http://www.shift.com/web/profile/profile005a.asp
I have found that I do not like to waste my breath anymore on things. I'm a pretty quiet person, doing what I can to help things out. So I'll be quiet brief on my opinion of this article...
This seems to be the biggest admission of "We want to tell the story, not have the player's interact." that I have ever been uttered from anyone who works at Funcom's mouth.
I don't see what you a getting at...
Well this is fine...But we're still going to have those major plot points, the major story arcs that we decide, because storytelling is also about telling a story and not just letting people run around and do whatever they want to do. I think there has to be a balance: Good storytelling cannot be completely interactive. It will be interactive to the level that people find interesting.
I think this is fine too. I don't see how it can be any other way...and I don't really know what people are expecting. Players a never going to be the centre of the story, and neither are they going to control it directly. But why is that a problem?No, we work on the story continuously. In the case of Anarchy, we do look at what's happening in the game. We also lay a plan for what's going to happen in the months to come, but we are flexible in terms of what happens. It's both an organic process and there's also a traditional story-telling aspect to it, because you still need that. You still need story telling, and not the players' story creating.
Take a look here...
http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...?threadid=3355
Last edited by Hiero; Dec 8th, 2001 at 23:08:16.
To add to this, the reason that nobody can be the center of the story is because if Funcom did make a player or a group of players the center, everyone else will cry "foul" and "favoritism". It looks like in this respect, Funcom is in a no-win situation.Originally posted by Hiero
Players a never going to be the centre of the story, and neither are they going to control it directly. But why is that a problem?
Don't have any players at the very epicenter of the scheme of things, and get flamed.
Have some players at the very epicenter, but not everybody, and get flamed.
There is no way to have each and every subscriber at the center of the story, because this isn't a single player game. That's just the way it is, in my view.
If I am wrong and there IS actually a way to have each and every subscriber be at the very epicenter of the story, I'd love to hear it, though. "It can be done" is not what I want to see, I want to see a response of "It can be done, and HERE'S HOW TO DO IT."
/sighOriginally posted by Shorthack
... If I am wrong and there IS actually a way to have each and every subscriber be at the very epicenter of the story, I'd love to hear it, though. "It can be done" is not what I want to see, I want to see a response of "It can be done, and HERE'S HOW TO DO IT."
what about another button on the login-screen, called "Play Storyteller-Account" ? by pressing this button you can login using either a pure random or to some degree customizable avatar.
the special thing about this account would be some helper commands like /spawn key (to mission area), /spawn mob, /spawn npc etc (just the basics for creatin a short mission)
of course those accounts don't have the power of gm-accounts or so.
maybe there are some constants for available credits (max. 100k credits per hour (depending on lev etc), only certain amount of keys/items etc within a set time-frame etc)
yeah, most of the work would come from preventin people exploitin this feature, but then with all the ip-/credits-/items- etc etc exploiters out there i don't really give a **** ehehehe
if one storyteller could entertain around 10 people, we do not need that much of them to have *nearly* everyone involved me thinks ..... ,)
yep, you see storytellers were the number one reason for me to love ao so much ..... ,)
this means war if you now try to talk you out of it funcom, eh
ehehehe
tradeskillz ?
Um...I don't think this is gonna happen on any MMORPG in the next few years. Maybe sometime in the future when someone comes up with a better way of handleing it.
Until such I time...if you want to do that sort of thing, then I guess Neverwinter Nights is your best bet.
"Maybe Funcom should move 1000 AO players into Clon****, lock down the zone and make dyeable armor to attract more players?"
A DaoC player defending AO
Nice idea, very NWN-ish. However, EverQuest recently did something like this and it failed horribly - it was called "Project M" and there was a button where you could log in as a random NPC. Unfortunately this was used to harrass players, especially newbies, by repeatedly killing them and then corpse camping them. (Although corpse camping is not a problem in AO, I agree.)Originally posted by Fazun
what about another button on the login-screen, called "Play Storyteller-Account" ? by pressing this button you can login using either a pure random or to some degree customizable avatar.
the special thing about this account would be some helper commands like /spawn key (to mission area), /spawn mob, /spawn npc etc (just the basics for creatin a short mission)
Think about if one of these "Storytellers" decided to camp a grid point? They can attack in 75% supression zones, since they are effectively NPC's.
You may not care about the exploiters, but I sure as hell do.
And, it's impossible for Funcom to keep with the 4-year story arc if there are players they don't even know changing their story around.
As I said before, sounds like you really want Neverwinter Nights. I'll be getting it on the day it comes out too...I can't wait for it either.
Lorekeep,
I agree with you whole heartedly on your reading of the interview.
It really disappoints me.
The outcome of the story, generally, has been determined. AND - it seems that they have an attitude that they dont WANT the players to have any ability to effect the story.
I posted to a similar topic elsewhere where I stated that this game's story should have been like a "choose-your-own-adventure" book.
Those books were scripted - but - they were scripted in various decision trees based upon decisions made before (or based upon actions taken, goals achieved, etc).
They could easily have written a script like that. Of course, the problem with that type of story would be the need to generate the story differently on each server depending on the outcome.
Example (and just a hypothetical example): Rubi Ka One the clans destroy all the notum factories. This takes the story down a new "path". Why? Maybe the prices of goods go up. Maybe Omni-Tek ousts Ross in that scenario - whatever was scripted.
Maybe on Rubi Two the notum facilities arent destroyed - which takes the story down a different path.
Seriously though, how hard is this?
Even the wing commander games had major decision trees. This isnt rocket science.
The part that is bothersome is that the writer seems to be taken an attitude of "so what we dont want the players to determine things".
That is the really disturbing part.
-Machievelli
Oh and one other point that pisses me off - at the trial of Truwind and Aberic - they kept calling the defense's points "irrelevant" because I am quite certain we discovered a part of the story that was not suppose to be disclosed yet.
Really silly - but I suppose they dont want US to know about the Unicorn company, etc. just yet.....
-Mach
Maybe, just maybe, the character that was calling the points "irrelevant" didn't know about the Unicorn Company and was thinking you were all of hot air?Originally posted by machievelli
Oh and one other point that pisses me off - at the trial of Truwind and Aberic - they kept calling the defense's points "irrelevant" because I am quite certain we discovered a part of the story that was not suppose to be disclosed yet.
Really silly - but I suppose they dont want US to know about the Unicorn company, etc. just yet.....
-Mach
Just because a GM might know the whole story doesn't mean the character they are portraying does. That's why it's called "acting".
Exactly.Originally posted by Shorthack
Maybe, just maybe, the character that was calling the points "irrelevant" didn't know about the Unicorn Company and was thinking you were all of hot air?
Just because a GM might know the whole story doesn't mean the character they are portraying does. That's why it's called "acting".
"Maybe Funcom should move 1000 AO players into Clon****, lock down the zone and make dyeable armor to attract more players?"
A DaoC player defending AO
Ultimately, this is going to be a problem in any large MMRPG. People working on something develop a very proprietary stance towards what they are doing. So much so that they get angry when anyone wants to do a single thing differently. Witness any movie director or stage director in existence. In this sense AO is no different.
I WOULD like to see player influence on the story. That was a major draw for me to PLAY AO. And no, for all of you who keep trotting out the tired arguement of "It can't be all about YOU, you selfish person", I'm not talking about seeing daily news reports about how Canary single-handedly led Rubi-Ka into a new age of freedom, I'm talking about how the the clans, (in the form of a hundred players maybe) decide to deal a crippling blow to Omni by taking out the notum launchers in Clon****, or Omni (in the form of another several dozen players) decides that the clans have been pandered to enough, shells Athens and destroys several buildings, or even a small group of players go out among the Rhinomen and work to unite the tribes, forming another power that both the clans and Omni has to reckon with. I don't think I can accept the answer that it won't be "fair" that certain people get singled out, so we must all remain anonymous and ineffectual masses. Why would you want to play that?
I guess people are right though, and this type of game is impossible in a MMRPG format. I had hoped. Oh well, NWN is coming out, and hopefully it will be a good product. My friends and I, a group of about 6, are looking forward to doing in it what we've been doing on the tabletop for years. Telling stories... The worlds we've created have been collective ventures. For one of our games (where I wasn't the GM) I wrote an 80 page handbook on one of the races in it, detailing their culture down to the music that they listen to... And the GM decided to use it, so my other friend did the same for the vast human kingdom in that game, and so on... It made for a better game and we had fun having a chance to shape the world. And even in the game itself, while we were actually playing, quite often we'd do something that was obviously "against the plot" and the GM would (as I did many times when GMing my own games for them) shrug and just take the story down a new road, adapting.
I've been missing that kind of game the past few months, and I've been talking to my friends and they've said the same. Maybe its time to give AO a rest for a bit and do some REAL role-playing.
For everyone that is posting such helpful suggestions as "what did you expect" and "why did you think you could affect the story" and, my favorite, "GMs are supposed to tell a story" (I feel really sorry for their RP experiences), check out:
http://www.anarchy-online.com/conten.../articles/956L
and
http://www.anarchy-online.com/conten.../articles/960L
Scorus
Scorus:
Yes, the articles tells us quite exactly what one could suspect. We are not to tell the story..We (players that is) will effect the story.
Someone killed Radiman. so the effect is a trial. Radiman is not dead, since that would be us telling the story, and 40k people can never tell a story. But it showed us effecting the story, since theire were a trial.
About GM:s telling a story:
Yes, if youre a GM having 4 players, then the players can get to tell the story, and the GM can improvise after that.
But that can never be the caase when over 1000 people are in the same game.Theres to many powergamers around, to many griefers, and to many that simply wont listen to others, and to many that wants to tell the story all by them selfs..
So we will, in the next 5-10 years never see a computergame (that turns out good) where player will do the story all by them selfs, because that would be Everquest, or UO...
It can not turn out anyother way then a couple of guilds(often with stupidly high lvl:s) fighting to see who acctually controls the bridge/town/tower...and thats not a story...and not that intersting either.
Father Chagidiel
High priest in The Church of OmniTek
Though I agree...if there ever were such a game,that acctually worked, it would be fun.
Theres a saying around here that goes something like "You wont have more fun, then you make by your self"
You have to make things happend youre self. I am known by quite a bunch of people, thus i have an impact on the world of Rubi-Ka, and i have fun. Sure FC maybe never will see me, or pay any notice of me, but that doesnt matter, since i know lots of other players know me, and I have effected them, as well as they have effected me.
My tip for others feeling they have no impact on the story:
Make youre self known, and dont just hang around and waiting for the dragon to show up in front of you, so you can slay it and be a world celebrety. The real world doenst work that way, and a compuetergame with thousands of other players cant work that way.
True, a singel game, or a RPG could work in that way, but thats because theres not so many people around.
And please, remember this when SWG comes to the stores as well, cause I would HATE to see that game go down the drain because people expect to create the story all by themselfs, and thereby gets to high expectations and eventually gets dissapointed...
Ohh, I am tired now, so i will stop rambling..=P
Father Chagidiel
High priest in The Church of OmniTek
I seem to recall this actually happening and being incorporated into the story...Originally posted by Canary
I'm talking about how the the clans, (in the form of a hundred players maybe) decide to deal a crippling blow to Omni by taking out the notum launchers in Clon****
http://community.anarchy-online.com/...articles/1240L
And the subsequent "continuation" of this storyline...
http://community.anarchy-online.com/...articles/1181L
Unfortunately, nobody cared to elaborate further than what Titan Mining had done. Where was the Clan response to our assessment? Where were the Omni's who were outraged by this, and wanting to take revenge? The Voice of Freedom listed the people who were in charge of this...My name was listed on the Omni-Tek response...How come nothing has come of this?
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