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Ok. After reaching stable orbit around kerbin for the first time, mission control is triggered to send a message saying that they discovered something kurcking amazing and you should visit there asap.

You go to the space center and this science kerbal starts talking to you about some strange signal and you now have to reach destination X on kerbin.

Once you reach it, you will have to take surface sample and bring it back to mission control. This will trigger another message talking about the finding and ask you to go to the moon and look for another clue, then place a telescope in orbit.

Then you will have to find and locate an artifact on a distant planet... (and story continues).

What if KSP had a mission editor?

And i'm not talking about scenarios but an actual storyline for the game which is based on triggered events and timers.

What if you could actually create your own missions and story? or even multiple stories?

Wouldn't that give more purpose and role playing to the game rather just another challenge and 'harder level'.

What if you could create missions that will resemble some of the movies we saw?

Movies such as:

Armaggedon

Europa report

Alien

Last days on mars

Mission to mars

Sunshine

Moon

This shouldn't be very hard too implement, as a feature or even as a mod.

I love KSP, but after a few hours I get bored. I've been everywhere, done everything and dont really look for a challenge (not that type of a person). Storyline would give more purpose to the game and enhance the role playing part of it.

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The way you described it makes it sound like a cheap ripoff of the first space missions from Spore. :sealed:

Eh, a "story mode" would appeal to me, but not the way you've set it up. I'd love a kind of RPG freedom, with consequences for all of your actions instead of set objectives.

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Ok. After reaching stable orbit around kerbin for the first time, mission control is triggered to send a message saying that they discovered something kurcking amazing and you should visit there asap.

You go to the space center and this science kerbal starts talking to you about some strange signal and you now have to reach destination X on kerbin.

Once you reach it, you will have to take surface sample and bring it back to mission control. This will trigger another message talking about the finding and ask you to go to the moon and look for another clue, then place a telescope in orbit.

Then you will have to find and locate an artifact on a distant planet... (and story continues).

What if KSP had a mission editor?

And i'm not talking about scenarios but an actual storyline for the game which is based on triggered events and timers.

What if you could actually create your own missions and story? or even multiple stories?

Wouldn't that give more purpose and role playing to the game rather just another challenge and 'harder level'.

What if you could create missions that will resemble some of the movies we saw?

Movies such as:

Armaggedon

Europa report

Alien

Last days on mars

Mission to mars

Sunshine

Moon

This shouldn't be very hard too implement, as a feature or even as a mod.

I love KSP, but after a few hours I get bored. I've been everywhere, done everything and dont really look for a challenge (not that type of a person). Storyline would give more purpose to the game and enhance the role playing part of it.

What you are suggesting could be easily implemented via contracts (albeit, ones that arent in the game). I would be a fan of logically stringing together contracts that follow a storyline, while splashing in other side-contracts that let you acquire funds, rep, science etc.... to be able to accomplish the main story-line contracts. I also think a mission editor that restrict techs/parts with a clear mission in mind would be awesome for replayability <---- Great Idea!

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Yeah ... I quite like the idea of chain contracts.

Contract series: Space lab for Petrodyne.

1. Orbit the core lab module

2. Add a habitat module

3. Add fuel and power storage

4. Fuel it all up for its long operational lifetime

5. Boost the completed structure into its final orbit. Don't break it!

6. Send up the crew. Be careful, they're squishy and they don't like your sustained 8G boosts.

7. So, it turns out we need solar panels. Would you mind adding some?

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I'd been thinking recently about introducing plot to KSP.

I think the key to it may be to create the story more via background events rather than driving the player directly. For example, set up the initial conditions so that an asteroid appears on target for a Kerbal city (once such things exist) a set time after the start of a new game; have serial contracts that gradually lead the player towards scientific discoveries that trigger follow up contracts; etc.

It's important, I think, to keep the storyline stuff entirely optional.

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  • 1 year later...
On November 3, 2014 at 4:01 PM, avpx said:

Ok. After reaching stable orbit around kerbin for the first time, mission control is triggered to send a message saying that they discovered something kurcking amazing and you should visit there asap.

You go to the space center and this science kerbal starts talking to you about some strange signal and you now have to reach destination X on kerbin.

Once you reach it, you will have to take surface sample and bring it back to mission control. This will trigger another message talking about the finding and ask you to go to the moon and look for another clue, then place a telescope in orbit.

Then you will have to find and locate an artifact on a distant planet... (and story continues).

What if KSP had a mission editor?

And i'm not talking about scenarios but an actual storyline for the game which is based on triggered events and timers.

What if you could actually create your own missions and story? or even multiple stories?

Wouldn't that give more purpose and role playing to the game rather just another challenge and 'harder level'.

What if you could create missions that will resemble some of the movies we saw?

Movies such as:

Armaggedon

Europa report

Alien

Last days on mars

Mission to mars

Sunshine

Moon

This shouldn't be very hard too implement, as a feature or even as a mod.

I love KSP, but after a few hours I get bored. I've been everywhere, done everything and dont really look for a challenge (not that type of a person). Storyline would give more purpose to the game and enhance the role playing part of it.

So almost exactly like ArmA III's mission editor? You set objectives and going to each objective triggers the next one.

 

Now that is just awesome, especially in a game like this.

I would VERY highly suggest changing the title of this thread to "Mission Editor", it seems more accurate and would draw more attention to it.

Edited by Aperture Science Employee
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1 hour ago, AlamoVampire said:

Here we are a year and like 9-10 months later and career still lacks cohesion or a reason to be there beyond novelty...

Umm... Relevance? Your statement seems to have no basis to the subject at hand. He is talking about a change to career but why mention how it's broken. Since this isn't aimed at improving it but rather expanding it for expansions sake, your comment seems misplaced.

ANYWAY!

I've seriously have been working secretly on a storyline concept for KSP. Something that would fit Squad's vision of KSP and yet still be functional, unqiue and truly expanding the options of KSP.

Ofc I can't show this to you as the whole idea is to let you discover the story as you play and if I post it here then the reveal of the story is ruined. 

Like this post if you think my creativity can inspire the devs, or comment negatively and rant about my incompetency as a creative writer if you think I can't :) .

Either way, there's a KSP Story Mode to be written!

Edited by ZooNamedGames
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@ZooNamedGames relevance? simple. Career mode is analogous to a campaign mode in other games. And a hallmark of that is a good story, a reason to care about your character and the supporting cast there in. KSP's career mode is none of this. It has no meaning other than the novelty of oo contracts, and the fact that they are less than linear, poorly written gives no story. No story gives no reason to care.

Simply put, career has missed the mark considerably in almost every aspect in almost every single way. IF it was done in such a way that made sense, as in, not saying that because I made it to minmus now I get told to go do a mission to duna? um no.  Lack of logical progression makes for confusion. if you do not see that, then you dont. if you like the excuse we have for a story mode, then good on you. no really. I myself, need a genuine, logically progressing story. Not some shot gunned approach to the mess we have. THAT is the relevance. if this is all incoherent, let me boil it down to this:

currently, there is no logical progression, no story beyond: you run a space program, now do these contracts. my sand box game has a real story in it, a real reason to care if my kerbals live or die. career offers NONE of this. sorry.

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2 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

career still lacks cohesion or a reason to be there beyond novelty...

Well, I suppose one reason for it to be there would be the large numbers of players who enjoy it and choose to play KSP that way.  (I'm one of them.)   Certainly it's not necessarily everyone's cup of tea, which is why KSP offers a choice of different game modes.  Are you contending that the people who choose to play career are wrong, and that your way of playing is somehow better?

 

3 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

Career mode is analogous to a campaign mode in other games.

I wouldn't say that.  I'd say that the KSP implementation of career mode is more analogous to games that have a tech tree to climb.  You start out with the basics, you do <stuff> to accumulate <some sort of points> which unlocks <better stuff> that you can then accumulate <more points> with.  Lots of RTS games do that sort of thing, for example, even when not playing a "campaign".

Certainly opinions can vary on how "good" or "effective" the career mode is.  Clearly you don't care much for it, and you're not the only one-- I've seen plenty of folks complain about KSP's career mode.  It's also pretty clear that a lot of other players do like it, and choose to play KSP that way.

You're right, KSP career currently doesn't offer a story.  Doesn't mean it's "broken", just means that "story" is not what it's trying to do.  Personally, I love that it doesn't have a story-- or, at least, doesn't enforce one-- since I prefer to supply my own story, but I like the challenge of career which is why I don't play sandbox.

The beauty of KSP is that it lets different players who like different things have it their own way.  There are folks who love sandbox, and never play career; and also the other way around.

I've never had any particular interest in a "story mode" for KSP myself... but that doesn't mean that other players wouldn't like one.  I think the addition of a "story" or "campaign" has the potential to be interesting.  My main concern would be the execution-- i.e. how effective it would be, how good the storytelling, how compelling the arc.  Really doing that well would be a large labor investment, which would mean lots of other stuff would have to go on the chopping block.  So the question comes down to one of priorities:  in terms of what the player base as a whole would like, should a story mode take priority over bug fixes and additional feature work?

My own personal take on that question:  I think KSP still has some growing pains to contend with, and I think there's still enough bug-fixing and feature work that I'd rather see first, before going down the path of story mode.  But that's just me.  It's interesting to hear others' viewpoints, which is why I find this thread interesting.  :)  Looking forward to seeing what opinions other folks have.

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@Snark never said those who play this games attempt at a campaign are wrong. never ONCE said that.

What I will say is, on the analogy of Career Mode being like the campaign mode of other games and you saying its not, THAT is where you are wrong. Just because it does not play out like in the battlefield games or call of duty games or even like say WoW, it STILL is a campaign with goals being forced on you by the contracts you take. This is campaign. NOW, is it wrong of YOU for example to like this? nope. thats YOUR scene man, not mine. You dig?

Now, seeing as this is getting out of hand, I am going to nip this one off at the collar bone.

For me, my words indicating my opinion for what I myself, the individual typing this post that YOU are reading, indicating the opinion and feelings of the one person sitting at this particular computer and keyboard typing out these thoughts and opinions apply solely and only for me, the person typing these things out for you the reader to read, do not imply, indicate in any form directly stated, implied or imagined by you the readers that these opinions, these written words indicating my thoughts, impressions and desires, do not indicate what I think is right, or implied that way imagined or otherwise for you the reader to think that what i say is meant for you to right or wrong, only that these are my thoughts, my criteria for what, the person on the computer logged into this account typing these words that show what I want for myself, and not what i think is or is not right for  you the reader.

with that said, indicating that these here words are my thoughts and apply only to me. For me, career mode IS broken. Why? Its not linear, its not logical in how it progresses. It gives me no reason to care if I sling jeb into the sun or out beyond eeloo never to see kerbin again. it askes me to do things that are pointless and frankly do not advance my planets space program in a logical or meaningful way. The contracts are written in pure gibberish. By that I mean, they make no logical sense. SOME make some sort of random sense, but others are incoherent at best. A prime example of caring about my kerbals or rather why should I bother to care? In  my sandbox, each of my astronauts has a story, a reason why they are in the space program. In career? not really. Why should I rescue Bartmund Kerman from floating around Kerbin for eternity? For a few bucks and some reputation? Who is it exactly that I am impressing? More importantly, WHY is Bartmund stuck up there? I dont know. Do you? The contract never says, it just says this lost little soul is stuck and he needs bringing home. Better yet, is he the first one to get stranded up there? IF this is the case, HOW did he get there? I did not put him there, and far as I know, as again, the game has not made it clear that there is any other agency capable of space flight, howd he get there? None of this ever gets explained, its a plot hole. an infuriating one.

worse yet are the test part blah in situation blah. Why? Why should I bother to test that part? 

Look, in the end, all of this is perfectly fine fluff, but, it needs a reason behind it. Maybe not a set of structures that says, Now Snark, you MUST fly THIS mission or you fail completely game over. No, nothing of the sort. Think more like Fable. You do action A get result B and get to do action C which gets result D which down the road because you did A now Z is available but Y cannot happen because A was done. Way I see it, give us a nice meaty story, something that drives our missions while letting say you Snark do things in one way while I do the same story in my own way, and in the end our space programs are equally grand, but, my kerbals are famous in ways yours are not and vice versa. Ya dig?

BUT, as it stands, and I try career each and every time a new version hits, and every time, I get 3-4 missions in and the pointlessness hits and novelty goes away.

Is it broken? yes. yes it is. for me. Is it broken for you? as you indicate, no. and that is 100% fine. 

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kerbal to this point has added more and more ways to fly and explore the kerbin system, but what it needs in the near future if not now is more reasons to fly. I've seen people walk away from this game cause they believe they've done all there is to do and new features that make doing it all again but just a little harder like reentry heat and new aero is just perceived as padding to them. To retain players there needs to be just as constant of an expansion of the reasons we fly as there are the ways we can go about flying.

a story mode sounds like a good way to accomplish that :wink:

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@passinglurker i could not agree more. its why im now, in my sand box save, making a mun base. replete with rovers. using the Planetary Base Mod, and my own story = well, sights like this: 

Es8KyMb.png

and close up, and in daylight, you see the hub, with a green house on it, and a science lab awaiting connection. in the back, are 3 rovers made with the Planetary base parts. A man mover, a mobile drilling rig and a mobile science/hab rover for mobile missions as well as a surveyor module that landed some years back:

dYTRN94.png

self driven stories are fun, but, it would be better if career mode had a story arc in it that, well, for one was logical, entertaining, linear, and a genuine story so, i could bring this base into full potential ya know? and ya, shes a new base, just getting started :)

Edited by AlamoVampire
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1 minute ago, AlamoVampire said:

@passinglurker i could not agree more. its why im now, in my sand box save, making a mun base. replete with rovers. using the Planetary Base Mod, and my own story = well, sights like this: 

Es8KyMb.png

and close up, and in daylight, you see the hub, with a green house on it, and a science lab awaiting connection. in the back, are 3 rovers made with the Planetary base parts. A man mover, a mobile drilling rig and a mobile science/hab rover for mobile missions as well as a surveyor module that landed some years back:

dYTRN94.png

self driven stories are fun, but, it would be better if career mode had a story arc in it that, well, for one was logical, entertaining, linear, and a genuine story so, i could bring this base into full potential ya know?

As I brought up, what about a mission editor similar to ArmA III's, where you can create your own missions with waypoints, restrictions, goals, etc.

 

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15 minutes ago, razark said:

Story mode?

No thanks.  I prefer to write my own story for each game.

while writing ones own story is fine and well, and whether one admits it or not <speaking in general here> we all write our own stories, especially in sandbox and science sandbox. but, there is nothing wrong with the game giving us said story or just tools that let us insert a story INTO the game, rather than just saying for example, I launch you jeb into space for <plot point here>, you could use a tool, like the one @Aperture Science Employee suggests to make the game comply with contracts and the like that fit YOUR narrative.

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@Aperture Science Employee @Veeltch try to understand that not all players want want to write a story themselves but would instead rather a game entertain them by telling them a story with a little more substance than pure imagination. naturally story mode is not for everyone just like how carreer mode or science mode isn't for everyone, but in an effort to give more reasons to play the game every little bit helps just like how adding some more planets or easter eggs would help or how giving modders a scenario editor would help.

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I tend to flip-flop on story mode. Some days I think it would be a great idea, other days I'm less enthused. Done well, I think it would add a lot to the game - but I'm not quite convinced that the game is correctly set up for it. My yardstick here is one of my all time favourite games, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri or SMAC. Stop me if you've heard this before - I may have posted bits of this elsewhere on the forum.

Anyhow, SMAC had a story - and a pretty good one at that - but it was entirely possible to play your own game and ignore the story altogether. It managed to do this because the story primarily tied in with one possible victory path for the game - follow another path and part of the endgame sequence just included a note somewhere that <stuff driving the story> was still a problem and would need to be dealt with, but for now - enjoy your hard won victory.

Other strengths that SMAC had were strong world-building and multiple factions you could play, each with advantages and disadvantages. World building was partly handled by some very good technology descriptions - all the techs were designed to complement the game setting and all the flavor text for them did a great job of putting them into a context for that setting. One description may have been all about the rigours of setting up an off-world colony from scratch (for example), another would include a short 'reaction piece' to the technology from one of the faction leaders. SMAC also had Secret Projects to build, complete with immersive little video clips for completing them - and again, the video clips were all contextualized around the game setting, for more world building.

I think KSP could learn a lot from this. Video clips and Secret Projects are probably too much but multiple factions based on the current faceless companies might be an option, complete with different starting locations, resources and possibly technologies. The KSPedia entries and tech tree flavor texts could then be the vehicles for fleshing out the background to those companies (and the kerbals in general if you so chose). The Career game largely revolves around accepting contracts from these companies, so give us a reason to care about them. Give them faces, give them history, give them motives for exploring space that the player can relate to (or not). If you were feeling adventurous (and I don't know how feasible this is within the current game systems) then have inter-company rivalries and possibly per-company reputation for the player. Take a lot of contracts for Kerbodyne for example and get less favourable contract terms with Rockomax. Or going with the wiki descriptions, have Probodobodyne as the in-game elitist jerks, who stop giving you contracts if you do too much work for that ridiculous (in their eyes) Sean's Cannery company.

That's where I think a story might work - putting the game world and it's inhabitants into a context. I'm less convinced by the set of scripted contracts idea (although that would undoubtedly be easier to implement), simply because they impose an end goal on the game that probably can't really be ignored - if it could then it wouldn't provide a particularly compelling story. If I know there's an asteroid heading for KSC for example, I pretty much have to follow the story and deflect that asteroid else it's game over.

As mentioned above, SMAC managed to work around this by having multiple end goals corresponding to multiple styles of gameplay (tech tree crawling, conquest, diplomacy, acquiring wealth etc.) I don't think that's really an option for KSP - by design it doesn't really have distinct gameplay styles.

 

Edited by KSK
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6 minutes ago, passinglurker said:

@Aperture Science Employee @Veeltch try to understand that not all players want want to write a story themselves but would instead rather a game entertain them by telling them a story with a little more substance than pure imagination. naturally story mode is not for everyone just like how carreer mode or science mode isn't for everyone, but in an effort to give more reasons to play the game every little bit helps just like how adding some more planets or easter eggs would help or how giving modders a scenario editor would help.

I am totally aware of that, but I'm also sure that this will never happen. I mean, I'm not against the idea, but let's be honest, SQUAD couldn't even create a proper career mode with a sensible progression. Imagine if they tried to make some sort of story in this game. Kerbals would die before they get born, or sth like that.

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A set 'story' that the career mode follows is not something I would like personally - think linear progression along a pre defined path like the FPS single player campaigns here.

However, if that 'story' was one that was effectively written by the player as you play, guided perhaps by higher objectives set by 'the government' like 'we want you to put a kerbal on the Mun before the end if the decade' which then leaves the 'how' up to the player.  A selection of different sets of 'objectives' could be presented for players to choose from so as to offer variety too.

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