Clever Use of Story for Unique End Game Success!?

[Sshate]

SWTOR leveling experience garnered a lot of praise not because of ground breaking mechanics. The SWTOR's initial success is largely indebted to the 4th pillar in the leveling content. The class stories give story purpose to the leveling activities, keeping it interesting and sugar coat the repetitive gameplay extremely well.

 

It is unfortunate that the end game pay so little attention to the 4th pillar. The end game needs to have strong story purpose, and it can be done without huge additional effort. Sometimes it's as simple as slightly tweaking how the content is delivered.

 

1) Make daily quests contribute to an event goal like WoW's AQ event. Suddenly dailies isn't just a endless grind for loot that become obsolete faster than the hottest fashion… With an ultimate goal tied to the dailies, the players gain a stronger incentive and purpose. Having a story purpose also create fonder memory than just random stepping stone gear.

 

For example, the Illum storyline could've been introduced in tiers and unlock after completion of dailies. This would've kept Ilum lively and interesting for a longer time as more players catch up while faster players unlock the content. World PvP would be more interesting as people have even more reason to go there. It would also make the ending more impactful to the community as a whole if everyone discover the ending at the same time without spoiler.

 

2) Long dialogue scenes in flashpoint are fun to watch first time, but rather than giving them away so much that players end up skipping in 99% of the time (after they watch it a few times)… The resource used to create these cut-scene and dialogue would be much more appreciated if it was given out as a commodity. Kind of like another way to reward the player in addition to loot, similar to secret-ending or secret cut scene of many single-player games. Maybe I can have a story reason to keep running through Eternity Vault because I want to find something for my companions or my class story in addition to loot. Story is what makes SWTOR special!

 

Heck, even making the dialogue scenes randomly occurring could make it more interesting. Ex: If R2D2 makes a cameo, instead of whoring it out and nobody cares, make it a "rare" occurrence that he only sometimes appear. Then all of a sudden instead of "just another dialogue to skip after first time" now it's a commodity and a driving force for player to want to repeat the flashpoint.

 

3) Hard mode should have its own story reward instead of just better gear. Since the designer expect player to do hard mode as part of progression content instead of optional difficulty bump like nightmare, it should have story purpose/incentive also. It can be something super trivial to do but it would FEEL completely different. For example, maybe in eternity vault, after you defeat the last boss, he doesn't die, merely get imprisoned again. You don't really think killing an ancient menace would be that easy do you? But in hard mode, you will finally kill him and see a different story ending.

 

I really like this game and I think the missing emphasis on story in the end game is a HUGE missed opportunity and a betrayal of the mission statement! Story in end game needs to be more than fluff/decoration. Story needs to be the front-center of end-game content/goals.

Edited January 20, 2012 by Sshate