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General: MMOs and Storytelling
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
In this week's Player Perspectives column, MMORPG.com's Jaime Skelton talks about the importance of storytelling in any game. But do MMOs tell the story in a way that leads players to discover things on their own, to feel like they are truly immersed in the story? Find out what Jaime thinks in her compelling article.
Story-telling in a massively scaled game like an MMO is an amazingly difficult task, and for the games that continue building on their storyline well into the future, the task must be akin to being the Robert Jordan of the gaming world. Every plot must be carefully built to keep a player's interest; each side-story given or planned closure; each thread checked against the others to make sure there's no conflicting information. New endings must be constantly created. On top of all that, game writers must carefully check in with the development team to make sure that yes, it's completely in their capabilities to make a twenty-foot tall dragon that can breathe double-rainbows.
Read MMOs and Storytelling and then let us know your thoughts.
Comments
The problem with having a story in an MMO is that eventually a story comes to an end, whereas MMO's are supposed to be virtual worlds where you can just 'be'. Make the story the main focus and eventually the game is going to come to an end, something that MMO developers really shouldn't want to happen as that will have people unsubscribing when they realise theres not a lot else to do.
That's probably my main problem with SW:TOR, too much focus on story. It works in a single player game, as we know they're going to end at some point, probably in epic fashion, but an MMO? And while you can continue to add updates to an MMO, you can do the same to single player games now with DLC.
The characters actions should be the story. There should be things in game to create story opportunities, such as your example of half-orcs invading a town, but how you deal with that should be the story. Options should be in place for multiple approaches, be it destroying their food stores, waking them at night so they go days without sleep, and many other ideas. These are the things that developers should be introducing to MMO's, not simple quests with pointers. In my example you would have one quest to destroy 10 food stores, then wake 10 sleeping half-orcs, etc.. The quest should simply be to stop the attack and let the players carry on.
It's all in the delivery, as the saying goes. Games like EQ2, WoW and Vanguard fail completely in regard to delivering the story.
Games like FFXI and Lotro excel at it. And now, in the next gen games coming up we have Rift, Guild Wars 2, FFXIV, and SWTOR all shifting the story aspect into high gear. I can't wait. Shame it took so long to get to this point though.
The last 5 years have just been boring when it comes to stories in the MMOs I play. To the point, I wanted to just sit down with games like FF 1-10 or Kingdom Hearts, Baldur's Gate and others of similar ilk, for some nostalgic "true" storytelling.
As usual a really well written article (long-time reader, first time poster here). The reason I registered to respond is that this is a topic I personally feel strongly about - narrative in an MMORPG.
When it comes to the importance of story in the game, it really depends on what type of MMORPG you are making/enjoy playing. In so-called "themepark" MMORPG that have become so dominant over the last few years, then yes, story (and the quality that is used to tell it) is very important. If you prefer, again so-called, "sandbox" MMORPG then story should only function in the background (do not confuse content with story btw).
The problem with storytelling in themepark MMORPG is that, like you point out, it is generally skipped over by the player to the part that says "Kill X and return". There is no inherent reward in reading the text except, agin like you mention, a personal satisfaction, and the time-investment is not worth for most. As an example, if I was to read all the quest text (properly and not just skim-read it) of every quest I took, I would probably end up doing 5 less quests (again as an example) then I would normally have time for in my evening. I would thus not have progressed as far, etc (this is a problem with the way progression functions in MMORPG, but that is another topic).
Also, like a previous poster mentioned, stories come to an end. MMORPG, by their nature, shouldn't. Couple that with the fact that EVERY player makes their way through the SAME story, and certain illogical circumstances emerge from this. How many times does the Mayors daughter get kidnapped, for example. Or Player A killed Evil Dragon Z, only for Evil Dragon Z to respawn so the next player can finish their quest.
One could argue that a branching system or a form of instancing could fix this, but in my experiance this opens up other problems (do you instance every single thing in the game?).
Thus, in my opinion, the way to deal with it is to remove the focus on "developer-made stories". Allow the player to make their own story, as a previous poster mentioned, through their actions. And let the game story functions as backstory.
To paraphrase one designer:
"Players are not interested in your [developer] story. They are interested in THEIR story."
Peace.
A good story can immerse a player/listener, evoking reactions and emotions to the particular context of the story at that given moment: Fear at some hideous monster, laughter at some erudite wordplay or joke, resentment at some trickery or betrayal etc. These are then forks in our avatar/hero's journey: Runaway or fight! Laugh or 1up! double or quits! etc etc... that all (hopefully) lead to real consequences of the players' decisions. The lowest consequences would be a simple money or material reward or item, a higher reward would be to want to see where the story leads on in further forks and splits (The road less travelled)... and maybe even higher up, would be the players' reactions/decisions changing the very world of the story itself!
So story has a lot to offer games as long as it's told really well and the gameplay itself also adds back into the story tale itself. Perhaps that's what GW2 Dynamic events and SWOR personal crew of NPC friends are both trying to achieve?
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
As a professional writer(screenwriter, novelist) and a single player RPG veteran, how the story is told is the litmus test for an MMO being a true RPG. While I can certainly agree the WoW missed the mark when it comes to story(and for that matter being an actual RPG, since it is more of a dungeon raid style adventure game, which are games I generally have abhorred since the early 90s), I do believe Everquest, in all versions of the game to be at least decent in the delivery of the story line. Obviously since quests are important to an MMO, you have to be somewhat flexible with a story line. I also feel many MMOs need to balance the story for single player and group play preferences. Games like Aion, Final Fantasy, and Lord of the Rings Online simply are the epitomy of what story can do in a mmorpg when done well. Outside of the RPG sector of MMOs, Star Trek Online, Champions Online, and City of Heroes effectively implemented strong story lines as well. The goal for MMO creators and film makers is essentially the same. The goal is to create small stories that feed into a larger overall story. The only difference is that MMO creators have to build an even larger overall story.
Huh? Where is the story in Aion? It is no better than Wow in that regard. Then you have the brashness to mention Star Trek Online as backed by a story line. If you play any of Cryptic's offerings, you would know that a story line is the last thing they would ever put in a MMO.
I don't know any of the current MMO's that offer any story telling at all. That is why many of us are excited at the upcoming titles.
I totally agree with Oz, many of the current games have a very loose story. Games like Aion, WoW, and pretty much any Cryptic game lack story, given at one point in time WoW did have an okay story as time progressed and they released more expansions they just butchered the story and tried to mash stuff together to further the story, sadly it didn't work. This is why I can't wait for the Old Republic, Bioware has been well known for their immersive storytelling and judging by some of the videos. Being a huge fan of well written storylines I really hope the newer titles will break this habit of poor story and give us something truely exiciting to play, read, and experience.
Current MMO: Aion
MMO Watch: Warhammer 40k Online, SWToR, GW2.
Played: Planetside, SWG, EQ, EQ2, L2, WoW, RFO, KAL, MxO, Voyage, RO,Vanguard,Tabula Rasa, Horizons, CoH/CoV,, Lotro, FFXI
First MMO: Everquest (Tunare Server, Ronin/Tide Guild)
LOTRO does have a pretty decent story in there, but it fits the articles description to a tee. What it comes down to is this - if there is going to be story at all, it should be engaging. If there is not really a story, then so be it, but every time you try to convey story in a game, I want to be a participant in that story, not just reading a big wall of text. Even something simple as an old school dialog box that prints each character one by one can help. Have npcs pause between lines. Instead of having npcs give us 2 pages of BACKstory, get right to the meat of it:
NPC: "Oh, I'm so glad you've arrived!"
PC: <presses a continue button, maybe it has a line on it> "Why is that?"
NPC: "My daughter is missing! I don't know what to do!"
PC: "Where did you last see her?"
NPC: "Up on the ridge to the north!"
PC: "Don't worry, I'll get her back."
Done. We don't need to hear about how times have suffered ever since the big baddies moved in, and how him and his daughter are but simple farmers, how they have made their living for 10 years without so much as a peep from the goblins, and how the goblins arrived 3 weeks ago and began taking other people's daughters, and how they just took his own. It's stupid how much pointless information they stuff in a single, long page, of quest info. No wonder people don't read them.
How does this particular quest matter to ME in terms of story. What do I need to do. Why? That's it. Any other info can be doled out in other ways, little by little, not one big wall of text. Quest rewards, if they must be shown at all, can be on a handy little sidebar while the dialog is happening.
And I don't need the dialog to be voiced. It can be nice, but usually slows things down. It's not the voice, it's the amount of text they display at once. Doesn't feel like dialog - it feels like reading spam. And I'm a big fan of reading.
What is with people saying Cryptic games lack story? I find the story arcs in CoX to be pretty interesting, overall, and some of them are quite good, with in-mission scripting and cinematic events taking it to a new level. The same can be said of some of the architect missions that are available. No, the story is not one that follows you from beginning to end, unless you take into consideration the epic archetypes and the special missions they have available, but the story arcs and task forces have a fairly meaningful plot that helps to give your character a sense of purpose as you are going through the game. For me, it definitely detracts from the eventual repetitiveness that all MMOG gameplay eventually devolves into.
To my mind, MMOs should give a mixture between a storyline - something you can go and do at anytime - and provide features to give players enough freedom in the world. Freedom to be able to set your fate and give you the choice of being unique in the world you are gaming. That's my understanding of an MMO.
Great article and I completely agree about everything!
And I believe Arena.net can really pull it off in Guild Wars 2 (the game i'm looking forward to play the most). Let's just wait and see if they can change the story concept of mmorpgs.
I agree that the Cities of stories are very layered and well-written. I am a wanna-be writer myself, and that is what attracted me to the game and held me there. I totally agree with the plots keeping the character involved as they exist within the world. It makes role-playing so much better if there is a solid story foundation for it.
I have never had an interest in faeries or elves or whatever, so I haven't played any of the fantasy genre, so I can't speak as to their stories. The appearances of the characters in WoW kept me from ever trying it so I don't know if it has any kind of story or not. Part of the immersion factor for me is the ability to individualize a character to the point where you feel you have created something that is uniquely yours.
Good stories foster good RP, really. With a lame story, what kind of 'role' is there to play within? The one thing I'd like to see is more diversified story lines - where decisions branch off into differing consequences. And I think that too, will eventually happen.
I know writers get frustrated when people skim through the content. But truly? For ever PL'er or lewt farmer there are a few quiet souls that are enjoying the journey far more than the destination.
The problem with having the players 'be the story' is that the developers then completely skimp on the world design. I am primarily referring to sandboxes. It becomes sterile. The developers need to work on a RPG infrastructure that the players can partake in and the pre-written snippets of dialogue will shape around their actions, choices, affiliations and locations and use facts like their size, age, name, scars, profession etc to give colour to your NPC actions.
I am personally looking forword to Guild Wars 2 sound like a breath of fresh air and from what i understand UsualSuspect is that your character dose effect the story line in a way like you describe. i'm not good with details but their example is like this. say that there was an army of dredge marching out of their citadel you will get a warning to stop them. but say you fail that and the make it to an outpost/fort. they will take it over. if you fail to respond or take out there generals in the fort they will then reinforce the fort with troops coming in from citadel along with surpply line and make better fortifications. you can then join the army and other players to siege it from the front or cut there supply line then sneak in the back and try to take out the generals. failure to do this results in the dredge sending out raiding parties from the fort to attack people along the roads and cut of supplies to yours and surrounding villages as well as killing the villagers. As i said this is my interpretation of their text. so have a read of it and see what you think. but over all it looks to be an out standing game. oh and its free so no subscription will be needed when it comes out. also cheak out the ranger look like a pretty kick A** to me.
ps sorry for any spelling mistakes.
I prefer living worlds to scripted stories. Give me a good simulation and web of tasks where stories emerge rather than an artifical story that is disconnected from the mechanics of the game itself. There's no reason plot threads can't spawn like mobs - linking and interacting without a storyteller artificially impossing a narrative. If I were running an MMO, I'd view fiction as a stop-gap for events that cannot yet happen on their own inside the game mechanics.
For the "sandbox" type to MMO to work to its fullest potential, new modes and concepts of player interaction need to be implemented. And I don't just mean "more ways to kill baddies" here. The player must be given ultimate freedom within the world, to the point of becoming the basis for quests themselves.
Someone above mentioned the problem of that dang 'mayor's daughter' who is always getting kidnapped, or the necessity to kill a certain dragon every three seconds. The only way I see this event repetition ending anytime soon is if players are given the ability to become kidnappers, raiders, bullies and occupying forces, for the law-abiding player to bring to justice. Maybe even a dragon. I'm just speculating here. The developer would exist to maintain and improve the freedom of players to do whatever the hell they can come up with, and make sure the forces of reason are never overwhelmed by the swarms of players who will surely jump at the chance to be completely anonymous jerks.
As of this moment, these things all sound completely implausible, and this is by no means a serious suggestion. That sort of freedom would be a nightmare for developers to keep in balance, with the only solace being their lack of direct responsibility for the bulk of content. I'm not even sure it would be much fun.
The concept of a true sandbox MMORPG seems very far off to me, and I intend to be content with whatever the industry produces for a while, at least.
*salute to all the GW2 fans*
...
I hope someone from Bioware is reading this more than ncsoft. TOR is supposedly going to be the heaviest story based MMORPG yet from what I've heard. Will be interesting to see if thats what players really want, or if that's what tanks the game. I havent looked at GW2 very much, thought the PVE of GW1 was way to bland and boring. This is the first article I've read that has made me more interested in researching that game. thx
Asherons call 2 had great story to follow also through vaults(dungeons) very good mmo with good story.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
Storytelling has a purpose in MMO's that is sometimes beyond even action, if done correctly. The problem is MMO player base just doesn't like reading that much. That has always been the major complaint with Lotro: the story gets in the way. I'm speaking in terms of mass appeal. But if a story doesn't work, you can tell really quickly. For example: WAR has some decent stories, but they were never flushed out and disjointed. I don't think I remember a single one of those quests. WoW has a weak if not sanguine story, but at least it's a solid one. I think players pick up on these things whether we are aware or not. In fact, prior to reading this I just couldn't put my finger on what bugged me about Aion and it was the flimsy story.
So what is the answer? To make a well-rounded, long lasting MMO with appeal that stretches beyond the next few generations, story must be constructed with depth from the beginning, if only to employ us out-of-work writers. BUT- If you want to make a really successful short term game that has wide mass appeal but will last as long as it takes the kids to grow up; put vampires in it and give them sparkles with a furrowed brow and a "go bake me a pie, woman!" personality.
Cheers
"Story-telling in a massively scaled game like an MMO is an amazingly difficult task"
No, developers just have to redefine what storytelling is.
"This is not a problem with the writers; it's a problem with the medium, and a strange one at that."
It is not a problem with the medium. Again, the problem is with many developers and maybe even people like yourself who, from looking through this article, think that storytelling should be just copy/pasted from other mediums.
Guild Wars 2 has yet to impress me, and probably won't.
"personal story system"
Wtf is that? Just sounds like a single player story system stuffed into a MMORPG.
"It's a dream for role-players and story-lovers combined"
Too bad it isn't a dream for true MMORPG fans, who want NPCs to react to the world and not the player via cheap phrasing tricks learned from WoW.
"After all, a game can be just as engrossing as any book when well told."
Again, sounds like you want gaming and MMORPGs to be something they are not. If you want to read a book, do so. If you want to watch a movie, go ahead. But don't try to force games to be something they are not (btw, yes I do hate Mass Effect and DA:O, most boring games ever).
As I see it, the main problem is not so much the existence of story. It is the story that matters to me! The reason why *I* - my character - is here at this time and doing what he is doing. For instance, the reason of a Darkelf Assasin is likely to be a different than of a Human Paladin or an Orc Bezerker. And THAT is what MMOs lack, yet. There is just a generic story which totally ignores who I am and what I have done previously. So the first thing lacking in MMO stories isn't so much whether they are scripted or told, it's that they are generic. They are always the same for all races, classes and backgrounds coming.
Second, no one ever reacts to what I did before, and that is because usually stories have no alternative. Almost all quests have no choice. Unlike a book you read or a single player game, in a MMO you play with many others, so knowing you can chose between various way to do a quest and various endings, would make all the difference. But we have no choice and we have no one to remember our doings or react to our choices. So it doesn't really matter to read or follow the quest story. You know, in the end, no one will remember and it makes no difference.
Finally, impact. You know you can kill as many Gnolls in Antonica as you want. They will never diminish. Phasing is one step to change that in the future. Story needs impact, tangible impact. Not just some text you hear and when you go back it all the same. Sure, not all trivial quests can alter the "phase" you are in, but decisive moments in games can. The LOTRO books are a step towards it, even whille the world remains the same, you get the feeling of having an impact via the story. LOTRO was IMVPO one of the first MMOs to go in the right direction. Where you have memorable quests where the overall story is forwarded. Especially the later books were very moving and well told stories.
While I love stories and want MMOs to have story, I don't need every single NPC have an epic told and scripted tale. Someone it is enough to follow some simple task, like kill the 10 rats which infest my cellar. The point is, MMOs are still too much filled with such quests.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Another game that promises to have a dynamic storyline is Citadel of Sorcery. It's going to have a fully instanced "reflected worlds" system: every one of the player's actions will influence what happens later on; mobs will dynamically scale themselves to the players' level; and even NPC attitudes will depend on whether you've helped or hindered them in the past.
This system is even harder to implement than the GW2 version of it. COS has been very slow in the making - they've been developing it for 2 years now, and they still haven't finalised the races or even the payment model! But if the developers manage to pull it off, it's going to be a revolution in MMO gaming, combining the role-play potential of a sandbox with the clear goals of a theme park. I'm really looking forward to it.
The lack of well crafted stories has been the one thing that has me cancelling mmo's everytime a phenomenal single player game comes out. It seems to me that most games' story are there because they have to put them in and there are very few storylines in mmos that carry over from one area to another. Sure there are quests that lead you from zone to zone but they are not central to the game experience. To go through and completely skip the story and just read the quest description to see what you have to kill and how much of it you must kill is enough. WOW, SWG, UO, EQ2, Vanguard, COX, POTBS, etc never had enough creativity in their quests to make me bother. Hopefully BioWare with TOR will actually help immerse me into the world they have crafted. It remains, obviously, to be seen if they will actually succeed or not but I have faith in BioWare as they haven't really let me down yet (except the information concerning Dragon Age 2).
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
Quite negative, aren't you?
People can't complaint about the stupidity of things without knowing how it works and if it works. You can't talk bad and have critics about Guild Wars 2 ideas since they can't be proven os tested. The only thing you can do is congratulate them for having a lot of different and new ideas.
BTW, the Medium she refers to are the devs, and like you said, the problem is with them in copy/past the story-telling system. -.-"
And last, you can't say that games try to become something they are not, because the game world is always creating something new. That's just like when ppl, from 100y back, said the same about black people or about women and look what we have now. Trying to create things that ppl think impossible is not impossible, it's just hard and needs creativity in order to prove if it works or not.
Beeing negative about every new idea because we think is a bad idea is not going to help solve the "problems" we have without testing.
Even though Wingma is slightly negative (which is his/her perogative) he/she does make some very good points. Trying to shoe-horn another storytelling mediums rules and conventions into the MMORPG genre doesn't work.
While stories can be told in MMORPG, I belive the genre itself is NOT a storytelling medium. A poster mentioned that you need story so that you can define what "role" you play in an RPG. Since definitions seem to be liquid in this time, I've always believed that the role you play is in the WORLD not that story. For example, I am a Cleric. I am not a cleric in this story, but in this fantasy WORLD.
Another poster mentioned about the importance of THEIR charactor in the story, how does it relate to HIM and so on. This is the key if storytelling is to function in an MMORPG. If I resuced the Mayors daughter, thats it. No other player should have that "quest" available to them - ever (even new players to the server). The world moves on.
This opens up other problems. For example, will players accept this? Does it reward players who have more time on their hands to devote to the game (if player A plays 10hrs a day, and resuces all the lost daughters, what has Player B, who only plays 2 hrs a day, got left to do)?
In my opinion it is not only the developers who need to change the way they develop story, but also in the way players accept story and its form and function in this genre.
If I really want to engage with a story, I read a book. Or watch a movie. Or go see a play on stage. Or maybe even play a single-player game. I play an MMORPG not to engage in a story, but to create one.