How Much Story Is Too Much?

For the first couple of paragraphs I thought you were talking about all games in general but then only MMO names popped up and I realized you were talking about MMO’s!

This is something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately as well. I think that this overemphasis on story is precisely what made SW:TOR such a magnificent disaster: its greatest strength became its downfall.

But the idea of putting story in an MMORPG wasn’t new with TOR (despite what Bioware’s marketing would have had us believe). There were elements of that in WoW and EQ2, and I think just about every MMO since then. And like you, Keen, I’ve found all those games much less compelling than the original EQ.

I wouldn’t say that I didn’t find the idea of story attractive, as a player. Some of the quests in EQ were just so badly written and off the wall, that at first I welcomed the idea of story as a way to give some sense of logic to the things my character was being asked to do.

But despite developers’ efforts to frame quests within some sort of narrative, the silly variations on the old “kill 10 rats and bring me their tails” quests still show up. What is worse, they frequently appear even more off the wall and silly than before, because they give the lie to the story when they should be adding to it. And worse still, the player is often expected to chuckle at the “irony” of being asked to do a traditional MMORPG style quest in a game that claims to have moved past such things. This shreds any hopes they had of asking players to suspend disbelief and buy into the narrative.

I can understand why developers have been so gung-ho about putting story in their games. Telling stories is fun, and they seem to hold out the promise of a richer, more exciting user experience. And after all, narrative is such a convenient tool to have around when your aim is to guide the user’s experience through a set of level-based quest hubs toward the All Important End Game.

But that last point is precisely why they should stop trying to give us stories. The narrative (and its goal of reaching endgame quickly) becomes the game. Players end up interacting with with the narrative, rather than with each other. The result is the Massively Single Player Online RPG we’ve all come to know and hate.

So my take on the subject is: any story at all is too much. Story turns players into army ants who mindlessly follow the pheromone trail of narrative toward the same goal. This gets everyone moving along parallel lines, and as we know, parallel lines don’t intersect. The better approach is to give us not story but lore and quests (aka things to do) and let us flit amongst these things freely, like butterflies.

@Amiya :

“I think that this overemphasis on story is precisely what made SW:TOR such a magnificent disaster.”

I don’t fully agree with this as in theory SW:TOR was meant to be an MMORPG, which by definition should have a rich lore.

The problem in my eyes was EA/BioWare deciding to design it to be marketable it to all audiences. I remember even right up to launch not having a clear idea what the game was supposed to be, and it turns out for good reason as they didn’t appear to have a unifying game philosophy.

As such no one was really satisfied and people on forums would ironically complain that they had to level through the storyline in an MMORPG. Actually I found the story-driven group conversation mechanics within the instances to be a highlight of their MMORPG system.

With specific regards to SW:TOR, I have problems with storylines in MMORPG’s that try to make me feel like Highlander being the Only One, which can’t but seem disingenuous when I am surrounded by crowds of Only Ones in a space station all trying mundanely to sell green goo on the galactic trade network. I am fine with advancing my character from a nothing to a role of minor importance within a storyline. 😛

@Gankatron:

“I don’t fully agree with this as in theory SW:TOR was meant to be an MMORPG, which by definition should have a rich lore.”

The point I was making is that there’s a huge difference between lore and story. Earlier games like EQ tended to have plenty of lore, but very little story. You learned about the world by chatting with various NPCs, and in the process you pieced together the “lore”, which is to say the story of the world. But there was no single overriding narrative that became the “story” of your character’s adventures. You created your own story by engaging with those bits of lore that you found interesting or appropriate to your character.

A game like TOR is at the other side of spectrum. The storyline for your chosen class is your character’s story. And while you did have the option of responding to certain situations differently, by and large your story was the same as every other character in the same class.

Now, you may have seen the class stories as a high point, and I’ll admit that I enjoyed them to. But the fact that we got some fun out of TOR does not make it a success. Bioware and EA had been hoping for at least a few years’ run with a substantial number of players on the subscription model. Instead, they went F2P in record time and now it’s sort of limping along. Why? Because a lot of players quit shortly after launch.

And the most common complaints we hear from players who quit TOR? Once you played through the class stories, there wasn’t much to do. The dialog cutscenes become irritating after you’ve seen them once. And so on. It all boils down to one thing: TOR’s emphasis on story made for a flashy first impression, but ultimately was detrimental to the game’s longevity.

@Keen:

“Players were never part of the story.”

Except insofar as they chose to write themselves into it. I remember when I finally made it over to Kelethin (damn, those early runs through LFay were scary!) and my Wood Elf friend got into the roleplay: “We’ve got a big offensive against the Crushbone going, we could use your help!”

And they made up their own stories, too. Like the one about their petitioning the city of Kelething to install guardrails around the edges of the platforms, to prevent less agile allies falling off. Ahh, good times!

I disagree. I think there can be a very grand story and the players part of it. I keep bringing this back up but none of you have apparently played AC. The best part of AC was the continuing story and actually bring a part of shaping the world.

I think that’s the key though. In games today like SWOTR, it’s personal story driven, which in my opinion is boring. While AC was world driven where you are part of what happens around you. A bit like DAoC in that you were able to shape and change your world thru RvR.

As long as story brings change I’m all for it. When the story is just stagnant, as they are today in MZnO’s, story becomes boring and pointless.

I agree with all of Amiya’s points. I think another thing that allowed me to enjoy EQ more than most games was the lack of knowledge about everything in general. Before all of the spoiler sites were really actualized, there was just misinformation and rumors everywhere. You’d see people in cool armor and have no idea where it came from. You’d hear tales of sand giants in distant zones and your imagination would run wild. You’d be afraid to venture out at night because there was no map to guide you and you didn’t know what was around the next bend. It seemed like everything was a mystery yet to be uncovered.

I’d be most interested in playing a game that obscures almost all of the guts of the game from players. No maps. No numbers associated with damage that could be measured. No ruthless efficiency in every decision you make. You’d just have to try things and subjectively determine which weapon or spec *feels* the best. It would be a nightmare for OCD type players, but I think min-maxing is one of the main things that ruins MMOs at this point.

-my two cents

The problem with stories at least in mmorpg’s I have played is that they are written so poorly.
I at first to read it all, but after the 8th fetch quest I get bored by the badly written non engaging story.

Not to mention nothing what I read about makes me care, because I can not influence it.
Also the lack of danger. If I read beware a scary mountain troll there better be player corpses everywhere near him.

Its like they do not really try to write and implement an engaging story.
It all feels half assed.

@Maro:

“Before all of the spoiler sites were really actualized, there was just misinformation and rumors everywhere.”

And amazingly enough, as you say, that made the game more interesting! Trying to navigate the world while relying on partial accounts, speculation, and hearsay made for a really engaging challenge. It was a great reason to interact with other players.

I may be looking back through rose-colored glasses, but I don’t seem to recall seeing much of what we now know as “Barrens chat” in my chatbox. When people chatted in game, more often than not they were actually chatting about the game! Incredible as it sounds.

I’d also like to try playing the sort of game you describe. I know it may sound like heresy even to longtime PnP roleplayers, but the overemphasis on number crunching is really killing the sense of adventure these days. Overmapping likewise. And even the quest dialog! I really loved the “type in keywords” approach used in EQ. (Yes, I’ll admit it, I usually typed in whole sentences.) Even the simple act of finding the right NPC to start a quest, and then puzzling your way through his (frequently buggy) quest dialog, helped make playing the game something of an adventure.

Irritating at times, yes. But it kept me interested.

@Damage

I need to go back and find the article, but I’ve read something along these lines from a veteran game developper. He was pretty much saying the game industry has been overtaken by Sillicon Valley which has a totally different mindset. IIRC, his point was the SV mindset is about having a great idea, building a prototype to generate hype, sell the company to a big dog, rinse and repeat. There’s no continuity, no thoughts given on long term viability/usability, the big payoff is really about selling your company. Now, try to apply this to the video game industry, you can see how it would clash hard. Video games is more about creating a piece of art or an experience, there is care about now and then, there’s a sense of building a long terme relationship with the customers.

But because there’re plenty of writers and 3d modellers and artists and other one-off wonders there’ll always be story-driven games and “3 monthers”. The beauty of these “3 monthers” is players NEED the game makers and artists because the players aren’t the ones making most of the content. Honestly, there’re some VERY talented artists and game makers in this world!!! I think many of us, maybe most of us, are perfectly happy to play 3 monthers.