Why is race and nationality ignored so much in the lore? (why does the lore fail)

[Azurymber]

Rule of thumb: if you use the term "fail" in your post, chances are that the post is worthless.
Corollary to the rule of thumb: if you use the term "fail" in the topic of your post, the post if worthless for sure.

This thread exemplifies the above rule perfectly.

If you think the quests don't involve some great lore and some great writing, simply enough you didn't read them.

i'm sorry. one of the quests was like "zomg i made cookies, i want ppl to like my cookies, run around limsa and give 5 ppl my cookies and like totally /psyche them up about it"
How is that great lore? or great writing? or interesting in anyway. You literally just run around town for 10 min and /psych at 5 npcs who are like "nom nom good".....

this compared to ffxi in which a quest might have you watch a 5 min cutscenes with child elvaans talking about wanting to take part and help out in the war, the adults telling them not to, one of the kids running off to take on an orc, having to go save said kid from a crazy orc overlord, epic fighting, etc.

You have VERY low standards my friend.

So my friend....
run around town and give people cookies
or save a headstrong kid from his stubborness to help protect a nation from a beastman onslaught.

[Abriael]

i'm sorry. one of the quests was like "zomg i made cookies, i want ppl to like my cookies, run around limsa and give 5 ppl my cookies and like totally /psyche them up about it"
How is that great lore? or great writing? or interesting in anyway. You literally just run around town for 10 min and /psych at 5 npcs who are like "nom nom good".....

this compared to ffxi in which a quest might have you watch a 5 min cutscenes with child elvaans talking about wanting to take part and help out in the war, the adults telling them not to, one of the kids running off to take on an orc, having to go save said kid from a crazy orc overlord, epic fighting, etc.

You have VERY low standards my friend.

So my friend....
run around town and give people cookies
or save a headstrong kid from his stubborness to help protect a nation from a beastman onslaught.

The interesting part of the cookies quest is not what you're doing, but the comments you receive, which do give quite a few interesting hints on the life in Limsa, on some of the races and other things. Of course, reading comprehension and the ability to resist speedclicking is necessary (not to mention actual interest in the actual lore of the world, not just in the lore of the impending war against enemy X).

What people with poor taste and poor understanding don't really manage to grasp is that realistic worlds are populated with real people, that have everyday problems. Great lore and information about the world can be conveyed very well through those people.
In a realistic world not every headstrong kid needs to be saved to help protect a nation from a beastman onslaught.

In a realistic fantasy world there are both people with their everyday problems, and other people rallying companies of elite soldiers to prepare against the invasion of a ruthless empire of machina users.

FFXIV is building up having both. Immersion is built by a sense of realism, and if there were only quests to save the world, that sense of immersion would go down the drain.

I'm afraid the one with low standards (and no knowledge on how to build an immersive, realistic world), here, isn't me.

[Azurymber]

The interesting part of the cookies quest is not what you're doing, but the comments you receive, which do give quite a few interesting hints on the life in Limsa, on some of the races and other things. Of course, reading comprehension and the ability to resist speedclicking is necessary (not to mention actual interest in the actual lore of the world, not just in the lore of the impending war against enemy X).

What people with poor taste and poor understanding don't really manage to grasp is that realistic worlds are populated with real people, that have everyday problems. Great lore and information about the world can be conveyed very well through those people.
In a realistic world not every headstrong kid needs to be saved to help protect a nation from a beastman onslaught.

In a realistic fantasy world there are both people with their everyday problems, and other people rallying companies of elite soldiers to prepare against the invasion of a ruthless empire of machina users.

FFXIV is building up having both. Immersion is built by a sense of realism, and if there were only quests to save the world, that sense of immersion would go down the drain.

I'm afraid the one with low standards (and no knowledge on how to build an immersive, realistic world), here, isn't me.

alright then, what have you learned from the cookies quest?
People dont play an MMO to experiance real life. People play real life for that
People expect things in a game to be INTERESTING. Spending 1 hour walking around for 2 lines of meaningless lore is not interesting to the average person.

[Gramul]

alright then, what have you learned from the cookies quest?
People don't play an MMO to experience real life. People play real life for that
People expect things in a game to be INTERESTING. Spending 1 hour walking around for 2 lines of meaningless lore is not interesting to the average person.

Who are you to speak for the average person? I for one enjoy daily life lore and I feel it adds a nice touch to the depth of the overall setting. Mind you I think we should also have the sort of high action and adventure side quests like the one you mentioned from XI, but these more relaxed side quests are nice too.

I say we have both.

[Azurymber]

Who are you to speak for the average person? I for one enjoy daily life lore and I feel it adds a nice touch to the depth of the overall setting. Mind you I think we should also have the sort of high action and adventure side quests like the one you mentioned from XI, but these more relaxed side quests are nice too.

I say we have both.

I study / work with behavioural economics and neuroscience. So essentially i know the scientific reasons behind what makes the average person enjoy a game, why they enjoy it, what parts of the brain are active during specific tasks in a game, etc.

I'm not saying daily life lore is bad. I'm saying without real quests this game is not competitive with other games.

Further i'm saying that the -average- person's brain is not designed to get pleasure from monotonous boring tasks such as walking from one city to another along identical looking pathways without agro mobs. UNLESS its their first time. So if the quests had you explore new areas then there might be a benefit to them. But the fact that they have you walk to places you would normally go makes them fail.

put another way: if this game was FFXI standards and these quest were implemented then they would have value. But alone, they just make the game look rushed and uncompetitive.

[Gramul]

I study / work with behavioural economics and neuroscience. So essentially i know the scientific reasons behind what makes the average person enjoy a game, why they enjoy it, what parts of the brain are active during specific tasks in a game, etc.

Not really the main point of my post, but that's completely fascinating and not at all unbelievable.
Especially how you misspelled behavioral. (Just kidding, I know it's probably a typo)

That being said, I completely support the idea of more fantastic "real" quests.

[Azurymber]

Not really the main point of my post, but that's completely fascinating and not at all unbelievable.
Especially how you misspelled behavioral. (Just kidding, I know it's probably a typo)

That being said, I completely support the idea of more fantastic "real" quests.

I'm sorry that the rest of the world doesn't slack in their language like the US does
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioural_sciences

[Abriael]

Who are you to speak for the average person? I for one enjoy daily life lore and I feel it adds a nice touch to the depth of the overall setting. Mind you I think we should also have the sort of high action and adventure side quests like the one you mentioned from XI, but these more relaxed side quests are nice too.

I say we have both.

Exactly. You don't build a world on wars and conflicts alone. That's simply not a living and breathing world. In a realistic fantasy world there's the heroes andthe merchants, the warriors and the moms worried for their sons, people trying to put up a rudimental version of a pamphlet and all that.
Anything less, and the "Living and breathing" part goes down the drain. May as well just put up a series of instanced battles with cutscenes before and after.

@Azurymber: what's "meaningless" for you, is what create immersion for others. Sorry to burst the proverbial bubble.

Your studies mean jack. You obviously have never developed a game or written a story. And believe me, it shows. You have absolutely no idea of what the average person wants from a MMORPG game, let alone the average gamer, even less the average MMORPG gamer, and your extremely generic studies or work give absolutely no data or experience towards that knowledge.

You can't have just the heroes without the figurants. it's that simple.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

@ azur...
ya... you might need to revise what you just said as you cxan't speak for other people. What you study don't mean jack.

And to add ffxi also had "unless" quests..... alot more actually.

Also I got a nueroscience question, Supposedly those with ADD have long term/ short term memory issues. Care to explain as to why I can remember any sort of text, but have ADD

I can remember books I read just about word for word since I was about 4 years old. I can remember npc convo from games I haven't touched in nearly 10 years w/o looking it up care to expain that?

[Kilta_Firelotus]

Further i'm saying that the -average- person's brain is not designed to get pleasure from monotonous boring tasks such as walking from one city to another along identical looking pathways without agro mobs. UNLESS its their first time. So if the quests had you explore new areas then there might be a benefit to them. But the fact that they have you walk to places you would normally go makes them fail.
call me not adverage as I take please in this. And i literaly walk in olivion everywhere I go And take pleasure in running around each city aimlessly as i did in ffxi. careto explain why?