Showing Posts For Nexi.1297:
Probably the same reason it’s hard to turn a good book into an equally good movie. The material is there, but they’re limited by their tools when actually making the finished project.
Turning a book into a movie is difficult because you have hours of story, and all has to be presented in about 100 minutes.
Turning a (lore-)book into game content does not have this problem. This is prooven by many games, and also by Anet: remember there was something called “personal story”?
Content in almost any MMORPG is heteogeneous: There are quests, events, raids, scenarios, etc. And in most games you will find a lot of lore in singleplayer content, and the big bang events can be experienced as some kind of group content.
The living story just feels as if we would just get the big bang events. That would be like WoW introducing only a new raid, but no new quests telling you about its background.
For me this is very sad, because GW2 has to offer a lot of interesting stories and lore. But it seems as if Anet tries to hide it at any cost.
Honestly I think the problem can not be resolved by putting the lore into books or the UI.
In every other MMORPG, conent updates add permanent value to the game. If a player starts playing a MMO one or two years after the release, he doesn’t get state of the art graphics or game mechanics, but a lot of content that no new game can compete with. And I think also players that stop playing a MMO normaly don’t come back for the one uber-feature puplished during the last patch, but because of the tons of stuff they can catch up.
Regarding the living story this leads me to two conclusions: First of all the story content must not be temporary. It should stay in the game as an extension to the personal story. Turning living story events into instanced content and other things that might be needed for that may not be trivial, but it could be easy if the developers had appropriate tools and altered design processes.
Secondly the living story should provide enough lore and background information ingame to make it a good plot. Providing a story bit by bit every few weeks might work with short stories on the internet or ingame literature. But in order to make it a good story, the plot should be self-explanatory and consistent even if you would experience it completely within a few days.
It could be pretty simple: Provide the basic lore by advancing the personal story, bring it to life by events and give lore enthusiasts a little bit of sugar by distributing additional information in books or with the help of NPCs.
The sole problem is, this won’t work with temporary content…
Look at WoW-
You’re something elevated just above a meat-shield, doing the work for others so they can take the credit. Nobody knows you, nobody cares about you, your character has no personality or story unless you’re an RPer
[…]
GW2-You stop something tragic and horrible from happening, which will actually happen if you do nothing. Yes, the boss respawns ten minutes later, but that’s because the game isn’t single-player, which is why most quests on Orr are merely stemming an unstoppable tide or trying to keep the metaphorical floodgates closed.
Sorry, but this sounds like a joke.
During the personal story NPCs remember you for a single questline. Proceed to the next chapter and they will forget about you. Meet them again 20 Levels later and they won’t recognize you; even if you saved their lives. GW2 allows us make decisions, but the decisions have no more consequences than in any other Themepark MMO.; most of the time even less.
In WoW you can at least see the consequences of your actions as long as phasing is used.
Dynamic events are innovativ, no arguing. But for me they kill immersion because everything you do is trivial. Add dynamic events to WoW, or add meaningfull questlines and phasing to GW2, and the innovation of dynamic events will turn to a valueable tool of story-telling.
Sylvaris have the most consistent, cohesive story in the grand scheme of things
Posted by: Nexi.1297
3- that orrian mirror from the lv73 mission: this is almost literally something that Trahearne pulls out of his kitten for the sake of moving the plot forward. he just happens to have a powerful, magical orrian mirror? turns out not quite. if you played a sylvari and picked the proper story path, you’ll play through an entire story arc revolving around that mirror, how it was found, and its true powers. it’s also where you first meet Trahearne, which, at the end of the story, keeps the mirror to study it, as well as in case he needs it on the future.
This was one of the things I really hated my personal story for:
I did the mirror arc as a Sylvari, but when the mirror reappears in the Lvl 73 mission no one remembered me. In fact they told me the story about Trahearne retrieving the mirror and doing all the stuff that in truth I did.
I could imagine this is a bug, since Trahearne not recognizing sylvarian players on Claw Island is very similar and was confirmed as a bug.
Has anybody played the 73 quest and experienced more consitency?
Why!?! (MAJOR Order of Whispers Spoiler: do NOT read if you have not done the lvl 50 quest)
Posted by: Nexi.1297
I think they need to bring him back or something due to his sheer popularity.
[…]
I definitely see how they could re-introduce Tybalt back into the story, and this would let the player re-identify with their Order.
Following the current story-telling it will be something different:
Tybalt will come back as an enemy and we’ll kill him with the help of some NPCs (excluding Trahearne).
Ten to twenty steps later in the story we’ll meet the NPCs (that helped us kill Tybalt) again, but they won’t recognize us. They will tell us about the defeat of Tybalt just as if we had not participated. To make things perfect the NPCs will thank Trahearne for redeeming Tybalt. Finaly Trahearne will tell us about the sadness, that we never met Tybalt while he was still alive.
Sorry to say, but that’s just the way NPCs and events during my personal story were handled from 1 to 80.
Don’t know if we need forums just to have 1 billion “GW2 is awesome” posts…
I like GW2, that’s why I play it.
But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. In fact the story-telling, especially the personal story, is pretty bad. If you would make it a book, it would be a horrible book. If you would make a movie out of it, it would be a horrible movie. And if you make it the story of a video game, then you just ignore to much things we have learned about story-telling in video games since Pacman.Dodging is cool, the world is pretty awesome,… doesn’t make the story-telling any better. Story-telling is in my opinion an important part of a RPG, hence I will share my opinion on it…
Did you read my post before posting? Because you’re pretty much proving my point here.
Of course I did, and I fully agree with you.
And since story-telling is pretty much one of the most constructively discussed topics here, I’m really looking forward to the post-release phase when we’ll get some developer feedback about the future development.
Don’t know if we need forums just to have 1 billion “GW2 is awesome” posts…
I like GW2, that’s why I play it.
But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. In fact the story-telling, especially the personal story, is pretty bad. If you would make it a book, it would be a horrible book. If you would make a movie out of it, it would be a horrible movie. And if you make it the story of a video game, then you just ignore to much things we have learned about story-telling in video games since Pacman.
Dodging is cool, the world is pretty awesome,… doesn’t make the story-telling any better. Story-telling is in my opinion an important part of a RPG, hence I will share my opinion on it…
It’s a weird setup for anyone who is not familiar with the Guild Wars franchise. For those that are, it’s not news in the slightest. Again, the only grind in this game is for aesthetics. And that means the grind is entirely optional and not needed to compete in anything other than pretty princess contests.
Beeing optional doesn’t make things better.
GW2 treats items like any other MMORPG, except that you won’t get better stats but a nicer and/or rarer look.
So if GW2 uses gear as carrot on a stick like other games, what is the purpose of delimiting from other games solely by the grind intensity?
Why are dungeons only rewarding if you focus on one of them and grind for weeks?
It could be so easy: One additional exotic set of gear obtainable through a common dungeon currency. It wouldn’t be as rare as the current dungeons sets, but it would be a reward for people who like to play a dungeon only once or twice.
It simply would be a less grindy reward for people with a more common playstyle.
And I can’t imagine that this would hurt anybody.
It would be optional…
It is sad, but I experienced nearly the same as the thred starter. Playing a Sylvari, making decisions and later in the game it’s all gone as if it had never happened.
For me RPGs have been fantastic and immersive tools of storytelling for years, but what I got so far in GW2 is “You are the hero, you saved the day, but please don’t mind if we can’t remember your name tomorow. If you want to do something meaningfull, please do the epic legendary weapon grind…”
For me this simply looks like the game was released much to early or AN ran out of money during development. The personal story starts very well, but it “evolves” to one of the worst storytelling experiences I ever had in a RPG.
(edited by Nexi.1297)
Zhaitan saying “Trahearne, I am your father” definitely couldn’t harm the story telling about Trahearne….
(edit)
The more I think about it: it would be an improvement
(edit)
While I think a good story could tolerate even one or two weak characters, I find the association of the different story lines really weak:
As a Sylvari character you know Trahearne almost from the very beginning of the game. But after Claw Island you consistently get the same dialogs as every other race: just met Trahearne, never saw him before…
This culminated yesterday when he suggested to use an orrian mirror to set up a trap… “We have an orrian mirror …”
“Oh really? I was the one who recovered that kitten mirror!”
At this point the game just told me “Nothing you did so far was really important.”
(edited by Nexi.1297)
If you levelled up to the level of each heart just by doing all the content in an area, then if you did anything else, such as crafting, city exploring, WvW etc, you would always be over level and remain over level for the rest of the game or have to skip content.
[…]
This is one thing that Arenanet really shouldn’t change. Players just need to learn to smell the roses and not get fixated on a sequential path to max level where you have to fill up a tick list of content.
That’s just not true.
I play a Sylavari and a Norn, and this is a really antithetic experience:
I participated in every event I came across in Caledon and Brisban, did the 100% exploration achievements, and crafted as much as the limited resources allowed me. Until then I did about seven level ups by WvW, simply because I didn’t want to grind events. 7 Levels out of 25!
With my Norn I did not craft, did no WvW, did not repeat a single event, and did no exploration in the Norn capital. However I did not run into a level gap until Lvl 32.
The problem is not the missing level content, but its imbalance and randomness. This keeps players thinking of a virtual tick list, because many things you would do as “fluff” in other games is required to be done in GW2 to keep pace with the story.
(edited by Nexi.1297)
Dodging surely is a thing I will miss when playing other MMOs.
But on the other side I don’t feel pampered by GW2 enough to swear off other MMORPs in general.
What I’am really looking forward, just as an example, is the more decent story-telling in other games. Talking to random NPCs for getting into the lore, while normal quests just give you that “Kill monsters near the heart for more exp”-feeling is just to Asia-style for me.
The Norn are all stoic hunters, the humans all heroic, the Charr all powerful, Asura are all genius inventors, etc.
However by constantly applying this same trope to every set of dialogue, you create a feeling of staleness.
After one hundred Norns all talking about glory in the exact same tone of voice, you lose their individuality. The characters become defined by their races instead of colored by them. Yes, a Norn might have been raised in a society that glorifies hunting and power, but would -all- Norn have the same “For glory! They shall sing my songs in the halls of etc etc” sphiel?
I realized that when my female norn thief was introduced to the Durmand Priory in Lion’s Arch (german voice acting). It sounded absolutely wrong, and due to the voice acting I can’t imagine a female norn joining any other order than the Vigil.
Just imagine Donkey Kong beeing the host of Dr. Kawaschima’s Brain Training…
I don’t want to say the voice acting is bad, but it feels stereotyped. So when it comes to freedom and character development, computer says no …