Storytelling, not storyposting
The current survey about the Xenothreat event was asking if we like the storytelling and my immediate reaction was "...what storytelling?"
First of all: I do not mean to denigrate CIG's writing team. I am one of the players who actually enjoy lore dumps and like to dive deeper into the story of games, even those where the story is secondary at best. I am the kind of player that sits down and actually reads a lore post. Hell, there's Youtube channels dedicated to that stuff, so I know I am not alone. I am also a Gamemaster / Dungeonmaster in RPGs, I guess that explains a lot.
Where are we? Well, if we accept an event mission we receive a video message from the mission giver. That message is a generic "Thanks for picking this up"-message that we have heard thousands of times before in several different flavours. The same happens when we finish the mission. Or at least that is how it registers with me, because I honestly couldn't tell if there's any new lines in there. If we want anymore information than "You just started / ended a mission" we have to read the mission text. Mission text as a storytelling mechanism was not great in 2004 when World of Warcraft came out and it is bad now in 2026. How often did you actually read the quest text back in 2004 before you just clicked accept and ran off to collect yet another arbitrary amount of monster parts? Probably somewhere in the single-digits. However, that's how it works for plenty of games with a quest/mission based system.
This system works fine for missions where it is basically just a job board. "Haul X SCU of Cargo from A to B", "Hunt down A.B. Exampleperson for mishandling of a rooster", "Kill 10 rats in the basement". That's all good and well. That's meat and potatoes task material to fill the mission board. In these cases it's okay to have a few "Thanks for handling this"-Messages before and after the mission and some generic blabla in the mission text. You're only one space trucker / mercenary / salvaging professional they have dealt with among dozens in the last hour alone. Your work is appreciated, but the job was nothing extraordinary.
This approach does not hold up anymore as soon as we are talking about missions that include a certain amount of depth. Depth in this case can mean a certain complexity of story (the origin of regeneration tech), certain topics (the xenophobia of XT) or chains of events. An example of how it can be done is the Jorrit-missions. You accept the mission, receive a message that actually helps setting the mood a little from someone we have not seen before and on the way through the facility, we find audio files that we can listen to while we proceed. This is good. It gives us a hint of something bigger than a 255 character text message ever could. This can be expanded upon. I'd love to hear more comms from our NPC friends. Imagine having NPCs actually react to shit we do in the game as we are doing it. But even in these missions there's plenty of reading to do. I like reading. But if I want to read, I read a book. It is simply the superior medium for that. Reading can be included in video games when it is done in moderation, but there are better ways to convey information in an interactive, audio-visual medium.
I am well aware that even though writing a good mission text requires a lot of work, it's still less work than writing the same text and translating that into some form of audio or video file for the player to experience. But if CIG wants the player to actually notice their storytelling, they should try and present it in a way that does not get buried under the heap of generic mission blabla we are confronted with during the non-event-missions. A xenophobic, paramilitaristic group of outlaws is threatening a whole star system because they disagree with the politics of the UEE? They are willing to field war ships to enforce their views? That deserves to be more front and center. Give me the news in the spaceports, have a disembodied voice warn me about the terrorists when I leave the armistice zone. Have ATC be on edge, when you approach one of the smaller outposts. If we have to slog through a fight with an Idris to receive our reward, at least have the XT-VIP on board the Idris threaten us, taunt us, belittle us. Let them talk shit to us. "We will see how brave you are, when your corpses float amongst the debris of your puny flotilla 'Captain'." Make it five VIPs, chosen at random when spawning the mission, all with different voice actors so we get some variety in it.
The building blocks of this are clearly there. They have also talked about reworking the mission system to provide the team with more tools to work with. I get that it takes time. But asking for feedback on the storytelling when we're in the current state of "WoW ca. 2004" is asking for trouble.
(Edit: is this even the right flair for this?)
(Edit2: added the survey link)