Topic: We need a stronger backstory and sense of purpose
I'm a few days into Perpetuum, and I'm having a really hard time "getting into" the game because I feel like I'm controlling a little robot that I know nothing about, in a world I know nothing about, and have no reason for being here except the joy of pew-pewing some dirt and maybe some red targets.
This game is rock-solid gameplay wise (what content is there is implemented extremely well--very stable and looks and performs great, although I genuinely hate the targeting interface). But in the absence of gameplay content there needs to be a lot more external / virtual content in the form of an in-your-face backstory. I realize that there are only a few guys on the team, and a backstory is as permanent as a critical game feature so it needs to be handled carefully. But I think that should be given priority in your next steps of developing this game. People hold true to these kinds of games when they are deeply immersed, and there's nothing that makes a player more deeply immersed, in my opinion, than engaging interactively in a deep story where you really feel like you're changing the world, or rather changing the universe you're "living in".
I realize that there is a backstory (2, 3, 4, 5). But the basic premise shouldn't have to be sought out, especially "offline" in a browser outside of the game window, where the game must be minimized and immersion is completely lost.
That said, how should it be delivered?
First of all, if you don't have the multimedia talent on hand to produce hi-res video content for the player's first launch of the game, you should show a Homeworld-style narrative slideshow that the user can cancel out of. This should be accessible at any time but always presented at player's first launch. This narrative should explain the world we're about to experience, how we got here, why we're still here, what our short-term objectives are (survive? thrive?), and what our long-term (lifetime and beyond) objectives are ("get back home?" etc).
Second, you guys should not wait like EVE Online did to start adding storyline assignments. After I completed the tutorial assignments (which were very much storyline assignments even though they were focused on only training the player on the basics of gameplay) I immediately sensed thereafter that the standard assignments were meaningless, heartless, purposeless, and had no backstory, goal, or reason. You kill, you get paid. You mine, you get paid. Unacceptable. I'm talking more about the description of the assignment than much else; give me a little story to make me feel like I'm doing justice somewhere, undoing a wrong, or meeting a great need and exactly what that need means, even if for nothing more than greed.
Third, I would really like to get a sense of other egos, personalities, AIs, whatever you want to call them, from the NPCs in the game; as it stands there is absolutely no sense of other entities, just faceless (albeit logo-ified) corporations. In the humanoid universe of EVE Online the agents used verbiage that praised you, taunted you, or despised you; surely this alien world the humans have hacked into have some kind of personality, if not then *yawn*.
Finally, this goes beyond the main idea of this post, and if this fourth point is lost for technical or other reasons then may the other three points remain. But I would like to see much more interactivity in the game itself, where storyline is intertwined with player actions. "Find object X behind the rocks over there." "Place the object in the broken terminal at location B" "Watch the terminal come to life" "Now attack the sentries that you just caused to spawn" "Now take the disc out of the terminal you restored and bring it back to the main terminal (home)". "(this scenario will reset in 60 seconds for other players)" Perhaps this kind of interactivity does exist at higher level assignments, I don't know, I haven't seen it yet. But it shouldn't take much to implement simple triggers.
Overall, I think this game has a lot of potential, but IMO it needs some less-technical creative work applied to it to keep it interesting beyond the first day or two.
Thanks for hearing me out.
Jon
