With apologies to Astirian - your post made me go over my thoughts on this matter, and I'm in an impish mood this morning [wacky], no rancour implied or intended!
The only laughter I'm picking up is the bitter, empty sound of those pre-judging content they haven't seen in full yet.
They will never add personal narrative to this game in a meaningful way.
To be honest, I hope thats the case. When you are player number 120,472 to go and find
Mankrik's wife*, its not really a personal experience. Its just the same ride as everyone else gets to go on, and I doubt FDev has the people or the inclination to create more narrative threads than any single player could hope to complete.
*wowwiki link for those who haven't had the pleasure of that quest [rolleyes]
It's a systems simulation designed by engineers, for engineers.
I'm not much of a one for crunching numbers. I pick my ships and modules based on what looks cool, and how *I* can handle them. I even like the Adder. I'm not even close to being an engineer, but I'm enjoying the game.
Oh, oh, can haz ur stuff?
Aww, no stuff more me!
...if those content releases are actual story I can engage in.
Then again, maybe stuff!
It's the only way to keep people like SpaceGoblin and Domaraa happy, just make it an optional paid-for thing.
Not sure what that is.
Gear progression as narrative? I'm the least interested in gear progression player you could hope to meet. I have no urge for one of the "big 3", or to engineer every (or even most) module to max or even high end, effect.
And if it turns out that "personal narrative" means "personalising your gear through a personally unique* series of missions" then yeah, they should've called it "gear personalisation missions/brokers". I won't feel slapped in the face though, because eh, why?
*unique as in there are many, many missions and many, many types and combinations of gear, so any two players are unlikely to have exactly the same path/stuff. Disclaimer: all speculative on my part. If.
If you mean 'actual story I can engage in' is the only way to keep 'people like SpaceGoblin' happy, then also nah, because I'm not really interested in that. I'm with those guys who played Skyrim, found the main story both too short and too 'superhero blah, chosen one blah, save the world blah' and went and found the mod that took all that out so I could just be some random shmuck running around Skyrim getting into all sorts of scrapes. And I'm getting plenty of that from ED. Sure it could have more set and NPC dressing, but so could pretty much every sandbox, ever.
I'll wait and see what we get - it might be "gear personalisation by fetch me this, carry me that" it might be "gear personalisation through a branched seqence of missions interspersed with fetch me some of this stuff and that stuff". It might be something else altogether. If we're really lucky, it may not even be something that exists in isolation, but may be tied in to other new and existing things within ED - the Thargoid/Guardian stuff, the BGS, broader mission base, PP, Engineers.
To be honest, I'm fairly ambivalent either way. That may change when I see what we get.
What I'm interested in seeing is the new planet shaders at work, learning more about Thargoids and Guardians (the stuff listed under 'narrative' for the
Q1 update) and the new mission rewards system. Oh, and having seen it 'live and in the flesh', the Chieftain piques my interest - I had previously thought it wasn't a good aesthetic match for ED, but having seen it rendered in game and with virtual paint on, I take that back, lookin' pretty cool.
Lets wait until next week, sign in to the open beta, see whats what, then lets see how we feel about that.
Some of us will like it. Some of us really wont. And some, like me*, will be ambivalent.
*probably
Don't forget I said *if* a lot. I have no idea about the details beyond (no pun intended!) what was in the live-stream.