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Quests
There will be quests that occur in common areas, and there will be quests that start in common areas and wind up in instances. They also have special areas (such as Guild areas) that are somewhere between common and instanced in their nature, and quests take place there too.
Journey System
Hero's Journey has what is called the Journey System that dynamically creates story arcs for your character. What elements come into the story are, in fact, based on what you do. The actions you take in a Quest, if significant, are remembered. If you start a new character in the game, don't expect to see the same story. More importantly, don't worry about having to slog through the exact same sequence of quests, because you are going to get a rather customized experience.
You will also have multiple plot lines going on at once. And you have a lot of flexibility. For example, a sub-plot might evolve that, say, you learn that you have a brother you never heard of. And he holds the key to some other plot point in your storyline. You could, if you want, just ignore that sub-plot.
Instances
Instances come in two varietys, common hunting areas (which are quite large) and specific quest instances. There are also of course towns and cities and such. Now when you deal with quests in HJ, the intent is that everything you do has an effect on you and can affect what is available to you in the future, its a pretty dynamic system. There will be short and long instances, and long story lines as well.
The cool thing about instanced areas is that they can do a lot of neat things in them that are not practical in common areas. For example, in an instanced area you can design quests with defined start and victory conditions that don’t require that you account for hundreds of other people wandering through that have nothing to do with the adventure. Often a quest just makes more sense in a instance anyway… because it’s your party going on the adventure! In any case, our technology allows for the GameMasters to continuously create new quests of all types (even forms we’ve not considered yet).
Level Gap
"Our research told us people wanted to be able to play together with their friends as much as possible, regardless of level. So, we’ve developed something that allows players to play together without worrying as much about differences in their levels. This unique approach sets HJ apart from the way MMORPGs usually handle level advancement and grouping.
The formula for how we accomplish this is still one of our closely guarded secrets. The basic idea, though, involves dynamically adjusting the challenges to the composition of the groups and a mechanism for bridging level differences within a group by normalizing the effective level of each character (within certain parameters and limitations).
The real thing to understand here is that we are lowering the barrier to playing with your friends. There will still be limitations, but you’ll find a much broader range of options for questing with your friends."
Combat
Combat in Hero’s Journey is intended to be a lot more fast-paced and fluid than the genre’s current offerings. Even when fighting alone, there are frequently tactical decisions to be made if you want to emerge victorious. The trick to combat is all in how you deliver the tactical options to the player so that it is interesting, and balance the play so that is challenging but not absurdly so. Hero’s tend to be victorious, but they need to look heroic doing it. And, in good movies and literature, that means interesting resolutions to problems (pugilistic or otherwise).
In Hero's Journey, position, maneuvering and cooperation are paramount. It's all about paying attention to what's going on around you, the creatures, your group, the environment, and making the best you can out of it dynamically. For example, on a hill above the incoming army was a rock pile. A wizard shot a fireball at the pile and it gave way. The rocks rolled down the hill, crushing the army and allowed us to pass unmolested. This is the kind of customization their instanced areas allowed. The quests are not imposed on areas, but rather the areas are built for the quests.
There will be a layer of strategy to encounters. The strategic layer would allow you, for example, to prepare the defense of a town before an expected invasion. For example, you could order the townsfolk to reinforce a gate or prepare some traps at key locations. What you decide at the strategic level will, however, have to be balanced against the time remaining, resources available and what your battle plan is.
There are also special combat combos which take two or more characters to execute. But these aren't your typical MMO combos where randomly executed abilities can be combined. Instead, Hero's Journey combos require teamwork and strategy to perform, and result in great rewards.
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