
I was recently thumbing through my Lord of the Rings Online screenshots when I stumbled into one I’d taken of a player’s extremely smart observation on session play and mounted combat – and the real reason they don’t work.
“Session play was often like mounted combat,” the player wrote. “You are suddenly converted into a complete different kind of character class you have never played before.”
I can tell you right now why I clipped that screenshot: It’s because I hate, hate, hate MMOs that do this. I don’t know which MMO did it first, but I remember it in Classic Guild Wars, and I remember when World of Warcraft’s Wrath of the Lich King expansion launched, I was absolutely infuriated about all the ways WoW was coming up with to detach me from my character and make me play something else, whether it was a specific winged mount in a dungeon or a jousting horse or a siege weapon. And it wasn’t like a different mode you could opt into, like hopping into a spaceship in a space MMO with ground combat too; it was a blockade to content, so you were going to learn it. It felt like the antithesis of MMOs to me.
But other people love these things for their novelty, and I want to talk about the concept in this week’s Massively Overthinking. Tell me about the MMOs where suddenly you’re a different character now because the developers say so. Now you’re a tank or a dragon or a cavalryman or a Tolkien dwarf with totally new skills and mechanics and movement! Which MMOs do this, and more importantly, where does it work well?
Brianna Royce (@nbrianna.bsky.social, blog): I want to elaborate on why I hate this: It’s that MMOs are usually built on the idea of building a highly customized, highly specialized, highly personal RPG character over a long period of time. It drives me crazy when the game is suddenly like, THAT’S NICE BUT NOW YOU WILL PLAY OUR CHARACTER OUR WAY WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT. That’s what I mean when I say these game modes are the antithesis of MMORPGs. I’m good without enforced novelty, thanks. If I want novelty, I will roll an alt.
On top of that, the modes usually suck. They’re usually super gimmicky; the devs can’t add too many new buttons because you can’t learn too many quickly, so they pivot to relying on something else, like twitch speed, target accuracy, or ability to intuitively pilot something that handles like a boat on land, which you’re just meant to acquire by osmosis or something. Oh, and then fight while driving said boat. It’s great if you’re good at these things, I’m sure, but if you’re not, well, you’re in for a lot of annoyance and frustration while you learn, all the while wanting to get back to the character you built yourself.
I’m a big fan of Guild Wars 2, but that MMO does these little gimmicks all the time, and I definitely don’t enjoy it. The only time it really works is if it’s fully skippable – and as the OP says, in LOTRO, there are too many that are part of the main storyline. Or… my god, the months I spent jousting in Wrath. I shudder to remember.
Carlo Lacsina (@UltraMudkipEX, YouTube, Twitch): I enjoy it occasionaly if only because I enjoy the occasional change of pace, but I’ll probably quickly get bored of it. Its kind of something that’s just part of games in general, so it’s just a thing I do to get through the story.
Something that stands out more is when your character is put into a location that shakes up the mechanics just enough that it feels like a different game. For example, FFXIV’s deep dungeons. Those are far more standout and fun, and I prefer that over my character outright changing
Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes.bsky.social, blog): I always despised when Final Fantasy XIV forced me to play as another character entirely. This was especially egregious through Shadowbringers and Endwalker, but mercifully CS3 has finally lightened up on the nonsense.
I appreciate why this has to happen sometimes from a narrative point of view – having another NPC get direct time to shine is a great move – but a lot of the time, these character moments play so radically differently from anything that exists in a game that it just ends up being annoying and jarring, even if their ability suite is no more than maybe three buttons.
So with that said, even if I understand the motivations, and even if I manage to adapt for the most part, all it does is aggravate me and makes me ignore whatever good things are going on.
Eliot Lefebvre (@Eliot_Lefebvre, blog): Since we don’t have a lot of positive examples here, I want to focus on a game wherein it is a bit more of a mixed bag: Warframe. Warframe has several modes in which you swap what you’re playing, but I want to focus on three things in particular: Archwing missions, the Circuit, and dealing with the Necramech. I think all three actually provide an example of how to do this correctly or incorrectly.
In the Archwing missions, your frame of choice slaps on a flight pack, a different pair of weapons, and goes to fly around a fully flight-navigable space to accomplish missions. Now, I do think this mode plays worse than the main game, but perhaps most crucially you do have multiple options for your Archwing. You aren’t limited to a single type, and while there are far fewer Archwing options than you have for frames, the odds are at least decent you will find one that you like. In other words, it’s not a sudden hard shift you can’t anticipate, and you do actually have a measure of control over what you end up using.
The Circuit, meanwhile, is an optional roguelike mode: You choose between a small selection of frames and weapons and have to go through a series of endless objectives. This mode is… a bit worse, but still works. You are still not necessarily playing what you find to be the most fun, but you do get to choose your frame and still play the basic game according to its existing mechanics. It’s a unique challenge that forces you to deviate from your usual play patterns, and while some rounds can leave you with no good choices for frames or otherwise, it’s a fairly good compromise mode.
And then there’s the Necramech, a big, slow, stompy mech that the main story forces you to get and then certain missions force you to use, which has exactly two variants (with not very different gameplay) and no real choices beyond that. And therein lies the difference. If you love the Necramech, you barely ever get to use it; if you hate it, you still have to use it whenever the game decides to, and the choices you made down to the basic mechanics your character engages with are no longer respected. That’s what often makes this feel really unpleasant; you know what you want to play, you made those choices, and then the game suddenly takes away that control from you without giving you more choices to make up for it. That’s when it stops being a nice diversion and starts being an exercise in getting a Mystery Hand to play where your character build, gear, and so forth have no real impact on the game you’re playing now.
Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): This sort of thing, if done sparingly and creatively, isn’t a detriment to me. I actually like walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, especially if it’s used primarily for storytelling purposes and not to give me a huge combat challenge in a character I don’t know. Sometimes it’s the only way, narratively, that you can show MMO players flashbacks, or time travel, or other perspectives.
Sam Kash (@samkash@mastodon.social): I don’t like that I always fall back on my memory of Guild Wars 2 for so many of our OT topics but it was my one and only MMO for a decade, which is way longer than I played any other MMO. So falling back on it, I’m going to bring up some of the stealth missions that I remember from the early expansions. I believe it was designed as sort of a flashback controlling a key NPC (I think it was Caithe?), and you had to sneak into some facility. If I’m remembering right, you had some skills you never use except during this little window.
Or better yet, the parts of the original storyline when you have to use Traehern’s sword. It’s got these fancy abilities that are OP but are definitely not your normal skills. That’s a case where I like the skills ’cause they’re so strong, but whether you’re a Guardian or an Elementalist you’ve got to deal with these skills.
I think it works because it’s a very short time that you have to use them, but they’re also overpowered, so you aren’t struggling up learn them. You just button smash and enjoy the story of it all.
Tyler Edwards (blog): I was a huge fan of vehicle quests when WoW first added them. I’ve mellowed on them a bit since, but I’m still largely in favour of the idea. They’re a nice way to add some variety to gameplay.
I think the important thing is to keep them feeling special by having them be relatively uncommon and making them a big power fantasy. A major story quest where you get to hop on a dragon and rout an enemy army is fun. Doing tedious jousting dailies for a couple weeks isn’t.
