Story should be one of the things you should worry least about in a single player game.
Gameplay should be number one every single time. It’s a game, how on earth is any feature of a game more important then the actual game part of the game?
And dont worry not taking this to heart, just talkin.
IMO the best single player games are the ones with the best stories. The best multiplayer games are the ones that play well. Because if you compare oblivion to skyrim, Oblivion had better quests. They were more in depth, more of a drive to complete them, stuff like that. Skyrim had less quests, less in depth and more “I couldn’t really give a fuck about this quest” factor. In contrast, Skyrim had better gameplay, it was better to look at, more fun to play, just played a a lot smoother than its predecessor. But, what is gameplay without a reason to play the game? I can only “Fus Ro Dahh” an old man off a cliff so many times before I long for something more.
Multi-player games gameplay = More of Playing with your friends, destroying people for fun, never the same experience when you play online with most games.
Single-player games gameplay = More of things that keep the player interested, namely story.
I say this because a singleplayer world is scripted, pre made and thought ahead of time, meaning that you eventually run out of things to do. They can only cram so many missions, Level ups, perks, and survival modes into a single disc. Hence singleplayer games should concentrate on story much more to keep people playing for longer. Granted there are games where story doesn’t mean jack shit, but its just so damn fun, or so much of a challenge that you don’t really care (Ninja Gaiden Black, Ninja Gaiden 2). It’s just an inexact equilibrium that has to be met.
So in theory:
Multiplayer: Should have optimized gameplay to keep a player coming back on a very frequent basis
Singleplayer: Should have a good story or a very large amount of non repetitive things that can be done in order to keep the game from going dry to fast.
Graphics: Never hurt either side of the fence. Good graphics never hurt anybody.
If the main draw of the game your playing is the story i would venture that game isn’t very good, Skyrim and Oblivion both being prime examples…
A good story and atmosphere are good to have but the game itself, the core of the game, I.E. the gamplay and how the game interacts with you, should be the most important focus of any developer. When those are the focus you get stuff like NG and DMC, and SSX1-3, so on and so fourth. Im glad you mentioned Ninja Gaiden in fact, the Devs focused so much on the narrative aspect of NGIII that the game itself, that part you interact with came out awful. It’s a perfect example of why story should not be the primary focus of a dev teams attention.
I didn’t really mean the main quests. Mostly the side ones and side story lines. They all had good elements in Oblivion. The dark brotherhood being debatable, the other members ALWAYS fucking die at the end 
I didn’t venture that far.
I do always value gameplay over all else, but a good story in addition to that is honey on my biscuits.
reading not fun, playing video games fun. Put them together?
More games should be like the early Alpha games, where everyone had a different end boss. I miss that.
Someone who says MK9 had a “good” “story”, should be shot.
Pertho
52
Most godlike avatar ever. Seriously.
pherai
53
The puzzle genre says hi!
Kromo
54
I was thinking about this, and I think there are a couple of problems,
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Budget, I think most fighting games, even the “big” ones, are spending most of their time and energy in creating something that isn’t broken. Story mode is kind of an after thought. This doesn’t really have to be the case, a game like starcraft actually has both a compelling storymode and a very popular competitive scene. You could also look at something like COD, which typically has kind of repetitive campaigns, but they’ve got some exciting moments and nice special effects, and of course, a massively popular “competitive” scene. There is also something like half life, a very popular single player game, that spawned the massively popular counter strike franchise. So I don’t think there is anything inherently opposing between single and multiplayer, its just implementation. Were capcom to spend a few million on the story mode alone, I think they could come up with something pretty decent.
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The bigger challenge is that fighting games, at their very core, are not very conducive to story telling. An encounter is typically very short and intensive, you’ve got say, 99 seconds or less, and the players attention is more than likely going to be directed at “performing” not reading text and paying attention to what is being said. This kind of leaves the story to be bookends to the actual fighting. You also have to consider that the traditional playing field is small and two dimensional. Even games with “large” stages like smash bros can be traversed in a few seconds, this leaves no room for exploration. Without exploration, and considering all relevant information is on screen at all times, there isn’t too much in terms of mystery and discovery. There is also the matter of a reliance on directional/context specific commands, like fireballs and such, which tend to limits how “solid” the game feels when there is more than 2 characters on screen. Sure, dramatic battles are fun, but they tend to feel like a clusterfuck. A silly diversion more than a real, strategic battle.
So, to remedy this, I think they would have to make the story mode, in certain sections, inherently different than the multiplayer. Moving away from the model of “X number of fights with bits of story in between and a really cheap boss” and make singleplayer its own game. What this would look like, I’m not sure. They could borrow stuff from 3rd person brawlers, metroidvania, platformers, adventure games, puzzles, stealth or survival horror even. I think a good start would be to allow the community to take these games and modify them, since starcraft probably wouldn’t have ever gotten this popular without fan made maps…then you have CS which was a half life mod, LOL, even strictly single player bethesda games have a large collaborative community. Would giving SRK the tools to mod SF4 from the ground up create brilliant literature? Maybe, maybe not. Couldn’t hurt to try though.
You son of a bitch…how could I forget about Portal o_O
EDIT: Yes I know there are other puzzle games. I wish there was a version of Tetris on xbox that didn’t involve “Splash” in the title. You stil made a good point though.
Did the original half life even have a multiplayer mode? Or did counter strike just spawn out of community mods on the half life engine like I heard? I never got to play the original half life 
Also don’t forget Left 4 Dead came from the zombie mod that a lot of servers used in counter strike :tup: Valve basically took two great concepts from the community and made a fuck ton of money from it.
Vynce
56
Half-Life deathmatch was the best mp FPS experience up until COD4 came around. I’ve played 7 days worth of COD4. I guarantee I played more HL. I played with a group of guys only Hotobu and I would know.
In my opinion, no feature/element of a game should neglected just because their genre doesn’t “need” it. That’s just… upsetting to me. A game’s sole focus should always be drawing you from your world, and presenting you with a new one that is amazing to as many senses as possible. Gameplay, story, graphics, sound, and difficulty all stimulate your mind differently, and they all need to be used effectively.
Gameplay and Difficulty should stimulate your creativity, resourcefulness, and problem solving skills. Story is what’s needed to help you believe that this other world is real (No, I don’t believe Master Chief exists in space), and actually care what happens to it’s inhabitants. Graphics help in the same way that story does (Which is why devs try to go for that over story nowadays), they help you believe that the thing you are looking at is alive, and not just a computer program. Sound helps you drown out the outside world, which may try to wake you up from the fact that it’s a game. All off these elements are important, no game should forget any of them just because of it’s genre or online capabilities.
Well I wasn’t really saying they should just NOT do something in a game. More like devs concentrate on certain things in their games to accomplish what they want while putting other things on the back burner more or less. also that for a certain type of game to work then there is one or two design elements they should put a bit more effort into but not completely disregard everythign else. A game can’t be perfect all around so they tend to work on a few select aspects harder than other things, most likely because they believe it will help retain the heart and soul of the game better. Like for instance Dead Island is enjoyable solo, but they knew it would be more fun, and probably most frequently played, with others. So they put a nice bit of work into making sure they co-op wasn’t broke as fuck. Then they took away the duplicating glitch and i wasn’t rich anymore
