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Which MMO has good scripted instances?
nariusseldon
Member EpicPosts: 27,775
Most of WOW's dungeons are nothing but boss fights stitched together by a bit of trash. Most have little story scripting.
STO, OTOH, has some nice multi-part story instances.
DDO has a bit of that .. but from the little i have played, there isn't as much story as in STO.
I heard some good things about the story missions of TSW. TOR has a lot of stories, but poorly executed (not instanced enough?)
What other MMORPGs have good instanced with scripted events and stories? Which one has the best stories? Best changing "world" around you?
Comments
Im my experience I would have to say tsw. They did a great job with the little stories throughout the game as well as the big picture/ overall story. Playing as illuminati, in the base messages come through the loudspeaker of how free thought won't be tollerated etc...
It's def worth a play through for that stuff alone
Do they have things like story events inside instances, and the instance may change (like some NPC may be gone .. building destroyed) as the story progresses?
SWTOR has decent stories conencted to instances as does TSW. Both use story telling in the instance lightly however since your average dungeon group is much more interested in finishing the zone than watching cut scenes.
WOW has very limited stories inside an instanced .. mostly about boss fight mechanics. And a lot of those scripted has little story content. I remember the last heroics in CATALYSM. There was this part you hide in shadows, and walk around avoiding big troops .. while the production is done well .. the story aspect is not .. jsut running around . and eventually do boss fight .. much less in story context than a mission in STO.
Is neverwinter lanuching soon? That one i will definitely check out.
I have played TOR. TOR's problem is that most of the "story" is not really event scripting, but someone stands there, and talk, talk, talk.
I think i need to try out TSW for sure.
Neverwinter releases next Tuesday unless you buy early access with a founders pack. I only went though the first dungeon but I can't say there was really any story inside the zone at all. It was just a standard dungeon crawl from point A to B. Not that it wasn't enjoyable mind you it just didn't have a purpose beyond getting to the end. I'm sure there was a reason to go into the dungeon in the first place but overall NW's story is pretty muted and easy to miss if you are not paying very close attention. Very much like EQ2 and Rift in that regard. TSW, SWTOR, and GW2's have much more focuss on story and it's put much more forward probalby directly because of the cut scenes and voice overs. NW has voice overs but they don't seem to really say anything of substance most of the time.
It's the main focus of 99% of mmos
Lol
No...no it isn't. Whether that is a positive or negative remains to the opinion of the player but holy shit are you immensely off on that assesment.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Obviously players aren't going to be too excited by watching the same cutscene over and over again.
Collaborative dialog-cutscenes are only marginally better.
What would've been awesome is if SWTOR had all those interesting decisions play out in-game where the player is kept in constant control of their character. Instead of some dialog option asking whether you want to murder some dude for dark side points, an icon appears next to them, and it's whether you damage them or not that determines whether you participated in the murder and became more evil. And this applies to all the important dialog choices, not just murders; you could choose whether to activate the airlock or ignore it and walk into the next room. Your characters and the ones you're interacting with would still voice-act nearly the same lines, but instead of losing control of your character in a dialog sequence which is almost devoid of gameplay, you would feel a little more freedom and your choices would feel more real.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
A lot of DDO's stories span multiple quest chains that are done at different levels. To give an example - Water Works(level 3-5) ties into Shan To Kor(levels 5-7), and concludes in Ruins of Threnal(levels 9-11).
Another example would be the Devil Invasion story line (which was immensely more impressive when the original Marketplace was destroyed in the live event). You start off with Devil Invasion (Marketplace Barracks, level 6ish) and go into Chronoscope(levels 6-8). From there, you go on to Meridia(levels 12-17) and conclude(?) with Amrath(levels 17-20).
These story lines tend to be long winded and are easily missed by those that are impatient or dislike dialogue beyond what you have to do.
Another vote for TSW. The first instance you hit is still one of my favorites in any MMO.
Guild Wars 1 has all that in 3 campaigns and 1 expansion. I didn't personally care about the Factions campaign and I haven't finished Nightfall although I hear its good. Atleast Prophecies and Eye of the North are fairly decent even in SRPG standards.
Still a very good lan game to play with friends. Quite cheap too nowadays.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Great .. that means i will have lots of choices, and competiiton will help keep the quality up.
True .. but that is no reason not to look in MMORPG too. Let's say bioshock infinite is the greatest FPS ever made, does that mean that i do not play FPS that is done worse? Of course not. I don't just play one game.
Plus, tell me ...
What SP Star Trek game does story missions better than STO? None .. why? Because there is no Star Trek SP games at all. (Unless you count the upcoming ST movie game). And even if there is, what happen after i finish the SP game?
How about a SP RPG with modern setting and old legends like TSW? There is none (may be if you go back 10 years .. but i probably won't want to play something that dated).
So in the final analysis, it is just a way to expand my gaming choices and get more variety. Heck, even if i just play STO and TSW as SP games, i would be better off already. Can you think of any reason i should not? Particularly when i don't have a SP game currently i am playing?
Yeah .. pretty much i have to try TSW out.
The decision points in TSW's main story mission chain work pretty much like your suggestion mechanics-wise (so taking one choice might be done by interacting with a particular object, another one by attacking it), though there are precious few such choices (I count 3) and their long-term impact is currently far from clear (their medium term impact appears to be zero).
Welcome
Yeah that's part of the challenge of implementing this type of thing for sure (having meaninful outputs.)
For me I think one of the more dev-viable takes on the formula would be in a class-based game where your group won't have every class and you make the Choice A or B decisions based on your group composition. The simplest (but also worst) example would be if classes tend to be good at AOE or Single-target damage but not both, and the choice determines whether you face a mob of enemies or a single boss.
But that's sort of a bad example, because I feel there are more interesting decisions you could opt for. Stuff like if the rogue class can cloak the entire party like in WOW, and you have a choice between (A) Tough mob packs who can't spot stealthers, or (B) Weaker mob packs who can. Again, this is only really the tip of the iceberg in terms of possibilities but it seems like you could create some interesting dynamic choices in instance runs that would help them stay fresh a little longer.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Actually, there generally are some stories. Just millions of people that haven't ever stopped to follow (gogogogogogogogooooo) any of them.
On the other hand, SWTOR tells looooots of stories...space bar, space bar. No one ever sees those, either.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.