I think that it's fair to say that this topic is one of the main reasons I'm an ex-Eve player rather than a current subscriber. I see the failings with storyline development as part of a bigger problem with CCP's overall efforts. Much as I admire everything that has been achieved in Eve Online, and much as I have fond memories of it and the people I played with / against, the overwhelming feeling I have about it is one of mild disappointment at the way it developed. The early game showed a very strong vision and a huge amount of potential, but I think it has drifted away from that early vision and has failed to live up to its potential.
The background was a large part of the appeal, even if it was clichéd. It was a great set-up. The game mechanics should have built on those early foundations to provide more dynamic systems that would have supported emergent gameplay and all those other nice things you get when you give people a single-server sandbox. Actual storytelling would only have ever needed to be in a terse factual style or reporting on developments. Instead, every expansion has introduced some new grand idea that has never been finished and some easy-win shiny ships to distract the vocal PvPers.
The writers have been allowed too much free reign to pursue their own agendas and whims, and frankly, have bollocksed it up. Much that I have read over the years has been an obvious effort to shoehorn a story that someone wanted to write into the Eve setting with scant regard for that setting. The waters have been so successfully muddied that I doubt anything will ever be clear.
There was a time when I thought that there was an overall plan for the storyline / background elements. It's clear that there is nothing like a plan, however. People have been winging it from day one; making it up as they go along and hoping no one notices.
The players should have been writing the fiction and creating the history in any case. They largely have. People were hungry for more Eve chronicles, but that was because they were hungry for information; for the world to change; for something or someone to make a difference. I think that this clamour was misinterpreted as a desire for more fiction. we welcomed more fiction in any case, because at least it was something tangible. It showed that someone cared about something else other than another reskinned ships with amended stats in the database.
The gameworld should have been headed towards being dynamic from 2004. There was so much scope for using and progressing the existing tools: standings, system security status, docking rights, the market, trade goods, agents, corporate shares. Instead the world has been static with some grafted-on news reports and downtime changes to introduce a much-heralded feature that no one cares about any more. The official writers and content teams should have been marshalling and disseminating facts about the world, to support the dynamic world, rather than indulging their novelist aspirations.
I thought that one day I would log in to find that Pator was part of the Amarr Empire. Or that Rens was now a 0.4 system due to the ongoing pirate incursions there. I thought that the Amarr Empire would deny me docking rights at their stations due to my poor standings, meanwhile the docking fees at Caldari stations would skyrocket. I thought that I could live comfortably on the dividends paid out on my shares. I thought that I'd be able to check Lustrevik V and learn that it had four continental landmasses and its capital was Revikk, pop 15,898,387. I thought I'd see evidence of everyday life taking place around me: not dynamically spawned generic dungeons for the duration of someone's mission.
The expansion of CCP has diluted the core vision for the game. Original creators have moved to senior corporate positions, while new blood comes in and tried to make a mark. The result is that nothing is ever fully developed, least of all the storyline. The result is perpetual frustration for long-term players or a kind of grim resignation to perpetual shoddiness.
As much as anything, Eve has been great because it shines by comparison to its second-rate competitors. It could have been even greater though. Maybe Eve 2 will be the game some of us hoped for back in the day...
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Topic: Sorry, where did the storyline go? [raegwarning] (Read 8516 times)