a princess from the clutches of evil so and so, the world basically goes on without him and the princess might find him a dreadful drunken slob and fail to live happily ever after with him.
Contrast this with Lord of the Rings and its various copies and offshoots - its always the story of a hero or a band of heroes changing the world which will never be the same after they romp through it.
I don't think I have to further clarify how this second model is inherently inimical to the massive persistent worlds shared by thousands of other players. In my mind it is pretty obvious that the "low fantasy" model is inherently superior, for technical reasons if nothing else. This high-fantasy paradigm is just a hang, a throwback to single-player games where this was not only possible but actually inherent to the medium - in a single player game you ACTUALLY ARE the center of the world since you ARE the only living player in it. Imo it is time to call a spade a spade and just say "it is ludicruous to have all 10000 players be world saviours. Let us build our game on a different model - lets give everybody a chance to be a hero in their own way, in their own individual space, in the circle of their friends and co-players rather than forcing a sqare peg into a round hole and inventing all kind of crap to gloss over the fact that not everyone can save THE princess and kill THE dragon. Not because not everyone is "capable" of doing so (that's a matter of simple number balancing, nothing else) but due to the simple fact that there is only ONE most beautiful princes and only ONE most terrible dragon and there are thousands of players in this world. If you make one "most" beautiful princess and one "most" terrible dragon for each and every player then your "heroism" turns into its exact opposite - just plain averageness and ultimately boredom that can never be staved off for long, no matter how much gfx and oomph you pile on top of it."
PlinkPlonk, sounds like you would enjoy playing an MMORPG based off of the Black Company books.
You'd be a mercenary in a military unit, life would be brutal, short, and ultimately end up with your permanent death. If you ever DID go up against an 'end boss', you and the hundreds with you would die after a humiliating and brief fight, emphasizing just how mortal you really are.
Then you get to make a new character!
That's the tradeoff between having a good, immersive storyline and having RP freedom. GW2 follows the Mass Effect model: there's a central storyline that you basically must follow if you want to progress in the story at all, but you get to choose how your character responds to the events around him. Of course, you could always just choose to ignore the personal storyline completely in GW2 and go off and RP whatever you want, but the one thing that they absolutely can NOT allow is open PvP or PK. That would completely clash with everything they're trying to do to make people actually PLAY with each other in the open world.
If you want that, go play a sandbox. This isn't a sandbox. It's quite clearly supposed to be a story-driven single-player RPG, not an open-world "do whatever you want" RPG. If that's not what you want, so be it, but since the original GW1 was ALL ABOUT trying to give the player a single-player story in a multiplayer world, this really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
As for the actual topic at hand: easy. Either get immersed in your own personal story, and screw what everyone else is doing (you know that there are people out there playing their own stories in Fallout too, right?), or you can pick some challenge or area for yourself and do it. Want to RP as the protector of some small hamlet in Kryta? Great, just hang around and defend the area from centaur attacks, protect the trade routes to the town from raiders so the merchants have bread to sell, etc. There should always be dynamic events going on that affect whatever part of the world you're in, so pick some area to be a hero and be a hero.
I find it interesting that several people simply dismiss the issue, or give the advice to ignore the personal storyline. In fact, in my posts here I say that that has been what people who RP tend to do almost to a person in MMOs. And as I said, that is fine, and will probably be what I do. (Of course, I will play the story, just not RP that my character did.)
What the problem is is not that this personal story exists. It is that Anet says they want to inject RP into the world, and seem to be following, as PlinkPlonk put it, a low fantasy type of system in the dynamic events. You do things, or fail to do things, and these actions have a direct affect on the world, but the world does keep going no matter what happens.
So, it seems to me that they are trying to have their cake and eat it too. And perhaps they have a way to make it work and then they can eat said cake.
Some people are confusing this problem with theme-park vs. Sandbox. I won't lie, I like a good sandbox. But I like a good theme park as well. And GW2 would be no less theme park and no more sandbox is the personal story did not exist. They still create the world and the environment and we just exist in it. And I would not want world PvP for GW either. I love PvP, but I love GW style PvP, where people know going in that they are going to be fighting players, they know what to expect, and for the most part it is a fair fight. I despise ganking while in the world while other people are trying to relax with PvE. So again, not the issue in the slightest.
So it is not a sandbox, and I would not want it to be. But that has absolutely no bearing on the roleplaying. And this would not even be an issue if I did not expect near-perfection from Anet, or they had not expressly stated time and again that their goal is more RP and RP player interaction. Or, if they did not develop a brilliant and sprawling system (DEs) that seem to facilitate that very idea.
It seems to me they are divided on the issue, and are trying to be everything to everyone.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
GW2 really does seem to be trying to mash up several kinds of semi-incompatible gaming styles into one game. They have the almost sandbox, low-fantasy feel of the Dynamic Events, then the high-fantasy, very themepark personal story.
Then in a third, also unconnected area, they crammed in 3 way open world PvP.
All three of those gameplay types interfere with each other in various ways, and they seem to have mostly dealt with the problem by basically having 3 MMOs in the same MMO, coexisting but not overlapping.
(shrug) Yeah, they're trying to have their cake, eat it AND throw it in somebody's face.
It breaks world immersion a bit (They get around it in amusing ways sometimes. Like having the PvP int he Mists... alternate dimensions fighting IN an alternate dimension!), but I'm willing to make that sacrifice for the chance to play a (hopefully) well-polished game that delivers many types of gameplay I enjoy.