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just had some thoughts on narrative design and mmo requirements, since i& #39;m playing ff14 and mostly enjoying the story: a thread (1/x)
there are two main issues in MMO narrative design AFAIK (i& #39;m not an expert).
1 - many people are playing the same story. how do you then make the player feel like they& #39;re doing meaningful things and also justify having a ton of other people that are just like the player? (2/x)
1 - many people are playing the same story. how do you then make the player feel like they& #39;re doing meaningful things and also justify having a ton of other people that are just like the player? (2/x)
2 - you tend to not play with the same people when you play with others, meaning that any story threads have to be carried through NPC& #39;s who can feel useless. MMOs do usually encourage playing with Guilds/Free Companies/a name for a group of people but this isn& #39;t the same (3/x)
there are a few ways to tackle these problems, but the most common appears to be & #39;ignore the problems and have single/multi content& #39;. that& #39;s what FF14 does, world of warcraft AFAIK, etc. there are a few examples of people acknowledging the first one, but it& #39;s very hard ... (4/x)
Guild Wars tried to acknowledge this. the player (and all players) grew stronger through something called the & #39;pre-searing& #39;, and then everyone grows together as an adventurer and then as someone who is & #39;Chosen& #39;. this makes logical sense to do, but (5/x)
this game also has one of the objectively funniest pieces of dialogue I& #39;ve ever seen in a game, where you and your seven other random people you& #39;re playing a dungeon with are & #39;all Chosen& #39;. there are millions of chosen players. All people around you are Chosen. (6/x)
To be Chosen and & #39;special& #39; then is almost to be human, basically. It cuts that feeling of & #39;specialness& #39; off at the knees.
That piece of dialogue reminded me the most of the cutscenes from Dynasty Warriors, and that& #39;s really not where you want your RPG to be. (7/x)
That piece of dialogue reminded me the most of the cutscenes from Dynasty Warriors, and that& #39;s really not where you want your RPG to be. (7/x)
So generally you agree to do (1), and both player and dev suspend disbelief for this story. But then you get into weird situations: in FF14 you play 8-person dungeons, and then the plot directly after talks about how you beat everyone by yourself. (8/x)
You obviously didn& #39;t in the game. ... so I guess just the question of this thread is, is there a way to resolve this better than knowing ignorance? or is the way to get around them ... simply just playing something like dnd? (9/x)
