Another poll

[Rover 6428]

There should be a poll here telling you everything you need. 

If there isnt than...

``\_( ' -' )_/``

[razark]

When you say "that idea was rubbish", do you mean the old idea that gets posted every so often, or the very concept of adding a story to KSP?

[Just Jim]

Yeah, I'm for a 4th "Story-mode" option... and I want to be the one who writes it... 

But I really don't think either is going to happen. 

[Superfluous J]

I favor the idea of a story mode. Preferably along with a framework for others to create stories.

I have no idea what the original story mode was so don't know if it was rubbish or not. Was it that thing that tied a lot of the easter eggs together?

[Blasty McBlastblast]

I came here expecting discussion about a second Pol moon around Jool! But I guess a story mode would be cool too...

What would the story mode be about anyhow?

• An arms-race to make a reliable ICBM. Secrets, espionage and sabotage abound! 
• Celebrating history with a blow-by-blow recreation of the great manned space-race.
• Overcoming the struggle of maintaining an ageing space station against disasters, cutbacks, and public disinterest.
• Running a plucky space-startup, raising capital and cutting costs to beat your business competitors to those big juicy contracts.
• Settling Mars (either Von Braun or Elon style) and making a brave new world for your colonists.

[Fraston]

Auuu HEYK YEAHH!

[DoctorDavinci]

7 hours ago, Just Jim said:

Yeah, I'm for a 4th "Story-mode" option... and I want to be the one who writes it... 

But I really don't think either is going to happen. 

Well it may be quite possible to add a story mode through a mod .... actually the foundation is already there and I've been working on just such a thing, perhaps we should chat as I need a story to go along with OrX

Here's a little teaser video ...

 

[Ultimate Steve]

3 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

I favor the idea of a story mode. Preferably along with a framework for others to create stories.

I have no idea what the original story mode was so don't know if it was rubbish or not. Was it that thing that tied a lot of the easter eggs together?

The original story mode was written by NovaSilisko a long time ago, and at least one time when the full summary of the story was posted he replied with "please, just let this die." So I won't post it, but it would have involved more SSTV signals, with orbital parameters of a hidden ice planet, with a dead civilization on it. You might also unlock warp drive by visiting it.

As far as the ingame storyline, I feel like if it was done well it would be amazing. However, big if...

One of the game's appeals to me is that almost nothing is defined. There is more user generated canon that is commonly accepted than actual in-game canon, even! This means that each and every user is free to write their own story of how the game should go, and the fact that so many people have written so many stories about how they think it should go without any major arguments is one of this communities greatest appeals to me. Bored? Read a new mission report. It would take forever to get through them all!

[Superfluous J]

3 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

The original story mode was written by NovaSilisko a long time ago, and at least one time when the full summary of the story was posted he replied with "please, just let this die." So I won't post it, but it would have involved more SSTV signals, with orbital parameters of a hidden ice planet, with a dead civilization on it. You might also unlock warp drive by visiting it.

Yeah I do remember that and yeah, I kind of agree with him. It's a cool idea and if it was some kind of plugin scenario or something that'd be really great, but no way would I want it to be slapped into career mode as "the way to play."

[basic.syntax]

Various stories playing out in a sequence, are exactly what the mission builder makes possible. Its just a more technical process to make one, than writing out a story in the forums. 

[Superfluous J]

23 minutes ago, basic.syntax said:

Various stories playing out in a sequence, are exactly what the mission builder makes possible.

...except it doesn't tie in with any other mode, like Career.

[lugge]

A real story, with twists and character development would be out of place for KSP.

However, I like the idea of some contracts, in the style of the World First contracts, to guide your space programm.
There should be resonse why to go to places like Eeloo and Dres.
One example can be monoliths or anormalies (negative space wedgies) on various bodies or in space which needs to be analysed or gathered and brought home.
This would provide reasons to go to distant bodies. This can even be used to enforce the player to re-visit bodies ("Hey, the monolith on Moho somehow got active since your Eeloo visit, check this!!") or to set up a colony for long-time studies.
Also rovers can do useful things ("There's a mysterious dust storm on Duna, it's moving fast, chase it and perform measurements").

In other words, I do not like the idea of a story, but some kind of paper chase game which provides reasons to do things and explore the solar system.

At the moment, the WorldFirst guide you as long as you explore the Kerbin system.
You are enforced to visit and land on Mun and Minmus, do rendezvous and docking, and so on.

Edited May 24, 2018 by lugge

[Rover 6428]

16 hours ago, razark said:

When you say "that idea was rubbish", do you mean the old idea that gets posted every so often, or the very concept of adding a story to KSP?

The second one

11 hours ago, Blasty McBlastblast said:

I came here expecting discussion about a second Pol moon around Jool! But I guess a story mode would be cool too...

What would the story mode be about anyhow?

• An arms-race to make a reliable ICBM. Secrets, espionage and sabotage abound! 
• Celebrating history with a blow-by-blow recreation of the great manned space-race.
• Overcoming the struggle of maintaining an ageing space station against disasters, cutbacks, and public disinterest.
• Running a plucky space-startup, raising capital and cutting costs to beat your business competitors to those big juicy contracts.
• Settling Mars (either Von Braun or Elon style) and making a brave new world for your colonists.

I think it would be great to have some lore put behind the stuff happening, so that there will be some grand question to be answered (basically to give us some need or a goal to why should we bother exploring space (e.g some strange signal found at the edge of the known system or an asteroid is heading to kerbin and we need to migrate etc))

[Rover 6428]

Just to make it clear, when I asked whether the re should be a story mode, I meant a fixed story-line, bot like a scenario or a mission you get in mission builder, but rather to turn KSP into something more than an open world sim. A.K.A, have the story line set a firm goal in front of the player (e.g Evacuate Kerbin before Moho crashes into it), but not intervene in the way the player reaches the goal. (Guide, not put on tracks and push along one line) And add a reason to this goal (Not just because Duna is cool, so you might aswell live there like mission  builder and scenarios limit us) 

Hope this made it clear

[Just Jim]

For something like a story-mode, there are a lot of questions that would need answering first.  More than anything, what does everyone really want as far as a story? 

I already said I would love to write it. But if it were me, I wouldn't just write what I want... I would do some serious polling of the forum and community, and other fan-fiction authors, and try to get as much feedback as possible first as far as what everyone else wants.

11 hours ago, Blasty McBlastblast said:

An arms-race to make a reliable ICBM. Secrets, espionage and sabotage abound! 

The problems with this is KPS is non-combat, and to make a story work, it has to be stock, so all players can use it. Adding in ICBM's either requires new parts, and a whole new attitude about the game, or adding in a mod... which is unacceptable.

9 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

The original story mode was written by NovaSilisko a long time ago, and at least one time when the full summary of the story was posted he replied with "please, just let this die." So I won't post it, but it would have involved more SSTV signals, with orbital parameters of a hidden ice planet, with a dead civilization on it. You might also unlock warp drive by visiting it.

I would love to build on this, but if @NovaSilisko want's it to die, I would respect this wishes and go another route instead.

[razark]

I'm opposed to KSP having a story.  The wonderful thing is that every time I play it, there's a different story, and things can play out differently.  I can start at the dawn of the space age, or as a small start-up, or anything I want.  Your story is going to be different from mine, which is different from his, etc.

If every time I played KSP, I got the same storyline, the same missions, the same "accomplish this task before you can do something else", I would quickly get bored and the replay value would drop to zero.  Having a more "open" story, there's more freedom, but the same series of events and goals would also reduce replayability.  But I would still be stuck in someone else's vision of KSP, playing out what the writer thinks it should be.

Adding on a new mode might work, if I am able to ignore it and continue playing how I want.  Allowing users to create a series of missions, setting the starting conditions, a series of goals, scripted events, and a persistent world between them would be a good idea.  This would allow those who wish to write a story in KSP to do so, and it would provide other players with a large supply of different storylines to explore, which helps keep replayability on the table.

[Rover 6428]

1 hour ago, Just Jim said:

For something like a story-mode, there are a lot of questions that would need answering first.  More than anything, what does everyone really want as far as a story? 

I already said I would love to write it. But if it were me, I wouldn't just write what I want... I would do some serious polling of the forum and community, and other fan-fiction authors, and try to get as much feedback as possible first as far as what everyone else wants.

The problems with this is KPS is non-combat, and to make a story work, it has to be stock, so all players can use it. Adding in ICBM's either requires new parts, and a whole new attitude about the game, or adding in a mod... which is unacceptable.

I would love to build on this, but if @NovaSilisko want's it to die, I would respect this wishes and go another route instead.

I agree with you.

Plus, another problem with ICBM is that KSP is not even intended to be military (It is a space exploration game, not a WW2 strategy)

[basic.syntax]

KSP could have "a" story, (the original designers were reluctant to define one) and include a campaign of tasks to accomplish, that also has characters you get to know over time. It could become Squad's official story.  I'd like to see it! 

Thanks to the new mission builder, if they did write one, it would not be the ONLY story.  

I don't think the original developers wanted to make a story driven campaign as the sole KSP experience, because once you've completed it and seen a "game over," you're "done" ... they preferred an open-ended random mission 'career' where the player decides that they are "done" or not. 

But MH expansion proves there's room for more game modes.  The forums have debated "what is / should KSP be" many times.

[Lisias]

My opinion is that Squad, currently, is doing the "right thing" about a history background.

There are few gains by restricting possible developments in the future.

One thing that I think can be done are DLC's with "short histories", that can be tied together, but with the less past baggage possible to avoid restricting future developments. For example, if by some reason it's "official" that Kerbals lives underground, this would restrict an official DLC that delivers a city.

I would propose something as the Asimov's short histories about the Three Laws of Robotics, and suggest avoiding something as Foundation. :-)

[Just Jim]

11 minutes ago, basic.syntax said:

KSP could have "a" story, (the original designers were reluctant to define one) and include a campaign of tasks to accomplish, that also has characters you get to know over time. It could become Squad's official story.  I'd like to see it! 

Thanks to the new mission builder, if they did write one, it would not be the ONLY story.  

I don't think the original developers wanted to make a story driven campaign as the sole KSP experience, because once you've completed it and seen a "game over," you're "done" ... they preferred an open-ended random mission 'career' where the player decides that they are "done" or not. 

But MH expansion proves there's room for more game modes.  The forums have debated "what is / should KSP be" many times.

Agreed! Mission Builder opens up all sorts of possibilities for story-driven missions, especially with the ability to add in message/dialogue windows at most any point. I'm already working on a couple missions... but I'm also trying to do 5 things at once... ya know how that goes. 

But I would love to see more people take a shot at building missions with actual plots, and not just objectives. It's still fairly new, and I think we're still just hitting the tip of the iceberg as far as what MB is really capable of. 

2 minutes ago, Lisias said:

For example, if by some reason it's "official" that Kerbals lives underground, this would restrict an official DLC that delivers a city.

Yes, I totally agree with this as well... which complicates things a bit. But as a fan-fiction writer, I totally agree the less "canon" the better, and the more freedom for us to make up and write whatever we want. I would try and just stick to what canon is pretty much universally agreed on, like Kerbals love snacks... and they think Minmus is made of ice-cream, but avoid adding in anything new.

[steuben]

A KSP story...as a crafter of tales I like the lack of story canon, but like the existence framework canon. The original four, the ordering of the planets, etc. What would a KSP story mean? <shrugs> It would mean that my stories would be different; maybe a Lower Deck focus, maybe something after the close of the story, maybe something different. For good and ill, a complete story would change the game.

The story would have to be an Epic, perhaps something like Alien Legacy. But, these are hard to craft and craft well.

 

 

[DAL59]

15 hours ago, DoctorDavinci said:

Well it may be quite possible to add a story mode through a mod .... actually the foundation is already there and I've been working on just such a thing, perhaps we should chat as I need a story to go along with OrX

Here's a little teaser video ...

 

KSP could be an awesome interplanetary combat game!

You could hurl giant spaceships at each other, do dogfights in thick and thin atmospheres, and even fight on the ground!  There is no game like that right now.  

[Just Jim]

4 hours ago, steuben said:

The story would have to be an Epic, perhaps something like Alien Legacy. But, these are hard to craft and craft well.

Agreed! I see this as the hardest part, by far. It is so hard to write something epic, and almost impossible to write something that everyone will like. 

Edited May 24, 2018 by Just Jim

[mattinoz]

When did the Dev's ever suggest a story mode for it to be revived?

Might be before my time (so a fair while ago) but I can only recall an aim for Tycoon style mode that has clearly been left by the way side. Tycoon is very different to a story mode. Indeed Career is probably closer to a story mode (that lacks creative writing) than a Tycoon mode.

[Just Jim]

1 hour ago, mattinoz said:

When did the Dev's ever suggest a story mode for it to be revived?

Oh, I don't recall the Dev's ever mentioning it on here.

It's just a discussion that pops up now and then.

Edited May 25, 2018 by Just Jim