Leaderboard: Do you care more about story or combat in MMOs?

After E3, VG247 posted up an excerpt of an interview with Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red that included a startling comment: The studio never had “combat designers” or “encounter designers” for its previous games. Part of that was budget, but part appears to be the company’s underlying belief that story is paramount rather than the punching and the killing.

“In our game, in our company, always story design, so the story goes first with everything,” the studio’s Pawel Sasko told VG247. “So the thing is that the quest designer and writer, they together figure out the story, the scenario. The quest designer writes the scenario, and then based on that we implement it. […] When it’s implemented our writers write the first dialogues and cinematic designers start making first scenes and so on. And we work together – quest designers, cinematic designers – to implement and make it perfect.”

Now, Cyberpunk 2077 is not an MMO – we don’t even have multiplayer officially confirmed yet – but we’ve certainly seen MMORPGs that have fantastic storytelling where the combat is, well, a bit on the weak side. You know the ones I mean. You know because a lot of you play them anyway, as do I. Other folks? Look, if that combat doesn’t feel like butter, they don’t care how good the story is.

Do you care more about story or combat in MMOs? If there one you’d sacrifice for the other if pressed? Or is there something else way, way more important than both?

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