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Player story should return.
Vermillion_Raventhal
Member EpicPosts: 4,198
No matter what type of MMORPG is made in the future I look forward to return to player story. Yeah old cranky vet talk... I guess. But one thing I've realized that was different with old MMORPG despite the great differences is that player story made the game. There wasn't a neat funnel of single player quest driving the whole game. It was more putting us in a world and making our own adventure out of it. I can say majority of my clear memories of MMORPG come from the player story. None of the quest I ever did stick out.
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Worlds in modern MMO are a lot more interesting to go out and explore and create your own stories over the older games (IMO) if your into that. Even with the quests present.
I think quests should stay in MMOs but I did play the old MMOs and even M59 had quests. Sadly those quests sucked though so most have forgotten about killing rats in the moat and so on.
My point: MMOs can have quests but those quests should be fun and epic, 200 great longer quests are far better than 10 000 crappy ones. Add fewer, longer and better written quests with more exploration and fredoom and things are peachy.
No-one needs to constantly ask me to go and kill 10 orcs, 10 moblins and 10 whatsnot. That is just pure grinding and there is no point telling me to do that crap, if I need the XP I can do it anyways.
There is a huge difference between taking the one ring to mount Doom and some peasants asking a mighty hero to kill pests in his cellar. Only one of those things could be called a "quests".
If unsure, think "Would Conan do this"? If not just save us the effort. Overfull questlogs with "quests" so sad that not even the cheasiest fantasy comic or TV show would use them is an insult to our intelligence.
Yeah this is the prevailing player opinion. Almost no videogame RPGs have strongly supported tabletop-style role-playing, so as a result the majority of RPGers enjoy the core traits of videogame RPGs: story (dev-made), progress, and stats-driven combat. Developers occasionally dabble in other types of RPGs, but they're much less popular (or if they're popular, they're popular because the feature was tacked onto a game where a dev-made story was driving things.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
*Old Man Speak coming*
When I first started playing MMO's, I played one. It was call Asheron's Call. During the first few years, players actually affected story lines, if only to fulfill a role, but with all of the hub bub out how you are the hero in the story, blah blah blah, there seems like to less player involvement and more "WORLD FIRST".
A prime example of what I am talking about with players interacting with the devs was during the shadow invasion, several players of high level were teleported to a place, and were asked questions about the story and to make decisions dictating future story arcs and the like via their responses. Why can't we do MORE of this? Devs seem to be more hands off, and more and more, build code and release instead of getting active responses to their code after release of said code. Like, they release a new weapon and wait for the players to complain, then they fix, instead of giving players the weapon, telling them to go kill stuff, and seeing the results, and toning it up or down.
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I don't know if by player story you mean people role played or player story in terms of things kind of just happened as you wandered around that could be considered stories and more interesting ones than the general ones that everyone experiences in story driven games. It's not so much roleplaying as just going out, doing things in games, and having things happen. There is no real effort required to role play. You simple go out and various different things happens like someone trying to steal your kill, coming across someone in need of help, asking someone to teleport you or give you a buff, gathering to trade items, etc. I think this is a general change with the way kids grow up today. They are in very controlled environments monitored by adults. They often don't understand the concept of playing in a sandbox unmonitored and all the different possibilities that arise from such an environment. It's more exciting to survive a train brought by another player or get your corpse back from deep in a dungeon then to go through a very controlled story in many cases. Mostly because it's different, random, and there is no guarantee of success.
Yesterday a person in my corp needed to move a capital mining ship from empire space to null along with some other supplies needed for an internal mining consortium he and some others were forming. So a random corpmate offered to help, and spent a significant amount of time going back to empire, mapping out multiple worm hole routes, remapping more WH's when the primary unexpectedly closed out, several other players joined in to assist with this effort as several dozen systems were scanned down.
At the end of the day, all gear made it safely back to null sec, congrats were given out to the first guy that volunteered and stuck around all day on an activity that actually didn't benefit him in any way. (not a miner).
In fact, while they were discussing their exploits on TS, I mentioned I had 5 miners who could fly at max efficiency, and they invited me into the consortium on the spot.
We all regularly scout for each other to prevent unnecessary deaths, assist in call to arms, and generally support each other when duty calls.
This is what I consider to be player stories and by far they are more enjoyable than scripted developers stories, at least for me.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Yes, this is exactly it. I don't think quest should be so much in the way. The way we designed to play, player progression and the way the worlds are designed questing is in the way of player story. You're not meant to find your own adventure. You play in a confined space to quest only.
"The Society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."
Currently: Games Audio Engineer, you didn't hear what I heard, you heard what I wanted you to hear.
So I guess haflway through this post, I'm seeing where you're coming from. Whereas I can go on for hours with UO, EVE Online, and Puzzle Pirates anecdotes, I can't really think of many specific events from the quest driven games, as they were enjoyable but not really memorable.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I think the point is you don't have to sit make a backstory for your character or play them a certain way to fit the role in order to have stories in the games. Just playing the game stories will unfold of their own accord. You could still consider them roles, but they are not planned out roles.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
In contemporary mmos you get to pretend that your pretend awesomeness is valid, cause the NPCs told you so in a cutscene.
"Help me! My brother is late for a shipment of giant shells! Have you ever heard of the Bongy Boys? They says we owe 'em money. If we don't pay, they will certainly come down on us hard. their leader, Bong, isn't really known for his leniency. He's been the town bully for quite sometime. I really need some help! Could you bring me 20 Giant shells from the Giant crabs on Hellscorch Beach? I will greatly appreciate it! The Bongy Boys are just too .... blah blah blah blah"
Just say... "I need 20 giant shells".
Intrigue.
Politics.
History and lore.
Character play.
The combat is important, no doubt. But I find myself wondering "what is all this combat for?"
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"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
After SWTOR released with horrible sales and retention there was nothing but silence from the pro story crowd.
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