Main Scenario Restriction Bloodstorm - Very Very Bad idea.

[Blood-Aki]

Making niche games nowadays doesn't make you tons of money anymore. Just see at Wildstar and its attempt to gather the "hardcore raiders" back. Was a big success wasn't it?

Regardless, if people go to the "swimming pool" and "sit there next to the water", it's not your concern: they paid to sit in that swimming pool and all they (the company who knows the pool) only care about their money. How they spend it is none of your concern.

Yea, much like how you can buy a huge dinner, and let it sit there and do nothing but talk, in the end you more or less wasted your money instead of staying at home. as with an RPG you treat it as a social media instead of using actual social medias. No one said you can't do that, but you aren't using it as intended.

Corrected that for you, mostly because the driving force of an MMORPG isn't story alone. I mean as someone said to me regarding why 1.0 failed:

IF you are going to "correct" it then you even did that wrong, it's a "Massive Multiplayer online ROLE PLAYING GAME, Hence MMORPG" it's still a role playing game, you just play with OTHERS, does not change it's meaning. You don't find many people on fighting games only going on to talk, and never actually fighting. maybe very rare cases, since we have this issue. and 1.0 failed because it was plain and simple a bad game, to many flaws and not enough actual fun. not to mention it was PC only with way to high req needed where you needed a REALLY good pc just to be able to handle it. Cutting off most players.

In other words, story alone didn't make 1.0 worth its price tag because the gameplay was trash beyond belief, or else the game wouldn't shut down.
Story is important yes, but alone it won't make the game go further and 1.0 was a good lesson to remember.

It's called a balance, it wouldn't work without a story either, Like if you just made a character, and there was no CSs, and it just said "here, make a character and go do whatever, no need to talk to anyone" it needs BOTH, as any ROLE PLAYING game does.

Every game has some kind of story to it. regardless of how minor because creators like to give reasons behind there creations.

[Voltyblast]

Snip

1) Irrelevant: all the companies want is our money and they couldn't care less how we "waste" the huge dinner for. I play the game for the gameplay and I don't care about the story: it's how -I- want to spend my gaming time on.
Is it not intended? Why should you care? Or for that matter why should THEY care? The companies literally couldn't give two effs about it: all they want is to find ways for us to spend money and I'm paying them for the service.
Infact it's why skins, costumes and all that stuff is famous in F2P: it sells, it's a nice cosmetic thing that takes the attention, and it's not overly cheap. Guess what's FFXIV is doing right now? Yup, exactly!

2) Not sure what I wrote back, but so what? Other "Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game" don't get you stuck on a story. Even Single Player Role Playing Game allow you a much more array of freedom, and they are focused on story for the most part: I'm currently playing Legend of Heroes and the amount of things you can do with your free time is immense, and it's also rewarding (literally speaking).
Heck Skyrim is story driven too but did you really even bother to follow it? And that's a "Role Playing Game" too, mind you. A western one yes, but still one regardless

2.5) And that's still makes my point: 1.0 was a terrible mmorpg by gameplay AND technical standards, making it "unplayable" even if it had a heavy focus on story, just like FFXIV do. 2.0 fixed the gameplay and it instantly became a hit. As i said, my point pretty much stands: gameplay is mandatory to make a GAME - yes even a role playing GAME - playable to begin with. A story does nothing else but add flavour to the gameplay.

3) I don't know, almost any mmorpg I know does it fine without a story, and some of those who do have a story still don't lock you from an entire expansion. The Role Playing part still exists: you still play the ROLE of an avatar and your ROLE as X is to explore the world and talk to other ROLEPLAYERS and play the game together. As I said earlier, the story is just added flavour to the game: it's there to make the experience enjoyable, not a chore.

So no, there's no balance because you're forced to complete the STORY which locks the GAMEPLAY behind it.
Meanwhile another game with heavy story on it (SWTOR) just suggests you to complete the STORY but doesn't lock the GAMEPLAY behind it.

But don't take me for a hater of stories: I love RPGs of all kind (FF a bit less, especially after 12 and 13) and a MMORPG with a campaign is fun to do and it's one of the main things I absolutely adored of Legion, while I simply could not bear to follow this one at all.
Regardless, Legion gave me full freedom of what I wanted to do without locking everything (And I can't even call World Quests a real lock, since that you pretty much unlock it by levelling) and I could follow the stories and the class campaign in any order I wanted. I just had to choose.

Something that this game sorely lacks: choices. And darn it, now I have imagines of myself playing the role of the villain...why can't we play them