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+--- Thread: Story Railroading. (/showthread.php?tid=191386)
RE: Story Railroading. - Saronsen - 03-20-2022
It's been a while.
Has there been any discussion on including the playerbase like once before, or have we settled on the players being too incapable of being part of the story, and only the devs (who are also just players) are the ones who can control it?
RE: Story Railroading. - Karlotta - 03-20-2022
How about you write up a proposal for guidelines, hard requirements, and limits for faction leaders and story devs, which will keep things from going down the toilet like once almost always before, with or without player involvement.
RE: Story Railroading. - sindroms - 03-20-2022
This has always been a messy subject. The issue I personally have it is that we could never sit down and agree just what degree of control faction leaders have over their factions, and if should or should not encompass the whole of the NPC faction as, for the sake of uniqueness, many factions are not meant to represent the whole NPC faction, while others do.
I do not really remember who was the story lead at the time, I am sorry, but it was brought up during that time (Early 20teens) that basically it would make more sense to take away the full freedom of the story progression from regular members (And this also included 1ICs of official factions) and leave it up to the story devs to provide them with two things. A rough outline of the current story state, a possible result for the next patch (with or without spoilers) and then allow the players (faction, indie, etc) to get from A to B in whatever way they wished RP-wise.
So yes, you are basically railroaded by an overarching plot, but the story itself is yours to write and figure out.
For obvious reasons this was never adopted as people felt as though it endangered their writing and however many years of effort has been placed into developing an ID, faction and its ties with other factions.
In order to change anything about this the current members would have to get together, agree that yes - to make changes it is to risk past work and have it subject to change if needed. Only when this understanding is reached, you can start screwing around with the process itself. Figure out if it is 1) needed, 2) how much of a flustershock it will be to change it in the first place and if it is worth the drama/effort.
RE: Story Railroading. - Czechmate - 03-20-2022
(03-20-2022, 09:10 AM)sindroms Wrote: This has always been a messy subject. The issue I personally have it is that we could never sit down and agree just what degree of control faction leaders have over their factions, and if should or should not encompass the whole of the NPC faction as, for the sake of uniqueness, many factions are not meant to represent the whole NPC faction, while others do.It got worse actually - there is now a form "dev plan" which is how you are supposed to contact the Dev team.
I do not really remember who was the story lead at the time, I am sorry, but it was brought up during that time (Early 20teens) that basically it would make more sense to take away the full freedom of the story progression from regular members (And this also included 1ICs of official factions) and leave it up to the story devs to provide them with two things. A rough outline of the current story state, a possible result for the next patch (with or without spoilers) and then allow the players (faction, indie, etc) to get from A to B in whatever way they wished RP-wise.
So yes, you are basically railroaded by an overarching plot, but the story itself is yours to write and figure out.
For obvious reasons this was never adopted as people felt as though it endangered their writing and however many years of effort has been placed into developing an ID, faction and its ties with other factions.
In order to change anything about this the current members would have to get together, agree that yes - to make changes it is to risk past work and have it subject to change if needed. Only when this understanding is reached, you can start screwing around with the process itself. Figure out if it is 1) needed, 2) how much of a flustershock it will be to change it in the first place and if it is worth the drama/effort.
Submissions are getting eithere responsed to months down the line with "doesn't fit story" or straight up ignored.
Communication and influence works on the buddy system instead - it all depends on who you know on the Dev team rather than official channels to be able to influence story. Official factions have no control over their own reps either - request are denied by admins and you are constantly told to "talk to story" while there is no official channel that you can talk to story through (there used to be) in the first place.
The story devs don't care, the change would need to come from them as it has been proven time and time again that the input of the community is not important to them and threads are these are plainly ignored.
RE: Story Railroading. - Erremnart - 03-20-2022
I believe that main probelm between dev - player relationship is just the fact that Disco runs for so long and mistakes were made in the past which can't be just deleted with a wave of magic wand.
In optimal roleplaying story-driven environment, storytellers/DMs/story devs should always be open and an unbiased, but players should be humble and ready to accept compromise and the fact, that not every proposal is going to get through. In fact, even in other story-driven collaborative games, just a minority of players proposals gets implemented.
No serious and long-going story telling game accepts all player story proposals - that's a fact we must all accept and cope with it because that's a norm.
In optimal roleplaying story-driven environment, storytellers/DMs/story devs should always be open and an unbiased, but players should be humble and ready to accept compromise and the fact, that not every proposal is going to get through. In fact, even in other story-driven collaborative games, just a minority of players proposals gets implemented.
No serious and long-going story telling game accepts all player story proposals - that's a fact we must all accept and cope with it because that's a norm.
RE: Story Railroading. - LuckyOne - 03-20-2022
While the devs seemed to have the best interests in mind with the recent changes, from where I'm standing this had the unfortunate consequence of many RP heavy factions simply giving up and fading into obscurity, instead of focusing on delivering more quality content that's more aligned with Story's vision.
The decision didn't seem to affect the player numbers too much (taking into account the end of lockdowns and people being fed up with staying inside), but it did affect peak numbers. When I returned to the mod, at the start of lockdown, factions still had some say in the Story and this lead to spikes of 70 - 90 players during important events.
The recent, Story driven events have been far less successful in garnering interest.
The other effect was people being driven to more "casual" factions like the recently formed DTR, factions that are not trying to invest heavily into the plot points of Story.
For diversity's sake and to keep the mod more interesting I urge the devs to reconsider some of their decisions regarding players having some influence on the story (or the accompanying game mechanics) and return to a more democratic and parliamentary "form of government" of the mod.
RE: Story Railroading. - Czechmate - 03-20-2022
The issue I have is the total randomness and disconnect to what happens in-game.
For example it's been said that it wouldn't matter if insurgency was the most played faction in the game - they'd remove it anyways. And on the other hand there's been time wasted on Royalists - a very similar faction, one that harmed Gallic story, was wanted by just a few buddies and the form in which it was applied was changed from what the initiators, MdG, wanted. And it's dead now with no progress done to it since it was plastered into the game.
One faction added to the game while other one removed, both decisions harming activity ultimately.
If story worked well we wouldn't complain, they aren't however, they have made it clear they don't care what people actually playing the game want.
It's not rocket science to bother replying to dev plans sooner than months down the line, or make a communication channel, official one where they listen to feedback and explain things. What ends up happening is that story devs are making drastic changes in areas they have no clue about how people actually play in-game, based on their own random whims - this is definitely NOT the norm for other games where the player base is considered and devs try to make the game active as much as possible.
I mean naturally - commercial game companies' bottom line depends on that - Markam, Reeves and Co do this as a hobby, they don't have to care as it's just a nuisance for them, they probably see it as "I do the work, I get to decide on what makes sense to me", which is why DWGs were cut, they ignore dev plans and discuss what to do with their friends. Any change will need to come from them, for that they'd need to care about the community and active players, and also make their life harder/more complicated in the process.
RE: Story Railroading. - Erremnart - 03-20-2022
Pointing fingers at people won't help these matters, unfortunately. I've been doing that as well and it only led to worse ingame experience for me.
The best course of action is to start cooperating without biases of the past and acknowledging that some thing can't be done or undone, and some things need or can't happen.
Game won't be better if we split ourselves into different camps and stop interacting with each other because 'X did Y to me.'. Game will be better if we'll start playing the game.
Also, what I've notices during my time on Disco as I had a chance to peek into OF HCs and player govs - there is unhealthy adversity for losing stuff, especially pixel empires. One must understand, that victories are only one half of the journey and defeats and setbacks can be as good for story as any victories, if not even better.
The best course of action is to start cooperating without biases of the past and acknowledging that some thing can't be done or undone, and some things need or can't happen.
Game won't be better if we split ourselves into different camps and stop interacting with each other because 'X did Y to me.'. Game will be better if we'll start playing the game.
Also, what I've notices during my time on Disco as I had a chance to peek into OF HCs and player govs - there is unhealthy adversity for losing stuff, especially pixel empires. One must understand, that victories are only one half of the journey and defeats and setbacks can be as good for story as any victories, if not even better.
RE: Story Railroading. - Czechmate - 03-20-2022
(03-20-2022, 12:06 PM)Erremnart Wrote:Hmm, you do have a point. People like me do get attached too much to stuff, pixels are not that important in the end. At the end of the day, in practice story can be largely ignored anyways E.g. When they delete Insurgency we will just move Hellfire under Xeno ID or wherever the cap (s) will go and just keep going as usual, maybe work towards getting Fr5d by Xeno Alliance, that's player choice devs can't influence much - generating activity and how it happens is on the in-game leaders at the end of the day.Pointing fingers at people won't help these matters, unfortunately. I've been doing that as well and it only led to worse ingame experience for me.
The best course of action is to start cooperating without biases of the past and acknowledging that some thing can't be done or undone, and some things need or can't happen.
Game won't be better if we split ourselves into different camps and stop interacting with each other because 'X did Y to me.'. Game will be better if we'll start playing the game.
Also, what I've notices during my time on Disco as I had a chance to peek into OF HCs and player govs - there is unhealthy adversity for losing stuff, especially pixel empires. One must understand, that victories are only one half of the journey and defeats and setbacks can be as good for story as any victories, if not even better.
Focusing on leading player driven stories, pixels be damned is a better use of time anyways than the futile attempts to influence story.
Sometimes the decisions seem disastrous and limiting at first though before you realize you can easily bypass them later though and changed status quo isn't so bad :]
RE: Story Railroading. - sindroms - 03-21-2022
Well, again, is Discovery the result of player interaction and we live and accept the ''jank'' that is introduced over time as it evolves - Phantoms being a good example from the olden days, now retired and phased out of existence as with many other topics will be over time I have no doubt, or do we stick to a more coherent railroad which is controlled by a handful of players. There is no right answer here, it is just a mater of how big of a population agrees with either choice and can the minority swallow their pride and learn to adapt to the opposite choice to make disco work. Probably not. It has not happened in the past and people are reluctant, understandably, to give up their hard work for the sake of the mindshare.