I wouldn't say story is essential, but it can add a lot to a game. I look down on games with storylines that every player goes through, because it's not fit for an MMORPG, it's basically a singleplayer online game. However, a dev run storyline where the devs bring the action to the players with events and one time quests and other stuff that change the world can make a game incredible for all players playing. An unforgettable experience.
I think a better replacement to the singleplayer style story quests is to have world history, stuff that's in the lore that actually exists in the world. The replacement would be exploring these places in the world that are maybe ruins now, or maybe not, and learning their history. It fits more in an MMORPG this way. Hell you could even have your flashy cutscenes that show what the place used to be like as you progress through it. Maybe like that vault in Fallout 3 where you would hallucinate and see the vault you had come from and the people from it.
So I suppose story in games being important is subjective. I base it on the game mechanics. If the core mechanics aren't fun then they better have something else that's damn good to make up for it.
for me it is important. it gives me the drive to find out more about dungeons or ruins i've stumbled on or to even seek out. I still find myself looking up EQ1 lore because i just find stories and lore so exciting to get into.
However, a dev run storyline where the devs bring the action to the players with events and one time quests and other stuff that change the world can make a game incredible for all players playing. An unforgettable experience.
I agree with that as well. Too many times players are just thrown into the world with no direction. Some players like that, but I think it would be cool to have Devs or GMs running daily or monthly events. It would be especially cool in a faction-based PvP MMO to have GM or Dev leaders that give quests, bark orders, and help in the battles. Yeah, they'd have to have thick skin, but it sounds like a lot of fun to me.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
How improtant is the Story in a MMORPG game? From what I hear from vet MMORPG gamers, most sandbox MMOs didnt have Quest, so you were left to make your own story. So shouldnt Gameplay and Mechanics be the most important? But then another croud of people say Story is the most important thing in a RPG, since its all about Role Playing.
So what do you all think?
The game needs to have lore, the rest should be up to it's players, just like with big IP MMORPG, I mean we all know the story, now let us free to be who we want to be in that world and make our own little history in that world/lore/story.
For a good story I play singleplayer RPG's as nothing can come close to that experiance of Story, in a MMORPG to play a story would ruin the whole MMORPG experiance for me.
Developer made "story" and content is boring and gets old extremely fast. The best story is told by the players. I'm not talking about roleplaying, I'm talking about competition between players.
There is nothing more fun than to have an enemy guild on your server that you're constantly competiting with. They'll get you one week, and then the next you'll get them. They could destroy your city, but later on you steal their warship that they speant months building. It feels real, it's ever changing, and you are actually a unique part of it. Rather than the 200,000th person to save the same city like in so many other games.
Unfortunately very few games do this anymore. Darkfall is the closest thing to a real dynamic story.
How improtant is the Story in a MMORPG game? From what I hear from vet MMORPG gamers, most sandbox MMOs didnt have Quest, so you were left to make your own story. So shouldnt Gameplay and Mechanics be the most important? But then another croud of people say Story is the most important thing in a RPG, since its all about Role Playing.
So what do you all think?
The game needs to have lore, the rest should be up to it's players, just like with big IP MMORPG, I mean we all know the story, now let us free to be who we want to be in that world and make our own little history in that world/lore/story.
For a good story I play singleplayer RPG's as nothing can come close to that experiance of Story, in a MMORPG to play a story would ruin the whole MMORPG experiance for me.
I disagree.
If I toss you into a Sandbox MMO, well its up to you wether to make believe you are in a LoTR or WARCRAFT Storyline.
See how that is optional. You can make your own Lore, not always have to be handheld IPs and stuff.
If Iam playing DARKFALL,, How come I cant Make Believe iam playing a Lore Paladin in WARCRAFT? explain that please.
As I said,, Lore is not the most improtant. mechanics and gameplay is.
The game needs to have lore, the rest should be up to it's players, just like with big IP MMORPG, I mean we all know the story, now let us free to be who we want to be in that world and make our own little history in that world/lore/story. For a good story I play singleplayer RPG's as nothing can come close to that experiance of Story, in a MMORPG to play a story would ruin the whole MMORPG experiance for me.
I disagree.
If I toss you into a Sandbox MMO, well its up to you wether to make believe you are in a LoTR or WARCRAFT Storyline.
See how that is optional. You can make your own Lore, not always have to be handheld IPs and stuff.
If Iam playing DARKFALL,, How come I cant Make Believe iam playing a Lore Paladin in WARCRAFT? explain that please.
As I said,, Lore is not the most improtant. mechanics and gameplay is.
oh......are we taking about gamemechanics and gameplay????, hmm and here I was thinking this topic was about story.
To be honost I really have no idea what you are talking about, I mean which sandbox game are you talking about, do you mean any random game that is sandbox? Do you really think that any sandbox game people will make up as if they are playing LoTR or Warcraft even if those game do not have the lore to back up these suggestions? Did you actualy read what this topic and what I said?
Like I said what is it you disagree with me cause you aint saying or actualy responding to anything I said, so please explain?
Try to remember this topic aint about gameplay or gamemechanics but this topic is about STORY!! let's try and discus that.
How improtant is the Story in a MMORPG game? From what I hear from vet MMORPG gamers, most sandbox MMOs didnt have Quest, so you were left to make your own story. So shouldnt Gameplay and Mechanics be the most important? But then another croud of people say Story is the most important thing in a RPG, since its all about Role Playing.
So what do you all think?
I like a good story. Even sandbox games where players creates most of the game could have a good backstory. The world existed before the players got there and a good story is one of the things that makes the world feel alive.
Unfortunately do most MMOs have a background story that feels like a 14 year old kid wrote it. A few companies like 38 studio and Arenanet actually have real writers working for them and I think that will win in the long term.
If the game have quests they should be fun and well written, not just go kill 10 rats (without an actual reason for it). Quest should be long and epical, something heroes of fantasy books should do, if you asked Conan to kill 10 rats he would have given you a good beating.
But sandbox games are a different matter, there should however still be a past to any world. Why is there a ruin in a certain place? Why does orcs dislike gnomes? Why does a certain city looks like it does and how old is it?
A MMO world should feel like a living, breathing world. Something without a past will never do that. There are other things that makes the world feel alive also of course but the story should be important in ant mmoRPG, whatever kind it is. A MMOFPS doesn't really need a story but a game like that is just for combat anyways.
Story is something I enjoy, but I'd prefer gameplay and mechanics over it, because I'm here to play a game, not watch a movie.
Hehe another person talking gameplay and mechanics, sorry dude but this topic aint about that as it's obvious that regardless of the game has story or lore or not a story that it will have gameplay/mechanics.
Let's discus if you like Story or not and lets discus gameplay and gamemechanics in other topics that are about gameplay/mechanics....okay?
Originally posted by tro44_1 I disagree. If I toss you into a Sandbox MMO, well its up to you wether to make believe you are in a LoTR or WARCRAFT Storyline. See how that is optional. You can make your own Lore, not always have to be handheld IPs and stuff. If Iam playing DARKFALL,, How come I cant Make Believe iam playing a Lore Paladin in WARCRAFT? explain that please.
As I said,, Lore is not the most improtant. mechanics and gameplay is.
You can pretend that the sky is green too but it wont make it true.
And this isn't about holding anyones hand, players do create their own story but for a world should feel alive should there actually been something before you got there, that is a story too. If you just place out a few cities and put in a few random races the game will make no sense.
That works in a FPS game but anything with the RPG in the name actually demands some kind of story at least before the server went up for the first time.That doesn't force you to act in a certain way but if you know that orcs massacred your village 5 years ago and you still can see a monument to remind you of it you would be affected by it in some ways. You could still befreind orcs but it will actually make the world more interesting.
Story have nothing to do with handholding, it explains why the world looks like it does, and if you study it you could find out stuff, like that a certain rare herb was grown by monks in a certain place and therefor it could be a good idea to look at the ruins, or that a certain day is holy to elves and that is a good time to sneak into their village to steal stuff because they are celebrating that.
A story is something that add spice to a game, if you study the lore it can help you in certain ways (the dwarfs had a secret mine somewhere and you still can find some gems there, stuff like that).
This doesn't mean that a story is more important than mechanics but there are many things that adds to a great game and story is actually one of them. In some games story is just hints and old ruins, in others it affects the entire game. Both those are fine if they are well written.
I'm actually a mite bit confused here. Someone actually said story isn't a game mechanic? Or is everyone just operating on the assumption that the story behind a game is just the fluff text one skips over or the cutscenes occasionally(or all too frequently) thrown at you, and not in fact an overarching and involved aspect of what drives just about every thing you ogle at in the game world?
Story is pretty damn important when it brings an actual frame of reference to what is going on within a game. even if the story is the most generic, bland, trite junk you've ever seen, it's actually had quite a bearing on what becomes known as the 'feel' of a game, alongside giving an overall art direction, progression of plot and direction of game play/flow, etc.
I'd say for any one that knows how to make a game, story is pretty important to have.
Don't have some long winded explanation and examples handy at the moment, so you'll have to excuse me not going on a rant. Maybe later though.
"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
An mmo should never be about a pre-written script. I honestly can't stand mmos with a strong story. They feel like playing through a single player rpg and after your third alt char you will be ignoring the "story" anyways.
Our genre has the tools to actually do something with all those players together. But instead of encouraging players to create a meaningful history, developers try to create massively singleplayer rpg experiences. However, due to thousands of players having to play through the same plot, rescuing the same damsel a few gazillion times and killing the same guy several dozen times a day, "story" just becomes hilariously irrelevant.
It makes me a bit sad how most mmorpgs do not utilize the incredible potential of simple player interaction. If games were more about what players were doing instead of killing 25 wolves for some faceless guy in a repeatable quest, they'd be a lot more enjoyable for me. I want to read people's stories.
The only "word of god" i tolerate in a game is a meaningful backstory. A meaningful world needs meaningful context. However, after that backstory is set, i don't want any writer messing with my game ever again.
I don't see why you can not have a decent storyline with good game play. The only thing I do not like is to have to raid or do dungeons to complete the storyline. Hardcore players will bash me for saying that but there are more casual players then hardcore out there. I use to hate in WOW following a storyline from basic quests and then having to group or do a raid to continue. Especially hated having to keep going back because the next part sent you right back into to the same instance. That is just crappy thinking to me. That is my opinion. Also please take away brainless quests like killing animals or mobs for pieces or parts. Leave that for crafting. Peace.
Originally posted by Basicgear You shouldnt have left WoW because of a lack of storyline. That MMO is the only one that does it right. A story line.
What WoW did was bring a storyline to mmos for the first time, and it did it well. Not only was there the lore and story from war3 to build apon, there was also a quest apon quest that told a story of the world around you, your zone.
Lore before story i say.
WoW is a good game, I can (and do) recommend people to give it a try.
However, I won't return to WoW until my Tauren Druid is allowed to join the Cenarion Circle and hate and hunt Forsaken, Blood Elves, warlocks in general and other abominations against nature.
Mainly due to the artificial faction balancing WoW lore suffered, suffers and will suffer.
Recycling antagonists doesn't make it better. The announced opening of classes to races without any affinity to it won't make it better.
How improtant is the Story in a MMORPG game? From what I hear from vet MMORPG gamers, most sandbox MMOs didnt have Quest, so you were left to make your own story. So shouldnt Gameplay and Mechanics be the most important? But then another croud of people say Story is the most important thing in a RPG, since its all about Role Playing.
So what do you all think?
I find both important. Gameplay and good questdesign/story.
BTW a sandbox MMO doesnt rule out interesting lore and involving quests.
There is no right or wrong here, just the intention of the devs for a game. You as player can only decide if you like it or not.
Comments
I wouldn't say story is essential, but it can add a lot to a game. I look down on games with storylines that every player goes through, because it's not fit for an MMORPG, it's basically a singleplayer online game. However, a dev run storyline where the devs bring the action to the players with events and one time quests and other stuff that change the world can make a game incredible for all players playing. An unforgettable experience.
I think a better replacement to the singleplayer style story quests is to have world history, stuff that's in the lore that actually exists in the world. The replacement would be exploring these places in the world that are maybe ruins now, or maybe not, and learning their history. It fits more in an MMORPG this way. Hell you could even have your flashy cutscenes that show what the place used to be like as you progress through it. Maybe like that vault in Fallout 3 where you would hallucinate and see the vault you had come from and the people from it.
So I suppose story in games being important is subjective. I base it on the game mechanics. If the core mechanics aren't fun then they better have something else that's damn good to make up for it.
for me it is important. it gives me the drive to find out more about dungeons or ruins i've stumbled on or to even seek out. I still find myself looking up EQ1 lore because i just find stories and lore so exciting to get into.
I agree with that as well. Too many times players are just thrown into the world with no direction. Some players like that, but I think it would be cool to have Devs or GMs running daily or monthly events. It would be especially cool in a faction-based PvP MMO to have GM or Dev leaders that give quests, bark orders, and help in the battles. Yeah, they'd have to have thick skin, but it sounds like a lot of fun to me.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
The game needs to have lore, the rest should be up to it's players, just like with big IP MMORPG, I mean we all know the story, now let us free to be who we want to be in that world and make our own little history in that world/lore/story.
For a good story I play singleplayer RPG's as nothing can come close to that experiance of Story, in a MMORPG to play a story would ruin the whole MMORPG experiance for me.
Developer made "story" and content is boring and gets old extremely fast. The best story is told by the players. I'm not talking about roleplaying, I'm talking about competition between players.
There is nothing more fun than to have an enemy guild on your server that you're constantly competiting with. They'll get you one week, and then the next you'll get them. They could destroy your city, but later on you steal their warship that they speant months building. It feels real, it's ever changing, and you are actually a unique part of it. Rather than the 200,000th person to save the same city like in so many other games.
Unfortunately very few games do this anymore. Darkfall is the closest thing to a real dynamic story.
The Official God FAQ
The game needs to have lore, the rest should be up to it's players, just like with big IP MMORPG, I mean we all know the story, now let us free to be who we want to be in that world and make our own little history in that world/lore/story.
For a good story I play singleplayer RPG's as nothing can come close to that experiance of Story, in a MMORPG to play a story would ruin the whole MMORPG experiance for me.
I disagree.
If I toss you into a Sandbox MMO, well its up to you wether to make believe you are in a LoTR or WARCRAFT Storyline.
See how that is optional. You can make your own Lore, not always have to be handheld IPs and stuff.
If Iam playing DARKFALL,, How come I cant Make Believe iam playing a Lore Paladin in WARCRAFT? explain that please.
As I said,, Lore is not the most improtant. mechanics and gameplay is.
I disagree.
If I toss you into a Sandbox MMO, well its up to you wether to make believe you are in a LoTR or WARCRAFT Storyline.
See how that is optional. You can make your own Lore, not always have to be handheld IPs and stuff.
If Iam playing DARKFALL,, How come I cant Make Believe iam playing a Lore Paladin in WARCRAFT? explain that please.
As I said,, Lore is not the most improtant. mechanics and gameplay is.
oh......are we taking about gamemechanics and gameplay????, hmm and here I was thinking this topic was about story.
To be honost I really have no idea what you are talking about, I mean which sandbox game are you talking about, do you mean any random game that is sandbox? Do you really think that any sandbox game people will make up as if they are playing LoTR or Warcraft even if those game do not have the lore to back up these suggestions? Did you actualy read what this topic and what I said?
Like I said what is it you disagree with me cause you aint saying or actualy responding to anything I said, so please explain?
Try to remember this topic aint about gameplay or gamemechanics but this topic is about STORY!! let's try and discus that.
I like a good story. Even sandbox games where players creates most of the game could have a good backstory. The world existed before the players got there and a good story is one of the things that makes the world feel alive.
Unfortunately do most MMOs have a background story that feels like a 14 year old kid wrote it. A few companies like 38 studio and Arenanet actually have real writers working for them and I think that will win in the long term.
If the game have quests they should be fun and well written, not just go kill 10 rats (without an actual reason for it). Quest should be long and epical, something heroes of fantasy books should do, if you asked Conan to kill 10 rats he would have given you a good beating.
But sandbox games are a different matter, there should however still be a past to any world. Why is there a ruin in a certain place? Why does orcs dislike gnomes? Why does a certain city looks like it does and how old is it?
A MMO world should feel like a living, breathing world. Something without a past will never do that. There are other things that makes the world feel alive also of course but the story should be important in ant mmoRPG, whatever kind it is. A MMOFPS doesn't really need a story but a game like that is just for combat anyways.
Story is something I enjoy, but I'd prefer gameplay and mechanics over it, because I'm here to play a game, not watch a movie.
"The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?" - Albert Einstein
Hehe another person talking gameplay and mechanics, sorry dude but this topic aint about that as it's obvious that regardless of the game has story or lore or not a story that it will have gameplay/mechanics.
Let's discus if you like Story or not and lets discus gameplay and gamemechanics in other topics that are about gameplay/mechanics....okay?
You can pretend that the sky is green too but it wont make it true.
And this isn't about holding anyones hand, players do create their own story but for a world should feel alive should there actually been something before you got there, that is a story too. If you just place out a few cities and put in a few random races the game will make no sense.
That works in a FPS game but anything with the RPG in the name actually demands some kind of story at least before the server went up for the first time.That doesn't force you to act in a certain way but if you know that orcs massacred your village 5 years ago and you still can see a monument to remind you of it you would be affected by it in some ways. You could still befreind orcs but it will actually make the world more interesting.
Story have nothing to do with handholding, it explains why the world looks like it does, and if you study it you could find out stuff, like that a certain rare herb was grown by monks in a certain place and therefor it could be a good idea to look at the ruins, or that a certain day is holy to elves and that is a good time to sneak into their village to steal stuff because they are celebrating that.
A story is something that add spice to a game, if you study the lore it can help you in certain ways (the dwarfs had a secret mine somewhere and you still can find some gems there, stuff like that).
This doesn't mean that a story is more important than mechanics but there are many things that adds to a great game and story is actually one of them. In some games story is just hints and old ruins, in others it affects the entire game. Both those are fine if they are well written.
I'm actually a mite bit confused here. Someone actually said story isn't a game mechanic? Or is everyone just operating on the assumption that the story behind a game is just the fluff text one skips over or the cutscenes occasionally(or all too frequently) thrown at you, and not in fact an overarching and involved aspect of what drives just about every thing you ogle at in the game world?
Story is pretty damn important when it brings an actual frame of reference to what is going on within a game. even if the story is the most generic, bland, trite junk you've ever seen, it's actually had quite a bearing on what becomes known as the 'feel' of a game, alongside giving an overall art direction, progression of plot and direction of game play/flow, etc.
I'd say for any one that knows how to make a game, story is pretty important to have.
Don't have some long winded explanation and examples handy at the moment, so you'll have to excuse me not going on a rant. Maybe later though.
"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
An mmo should never be about a pre-written script. I honestly can't stand mmos with a strong story. They feel like playing through a single player rpg and after your third alt char you will be ignoring the "story" anyways.
Our genre has the tools to actually do something with all those players together. But instead of encouraging players to create a meaningful history, developers try to create massively singleplayer rpg experiences. However, due to thousands of players having to play through the same plot, rescuing the same damsel a few gazillion times and killing the same guy several dozen times a day, "story" just becomes hilariously irrelevant.
It makes me a bit sad how most mmorpgs do not utilize the incredible potential of simple player interaction. If games were more about what players were doing instead of killing 25 wolves for some faceless guy in a repeatable quest, they'd be a lot more enjoyable for me. I want to read people's stories.
The only "word of god" i tolerate in a game is a meaningful backstory. A meaningful world needs meaningful context. However, after that backstory is set, i don't want any writer messing with my game ever again.
I don't see why you can not have a decent storyline with good game play. The only thing I do not like is to have to raid or do dungeons to complete the storyline. Hardcore players will bash me for saying that but there are more casual players then hardcore out there. I use to hate in WOW following a storyline from basic quests and then having to group or do a raid to continue. Especially hated having to keep going back because the next part sent you right back into to the same instance. That is just crappy thinking to me. That is my opinion. Also please take away brainless quests like killing animals or mobs for pieces or parts. Leave that for crafting. Peace.
WoW is a good game, I can (and do) recommend people to give it a try.
However, I won't return to WoW until my Tauren Druid is allowed to join the Cenarion Circle and hate and hunt Forsaken, Blood Elves, warlocks in general and other abominations against nature.
Mainly due to the artificial faction balancing WoW lore suffered, suffers and will suffer.
Recycling antagonists doesn't make it better.
The announced opening of classes to races without any affinity to it won't make it better.
There are only three sandbox games that I know of, Second Life, the most sandboxy, wurm, and Love.
If a dev makes something, that's theme park.
If a player makes something, that's sandbox.
A lot of us role players like a lot of theme park elements with a story. But we want to be a hero at the same time.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
I find both important. Gameplay and good questdesign/story.
BTW a sandbox MMO doesnt rule out interesting lore and involving quests.
There is no right or wrong here, just the intention of the devs for a game. You as player can only decide if you like it or not.