Do you think story is really what MMO players want?

[Kaladorei]

dear OP.

 

NO.

[SnoggyMack]

2 million customers leads Bioware to believe that maybe yes story is what customers might want. People definitely spoke with their wallet. Edited January 10, 2012 by SnoggyMack

[LogicalPremise]

(My main point out of all of this is that I don't think adding Story as a new pillar of the MMO is a smart move when trying to beat other MMOs in the market)

 

And your support for this argument is that no one else has done it before and all people want are more of the same?

 

*sighs*

 

I'm not sure why we keep having these sorts of threads, but I suspect it's something along the lines of cognitive dissonance.

 

It has been said, repeatedly, that a lot of players are

 

- not interested in PVP

- not interested in metrics of "efficiency" in terms of their character

- invested in the story, both in a way to justify "kill x foozles" and as a story in it's own right

- tired of the focus on stilted empty shells of gameworlds that are basically only there to compare gear and "pwn n00bs"

- see the journey to 50 as the goal, not getting to 50

- value story, RP, community MORE than having bragging rights because your DPS is X or because you have x rare loots

 

But no matter how much this is repeated, people from other MMO's who are convinced that all must be EXACTLY like that don't grasp it.

 

Bioware and EA are gambling that people are SICK of the conventional formula, that the "tools and convience" offered actually strip the fun away for many people, and that a large portion of the gaming community doesn't play MMO's because MMO's do not currently appeal to them.

 

Consider. There are what, 50 million people in America alone in the typical age range to play MMO's? The market hasn't even captured a fifth of that. Why? Because MMO's don't CURRENTLY appeal to most people.

 

Now eventually you'll have football MMO's, or puzzle MMO's, or even *shudder* hunt-the-pixel MMOs of some kind. But merely retreading the old features with new gimmecks , such as GW is doing, doesn't move into a new directly the way SWTOR does.

 

Bottom line: I don't *care* if you like it and I think I actually prefer that you don't. The fact that you don't, however, does not mean that no one likes it.

[Nanomancer]

To me SWTOR fails at the real important things of an MMO

 

SOCIAL - it is so freaking important. I swear no one would be playing EVE if the social aspect was not so well done.

 

COMBAT - you NEED to get this so smooth and nice because people will be doing it for hundreds of hours.

 

PVP - you need deep engaging pvp to keep a large number of people coming back.

 

DEPTH and VERSATILITY - keep people engaged through deeeep customization and character versatility. Rift sucks in many ways but they do this RIGHT so i played it for 4 months.

 

anyways my 2 cents

[GalacticKegger]

As it is in SWTOR; No.

 

Everything you do, has happened hundreds's of times already on the server, and the massive multiplayer game world didn't change a tiny bit.

 

If the storyline were MMO'ish, and not singplayer-like. My oppinion would drastically change.

Millions of players in total with each having their own organic storyline that grew as they progressed while affecting other player's organic storylines - as well as the game's overall storylines - would probably require the combined manpower and server capacity of Industrial Light & Magic, Digital Domain, Pixar, Blizzard, First Data and NASA to work. All MMO storylines are fixed. Edited January 10, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[UjellyTrollicus]

i play mmo's

 

i want this game.

 

 

yes?

[mcburly]

its absolutely important. one of the things that always made mmos boring to me was the fact that the text based story just had no life to it. I really feel attached to my characters in this game which adds longevity to the game for me.

[WookieBob]

without Story there is no reason for the game,

without story there is no light and no dark

without story there is no Republic and no Empire

Without Story there is no Jedi, no Sith,

without Story there is no Flavor to the game.

[Restepor]

It's important to me and a whole lot of other people. But I can't admit that there isn't a huge amount of people who just want to play the MMO side of things. I like it because of it's differences, but the majority most likely does not.

[BrettHunter]

I'm here for the stories.

[Darkulous]

Yes. I love my Class story right now.

 

And for the first time ever, in my MMO experience, I can't wait to cap my guy so that I can start another new Class and experience that Story. Awsome job.

[swtorjkcbr]

Yes, it is for me. I love it

[Forr]

If the recent trend in video gaming is of any indication, story is what everybody wants. Everybody includes MMO players.

[Arkerus]

Yes x 1000 + good mechanics.

 

This game has most of what I want. I'll stay.

[JediRyuk]

Meh, yeah. It really can be. One MMO player likes to immerse themselves into the story or 'role' of their character (Role-Players), others just like the gameplay.

 

Hell, after all, WoW wouldn't have lasted very long if its large fan-base wasn't interested in the lore of WoW and immersion at launch.

 

Honestly, in most MMO's you never really play them until you reach max level. TOR looks to ease the burden of grinding to max by adding story elements and using wizard magic too distract you from your skinner box.

[BeeblesTV]

It's what I've wanted for years.

[Gargion]

It's not been important before, Bioware has changed that with this game. Story is arguably the most important part of TOR.

 

Not trying to pick fun at you dude, but I think you missed the "in-" before the "arguably".

[Zlattrick]

I'm here for the stories.

 

What he said.

[Miths]

I've played MMOs for ten years (starting with Anarchy Online) but I've yet to play any one of them for more than 4-5 months (SWG and Eve Online, both at launch), and most I get bored with after 1-2 months.

I've also never hit the level cap in an MMO.

 

Obviously, despite playing well in excess of 15 MMOs over a decade, I'm in no way whatsoever a "hardcore" MMO player, but precisely because of it's extensive voice acting (only having that for the main story lines would make the game feel like a disjointed experience) and story driven nature, I'm almost certain I'll be hitting the level cap with at least one character in SWTOR. Probably two - one Republic, one Empire. Like in a good singleplayer RPG I want to see how the story unfolds.

 

Whether I'll stick around after that is probably doubtful - repeated dungeon runs and "raiding" has held absolutely zero interest for me in other MMOs, the few I've even had the chance to try it in (the public events in Rift were the exception to some extent) - but at my pace I imagine it should take me couple of months still to reach level 50 on two characters (so far I've spent a lot of time trying out classes, so my highest level is still only 19).

[Gargion]

Meh, yeah. It really can be. One MMO player likes to immerse themselves into the story or 'role' of their character (Role-Players), others just like the gameplay.

 

Hell, after all, WoW wouldn't have lasted very long if its large fan-base wasn't interested in the lore of WoW and immersion at launch.

 

Honestly, in most MMO's you never really play them until you reach max level. TOR looks to ease the burden of grinding to max by adding story elements and using wizard magic too distract you from your skinner box.

 

Well worded my friend.

[bbbmmmlll]

If story is that important then the game isn't sustainable as the story is such a small part of the overall experience and quickly (relative to how long people will play an MMO) consumed.

 

I like a good story, but I spend more time doing pretty much every other aspect of the game: fighting, running around, using the auction house, socializing, watching loading screens, customizing my companions, crafting, etc... And guess what, I'll keep doing all of these until I quit the game whereas the story is fun once or maybe twice, then to me it's value goes to zero. I've never had an issue playing another MMO for years without a great story or voice acting. I'd rather any significant funds spent on story be directed into more content and better content. I get much more mileage out of a new zone that I do out of 10 minutes of voice and a cut scene.

[Luewen]

(My main point out of all of this is that I don't think adding Story as a new pillar of the MMO is a smart move when trying to beat other MMOs in the market)

 

I've been reading a lot of posts recently about what people think of this game but none directly discuss how the pillars of MMOs are being dealt with in TOR. This game is STORY DRIVEN, we've heard it numerous times now. I've heard many times In interviews the devs say they wanted story to be the new pillar in MMO and I don't think that this is a realistic prospect.

 

---> ESSAY ALERT <---

 

Think about what happens when you read a book. The story is interesting while your reading it and it can stay with you forever. You get a certain satisfaction out of knowing the parts of it. SW:TOR is saying to players 'Make your own story, live it out in your own way' This is a good idea, I myself find the idea of living an online life in the Star Wars universe to be exciting and thrilling. There is however a key problem I feel which is that this is an MMO. And what happens in all MMOs is that you reach this little brick wall called, the max level...

 

The problem with this idea of 'making your own story' is simply the restraints of the game itself. I find it very difficult to embrace this idea because I know that eventually I will run out of content or indeed just get bored with my character. Its also very difficult to live out a truly believable story in an MMO since the majority of time is spent killing defenceless animals or collecting random crap.

 

The original poll done on these forums indicated that the main things people looked for in MMOs were PvP or PvE. Anyone who has played an MMO before will surely realize that these two concepts are the foundation of the end game content. For SW:TOR these apparently weren't a problem. They made this game STORY DRIVEN despite the fact that only a tiny portion of MMO gamers would consider this even the slightest bit important. So why?

 

I feel as though this game simply lacks in certain areas and the only thing I can think to blame is there total emphasise on story. I have no doubt that this game will do well simply because there are plenty of people willing to put up with the quantity of story just to reach the end game. But what end game? Patching will surely add more content but with an old system ( eg. The Holy Trinity ) it will make it no different to WoW which has put a lot of focus into making its end game as fun as possible. BioWare needs to wake up and realize that this is something too important to just pretend isn't important and although the game may be story based, they do need to put end game in or the hardcore MMO players will just get up and leave.

 

On the topic of story I really don't like the way BioWare as implemented their vision of story. Just because I have a nice conversation with a quest giver doesn't mean that him telling me to kill 10 boars (or droids) will be any more fun. Are people really that stupid as to believe that STORY is going to make an MMO more fun in the end game. I look forward to new titles such as GW2 which promise to actually change end game for the better by directly tackling the problems people have with PVE and PVP.

 

This game feels more dull than WoW in the questing sense because adding in all this story actually increases the time that killing 10 boars would normally take. 'But thats just if you want to grind to max level', sure ill admit one thing I loved about WoW was that I could get to max level in no time by just grinding. That still doesn't change the fact that most MMO players are just like me, they want to get to that end game content as soon as they can and SW:TOR has tried to change that by introducing more stuff for you to do while you level up. This doesn't actually make the game experience any better in the sense that people still want to be max level as soon as they can, so I suppose much of this new content is in fact just pointless if people are just going to skip over it. I feel as though BioWare has actually harmed themselves by making story so important especially in the levelling part and I am not sure how they intend to carry this over into the end game.

 

To try and fix this many people may suggest that you re roll an alt, BioWare has tried to make it clear that making a new character is a whole new story and yet wont I be doing exactly the same quests? I find it hard to build this vision of a new character when so much of what I am doing is the same as what my main did previously. There is only 1 area to go and quest in for each level group, yes you could leave a location sooner or spend longer in another but you are not really living a new story except for of course your classes main one.

 

For an MMO which values story so highly it seems embarrassing that there is actually very little choice in how your story progresses. Oh I get to choose if i'm 'Light or Dark side', I do question the philosophical side of this game as can you really split life so plainly into just good deeds and evil ones. Yet the game gives you brownie points for taking one side which means players are either all evil or all good. Is there no middle ground? How can someone build a true story for themselves when the game pushes them to choose good over evil or vis versa. Yes you could just ignore the whole system but is it not outrageuous in the first place that they split moral choice so plainly?

 

To finish I would like to just discourage anyone from saying any obvious comments and that the single reason why I am posting this is to see if anyone in the community shares my concerns. BioWare has put their eggs in one basket on this game and I feel they have missed out some crucial parts of what makes MMOs successful.

 

(My main point out of all of this is that I don't think adding Story as a new pillar of the MMO is a smart move when trying to beat other MMOS in the market)

 

 

_EDIT_

I changed my main point's wording a little bit to greater reflect my actual opinion.

 

I agree on many points on your post and the story is really not that important.

On that note i tuiki that the travel to the lvl cap is as important as endgame. Perhaps the rush to cap is something that needs to be changed or something.

[bbbmmmlll]

2 million customers leads Bioware to believe that maybe yes story is what customers might want. People definitely spoke with their wallet.

 

No. It's the fact that it's Star Wars. I don't know anyone that knew about the voice acting or cut scenes before signing up. A big budget Star Wars MMO from BW is enough to get a lot of people to try it. The only confirmed numbers I've seen for SWtOR is that it's over 1 million users. Remember weaker franchise's like AoC confirmed 900k at launch. I would expect that the Star Wars and BW brands would do better than that. The long term numbers will validate how successful (or not) the SWtOR MMO turns out to be.

[Viera]

Yes, I do. Because I have friends who left WoW and friends who don't really get into MMORPG's tell me they love SWTOR because the story makes it more interesting. The cutscenes really made questing not seem like a chore to them, and for once they actually knew why they were doing such-and-such as the WoW people just skipped all the quest dialogue.

[izzymunoz]

i understand story emphasis may not be for u and u believe it cant be expanded on which u hve a right to believe tht and u the right to express tht opinion on which i am not dening u tht right but i think they could cause not all story come to an end like books tht go on and one forever by hving more volumes written for example the many andventures of sherlock holmes and countless others such as the dragonlance books and i am hoping BW has not thought of the same thing as u and hve no plans to extend story because my personal opinion and tht all it is my personal opinion i think story is real important cause without it everything seems pointless and repetive to me as y i cant stay interested in wow rift aion and some of the other mmos i hve tried but swtor has so far and i hoping they alrddy hve tons of stuff developed for content and story for this game and they are going to give it to us a little at a time and the stuff we hve now is only is the tip of the iceberg but time will only tell tht but bottom line is when bw chose to focus on story the opened more room for differnt types of players to get into a game tht is done online which is not nessarily a bad thing cause gamming should be about fun and entertainment and when it comes to tht it all comes down to personal preference and which we all no not everyone are the same cause if we were all the same and like the same things it would be such a boring world we live in so pls do not speak for everyone out there playing this game when it comes to story let us se where it goes from here and let the people who like it play it and let the people who dont like go on to something they like lets all respect each other as gammers and people and and not try to force each others opinions on anyone which has been done a lot in there forums and good gamming to all