I don’t really know, or care, why my characters are fighting stuff. Was the undead emperor a bad guy, or just misguided and became corrupted by the void? Is the void a conscious heat death of the universe kind of thing? Should I care? Does my necro want to be the new, worse, emperor? Is my druid a grumpy old man that got bored saying ‘get off my lawn’ and is now kicking people off his lawn? There’s a LOT of room to grow with the story, but currently the story just doesn’t grab my attention past the intros.
Ideas on how to enhance the story
Have multiple stories, one for each character specialization. As long as they end up in the same endgame, it’s all good. This would also give people more reasons to play different classes and specializations.
Don’t make it static. Most people understand that time travel changes the story. So, if a better written story comes up next month, don’t be afraid to remove the current story (i.e. druid goes from being a grumpy old man to a young idealist).
Let the community write the stories. I know there are aspiring writers in the works here, so embrace the fan fiction (but please edit it). You could even let the community vote on the best or most liked stories.
Assuming you built in i18n support, updating the story should be strait forward (I know, each time someone says this it adds a month to the development time). This also allows you to have different stories for different languages (not every culture likes the same story).
I know these ideas are on the crazy side of things, as most games do a fire and forget story wise. But, you’all seem to be doing some amazing things gameplay wise, and I’d hate to see the story not hold up. With the ability already there to rewrite history in the story (time travel between epochs), you can iterate on the story just like you are iterating on the gameplay. Most games have fan fiction (and fan art, and fan…well, lets just say there’s other fan stuff that’s not appropriate for this conversation). So lets just say, there’s a resource you can use to iterate on the stories, might as well use it.
Thank you for your time
TLDR: Story is lacking, maybe iterate and expand to make it better. O, and use free fan labor so we’d have a story written by fans for fans.
Yeah to be honest, I’ve played the campaign three times by now over something 16 months and I don’t know a single character, quest or even what the whole story might potentially be about
AT ALL
The only thing that I know about the story is there is one cool lancer guy in the Monolith who thinks that his lance will make him a cool guy and to be honest, it does make him a cool guy.
There was so much story telling in those 2 manuals, it was almost like getting a free novel when you bought the game. I still remember how it felt when Tyrael destroyed the Worldstone, not because of the gameplay, but because of the story. True, a lot of games have all but ignored the story, but the story is what gives us more feelings then ‘i beat it, now what?’. I can still recall most of the quests for d2, because of the story telling, not the boss fights.
Granted, the story shouldn’t get in the way of playing, that way if you want to ignore it you can. But…that still leaves a scratch that isn’t itched.
I’m still very early in the story but I’ve found it very interesting - to the point I’d happily read it through as a book. Time travel, shards in different time lines… I’m really excited to find out what happens.
Edit: One thing I did find strange is that we went to rescue that girl with the shard and she just says take it and stays there. I didn’t understand in the context of what was going on why she didn’t come with us. Maybe she was dying but it wasn’t obvious to me at the time but seemed strange that she was so willing to give up something her family existed to guard.
i fully agree. it is missing cut scenes or more interesting things.
The bosses that are in so far are somewhat fun but nothing special yet.
The maps are pretty boring to be honest.
In action-oriented games, I much prefer my story to be presented in this way. Not necessarily as a printed manual, but kept in a little digital library that I can peruse at my leisure when I feel like taking a break from hacking up monsters. I absolutely love finding scraps of lore and reading them–just not having to interrupt my gameplay flow in order to do so.
DOOM 2016 did this well. I unlocked a treasure trove of worldbuilding simply by playing the game, but never felt like it got in the way of my rocket-fueled rampage. At the end of the night, I’d kick back and read the new lore entries before logging off.
Grim Dawn has a ton of worldbuilding that you can completely ignore, but an entire novel’s worth can be found in pages along your journey, all organized by story arc or area when you choose to flip through them.
I love, love, love monster bestiaries. Enemies are usually the local inhabitants of an area, and being filled in on their roles in their monster societies can help the player’s mind create a characterful setting for a place, ripe for fan art or stories.
Drop the repetitive unicorns, bubble gum, and skittles wormhole sequence and substitute some short story driven cut scenes and people might become more connected to the plot…
… but I’d be happy if they just dropped the wormhole sequence.
The campaign’s boss fights are forgettable. The loot drops from bosses are forgettable. Orchirian the Rampant has a 100% chance to drop a unique (Orchirian’s Petals) which has no variation in stats which means once you beat him in softcore with any character he becomes an after thought. I don’t recall any boss dropping any loot. I dropped a portal on the architect and farmed her 11 times with zero unique items before giving up. The campaign needs some love definitely. As it stands now, it just seems like an obstacle that needs to be navigated to get to the end game, which in its current state is a needle in a haystack simulator since monolith boss fights drop pre-determined loot and you’re left scanning endless screens of items to improve your character.
The motivation to farm bosses either in campaign (no loot) or monolith (85% boss specific drop rates) is gone. I mean, how many woven flesh chest pieces do you need? And even if the loot wasn’t pre-determined you can’t farm monolith bosses anyways because they’re tucked behind the monolith of faith timelines.
You have to repeat things over and over in every ARPG, the good ones somehow manage to make that aspect enjoyable.
I would love to see bestiaries in the game guide! Talking about their culture (as much as can be expected, I doubt bears have hoedown), strengths, weaknesses, etc. I especially loved little paragraph (or 2) stories about the monster in question.
Some of the defining games in history had great stories. Ex: