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Why Story Is False
Royalkin
Member UncommonPosts: 267
Why Story Is False
The premise presented by some people that story will save the MMO(RPG) genre is false. Specifically story is not role-playing, nor is it the mechanical aspect of placing points into attributes. Not to say that story is (or should be) absent from role-playing, but it is not (nor should be) the all-encompassing element that modern game designers seem to think it is. Role-Playing encompasses the acts and decisions that the player takes in order to make their character their own –the constructing their characters into a unique manifestation of their will. Role-playing a character in an RPG is no different from the processes we all went through as children playing with action figures. We created personas and personalities, histories and previous adventures which defined those characters’ natures. We invented adventures on the fly for them to participate in, with specific outcomes. Completing a static set of quests towards fufillment of a narrative, is not role-playing, it's a book piecemeal.
Story is defined as, “A usually fictional prose or verse narrative intended to interest or amuse the hearer or reader.” The key word used in this definition is narrative, which is defined as, “Consisting of or characterized by the telling of a story.” The point here is that story is narrative, or narration, being that a story in of itself involves no interactivity in its experience. You, the reader or the participator are a passive participant, and therefore do not have any influence in the events that you are reading, seeing, or are otherwise witnessing. This is typical of film and literature, but is a recent occurrence in gaming. The precursor of role-playing computer gaming was table-top and board games, the most influential of these was D&D (Dungeons and Dragons). The appeal of D&D was that stories were created on the fly, and the participatory players were free to design and develop stories for their characters and how they would also advance and develop their characters within that paradigm. Essentially, the story and character development wasn’t a prior design; it was developed on the fly, and ‘in-the-moment’. There was no linear story; it evolved as the participants needed it to. These players were free to design the backgrounds, personas, personalities, and whatever other personification of their characters they wished.
Skipping forward, the first MMO(RPG)s took this concept as a fundamental design characterization, wherein players were free to shape the world they lived within. Just as was the case with D&D, there was no previously designed story, the players could develop their own characters as they saw fit with the tools the developers had created for them.
The linear story driven RPG is not a result of role-playing, it is a shallow and base distortion of what role-playing really is. By limiting participants to a strict and specific story, developers are not catering to role-playing; they are in fact limiting it.
Comments
Ye i fully agree and already made few responses in this same forum using the same kind of argumentation. But the fan boy will always claim the story is a main part of rpg, since playing a role is the act of telling a story (take a role) as much as witness a story (listen to other playing their roles), so they will goes out with this kind of stretched vision that story is the most important element here. But for me those claiming that seam to have witnessed rpg more than played them tbh. Just like movie making or theater, the watcher will tell you its all about story, but the actor might deny that, acting is much more than telling a story, or at least is not only that. But its kind of hard to describe and people tend to stretch their logic to prove their point. In any case story is a big part of acting, they probably came from the same source historically.
The problem come when someone want you to stick to a story to the point there is no possible improvisation like themepark mmo are built usually, is it acting anymore? for me it is not, story or not, and i just dislike the usual "on rail" aspect. Some will like this. Honestly they are also advantages in "on rail" mmo, they are more relax and don't need much effort for example. For me those mmo are like the mainstream books or movies, their main point is to entertain you and move on. They are not there to set a new trend, or to make you think about an important thematic of our society. Those are not exclusive for sure, some mainstream product do that as well, but its not their goal lets say. For example playing an evil character would be just stupidly fun, like "i'm bad ass", but in a deeper kind of game play you might ask yourself why some people do act in real world like in your game, and you might think "damn why do they do those stuff, i just don't get it?" and get even disgusted once you wiped entire virtual cities. That's just an example right. But this kind of deepness i also what some people hate, remember all the hatred about pking when mmo became that popular, its clear people refused to have to deal with that kind of evil in their game.
Imo the problem is that most game are or totally dump or ask a bit too much. I mean did Bioware had to throw away that much into their cut scene, wouldn't their game benefit a lot more from less story and better gameplay? Imo they just screwed up big time, and should have listen the critic a bit more and the advise from people with more experience in mmos.
I agree, but I want to add a point.
Story IS important if you are making a Themepark MMO. Themeparks by definition put you on rails towards the level cap and without a captivating story, a lot of players will quit and leave before they ever see the end of the tunnel.
However, as you said yourself, the best stories are created by the players themselves. This is the basis of Sandbox MMOs, which are currently in a big low point.
Developers seem hell-bent on grabbing the holy grail of MMO business - the massive subscription base of World of Warcraft. This year has seen two large AAA MMO titles. Both of them are very much carbon copies of World of Warcraft. I cant really blame them. It is of course what any business would want - massive subscription base and loads of money. That's what most businesses are built on - making lots of money. But developing an AAA themepark is also risky business. Making all that questing content takes a lot of time and a lot of money. That's why these games are marketed with a big budget - they need to attract large initial box sales and hopefully retain some of them to break even the massive development costs.
On the other hand, developing a sandbox MMO takes much less resources. Give the players the tools and they will create the content themselves. Too bad it seems that the only recent attempts at creating a sandbox MMO have put too much emphasis on FFA Full Loot PvP, which tends to alienate all but the top elites of the playing field.
I hope that someday in the (not so distant) future, someone will create a sandbox MMO with rich features, good tools for creating your own content, and give the players an option (even as a separate ruleset server) to spare themselves from the elitist FFA PvP crowd. EVE Online comes closest, but unfortunately space ships are not the setting for everyone.
Have been saying this for a long long time now.
Story in an MMORPG or an RPG is so far removed from its intended purpose, it might as well be on mars.
Bioware and their choose-your-own-adventure approach.
Good riddence.
There is the fact of "Role Playing" and there is "Role Playing Game" . There are totally different.
You are not supposed to role play in Diablo or Final Fantasy, the story drives you along the game.
I would take that further, and state that if story is the basis of the game's progression and design, I don't see how it can get away with calling itself an MMO(RPG). Placing story as the main emphasis is totally dichotomic between itself and what is indicative of an MMO(RPG). Therefore, any game claiming to be an MMO(RPG) which places such emphasis on story is not an MMO(RPG), but rather predominately a single player experience.
Yes, but your missing the point. "the story drives you[...]" Story has to exist in some form within a game (lore, background), but it should never limit (within reason) what you do, or how you develop and advance your character (i.e., it shouldn't be on rails at the cost of playing outside the pre-defined story).
DnD is a Role Playing Game.
Nothing makes the "game" part diferent from just Role Playing.
What you mean is that in video games, the term "role playing" was bastardized and diluted untill it meant not "role playing" but "role following".
Blame final fantasy, since thats the first main-stream "RPGs" to come to the western audience.
Congratulations, Square ruined a complete genre forever.
To OP
What you want is a World (of Players) "role" playing it self.
Video Games which are known to be RPG are mostly story driven. They are either text based or voice over/cinematic based.
Are Voice Over quests instead of Text based quests making an MMORPG felt less MMORPG?
Do they prevent players to Role Play with each other?
Quests are irrelevant in this matter. It's the fact that those quests, regardless of their mechanism, serve no other purpose but to "push" the "official" story. By serving only that purpose they retract freedom from the player, they prohibit the player from exploring and developing their character. Quests should exist within the world, but if the quest exists only to further the story, it exists only to promote the existence of the story, and produces no significant benefit for the development of the character.
Yes.
Also this:
We want that on the bottom instead of the insignificant shit inbetween.
PS: ignore the animu pictures
Agreed Adam, but it stands to reason that to get that level of depth, the story cannot be contrived from pre-defined elements. That would enduce so much programming and writing that it would make even SWTOR's budget seem tiny. So the only way to allow for that is to give the player the freedom to develop their own stories.
As far as this game is concerned, however, it is absolutely the best storytelling in an mmo by far, and in my opinion makes for the best themepark mmo out there.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
I won't dispute BioWare's propensity to spin a good story, but they do it at the expense of player freedom, and I disagree with that design philosophy. Stories are great entertainment, but they don't produce any lasting effect once the participator reaches their end, and with a story there must be an ending, otherwise the story itself looses its purpose and meaning.
This I think, produces a shallow gaming experience in that once the participators reach the end of the story, it's done. But more specifically for a game that claims itself to be an MMO(RPG), and one that also exepcts $15 per month for the privilege, it's unacceptable.
lol.. well Bleach lost me after Season 2 tbh.. but.. P&P rpg's FTW.. proof that giving players the tools allows for more creativity.. and.. beer.. or something.. crisps!! anyway.. until 'tad williams' the world (river of blue fire etc) is realised im guessing that nothing will really achieve that kind of level of random 'fun'
You're absolutely right, most MMOs there have no right to put the "RPG" in their game genre. Then again, the same could be said about almost all RPGs you play on a computer.
Adam, that picture nailed it spot on. THAT is the kind of MMO I want (and had, before EA destroyed UO, those fuckers!).
Without a story the game starts to get dull. WoW had this hit first, there was a story there but barely anyone actually read it. also what is the point of being put into a world where things are happening if you not going to take part in events. think of it by the example
there is a war going on between 2 factions, but you dont care, your going to kill 10 rats.
story is what gives the character reason to be there. the only reason i still play MMORPG's because i enjoy stories. i find wholsale mass slaughter gets boring after you have done it afew times. sorry kiddies but this is true. ill push story over mechanics (to a certian point) any day.
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
You forget one thing - 99,9% of people want to read books and watch movies and not write books and scripts.
BWs approach is to provide decent story with little wiggle room, but in the end its not really "open ended do what you want adventure". Its for majority of people, wheter you like it or not.
As far as i remember you could buy preset D&D adventures where you just followed the story. Not everyone did their own setting and their own stories on the fly.
Good for you. Seems like you will have a couple new MMOs done just for you every year from here to the end of time.
Calling us kiddies, because we don't want to be told what to do in a game totally makes your own preference seem like the only one, by the way
This, and theres plenty of them, and many of them are leagues better than the stuff DMs come up with, since even a half decent DM is a rare occurance.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling"
Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
99.9% of all Internet statistics are made on the spot.
But you can bet your arse the percentage of D&D player groups that made their own adventures was a LOT bigger than 0.01%
It might not be over 50%, it might not be even 30%, but consider this: Whatever the number is, those players have no MMOs to play at the moment, and thus some of them take the substitute to "get their MMO fix". There simply is no good alternative for those who want an AAA MMO with sandbox gameplay.
Sorry, a PnP rpg can be just as horrid as anything else, to pretend like its automatically better is just foolish.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling"
Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
getting offended enough to reply to a word is what the gaming community is come too.
anywho. thought of more to add on. story also allows for more things to be done that just killing, story is a great way to eliminate grind. remember that word the one everyone seems to hate. well without it thats all the game is constant grind, isnt that what everyone is the first to complain about.
take TSW for example. you have missions that involve Investigation, Stealth, and action. no story all you have is action, i will agree that you can go overboard on story (MGS4) but at the same time neglecting it only hurts in the end.
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
I do like the story I think at the end of the day they need to catter to what most ppl want, I really like sandbox games but I also realize that its very unlikely a company that could pull off a sandbox I would want to play to actually do it, we have the train wreck of Darkfall, Mortal Online and then EVE which is not a train wreck but just fails to grab my atention like UO did for instance.
RPG are about the story and the journey, like in a P&P where the game master will tell you a story and you only have to do certain choices go forward or not to go, i dont know if you actually played D&D pen and paper but that is how it works the game master will tell the story as it goes a long and you only make simple choices based on that which is the same premise as SWTOR.
I've played games where there was unlimited freedom and I didn't like them, because they all turned out to be all about PvP. Sure, you can create your own story as you go along, just as long as it involves killing other people or getting killed by other people. You want to roleplay a lone-worlf? Nope, not going to happen, because the freedom the game gives the players forces you to join up with others, else you'll just get killed.
I like story driven RPG's, because I get to choose my character, what they look like, how they progress, and I get to do something important. SWTOR is a good RPG, because the next phase of the story depends on my choices. The dialogue choices are diverse enough that I feel I always have the option I"d actually say if I was that character.
I'd really like to see how long people would stick with a single player RPG that had zero story in it. How long will exploration alone keep you interested? Exploration isn't a part of the definition of role-play, so players that aren't interested in exploration for it's own sake do what in a game with no story in it?
Simply put, a RPG without a story driving you forward is a very boring RPG. Without a doubt, a story driven RPG without choices also feels rather dull and limited, which is why I enjoy Bioware games very much. Now MMORPG's are a tad different because you add players to the equation, so a world without a story driving you forward is more bearable, but the same thing that makes it bearable (other people) also ruin it. A sandbox MMORPG where people actually behaved the same way they would in real life would provide opportunities for great story's, but peole don't behave as they do in real life. Instead they turn a sandbox MMORPG into a FFA gankfest, making it mandatory to not be able to live your life relatively violence free.
This is fine, I understand that there are people out their that aren't that imaginative, and luckily for them, they make games that cater to them.
But I would say that if players had control, there wouldn't be those kinds of quests. Players would develop their own factions fighting for resources, cornering markets, or whatever. There wouldn't be boredom. Someone somewhere within the game would build and provide a variety of content, and I think everyone could find something to enjoy.
Not every sandbox game has to allow FFA PVP, and I think that has turned alot of people off towards sandboxes. It is a legitimate criticism, and I don't agree with FFA PVP either. But to single out that one issue in opposition to sandboxes is a little unfair I think.