Please allow me to ask one question… do you read the description of the timelines?
It is clearly written that we explore alternate realities, when events did not occur as we know they did. It is written, in not complicated language. I feel - and I must be wrong - that anyone who reads it would understand.
Each timeline is a different story. They’re not related to each other, but each one is an alternate story from the original story exposed in the campaign. “What if Heorot won against Rahyeh” sounds very clear to me. “What if Rahyeh attacked Lagon’s domain” also. And so on.
Yeah you are right. If I would read all the text I would know what the story is about. What you are 100% wrong about though is assuming that everyone will read it. If more than 10% of the players read them I would be surprised.
Story is one thing, how you deliver it a second and how it drives you is a third.
The story is threadbare whether you can read it or not. The delivery is non existant and this is where LE fails right now. I don’t mind being given more background through optional text but you can’t deliver every bit of story through written text alone and going forward the voice acting is something that will be very important. That being said however I do think voice acting for every single alternative story represented by a monolith would be a huge waste of resources. This for most players will be an auto skip as is the text provided.
I don’t really care whether the story is any good or whether or not is complex and layered. They never really are in arpg’s and to be quite frank 90% of your target audience doesn’t really care all that much as long as it falls within what is acceptable. I also don’t care that there is no delivery as it is in beta. I am sure once the voice acting is implemented it will become a lot better at deliviring its narrative.
The main issue is how the story drives the player. A story and a narrative drives a players actions. Sure fine we are experiencing alternative timelines but why? What is the actual point of doing it? What is the impending doom that threatens us all unless you, the hero, puts his/her life at risk to prevent it? This is D3 all over again. The endgame is aimless. Grinding something to be able to do the same thing but harder doesn’t motivate a player long term.
What LE really needs in the endgame is a clear questline that you can follow. At first you have to explore alternate realities to find the one that contains a boss. A player will be triggered to look for said boss. Once you kill the boss you expand your story and tease the player with the long term story goal and give them a set of quests that they can focus on short and middle-long term.
You can have pulitzer prize story material but if it fails to drive the player, if it doesn’t lead to goals for the player, it is wasted.
Full disclosure I do not like the choice of theme in this game. This is personal taste but because time is non-linear it makes it very hard to instill agency in a player and makes the narrative more complicated that it should really be. It’s a cool idea and all but it comes with a specific set of new challenges that I don’t feel are handled very well in the games current state. The more complicated your story becomes the better you delivery needs to be to keep players engaged enough to make the effort to understand it. The fact that there are endless alternate timelines implies that there are timelines where the players efforts and accomplishments also count for nought. You spend a good 8-10 hours finishing a quest that in the bigger picture has very little implication ( at least in the current version )
Again. I am being quite critical here because I really want the game to succeed and in my personal opinion the issues I listed require some attention if the game is to find long term success
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I don’t assume people will read, I just regret they won’t. 
That’s the problem with HnS games: people don’t read the story then may struggle when they don’t understand it.
I’m a little biased because I’m totally story-focused, but when I play a game I want to understand what it is about.
Or maybe one day we’ll have a HnS with no story, just activities about killing monsters and looting stuff. This would be efficient and could be fun, but it would be sad.
You’re critical, yes, but in a positive way. That’s good!
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Really wish the story had been structured like this. I feel like the monolith system would make a far more interesting way of delivering the story than the railroad system we have right now.
It’d solve the issue of the campaign’s lack of randomness by letting the player choose which timelines to explore. There’d be a lot more mystery to the whole world too.
Edit: Also think it’d be kinda nice if you didn’t know what timeline was the “right” one too. It’d be up to the player to piece together the story.
This right here. To my friends I have always been known as the one who likes the games that you have to read aka “rpg” games. So I always assumed that the rpg genre drew in people that enjoy the reading and imagining and immersing. Which is what the target audience ends up being and the game is structured around.
But then you get zippy mczoom zoom who can’t be bothered to read cuz tldr, and he wants the entire genre changed because of it lol. The entire foundation of rpgs was built around the environment telling you the story and giving you clues where to go next. If you didn’t want to read, you wasn’t goin nowhere.
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It’s not that I dislike storytelling or reading. I have a book set in D2 lore at home that I have read a few times and quite enjoyed. I also ended up reading through most of the lore in POE.
You need to be realistic about these things. If you decide to use only text format to deliver the information that is required to engage your players then your game will flop. Just hanging on to the good old days , however noble, makes very little sense. There are much better ways of creating immersion and delivering content. Failing to adapt will ultimately lead to failure.
In my personal opinion you need to strike a balance here. Deliver your story and plot through a combination of proper narrative and gameplay. Enough to tell players what is going on and why they are doing what they are doing. This is Audio, visuals and gameplay. Then you expand your lore and universe through other information that adds depth and flavor and can be explored through text.
LE forces you to read the story if you want it but gives you no reason to actually read it other than out of sheer interest. The game literally gives you an arrow at the start of your zone that points directly at your objective. You don’t even need to explore a zone to get to your quest let alone read the text.
I am just being realistic here. There are a lot of things that I think used to be better than they are nowadays. But as a business you need to adapt and evolve. A game with just text that requires a lot of reading may be amazing for you but it will not be a success. I do not believe that it is well suited to the average Arpg player and it’s target audience.
Just because something used to be a certain way doesn’t make it better than what it is now even it that is your personal preference. Being able to point your finger at zippy mczoom zoom for not reading the text when the game dies after just a few months will do the developers and the game a lot of good…
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I agree with you, I believe visual and audio delivery of a story makes an even stronger impact. Cut scenes at crucial moments can add a flare and dramatic angle that can leave a lasting impression. I’m all for that.
Voice acting is a beast in itself to tackle. As a small team I’m sure they don’t have ready access to someone like Morgan Freeman to drop in and deliver an ace narrative. And my very limited, small experience with game development in things like unity and game maker, have taught me that sound files eat up a tremendous amount of resources. If your game is limited on what it can push, audio has to take a backseat.
I have a more positive outlook on this games future than projecting failure onto it before it’s even out of beta. I have a feeling there are more than enough people that like the direction it’s going in that will keep it alive. Zippy is more than welcome to join the adventure. He might even learn to slow down and enjoy the scenery for once.
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I chuckle every time I hear Alric getting annoyed at the forge. But I do agree the story is somewhat lacking something to engage the average player. Perhaps some lore drops/collectibles like D3?
From what I read so far, the voice acting is done as one of the last parts in the development. Its because you want to hire the actors one time to record everything to have the smallest possible expenditure.
I hope that we will see lots of voice acting and maybe some more ingame scenes like the clash of Rahyeh and Heorot. Also maybe some more cut scenes like the character introduction stuff.
Even Diablo I had good voicacting. I still remember the tomes you could find in the levels that told you about the demons.
This stuff helps a lot in terms of immersion. My hope us that future polishing will bring all these things to LE.
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