I have this interesting idea when I was in taking a bath.... let's see what you think about it Playing the metagame galactic war will be amazing, no question about it. But from what I understood, there is no story at all behind this meta game, you just enter the game and try to conquer the galaxy (correct me if I'm wrong, english is not my main language so I may have missed something in the video). What if PA comes with an 'customizable comic story' that allow the users to create his own story. Nothig big, nothing complex.. just a set of images and texts that are shown in the beggining of the metagame to illustrate the story. Everything created by the metagame hosters.. This is no meant to create an 'official' story to PA, but it is something to add a bit of objective to the metagame. To illustrate what I mean, take a look at the video below. It is from a game called SunAge (rts aswell): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFYLvo9ukKA (00:33 - 01:24)
Actually I want the progress of the game to become the story and the idea is to have game events that happen during the war that make it more interesting.
This is very similar to how RP works on an MMO. The "lore" that people create determines how the character got to where they are. The context, the backdrop, etc. It's the stuff you then do as that character, though, that makes an impression and creates the stories that people want to tell each other about. "Man, I was just about to attack his base, and the asteroid he launched hit my army on the way there. Turns out he didn't know how to use the asteroids and just got lucky! I soo would have had him too." "Dude, we both ended up going for the same moon! We'd both built these huge bases on the planet, but then it all came down to just our Commanders in orbit. That was intense!" Stuff like that, which comes completely from people just playing the game, can be more memorable than any scripted story.
That's how Zero-K is doing its own PlanetWars. Between each round, the next chapter of the story is written in function of who won, who barely lost, who was crushed... The next round may have missing or new factions. That said, I'd like if we could have something less faction-locked and more FFA where the ultimate goal is to be the last one standing ; where someone can fight for oneself, join a faction, have internal conflicts in factions... Maybe making it clan-based instead of faction-based would work like that, I don't know.
We had a thread about this a few weeks ago - that's precisely what the original Galactic War meta game was for TA, a game with an otherwise threadbare story. From the update, this idea looks somewhat larger - I including what seems to be options to run private metagames with clans, single players, etc. I just hope if we can hit the goal, there'd be a primary metagame that would determine the storyline of the overall game, in the role a single player campaign would normally occupy, Boneyards style. And that could take the form of the old newsbot posts or as player posted RP's.
(Apologies in advance for the lengthy post: a TL;DR summation is at the bottom for those who don't care to read all my reasoning) Ok, I don't really expect I'll wind up changing the dev's minds about this (being a developer myself for a game with a very active and invested community, I know how rarely that actually happens), but I'd like to beg your indulgence and repost my (now heavily edited and expanded) comments from the Kickstarter Galactic War announcement: I have to disagree with the assertion that multi-player play at any level can somehow substitute for or entirely replace the action, immersion, feel and play in a well-done single-player story-driven campaign. It's like comparing apples and oranges, to be completely honest, and in more ways than the immediately obvious. The ability to pop in and play for however long I want without any big commitment, to hit escape and pause a game, or the ability to play without worrying about not paying enough attention to a large MP game and looking a fool or letting down a team, for example, is critical for some of us. I took no interest in DOTA2, for example, due to the lengthy battles that couldn't be exited without screwing over the other players on your team. Even if I intend to play games--even just a single game--all day long doesn't mean I plan on devoting constant attention to it. As was mentioned in an article about Planetary Annihilation I read earlier, and as I myself have said (more or less) to others many times over the years in reference to similar games, “I love RTS games, but I suck at them,” (not entirely true, but the point remains... I don't play Frozen Synapse anymore because losing all the time got, well... boring) and I don't always care to spend a few hours getting my butt kicked by other players who may be considerably better skilled and/or more experienced than I am, regardless if it's vs. one player or 100. If I'm going to play hour+ long games and still lose semi-regularly, I want to at least feel like there was a reason or purpose for it, and that I've still accomplished something in the process, even if it was only making progress toward another skill level or some such: I need more than just battling for the sake of battling sometimes. Repetition kills games for many people, myself for certain and an engaging story can go a long way to alleviating this. Often times, when playing a game, I want to be told and/or be part of a story, not do the telling myself. Yes, this game may have some truly epic moments both single- and multi-player that make for good stories later, but... well, tell me that Portal 2 (AND it's co-op multi-player) would have been just as good and engaging of a game if it were simply a random collection of puzzles without story, and then I'll point you to the end-game sequence and ask you how any sequence of fancy jumps and portals could POSSIBLY be as epic as the scripted events in the final moments of that game, or that the game play would be half as compelling without GLAdOS and Wheatley pushing you along, giving you a reason to do it: I've been trolled by other players plenty over the years, but I can't think of a time where another player said something as memorable as this. The co-op portion of Portal 2, even though largely irrelevant to the single-player game, is only that much better and more engaging specifically because of the events of the story that flesh out the world and give it personality and a reason to exist. The final stretch goal was blown away by $128k on KS alone... I'd think there's enough money in the pot now to justify making a single-player story-driven game. Don't underestimate the ability of a good story and setting that players can "get in to" to not only retain players even for multi-player games, but to keep them motivated and excited for a much longer time than they might if they have no other higher interest besides fighting what will eventually start to feel like the same battle, over and over again. When you give me an interesting and engaging universe with actual characters, history, and unique details, you give me even more to be passionate and excited about. Without the back story, The Old Republic would be just another MMO: a somewhat innovative one in a few regards, sure, but if it had not been a Star Wars title instead of just another generic MMO, I guarantee it would not have been as popular on launch as it was, much less have retained anything like a viable player count for more than a month after it released with a broken texture renderer. EVE got boring precisely because of an extreme lack of motivating story, and the "make your own story" isn't a substitute: the games' freedom and expansive sandbox universe is a neat thing, but the complete lack of a truly interesting or engaging story, coupled with the need to grind long, boring missions (if you don't want to PvP that is) got old, quick. SWTOR was the same way, as soon as I had repeated the majority of the content more than twice, I was done with it, and haven't played since. These reasons are all why MP-only FPS games hold little interest for me, and why I rarely play them for more than a month or so. Yes, you've got my money already, but I presume DLC or a sequel, etc., is probably also somewhere on the horizon, too. Even in the most advanced and innovative games... even in a game where the "maps" are procedurally generated, eventually the play is going to become repetitive for many of us, especially the ADD geeks like myself. Yes, there are people out there who played thousands of hours of SupCom1, but they aren't by far the majority of players, and for many people like myself, with families and full-time jobs, even when we can set aside 4 or 8 hours to play games, that doesn't mean we can do nothing but game for that time, be it due to ADD or simply real-life. With the kind of procedural play and "story" being discussed for the Galactic War, I would think that doing something similar for a truly engaging, possibly procedural and non-repetitive/grinding single-player story experience would be the much lower-hanging fruit than trying to do so on a huge multi-player scale, and in fact could very well be the groundwork or basis for those same features in the Galactic War environment, possibly up-to and including advancement of your commander and unlocking new abilities, units, planets, etc., in the process. TL;DR - Please don't completely write off the idea of a good single-player/co-op story mode. With the way you've blown so far past even the highest stretch goals, I should think this would be a relatively straight-forward addition easily accomplished within budget and time-frame: single-player, story driven campaigns (along with co-op story campaigns) are, like RTS' in general, an unreasonably maligned and ignored genre by the major publishers that I think really deserves a second look and serious consideration. With a game-play scope and even soundtrack this massive and epic, how could it not deserve an equally epic story to bring it fully to life with history and personalities, maybe even as a sort of intro- or lead-in to Galactic Wars, giving players a feeling of having a place and purpose in the larger conflict and the events that lead up to it? I should think the effort, time, and cost involved in the orchestral recording would cost more than it would to devote one or two people to dreaming up and implementing a story. Being one of the rare games (these days) to have a good, engaging, story driver single-player/co-op campaign would just be another nice way of setting yourselves apart from the rest of the same-old, same-old, humdrum games like what the Command & Conquer series has turned into. P.S. lacking man-power for such development and writing? I'm available P.P.S. In any event, keep up the good work; I'm excited and greatly looking forward to playing regardless. Even if we never get the story mode I might like, I'm sure that between everything else and mod support, we'll get many hours of enjoyment. Zero Hour, I suppose, had no real story that I remember, and I certainly did play a lot of it, I'll admit. Persistent levels/ranks/unlocks and/or stats might go a fair way to mediating a lack of story content. Thanks for reading!
Uber has already discussed the fact that it would cost millions to write a single-player campaign that people would play once, that the investment is not worth it, and the community as a whole has agreed. Immersion is completely up to the player, and there is no gold standard for what would get the most people immersed. This is most evidenced by the relationship between RP'ers and MMOs. Immersion is completely up to the player, and some people find it hilarious that people RP. Others are able to use their imaginations and add realism and importance to what amounts to a load of ones and zeroes. For instance, I had a rogue in WoW. I joined a buddy for an RP event where we were spying on some folks. I was stealthed, but he couldn't so eventually they spotted him. He tried to play it off like he was alone, but in-character let slip that he wasn't. So they started looking for me where I was hiding in the house. I was able to successfully avoid detection and get out of the house, and then only briefly let one of them realize I was there before I went back into hiding, which only spurred their search on further to find me and find out what I'd overheard. It was a completely player-generated event, only loosely using in-game mechanics to create was was, and is still, one of my most memorable moments in the game. It wasn't raiding, it wasn't doing quests for characters in the lore...it was just my imagination adding that layer of suspense and reality which sucked me in and sold me on RP for the rest of the time I played the game. Because of this, I have in the past requested that when this forum breaks into subforums that there be an official place for fanfiction, because that's a great way to get people introduced to the topics. With in-game chat, and Galactic Conquest, it'll be even easier to play out roles of intrigue and suspense...and then save them till the next time I can get with my buddies and RP again in PA. I may be the only person thinking about setting up RP servers or sub-forums for PA, but I can guarantee that the story events driven by people playing out roles will be much more involving and unique than any story that Uber could come up with.
I'd suggest leaving a traditional single player campaign up to the modding community. And with all fan created modding you'll end up with thousands of terrible mods but a handful of really amazing things. In the end everyone will forget about, or ignore, all the poor quality content and latch on to the few good ones. And it'll cost far less to add a bit more to the game API than make your own full single player story. And you can get some really good ideas out of nowhere, what publisher would greenlight a game like "Dear Ester". All we'd need are a few more triggers, message pop ups, and some other scripting functionality. If you are going to make a tutorial I'd guess that you'd need to make most of this already anyway. Also it'd be nice if we kept the official game lore to a minimum so people could make up whatever they want. For the main game we just say that in the future there are robots and they are angry at one another.
