I'm focusing specificially on the idea the the greater the role that dev defined, mandatory, cut-scene and npc driven storylines play in an MMO, the less of a role community plays. Please note i'm talking about gradients not absolutes. I'm not saying all story is bad. I'm noting that the pendulum (imo) is swinging too far towards storyline to the detriment of community building.
Originally posted by dhayes68
When the mmo determines who your char is, what his backstory is, what his voice sounds like, provides npc's to fulfill the roles other players may have filled, etc... It discourages the kind of players from playing the game who build community. Clearly you don't agree, and that's fine, its not an absolute, but trust me, you want the kind of people who do feel that way in an MMO because they provide depth, width and color to the community that the dev's for obvious reasons can't provide.
I agree that story can be detriment for a community, in exactly the same way that the experience of solo quest grinding has been encouraging the singleplayer game feel that some gamers have when solo questing to level cap in MMO's.
I don't think it's a 'or... or' pendulum situatino though.
It depends on how things are implemented, and both Bioware and Anet also introduce features to also help community, in the case of SW:TOR via all kinds of ways to encourage grouping.
Or as Athcear said (saves me the trouble of typing it )
Originally posted by Athcear
I don't think story and community are mutually exclusive. The things that make a good story are writing, art, and immersion. The things that make a good community are fun group content, ease of access, and an interconnected economy. You can have both.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Story doesn't detract from community. Mandatory storylines that define your char for you, do.
Those types represent a ridiculously tiny minority of a smaller subset of a specific genre. Doesn't seem worth bringing up in a genreal thread on storylines and questing evolution.
And this. I think there has been some misunderstanding in the thread, and probably because 'Story' can have different interpretations and definitions.
I think you can safely discern two categories of Story:
- provided by designer/devs: these are the lore and the quests and events we encounter ingame. The lore is the background story of the world you wander around in. The quests is the thing that helps progress you through the game all to level cap, in the meantime also handing out bits of lore and story. Now this is what Bioware is expanding upon, the quest mechanics. This is by no means a replacement of the second category:
- provided by players: this is the experiences you collect while playing, as well the in-character 'roleplay' aspect (light, heavy, any kind) as the out-of-character part, like when your guild were the 1st on a server to defeat an end level dragon, or the first to build a keep.
Now, the fact that Bioware is improving upon the 1st category doesn't mean that this will exclude the 2nd category, just as in other MMO's those 2 categories have existed next to eachother.
An example: In several MMO's I have also played on RP tagged servers, and although I enjoyed the quest storylines in a LotrO and AoC, those were totally separated from the RP that was happening among the players. Some people included bits of their questing adventures in their roleplay, and others just separated fully the quests from their personal story. Also, the quests and storylines provided by the designers in LotrO and AoC were a separate thing from the stories that you build up while playing, like the time that my guild conquered a keep, and managed to ward off sieges from enemies upon it for weeks at a stretch.
There are different kinds of story, the one I was talking about was the storylines provided by the questing mechanics that Bioware intends to improve upon.
As I said earlier, we don't know how things will end up to be, but one kind of story doesn't have to exclude another kind of story.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I'm going to play a little scenario with those people who say that a story driven game detracts from their character story element. Heres what i'm going to do.
I'm going to place you in the set of the writter. The person who makes the story for your character. I'd really love to see if you had a game world for your character where you would go with this. As you proclaim that you can make a story oh so much more interesting then what the devs cook up for your character.
What i'm trying to get at here is again most people while would love to tell their own story are just frankly not good at it, you'd be surprised at just how hard it is to make a story everyone will love or even like, i'm doing this in an effort to show that story telling done right is not as easy as it looks. Remember your story in the world can affect others. If you say oh i was the first person to slay the x creature that would conflict with my story that says the exact same thing. If this goes right i will be comparing stories as they are all part of the same world.
The only reason i'm doing this is to see if player driven stories are really that much better then what the dev give out.
For this example we'll use the world in SW as a backdrop. I'll let you guys fill in the rest. Try to avoid cliches and loopholes as you don't want people coming down on you with that.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I'm going to place you in the set of the writter. The person who makes the story for your character. I'd really love to see if you had a game world for your character where you would go with this. As you proclaim that you can make a story oh so much more interesting then what the devs cook up for your character.
I don't think this is what those players mean. They are not claiming they can write better quest arcs than the developers, they are saying the quest arcs are too restrictive, and the result is everyone basically experiences the same thing. Since these sorts of games focus on your being the 'Savior of the Universe', it cheapens the experience. This is because it really doesn't matter what you do, or more importantly, how good a player you are, everyone will end up the same.
When they say they want to create their own story, they simply mean they want to be 'off the rails'. If you wish, and you are good enough, you can earn your way to the top, or you don't.
Bioware is countering this 'everyone's the same' thing, by adding choices to the story arcs. But I would imagine, again really no matter what, everyone will still end up a hero, just will a slightly different route to get there. That's what the whole Uncle Owen thing is about. Its a metaphor for this, not literally to mean people want to create a character that just sits there and waits to harvest moisture, as some think.
These players are saying they don't want to for to travel the route the developers construct for them, since their roll within the game universe is not their own, it will be delivered to them. Yeah its been said you can skip the quest and just grind, but that is going to depend on what the rest of the game entails for these players to see if it is worth doing that. Let's face it, that is possible in every game, just like its possible to solo to max level in every game, or group in every game. Yet some games are clearly known as 'solofests' or 'forced-grouping' games.
You're missing the point. Disliking story in an mmo isn't because you like the current questing system. Its more about players who see mmo's as a world to play in. The more the game defines for you who your char is, what your char is doing, the less fun it is because the single predominant feature of mmo's is the other players. mmo's should focus on building community, not playing the game for us.
In standalone games, I want story. In mmo's I want community.
Why can't it be both? Why can't I play an MMO for the story and the community. Good stories can help create good communities. I've had hours long conversations with friends discussing the stories and events of our favourite TV shows. I've spent lots of time talking about the story and lore in WoW with my guild.
I think your attitude is somewhat close minded and you're essentially skipping half a gane because of it.
It absolutely can be both. I'm referring to the growing prevelance in story being the focus of the game to the detriment of community.
Yet you talk as if somehow the story in TOR specifically will somehow lead to a bad community. This is a misnomer and I'd be far more worried about TOR's wild popularity leading to a crappy WoW-type community.
Why exactly do you think the story in TOR will lead to a poor community? Is it because you think the story will be so awersome that people will get so engrossed in it that they stop talking to other people and stop socializing, logging on only to experience the cool storyline instead of playing with other people? Because if so, then I think that's pretty high praise for how awesome you think the story will be.
Personally, I intend to play the game in the same room as my brothers with us all teaming the entire time and playing different classes so we can experience all the class storylines. I find MMOs are at their most fun when played with other people you know in real life like a LAN party.
I want you to explain in detail how what you say is possible. Give an example.
Look, its clearly possible that 2 people can honestly have different interpretation of the same thing. Do you deny that? Since that is possible, there is no need to provide an example. Especially since we have determined where you stand on the issue, I know you won't be pursuaded by any example I could make up since I know you would honestly interpret it differently.
I am just trying to understand how what you are saying is logically consistent.
I've already explained it to you. You refuse or are unable to understand it.
No you didn't. You said the Dev could mean something else, but you haven't said what else he could possibly mean. Seriously, I'm just trying to understand what other possibility is going on in your head.
The specifics are irrelevent. if you acknowledge that two people can have different but honest interpretations of the same thing, then you concede my point.
Wow. Fine, if you don't want to tell me what your interpretation is... I honestly don't see what that could make logical sense (without assuming some lying going on), so I am trying to find out what you are thinking. Apparently such a simple request is too much for you, because you'd rather argue about the request than actually say what is going on in your head.
Whatever.
It goes both ways. Do you concede that two people can have honest but contradictory interpretations of the same thing? Why can't you answer that? Because you know once you concede it, then you've made my point. You want a specific so you can deny it, but its not necessary. As long as different people can have honest but different interpretations of the same thing, then I'm as potentially right as you are.
I've inherently acknowledged that in principle 24+ hours ago on this very topic. That doesn't mean that you can't also have a situation where two people have different opinions and one person's is logically inconsistent. I'm honestly trying to understand where you are coming from here, but you'd rather have a semantic debate than just tell me what your bloody interpretation on the quotes are.
Good. since you've acknowledge its possible for two honest people to have different honest interpretations of the same event, then there is no need for me to provide a hypothetical example. If you already understand its possible, why provide an example?
Story doesn't detract from community. Mandatory storylines that define your char for you, do.
Those types represent a ridiculously tiny minority of a smaller subset of a specific genre. Doesn't seem worth bringing up in a genreal thread on storylines and questing evolution.
And this. I think there has been some misunderstanding in the thread, and probably because 'Story' can have different interpretations and definitions.
I think you can safely discern two categories of Story:
- provided by designer/devs: these are the lore and the quests and events we encounter ingame. The lore is the background story of the world you wander around in. The quests is the thing that helps progress you through the game all to level cap, in the meantime also handing out bits of lore and story. Now this is what Bioware is expanding upon, the quest mechanics. This is by no means a replacement of the second category:
- provided by players: this is the experiences you collect while playing, as well the in-character 'roleplay' aspect (light, heavy, any kind) as the out-of-character part, like when your guild were the 1st on a server to defeat an end level dragon, or the first to build a keep.
Now, the fact that Bioware is improving upon the 1st category doesn't mean that this will exclude the 2nd category, just as in other MMO's those 2 categories have existed next to eachother.
An example: In several MMO's I have also played on RP tagged servers, and although I enjoyed the quest storylines in a LotrO and AoC, those were totally separated from the RP that was happening among the players. Some people included bits of their questing adventures in their roleplay, and others just separated fully the quests from their personal story. Also, the quests and storylines provided by the designers in LotrO and AoC were a separate thing from the stories that you build up while playing, like the time that my guild conquered a keep, and managed to ward off sieges from enemies upon it for weeks at a stretch.
There are different kinds of story, the one I was talking about was the storylines provided by the questing mechanics that Bioware intends to improve upon.
As I said earlier, we don't know how things will end up to be, but one kind of story doesn't have to exclude another kind of story.
Thank you. I've attempted to be quite clear, repeatedly, by what I mean when I talk about story inhibiting community. People keep thinking I'm saying that there should be no story, or there has to be a choice, between the two.
And I said as well, we'll have to see what happens after launch. Although even that open minded attitude is considered negative by some overly enthusiastic fans.
Thank you. I've attempted to be quite clear, repeatedly, by what I mean when I talk about story inhibiting community. People keep thinking I'm saying that there should be no story, or there has to be a choice, between the two.
And I said as well, we'll have to see what happens after launch. Although even that open minded attitude is considered negative by some overly enthusiastic fans.
Right. I should've cut out your quote in order to prevent misunderstanding, in my post I was actually responding upon Zarcob's comment, and upon the posts of several other posters that were talking about story and a different interpretation of it than I had in the OP.
I had already commented upon some of your comments in earlier posts, they sounded pretty clear to me
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I've inherently acknowledged that in principle 24+ hours ago on this very topic. That doesn't mean that you can't also have a situation where two people have different opinions and one person's is logically inconsistent. I'm honestly trying to understand where you are coming from here, but you'd rather have a semantic debate than just tell me what your bloody interpretation on the quotes are.
Good. since you've acknowledge its possible for two honest people to have different honest interpretations of the same event, then there is no need for me to provide a hypothetical example. If you already understand its possible, why provide an example?
Because I am trying to undersand what is going on in your head. I want to understand your perspective and reasoning on the information available. Maybe you've thought of something I haven't for instance.
Fair enough, the reason i do this is because people say that the main story will be too restricting for their class or will stiffle what they think their character should be. So what i did was basically do a Bruce almighty thing. If you think you can do it better then do so.
While i admit that there are two different stories that can be going on at once, i don't constitute taking and holding a keep as a story. Explaining how you take the keep and how you hold it, trials of rationing food and keeping peoples morale up while fending off the enemy attack is a story.
The problem with player driven stories is this is rarely the case. In most cases it's just a bunch of random events thrown together to make some kind of storyline out of their adventure, this you can do in almost any game and explain away why your doing it, so the dev driven story isn't really a case here and should be developed as best it can be. I believe BW did mention something about how you can just drop the story and do whatever. I'm sure there will be bottlenecks to this at first, such as you have to get to a certain point in your "character adventure) to get a space craft.
What i was asking was not so much to change what the devs did but to see how they would handle being a writter themselves. How they would go about making a storyline that doesn't (as they put it) intrude on the player driven storyline version. Its so easy to say they don't know what they are doing or they are doing things wrong. It's so much harder to do it yourself.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I've inherently acknowledged that in principle 24+ hours ago on this very topic. That doesn't mean that you can't also have a situation where two people have different opinions and one person's is logically inconsistent. I'm honestly trying to understand where you are coming from here, but you'd rather have a semantic debate than just tell me what your bloody interpretation on the quotes are.
Good. since you've acknowledge its possible for two honest people to have different honest interpretations of the same event, then there is no need for me to provide a hypothetical example. If you already understand its possible, why provide an example?
Because I am trying to undersand what is going on in your head. I want to understand your perspective and reasoning on the information available. Maybe you've thought of something I haven't for instance.
Nope, just heard lots of things about the game that from the perspective of a gamer who prefers robust community to robust storytelling (in mmo's) that sound discouraging. (Bear in mind I've heard encouraging things too, but was focused on topic the OP proposed.) Also being a person who is wisely skeptical of the claims of for-profit businesses about the wonder of their products, I merely took the mildly conservative position that despite their claims to the contrary, I'll wait til launch to see how the game is. You took the position of accepting what they said without question, and seemed baffled at how I could doubt it. Its such a stark difference of perspective that there is no need to try to convince you, since you clearly accept what Bioware has to say without question.
Thank you. I've attempted to be quite clear, repeatedly, by what I mean when I talk about story inhibiting community. People keep thinking I'm saying that there should be no story, or there has to be a choice, between the two.
And I said as well, we'll have to see what happens after launch. Although even that open minded attitude is considered negative by some overly enthusiastic fans.
After reading your points, I'd say I really can't agree for the most part. My experience says the biggest deterent to community, is the mmo community itself.
For the most part player A: is out for himself, as well as player B:. The only community they may belong to is which ever guild they are be affiliated with. For the most part they don't like to group, they don't like to socialize, they don't like to stand around. All they care about is hitting max and becoming uber. The community to them is nothing but a means to reach an end.
Player C: is a rare breed, I've only found player C: in SWG personally. Still he was a rare person to see as well as meet. Most were player A's and B's, remember this is SWG PRE-cu I'm referring to, one of the most community oriented games I've played. Even in such a game player c's are few and far between.
Story really has nothing to do with breaking down a community or community functions, the only time community has come together in MMO's is when they've been forced to. What came as a result of that? Nothing but complaints, it took far too much time away from the race to end game.
IMO community is more a myth now than anything, I think devs see this too, which is why they steer clear of sandbox mechanics. They only work when they're used properly, this current fanbase, is incapable of that IMO, that may ruffle a few feathers I'm sure, but that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. Until something shows me otherwise, I won't hold my breath waiting for that to take place.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I can see a story as a good thing IF... it is more optional. If this was a designing of a real world, then I would not have liked a story. But in the end it is a game, and beyond that it is a business. If everyone has something to do, everyone should be happy.
Of course it is entirely possible have an alternative to story. But as of right now, for me, a story with quests is better than no story with quests. For me.
You're missing the point. Disliking story in an mmo isn't because you like the current questing system. Its more about players who see mmo's as a world to play in. The more the game defines for you who your char is, what your char is doing, the less fun it is because the single predominant feature of mmo's is the other players. mmo's should focus on building community, not playing the game for us.
In standalone games, I want story. In mmo's I want community.
Why can't it be both? Why can't I play an MMO for the story and the community. Good stories can help create good communities. I've had hours long conversations with friends discussing the stories and events of our favourite TV shows. I've spent lots of time talking about the story and lore in WoW with my guild.
I think your attitude is somewhat close minded and you're essentially skipping half a gane because of it.
It absolutely can be both. I'm referring to the growing prevelance in story being the focus of the game to the detriment of community.
Yet you talk as if somehow the story in TOR specifically will somehow lead to a bad community. This is a misnomer and I'd be far more worried about TOR's wild popularity leading to a crappy WoW-type community.
Why exactly do you think the story in TOR will lead to a poor community? Is it because you think the story will be so awersome that people will get so engrossed in it that they stop talking to other people and stop socializing, logging on only to experience the cool storyline instead of playing with other people? Because if so, then I think that's pretty high praise for how awesome you think the story will be.
Personally, I intend to play the game in the same room as my brothers with us all teaming the entire time and playing different classes so we can experience all the class storylines. I find MMOs are at their most fun when played with other people you know in real life like a LAN party.
To be clear I was talking in generalities, not the specifics of TOR. Also I'm talking about a kind of player not all players. If how I feel about it doesn't apply to your play style then its doesn't apply to you. So how you intend to play doesn't really reflect on how I feel about the game. At no time did I say the way TOR is being made it will be bad for everyone.
What I am say is that there are types of dev mandated story centric game dynamics that discourage community.
I've inherently acknowledged that in principle 24+ hours ago on this very topic. That doesn't mean that you can't also have a situation where two people have different opinions and one person's is logically inconsistent. I'm honestly trying to understand where you are coming from here, but you'd rather have a semantic debate than just tell me what your bloody interpretation on the quotes are.
Good. since you've acknowledge its possible for two honest people to have different honest interpretations of the same event, then there is no need for me to provide a hypothetical example. If you already understand its possible, why provide an example?
Because I am trying to undersand what is going on in your head. I want to understand your perspective and reasoning on the information available. Maybe you've thought of something I haven't for instance.
Nope, just heard lots of things about the game that from the perspective of a gamer who prefers robust community to robust storytelling (in mmo's) that sound discouraging. (Bear in mind I've heard encouraging things too, but was focused on topic the OP proposed.) Also being a person who is wisely skeptical of the claims of for-profit businesses about the wonder of their products, I merely took the mildly conservative position that despite their claims to the contrary, I'll wait til launch to see how the game is. You took the position of accepting what they said without question, and seemed baffled at how I could doubt it. Its such a stark difference of perspective that there is no need to try to convince you, since you clearly accept what Bioware has to say without question.
Gah! Why didn't you just say you didn't trust what they said? Instead you said you just had a different interpretation of it. Thanks for wasting my time.
You're missing the point. Disliking story in an mmo isn't because you like the current questing system. Its more about players who see mmo's as a world to play in. The more the game defines for you who your char is, what your char is doing, the less fun it is because the single predominant feature of mmo's is the other players. mmo's should focus on building community, not playing the game for us.
In standalone games, I want story. In mmo's I want community.
Adding story doesn't define your character at all.
Especially if you have choice in that story.
Players don't have to take every quest, espeically if those quests run counter to your character.
And quite frankly, players don't have to take any quests. I only ever take the quests I want to. I don't do every single quest in these games. The rest of my leveling is spent exploring and hunting.
I believe I did 58 to 60 in LOTRO just clearing out orcs outside of Lothlorien.
but for some reason players distill the game play to something really distasteful and just "grab quests without reading, do them, run back for more."
Maybe if the players took more control in their game play they would have a better time. You can have your community and still have quests in games.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Some people prefer sparks over substance, personally It looks like comparring magazines to books to me.Besides whenevr a game company introduces something of an open do what you want world everybody gets all pissy saying,'theres nothing to do, its just a big empty world.' People need there hands held and their feet walked for them, especially mmoers because were a bunch of whiny bitchy little turds.
You're missing the point. Disliking story in an mmo isn't because you like the current questing system. Its more about players who see mmo's as a world to play in. The more the game defines for you who your char is, what your char is doing, the less fun it is because the single predominant feature of mmo's is the other players. mmo's should focus on building community, not playing the game for us.
In standalone games, I want story. In mmo's I want community.
I agree.
I have to say that I love Bioware RPGs, but I am seriously thinking skipping SWTOR, for the reasons you mentioned above.
I cannot see how a good story line can blend with the need of a strong community.
To me storytelling is good for offline games, as I said I am a Bioware fan and I own every game since Baldurs Gate.
I never skip quest text or voiceover during their offline RPGs, but when I play a MMO I am not really that interested in meaningful quests, but to play with the community.
I was going to buy SWTOR and play it as an offline game, but I am not even sure I will do that, because I think that even as an offline RPG, it won't be as good as their usual stuff (due to the MMO features which will break the immersion)
You're missing the point. Disliking story in an mmo isn't because you like the current questing system. Its more about players who see mmo's as a world to play in. The more the game defines for you who your char is, what your char is doing, the less fun it is because the single predominant feature of mmo's is the other players. mmo's should focus on building community, not playing the game for us.
In standalone games, I want story. In mmo's I want community.
Adding story doesn't define your character at all.
Especially if you have choice in that story.
Players don't have to take every quest, espeically if those quests run counter to your character.
And quite frankly, players don't have to take any quests. I only ever take the quests I want to. I don't do every single quest in these games. The rest of my leveling is spent exploring and hunting.
I believe I did 58 to 60 in LOTRO just clearing out orcs outside of Lothlorien.
but for some reason players distill the game play to something really distasteful and just "grab quests without reading, do them, run back for more."
Maybe if the players took more control in their game play they would have a better time. You can have your community and still have quests in games.
That's part of the concern though with the game beign so "story" heavy. Will players really get much of a choice in what quests they do and don't pick up, or will they be progression gated by a main questline?
Furthermore, even if the quests have choice, it doesn't mean they offer enough choice. Simply going by experience with the latest Bioware games, the times you do get any choice it's one of three things: Goodie goodie, neutral, or jerk. Ironically, the few choices they do offer that could be considered 'for the greater good' or 'the ends justify the means', are considered jerk options even if they're morally superior in the grand scheme. Extending on that, there's practicaully no outright evil options either. The 'bad' options are all mostly just being a dick more than being outright evil.
Additionally, to maintain some semblance of continuity between storyline and player, the choices made will not have some huge chain impact later on, or to anyone else. There's no possible way Bioware will be able to create an elaborate cause and effect quest system. The best they will be able to do, and have been doing, is a simple karma system. The player chose the "be a dick option", give them some dark side points. Oh, they chose to save the kitten from the tree, give them some light side points. The player doesn't have X light side points, so they don't get this option in this conversation to get more light side points.
That's part of the concern though with the game beign so "story" heavy. Will players really get much of a choice in what quests they do and don't pick up, or will they be progression gated by a main questline?
Furthermore, even if the quests have choice, it doesn't mean they offer enough choice. Simply going by experience with the latest Bioware games, the times you do get any choice it's one of three things: Goodie goodie, neutral, or jerk. Ironically, the few choices they do offer that could be considered 'for the greater good' or 'the ends justify the means', are considered jerk options even if they're morally superior in the grand scheme. Extending on that, there's practicaully no outright evil options either. The 'bad' options are all mostly just being a dick more than being outright evil.
Additionally, to maintain some semblance of continuity between storyline and player, the choices made will not have some huge chain impact later on, or to anyone else. There's no possible way Bioware will be able to create an elaborate cause and effect quest system. The best they will be able to do, and have been doing, is a simple karma system. The player chose the "be a dick option", give them some dark side points. Oh, they chose to save the kitten from the tree, give them some light side points. The player doesn't have X light side points, so they don't get this option in this conversation to get more light side points.
We have to see I guess until we can play it, but most of the games - and even MMO's (besides maybe the sandbox ones) - have a main questline, even free roaming games as GTA and Red Dead Redemption or MMO's as a AoC and LotrO have them. But from what I recall from those games and from a Bioware game as Baldur's Gate 2, you have enough choice besides the main questline to do all kinds of side quests and activities that are different depending on your class and decisions you make during your travels.
From the morality choices, I don't know if they'll be so black&white, the devs already commented upon that it very often will not be so black & white, and recent games from them as ME2 already showed a lot of ambivalent greyness. Anyway, we have to see how this'll work out, hard to tell now. In any case it's already more choice than quests in other MMO's where the only choice often is 'ok' to accept your quest and 'ok' to accept your reward when you've finished it.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
You're missing the point. Disliking story in an mmo isn't because you like the current questing system. Its more about players who see mmo's as a world to play in. The more the game defines for you who your char is, what your char is doing, the less fun it is because the single predominant feature of mmo's is the other players. mmo's should focus on building community, not playing the game for us.
In standalone games, I want story. In mmo's I want community.
Adding story doesn't define your character at all.
Especially if you have choice in that story.
Players don't have to take every quest, espeically if those quests run counter to your character.
And quite frankly, players don't have to take any quests. I only ever take the quests I want to. I don't do every single quest in these games. The rest of my leveling is spent exploring and hunting.
I believe I did 58 to 60 in LOTRO just clearing out orcs outside of Lothlorien.
but for some reason players distill the game play to something really distasteful and just "grab quests without reading, do them, run back for more."
Maybe if the players took more control in their game play they would have a better time. You can have your community and still have quests in games.
That's part of the concern though with the game beign so "story" heavy. Will players really get much of a choice in what quests they do and don't pick up, or will they be progression gated by a main questline?
Furthermore, even if the quests have choice, it doesn't mean they offer enough choice. Simply going by experience with the latest Bioware games, the times you do get any choice it's one of three things: Goodie goodie, neutral, or jerk. Ironically, the few choices they do offer that could be considered 'for the greater good' or 'the ends justify the means', are considered jerk options even if they're morally superior in the grand scheme. Extending on that, there's practicaully no outright evil options either. The 'bad' options are all mostly just being a dick more than being outright evil.
Additionally, to maintain some semblance of continuity between storyline and player, the choices made will not have some huge chain impact later on, or to anyone else. There's no possible way Bioware will be able to create an elaborate cause and effect quest system. The best they will be able to do, and have been doing, is a simple karma system. The player chose the "be a dick option", give them some dark side points. Oh, they chose to save the kitten from the tree, give them some light side points. The player doesn't have X light side points, so they don't get this option in this conversation to get more light side points.
I imagine that really depends on the game then. I agree that it is way too easy to funnel all players through one main story but that is not the fault of "story" and more the fault of the developers.
Bioware was never really good, in my opinion, at the evil storylines. As far as choices in Dragon Age, there were a lot more choices than peole realized. Sometmes it was just "flavor" and sometimes if you explored all the trees you would get different results. Unfortunately some players thought that it was the same in every dialogue choice when in reality some of those dialogue choices could lead you to information you didnt' know.
But affecting the entire world because of what one player does? That is best done with the regular open game play, taking and holding land, controlling taxes or goods, etc.
That still doesn't mitigate the inclusion of story. As I've said elswhwere before, I used to log into Lineage 2, a game where you did create your own "stories" of a sort, and grind for levels over the course of months when there wasn't pvp happening or a raid, etc.
It wasn't until I experienced the smaller stories of a then young WoW that I felt some context to why I was doing what I was doing.
But players oftentimes use the mantra "players need to make their own stories". However, those "stories" rarely have any depth or story arc and it's always something like "player A stole from Player B and now they are at war" yadda yadda yadda.
Or player A griefed Player B or any number of things. After a while that can also get very old. What is the use of players making "their own stories" when it's the same story over and over?
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Naturally i agree with the above post as that would be concurrent with what i've been saying. But to add a little. To those that want to make their own story, why does the story given by the developers have to get in the way? If your really good with story telling, you can use that as a basis and build from it to make a really great story. This is just off the top of my head but it could be something like this. Your family was captured by the sith. They are too far in for the jedis to help so you do odd jobs to help them so you'll eventually get close enough to save your family. (it's at this point when you go to save them that you manually attack a bunch of siths in a cave or something) and get your "supposed" family back. After which the remainder of the story is figuring out how you get out of your current perdicament without drawling attention to yourself or your recently rescued family.
This story can work with the story that BW is doing and still be apart of the great over arcing story that you wish to provide. I dunno, makes sense to me and could work and i thought that up in all of about 2 minutes. I prefer to see this as a chance to test my story telling abilities instead of a blockade for it.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
To those that want to make their own story, why does the story given by the developers have to get in the way? If your really good with story telling, you can use that as a basis and build from it to make a really great story.
(snips)
This story can work with the story that BW is doing and still be apart of the great over arcing story that you wish to provide. I dunno, makes sense to me and could work and i thought that up in all of about 2 minutes. I prefer to see this as a chance to test my story telling abilities instead of a blockade for it.
I never saw the roleplayers in dev-provided story heavy MMO's as LotrO and AoC have any problem with creating and developing their own stories, and these were the people who were most invested in lore and their character's story. I think it's a matter how creative and imaginative you are that results in how well you can handle your own stories besides the designed ingame ones.
Neither did I see the PvE'ers or PvP'ers have any problem in those MMO's with their meta-story ingame.
So no, I don't see either how it could be a problem in SW:TOR, building your own stories next to the ingame ones.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Why hate improved storytelling via questing in MMO's, if it isn't because you think quest gameplay is perfect as it is in current MMO's?
Because is it really inproved? instead of a wall of text to fetch 10 rat tails you now get a novel worth of speech for 20 minutes to tell you to get 10 rat tails?
in the end whats the difference? the end goal is the same you get 10 rat tails and lost 20 minutes of cool gameplay to listen to someone rambling on about stuff to do a quest that takes 3 minutes to finish.
After 3 quests im sure 80% of the people will press ESC to skip the dialog just as they click away text. people want to play the game not read/listen to a novel worths of text.
Comments
I like story, but I don't like being it being spoon fed via an endless torrent of quests.
I'd rather make my character's own story within the ongoing story of the world.
I agree that story can be detriment for a community, in exactly the same way that the experience of solo quest grinding has been encouraging the singleplayer game feel that some gamers have when solo questing to level cap in MMO's.
I don't think it's a 'or... or' pendulum situatino though.
It depends on how things are implemented, and both Bioware and Anet also introduce features to also help community, in the case of SW:TOR via all kinds of ways to encourage grouping.
Or as Athcear said (saves me the trouble of typing it
)
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
And this. I think there has been some misunderstanding in the thread, and probably because 'Story' can have different interpretations and definitions.
I think you can safely discern two categories of Story:
- provided by designer/devs: these are the lore and the quests and events we encounter ingame. The lore is the background story of the world you wander around in. The quests is the thing that helps progress you through the game all to level cap, in the meantime also handing out bits of lore and story. Now this is what Bioware is expanding upon, the quest mechanics. This is by no means a replacement of the second category:
- provided by players: this is the experiences you collect while playing, as well the in-character 'roleplay' aspect (light, heavy, any kind) as the out-of-character part, like when your guild were the 1st on a server to defeat an end level dragon, or the first to build a keep.
Now, the fact that Bioware is improving upon the 1st category doesn't mean that this will exclude the 2nd category, just as in other MMO's those 2 categories have existed next to eachother.
An example: In several MMO's I have also played on RP tagged servers, and although I enjoyed the quest storylines in a LotrO and AoC, those were totally separated from the RP that was happening among the players. Some people included bits of their questing adventures in their roleplay, and others just separated fully the quests from their personal story. Also, the quests and storylines provided by the designers in LotrO and AoC were a separate thing from the stories that you build up while playing, like the time that my guild conquered a keep, and managed to ward off sieges from enemies upon it for weeks at a stretch.
There are different kinds of story, the one I was talking about was the storylines provided by the questing mechanics that Bioware intends to improve upon.
As I said earlier, we don't know how things will end up to be, but one kind of story doesn't have to exclude another kind of story.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I'm going to play a little scenario with those people who say that a story driven game detracts from their character story element. Heres what i'm going to do.
I'm going to place you in the set of the writter. The person who makes the story for your character. I'd really love to see if you had a game world for your character where you would go with this. As you proclaim that you can make a story oh so much more interesting then what the devs cook up for your character.
What i'm trying to get at here is again most people while would love to tell their own story are just frankly not good at it, you'd be surprised at just how hard it is to make a story everyone will love or even like, i'm doing this in an effort to show that story telling done right is not as easy as it looks. Remember your story in the world can affect others. If you say oh i was the first person to slay the x creature that would conflict with my story that says the exact same thing. If this goes right i will be comparing stories as they are all part of the same world.
The only reason i'm doing this is to see if player driven stories are really that much better then what the dev give out.
For this example we'll use the world in SW as a backdrop. I'll let you guys fill in the rest. Try to avoid cliches and loopholes as you don't want people coming down on you with that.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I don't think this is what those players mean. They are not claiming they can write better quest arcs than the developers, they are saying the quest arcs are too restrictive, and the result is everyone basically experiences the same thing. Since these sorts of games focus on your being the 'Savior of the Universe', it cheapens the experience. This is because it really doesn't matter what you do, or more importantly, how good a player you are, everyone will end up the same.
When they say they want to create their own story, they simply mean they want to be 'off the rails'. If you wish, and you are good enough, you can earn your way to the top, or you don't.
Bioware is countering this 'everyone's the same' thing, by adding choices to the story arcs. But I would imagine, again really no matter what, everyone will still end up a hero, just will a slightly different route to get there. That's what the whole Uncle Owen thing is about. Its a metaphor for this, not literally to mean people want to create a character that just sits there and waits to harvest moisture, as some think.
These players are saying they don't want to for to travel the route the developers construct for them, since their roll within the game universe is not their own, it will be delivered to them. Yeah its been said you can skip the quest and just grind, but that is going to depend on what the rest of the game entails for these players to see if it is worth doing that. Let's face it, that is possible in every game, just like its possible to solo to max level in every game, or group in every game. Yet some games are clearly known as 'solofests' or 'forced-grouping' games.
Yet you talk as if somehow the story in TOR specifically will somehow lead to a bad community. This is a misnomer and I'd be far more worried about TOR's wild popularity leading to a crappy WoW-type community.
Why exactly do you think the story in TOR will lead to a poor community? Is it because you think the story will be so awersome that people will get so engrossed in it that they stop talking to other people and stop socializing, logging on only to experience the cool storyline instead of playing with other people? Because if so, then I think that's pretty high praise for how awesome you think the story will be.
Personally, I intend to play the game in the same room as my brothers with us all teaming the entire time and playing different classes so we can experience all the class storylines. I find MMOs are at their most fun when played with other people you know in real life like a LAN party.
Good. since you've acknowledge its possible for two honest people to have different honest interpretations of the same event, then there is no need for me to provide a hypothetical example. If you already understand its possible, why provide an example?
Thank you. I've attempted to be quite clear, repeatedly, by what I mean when I talk about story inhibiting community. People keep thinking I'm saying that there should be no story, or there has to be a choice, between the two.
And I said as well, we'll have to see what happens after launch. Although even that open minded attitude is considered negative by some overly enthusiastic fans.
Right. I should've cut out your quote in order to prevent misunderstanding, in my post I was actually responding upon Zarcob's comment, and upon the posts of several other posters that were talking about story and a different interpretation of it than I had in the OP.
I had already commented upon some of your comments in earlier posts, they sounded pretty clear to me
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Because I am trying to undersand what is going on in your head. I want to understand your perspective and reasoning on the information available. Maybe you've thought of something I haven't for instance.
Fair enough, the reason i do this is because people say that the main story will be too restricting for their class or will stiffle what they think their character should be. So what i did was basically do a Bruce almighty thing. If you think you can do it better then do so.
While i admit that there are two different stories that can be going on at once, i don't constitute taking and holding a keep as a story. Explaining how you take the keep and how you hold it, trials of rationing food and keeping peoples morale up while fending off the enemy attack is a story.
The problem with player driven stories is this is rarely the case. In most cases it's just a bunch of random events thrown together to make some kind of storyline out of their adventure, this you can do in almost any game and explain away why your doing it, so the dev driven story isn't really a case here and should be developed as best it can be. I believe BW did mention something about how you can just drop the story and do whatever. I'm sure there will be bottlenecks to this at first, such as you have to get to a certain point in your "character adventure) to get a space craft.
What i was asking was not so much to change what the devs did but to see how they would handle being a writter themselves. How they would go about making a storyline that doesn't (as they put it) intrude on the player driven storyline version. Its so easy to say they don't know what they are doing or they are doing things wrong. It's so much harder to do it yourself.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
Nope, just heard lots of things about the game that from the perspective of a gamer who prefers robust community to robust storytelling (in mmo's) that sound discouraging. (Bear in mind I've heard encouraging things too, but was focused on topic the OP proposed.) Also being a person who is wisely skeptical of the claims of for-profit businesses about the wonder of their products, I merely took the mildly conservative position that despite their claims to the contrary, I'll wait til launch to see how the game is. You took the position of accepting what they said without question, and seemed baffled at how I could doubt it. Its such a stark difference of perspective that there is no need to try to convince you, since you clearly accept what Bioware has to say without question.
After reading your points, I'd say I really can't agree for the most part. My experience says the biggest deterent to community, is the mmo community itself.
For the most part player A: is out for himself, as well as player B:. The only community they may belong to is which ever guild they are be affiliated with. For the most part they don't like to group, they don't like to socialize, they don't like to stand around. All they care about is hitting max and becoming uber. The community to them is nothing but a means to reach an end.
Player C: is a rare breed, I've only found player C: in SWG personally. Still he was a rare person to see as well as meet. Most were player A's and B's, remember this is SWG PRE-cu I'm referring to, one of the most community oriented games I've played. Even in such a game player c's are few and far between.
Story really has nothing to do with breaking down a community or community functions, the only time community has come together in MMO's is when they've been forced to. What came as a result of that? Nothing but complaints, it took far too much time away from the race to end game.
IMO community is more a myth now than anything, I think devs see this too, which is why they steer clear of sandbox mechanics. They only work when they're used properly, this current fanbase, is incapable of that IMO, that may ruffle a few feathers I'm sure, but that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. Until something shows me otherwise, I won't hold my breath waiting for that to take place.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I can see a story as a good thing IF... it is more optional. If this was a designing of a real world, then I would not have liked a story. But in the end it is a game, and beyond that it is a business. If everyone has something to do, everyone should be happy.
Of course it is entirely possible have an alternative to story. But as of right now, for me, a story with quests is better than no story with quests. For me.
To be clear I was talking in generalities, not the specifics of TOR. Also I'm talking about a kind of player not all players. If how I feel about it doesn't apply to your play style then its doesn't apply to you. So how you intend to play doesn't really reflect on how I feel about the game. At no time did I say the way TOR is being made it will be bad for everyone.
What I am say is that there are types of dev mandated story centric game dynamics that discourage community.
Gah! Why didn't you just say you didn't trust what they said? Instead you said you just had a different interpretation of it. Thanks for wasting my time.
Adding story doesn't define your character at all.
Especially if you have choice in that story.
Players don't have to take every quest, espeically if those quests run counter to your character.
And quite frankly, players don't have to take any quests. I only ever take the quests I want to. I don't do every single quest in these games. The rest of my leveling is spent exploring and hunting.
I believe I did 58 to 60 in LOTRO just clearing out orcs outside of Lothlorien.
but for some reason players distill the game play to something really distasteful and just "grab quests without reading, do them, run back for more."
Maybe if the players took more control in their game play they would have a better time. You can have your community and still have quests in games.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
QFE
I agree.
I have to say that I love Bioware RPGs, but I am seriously thinking skipping SWTOR, for the reasons you mentioned above.
I cannot see how a good story line can blend with the need of a strong community.
To me storytelling is good for offline games, as I said I am a Bioware fan and I own every game since Baldurs Gate.
I never skip quest text or voiceover during their offline RPGs, but when I play a MMO I am not really that interested in meaningful quests, but to play with the community.
I was going to buy SWTOR and play it as an offline game, but I am not even sure I will do that, because I think that even as an offline RPG, it won't be as good as their usual stuff (due to the MMO features which will break the immersion)
That's part of the concern though with the game beign so "story" heavy. Will players really get much of a choice in what quests they do and don't pick up, or will they be progression gated by a main questline?
Furthermore, even if the quests have choice, it doesn't mean they offer enough choice. Simply going by experience with the latest Bioware games, the times you do get any choice it's one of three things: Goodie goodie, neutral, or jerk. Ironically, the few choices they do offer that could be considered 'for the greater good' or 'the ends justify the means', are considered jerk options even if they're morally superior in the grand scheme. Extending on that, there's practicaully no outright evil options either. The 'bad' options are all mostly just being a dick more than being outright evil.
Additionally, to maintain some semblance of continuity between storyline and player, the choices made will not have some huge chain impact later on, or to anyone else. There's no possible way Bioware will be able to create an elaborate cause and effect quest system. The best they will be able to do, and have been doing, is a simple karma system. The player chose the "be a dick option", give them some dark side points. Oh, they chose to save the kitten from the tree, give them some light side points. The player doesn't have X light side points, so they don't get this option in this conversation to get more light side points.
We have to see I guess until we can play it, but most of the games - and even MMO's (besides maybe the sandbox ones) - have a main questline, even free roaming games as GTA and Red Dead Redemption or MMO's as a AoC and LotrO have them. But from what I recall from those games and from a Bioware game as Baldur's Gate 2, you have enough choice besides the main questline to do all kinds of side quests and activities that are different depending on your class and decisions you make during your travels.
From the morality choices, I don't know if they'll be so black&white, the devs already commented upon that it very often will not be so black & white, and recent games from them as ME2 already showed a lot of ambivalent greyness. Anyway, we have to see how this'll work out, hard to tell now. In any case it's already more choice than quests in other MMO's where the only choice often is 'ok' to accept your quest and 'ok' to accept your reward when you've finished it.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I imagine that really depends on the game then. I agree that it is way too easy to funnel all players through one main story but that is not the fault of "story" and more the fault of the developers.
Bioware was never really good, in my opinion, at the evil storylines. As far as choices in Dragon Age, there were a lot more choices than peole realized. Sometmes it was just "flavor" and sometimes if you explored all the trees you would get different results. Unfortunately some players thought that it was the same in every dialogue choice when in reality some of those dialogue choices could lead you to information you didnt' know.
But affecting the entire world because of what one player does? That is best done with the regular open game play, taking and holding land, controlling taxes or goods, etc.
That still doesn't mitigate the inclusion of story. As I've said elswhwere before, I used to log into Lineage 2, a game where you did create your own "stories" of a sort, and grind for levels over the course of months when there wasn't pvp happening or a raid, etc.
It wasn't until I experienced the smaller stories of a then young WoW that I felt some context to why I was doing what I was doing.
But players oftentimes use the mantra "players need to make their own stories". However, those "stories" rarely have any depth or story arc and it's always something like "player A stole from Player B and now they are at war" yadda yadda yadda.
Or player A griefed Player B or any number of things. After a while that can also get very old. What is the use of players making "their own stories" when it's the same story over and over?
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Naturally i agree with the above post as that would be concurrent with what i've been saying. But to add a little. To those that want to make their own story, why does the story given by the developers have to get in the way? If your really good with story telling, you can use that as a basis and build from it to make a really great story. This is just off the top of my head but it could be something like this. Your family was captured by the sith. They are too far in for the jedis to help so you do odd jobs to help them so you'll eventually get close enough to save your family. (it's at this point when you go to save them that you manually attack a bunch of siths in a cave or something) and get your "supposed" family back. After which the remainder of the story is figuring out how you get out of your current perdicament without drawling attention to yourself or your recently rescued family.
This story can work with the story that BW is doing and still be apart of the great over arcing story that you wish to provide. I dunno, makes sense to me and could work and i thought that up in all of about 2 minutes. I prefer to see this as a chance to test my story telling abilities instead of a blockade for it.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I never saw the roleplayers in dev-provided story heavy MMO's as LotrO and AoC have any problem with creating and developing their own stories, and these were the people who were most invested in lore and their character's story. I think it's a matter how creative and imaginative you are that results in how well you can handle your own stories besides the designed ingame ones.
Neither did I see the PvE'ers or PvP'ers have any problem in those MMO's with their meta-story ingame.
So no, I don't see either how it could be a problem in SW:TOR, building your own stories next to the ingame ones.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Because is it really inproved? instead of a wall of text to fetch 10 rat tails you now get a novel worth of speech for 20 minutes to tell you to get 10 rat tails?
in the end whats the difference? the end goal is the same you get 10 rat tails and lost 20 minutes of cool gameplay to listen to someone rambling on about stuff to do a quest that takes 3 minutes to finish.
After 3 quests im sure 80% of the people will press ESC to skip the dialog just as they click away text. people want to play the game not read/listen to a novel worths of text.