The Death of Story, Part II

While advances in world story are promising in the arena of PvP, the other aspects of MMOs have suffered neglect. If "the pen is mightier than the sword" then why are players only able to use swords? The answer is that the devs won't let go of the pen.

Permalink

Dude at least play the games if you are going use them as evidence for your weak ideas.
Eve actually works opposite of what you say.

"Nor do they give full control over to the players in the sense that someone who starts as an Amarr cannot defect from the Amarr Empire and join the Gallente Federation."

Actually you can do exactly that. You can work your faction up for any side you want then join their militia and fight for them.

And secondly you claim they have no "running story" that is exactly what EVE does have, but what makes EVE notable is you can completely ignore the built in story if you like and move to alliance(0.0) space and only worry about pvp politics and wars.

It hard to take you serious when you get the major points about a game wrong by 180 degrees.

The first part of your post may be true. I have played EVE, but I found many parts of the game too tedious to make up for the enjoyable and creative aspects. Because of that, I didn't bother to sign up after the 2 week trial and never advanced far enough to explore the defection aspects. I apologize for that error.

The second point I disagree with. The in-game EVE events, however, are generally on the lower spectrum of story-progressing actions. In a storytelling sense, these are comparable to WoW's PvP tournaments or WAR's public quests. All of these are great ideas because they funnel communal and/or competitive actions from players, but they do not push beyond the standard already set by AC in the sense that players are not the source of these events.

In 0.0 space, alliances build stations and structures and establish sovereignty then they defend their resources and try to conquer others sovereignty. In the mean time independents sneak around pirating from both sides. Its pure sand box.

Its far and away the most player written script in any game.

Your problem is thats not what you want. You want a developer written story line where you get to pick the ending from a list.
Its fine that you want that, but it has rather little to do with the title theme of your artical.

On the contrary, the title is exactly what I mean. By saying that, I'm not denegrating EVE. The EVE developers made a conscious choice to give players total control and it has certain benefits. In so doing, however, they have removed world "plot" from the game. Where there is no plot, there is no story. There can be no overiding plot when no one is at the helm. AC is an example of the opposite extreme where they have instituted a plot but given players no control over it (the exception being in very rare instances like the Nuhmudira example). That example also is very simplistic -- a mere throwing of levers, but it is a step in a good direction demonstrated by a very old game.

Most MMO games do not follow the EVE open-ended universe model. They either borrow IP with a pre-existing story or create their own very involved background which implies an ongoing story. By story, I mean worldwide plot. EVE has a backstory but it is very simple and is intentionally designed to have minimal influence by giving total power to the players. The problem with other games is that plot does exist but is completely in dev control. Naturally, devs should have an idea of where they will steer NPCs and events, but players should be given the ability to impact and change those NCPs and events, thereby having influence over outcomes. If that is achieved, you will achieve two things: a world story and player involvement in it.

To use an AC plot example: when any of the major plot arcs began -- the shadow war, the viridi / Martine debacle, and so on, players could only be on Asheron's side. All internal conflicts within the anti-Martine faction came from NPCs. A plot which allowed for player influences would allow them to rally around Martine, or Nuhmudira, and so on rather than be forced to take a certain side because the dev's desired outcome demanded it.

OK now as a player of AC and a beta tester of AC2 I can confirm and yet deny a couple things in the above posts.

First of all the Martine storyline was a lead in to the Bael'Zharon storyline, and there were many players who were on Martine's side and then joined with Bael'Zharon. However if you wished to join their sides you needed to be PVP and not all PVP joined because there were conflicting attitudes about what was right and just.

Also as a beta tester for AC2, there you were capable of building a town yourself with other characters because that is how they wanted it but there were quests required to gather up all of the neccessary components needed to build the town. Also AC2 was working on a crafting model similar to Auto Assault. However I have found that most crafting patterns are Dev controlled however if there were anyway to consult with the Dev`s I am sure that the players would be able to have a greater hand in the storyline and development of which ever MMO they are playing.

I know that AC and Auto Assualt had emotes designed into the game for contacting the Admins of the game.. However there had to be an Admin in the game before it would work. Also In AC you could work your way up to being an Admin if you worked on the helping level, ie you never turned down a request for help and passed along anything you could to the newbs whether it be equipment, advice, or even pyreals which were the currency of AC.

I played AC for about 4 years and had a lot of fun with it.. I never tried to be the first to do anything because as soon as the patch went through there was huge lag issues do to overcrowding of the servers... Therefore I believe that server capacity also has a huge role to play in the death of a story.

I think you are referring to the distruction of the last crystal of BZ's prison on the Vesayen Isles. I'd completely forgotten about that one. I was too low of level at the time to participate, but you are right. Players had to be PK to participate and could either defend the crystal or join with BZ to destroy it. If memory serves, one server actually held out for the whole month and got a special monument built. Thistledown or Morningthaw I think... not my server in anycase. But your chronology is a bit off. Martine's plot arc came after Bael'Zharon. BZ's started when the game went live (or shortly thereafter, I didn't start playing until three months after release and gave it a good four years myself). The kickoff was the fierce winter that was abated by the destruction of the first crystal in Frore. Martine's story partially overlapped the BZ arc with his abduction in 10/00. His virindi schemes didn't begin in earnest until after BZ was defeated though.

In anycase, that is a nice example of player impact on storyline, especially because it was so communal. In many ways, it is a precursor of RvR with a downside of being brief and an upside of being far more directly tied to story than most RvR events. I think it is a much better tool then the Nexus Crystal where players battled to be the one (and only) player per server to destroy the crystal and get the Nexus Shadow Armor that became so notorious. The obvious problem with individual influence on events is that only one player is making an impact on a server with thousands of people. Events that incorporate much larger groups of players or guilds are generally better.

Good point about server capacity. That definitely could be a contributing factor. It could inhibit large group functions such as the defense of the crystal. The other AC problem, as you mention, is everyone rushing to solve the new events on patchday. This became worse once people learned how to access the portal.dat file. That is one of the major drawbacks of dev-inspired events: they have solutions, like riddles. Ideally, player-influenced events would have more open-ended results to make such changes more rewarding.

I must confess that I'm at a loss as to what it is you want. You say that plot is either non-existent in MMOs or it is tightly controlled by the devs. I won't speak to the first part of that equation, but I am curious: can you show me a game where story *isn't* tightly controlled by the devs? You said at the outset of your argument that MMOs are the spiritual successors of the single player RPG. Do you think that there is true player control over story and world-state in this older form of game? To me, single player RPGs are perhaps the most tightly scripted (i.e. dev-controlled) games I can think of. Granted those storylines are branching, but there isn't anything that you as a player can do in any of them that the devs haven't planned for in some way. What you seem to be looking for is emergent gameplay in an MMO where the storyline is procedurally generated through a symbiotic relationship between the game engine and player activity. To the best of my knowledge, no such technology exists. When someone goes to the trouble to write an engine which procedurally generates story content then we might have something. The examples you cite (like the town crier, etc.) strike me as nothing more than window dressing-style enhancements to the old model and don't constitute any sort of leap forward at all. In my view, you have yet to answer the question What should these games be doing that they're not already doing? Perhaps a way of doing this would be t point to a game that has successfully cracked the nut of players legitimately affecting their game world. I can't think of any such game off the top of my head.

If players canfully affect the game world doesnt that kind of make Ithela's point?
If not scripted beforehand than what is the plot?