How to deliver an in-game narrative (John Jameson)
- Thread starter Globusdiablo
- Start date
Are you being sarcastic or are you stating that you believe any and all design decisions made by FD to be working as intended? Obviously?
Yes, but...
How do you suggest they implement this?
Take World of Warcraft for example. The story is EPIC in every single way, great characters, well told, everyone who does the quests knows the whole story. STOP. There it is, right there. "Everyone who DOES THE QUESTS" knows the lore.
So, how does WoW achieve that? It instances its world. If you go to a place before completing a quest it might be different to how it is AFTER you've completed that quest (and this DOES include all the instancing problems that come with that, one player in post-quest instance, another in pre-quest instance and they cannot see each other). WoW also accepts the broken reality that something hasn't happened in the game until YOU have done it. Elite differs in that if something happens once, it happens once for everyone, the world is in fact MORE persistent than WoWs.
While I definitely support main story missions in Elite, it's frankly a bit late to implement in a way that will fit in. For example, if the Thargoid story starts with a few megaships getting destroyed, if this was WoW you'd be able to go to the instance, a mission giver would be there, he'd give you a chunk of lore and then give you some objectives, you'd complete the mission the instance would change to one of victory or desolatoin or whatever, and that's how it would stay until the next piece of content that changes that zone is delivered.
Between instancing and all the problems that brings, and a changing a completely persistent galaxy to one that is dependent on the status of the player depending on their progress, I just can't think of a decent way to make it 'work'.
I'm not sure what you mean. I stated simply without sarcasm, that Elite is a game where you have to go looking for the lore and fill in the blanks and that this is obviously a conscious design decision.
Do I think the Jameson's demise encounter is working entirely as intended and all the other lore snippets? Yes, I do. Could it be better? That's subjective. I prefer quest givers and being fed the lore by playing, but I accept that someone might have a different philosophy, especially if that is a side effect of the mechanics that govern the galaxy (see my post above) as it is now.
No salt here. Just constructive feedback. No, it may not change but there is no reason why such a design decision should not be questioned.
Yes, actually it is. But if FD want me to take part in or at least care about all this other content then they need to tell me it is there.
True but like all things does need to be built, and from scratch - ie. all classes of (even future) POI's have to be defined beforehand? (Then you can scan, no matter what they are). Seems to me the same story of cart / horse configuration. I don't think are design decisions, much more a questiion of developmental constraint.
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Pay attention FD, this is good stuff.
Fair enough. Apples and pears.
Yes.
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I think we all agree on this. Question seems to be though whether FD are somehow incompetent for not putting these in from the off. Because the game is being built from the bottom up though, I really don't think they are. To make omlette, FIRST you must break the eggs? (If you do that second, then your egg pie is all full of shells obv.).
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Btw; for the sake of argument, would you say that the epic story within World of Warcraft is thorougly described and communicated to the players in an easily accessible in-game narrative via quests?
Agree OP, spot on.
You shouldn't have to play the forum or YouTube to know what's going on in the game.
It's a shame really, FD is hiding a lot of content in far away or remote locations for a few die-hard players.
Also there isn't an incentive to fly there once you've seen or read about it.
You shouldn't have to play the forum or YouTube to know what's going on in the game.
It's a shame really, FD is hiding a lot of content in far away or remote locations for a few die-hard players.
Also there isn't an incentive to fly there once you've seen or read about it.
Try the triangulation game at Jamesons crash site. You'll love it!
Go to Youtube to find out how to get there.
Yes, I would. Blizzard really know how to deliver content, but it isn't exactly fair to compare spaceship man braben with the biggest game giant of our times.
But, yeh, Elite could certainly take some inspiration from WoW (and even less successful MMOs, like Star Trek online; when the borg came, it was properly scary). Also, in both of those games, if you want to immerse yourself further, there are optional quests and dailies which provide extra detail, plus books and plaques dotted around the world in places you are encouraged to visit (note; 'encouraged to visit').
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Well hell, then we agree.
The truth is I wanted to have a rant about how 'average' the Jameson's Demise encounter was, but everyone was so gushy about how awesome it was at the time, I didn't have the heart to a) burst their bubble or b) defend my position to people who seem to be rather easily pleased.
I went there in a 800m/s (760 with SRV if I'm completely honest
) iCourier and had more fun spending 20 minutes in the nearby canyons, than during the 5 minutes listening to the admittedly very well acted dialogue (you know what makes that dialogue and voice acting so amazing? It's the piddle poor quality of the script, but he STILL managed to deliver it convincingly, if I ever need a voiceover, I'm gonna look him up).
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The problem with 0.01% of players finding all the cool stuff by using texture glitches, windows resource monitors etc is that it makes the other 99.99% of players think they "missed" something, or that they're "not good" at finding stuff. This then feeds a negative loop where they know some cool lore thing exists but instinctively don't want to have a go at finding it. "It's just not my strong suit". "I don't like meta gaming" (datamining/glitch analysis/fourth wall breaking tools). Even if I turn my textures all the way down and watch for changes "someone else will still beat me to it" because they've got it down to a fine art with Salome/INRA/JJ/etc. "I'll just watch it on youtube - it'll be just the same". All of which leads to the real problem mindset -- "I'm angry! why does this game not do any lore or worldbuilding? How many thousand more times must I dock to fill this bar to 100% - is there nothing more to this empty synthetic galaxy?"
I'll sadly never know for reasons well known to you by now... And I won't be playing the triangulation game again. EVER.
This little metaphor has emerged while partaking in this thread:
Agree 100%.
Good remark. To the point.
Mind you, so has this one.
Developmental Constraint is not the same thing as Design Decision. (Sorry)
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