Woo we're getting Lore!.. But in all the wrong ways.

[LuckyCharm]

Hey all,

It feels a little like all the lore we've been getting lately is world building but at the same time not building it in the way that makes us actually care about what it is that we're doing or fighting for. Cool, we're getting an updated tileset here and there. Can't say I saw anyone ask for it, but it happened. Cool. But learning about the founder of the corpus? Who started the corpus all those years ago really has little baring on who the corpus are currently, and certainly doesn't make the current bosses the corpus have any more evil or worth killing. 

And that's just it, every faction is generic, every boss is solitary and not effecting that faction in any meaningful way, and each faction isn't quite acting like a cohesive whole. Each planet is controlled by a faction. Each of the planets has a ruling boss. Why then aren't that planets armies wearing that bosses livery or colors, or acting in a way that boss would approve of? Kela de thayme for example is mostly a celebrity to the grineer in that planet, Why aren't there advertising posters all over there promoting her, or the speaker drones going about promoting her next rathoom and her rowdy fans all rushing you all bloodthirsty like she does. 

Or Vor has himself an army of artifact collectors and loyalists. Yet the grineer in his planets don't act like they want to take you prisoner or anything. Tyl regor loves his tubemen and it stands to reason they'd love him back and yet there's no fanatical zeal to protect his labs, or manic experiments running about forgoing cover and trying to swarm you all at once. Things that make each bosses army unique to that boss so at least you're given reason to get to the boss and take them out to stop that part of the army improving. 

What're the communications like between these bosses? Who's allied with who? Why isn't it taken into account when you're going through the missions. Vor's forces for example could show up and help krill sometime if the balance was in a state of flux between the factions. It would make the game at least much less monotonous when going through, since currently all enemies are the same, regardless of what planet they're on. 

Then if we had that sort of gameplay being added, it'd add lore of whats actually happening CURRENTLY into the game rather than years in the past, which let's face it, the war has happened and ended. As interesting as a little backstory is, the main story isn't the past but the one we're playing through and whats actually happening NOW. 

 

Thank you for reading my thoughts and opinions and I hope some of you at least share the same thoughts

[(NSW)Greybones]

Well written 👍. You make some interesting observations.

The title was a little misleading for me. I thought it was a complaint thread instead of a “Food for thought” thread

Edited March 13, 2020 by (NSW)Greybones

[taiiat]

sure, you have a point.

and it would seem prudent for the Factions and the sub Factions to have their own Technology, then. the Factions as a whole have their usual Technology but each of the sub Factions related to a particular named Character, you'd expect to be creating Technology of their own on top of that and ergo deploying their own modified as well as unique types of Units. and probably some global models in there too.

so each Grineer/Corpus region would share some Units but also have unique Units.
the game did actually have this to some degree over the years, where this or that Planet did have one or two unique Enemies - though those got attributed to the Faction as a whole for the most part.

but maybe that's exactly how it should be / would be in universe, hmm? maybe that's the exact process Units should fill. this or that sub Faction creates a new modified or unique Unit, and for a while that's a big deal for them but over time that new Unit gets adopted/stolen and other sub Factions or the global Faction end up with those designs.
and that cycle continues, ad infinitum. each sub Faction procures new deployments of their own, while eventually those new deployments inevitably become the status quo and the cycle repeats.

 

that could be a good universe connecting spin on adding new Units, then. and since that covers both modified Units as well as completely new ones, that means that basically any update to the Factions that would be planned/queued can be funneled this way, regional deployment initially and spreading out as time goes on.

Edited March 13, 2020 by taiiat

[CarrotSalad]

Telling a story through imagery seems to be a dead art these days. Nightwave was pretty cool the way it was going. I cant connect the dialogue because the way her lines are written are far too out of perspective. (What the hells a dreamer? Why are you calling me that?) All her dialogue drives me nuts because it makes no sense. Who is she even talking to? ME? But the grammer?

10/10 for Nightwave with the way it communicates story through imagery. 4/10 for the way it communicates the story through dialogue.

1 hour ago, taiiat said:

and it would seem prudent for the Factions and the sub Factions to have their own Technology, then

They done this in Mechwarrior(battle tech) universe its cool. I want to be cautious in encouraging it at the same time as balance and pacing is all over the place in the games. Its like how Railjacks are at the present time. Having weapon tiers that contribute nothing to someone once they get to the final tier. Theres no point in those lower teirs so people are just going to fast track past all that stuff! Especially if youre limited from inventory space.

2 hours ago, LuckyCharm said:

It feels a little like all the lore we've been getting lately is world building but at the same time not building it in the way that makes us actually care about what it is that we're doing or fighting for.

I agree.. I can see what developers are doing but its not believable. Cetus promised allot but it didnt because we dont see those NPC's apart of the world. They're just in the same place in the hub all the time.

Fortuna was a little bit better because of the ventkids and the way they were built into the world. Along with the conservation. Those simple things made me feel like the world was connected to each other.

[taiiat]

19 minutes ago, CarrotSalad said:

They done this in Mechwarrior(battle tech) universe its cool. I want to be cautious in encouraging it at the same time as balance and pacing is all over the place in the games. Its like how Railjacks are at the present time. Having weapon tiers that contribute nothing to someone once they get to the final tier. Theres no point in those lower teirs so people are just going to fast track past all that stuff! Especially if youre limited from inventory space.

i don't understand how what you said relates to Enemy Factions having an opportunity to take stuff they'd make for the game anyways and present it in a way that feels like an organic part of the universe, reinforcing the Lore without having to put much extra effort into doing so.

[Steel_Rook]

9 hours ago, LuckyCharm said:

It feels a little like all the lore we've been getting lately is world building but at the same time not building it in the way that makes us actually care about what it is that we're doing or fighting for. Cool, we're getting an updated tileset here and there. Can't say I saw anyone ask for it, but it happened. Cool. But learning about the founder of the corpus? Who started the corpus all those years ago really has little baring on who the corpus are currently, and certainly doesn't make the current bosses the corpus have any more evil or worth killing. 

Strongly disagree. I'm going to skip over the "never saw anyone asking for updated tilesets" comment because you clearly haven't looked closely enough, and get to the meat of the point:

History IS worldbuilding, whether you personally care for it or not. History gives us context for how things came to be the way they are, it gives us a glimpse into the culture, customs and ideology of different people and - if done well - the way they've evolved and twisted old ideology over time. For me personally - and yes, this is anecdotal - the history of the old Orokin empire and the origins of all the existing factions as essentially throwaway projects from a decadent aristocratic ruling class is far more interesting than anything happening in the here-and-now. Current events are not worldbuilding, they are plot, and often largely uninteresting plot, at that. Take something like Homeworld, for example. The search for Sajuk, encounters with the Benthusi, the history of the Hyperspace Cores - that was the interesting, high-concept space opera plot that kept me at least interested. The dry, utilitarian, mundane skirmishes with the Vaygr, by contrast, felt like padding. I'm told that my actions had some unspecified effect on a war I wasn't invested into in the first place, but they failed to backfill the world in any meaningful way.

That's not to say I would be opposed to getting more background on the current named characters would be a good thing, definitely. A friend of mine talked about some kind of comic book around Vay Hek, how he was... I forget, thrown into a pit or acid or some such, and had to crawl out and rebuild himself. Hence most of his body missing? Yeah, that's cool and it does add a lot of context to what is otherwise a comic relief character. Be nice if it were IN THE SODDING GAME, but sure - I'm not against that. That, however, isn't what I'm predominantly interested in. My personal interest lies in ancient history, eldritch horrors from the Void, futuristic civilisations who have transcended the bonds of life and death and the intrigue involved in just how much of that was their doing and just how much of a hollow scam their rule was. That's not "the wrong way" to do worldbuilding - far from it.

 

9 hours ago, LuckyCharm said:

Kela de thayme for example is mostly a celebrity to the grineer in that planet, Why aren't there advertising posters all over there promoting her, or the speaker drones going about promoting her next rathoom and her rowdy fans all rushing you all bloodthirsty like she does.

Yeah, and if we had a separate Senda tileset that's not just a retread of the Grineer Shipyard from Ceres, then that might actually be a thing. I mean, look at the new Jupiter tileset pasting Alad V's face all over the place in monitors. Granted, he doesn't say anything terribly interesting and most of his lines are dry EULA readings for his workers, but that in itself reveals a lot about his character. He likes to act shifty and crazy and hammy, but is actually a bureaucrat at heart. Would explain how he managed to amass enough wealth to buy such high position in a society entirely driven by money. And while Tyl Regor claims to "love" his Tube Men, I have a copy of a letter he sent to one of them, in which he's entirely condescending and seems to regard the Draga with open contempt, treating them like knuckle-dragging idiots. Tyl Regor's unique tileset, however, is littered with bio labs which even on cursory examination reveal attempts to improve the cloning process or improve the gear of his soldiers. The all of the flavour context of missions on his tileset also revolve around sabotaging his cloning experiments.

The majority of early Warframe assets are generic, meant to evoke the general feel of a faction without real distinction between its leaders. Creating unique tilesets per planet allows for environment detail to be tailored towards the backstory and personality of the person in charge of that planet. And granted, the Corpus Ship tileset isn't specific to any individual character and is more a generic one, but it's still specific to the Corpus as a whole. I've obviously not seen it yet so who knows - maybe it's entirely hollow. However, creating new and more specific assets IS a way to do storytelling.

 

9 hours ago, LuckyCharm said:

Then if we had that sort of gameplay being added, it'd add lore of whats actually happening CURRENTLY into the game rather than years in the past, which let's face it, the war has happened and ended. As interesting as a little backstory is, the main story isn't the past but the one we're playing through and whats actually happening NOW. 

And just because this deserves being stated on its own: "What's actually happening current" is not inherently more interesting or more meaningful than what happened in the past. For me personally, what's happening currently is uninteresting utilitarian noise. All of the interesting events are in the past, because none of the interesting events can be rendered through gameplay in a way that's as compelling as a solid writer's freehand narrative. As such, I'm far more interested in the events of the past where all the interesting stuff happened than I am about The New War. The Zariman 10-0, Archimedian Margulis, the Man in the Wall, the history of the Sentients, the origin and technology of the Orokin, the transition between the old world and the current one - THAT is what interests me. I get that it doesn't interest YOU, but that doesn't make it inherently less interesting.

[peterc3]

10 hours ago, LuckyCharm said:

the main story isn't the past but the one we're playing through and whats actually happening NOW. 

The main story happening now is based on a timeline that starts and stops every time a new update is released. There is nothing happening in the meantime. It isn't some persistent, living world.

The bulk of the story is what happened in the past. Your problem is with a game type that has to exist the same for a first day player as a 1000 day player. Is there any other game that does something like what you suggest?

[Althaline]

5 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Strongly disagree...

Thank you. You articulated what I was thinking far better than I could've. Worldbuilding includes the history of the place, though my personal passion lies in a slightly different place from yours (I like learning more about how the Void works and what its limits are).

[LuckyCharm]

Fair points, but i never did say history was bad, i said the history weve gotten recently hasnt done anything at least for me to make me want to actually fight these things. The void for example , how did those units get corrupted, what is corruption, why are the ancient orokin tech so much stronger than tech like a thousand years in the future? What are those white trees? How did vor get to the void?   None of this stuff gets answered but it would flesh out what youre doing there and why you want to go and clear towers out. Instead im given another island to grind on, or completely unexplained new research just appears in our areas for research without so much as a "we stole this prototype tech from one of the missions you played decoy for, research it and make it ours"

And yes literally every strategy game out there changes the team colors based on player. Every rpg out there recyles assets and recolors them for different areas. And also yes mmos frequently reuse and recolor enemy types and upgrade their skills. Hecc even path of exiles has 3x different bandit hoardes named and recolored after the 3 bandit bosses, and one of those hoardes has different skills. 

 

Id be all for it if they wanted to actually flesh things out to explain why we do things through history stuff, but just introducing all these random new things and then failing to explain what they are and how we got them or found them just doesnt feel coherant. Certainly doesnt sound like we've gained any meaningful advantage sometimes when you build this new thing, go out there and the enemies have all gotten there first and have more advanced tech to start off with.