Any other MMORPG's *generating* player-driven stories?

Flute

Over the past year I have been mostly playing Darkfall , which for me has provided a vintage years' gaming.  Just for context, I would best be described as an 'old-school' MMO player, and could happily wax lyrical about many many games played and past.  I'll spare you that ;p

While many people have a lot to say (good and bad) about Darkfall, for my own part I can honestly say that I have not had any gaming experiences more intesnse, dynamic, or more memorable, that those in Darkfall this past year.  Indeed not since old school UO (pre-Trammel). to me this game has provided a real rediscovery of an element I thought mostly lost from the MMO genre - the rennaisance of player-driven storylines with a real impact on the game.

 

Dark... umm,,, what?

For years, Darkfall was called vaporwear, and even when it launched it had an 'interesting time of things'. It is very much a modern take on the original Ultima Online (pre-Trammel), with a high-fantasy style FFA PvP, full loot, long travel times, but with FPS style targetting - you need to estimate the angle of your arrow on your bow, or it will drop short or fly over your target (who might well be quite keen to try to sidestep or duck behind cover as well!).  The world is hand crafted and amazingly carefully put together, right down to different types of butterflies in different parts of the world of Agon.  It has player built cities and hamlets in addition to the numerous NPC cities, and a healthy mix of PvE, magic and mayhem.  For reasons never quite explained, in addition to very classical magic / archery / melee skills, it has 18th Century style sailing ships complete with cannons (but there are no muskets/guns in the world), and hovertanks called Warhulks (yup, the mad mages creations I suppose!) different types of which can have cannons, flamethrowers, and lighting cannons.  The game is classless, using a skill system (with no skill cap), and importantly anyone can use any item, so you never know if the person in a brown robe is a beggar or a devastatingly powerful mage - until you attack them, of course - you will quickly know the difference then!

The top end PvP is rediculously fun , and two simple questions to ask anyone who is complaining about Darkfall are these:  1.  Have you captained a ship in a large sea battle? and 2.  Have you been in a heavy cavalry charge in a massive battle between elite level player armies?  Incidentally, if they say 'no' to both, then honestly they have not seen some of the best things this game has to offer yet.  They might even say 'people don't really play as cavalry!' - to which I would say 'we do, we did, and we won a siege because of our full Dragon armour clad charge on battle-horn mounts into the flank of an advancing mage army.  GSO.'  

Because players in Darkfall have only one avatar per account, and there are in-game advantages to playing just one character, many active players in the community are well-known.  In addition, the ability to own player cities and hamlets, and to take them by force of arms or intrigue, means that players engage in espionage, sabotage, and overt wars to settle scores or for territorial control (and thence better control of the resources in that holding / reigon).  There can be (and indeed usually are) full on wars raging across the beautifully crafted world of Agon, and the stakes are high - if you spent millions of gold building a city, the last thing you and your friends want is to lose it to a conquoring army!

 

Storytelling in MMORPGs

 

A weakness from my point of view in Darkfall over the past year was the feeling that there was a lack of story. I know for my own part I have been spoiled by WoW's renaissance of stroytelling through missions and themed zones, and of course table top RPG's where the story can be infinitely richer than anything a computer game can code in.  However with hindsight I can see that many of the player-driven stories that have arisen from the churning politics of war in Agon over the past year are simply amazing.  Darkfall is finally re-awakening storytelling driven by players, rather than players following pre-scripted stories coded into the game by the Developers.

As one player commented after a saga of unrequited love, hardship, triumph and betrayal between players through their avatars came to light - it was completely Shakespearean - so much so he thought it had been made up, when it was indeed entirely real.  Another aptly commented of the tale: it was a very Greek trajedy. It fell unplanned out of the unscripted collective and individual actions and reactions of players, and is indeed such a good story that over this next year I will be working it up into a novel.  The story could not have happened in most current games I am aware of: they simply don't have the freedom of action for the range of very real in-game consequences. 

I can't say that about any other MMORPG game I have played this Century!  Gah, now I feel old

 

So ... what other games are actually generating such deep stories? 

I know EVE Online can do it, however for my part I always felt that the ship-only interaction blocked a lot of the depth and 'closeness' of the stories.  Pilots always had a lot of cold, impersonal space between them and everyone else, and hopefully a huge amount of shields, armour, drones, ECM and more as well!  Have the latest changes in EVE changed that feel, and freed up player driven stories to really shine?

What other games out there are hitting this old-school aspiration of MMORPGs?  Are most of them simply about clicking off achievements, gear score, gold in the bank, or other indicators of how much of a pre-scripted story a player has ground through?

Thoughts?

Ironfungus

Always have wanted to try Darkfall, but for a genre that relies completely on gear, it's a bit too much that it can be looted off your body after you die. PvP in MMOs are quite unlike shooters in the sense that, when your'e outnumbered, you are screwed..This game seems reliant on whether or not you have friends who also play. If you're playing solo, the game just doesn't look fun at all. 

NineDots

Well, I must say that I completely agree with the OP. I have also played several MMOs before Darkfall, such AoC, WoW, Silkroad, Lotro, and although some of them provided some fun for some time, they finally all got boring after some time even when the storylines was great and the graphic fantastic, because they had not so much space for imagination and creation. Darkfall Online has issues and might not appeal to everyone, but it does provide a huge seamless world, hand-crafted, with really smart mobs, and above all a place where there is a lot of player strategy and politics happening around the player owned cities and sieges.

So, yes, a MMORPG that generates player-driven stories is really what I have been looking for all those years before Darkfall.

Flute

Originally posted by ironfungus

Always have wanted to try Darkfall, but for a genre that relies completely on gear, it's a bit too much that it can be looted off your body after you die. PvP in MMOs are quite unlike shooters in the sense that, when your'e outnumbered, you are screwed..This game seems reliant on whether or not you have friends who also play. If you're playing solo, the game just doesn't look fun at all. 

 

Darkfall is not completely about gear.  There are skilled mages who can (and do) kill people with a hand full of reagents, a staff, and a cheap brown robe.  Gear matters (as indeed it should!), but it is a myth that Darkfall relies completely on gear.  Indeed, the best gear won't save you if you do something dumb, like charging an army on your own.  You may, however, be worthy of a poem!

As for numbers, yes numbers help (duh), but magic lets skilled players do things that you just can't do in normal FPS games.  A classic is using magic to 'bunny hop' away - if you get it wrong you die, but if you get it right you can use magic to evade superior numbers, whom you may well be throwing fireballs (etc) at

Make no mistake though - good magic in Darkfall takes work.  If you want fast damage and quick and dirty pvp, get a bow and a longsword, and sneak up on someone farming monsters.  Shoot them in the back, and hope they don't have friends ...

Also yes huge ships with huge crews typically beat little ships with light crews, however that said I have used a brigantine (4 cannons starboard, 3 port 1 stern) and a crew of 5 to win a sea tower while up against a Ship of the Line with 40+ crew on it.  Needless to say, such daring is the stuff of tales ... and vendettas (said Ship of the Line made a point of hunting us down!).

A lot of people in Darkfall play solo.  That said, friends are a good thing.  Besides - why are you playing an MMORPG if not to play with other people too?  These games are about community and shared fun: other people are not meant to be simply super-realistic NPCs.  Speaking of NPCs, the AI in Darkfall is incredible, and has been improved more than once too.  That and if you get too comfortable, the GM's can take control of monsters / spawn atypical monsters and really shake things up!  I can't think of any other game where monsters have used magic to flick someone off a cliff, or where goblin archers sometimes work out they are losing an archery battle and run away to hide behind a tree.  And don't ever meddle with the Red Dragons or the Ice Dragon ... those things add a whole new meaining to the phrase 'remember to look up'.

 

Besides, the 14 day trial is free   Just don't download it if you won't have time to give it a decent test - better to wait and watch if you are heavily committed.  This game really is getting better all the time, including the new player experience being looked at closely (it tends to be rather ... brutal ... and a tad confusing to people who are used to WoW style games that have very very polished new player experiences  ;p).

Adamantine

Well this thread at least sheds some light on the fact that I read surprisingly many positive threads about Darkfall in the past year.

A game where I read the Wikipedia description and thought: that cant work.

And then I read the forum of the game and thought again: omg, they just discuss how to farm enough CON for PvP !

Still, it sounds like this game is poorly balanced - being focussed on magic as the superior weapon.

Axehilt

Originally posted by ironfungus

Always have wanted to try Darkfall, but for a genre that relies completely on gear, it's a bit too much that it can be looted off your body after you die. PvP in MMOs are quite unlike shooters in the sense that, when your'e outnumbered, you are screwed..This game seems reliant on whether or not you have friends who also play. If you're playing solo, the game just doesn't look fun at all. 

As much as I find Darkfall dull, I gotta admit your first statement is a little like saying:

"Always wanted to try electric cars, but cars typically rely on gasoline and I heard electric cars don't even have gas tanks!"

But you're totally right about world PVP MMORPGs being predominantly about zerging.  These players seem to enjoy competing over "who has more friends?" instead of "who's more skilled?"  Seems pretty dull to me.  (And the zerging and grinding are the two major reasons I dislike DF.  It's a PVP game which isn't about real PVP.)

Cik_Asalin

I am wondering if Earthrise, another sandboxy player-centric organic ecosystem, a SciFi title launching next month, will provide the same vintage feel.

Flute

Originally posted by Adamantine

Well this thread at least sheds some light on the fact that I read surprisingly many positive threads about Darkfall in the past year.

A game where I read the Wikipedia description and thought: that cant work.

And then I read the forum of the game and thought again: omg, they just discuss how to farm enough CON for PvP !

Still, it sounds like this game is poorly balanced - being focussed on magic as the superior weapon.

 

The balance was off, but the Devs have worked hard on that over time and it's good now. 

 

One siege I had we were using magic on an army of heavy infanty who were using cannons on our defended position on a mountain NPC fortress.  Our magic basically did nothing at all to them, because their cross healing and teamwork was more than up to the challenge, so our only option was to mount up and try to get stuck into them at close range.

Another siege, we defeated a numerically vastly superior force by usiung better tactics.  DF is not just about numbers any more, but not many people on the server are smart enough to pull off 1 v 10 odds. Those who can are indeed the stuff of tales.  

-----

I haven't looked at Earthrise since the title was announced ages ago, good call - maybe it too will have the potential to really generate some great storylines.

Hoplites

CoX actually has generated player driven stories arcs, with AE, but I don't think it is anything close to what you describe with Darkfall.

 

NineDots

Well one of the aspects of Darkfall that also contributes a lot to have player generated stories is the player-owned holdings with the clan and alliance wars that come with it and more importantly all the politics around it.

If you like to get an idea about this, I could recommend that you to take a look at the player made political map:

http://darkfallinfo.com/pmap/index.php?mapserver=eu1

as well as read some of the thread on the clan forum:

http://77.95.25.51/forumdisplay.php?f=36

An interesting trend lately has been alliances that declare they own or are going to conquer a territory on the above map.

Loktofeit

I wish one of you Darkfall fans would create something like this timeline for your server. If someone is already doing it, please post a link to it. Darkfall is one of the few MMOs where players can write their own history and that's one of my favorite features of the genre.

 

NineDots

Originally posted by Loktofeit

I wish one of you Darkfall fans would create something like this timeline for your server. If someone is already doing it, please post a link to it. Darkfall is one of the few MMOs where players can write their own history and that's one of my favorite features of the genre.

 

Well, in the Darkfall map page I have provided above, please click on history. I think this is a good start.

Sid_Vicious

Originally posted by Loktofeit

I wish one of you Darkfall fans would create something like this timeline for your server. If someone is already doing it, please post a link to it. Darkfall is one of the few MMOs where players can write their own history and that's one of my favorite features of the genre.

 

Thats brilliant!

 

People are working together now to put together a History of Agon.

 

I've been in so many epic battles and fights that came only once and are gone forever. Political movements, territorial control, etc. I get all nostalgic when I speak of when I first started playing. That is because I know that no one will ever have the same experience as me. I saw things from my eyes in a different way that anyone gets to in other games.

 

Not sure why this game is not considered a roleplayers paradise with the general audience.

Sid_Vicious

Originally posted by NineDots

Originally posted by Loktofeit

I wish one of you Darkfall fans would create something like this timeline for your server. If someone is already doing it, please post a link to it. Darkfall is one of the few MMOs where players can write their own history and that's one of my favorite features of the genre.

 

Well, in the Darkfall map page I have provided above, please click on history. I think this is a good start.

Whoa thats awesome!!! So many fond memories . ..

 

; )

Elox1

Sounds like an interesting game if I had 25+hours a week to commit to it and a good guild behind me. 

Just curious, but it does not sound casual friendly for someone like me that gets 10 hours a week for gaming.  I do actually enjoy a challenge but when I can only get on two nights a week I can't participate in guilds in the same way that might be expected.

So Darkfall good o bad for people with limited play time?

Sid_Vicious

Originally posted by Elox1

Sounds like an interesting game if I had 25+hours a week to commit to it and a good guild behind me. 

Just curious, but it does not sound casual friendly for someone like me that gets 10 hours a week for gaming.  I do actually enjoy a challenge but when I can only get on two nights a week I can't participate in guilds in the same way that might be expected.

So Darkfall good o bad for people with limited play time?

Thats fine so long as you plan on playing it for at least a year so that you experience everything that it has to offer.

 

The question is, after a few months, can you keep it at only 10 hours a week when you start to have a lot of fun?

: P