SD games lack of Stories ?

(Dthy) #21

What about a QW mini series of videos? :smiley:

(tangoliber) #22

I find that Natural Selection 2 is really good at creating emergent narratives during multiplayer.

This is not something I want Splash Damage to focus on though.

(rookie1) #23

I would see a Global story for ETQW, then through MP with a narrative beginnning describing set of events with nice videos. These events would be played in mp maps
and adding new episodes of the whole story through DLCs…that would be nice ! ?

(Exedore) #24

We did this with the Brink DLC, as some people have figured out. As I said before, it’s all about the demand.

(rookie1) #25

ETQW 2 need this :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

(Stroggafier) #26

Before any game is released, how does it draw an audience? Story. Call it context, call it a “game universe”, borrow it from predecessors, or copy it from competitors. Without story and as @rookie1 refers to it, “nice videos”, the chances of success are, well, poor.

It isn’t enough to just have faction A versus faction B defend or take strategic objective 1, 2, 3 etc. That’s the mathematical equation, but not the “game”. That vanilla approach is simply not compelling, even in MP, without immersive base rationale, plausible tieback to the back-story, associated cause-effect, great graphics and sound, and plausible reward.

I believe without these elements, players feel baited then betrayed.

My son hates dialogue, cut-scenes and menus - he wants to get right to the shooting. I’m sure he’s not alone in that regard. But ask why are you playing this game rather than that game, and the answer is always the same: Primarily its game setting context, next its relevance to his personal sensibilities, graphically interesting, and so on, down the line, through what I call, “Story”.

(SockDog) #27

[QUOTE=Stroggafier;402632]Before any game is released, how does it draw an audience? Story. Call it context, call it a “game universe”, borrow it from predecessors, or copy it from competitors. Without story and as @rookie1 refers to it, “nice videos”, the chances of success are, well, poor.

It isn’t enough to just have faction A versus faction B defend or take strategic objective 1, 2, 3 etc. That’s the mathematical equation, but not the “game”. That vanilla approach is simply not compelling, even in MP, without immersive base rationale, plausible tieback to the back-story, associated cause-effect, great graphics and sound, and plausible reward.

I believe without these elements, players feel baited then betrayed.

My son hates dialogue, cut-scenes and menus - he wants to get right to the shooting. I’m sure he’s not alone in that regard. But ask why are you playing this game rather than that game, and the answer is always the same: Primarily its game setting context, next its relevance to his personal sensibilities, graphically interesting, and so on, down the line, through what I call, “Story”.[/QUOTE]

This is hand holding and bastardising multiplayer into some sort of singleplayer with others. It’s the same thing that makes people in multiplayer act like the 15 other people on the server are their for their entertainment only. It belittles the focus that is why you should be playing multiplayer, to interact with other real players.

If the need for a story was so key to a multiplayer game’s success then you wouldn’t see the likes of DayZ spark so much interest. Minecraft prove to be an unheard of success despite poor graphics, no story and janky controls. Games like Counter-Strike and Quake 3 have less than a handful of lines of story yet still be played in considerable numbers years later. Even CoD/MW has zero narrative in its multiplayer.

Obsessing over story in a multiplayer FPS is just like taping on all these RPG elements into the game to appeal to that crowd or putting in all the Peggle glitter to keep the OCD and ADHD people glued to their controllers. You want to see what a mess that all turns out to be then by all means play another game of Brink.

(rookie1) #28

If all the good elements of a MP games are there, adding a SP element to it shouldn’t be a big deal for the MP players if it’s doesn’t interfere .Except that this game should add new players base to it .
Gaming industrie is strange .Why a weird game have huge success and other Very cool games don’t sometime?
There is type of games that has good timing imo voluntary or not when they come out .
There is exception games like if they were the first of its kind…Blizard’s Games… and Minecraft like you mentioned.
Would the zombies games would had a good popularity 15 years ago …idk may be not .
But zombies things is ending ,been there for long and I guest ppl are ready for new stuffs… new topics soon .
Deep in me ,despite I’m more etqw type ,I believe Brink could gain in popularity .
When you believe and work hard to make it happend all is possible .You have to be strong in Fierce battle in the gaming industry

(SockDog) #29

You can’t have this strong, in your face, narrative in MP because traditionally that means you see the same cut scene every time you play a map which could be 1000’s of times. As I said, L4D tells a narrative through the actual environment, you can ignore it quite literally and just pew pew the infected but if you’re new there is always some moments of discovery. I’m not against a good back story in games but it has to be done with the understanding that it NEVER EVER gets in the way of people playing multiplayer.

As for DayZ and Minecraft. Well both games off something new and relevant to this topic. That is emergent gameplay and so narrative. The premise in both is very small but the worlds are open and tooled in such a way that you write your own story. DayZ in particular seems to have grown not because of the zombies but purely because of the experiences you have when you’re alive. 15 years ago? Well I’d say Elite was pretty expansive for its time and did a very similar thing albeit in single player, that was… 28 years ago. :slight_smile:

(BackSnip3) #30

No, SD games don’t lack a story, they just need a strong settled universe.
I don’t like the idea of having a story in a MP game.
For example Brink has cutscenes and such things (which were hopefully short) which are in my opinion just useless, whereas Quake Wars (whose scenario is very simple) has a nice universe which makes things actually coherent. The asymmetrical gameplay was also a good idea. It helps settling the universe and it gives more choices to people when they play.
The Brink scenario is simple too but the game could have used a real good SP campaign.

The actual “story” that matters would consist in the map objectives for me.
In ETQW they are quite different, thinking about Volcano or Slipgate for example.
These are the best maps because they don’t have the classic steps like: construct the bridge, then escort MCP, then hack the shield and boom that last thing…
In Brink some efforts were made too… please SD keep that effort, that’s what makes the objective-based gameplay interesting!

(rookie1) #31

I’m thinking more for MP of extending the intro cutscenes that will put you in situation via videos That you can skip at any time .
no cutscenes ingame .
SP is a good way to make a story. If there is no SP for a particular game .extended Intros for the incoming MP maps is a good things imo.
Yes ETQW has story like for Quarry map story says :
‘The GDF have forced the Strogg ship to crash-land in a Quarry. The Ship’s auto-destruct has failed, and the Strogg must power it up with three energy cells to prevent the GDF from learning the secrets of deep space travel.’
This is part of the global story that could be made into videos at the extended intro

(MoonOnAStick) #32

Having some narrative to hang your multiplayer around is nice but not essential. Any story you graft onto TDM or CTF will probably be awful.

ET and QW took a short-cut by extending existing universes, but they still explained what you were trying to accomplish. I think that’s important because the ET formula is so rigid (unlike Minecraft for example). If I have to repeatedly escort this tank/plant that explosive it’s nice to know why.

A bit of humour goes a long way when telling the story too. Brink had an interesting premise but hearing (and watching) the same serious dialogue every map was a bit much. L4D is a better parallel. There’s a story but it’s out of the way unless you want to explore it.

(SockDog) #33

[QUOTE=rookie1;402650]I’m thinking more for MP of extending the intro cutscenes that will put you in situation via videos That you can skip at any time .
no cutscenes ingame .[/quote]

But the issue here is how many times are you going to want to see those cut scenes even as someone that’s asking for them? Sure they’re in a loading position so it’s dead time anyway but come on it’s going to get very annoying seeing and hearing the same scene over and over. I’d also probably argue that the dead time could be used for something else like displaying the last match, game or global stats. Even an live heatmap of the upcoming map.

SP is a good way to make a story. If there is no SP for a particular game .extended Intros for the incoming MP maps is a good things imo.

Valve have a nice approach (I’m talking from my primary L4D experience). They release cinematics outside of the game or as intros. They do comic books. They troll like SOBs! It all builds on the game world but it doesn’t detract from the flow of the game. Hell I still find myself watching the L4D intro movies once in a while, and that’s primarily because during hundreds of hours of play they are not thrust upon you. They’re still fresh years later, I still chuckle at the chocolate helicopter joke.

Slightly off topic but I can’t wait to see what the SFM (Source Film Maker) brings about. That’s one incredibly powerful tool, I mean it’s what they used to make all their cinematics themselves.

(tokamak) #34

Well said. I don’t play DayZ (yet) but I’m addicted to the videos on Youtube. What games like Minecraft, DayZ (and ET) have in common is that the narrative lies in the gameplay itself:

//youtu.be/PYKv4vc4cdA