There’s one thing that always bugged me about the ARPG genre as a whole. Their campaigns/stories are always too linear and simplistic. You have like this little chain of quests, with the occasional side quest that doesn’t actually affect the story and only serves to give you some reward (for example, even if you don’t rescue Cain, he finds his way to act 2 town anyway so the story stays unchanged), and that’s it.
The RPG genre is known for being the genre that does some of the best storytelling. Take Chrono Trigger with it’s 14 different endings, or Dragon Age Origins where choices you make can literally change the world around you as well as how different characters interact with you.
Deep dialogue choices, personality, etc.
Will ARPGs always be this genre where story and campaign is just something that’s there to give you a little context and then be ignored for the rest of the thousands of hours you put it into the game?
I really wish we could get a 40 hour campaign with multiple endings for different playthroughs in a game like Diablo one day.
As long as the sucky isometric view is in the game, it will never be an engaging RPG. The birdseye view detaches you from what’s going on, that’s why conversations in tv shows and movies are shown CLOSE UP.
In a RPG that would be first/third person view. It almost makes you feel like you’re there talking to the NPC’s yourself, and not watching the whole thing from a spy drone in the clouds.
Take Legacy of Kain as an example. While the latter parts are 3d action, the roots are an isometric action-rpg. Granted, it isnt on a level of diablo, but one can see how it could be.
And the plot? It is probably the deepest and most complex plot gaming ever knew. Really recommend watching it on YT.
My point is - the medium and genre of arpg does not constrain plot in any way. The problem is that game companies still dont like to hire big writers.
Take wow for example. It is wrutten by Kristie Golden - a woman ho doesnt have a single original work behind her. All she does is writing fan fiction for warcraft, starcraft, assassin’s creed, etc.
She basically gets inspired by other people’s plots, worlds and characters and recycles it in a new cliche stories.
And yet she’s hired as a main writer for wow.
All the while internet has dozens of talented writers who write webfiction, even. Wildbow, erraticerrata, Nobody103, and hundreds of others. They write amazing, original, inspiring fiction. Would it be hard for Blizzard to hire one or two of them? No.
But instead they go with basically a plagiarist.
I think i watched almost anything including streams, but i never heard what you are referring to.
From stage they promised a “non-linear campaign with various outcomes”
Yes, they said that the world is seamless and open and you can travel right away. But i dont think that means wow-style story arcs. I think it means that you can explore and kill minsters, but some key areas, dungeons and quest lines will be locked for you until you progress main campaign enough.
I think the campaign may be branching a little bit - difference between who dies and lives, etc. But it will still have a linear overal progression. You can do side activities in other areas, but you cant go to the second zone and do main story there until you’ve finished it in the first.
In that respect, i think that zones will be pretty much acts.
I believe a good story can be told in any genre.
And D1 and D2 stories are good enough for the game they made.
Now, making multiple choice stories that leads to different outcomes and different endings is not a simple feat. It demands a lot more time, both on the story creation and the game design, and can get exponentially hard.
If you consider that most ARPGs are multiplayer friendly, if not meant to be multiplayer, and D4 will also have shared open world, having a multi story path for multiple players can be a challenge when it comes to playing together (I left Cain behind, my friend didn’t; I joined a cultist order, my friend became a holy something, I went rogue and let the town burn to ashes, my friends saved it… how to put these to players together if they want to play together after all of that?)
That all being said, there’s the point of really wanting to tell the story they want to tell. The ending is that one, the path is that one, the things that happens are those ones… it doesn’t detract anything from a good story line. So they make side quests, with side NPCs and side stories, but the main story is the one they want to tell.
Multiple choice stories, with multiple endings and out comes are better suited for single-player-only games and on an open world where the story ending really ends the story.
I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I don’t see an ARPG (if not single player) being able to implement a Chromo Trigger range of story variation.
Quite easy.
When matching with randoms, in case of town burned - match with those who also got it burned.
If some npc died or not it doesnt matter. It would not break immersion of others if you see an npc standing under a tree and they see him hanging from it. The world opens only when the story is done, and such “fork” objects may simply be assigned no use after their ark is done. He becomes a decoration.
If you match up with a friend - theres no harm in seeing their version of the world.
however the end story shouldn’t be just… oh you killed Lilith good job…
I’m not sure I even want to fight Lilith and kill her she’s just too awesome…
in a faction scenario… Lilith came back, and the guy says “Blessed Mother, Save us” what if I want an story where I decide to join their faction and fight in PvP FOR Lilith instead of against her?
Lilith can be a character who is the leader of a faction… and we the players serve here… I really like that idea just wanted to add it, thanks…
Well Im no WoW fan boy not played it in over ten years.
Most of what I was asking is ideas for side quests - bounties or what ever they use as extra things to do after you hit max level - end game.
Another post I was asking about things like Hidden Dungeons
Lets throw the Devs heaps of things to consider and if they take some of them on great if not so be it.
I just dont want to be the type of person that in 2-3 years thinks I wish I would have asked is this something worth looking at getting added to a game I’d like to play.
There have been engaging RPG’s since the floppy disk game era.
The engaging aspect is the story. In games of old, if you died and had not saved at a recent point you went all the way back. In some RPG’s there were three questions. If you asked the wrong one, the game went in a totally different direction,perhaps even death and - start again. In some more complex games, that death may not be until much later, so you have to start again anyway.
Careful what you wish for.
These days, resurrection and an almost ‘no dying’ scenario are prevalent. An engaging RPG is that when you die, you die. That is actual ‘role playing’, because in life you do not resurrect.
Graphics are aesthetics only, it;s the story that counts for engagement to be solid.
Their campaigns/stories are always too linear and simplistic.
It’s difficult for video games with non-linear progression to have intricate stories because the writer can’t dictate the pace, implement proper foreshadowing, and all kinds of other issues. If a book or movie shows events out of order it’s for a very good reason, whereas in a video game the player might as well be bouncing around at random.
Multiple options for story arcs are something that sure is great, but unfortunately comes last in priority (imho). The problem is that making multiple stories, takes alot of extra work, that could actually just be used to make The One Story better.
Do you want more options, or just 30-50 % more main story and better quality.
ARPG is a different genre from RPG for a reason. Their roleplaying elements are sacked in favor of more action. Nothing really prevents putting those genres together, but the size of the project would end up huge.
You would have to increase the staff by atleast 50%, increase the development time and double the price of the game.
This is actually one of main reasons that combining genres is so hard. Doing all the different elements of the game well, requires time and money.
Lastly, you might end up alienating both target groups, RPG and ARPG fans. You’d be left with only players that like both genres, which by simple math can never be more than either of those groups alone.
(yes I admit that in this specific target group the game MIGHT be “The Must Have Game”)
There really isn’t any clear line between the genres, it’s a spectrum. Role playing as a term, by definition, doesn’t really include any fighting.
All this multioption guesting aside, there’s alot of simple stuff that can be added to the game to increase the RPG elements, while at the same time making the ARPG side more interesting aswell. I’ve covered this in another thread:
This is just to show you that by putting serious thought into this, you can actually implement things that make the mechanics and rpg elements support each other.
