Schilling's Green Monster Games

[tmp]

Although KOTOR bored me to tears I would point to the opening sequence as an example of doing story in a game. Instead of reading a text block about how your ship was attacked and you had to bail to some planet you instead are on the ship, fight the attackers then bail out youself. You play the story. (Which is different from you make the story I would note) Sure there is some text and a few animated bits that you could very loosely call "cutscenes" but these are a small facet of the overall presentation.

Are we talking of this KotOR opening sequence? Because if there's one franchise that takes the "wall of text" literally...

Sure, after the text (and cutscene) that provide context to your actions you play through a completely linear tutorial level which we can only call "playing the story" because it offers less choice than "making the story" a player does when they choose to go and kill 10 rats (after a wall of text/cutscene informs them of necessity to exterminate these rats)  But if you remove that text and cutscene? You're left with nothing but questions. Who are you, where are you, why is this thing shaking about, why are you being attacked, why do you have to keep moving forward? (aside from because nothing at all happens if you don't, of course) Without these filling bits your story is reduced to "i blew up a robot. And then another, and another, and then a few more. After that, i blew up few more robots for some change".

[tmp]

When you stand around the water cooler talking about what you did last night, do you talk about the childhood trauma of the evil wizard, or do you talk about how his tower began to crumble around your group as you whittled him down, and then that damn Leeroy pulled aggro from one of the patrols and you nearly wiped, but the tank and healer managed to keep them occupied, and the main DPS got in the killing blow with less than 100 hp left?

When people talk of KotOR, they typically bring up the "holy shit, and then it turned out i was the bad guy" or "and then that pious bitch Bastilla shows up turned all emo, the cheek" moments, or how they walked a little Jawa across the street and straight into the furnace. I.e. that childhood trauma of the evil wizard Jedi gets just as much exposition as player's own actions. Talking only about the player's actions happens mostly (only?) if the person you speak with has also played the game in question and so they're familiar with the backstory and/or plot twists themselves. But even then sharing players' reactions to the plot and how they dealt with it isn't uncommon.

[Azazel]

   

[Azazel]

Reading in a game isn't fun.  It's a chore.  I don't play games for chores.  If 99% of the story in games was integrated into voice, then stories in games could be a lot more rich.  I think that's kind of what you're talking about, but I really think it has as much to do with players lack of want to be forced into reading as it does providing players with an immersive context (which I agree is also important).  Text in games is a relic mechanic that somehow has survived from the days when you had to fit a game on to a 5 1/4" floppy.  We have hard drives now.  Stop making games I have to read.

Fuck no. I'm playing Fallout 3 at the moment. I read faster than the voice actors mumble their way through their lines. Since there's text there, I can skip through their voice acting and get on with the gaming faster.

Hey, it's not particularly bad voice acting, but it's not more fun listening to an uncanny valley resident slowly talk at me than it is to, you know, actually play the game.

What I really dislike of Schilling's beahviour so far is that he only talks about his game. Which he can't talk about.
If he's a gamer, and I am sure he is, why doesn't he talk with us about games?

If you only post to "mention" (bump) your product, that sounds like marketing to me. I would be definitely interested in his views about gaming in general, not just the distant future of (his own) MMORPG.

Also. This. IainC's version would also suffice.

[LC]

What I really dislike of Schilling's beahviour so far is that he only talks about his game. Which he can't talk about.
If he's a gamer, and I am sure he is, why doesn't he talk with us about games?

I think I asked same thing back around page 13 - 15, and he responded with some BS about not being interested in other games.

[Stormwaltz]

I find it increasingly amusing that the next step in the evolution of MMOs is turning them into singleplayer games. 

Not single-player; multiplayer. "Massive" as a structure around a small group oriented experience. Why? I blame our monkey brains.

Neighborhoods and small groups are probably the way to go. For many years, I was 100% certain anything less than EVE Online's single massive world was a waste of the potential of the medium. When I read about Dunbar's number / the Monkeysphere I realized that the more people you interact with, the more likely you are to treat them as grief targets. It was a sea change in my design philosophy.

It's not the software; it's the hardware. You can patch software, but hardware is a fixed target that you damn well better work within the limits of.

[Tmon]

Voice acting can't replace text for quests and back story entirely because doing so would effectively block hearing impaired or deaf people from playing the game.  A small segment of the gaming population I'm sure but one that can (at least in the US) become party to a pretty nasty lawsuit based on the ADA.

[Bunk]

I find it interesting, that when I think back to "stories" involving MMoGs, what comes to mind is stories that sprang up in the early games like UO and AC1 Darktide. The stories I think of all relate to player based actions and interactions, because these games had little to no quests at all. I mean there were a few NPCs or books here and there that gave out goals, but most of the real stories came up through player interaction, and dare I say it, pvp/pk'ing.

AC1 pushed some of this along with their monthly events, expecially when they'd blow up your home base out from under you, or as Stormwaltz mentioned - having a cross server event that involved pvp to push players. AC Darktide had websites devoted to publishing political guidemaps for the world because things changed so often between different guilds and factions.

Yes, I know those games were hell holes of rampant cheating, carebear raping, etc, etc... but the stories that came out of that were for more interesting than recounting tales of DKP earnings on your 119th run through whatever the raid of the week was. Has anyone every really recounted a story about how awseome the questline in Ironforge to recover the smith's grapplegrommets was? Of course not, because every single player in the game did the exact same quest.

Really, for the size of the game, it's pretty sad that the only famous WoW stories I can think of are Leeroy and some story about a dark and awkward encounter in the tramway.

[Musashi]

I don't think I said remove all text from all games.  I just mean stop forcing me to read shit.

[Bzalthek]

Play Tetris.

[Slayerik]

Add housing
Mark/recall
Pre-casting
Cheap Mounts (that can die and be butchered)



oOooOOOoooOOooooOoo

[Rasix]

 

[HaemishM]

I'm sure there's a chart somewhere that can be used to illustrate Slayerik's points more clearly.

[Lantyssa]

Really, for the size of the game, it's pretty sad that the only famous WoW stories I can think of are Leeroy and some story about a dark and awkward encounter in the tramway.

WoW's quests aren't stories for the most part.  There's the Death Knight intro area and... yeah, I'm drawing a blank.  There are a few small ones here and there, but for the most part they are not meant to tell a story so much as provide a little bit of fluff for why you're being handed a chunk of XP.

[Ingmar]

Really, for the size of the game, it's pretty sad that the only famous WoW stories I can think of are Leeroy and some story about a dark and awkward encounter in the tramway.

WoW's quests aren't stories for the most part.  There's the Death Knight intro area and... yeah, I'm drawing a blank.  There are a few small ones here and there, but for the most part they are not meant to tell a story so much as provide a little bit of fluff for why you're being handed a chunk of XP.

The old Onyxia attunement quest chains were definitely stories. So was the Fallen Hero of the Horde stuff that started in Blasted Lands. Come to think of it there were a fair amount of long 'story' quest chains; either they're now obsolete or nobody does them, though, because the shorter here is some fluff and some XP quests get you to your goal faster.

EDIT: The Van Cleef/Stockades thing, definitely a story!

[kildorn]

Doing WoW story chains was entirely paired with "how annoying is this going to be"

VanCleef took place mostly in the same 2-3 nearby zones, told a story, and gave you well paced rewards for following it along. Engaging.

Ony attunement takes you all over the goddamned place for iffy paced rewards and a final payoff of getting to play with your friends. Blasted Lands was okay until the "run all over the goddamned place" part as well.

I love story quests. I don't love things that yank me out of the zone and send me on 45 minute fedex runs to try and tell me more of the story. I'm turning a page in a book, in the book I rarely need to read about every minute of the two week journey to the next city. Unless it's a Wheel of Time book.

edit: the fucking kidnapped king quest was another horribly paced drops off the goddamned map randomly and makes you run to the middle of fucking nowhere story line. Didn't help that the ending was "huh, guess he's really gone, go buy a book about it!"

[Morfiend]

After recently resubbing to AoC, I am finding that they do this a horrible amount. There are a lot of places where the quests just do not "flow", and have a horrible amount of running. To put it in WoW terms, imagine going to the Barrens, and when you finished a quest it would then send you to Undercity for the turn in. And not once, but lots of quests do this.

[Ingmar]

Doing WoW story chains was entirely paired with "how annoying is this going to be"

VanCleef took place mostly in the same 2-3 nearby zones, told a story, and gave you well paced rewards for following it along. Engaging.

Ony attunement takes you all over the goddamned place for iffy paced rewards and a final payoff of getting to play with your friends. Blasted Lands was okay until the "run all over the goddamned place" part as well.

I love story quests. I don't love things that yank me out of the zone and send me on 45 minute fedex runs to try and tell me more of the story. I'm turning a page in a book, in the book I rarely need to read about every minute of the two week journey to the next city. Unless it's a Wheel of Time book.

edit: the fucking kidnapped king quest was another horribly paced drops off the goddamned map randomly and makes you run to the middle of fucking nowhere story line. Didn't help that the ending was "huh, guess he's really gone, go buy a book about it!"

Perhaps the best example of all is the Stalvan quest in Darkshire, which tells a story, is furnished with all kinds of in-game texts to read, etc. And it hardly gets done anymore because it involves too much running.

[dusematic]

First that's false and second why would spoken imply cutscene?

If you think of the "story" in an MMO as a data dump of exposition that the players must be periodically subjected to then text or a boring voice droning on about dark wizards is pretty much the only way to go about it, but then again that story will be crap so who cares? Data dump is failure, even in good writing let alone horrid MMO writing.

I'm not one of those crazy people who rant about how the gameplay is the story or how players can make there own story (let me tell you about the time I went from level 45 to 46...) but it's certainly possible to integrate the story into the game. One problem is that in many games the story is actually the backstory and there is no real story unfolding. In MMOs nearly everything is backstory.

Although KOTOR bored me to tears I would point to the opening sequence as an example of doing story in a game. Instead of reading a text block about how your ship was attacked and you had to bail to some planet you instead are on the ship, fight the attackers then bail out youself. You play the story. (Which is different from you make the story I would note) Sure there is some text and a few animated bits that you could very loosely call "cutscenes" but these are a small facet of the overall presentation.

I'm just saying, unless you're an artfag, the vast majority of story is going to be communicated via text or voice.  This doesn't mean they can't gussy it up a little via in-game texts (books) or some other clever bit.  I don't totally get your point with KOTOR because there was an initial text exposition in that game, and what follows is comparable to nearly any game ever made.  Even in WoW, you read some cutesy text, and then you're attacked or attacking or searching for something.  

This isn't one of those areas where there are a ton of options.  Complex ideas require language.  

But a good developer will understand that not everyone is down for a ton of talking and reading, and will allow the player to immerse himself as much as he cares to.

[AcidCat]

I think if the player can't change the story, it's largely irrelevant window dressing.

[dusematic]

So movies and books aren't your cup of tea?

[Senses]

On a completely different note, and yet similiar to the conversation at hand....One thing that is bothering me lately, first with WoW and now with Lotro, is the overwhelming nature of walking into a new place for the first time and seeing a ring or exclamation point over literally every single npcs head.  I really get that the idea is to give you so many quests that you are never bored, and yet, if you really wanted to drive your story *with* quests, shouldn't the entirety of a village all be concentrated on the same thing?  I'm not talking about 1 quest per village, but perhaps just one all important quest chain per area that leaves you with the feeling that when your done, you have really helped these people and made their lives better.

Here you have this tiny little one stable town and every single person has some new fedex issue and it occurs to me that if writers actually want you to read the blurb of text information, perhaps they should provide less of it so that when you do see it, you know its actually important.

[Ingmar]

On a completely different note, and yet similiar to the conversation at hand....One thing that is bothering me lately, first with WoW and now with Lotro, is the overwhelming nature of walking into a new place for the first time and seeing a ring or exclamation point over literally every single npcs head.  I really get that the idea is to give you so many quests that you are never bored, and yet, if you really wanted to drive your story *with* quests, shouldn't the entirety of a village all be concentrated on the same thing?  I'm not talking about 1 quest per village, but perhaps just one all important quest chain per area that leaves you with the feeling that when your done, you have really helped these people and made their lives better.

Here you have this tiny little one stable town and every single person has some new fedex issue and it occurs to me that if writers actually want you to read the blurb of text information, perhaps they should provide less of it so that when you do see it, you know its actually important.

WoW has gotten better about this in the expansion, although amusingly I have heard some complaints from people who like the 'scoop up 20 quests and go do them' model about the zone where it is used best, Grizzly Hills.

[AcidCat]

So movies and books aren't your cup of tea?

I enjoy movies and books on their own terms. I expect something much different from a game.

[SnakeCharmer]

I'm not talking about 1 quest per village, but perhaps just one all important quest chain per area that leaves you with the feeling that when your done, you have really helped these people and made their lives better.

Because, rather than taking 50 quests at once, then and leaving/returning to the village 10 times, you're now taking one quest at a time and leaving/returning to the village 49 times.

I think I'd rather eat my keyboard.

However, the above could easily be solved by the quest itself autoupdating your next step/reward/xp into segments while you're out in the wild.  But that creates the next dilemma that they've created this awesome looking village and whatnot and you only see it twice (on arrival, on departure after the last quest).

[Sjofn]

On a completely different note, and yet similiar to the conversation at hand....One thing that is bothering me lately, first with WoW and now with Lotro, is the overwhelming nature of walking into a new place for the first time and seeing a ring or exclamation point over literally every single npcs head.  I really get that the idea is to give you so many quests that you are never bored, and yet, if you really wanted to drive your story *with* quests, shouldn't the entirety of a village all be concentrated on the same thing?  I'm not talking about 1 quest per village, but perhaps just one all important quest chain per area that leaves you with the feeling that when your done, you have really helped these people and made their lives better.

Here you have this tiny little one stable town and every single person has some new fedex issue and it occurs to me that if writers actually want you to read the blurb of text information, perhaps they should provide less of it so that when you do see it, you know its actually important.

WoW has gotten better about this in the expansion, although amusingly I have heard some complaints from people who like the 'scoop up 20 quests and go do them' model about the zone where it is used best, Grizzly Hills.

Hm, back when I was doing it, Grizzly Hills felt like the least "grab 20 quests and do 'em" of those lower-to-mid-70's zones. Maybe it's because now, three trips through later, I know Un'Goro the Second Coming is a WAY worse offender as far as "grab a bunch of quests and bang those bitches out" feel-wise.

[Ingmar]

On a completely different note, and yet similiar to the conversation at hand....One thing that is bothering me lately, first with WoW and now with Lotro, is the overwhelming nature of walking into a new place for the first time and seeing a ring or exclamation point over literally every single npcs head.  I really get that the idea is to give you so many quests that you are never bored, and yet, if you really wanted to drive your story *with* quests, shouldn't the entirety of a village all be concentrated on the same thing?  I'm not talking about 1 quest per village, but perhaps just one all important quest chain per area that leaves you with the feeling that when your done, you have really helped these people and made their lives better.

Here you have this tiny little one stable town and every single person has some new fedex issue and it occurs to me that if writers actually want you to read the blurb of text information, perhaps they should provide less of it so that when you do see it, you know its actually important.

WoW has gotten better about this in the expansion, although amusingly I have heard some complaints from people who like the 'scoop up 20 quests and go do them' model about the zone where it is used best, Grizzly Hills.

Hm, back when I was doing it, Grizzly Hills felt like the least "grab 20 quests and do 'em" of those lower-to-mid-70's zones. Maybe it's because now, three trips through later, I know Un'Goro the Second Coming is a WAY worse offender as far as "grab a bunch of quests and bang those bitches out" feel-wise.

Yes, that is what I mean. The people who wanted scoop 20 and don't read anything were complaining about Grizzly Hills, which is the zone that does the 'just give me a storyline' quest thing best.

What was amusing is you can't make a zone that people won't complain about for some reason.

[Rendakor]

The reason "Grab 20 Quests and go" is more popular is that it leads to faster XP. If you're working on one long quest chain, that generally means more trips to and from town, while efficient XP desires to do as many quests in one run as possible, turning them all in at the same time to minimize travel times.

[kondratti]

I find it increasingly amusing that the next step in the evolution of MMOs is turning them into singleplayer games. 

Not single-player; multiplayer. "Massive" as a structure around a small group oriented experience. Why? I blame our monkey brains.

Neighborhoods and small groups are probably the way to go. For many years, I was 100% certain anything less than EVE Online's single massive world was a waste of the potential of the medium. When I read about Dunbar's number / the Monkeysphere I realized that the more people you interact with, the more likely you are to treat them as grief targets. It was a sea change in my design philosophy.

It's not the software; it's the hardware. You can patch software, but hardware is a fixed target that you damn well better work within the limits of.

Interesting... looks like APB's model of neighbourhoods of 100 or so is a valid model. 

[Tarami]

You can't compare quest text to, uh, well, really any other text medium, I suppose.

Quest text is almost all monologue, dotted with some rare occurances of dialogue or live action (scripting.) There's nothing wrong with text in quests, or presumably even walls of text. The fault lies with the limitations of perspective in such writing, since it can't describe any greater scope (ramifications not directly considered by the granting NPC, for example) or something objective (a storyteller describing in actual terms just how huge and nasty that ogre is drives home the point much better than a villager in the story telling a character the same thing.)

A big part of telling a good story is setting its context, which is really, really hard to do in dialogue and a single point of view. We want to be shown, not told, and in a novel it's the author's job, as the storyteller, to do that, while in film it's the director's job. The author, or director, cannot lie; they're by principle unable to do so. If we're shown that elephants can fly, it is so. We might not appriciate the fact that they can, but in this context, we know they can. Characters on the other hand lie all the time, about everything. A character can even be a figment of another character's imagination, but it cannot be explained as a figment of the reader's imagination. (Like how Tyler in Fight Club is a real character; he's just not real to other characters.) As readers we're very aware of this and in scepsis adjust any story characters tell us (or rather, other characters) because we have no reason to believe them. Pushing the point a bit farther than it can probably take, we can assume that everything ever observed or said by a character is a lie, big or small, because we cannot, without the author's acknowledgement, prove its truthfulness using our own frame of reference.

It's not something that's solved by alternative ways to do the same thing, like voice acting. It may improve certain aspects, like actual dialogue, but it won't improve the way the story is told and it won't necessarily increase the believability of the story. To be a bit bold, I will say that's just not how storytelling works and therefore I believe the general principle of how stories are told in MMOs is fundamentally flawed. It basically can't be fixed as long as we are using the "quest dispensing" mechanisms abound in modern MMOs.

It's 6 AM here. Sorry if it doesn't make sense. 

[Sjofn]

Yes, that is what I mean. The people who wanted scoop 20 and don't read anything were complaining about Grizzly Hills, which is the zone that does the 'just give me a storyline' quest thing best.

What was amusing is you can't make a zone that people won't complain about for some reason.

Oh, I see what you mean now. Meh, fuck 'em! You can totally skip that zone if you want if you're rested early on ANYway.

[Margalis]

You can't compare quest text to, uh, well, really any other text medium, I suppose.

Quest text is almost all monologue, dotted with some rare occurances of dialogue or live action (scripting.)

In short it's bad writing and castigating people for not paying attention to it is castigating people for displaying taste. The Evil Troll Jabbar broke into Queen Esmerelda's bedroom and stole her magic tiara, it's up to you, a totally random stranger, to get it back.

Look, I just wrote an MMO quest. Maybe throw in a thee or thou for authentic flavor.

[tmp]

The Evil Troll Jabbar broke into Queen Esmerelda's bedroom and stole her magic tiara, it's up to you, a totally random stranger, to get it back.

Look, I just wrote an MMO quest. Maybe throw in a thee or thou for authentic flavor.

The evil Paris broke into Queen Helen's bedroom and stole the Queen. Are you a bad enough greek hero dude to rescue the Queen?

[UnSub]

You can't compare quest text to, uh, well, really any other text medium, I suppose.

Quest text is almost all monologue, dotted with some rare occurances of dialogue or live action (scripting.)

In short it's bad writing and castigating people for not paying attention to it is castigating people for displaying taste. The Evil Troll Jabbar broke into Queen Esmerelda's bedroom and stole her magic tiara, it's up to you, a totally random stranger, to get it back.

It'd still be a bad narrative, not matter how it was delivered. You could have Robert DeNiro giving that quest in an fully interactive in-game environment and it would still be bad.

Fully voiced dialogue helps, but at the end of the day there are only about 10 different quest types - it is how they are presented that counts.

[AcidCat]

Fully voiced dialogue helps, but at the end of the day there are only about 10 different quest types - it is how they are presented that counts.

What would really count would be better quests with mutliple solutions to give the player some choice and free agency in the gameworld, but I guess that would be asking a lot for an mmo.