This may be a hot take to many but hear me out. The lack of lore and story could possibly be one of the biggest reasons why people have left the game and don’t or didn’t even realize it. For those who love story and lore, the game just doesn’t do a great job at it in my opinion and I will expand on that in a moment. For those that don’t care about lore and story, that may be true to some degree, but you still need to have it so that even people who aren’t fully in to lore have some basis as to why we are all here, why we are doing what we are doing, why are we going in to expeditions etc
The current lore delivery:
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Fairly decent intro and tutorial that most people have likely forgotten about if they have played since the beginning. That is my experience
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A bunch of hidden blue papers throughout the game that may or may not be really interesting to read but I would guess a vast majority of players have never ever read, but they made it a point of clicking on it
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A pretty cool cutscene at the completion of Tempest (completely missing from the other expeditions
The Improved Lore Delivery:
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Add regular cutscenes or experiences at various levels that help advance the storyline. If those blue pages have good lore in them, try replacing some of the better ones with something in the game that is more interactive and interesting.
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Speaking of those blue pages, these need to be overhauled: Lets change them to various scroll types, tablets, writing directly on a walls and other , perhaps add a more subtle effect so you can see them, but in different colors that go with the area your in. Lets not put them were you see them right by an end boss fight, Lets move those to a short popup, or part of the cutscene to help drive the story forward. Perhaps in multiple pieces that must be gathered before it cant be read, add a reward upon completion of that task
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Figure out a way to do away with gearscore grind that takes you completely out of the story and in to chest runs and farming where you run through rapidly and do not care about the anything else. Instead wrap that portion of the game up in a brand new questline where as you progress, your gear score rises, but you also have a new skills tree that shows various unlocks on it that will begin to complete as you progress. The unlocks could be things like unique cosmetic items, legendary weapons, a furniture skill that enables you to mount certain weapons on your house wall, I could go on for days. During this time your engaged with the story and obtaining really neat stuff or skills at the same time
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Monthly advancement of story, issued at the same time as patch notes. It shouldn’t be super long, but it should be very engaging and interesting to view. It should include a video on occasion and possibly point to a very special named item that you have to figure out how to obtain. The type of item that when you walk in to town with it, people stop to look.
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Speaking of named items, kill most of them. A vast majority of them are made using a name generator it seems and are useless throw away items so they have lost their appeal in most cases. Introduce new ones that are directly referenced in story and lore. they should all be special. Nothing worse that getting my first named item and its got a unique icon, but when you view it, its the same sword as a throw away sword…plain boring and useless. It should be top of the line for the level of the dungeon, it should have a unique model, unique visual effects and even sound
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Random Dev controlled events with the main characters (Super Important)
To describe this I just think back to Asheron’s Call ( a much older MMO that had story and lore on lock) The devs built up excitement through monthly story until finally one day Asheron Himself appeared in the game right near town. He was bigger than anything you had seen before and had powers never before seen and he wasn’t afraid to show it. He would enlist the help of the people to battle Baelzeron (sp?) and would tell you where to go, or he would simply get ambushed by Baelzeron right outside of town and a massive battle would ensue. Every player rushing from all over the land to come and aid Asheron and literally be able to attack the lands biggest foe , The excitement was through the roof and its all people would talk about on the forums. I wont even mention how the storyline actually physically changed the map by wiping whole towns .
I could go on more but I think I made my point
Dont get me wrong, there are may important areas of the game that need work, like right now, but in my opinion the lack of story and lore is critically missing from this game