Alright, here's my buck o' five on why the MxO storyline is looked down upon or loses the community interest at points. Please realize this is a criticism and is not intended to be a flame of any sort, but rather a guideline of what I think could be changed to better retain a playerbase interested in the storyline.
Too many characters are written in AND too many are written out very soon after their introduction. Yeah, it was earth-shattering when Morpheus, a well-established character from the movies was felled by the bullet of a Masked Assassin who then went loco and was hunted down by all three organizations for no good reason (but I'll get to that later). However, it was not earth-shattering when Anome died, because he really had no character depth. He was that arrogant sumbitch from Zion that, much like the Assassin, went crazy and was wanted dead by everybody. Same with the General before his defeat. He was the cocky arrogant sumbitch who had lots of Sentinel soldiers and wanted to destroy the Matrix for no good reason. See a pattern? Now, look at Halborn and Carlyne... Cocky arrogant sumbitches who don't give a *CENSORED* about the Matrix, are pursuing the Oracle and, in a result, making everyone want to kill them. It's tiresome, and, as we saw with Anome, no one really cared when he died. It was like "Oh, he's dead now? Thanks." And really, if you want an even more prime example, look at Danielle Wright. That was a waste of a chapter in my eyes. Furthermore, there's the Apothecary, who lasted for what, a week?
This is the problem that we've run into since the second Matrix movie. Too many new characters without enough background with too many new powers. It gets the audience lost, especially when they already have a perfectly sizeable and suitable cast of characters in front of them. (I know the first time I saw Reloaded I went "Wait, who the hell are all of these vampire and ghosty people and the french dude? On top of that, why is Smith alive and why can he clone himself. Furthermore, who's the asian guy protecting the Oracle all of a sudden? Didn't she used to have an apartment with little kids who bent spoons?) Surely exceptions can be made in the way of Cryptos, Veil, Kid (well, he was already in the movies), Shimada, Gray, Pace, Malphas, Ookami, and even Colt. The Effectuator's stretching it, but I think we can deal with him, too. That's widening the stage. But your Anomes, Unlimits, Halborns, and Carlynes... They don't do anything for the audience.
Motivation, or the lack thereof. Often there's no real motivation behind an organization's jump to hostilities with some entity, or, in many cases, that entity's jump to hostilities with everyone else. With the Assassin, Zion had cause to want him dead because of the assassination of Morpheus. The Machines, to a lesser degree, had justification due to the termination of Skinner and support for Zion (though, really, I think this would have been better painted as a feint - "Oh we care... But we're going to look over here and just not interfere".) Really, the only thing that brought them into the scenario was when the Assassin went loco and tried to destroy the Matrix, which was against their interests, though, really, there was no reason for the Assassin to go loco and try to destroy the Matrix. It was a deus ex machina to write him out, which was lame. Especially since the Merv justification was entirely manufactured as "OMG he randomly attacked Ookami! Killz him!" It's been this way for a while, too. Anome had a reason to try and take control the way he did, because he was a a crazy power-hungry bastard, and is sort of the exception, but the General, after having disappeared, returns out of the blue, trying to seek vengeance on Zion for not helping him out decides to try and destroy the whole Matrix? It just didn't make sense. And now we have two wireframe titans who are motivated by a BIP, for which I do give some sort of props to the storyline team there. However...
Supervillains don't listen to reason. Not ever. Halborn and Carylne will never stop to listen to an opinion. Neither did Anome. Neither did the General. I highly doubt they ever will. It's incredibly disinteresting being a part of a live event trying to gather information from a character who's predisposed to not giving out such information. And so, it makes interacting with these characters like talking to a brick.
Spontaneous Generation. I kind of touched on this in the motivation section, but really, most of MxO's villains show up out of the blue. The Effectuator has simply always been. Anome's some random nutbar that got appointed Niobe's controller. The General disappears for a while (why?) then reappears out of nowhere (also why? Just random chaos? I totally didn't buy it). Halborn and Carlyne, I guess we're still seeing, but honestly, it's taking too long, and I, at least, am losing interest.
Plot Mechanics that kill player RP. Read: Reinsertion. I honestly don't have a problem with there being no such procedure as reinsertion. However, the problem lies in that there has been no explanation of what happened to people who had been "reinserted." I had a blast with a semi-player RP in where I convinced Festaneve, a Cypherite member of LESIG, to get himself reinserted (and in, turn, write his character out). A big thank you goes out to him wherever he is now for letting me have such an influence on his character. I have always wondered, with the advent of reinsertion being a lie, what has happened to his character. If it were simply explained in a timely manner what really happened to those reinserted, I think there would've been far less disapproval of this mechanic. The same happened with Tick Tock's 1999 explanation, wherein afterward falacies were noticed by the playerbase but not acknowledged by the storyline. All that would've needed to happen would've been a return appearance by Tick Tock to clear that up by talking to another player, but there's this sort of... Stubbornness I've noticed on the development side to concede canonical defeat in the form of rephrasing or reorganizing certain concepts. It's very, very frustrating, and I think it would mean a lot to the players if sometimes concessions were made.
Hey you, look! Over there! The distraction principle. THIS IS NOT A GOOD PLOT DEVICE EVER. And yet, it happens all the time in MxO. Morpheus and Zion want the body of Neo returned to them. Suddenly Morpheus gets assassinated and Niobe declares war on the Merovingian. Result? Everyone has forgotten about Neo's body. Anome fries Niobe out of the blue, Niobe is quite randomly saved by the Merovingian. Result? Looks like the war on the Merv's over. The Machines ask for access to Zion's mainframe, Zion in return asks for access to the Machine mainframe. Tensions heighten. But OUT OF NOWHERE the General reappears and wreaks havoc on the Mega City. A war starts, suddenly this wireframe guy shows up and the Machines retreat. This makes the story appear unrealistic and makes its progression illogical in the eyes of the audience. What we really need is a focus more on the main conflict between Zion and the Machines (which extends out into Cypherites and EPN as well) without massive, generally unrelated, side stories getting in the way all of the time. MxO has had a sidestory mechanism built in since its inception, and that is the Merovingian storyline. Anything further is excessive. Yes, this includes Blue Sky which was another random organization of calamatous intent with no background that vanished as soon as it came that I've yet to mention.
And now a man who will fake his own death. Too many characters from MxO die only to come back a month later or so. Even Morpheus's death is hollow in that there is a simulacrum in his image roaming the streets now. Don't get me wrong, the initial idea of the simulacrum was good - it played along with many people's hopes and Morpheus's words far earlier in the storyline. But when it was revealed that it was a sim, I really think it would've been better for the story if it had terminated itself upon request (the only thing this would have countered would have been the signal locks on veteran operatives - which could have been rewritten to after the fall of Zion when Lock encountered machines. They would have kidnapped him and used his brain signal then, which makes more sense than an imposter Morpheus to me...). But following Morpheus, Niobe should have been dead (pew pew lazhurs and a construct cop out), followed by Searph (who apparently became aquaman by way of cheat vials - an extrapolation of an already hated chapter), Cryptos (I still don't buy Veil letting him be leader following his memory restoration - it would have been perfectly within her nature to murder his *CENSORED* in cold blood), and recently, Agent Gray and Hypatia among others I'm simply not recalling. I would have liked it if Lock died, too, but I can believe his survival for all of the others who died trying to save him. Feigned deaths cheapen the story because we come to expect death to be far less than permanent whenever somebody gets hit with a bullet, or even has their jack pulled now.
Sit down, let's have a chat. The storyline progresses too slowly. Much of the cause of this is the number of insignificant events that happen on a regular basis. We don't need to have an event where Pace just talks to Machinsts, really. Nor do we need to have an event where organizational heads talk to a throwaway exile contact, give him whatever crap he needs for information, then proceed to destroy white puffballs and crackheads for an hour or so. That doesn't progress the storyline. With a more manageable sentinel in place of cinematics, it would be nice if the event for each day actually had an impact. For example, instead of having such meetings with Pace, the Machine organization would track down Halborn in the middle of his search for the BIP and either give him a lead, trying to get him away from some sort of residential area. Instead of simply stumbling upon accelerated exiles, Zion could have stumbled upon Halborn and began the initial questioning of who he was and what he wanted. Plot progression optimally would be revealed through each live event. By making each event contribute to plot progression, not only would they be far more interesting to the playerbase (honestly, there's no comparing giving a pair of commando goggles to some exile and fighting a swarm of accelerated exiles to seeing Seraph punch Cryptos and reveal that he's an overwrite - it's an imbalance), but chapters could move along more quickly, resulting in far less slows and stops which lose players.
I'm sure there's more that I could add to this, but that's all I feel I need to write for now... And I really do hope that with Rarebit completely and entirely at the helm, that some of these concerns will be addressed, changed, or circumvented in the future. Or that, at the very least, they are not taken lightly or disregarded.
There's nothing terribly wrong with the pacing of the story. I think it comes down to players being bored inbetween advancements. You have to consider that as an MMO, MxO is meant to go on for a long time, years...maybe even a decade. Therefore they can't throw everything out there just to keep us busy. Things must be drawn out.
It's irritating, believe me, I understand, but it's necessary. In regards to some things being poorly written...yeah, some things seemed a bit odd. Nothing is ever perfect. Personally I was most disappointed in how many of the good story elements were just dropped during the SOE/Lith transition. I understand the reasoning but can't help but still feel miffed about it all.
Personally, I think that if we had more than just one developer and his merry team of volunteers progressing the storyline, then we'd be drenched in much more than we are now. Maybe now that SOE isn't fitting such a bill for Chadwick they can hire out some more help. :S
Very well said, Neoteny.
We need to get rid of this villain of the week idea. I, as a player and as a character, am wholly disinterested in Halborn and Carlyne. There is a -war- going on. Why is Zion dropping everything to investigate these two jokers? Why are we not focusing on the war and taking advantage of the fact that these two jokers have the Machines distracted.
It's frustrating.
Almost as frustrating as when the organization's leaders do something that is very much against popular opinion of the org as a whole. The players' feelings towards an action need to be taken into consideration... if for any other reason just to make us feel like we're involved and have an impact on the story. Zion working with the General in chapter 3 is a perfect example of this. The entire community had been made aware of the General's relation to the LED Agents, proof was given showing the Commandos were sentinel programs MONTHS, if not a year before it was revealed by Pace... and yet Zion still agreed to work with him? That's one of the reasons I left Zion way back. My faction did months of work pulling information together about the General. When he showed up with his commandos, all the information we had gathered was sent to Niobe... old clippings from the Sentinel, coordinates showing every helipad location in Downtown, etc... and we basically got the cold shoulder and told that Niobe knows what's she's doing.
The storyline needs to be somewhat flexible in this regard. It's like Neoteny said... talking to storyline characters now feels like talking to a brick wall. They're so stubborn in their desicions, which leaves us, the players, feel like spectators instead of movers and shakers.
Can we at least get rid of the "Villain of the week"? Please Rarebit, let's have a more "natural" storyline, lets go back to the War Arc....
MetaLogic wrote:Can we at least get rid of the "Villain of the week"? Please Rarebit, let's have a more "natural" storyline, lets go back to the War Arc....Smith wasn't a villain of the week in the movies? =p
Rarebit wrote:MetaLogic wrote:Can we at least get rid of the "Villain of the week"? Please Rarebit, let's have a more "natural" storyline, lets go back to the War Arc....Smith wasn't a villain of the week in the movies? =pNaaa that was the Twins. Smith spawned all 3 films he was the major protagonist (like Lex Luthor and Superman), the twins were what you could call villain of the week, and should have never been brought back IMO. Cool that they are back, but totaly contradicts with the films.
