EPIC: Plz give us more story in the game

[gregori]

funny, the amount of copies of ut2kx sold was several multiples the amount of players and played online!
ALOT of people play UT offline, and should be catered to, storyline, AI wise and the rest........
beside even multiplayer is a bit boring without some story,
interesting characters, imaginative weapons and battlefields with a story behind them give a game colour and personality.............

If it merely comes down to frag, whats the point of the graphics and sound.
Why should anyone pay Epic for a souless visual upgrade of UT2K4?

Story doesn't mean videoclips or long boring reading of dialogues, it can be done in millions of tiny subtle ways that all add up!

 

[Vault]

epic has said that they are trying to give more life to the characters... and i think they were hinting at a story

 

[Taleweaver]

funny, the amount of copies of ut2kx sold was several multiples the amount of players and played online!
ALOT of people play UT offline, and should be catered to, storyline, AI wise and the rest........
beside even multiplayer is a bit boring without some story,
interesting characters, imaginative weapons and battlefields with a story behind them give a game colour and personality.............

If it merely comes down to frag, whats the point of the graphics and sound.
Why should anyone pay Epic for a souless visual upgrade of UT2K4?

Story doesn't mean videoclips or long boring reading of dialogues, it can be done in millions of tiny subtle ways that all add up!

Also funny: from those big hordes of people playing ut2003/4 offline, nobody complained about any sort of a "lack of story" (through 56k modem, a friend's computer, internet café, ...).

Maybe you've met players online who wanted more story on the servers, but I sure as hell haven't. Can you guys come up with a few examples of how you would envision an online story for a first person shooter? (congratulations...you've made me curious ).

Why should anyone pay for a "soules visual upgrade"? Well, let me answer that by saying I don't think the story is the soul of the game (you're confusing it with a book). The gameplay is the soul, while visuals represent the heart. Visuals are what people are going to see (screenshots, shareware, video's, demos, at a friend's place,...) and what they're going to base their opinion on. The gameplay is going to keep the audience coming, provided it's good. Story can have some effect as well, but once you've got everything, it becomes boring (no matter how good a story-based game is, I never play it again once I've finished it).

epic has said that they are trying to give more life to the characters... and i think they were hinting at a story

No...they were putting more personality in the characters. Right now - if you force models - everyone plays alike. There are some differences in attributes, but not enough to say that everyone is unique. In the next game, the roles will shine out more...At least, that's what I've picked up from the prerelease video.

 

[Sahkolihaa]

I don't know why I actually voted towards a better story, when in my opinion, I would rather have the work that goes into a story go into the gameplay, keeping the weapons/maps balanced for a good game for people to play offline and online.

If you want a good story then it's best if the game is single player only, or more based around single player than multiplayer so that the developers can work more towards the story of the game rather than the balancing of the game to keep online gameplay even and fair.

 

[Bullet10k]

Also funny: from those big hordes of people playing ut2003/4 offline, nobody complained about any sort of a "lack of story" (through 56k modem, a friend's computer, internet café, ...).

Yes because the only players that play right now are the most hardcore players that really love UT regardless of story or not, so the people that thought there was a lack of story, instead of complaining, they just LEFT. UT2004 demo is the most downloaded demo at Gamespot (iirc), it had 10,000 players in the first week it came out, and then it dropped to less than 2000 after the first week (iirc again). Only the people that loved the game stayed with it and everyone that hated it just left never to come back again.

Maybe you've met players online who wanted more story on the servers, but I sure as hell haven't. Can you guys come up with a few examples of how you would envision an online story for a first person shooter? (congratulations...you've made me curious ).

You CAN have a bit of "story" in ONLINE, but I wouldnt call it exactly a story but rather....DEPTH (couldnt think of the right words when I first posted this). Example would be like the maps would be designed to give you a FEELING of an unreal tournament (get what im saying?...the maps and artwork should be designed with the story in mind), ofcourse, gameplay comes first and adding this depth into the maps will not harm it either. Go to the thread named "New map thema ?" and you'll know exactly what im talking about coz there are some great map ideas and themes in there.

 

[EL BOURIKO]

don t mind about of a main story line and focus on even better maps and gameplay instead...

If I want a deep and tricky story, I play some other games but not UT. So why not playing UT for what it is, just some pure and fun gameplay in some wonderfull maps...

 

[gregori]

As i have said, you can have a great gameplay and a story, you don't have to sacrifice one for the other! I'm mostly interested in the storyline for the vast amount who play offline, although it wouldn't hurt multiplayer either!

The point that Epic are putting more personality into the characters is a great example of more story in the game, stories are about characters ultimately.

It also shows you don't need long boring speeches, text and videoclips to tell a story,
you can do it trough how the characters speak, animate and look, their motivations and personality

The themes and visuals of maps can give you snapshots of places in the unreal universe and can tie the game together pretty well, the assault maps in UT2kx and UT
are a great example of this.

The characters in tekken are a good example, they have very little storyline just a couple of lines , but each animates differently, has their own personality, and is instantly recognisable!

Gameplay is central to all games ofcourse, but i found the singleplayer in 2k4 unbearable and monotonous, unlike UT, it was too geared towards hardcore online players, the minority of minority of the games's players----------gone was the fast and fun play of the original.

Point is story and visuals if implemented well, tie a good gameplay experience together
without these offline or online I get a very bad impression of a game.

You can upgrade the visuals from a stats point of view all you want, with better graphics cards and so on, but that doesn't translate into better use of graphics, nor does it give them any soul,
countless examples prove this

 

[Taleweaver]

You CAN have a bit of "story" in ONLINE, but I wouldnt call it exactly a story but rather....DEPTH (couldnt think of the right words when I first posted this). Example would be like the maps would be designed to give you a FEELING of an unreal tournament (get what im saying?...the maps and artwork should be designed with the story in mind), ofcourse, gameplay comes first and adding this depth into the maps will not harm it either. Go to the thread named "New map thema ?" and you'll know exactly what im talking about coz there are some great map ideas and themes in there.

Why didn't you say so earlier? To me, this doesn't qualify under the definition of "story", but it's certainly important that this...whatever (I called it "visual stye" in an earlier post)...is taken care off in a more-than-decent matter. In any way, I certainly agree with you on this.

I'm still sceptical about the no-complaints explanation, though. On the INA forums, ppl complain about everything, including things that can't even be remotely blamed on Epic. With that in mind, lack of story could not stay out of sight for very long without many people to complain about it (or rather: one to complain, and dozens to confirm the complaint).

 

[Bullet10k]

On the INA forums, ppl complain about everything, including things that can't even be remotely blamed on Epic.

Very true. Also, they're very negative when some good ideas get posted, I think that all they want is UT2007 to be a prettier UT99 with UE3.

 

[_Lynx]

Yeah, that would be awesome. About 50 different cutscenes, which will use about a gigabyte extra HD space on movies that you just watch once or twice And let's not forget about the manpower it takes to create those cutscenes. No thanks, I'll rather have the developers spend some more time in usefull parts of the game (map optimising, model creation, whatever).

Oh, don't you remeber that matinee that was shown to you when you was finishing the ladders in UT'99? It's easy to make 3 or 5 matinee intros, that will be selected at random, showing exactly the character you have chosen. And it will take something like 50Mb of your disk space.

 

[NeoNite]

And really, what would an extra gigabyte be to most of you? Seeing you already have 10-20 gigabyte of porn movies installed, it couldn't POSSIBLY a problem, right?

 

[EL BOURIKO]

And really, what would an extra gigabyte be to most of you? Seeing you already have 10-20 gigabyte of porn movies installed, it couldn't POSSIBLY a problem, right?

I did not know that I had such things on my PC! maybe i should check my Hard Disk then...

 

[NeoNite]

I did not know that I had such things on my PC! maybe i should check my Hard Disk then...

Replace PC with brain and "hard disk" with ...

I'm saying, there are a lot of dirty people here!
I'm on to you...