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WildStar Wednesday: Quest Text in 140 Characters (More or Less)

Posted Feb 16 2012 12:30 AM by Ragar in News

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WildStar Wednesday is upon us once again. Last week brought us Chad "Pappy" Moore explaining to us how the Narrative Design team is working to bring life to Nexus and the rest of the WildStar universe. This week brings us more from his team, with Part 1 of a series from Senior Narrative Designer Cory Herndon.

In last week's post Chad talked some about the work that goes into creating a universe like WildStar's. Developing the setting and characters for the universe, figuring out how everyone fits together and reacts with one another, writing a history to provide meaning for the characters and the conflicts they're involved in - a great deal of work goes on creating a setting like this. In Cory's first post, he talks about the struggles in getting all of that history and lore into a form players are willing to read.

I'm a bit of a lore nerd for most MMOs I play, but even I don't read all of the quest text and I know that I'm not alone in that regard. Sometimes I can just tell that a quest is filler and I only need to note the "Kill X kobolds" bit. There's also the case where you might have people waiting for you to finish reading the quest; anyone who's space-barred their way through a SWTOR flashpoint will know this feeling. Cory talks about this in his post and some of the ways they're working to convey the story to the player, but without crossing that "TLDR" line.

If you're interested in quest design or just curious how Carbine is planning on making you care about something other than the quest rewards, head on over to the WildStar blog and read Cory's post. When you're done, come back and discuss this in the comments. Do you read all of the quest text in MMOs? Would the ideas Cory has in his post get you more engaged in the world around you or is all text merely getting between you and precious loot?


Comments


Pontianak
Feb 16 2012 05:00 AM
I'm also a lore nerd, and just like you, I also find myself skipping quest text now and again. Sometimes it is because my play session is going to be shorter that day, and reading filler quest text just isn't my idea of something productive. On the flip side, I've blindly just accepted quests without reading a thing, then I have to double back and actually try and skim the quest text if there is something that I needed to know in the first place. The fact that Carbine is looking to get to the meat of things without a bunch of filler could indeed be a very welcome part of the game. I don't feel like I need to waste time reading filler, and I know exactly what to do. It sounds perfect.

Ayr
Feb 16 2012 03:03 PM
I love a great storyline in an MMO and I think recent MMO's have been poor with conveying a sense of meaning or giving you a sense of where you are in the midst of the grand scheme of the story.

Although I'm very action focused - I still have that part of me that wants to level up and slay the evil dragon overlord that has caused all this chaos. I want to feel like I'm in an epic journey.

There is this argument between PvE and PvP focused players of what an MMO should be like. I think an MMO should have both in great measure and the PvE part should be so deep that if you only wanted to PvE then the game has enough of it to exhaust your time, and the story develops the deeper you progress through the dungeons. The PvP combat should be so addictive that nothing else matters except logging in for the joy of your next frag.

Having short quest text is the way to go. Even for a rich lore laden MMO. The overarching story can be given in depth at major points in the game and the 100's of small quests in between can provide meaning in simple ways - such as the type of enemy you encounter, or the type fo area you are in. If you find yourself in a zone filled with enemies that you don't recognise or seemingly have no purpose in the main story (as often happens with quests involved in side-stories) you can suddenly think..' what on earth am I doing here'.

World events related to the major story can be frequent enough to provide urgency and bring you back into focus on the main storyline as it is admittedly easy to forget the point of what you're doing when you've been farming materials for 100 hours solid in some zone :D

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