I'm looking for more immersive content.
By
ClawsandEffect,
Posted on: 2010-02-20 17:18 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
I see you have been playing since 2004.
I am unsure why you havent bothered to read the TEXT in this game? I dont read the text, but I also dont care. You seem to care about the text, so perhaps you should read it. Then, you wouldn't be missing out on any of the epic lore.
If your bored, go do all the 5 stars 500+ plays on the Mission Architect.
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If you want to be immersed in City of Heroes, you need to treat it more like a book. Yes, there's lots of text that you can just skip past, just as you can leaf through a book, have a look at the last page and ask what the big deal was. Lacking voice acting and cutscenes (that are not incredibly annoying), the game really does play out like a textual story that you basically fight your way through. If you don't read the text, there's really nothing to immerse you in the game.|
Originally Posted by Prime_Nighthawk
I'm curious about what kind of content COH has to offer. The basic combat is fun, and I've enjoyed leveling up my toons. I've blown through mission after mission. Usually I don't read too much of the text, and I realize I probably miss out on some of the story and background for the various heroes and factions. It just seems that COX doesn't do a good job of letting you know what you should pay attention to and what you can just mindlessly blow through.
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Personally, I wouldn't look for the same kind of "immersive" content a single-player game takes you through. Those games are largely scripted and rely on predictable player paths, mood music, scripted dialogues, cutscenes, briefings and so on. They're also usually 10-20 hours long. An MMO in general is going to have a much more loose interpretation of immersion and will basically tell you a story for your character to play through, which you have to read. There's no way around that.
There are fights against iconic characters, obviously, as well as fights with iconic character fighting on your side, there are a few scripted sequences and a few special missions, but by and large, that's the most you can expect out of an MMO. Even the the-called epic content just constitutes more fighting, just against bigger bosses, possibly with more elaborate techniques required to defeat them. But if you don't read the text, that still leads to the "Who the hell is Kel'Tuzzad?" problem. You're fighting a big thing at the end, but you have no idea why, who that big thing is, what it did to deserve being killed, or even what the hell a "Naxramas" even is. And that can be rather embarrassing.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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The mission text does a pretty good job of setting up immersion, but you have to let it draw you in. If you focus on the fact that you're in Yet Another Warehouse it'll sort of pull you out of that.
The task forces are one way to interact with the big players of Paragon, and the endgame content typically involves fighting Praetorians and saving the world, but you'll still be slogging through offices and forests to get to the epic battle scene.
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If it's CoV, I would simply make a new character and solo story arcs all the way to 50. The underlying storyline for villains is the Destined One. You're basically doing bad things with other people, climb your rank and finally prove yourself as the one. The climax is when you do the patron arc where you prove yourself to Lord Recluse.|
Originally Posted by Prime_Nighthawk
So I guess what I'm asking is, how do I get to the good stuff? Does it even exist? And by "good stuff" I'm talking about missions where you get to do things like interact with the major characters of the game. Custom missions that aren't in the same warehouse, tunnel, or research facility that i've seen 1000 times before, killing the same old enemies, etc, etc.
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For CoH, I don't think there is one coherent story line as in CoV. My feeling is that the stories in CoH are to introduce you various mob groups, where they come from and what they are doing. Since the stories are about the mobs, not really about you as in CoV, I think it's not as immersive. But if you like crime fighting, it should be ok. If you stick to the contacts of a specific origin (contacts are divided into different origins), you'll discover some interesting things. Usually, the low level mob groups only have some stupid plots, things do get more sophisticated at higher levels.
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Thanks for the thoughtful reply, but I'm disappointed by what you had to say about COH and I disagree that there aren't better ways of doing things. Text has it's place, but games are an interactive medium. COH could be so much more immersive. Why not have voice acting in some select parts? Why not have more cut-scenes (via in game engine or CGI).
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
If you want to be immersed in City of Heroes, you need to treat it more like a book. Yes, there's lots of text that you can just skip past, just as you can leaf through a book, have a look at the last page and ask what the big deal was. Lacking voice acting and cutscenes (that are not incredibly annoying), the game really does play out like a textual story that you basically fight your way through. If you don't read the text, there's really nothing to immerse you in the game.
Personally, I wouldn't look for the same kind of "immersive" content a single-player game takes you through. Those games are largely scripted and rely on predictable player paths, mood music, scripted dialogues, cutscenes, briefings and so on. They're also usually 10-20 hours long. An MMO in general is going to have a much more loose interpretation of immersion and will basically tell you a story for your character to play through, which you have to read. There's no way around that. There are fights against iconic characters, obviously, as well as fights with iconic character fighting on your side, there are a few scripted sequences and a few special missions, but by and large, that's the most you can expect out of an MMO. Even the the-called epic content just constitutes more fighting, just against bigger bosses, possibly with more elaborate techniques required to defeat them. But if you don't read the text, that still leads to the "Who the hell is Kel'Tuzzad?" problem. You're fighting a big thing at the end, but you have no idea why, who that big thing is, what it did to deserve being killed, or even what the hell a "Naxramas" even is. And that can be rather embarrassing. |
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I think basically it's just a matter of different players favoring different things here. I took time off from CoH, played WoW for several months, took two different characters to 80 during that time, participated in end game raids up to and including Ulduar and the Trial of the Crusader, which was the last one released before I quit and came back here. WoW has everything that you describe... voice acting, cutscenes, end game raiding, etc.|
Originally Posted by Prime_Nighthawk
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, but I'm disappointed by what you had to say about COH and I disagree that there aren't better ways of doing things. Text has it's place, but games are an interactive medium. COH could be so much more immersive. Why not have voice acting in some select parts? Why not have more cut-scenes (via in game engine or CGI).
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I never felt a sense of immersion in WoW.
I feel immersion when a game inspires me to add to the storyline with fiction of my own. Ironically, every game I have ever played for the last 20 years has engendered that sort of immersion in me. At least on the internet. However, console games generally don't. Knights of the Old Republic was a great game, but it was not an immersive game. There was nothing particularly different about your jedi from any other jedi who might be walking through this story. Mass Effect was the same. Great game. Had loads of fun. But it never became more than 'a game,' which is what to me defines immersion.
Once a game becomes a storytelling experience and inspires me to write my own stories to add to the universe, then I am immersed. You cannot do that with the linear, console rpgs because essentially there is only one story to add to and the developers have already written it from beginning to end.
That is probably why I never felt any immersion in WoW. Blizzard controls the story to such an extent that there is really no room for your character to become part of the narrative, any more than 'generic character x' is part of the storyline. Blizzard's story is about Arthas. At least during the period of time I played. Every cutscene I saw, every bit of voice acting I experienced, every raid I participated in... all of them were part of Arthas' story, a story in which I was a minor, minor character, because it was always implied that I would have to gather at least 40 of my friends to even have a chance against Arthas and even then 40:1, we would probably still lose.
That is not immersion to me.
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dunno, have some guesses, in the competing game with voice acting, i listen to it once, maybe and then hammer the skip button furiously every time thereafter. for the costs of putting it in the game, does it really provide major bang for the buck? As for the cinemas, Im guessing part of it deals with having multiple players at different points of the cinemas...am i going to be happy if my support guys still are in the cinemas while I am being leg-humped by romulus? Plus, when ma was coming out, it was strongly hinted that doing cinemas is not a fast nor efficient system, so while cinemas are nice, how many resources are being hogged by them for something that i am not going to skip after the first 2 times i do it?|
Originally Posted by Prime_Nighthawk
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, but I'm disappointed by what you had to say about COH and I disagree that there aren't better ways of doing things. Text has it's place, but games are an interactive medium. COH could be so much more immersive. Why not have voice acting in some select parts? Why not have more cut-scenes (via in game engine or CGI).
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I'm not adverse to either of those things, I just feel that they are largely superficial, and that the text does a pretty good job of doing what it has to.
The problem with cutscenes and cinematics and VA, is that in an MMO you're inevitably playing with other people who'll feel very differently about them than you do. For every one person that feels games are improved by all of that, there are plenty that detest it and aren't afraid to say so.
I remember Guild Wars having really pretty, informative cinematics where your character actually talked and interacted, as well as general ones that introduced the area and so forth. If you were on a team though, what you saw at the bottom immediately was something like "FighterChick and MonkMan want to skip this", so now you either follow their lead, or ignore that and inevitably get yelled at about it, neither of which is immersive. Look at the threads in the past here that have asked for some VA or more cutscenes, and you'll see the same sort of resistance. *I* agree with you, I think some VA especially would be cool, but we're a minority.
I feel sorry for the writers in this game. They do a decent enough job, don't get me wrong, but with so many character and concept possibilities they have to sadly either railroad you into following the story or be incredibly generic about it. Hard to say which is worse, but what choice is there?
I do kind of wish the devs would go back and revise a lot of the old story arcs with that new formatting they use on the newer ones. (Story arc title in color, "Part #", all that). It'd at least make it more obvious when it's time to pay attention and when it's just XP fodder.
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Originally Posted by Sister_Twelve
I think basically it's just a matter of different players favoring different things here. I took time off from CoH, played WoW for several months, took two different characters to 80 during that time, participated in end game raids up to and including Ulduar and the Trial of the Crusader, which was the last one released before I quit and came back here. WoW has everything that you describe... voice acting, cutscenes, end game raiding, etc.
I never felt a sense of immersion in WoW. I feel immersion when a game inspires me to add to the storyline with fiction of my own. Ironically, every game I have ever played for the last 20 years has engendered that sort of immersion in me. At least on the internet. However, console games generally don't. Knights of the Old Republic was a great game, but it was not an immersive game. There was nothing particularly different about your jedi from any other jedi who might be walking through this story. Mass Effect was the same. Great game. Had loads of fun. But it never became more than 'a game,' which is what to me defines immersion. Once a game becomes a storytelling experience and inspires me to write my own stories to add to the universe, then I am immersed. You cannot do that with the linear, console rpgs because essentially there is only one story to add to and the developers have already written it from beginning to end. That is probably why I never felt any immersion in WoW. Blizzard controls the story to such an extent that there is really no room for your character to become part of the narrative, any more than 'generic character x' is part of the storyline. Blizzard's story is about Arthas. At least during the period of time I played. Every cutscene I saw, every bit of voice acting I experienced, every raid I participated in... all of them were part of Arthas' story, a story in which I was a minor, minor character, because it was always implied that I would have to gather at least 40 of my friends to even have a chance against Arthas and even then 40:1, we would probably still lose. That is not immersion to me. |
I get the feeling that you're treating role playing and immersion as the same thing here. In a game like Mass Effect, your objectives are extremely limited. It's not an "open-ended" game. I bet if you played something like Oblivion, you would get a feeling much more like you get in an MMO-- like you are making your own path. What I'm talking about in terms of the "immersiveness" of a single player game like Mass Effect has more to do with the production qualities that bring you into the experience (voicework, scripted events, interacting with friendly units, etc). MMO's have lagged behind single player games in this area for a long time, but they are starting to catch up.
Maybe it's just me, but I've played both WOW and Lord of the Rings Online and for some reason WOW does not feel as RP friendly to me as LOTRO. Maybe it's the settings or the ultra-competitiveness of WOW. Anyway, I'm not sure that what you felt about WOW is necessarily because of a cinematic, story-centric focus. LOTRO has that too, yet I was able to getting immersed in my characters and their stories that I created through my actions while also enjoying the more linear, "epic" stories.
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| Once a game becomes a storytelling experience and inspires me to write my own stories to add to the universe, then I am immersed. You cannot do that with the linear, console rpgs because essentially there is only one story to add to and the developers have already written it from beginning to end. |
Okay, I thought of a simple example of the kind of thing I'm talking about. I don't ever recall two NPC's talking back and forth (text) during a mission. This happens in instances in LOTRO all the time. The game freezes everyone in place and the npc's will blab at each other for a bit. Then you kill them :P
For example, one of the epic story quests in LOTRO has you tracking down one of the Nazgul after they were washed away at the river outside of Rivendell. You find him at Helegrod which is an ancient Dwarf fortress in the Misty Mountains. The Nazgul and his servants are performing a ritual where they infuse fell spirits into the rotten corpse of the dragon Thorog who had taken over the fortress but was killed long ago. When you come upon them, they are in the middle of the ritual. You interupt them halfway through it, and Thorog flies off before coming fully under their control (killing him was a raid later in the game). Anyway it's a very cool scene.
CO is a pretty good argument against voice acting and cutscenes. There is nothing far more irritating than being locked in place some god-awful voice actors bounce shakey dialogue back and forth between each other. LOTRO was just about tolerable due to the lack of voice acting, but it really broke up gameflow during multiple playthroughs.
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In CoH, that happens a lot of the time in newer content, except without the "everyone freezes in place" bit. Try the final mission of the Faultline arc, for an excellent example.|
Originally Posted by Prime_Nighthawk
Okay, I thought of a simple example of the kind of thing I'm talking about. I don't ever recall two NPC's talking back and forth (text) during a mission. This happens in instances in LOTRO all the time. The game freezes everyone in place and the npc's will blab at each other for a bit.
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The devs have the tech for cutscenes, and do sometimes add them in... But the problem with cutscenes is that they get old pretty fast.
My characters - all on Virtue.
Gabe's Internet [censored] Theory
RMT spammers WILL steal your credit card.
Play more redside.
CoH has some good arcs, but they're buried in a lot of (frequently defeat all) filler missions that can quickly become boring. CoV arcs are usually shorter and faster moving, and the contacts are mostly well written with actual personalities.
Seer Marino and Marshall Brass are probably the earliest examples of contacts who give out mission arcs that really matter. They're both in the 15-20 range and I highly recommend them. Seer Marino's arc in particular, Oh Wretched Man, is the best story telling I've come across in this game. Better than most single player games in fact.
But you will have to read the mission briefs and the clues (especially the clues) to get the most out of it.
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I for one wouldn't mind a lot more chatter from the enemy mobs. Especially when you're helping someone else with a story arc. As is teammates miss out on the information provided by the contact and only have the mission description to read. Sure, you could hit auto-run while you fly over the zone and check it, but that hardly immerse you in the story.|
Originally Posted by Prime_Nighthawk
Okay, I thought of a simple example of the kind of thing I'm talking about. I don't ever recall two NPC's talking back and forth (text) during a mission. This happens in instances in LOTRO all the time. The game freezes everyone in place and the npc's will blab at each other for a bit. Then you kill them :P
For example, one of the epic story quests in LOTRO has you tracking down one of the Nazgul after they were washed away at the river outside of Rivendell. You find him at Helegrod which is an ancient Dwarf fortress in the Misty Mountains. The Nazgul and his servants are performing a ritual where they infuse fell spirits into the rotten corpse of the dragon Thorog who had taken over the fortress but was killed long ago. When you come upon them, they are in the middle of the ritual. You interupt them halfway through it, and Thorog flies off before coming fully under their control (killing him was a raid later in the game). Anyway it's a very cool scene. |
It would be nice if they utilized mobs starting behaviors more and had them offer up more idle chat.
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Yes, we have this. It's the sort of thing everyone wishes we could skip, but we can't, because our cutscenes are horrible. In general, cutscenes are not a good way to make a game more immersive, because the actual game flows in and out of them with a very audible clunk, where it's almost like you're shifting between two completely incompatible things. That's why games like Half-Life and F.E.A.R. (well, F.E.A.R. 2, anyway) manage to be as immersive - because they tell the majority of their storyline in real time as you're commanding your character without yanking control away from you so you can sit and watch a cinematic, all the time thinking "Man, I wish I could be having this much fun right now!"|
Originally Posted by Prime_Nighthawk
Okay, I thought of a simple example of the kind of thing I'm talking about. I don't ever recall two NPC's talking back and forth (text) during a mission. This happens in instances in LOTRO all the time. The game freezes everyone in place and the npc's will blab at each other for a bit. Then you kill them :P
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| For example, one of the epic story quests in LOTRO has you tracking down one of the Nazgul after they were washed away at the river outside of Rivendell. You find him at Helegrod which is an ancient Dwarf fortress in the Misty Mountains. The Nazgul and his servants are performing a ritual where they infuse fell spirits into the rotten corpse of the dragon Thorog who had taken over the fortress but was killed long ago. When you come upon them, they are in the middle of the ritual. You interupt them halfway through it, and Thorog flies off before coming fully under their control (killing him was a raid later in the game). Anyway it's a very cool scene. |
As far as voice acting goes, this has MANY problems. For one, it's incredibly expensive and resource-intensive, more so the more text you have in your game. Something like Soul Reaver could be as great as it is because it has a whole constellation of voice acting stars, but that game has relatively little text to work with. And call me a prude, but I DO NOT WANT to see a redux of Fallout and Baldur's Gate where most of the people spoke in text and only a select few had dialogue. It made the game feel even more awkward than if it'd been just text.
And, really, voice actors don't help when the bulk of your game is narration. A narrator gets boring really fast, as Mass Effect 2's Codex dump at the start of the game quickly demonstrates. Voice actors work for movies and they work for games that have more dialogue, less narration, because it brings the characters to life. We don't HAVE dialogue in City of Heroes, so it really wouldn't work. In fact, going from Dragon Age to Mass Effect, having a talking protagonist who engages in active, real-time conversation with people, as opposed to monologue trades, is what makes voice acting really shine. That really doesn't work here.
And again - Champions Online. Just that. Hammy, corny voice acting narrating absurd text just doesn't do a game good.
Immersion in an MMO does not happen the same way it does in a single-player game, for the simple fact that single-player games are played as we watch movies, whereas MMOs are played as we write stories. For an MMO to be immersive, it needs to give you enough breadth for your imagination to get enthralled into its own story. As such, City of Heroes goes a LONG way, but our limited responses to contacts' requests are probably the BIGGEST stumbling block, and Going Rogue looks like it'll try to fix that a fair bit.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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That's only one side of what immersion can be, though. In its very basic sense, immersion is the state of mind where the boundary between the real and imaginary blur and our minds can let go of the nagging reality check constantly reminding us that this is a game and isn't real. The creative freedom to craft your own story as you go along is certainly a very good way to do this, but it is far from the only way.|
Originally Posted by Sister_Twelve
I feel immersion when a game inspires me to add to the storyline with fiction of my own. Ironically, every game I have ever played for the last 20 years has engendered that sort of immersion in me. At least on the internet. However, console games generally don't. Knights of the Old Republic was a great game, but it was not an immersive game. There was nothing particularly different about your jedi from any other jedi who might be walking through this story. Mass Effect was the same. Great game. Had loads of fun. But it never became more than 'a game,' which is what to me defines immersion.
Once a game becomes a storytelling experience and inspires me to write my own stories to add to the universe, then I am immersed. You cannot do that with the linear, console rpgs because essentially there is only one story to add to and the developers have already written it from beginning to end. |
Quite on the flip side, being presented a fairly uninteractive environment that is crafted in such a way that it becomes both enthralling and mesmerising is another very good way. I need go no further than Aquaria to explain this approach, as that is a game which is practically all about diving into the scenery and falling into a dream-like state through its beauty and atmosphere. In terms of gameplay and story, it's a rather mediocre game, but I've not seen many that can beat it in terms of the sheer power of the experience.
Further still, a game can enthral with dramatic story and engaging gameplay just the same. Even if the characters are not mine, I can still find inspiration in them, and if they are crafted well, I find myself caring about them, their fates and their adventures. Mass Effect is an excellent example of this, as it presents me with a whole plethora of powerful characters that, like in real life, I will like some of and others not care about. But when a character I care about gets involved in a dramatic moment, that matters, and I am immersed for the simple fact that I don't care if this is a game or not. I care about this character. I know it's not real, but the power of the experience is worth ignoring that fact on a basic, instinctive level.
Gameplay, finally, can itself inspire immersion, as the plot-light Prince of Persia: Sands of Time game well demonstrates. When gameplay is fun, engaging, intuitive and immersive to the point where you fall into a state of flow, that's a good game. I'd go through the tutorial, fight a few fights and without realising it, I'm instinctively looking for ledges, planning jumps, timing sword swings and generally wrapping my subconscious mind around the ability of the nameless prince in a way not too different than the mentality required to move my own body. Just as I don't think about which muscle must contract by how much to let me press a button, I don't think about which button combination to press in what sequence to perform a wall run followed by a long jump. I just think "wall run," then "jump." That is immersion on a different level still.
All of this is not to discount your preference and opinion, of course, merely to explain that immersion can work on many levels. Sadly, not all of them are appropriate for an MMO.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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There are cut-scenes in newer storyarcs and newer task forces. I think the earliest one you can find is the Frostfire mission in the Hollows, which you can run in your teens. It's a pretty boring cutscene, but it's there, and the mission itself has a unique map and is fun.
Your next chance to experience some good, unique maps, character interaction, and cutscenes are the series of storyarcs in Faultline. This is a newer (revamped) zone, so I'd try that out to see how it feels. You can run those in the very late teens or early tewnties.
Even a few of the older task forces have unique maps for the final mission. The Synapse TF has a large warehouse map with unique rooms at the end. The trials all have unique maps -- Terra Volta Respec Trial, Eden Trial, Abandoned Sewer Trial. The task forces in Striga and Croatoa have unique maps.
The most popular task forces at level 45-50 come with multiple unique maps and sometimes a cutscene. The Imperius Task Force (actually 35-50) is one of the best examples of this in the game, and the cutscene may annoy some but is integral to the story. The Lady Gray Task Force is also mostly unique maps and loads of fun. Pretty much ditto for the Statesmen Task Force, and to a lesser extent, the Kahn Task Force.
But as others have said or hinted at, most of the hero content is at least 5 years old or longer, and is not as well assembled as the newest hero content (Faultline, Striga, Croatoa, Cimemora, Rikti War Zone, newer TFs) or as virtually all of the villain content.
my lil RWZ Challenge vid
There are cut-scenes in newer storyarcs and newer task forces. I think the earliest one you can find is the Frostfire mission in the Hollows, which you can run in your teens. It's a pretty boring cutscene, but it's there, and the mission itself has a unique map and is fun.
Your next chance to experience some good, unique maps, character interaction, and cutscenes are the series of storyarcs in Faultline. This is a newer (revamped) zone, so I'd try that out to see how it feels. You can run those in the very late teens or early tewnties.
Even a few of the older task forces have unique maps for the final mission. The Synapse TF has a large warehouse map with unique rooms at the end. The trials all have unique maps -- Terra Volta Respec Trial, Eden Trial, Abandoned Sewer Trial. The task forces in Striga and Croatoa have unique maps.
The most popular task forces at level 45-50 come with multiple unique maps and sometimes a cutscene. The Imperius Task Force (actually 35-50) is one of the best examples of this in the game, and the cutscene may annoy some but is integral to the story. The Lady Gray Task Force is also mostly unique maps and loads of fun. Pretty much ditto for the Statesmen Task Force, and to a lesser extent, the Kahn Task Force.
But as others have said or hinted at, most of the hero content is at least 5 years old or longer, and is not as well assembled as the newest hero content (Faultline, Striga, Croatoa, Cimemora, Rikti War Zone, newer TFs) or as virtually all of the villain content.
my lil RWZ Challenge vid
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Part of the problem is that usually I'm not doing my own missions but rather someone else's in a big group. So I outlevel my contacts and I just get used to not reading the story.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Read the texts and follow the stories. You don't have one single character-long story, but if you pay attention to the plot, you'll notice there are several extremely long storylines, some of them starting as hints and rumours.
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If this is the case, there's not much you can do to gain story unless you run your own stuff, do those arcs again in Flashback, or go read some of the sites like Paragonwiki, that have all the text and most of the dialog from the missions.|
Originally Posted by Prime_Nighthawk
Part of the problem is that usually I'm not doing my own missions but rather someone else's in a big group. So I outlevel my contacts and I just get used to not reading the story.
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I'd recommend reading the souvineers that you get from completing arcs, as well. But you only get them when you finish your own arc, so it's back to your original problem.
Loose --> not tight.
Lose --> Did not win, misplace, cannot find, subtract.
One extra 'o' makes a big difference.
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If you ask me, the whole notion of engaging the audience with storytelling vanished from the design before CoH was published. I think the notion was originally there, but it was cut and we've not seen hide nor hair of it since.|
Originally Posted by Prime_Nighthawk
So I guess what I'm asking is, how do I get to the good stuff? Does it even exist? And by "good stuff" I'm talking about missions where you get to do things like interact with the major characters of the game. Custom missions that aren't in the same warehouse, tunnel, or research facility that i've seen 1000 times before, killing the same old enemies, etc, etc.
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If you pick through the bones of the lore in the old zones, you'll find that someone was thinking about how and why things happened. For instance, there's Ingelbert Maahs, who became Igneous, the Magma Master, in the Cavern of Transcendence. There's the mysterious plot that led to The Hollowing, the questionable fate of Grendel, what I believe is the introduction of the Coralax long before CoV, and so on.
However, the storytelling aspects of the game design were insufficiently developed prior to publication, with too much emphasis being placed on large blocks of text in the mouths of contacts and tucked away in clues. Players on a team could not easily share in the storytelling process. Instead of an adventure game, what developed was an emphasis upon almost arcade-like action.
Now I think CoH has great action ... it's a strength of the game. But storytelling really should have been there too, and it's a shame the developers have looked the other way all these years and failed to improve upon that part of the gaming experience.
If you feel inclined, give my architect missions a shot. We've got the same limitations in AE storytelling that we have in the rest of the game, but I've tried to use what leverage I could to tell story in a way intended to make the story more accessible for teams and - hopefully - a step or two closer to being more immersive.
You can find my arcs listed under @Khonshu (different spelling from what I have as my forum name).
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Personally, I wouldn't look for the same kind of "immersive" content a single-player game takes you through. Those games are largely scripted and rely on predictable player paths, mood music, scripted dialogues, cutscenes, briefings and so on. They're also usually 10-20 hours long. An MMO in general is going to have a much more loose interpretation of immersion and will basically tell you a story for your character to play through, which you have to read. There's no way around that.
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Not in CoH but this is one of the things that I'm looking forward to seeing in the new Star Wars MMO, Spring 2011 can't get here soon enough! All interaction is going to be done with voice acting along with text if you'd prefer to read.
Obviously if you're not into Star Wars or at least sci-fi it may not appeal to you but after trying SWG and not caring for it I'm really hoping Bioware pulls it off right.
I think I know what the OP is saying though and I agree, I love this game (although I've not played for a week or so while playing other games) but there's definitely something missing... call it immersive content or whatever you want to... personally I think it's challenge. Knowing who Kel'thuzad is in WoW was optional... however if you played through WCIII or new where to find the lore otherwise it was there. The difference is that he and any other endgame boss in WoW presented a unique challenge instead of just being a tougher version of the trash mobs you blew through to get to him with a different skin.
As far as the story I've seen plenty of people on these forums talk poorly of the lack of story driven content in WoW... it's there... it's just that most of the 11 million people playing it don't bother looking into it. The ease in which you can pick up and play WoW appeals to most but to really get into it you have to have played through WCIII IMO.
Global @radubadu
Usually playing one of the following toons blueside on Virtue:
Cadler 50 WP/SS tanker
Radubadu 46 Fire/Fire blaster
Hell Runner 35 Fire/Fire brute
Quote:
If you follow the Lost/Rikti stories from level 10 all the way to 45 (and then on to the Lady Grey TF), you do actually get a fairly cohesive story involving that group.|
Originally Posted by Twilight_Snow
For CoH, I don't think there is one coherent story line as in CoV. My feeling is that the stories in CoH are to introduce you various mob groups, where they come from and what they are doing. Since the stories are about the mobs, not really about you as in CoV, I think it's not as immersive.
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Other than that, I fully agree with you.
Arc# 92382 -- "The S.P.I.D.E.R. and the Tyrant" -- Ninjas! Robots! Praetorians! It's totally epic! Play it now!
Arc # 316340 -- "Husk" -- Azuria loses something, a young woman harbors a dark secret, and the fate of the world is in your hands.
I'm curious about what kind of content COH has to offer. The basic combat is fun, and I've enjoyed leveling up my toons. I've blown through mission after mission. Usually I don't read too much of the text, and I realize I probably miss out on some of the story and background for the various heroes and factions. It just seems that COX doesn't do a good job of letting you know what you should pay attention to and what you can just mindlessly blow through.
So I guess what I'm asking is, how do I get to the good stuff? Does it even exist? And by "good stuff" I'm talking about missions where you get to do things like interact with the major characters of the game. Custom missions that aren't in the same warehouse, tunnel, or research facility that i've seen 1000 times before, killing the same old enemies, etc, etc.
Are task forces like this? Is the "endgame" content like this? Maybe I'm just missing the boat, but my experience has just been endless generic mission after generic mission. It's good that there is so much content, but either I'm missing something or the game needs to do a much better job of providing some epic/immersive content AND guiding the players to it. A good example of how to do this the Lord of the Rings Online's "epic story" quest series. You start the epic series when you first log into your character as the tutorial is the prologue. As you play through the game, the epic quests take you through the different areas and contain the most important elements of the game's ongoing story. The quests are easily identifiable, so while you might blow through a lot of the game's more generic quests, with the epic quests you don't get caught off guard and realize you missed a bunch of important info and now are lost.