What is, in your opinion, the best way to deal with the "everyone is the chosen one" problem in MMORPGs?

What is, in your opinion, the best way to deal with the "everyone is the chosen one" problem in MMORPGs?

Make NPCs treat you like "just another soldier"

I think, but this is only my opinion and you can disagree, that we could improve them by not making everyone the chosen one.

Don't do it

Make your character just one of many, where you don't matter to the overall picture. Just like real life.

Ideally, you don't want to have that situation to begin with.

If you absolutely had to though, downplay the status of a "chosen one" a lot, you're still some hot shit but not so much so that everyone is entirely reliant on you to get shit done and your efforts has a marginal effect.

ESO was able to explain with a Dragon Break but that's really exclusive to Elder Scrolls

Then who defeats the big baddie?

Do it Morrowind style. Everyone has the capability to become the chosen one.

No one

An army of nobodies lead by the hero of your faction.

real choosen one

In my objectively true point of view, most players should be treated as soldiers, while the best PvP / PvE players and guild leaders of big factions should be treated as important people in the story, maybe ascended demi-gods or something and giving them access to better gear and skills

This gives everyone the feeling that if they give their best, they will actually become relevant story-wise and different from the other players

Do what runescape did and have creative quests. But that requires talent, something modern day publishers, including jagex, don't want to touch.

I've always liked this idea, a super meritocratic system where any one character can be objectively better than others through skill and work

but it's many flaws prevent it from becoming a reality:

>NEETs playing from launch have an enormous advantage
>lessened appeal to those who can't drop 6+ hours daily on vidya, no chance
>the longer the game is out (or since the last reset, if implemented) the less incentive to start playing

Just like in real life

you were/are always the chosen one in runescape. are you retarded?

Iirc Tree of Savior explained that everyone was told they're the chosen one to hide the real chosen one. I might be wrong though, as I didn't play much

People only really call you the chosen one because the big guy on the throne said you were. In reality you're just some shmuck that kills magical boars for a living.

runescape had good quests but they did not avoid the "everyone is the chosen one" problem. not even counting nu-scape lore where guthix chooses you to be the world guardian, you were always the #1 totally unique special person who did everything. gaining access to champs, heros and legends guilds are all because you are a champ/hero/legend who found the holy grail/resurected zaros/saved varrock from the demon/saved varrock from the vampires/married into miscellanian royalty/found the elves and defeated the mourners/became leader of the temple knights/saved the gnomes from being wiped out by khazard. those are all the early quest chains i can remember lmao

Social based horizontal progression with classes like drug addict, criminal, lawyer, cop, alcoholic, prostitute, waitress, etc. etc. Shit like Second Life has proven there's a market for that kinda shit.

Wasn't there a Star Wars MMO where only a few people could be jedis?

You forgot discovering Zanaris, saving Burthorpe from trolls and thwarting some early mahjarrat like Lucien (by stealing the staff of Armadyl) and Hazeels cult

Having an MMO in which you can literally become the strongest character. But that is never gonna happen in these times, when games get too casualized and everything that emphasizes "no-life" is frowned upon.

Don't write stories about saving the world or saving cities. You can still make an interesting game about raiding an enemy city or fighting a big beast.

A bunch of soldiers.

It's not an MMO, but I like how Dark Souls did it. Everyone is the chosen one in their own universe but due to "time is convoluted" shenanigans, the "chosen one" of one universe can cross over to another's universe as a phantom.

I hate the whole "you are the chosen one" idea in any game

Just have the NPC's treat you like a normal guy or soldier or whatever

Its just much more interesting when an underdog overcomes the odds that are against him

That route is usually better than offloading the "chosen one" thing to one NPC lore character. Characters like Thrall and Trahearne are obnoxious and usually end up being mary-sues

Star Wars Galaxies is literally the answer, but people are assblasted because they want importance that they don't have in real life, without realizing that life's importance is created by the individual and so too is it in an MMO world.

Should've finished the thought, but it's really the mentality of gamers, not an issue with the genre. The genre is nigh irrepairable until people realize there is satisfaction to be had even when you're far from the center of things. In SWG, I played in a band and worked as a miner occasionally and it was legitimately some of the most fun RPGing times I've had. You need to have people who buy into the fact that you are just a person, and so is Yoda, so is Superman. You choose a role you want to fill and you work to fill it while making that character become a realistic entity within that universe.

It's difficult to a weave a story line without it sometimes.

In Star Trek Online everyone is a cadet turned Ensign who gets command of their own ship during a disaster on a training mission. That old trope.

Why? Because STO is a ship based game, not a ground based game, so necessarily every player must command their own ship to fly it around and do stuff.

Then every PvE ground mission is full of Captains and Fleet Admirals running around shooting aliens.

Everyone together, because it's a danger to their way of life or something and the only way to stop it is together.

You don't have to be a chosen one, you can be the guys who decided to not sit back and get fucked by big baddie

Yup. You're just random traveler who happened to help the bro who needed something done (quest giver).

You don't need to be the one true hero to help farmer brown with his boar problem.

Make it plural, the chosen oneS. IIRC the campaign in vanilla Guild Wars always assumed the players were part of a group. In the first half they were all refugees from Ascalon, then later the group of "Chosen" that went through ascension.

WoW sometimes refer to the players as "Champions of the horde/alliance" but recent expansions have really double dipped in the "Chosen One" thing.

this too, it just feels so out of place when a supposed "chosen one" helps out with miniscule tasks like that

You don't need to create a storyline when an MMO produces an environment where storylines should naturally develop. I understand you're talking hard-coded, cinematic shit, not that it is shit literally, but EVE Online is another good example. Things happen because the players will them, very similarly to the real world. If you want a storyline while still keeping hundreds of thousands of people, you are going to have to make it impacting without it necessarily being relevant. An example in that regard is something like America bombing Syria recently; it doesn't directly impact other countries, as they aren't being bombed, but it clearly creates tension and changes how things will begin to work. I know that's too recent to be exactly effective in it's analogy, but I hope these points convey well enough. Players don't need a throne and warbands attacking their own deluxe castle that realistically would be sitting ten miles over the ocean due to the player amount. What they need is interactivity and impact where the playerbase and the potential for a vague or fully fleshed out story are both equally as important.

Blizzard needs to cut that shit out, but with he artifact weapons, it doesn't seem to even be slowing. I liked being a Horde Mook who helped the story heroes do shit. I like the feeling of basically being a Warcraft 3 unit in a gaggle of them with a hero or two NPCs. I thought that was sort of the point of WoW.

I like how FF14 handled it

>You are the chosen one
>A couple of throwaway lines here and there imply that the other players are just a bunch of mercenaries you hired

What are some good mmos to play atm?
I played Tera, ArchAge B&S and enjoyed both

I know this may seem sort of cringe but look at Sword Art Online. I feel like the formula for that would be pretty good for solving the chosen one cliche. Make the MMO like a separate life simulator but still make itna game. You can do anything you want as long as you train the right talents/skills. Everyone works together to take on dungeons/bosses. Towns and economy are real and very lifelike.

Tíbia did it, just don't make you the chosen one and no one cares/notices

everyone else is a chosen one from a parallel universe/alternate history and said universes merged somehow because of the big bad's plan

I bashed the chosen one thing in this thread, but this is actually a pretty good resolution for the issue, if not a bit cliche.