Your views on mechanics vs story?

[TitusCrow]

Hmm..I've changed my mind like 2-3 times as I've read the arguments here. They have kinda made it clearer in my own mind what I'm in games for. I was a big wow player. I mean like crazy addicted, used to wake up, first thought..what times the raid I better check the signups. Second thought I wonder how the auction house is doing!? I can hardly remember anything from 2005-2008. I could literally name %on loot and every loot table. How to gear your sword and board warrior from 0-60 how to do every boss including Naxx. However.. I still have no idea of any the story from the game.
The art basically informed me what things did and if they were "goodies" or "baddies" I'm an artist myself so maybe this is why but I also am a book reader and love all the classics etc so I should have been big into the story. Let me tell you what I think it is. It has to be a very high standard of writing before I am "in!" I think. Game of thrones , kingkiller, Gemmell etc. Damn straight! Horrible high fantasy fan fiction standard Warcraft.. my brain says "no thankyou my friend we need this room for more important shit!" So going back to wow ( Oh go in then! ) the mechanics , the 0 feedback delay on skills and combat. The animations the art design ( omg the art! ) the videos.. It was all perfect. With this in place I didn't need a story.
I literally filtered out the crap and just enjoyed the most perfectly made MMO, ever to do it. I think this puts me in the gameplay over story right? However there is an anomaly here. The game , the last of us was the last game I ever picked up on my ps3. Now I haven't told you everything abou me. I am a real graphics guy and I'm an even bigger fps guy! This leaves me in the sticky situation where I say I got to have at least 100fps on a game. But if I turn down stuff to get this number I'm like "Oh my god my eyes! Wtf is on my screen! 2000 want their game back!" I know what your thinking, you can't have both you fool! To which I say, you can if your a PC gamer it just costs stupid amounts of money. So I then throw more tech at it and my wallet weeps tears of blood! ( no I am not getting mixed up with stigmata either! )

Ok so we have established that I am pretty obsessed with good fps and beutiful graphics. So it really would take a lot of persuading to in 2013? I think.. ) get me to want to play at 720p at an average fps of about 28 a game on the ps3 which at this time I only ever played everbodys golf on. The Last of Us was the game that got me. When I saw the previews and videos and read the story for that wow! I was in! Bought day 1 and played the shit out of it till finished and the story blew me away! ( slightly worried for the 2nd one but hope it will be ok..sigh! ) what I'm saying here is I really went against my grain to participate in what I, just had a gut feeling was going to be a classic story. I am not great at games with controller either so to play through on hard, well I was really taking one for the team to get the full fat experience. The story, was so good that it made me forget a bunch of stuff that I would have said would make me hard pass.

So with these two examples I think it leads me to the conclusion that gameplay is the most important, unless the storytelling is such next level stuff that it hits me in the same place as that which sucks me in when 1 first read The stand or "insert great book that blew your mind" So Am I a story guy? I guess I am as long as the quality is up there. But since the writing on games is generally not up there, I default to being a gameplay guy.

[Juan-ton_Soup]

To put it short, a game "needs to be fun, before it can be pretty." Pretty, as in the artistry of a story.

[Hopeless Wombat]

I honestly think this debate is a bit of a fallacy. I've lost track over the years of how many games win me out on either when the other element has been rubbish, and so I don't think any game is exclusively tied to either depending on their genre. As a developer, I think it's important to put out product that ticks all the boxes instead of focusing on a singular element being top notch. No point in having an amazing story or gameplay if the world you build the game for is wanting for lore, the visuals and style are tacky, the online services are worse than Nintendo WFC and the music makes Daisuke "The God" Ishiwatari cry in his sleep.

[Cyruss]

Mechanics/Gameplay always

I eventually come to the conclusion that if you play video games and or read books long enough you'll get to the point you've seen it all. So gameplay will always be #1 to me above story, even a good story is one and done, a story with choices still leads to generally the same ending so at best 2 or 3 playthroughs of good, evil, WWJD and then done. Though good gameplay and progression will get you coming back for that next epic drop while enjoying great controls and playing the way you want to play.

A good example is Devil Macy Cry 3 and 4, people will do bloody palace all day but how many times are you going to go through a talltale game like walking dead the order 1886? Compare that though hours put in on something like borderlands 1 and 2 now look at games like heavy rain and until dawn.

When you strip down both you can either argue our story games haven't evolved enough or that story isn't strong enough so it needs decent gameplay mechanics to hold it up an example being Mass Effect 1-3, God of War, Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy 15 etc etc.

[Astraea]

I like both, but I don't care when a story is bad if the gameplay is good. But vice versa is unacceptable. Gameplay triumphs all imo.

[Last_Dragoon]

Game mechanics are more important because if it isn't fun to play chances are I'm just going to drop it regardless of a good story.

[ryvrdrgn14]

Strong mechanics + Strong story = Best
Strong mechanics + Minimal story = Okay
Minimal mechanics + Strong story = Okay

Bad mechanics + Strong story = Bad
Strong mechanics + Bad story = Bad

If one or the other dips too low in quality it can ruin the other side's enjoyment as well.

[Doomie]

Heavily prefer mechanics over story. My favorite game of all time is Doom, for crying out loud, do I look like I care about a plot?


...I mean, I do, but still! I'll gladly take a great game with no story then basically a movie.

[Dub-Z]

I lean more towards mechanics and overall game design, but I love a good story and presentation and take everything on a case-by-case basis of what it sets out to do. Overall aesthetic comes into play too, as I feel just being in a world is part of adventure with any kind of contextualization.

[EurydiceKallos]

I really enjoy games with a good story, but if the game has bad mechanics then it makes it overall difficult to continue to play the game far enough to even get "into" the story.
Good mechanics for me, help increase the replay value a lot even if the story isn't 100% or "choice-effects" ending,etc or has an awesome story.
But bad mechanics can be enough to just make a game not worth playing for me. If I'm wanting to rage at just trying to do what the game is meant to be able to do or expects of the player, its not worth it to struggle just to see the story play out.
So I guess in the cases of if a story or mechanics is more important to me in playing a game, it would have to be mechanics.
Good mechanics then awesome, I hope the story is good too. But bad enough mechanics, and I won't enjoy playing the game no matter if the story is good.

I'm a very story driven type player, I like learning the lore of the world I am in or what is the drive behind the character or NPCs in the world. But despite that, if its hard to even get close to being able to get a further understanding in these respects, then the mechanics in the end control if I will be playing the game I suppose. (At least in RPG games or those that are meant to have story etc)

Challenge games or those like Banished were its mostly all effected by mechanics, of course then the mechanics and how they work together and such have the most importance in my opinion.

So, this also is probably dependent on the type of games people are playing.

[Monkeyman04]

Doesn't matter how good or bad a story is. If a game isn't fun/engaging, than I don't see a point of playing the game. So, mechanics is a top priority to me.

[Zenryu]

It heavily depends on the game for me. I couldn't care much for story in FPS games, but is the most important thing for me in rpgs. I've played rpgs with horrid mechanics before but can still say I have enjoyed them overall. I've recently been thinking that a game's theme is actually more important than both the mechanics and story though.

[Sorain]

For you, how important are solid mechanics in a game compared to the importance of a good story?

Depends on two things: Genre and Selling Points.

Genre should be pretty clear. Fighting games did well with barely an excuse for a story. Eventually you got games like Guilty Gear or Blazblue that brought some solid story along with it, but without solid mechanics you are sunk. Strategy games are similarly mechanics focused. Meanwhile an RPG can be amazingly dated or clunky and still deliver if the story is solid.

Selling Points. No one tries to tell me that Counter Strike has a story. Stellaris (as a 4x game) doesn't try to sell me on a specific story as much as the tools to make my own within it's genre of empire building science fiction. Meanwhile, despite not trying to sell me on it, Warhammer Vermintide actually forms a remarkably coherent story when played in chronological order. Battlefleet Gothic: Armada's single player retells the events of the Gothic War (12th black crusade) with aplomb and even lets the player mess with the outcome a bit. BFG:A sold itself to me on workable mechanics and telling a story I wanted to see retold, it succeeded on that. The final expansion to Dawn of War 2 sold itself to me entirely on it bringing a conclusion to the ongoing story from the original Dawn of War's campaign. (And did so spectacularly!)

So basically: If you are trying to sell me on story, you can slack a bit on mechanics. (So, nothing new or spectacular, as long as it's serviceable your good.) If you try to sell me on mechanics, you can have essentially no story at all and if the mechanics are solid, I'm with you. Ideally you do both of course, but if you have to make the call, look at your advertising and the genre your working in.

[Chadaclysm]

It's all about the story for me, mechanics are good and there has to be some kind of balance there of course. But if it doesn't have a good story to go with it then I'm not really interested.

That said though, if it's a game like Mario or even DOOM to an extent. Story isn't really a big factor.. so I guess it depends on the game.

[Jigen]

Mechanics are more important than story and always will be. I hate it when designers describe their story more than their gameplay.