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I wish personal story would just go away
Piechunks
Member Posts: 136
Yet another negative post, but hey... there's no use dicussing something you're already content with, right?
Why would you spend so much time and effort on something that is completely disjoint with the online experience?
There's a niche for games like that, they're called RPG's. The technology for immersive single player storylines has been around for over 50 years, the entire reason games didn't "exploit" it was due to the fact that people generally want to play with others when they log onto an online game.
If you want to see an example of a game that had a great personal story, but nothing else (in my opinion and in that of many others, or else it wouldn't have gone f2p) is SWToR:
Every games personal story is leagues behind the latters, yet those games are doing markedly better.
Please, CEOs/game directors, get rid of this ridiculous abomination that only serves to fragment the in-game community and add to costs needlessly.
Comments
Really, over 50 years? Are you from the future?
First personal computers were only available 36 years ago and pen and paper roleplaying games only slightly predate that. Of course I guess there was always stuff like Cops and Robbers and Cowboys and Indians... but I would hardly call them immersive personal stories.
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It depends on the game. In GW1 you played the storyline (missions) and that was the whole point of PvE. And it was the best PvE game ever, if you bought it with a few friends and played through it. I loved the prophecies storyline so much! But that's just my opinion
I think a great storyline that everyone shares is better than a personalized one you can't share.
i'll go with the above for my answer as well.
at the same time, most developers fear the Uncle Owen syndrome, in which players in virtual worlds really just want to be players in virtual worlds not superherofragulisexpecialadocious.
developers seem to think no one wants to just build their own story and become known for their own ingame merits.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
I'd rather come up with my own store entirely. Usually I always do irregardless of if they force feed me some "I am the chosen one" crud which is so common now.
Did I mention I wish they'd do away with the "I am the chosen one" themed stories? :P
I figure I'm in the minority though and most people don't care to come up with character concepts of their own and are fine with being told who/what they are?
I choose "secret option number 3" [Make it purely optional].
You may be able to have your own character bio that's as raunchy and sick as you can dream up, but something so individual and unique is unlikely to really make a difference in how you ultimately play through a game. Developers can't write for every individual gamer and give them a beginning to end game story that reflects or perfectly fits a specific character. This is just one of those things where we're going to have to settle for "Good Enough".
I may want a story and leveling path unique to my character but I don't expect to get it because it just isn't feasible with the way games are made. The day may come when I'm proven wrong and am pleasantly surprised to get a game like that, but until then I'm not getting my hopes up.
Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint.
If an MMO do not offer a personal story, then they are not a good game for me.
I don't play MMOs unless they offer a good story.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
No, he played the Pong storyline, and now he's bored with it appearing in newer games.
[mod edit]
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
im curious as to why you typed "pre-WOW'? world of warcraft didn't/doesn't offer much if any in the way of personal story. personal story seems to be a new trend in "AAA" mmo's. with swtor and gw2 having, well....a whole personal story line.
This kinda falls back on the common dilemma that within a multi player experience, not everyone can play the 'chosen one', yet that's rather how most quest experiences still present themselves.
Even WoW has this issue when you regard every major boss battle. How many times has Onyxia or the Lich king been slain at this point? Every time someone comes along and kills one of these kinds of things there's some scripted fanfare to commemorate the slaying of a pivotal foe, and then it resets for the next person to do it over again.
Rather than address this situation, it seems the next wave of recent and upcoming games are taking it to a more extreme end, and that's the whole 'personal story' thing. Making a predominantly individually driven progression to the world where events unfold with each player character at the center of all the activity. Perhaps not 'the chosen' directly, but their right hand man at the least (like in GW2).
It builds a pretense of having great importance only until you realize every other person you see is in those exact same shoes. There is no novelty to the achievements or experiences one has in that situation. The best case scenario is it's a decent narrative to follow through a time or two and then shelve, and that's a problem when the game is meant to be played indefinitely.
Narrative that builds itself responsively instead, as was mentioned by at least one other in this thread, is a concept that fits the genre perhaps better. When the story follows the outcome of communal events and the narrative that a player experiences is procedurally built from current affairs in the game world alongside personal achievements to retroactively create a truly personal story.
It's an entirely different system and way of thinking from most any other kind of game, and we have yet to see any major developer tackle the idea of moving story away from a single player style to a multi player collaborative 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
MMORPGs sometimes forget the RPG part of their MMO. Personal stories can work and I will admit they may not be as necessary as they are for certain games. I am sure there are good MMORPGs that do not have a personal questline, but I would not think that all MMORPGs would have to abandon it. What may work for one, may not work for another.
You want games without a story, go play stuff like Battlefield or CounterStrike.
These are Online games all right, perhaps even Multiplayer but certainly not massive and least of all RPG's.
Personal story is great...for a single player game. The problem with putting them into an MMORPG is that it makes the MMORPG more like a single player game, which is pretty silly when the things that makes MMORPGs unique and special are the grouping and social aspects.
I would so much rather see devs come up with ways to get players to group. Real groups. Not public quests, which are another way of encouraging solo over grouping.
I'd like to see MMORPGs return to their roots and stop trying to be everything for everyone - stop going for broader appeal and instead make focused high quality games for what the genre is all about - grouping. People who don't want to group and who would rather solo a ton ...should just stick to single player games. Hell, developers who want to make online single player games should just stick to making single player games - why make an MMORPG if you're just going to make a mostly solo game?
Premium MMORPGs do not feature built-in cheating via cash for gold pay 2 win. PLAY to win or don't play.
Story doesn't make a game into an RPG. Role Playing does. Most of these personal stories offer little or no freedom of choice to play your role. It's a predefined story with a few forks in the path.
RPG is born from player interaction, where both parties can react to any number of situations and adapt accordingly.
Unfortunately the gaming crowd of today has been fed lies and substandard products for years and today most consider RPG to mean increasing stats on your character sheet and a modicum of ready-chewed story.
Anyone who participated into the lively roleplaying scene of Ultima Online at the time of it's height knows the difference between stories that the players conjure for themselves and the ones the developers shove down your throat.
The difference is that no story is truly Personal unless you make it yourself.
That's one of the reasons why I played ARR only for about 5 hours. A giant glowing crystal in space telling me in old English (of course a crystal has an accent) that I am the chosen one and it is my duty to bring the light to the world.
And then every 5 minutes the storyline npcs talk about the warriors of light 'Oh could you be one of them? That would be so awesome!'
It's like nobody knows what interactive storytelling or interactive fiction are. How about giving the players the freedom to make their own personal story. This may sound shocking but in a video game it is completely possible to tell the story and provide choices that branch the story in different directions while letting the player have control of their characters the entire time and not using a single cutscene.
If a MMORPGs main focus is a linear single player story line, it's doing it wrong.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/As it exists in MMOs no may as well get rid of it and just make it regular quests
If they make it more of a journal to document your journey and choices than it would be a better system that I can say yes to. It doesnt count as your choices if its linear or near linear quests leading you by the nose.
So I voted yes because I want them, just not how they are currently implemented in any games I've played. Heck I would even take an ingame wiki style journal that hotlinks your keywords to lore, characters or other ingame things you experience or write down in this "journal".
I voted no.
I didn't use to think much of it, but after SWTOR my dislike for this kind of game design has gotten worse and I just outright stop playing an MMO when it gets really bad. Because I stopped caring about the world.
It clashes completely with what I want from an MMORPG.
I don't want to be teleported to an instanced section of the world.
I don't want there to be a storyline which makes me feel I'm playing a single player RPG. Single player RPGs do that infinitely better, so don't even try.
I don't want to be no stinking "chosen one." It's jarring to me to see other chosen ones running around.
Anyways, this is one of the reason why I'm not playing any MMO at the moment and from what I've seen what's coming...I guess I'll be playing my great single player RPGs for a long long time still.
Ugh, I love that accent but it is kind of seared on my mind. "Ahhh...Hydaelyn."