Please add a storyline quest with Odyssey

[Jack Wilmslow]

I would imagine what is happening now with GalNet and CGs to be the framework of all the lore to come in the next couple of years. There will be content for everyone!

Just remember, for a fully narrative experience, you will not get that with this game, ever. It's a sandbox and the narrative is mainly yours to do as you please.

If you want something focused ... come join us with Turning the Wheel and lets expand The Dark Wheel's influence across the galaxy.

 

[Sensei Jacksama]

I think having having short procedurally generated story arcs could be possible in elite. My impression is that chained missions were an attempt at that.

 

[Kirth]

What's so complicated about stories in MMOs?

There are plenty of examples of how the mission board chained missions can be used to support a series of short stories - that's all narrative based games are; a set of missions which a story surrounds to justify doing them.


You have a mission to seek a briefcase scan the contents and evac to safe space to commence the following mission.
Cinematic.
Next mission - Blow up the important something.
Cinematic.
Next mission follow and then kill the ship (Horizons) or person (Odyssey)
Update from Comms - we need important material, urgent blah blah (Tense music)
Next mission - Go to area (Scripted ambush on way with cinematic) and collect 20 items

Then you need rewards, a payoff for completion. A golden ship maybe or credit and a special paintjob

 

[Hopix]

Umm... They basically are? They're planning a narrative that lasts until 2022. Odyssey's content will be incorporated within it.

 

[kalniel]

What's so complicated about stories in MMOs?

There are plenty of examples of how the mission board chained missions can be used to support a series of short stories - that's all narrative based games are; a set of missions which a story surrounds to justify doing them.


You have a mission to seek a briefcase scan the contents and evac to safe space to commence the following mission.
Cinematic.
Next mission - Blow up the important something.
Cinematic.
Next mission follow and then kill the ship (Horizons) or person (Odyssey)
Update from Comms - we need important material, urgent blah blah (Tense music)
Next mission - Go to area (Scripted ambush on way with cinematic) and collect 20 items

Then you need rewards, a payoff for completion. A golden ship maybe or credit and a special paintjob

Sounds like a single player story. How do you handle groups of players? Do you all have to scan the briefcase (how does that make sense?) or just one of you? Ditto blowing up the important something - what if someone else blows up the important something? What if they never got the mission but still blew up the important something - do they count as having completed the mission even though they never got it in the first place? What about people joining/leaving part way through the mission chain? Do they need to start over for themselves, or do you synchronise mission states?

All of that can be overcome, but it's not trivial and involves support both from a multi-player aware mission system and from mission design to make sense from a multi-player perspective.

 

[Jukelo]

Hell NO. I bought the game in part based on the premise that there was no traditional storyline or 'quest' and that the universe wouldn't revolve around the player.
There is so much still missing from the game that was included in the vision they have for the game, what kind of sense would it make to divert resources towards something that was explicitely stated as not being part of it?

Once we have space legs, interiors for ships, stations, cities and everything in-between, that we can land on every planet, go big game hunting down on primal planets, fly in the upper layers of a gas giant, steal another player's ship in boarding actions, and once factions can dynamically expand into empty systems to wage war over newly discovered resources, then at that point maybe Frontier could look towards adding more traditionnal storylines/quests/whatever.

 

[goemon]

Please please please add a storyline quest with odyssey. It doesnt have to be cinematic quality storyline. Just a long chain quest that gives us deep content. You could even voice act the dialog in the storyline like you do with galnet. This would give us an amazing HANDS ON experience with the story of Elite Dangerous

did you
- play both missions the engineer ram tah is giving out? (i think closest to such a "storyline" quest)

- did you follow one of the stories coming from number stations (for exampel the heartbreaking story around the attack on megaship welcome deviation, or the scary story of that abandoned mining camp ... or the full story of captain jameson... )?

hardcore, if you do so without googling shortcuts. can keep you busy for a looong time.

 

[Stigbob]

Complicated quest chains don't mix very well with huge RNG games. Look at the X-series, get the wrong ship spawn in and everything breaks.

Not really a major problem in a game where you can revert to your last save, that's not an option in ED.

 

[VirtueXOI]

Well , random generated event like in FF14 or guild war 2 could benefit alot to elite.

Not like credit making is a problem tbh =D

Stations attack felt that way to me , but i ever wondered why they could not do such event . (BGS already do this somehow , but it's less visible)

 

[Cosmo]

Complicated quest chains don't mix very well with huge RNG games. Look at the X-series, get the wrong ship spawn in and everything breaks.

It's not hard in separate instances with mostly text + NPC ships or characters. Eve Online has epic mission arcs such as The Blood-Stained Stars.

 

["Red" the Pirate]

Personal quests in general would just be a great addition, IMO.

C'mon, FD, give us some real "personal narrative".

 

[o2thaZ]

What's so complicated about stories in MMOs?

There are plenty of examples of how the mission board chained missions can be used to support a series of short stories - that's all narrative based games are; a set of missions which a story surrounds to justify doing them.


You have a mission to seek a briefcase scan the contents and evac to safe space to commence the following mission.
Cinematic.
Next mission - Blow up the important something.
Cinematic.
Next mission follow and then kill the ship (Horizons) or person (Odyssey)
Update from Comms - we need important material, urgent blah blah (Tense music)
Next mission - Go to area (Scripted ambush on way with cinematic) and collect 20 items

Then you need rewards, a payoff for completion. A golden ship maybe or credit and a special paintjob

Throw some princess saving in there and voila.
What you are describing cmdr is EVERY other game.
I for one am not interested in plot game play, I scratch that itch with the X series.
For each their own, granted, but please let's not turn elite into every other game.

 

[Kenneth McGrew]

I feel like this is a pivatol moment for me with this title. I think the determining factor of weather I shelve this game or not and I think other people as well is seeing what Odyssey brings to the table. If it is clear to me on release that they are not taking this title seriously then we will have to see what happens.

the great beauty of Elite dangerous is you make the story up as you go.

for example, pick a ship and then you have to do the 1st mission that pops up at the station which you hand the previous in at, you will have seen every corner of Elite dangerous before you know it.

if you cant do that i would give up with Elite its not the game for you, why don't you check out what Bazmeson is up to?

 

[Vardaugas]

Unique stories aren't unique when everybody are doing them. They would just break world coherence. Generic missions. Well, we already have those. Even voice acted in part. Space and installation encounters. Those can work. Now a branching generic mission procedural "story" arc generator, now that would be new and innovative technology that would make Todd Howard green with envy.

 

[Quantis Trap]

Please please please add a storyline quest with odyssey. It doesnt have to be cinematic quality storyline. Just a long chain quest that gives us deep content. You could even voice act the dialog in the storyline like you do with galnet. This would give us an amazing HANDS ON experience with the story of Elite Dangerous

OP, I agree that this would be nice and games like No Man's Sky, with it's massively better mission system show that it can be done. In order for this to be done, Elite Dangerous would have to have a mission system which al least approached the power of what NMS has. I hope Frontier is working on this!

Que the raft of commanders bashing NMS for it's completely unrelated short falls, of which it has many.

It would be great to have a story of some sort, I would have to steer clear of the forums because some person would get through it all in one sitting.

I think it should start with something the Ship's cat finds.

Many games have this problem and that that's never an excuse to not have story lines.

That's the problem in ED for storyline stuff, all events take place in real time in ED, they could craft a deeply nested story line about an abandoned base and some other stuff, insert it into the game, and one person might play it and then it's over because the events take place in real time, you can't just keep repeating the same events over and over like a traditional MMO.

I honestly hate bringing up NMS so often, but that games mission system addressed this also, by allowing the missions to happen in systems near the commander no matter where the commander is in the galaxy. It kind of tailors the missions to the commander and, in affect, automatically makes the large multi-step missions into an on the fly ... personalized narative.

It works amazingly well. I think Frontier could achieve something similar if they tried.