I like both dev made content and sandbox features.
Also, I like the idea of temporarily damaging dev made structures.
Ex.
1. My iksar travels to Kelethin and is subsequently attacked by Wood Elf guards.
2. Iksar flees, then comes back with a train of 20 Orc Centurians, feigns near one of the lifts. The 20 orcs quickly overrun the guards and burn the lift. Players are forced to use the other lift for 10 or so minutes, while Wood Elf engineers repair the damage.
I've been saying everything he said in this article for the past 6+ years as an MMO player. We "bittervets", as some like to call us, were around to play those games that were more virtual world than themepark, and so themeparks largely never lived up to what we always thought the future of MMOs would hold.
The part about themeparks being unsustainable is key, and it's the main reason why people are MMO hopping these days. I'll go a step further and simply say that today's MMO's are not hard enough. Again, Star Wars Galaxies had a neat idea with different *ENTIRE* planets, with varying degrees of difficulty. When the game was new, I remember not even going anywhere near Dathomir for like six months, because even as a high level player, it was almost insta-death unless you went in with a full group.
I can understand casual players wanting easy-mode content, and there's no reason why we can't have both easy and super hard content in these games, both being fun / rewarding, and let the players choose which they want to play.
The only game that looks interesting to me right now is The Repopulation. TESO, Wildstar, probably EQN will be more of the same themepark, dressed up a little. No thanks.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Not to mention the 2nd most popular MMORPG on the current market is a sandbox game in EvE. There is no reasonable way to think that a sandbox game can't work.
It can't because CCP is interested in defining the definition of a "sandbox" with "our way or the highway".
A true sandbox can turn a FFA PvP game into a PvE game, purely by how many dominate the game. Not the devs pushing their ideas of an "sandbox", itself.
So I will never consider EvE a sandbox game no matter how CCP tries to say it's one.
The ONLY sandbox games are offline, as they allow modding to truly customize their gaming experience. Devs can't dictate what you can't do offline (other than redistributing content that questionable -- p0rn and modding in brand name items).
Not to mention the 2nd most popular MMORPG on the current market is a sandbox game in EvE. There is no reasonable way to think that a sandbox game can't work.
It can't because CCP is interested in defining the definition of a "sandbox" with "our way or the highway".
A true sandbox can turn a FFA PvP game into a PvE game, purely by how many dominate the game. Not the devs pushing their ideas of an "sandbox", itself.
So I will never consider EvE a sandbox game no matter how CCP tries to say it's one.
The ONLY sandbox games are offline, as they allow modding to truly customize their gaming experience. Devs can't dictate what you can't do offline (other than redistributing content that questionable -- p0rn and modding in brand name items).
You're welcome to make up your own definition of sandbox game, but don't pretend to speak for others.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
I think you need a truly new type if design shifting away from all existing paradigms, neither successfully satisfy a large enough player base, we need true innovation not stagnation or regression.
Not to mention the 2nd most popular MMORPG on the current market is a sandbox game in EvE. There is no reasonable way to think that a sandbox game can't work.
It can't because CCP is interested in defining the definition of a "sandbox" with "our way or the highway".
A true sandbox can turn a FFA PvP game into a PvE game, purely by how many dominate the game. Not the devs pushing their ideas of an "sandbox", itself.
So I will never consider EvE a sandbox game no matter how CCP tries to say it's one.
The ONLY sandbox games are offline, as they allow modding to truly customize their gaming experience. Devs can't dictate what you can't do offline (other than redistributing content that questionable -- p0rn and modding in brand name items).
You're welcome to make up your own definition of sandbox game, but don't pretend to speak for others.
Not you, but I don't live in a basement and sprouting nonsense, either.
A sandbox is USER CREATED content. Not dev directed content in a pseudo-sandbox concept.
As long as devs are directing game direction and it's content...it's NOT a sandbox, period.
Not to mention the 2nd most popular MMORPG on the current market is a sandbox game in EvE. There is no reasonable way to think that a sandbox game can't work.
It can't because CCP is interested in defining the definition of a "sandbox" with "our way or the highway".
A true sandbox can turn a FFA PvP game into a PvE game, purely by how many dominate the game. Not the devs pushing their ideas of an "sandbox", itself.
So I will never consider EvE a sandbox game no matter how CCP tries to say it's one.
The ONLY sandbox games are offline, as they allow modding to truly customize their gaming experience. Devs can't dictate what you can't do offline (other than redistributing content that questionable -- p0rn and modding in brand name items).
I also don't think EVE is a good example of a game to emulate, but for somewhat different reasons. While EVE is a successful game, it's biggest claim to success is it's ability to generate a desire for multiple accounts from within it's existing player base. (re-monetization) What I mean is this. In a time where new games are struggling to maintian even 1 subscription, pointing to a game that is making the majority of its revenue on multiple subs may not be wise. If we remove the PLEX accounts from EVE and just look at the actual number of active players EVE has, it's really not very impressive at all.
Not to mention the 2nd most popular MMORPG on the current market is a sandbox game in EvE. There is no reasonable way to think that a sandbox game can't work.
It can't because CCP is interested in defining the definition of a "sandbox" with "our way or the highway".
A true sandbox can turn a FFA PvP game into a PvE game, purely by how many dominate the game. Not the devs pushing their ideas of an "sandbox", itself.
So I will never consider EvE a sandbox game no matter how CCP tries to say it's one.
The ONLY sandbox games are offline, as they allow modding to truly customize their gaming experience. Devs can't dictate what you can't do offline (other than redistributing content that questionable -- p0rn and modding in brand name items).
You're welcome to make up your own definition of sandbox game, but don't pretend to speak for others.
Not you, but I don't live in a basement and sprouting nonsense, either.
A sandbox is USER CREATED content. Not dev directed content in a pseudo-sandbox concept.
As long as devs are directing game direction and it's content...it's NOT a sandbox, period.
I disagree. There are verying degrees of "sandboxyness". SWG is a perfect example of what was basically a hybrid, with some rules, lore, faction, etc. Still, the players made it their own, broke rules, did things the devs didn't expect, etc. You can argue that it's not a "pure" sandbox, and I would agree.
Pure sandboxes are garbage. For example, EQ Landmark right now is just a builder space. Since there's currently no driving reason for me to build, I can't get into it. Xsyon had a very similar problem. There was no "game". No factions, barely any PvE or PvP (or a real reason to PvP). Even with the bugs the game had, I knew it could have been very interesting if there was more guidance for the players in the form of lore, factions (or ideologies), and a reason to spend all that time crafting and building.
EQ Landmark, in it's current Alpha form, is a dumbed down SecondLife, really. If they don't add some game parameters, it will just be a builder space. They are planning to, from what I understand, but I'm just making a point about pure, 100% player-driven sandbox as MMO. They don't work.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Not to mention the 2nd most popular MMORPG on the current market is a sandbox game in EvE. There is no reasonable way to think that a sandbox game can't work.
It can't because CCP is interested in defining the definition of a "sandbox" with "our way or the highway".
A true sandbox can turn a FFA PvP game into a PvE game, purely by how many dominate the game. Not the devs pushing their ideas of an "sandbox", itself.
So I will never consider EvE a sandbox game no matter how CCP tries to say it's one.
The ONLY sandbox games are offline, as they allow modding to truly customize their gaming experience. Devs can't dictate what you can't do offline (other than redistributing content that questionable -- p0rn and modding in brand name items).
You're welcome to make up your own definition of sandbox game, but don't pretend to speak for others.
Not you, but I don't live in a basement and sprouting nonsense, either.
A sandbox is USER CREATED content. Not dev directed content in a pseudo-sandbox concept.
As long as devs are directing game direction and it's content...it's NOT a sandbox, period.
I disagree. There are verying degrees of "sandboxyness". SWG is a perfect example of what was basically a hybrid, with some rules, lore, faction, etc. Still, the players made it their own, broke rules, did things the devs didn't expect, etc. You can argue that it's not a "pure" sandbox, and I would agree.
Pure sandboxes are garbage. For example, EQ Landmark right now is just a builder space. While I think it's neat, since there's no driving reason for me to build, I can't get into it. Xsyon had a very similar problem. There was no "game". No factions, barely any PvE or PvP (or a real reason to PvP). Even with the bugs the game had, I knew it could have been very interesting if there was more guidance for the players in the form of lore, factions (or ideologies), and a reason to spend all that time crafting and building.
EQ Landmark, in it's current Alpha form, is a dumbed down SecondLife, really. If they don't add some game parameters, it will just be a builder space. They are planning to, from what I understand, but I'm just making a point about pure, 100% player-driven sandbox as MMO. They don't work.
"Sandboxyness" is like trying to classify LoL as a MMORPG to justify it even included on a MMORPG site. -_-
A true sandbox is USER CREATED content.
Anything else is not true to the definition, nor should EVER be marketed as a sandbox when they're not, like LoL would never be considered a MMORPG.
"As for Smed's text... i find it perfect. Exactly what I (and many others) have been piping for a long time - you can't have a continuous, endless game which is story (or "content") driven. The very idea of a mmo is directly opposed to the one where you "consume" a set amount of content and then bug off. A story is defined by a beginning and an end, and if you have a game which relies on a player never reaching the end... You'll have a big problem if you make it story-driven - because by their very definition stories end. Sadly, Bioware and others, so obsessed by their story-telling model where it pays if players burn through content quickly and demand more, never managed to realize this. Their answer to everything was "more story" without realizing it is exactly this story-reliance what is killing their mmos longevity. It's heartening to finally see a big name developer realize this simple fact. I must say I'm, dare I say it, cautiously optimistic tho I can't help feeling a little bit sad that so many years of development and genre evolution were wasted on this misguided obsession with stories."
You sell developers short. They ABSOLUTELY understand the downside to developer driven story based content. The advantage of the bioware model is that they can create GOOD content. It really boils down to three choices for developers.
#1) Try to encourage lots of player driven content - but run the risk of creating alot of mediocre to bad content. An example would be minecraft. Sure it CAN be fun but often it isn't. It's also extremely prone to griefing and runs a high likely hood of giving noobs a bad time. If you have alot of time to invest it can work out.
#2) Create lots of high quality 'story' based content - but run the risk of players burning through the content quickly. This is the approach that games like WoW, GW2, WIldstar etc try to manage. They try to balance the burn through rate with time gating (raiding once a week), difficulty, achievements (GW2), and grinding (faction grinds - WoW).
#3) Procedurally driven content - Try to make your gameworld still story driven but work in variation based on randomness and/or player performance/wants/needs. This is the aspect that's present is some single player games but developers are loathe to put into MMOs. Its obviously a challenge - but its a better way to extend content. Skyrim has a fair amount of this - as do some other single player games. But the last MMO with it that I played was EQ - who had an expansion with procedurally generated dungeons. (EQ2 might have had some of that too). This exists only in small amounts in current MMOs as the dungeons are mostly 'fixed' but have some variation based on player mix and performance.
Obviously you can mix and match all three approaches. But the much hated 'themepark' approach has been the most successful - and the big reason is its better to give people a short but sweet experience then a long but lousy one. Lots of people want it all - endless play with a great story and plot. But that's not going to happent. It's a trade off - the more you play the more grind/gating you need for themepark or the more patience you need to muddle through 'player created' content.
My main point though that there is no free lunch. "Sandbox' is not some cure all from the 'crap' that comes out of hand crafted developer driven games. More often then not it's of such poor quality and so boring to create that these games are little more then the pastime for people who sufffer from too much time on their hands. PvP works best as a 'sandbox element' and thats' why developers are okay with tacking that on.
Guys are all like 'Smedley gets it". But what he likely gets is that Sony can't compete with the AAA studios in the themepark space and is moving to the minecraft space where there is less competition. But even good versions of minecraft aren't going to match the AAA experience you get out of story driven game.
Not to mention the 2nd most popular MMORPG on the current market is a sandbox game in EvE. There is no reasonable way to think that a sandbox game can't work.
It can't because CCP is interested in defining the definition of a "sandbox" with "our way or the highway".
A true sandbox can turn a FFA PvP game into a PvE game, purely by how many dominate the game. Not the devs pushing their ideas of an "sandbox", itself.
So I will never consider EvE a sandbox game no matter how CCP tries to say it's one.
The ONLY sandbox games are offline, as they allow modding to truly customize their gaming experience. Devs can't dictate what you can't do offline (other than redistributing content that questionable -- p0rn and modding in brand name items).
You're welcome to make up your own definition of sandbox game, but don't pretend to speak for others.
Not you, but I don't live in a basement and sprouting nonsense, either.
A sandbox is USER CREATED content. Not dev directed content in a pseudo-sandbox concept.
As long as devs are directing game direction and it's content...it's NOT a sandbox, period.
I disagree. There are verying degrees of "sandboxyness". SWG is a perfect example of what was basically a hybrid, with some rules, lore, faction, etc. Still, the players made it their own, broke rules, did things the devs didn't expect, etc. You can argue that it's not a "pure" sandbox, and I would agree.
Pure sandboxes are garbage. For example, EQ Landmark right now is just a builder space. While I think it's neat, since there's no driving reason for me to build, I can't get into it. Xsyon had a very similar problem. There was no "game". No factions, barely any PvE or PvP (or a real reason to PvP). Even with the bugs the game had, I knew it could have been very interesting if there was more guidance for the players in the form of lore, factions (or ideologies), and a reason to spend all that time crafting and building.
EQ Landmark, in it's current Alpha form, is a dumbed down SecondLife, really. If they don't add some game parameters, it will just be a builder space. They are planning to, from what I understand, but I'm just making a point about pure, 100% player-driven sandbox as MMO. They don't work.
"Sandboxyness" is like trying to classify LoL as a MMORPG to justify it even included on a MMORPG site. -_-
A true sandbox is USER CREATED content.
Anything else is not true to the definition, nor should EVER be marketed as a sandbox when they're not, like LoL would never be considered a MMORPG.
Yes, because the world we live in is so "black and white". A child's view of the world, perhaps.
Address my point: Pure 100% player driven sandbox does not work as a game. The kind of sandbox you are talking about where there's only a blank slate and some tools, doesn't work as a game. It *could* work, if you could find enough people who want to create and *enforce* an entire social structure, factions, rules, laws, and the ability to build/script gaming systems in-game to go along with a 100% player-made construct.
There are degrees of sandbox capability, and whether or not you personally believe so doesn't really matter to anyone but you. I personally believe there is a balance that needs to be struck between sandbox and developer content in order for a game to make sense to most people. I think Star Wars Galaxies, though it needed better developer content, was very close to getting that blend right back pre-NGE. That's my opinion.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
A sandbox is USER CREATED content. Not dev directed content in a pseudo-sandbox concept.
As long as devs are directing game direction and it's content...it's NOT a sandbox, period.
In that case, I won't touch a sandbox game with a ten foot pole .. most user generated stuff is crap. I would much rather just play professionally produced content.
Not to mention the 2nd most popular MMORPG on the current market is a sandbox game in EvE. There is no reasonable way to think that a sandbox game can't work.
It can't because CCP is interested in defining the definition of a "sandbox" with "our way or the highway".
A true sandbox can turn a FFA PvP game into a PvE game, purely by how many dominate the game. Not the devs pushing their ideas of an "sandbox", itself.
So I will never consider EvE a sandbox game no matter how CCP tries to say it's one.
The ONLY sandbox games are offline, as they allow modding to truly customize their gaming experience. Devs can't dictate what you can't do offline (other than redistributing content that questionable -- p0rn and modding in brand name items).
You're welcome to make up your own definition of sandbox game, but don't pretend to speak for others.
Not you, but I don't live in a basement and sprouting nonsense, either.
A sandbox is USER CREATED content. Not dev directed content in a pseudo-sandbox concept.
As long as devs are directing game direction and it's content...it's NOT a sandbox, period.
I disagree. There are verying degrees of "sandboxyness". SWG is a perfect example of what was basically a hybrid, with some rules, lore, faction, etc. Still, the players made it their own, broke rules, did things the devs didn't expect, etc. You can argue that it's not a "pure" sandbox, and I would agree.
Pure sandboxes are garbage. For example, EQ Landmark right now is just a builder space. While I think it's neat, since there's no driving reason for me to build, I can't get into it. Xsyon had a very similar problem. There was no "game". No factions, barely any PvE or PvP (or a real reason to PvP). Even with the bugs the game had, I knew it could have been very interesting if there was more guidance for the players in the form of lore, factions (or ideologies), and a reason to spend all that time crafting and building.
EQ Landmark, in it's current Alpha form, is a dumbed down SecondLife, really. If they don't add some game parameters, it will just be a builder space. They are planning to, from what I understand, but I'm just making a point about pure, 100% player-driven sandbox as MMO. They don't work.
"Sandboxyness" is like trying to classify LoL as a MMORPG to justify it even included on a MMORPG site. -_-
A true sandbox is USER CREATED content.
Anything else is not true to the definition, nor should EVER be marketed as a sandbox when they're not, like LoL would never be considered a MMORPG.
"Content" is an extremely ambiguous word. You could say that a shack you build in Minecraft is "content".
A sandbox is USER CREATED content. Not dev directed content in a pseudo-sandbox concept.
As long as devs are directing game direction and it's content...it's NOT a sandbox, period.
In that case, I won't touch a sandbox game with a ten foot pole .. most user generated stuff is crap. I would much rather just play professionally produced content.
He's not talking about user created content like Never Winter, he's talking about MMORPGs with a high Meta Game content. Such as player driven economies and societies based on systems already implemented into the game.
Whcih brings us right back to what Smed is trying to do. Redefine what a sandbox is.
The difference is that in traditional sandbox MMORPGs, nobody was adding anything new to the game but rather working within what was already there to create a different experience.
Sandbox does not describe the content. Being a sandbox means the tools are in place for players to create their own content, it has nothing to do with the content itself. They are putting the tools in place to play the game the way you want to and not be forced into some linear script like most mmorpg.
A quick and easy litmus test is to log into 5 different servers in the same spot and look at what you see. If you see the same exact thing it isn't a sandbox. A sandbox world is impacted by what the players do. In say Shadowbane you could log into 5 different servers and see something completely different but it was mostly just castles moving around.
The concept in EQN is you can actually impact where mobs exist, destroy parts of the world, build part of the world, change which mobs control different areas, build entire NPC cities or have them destroyed etc. You log into 5 different EQN servers and you see 5 different scenes in the same spot.
A sandbox is USER CREATED content. Not dev directed content in a pseudo-sandbox concept.
As long as devs are directing game direction and it's content...it's NOT a sandbox, period.
In that case, I won't touch a sandbox game with a ten foot pole .. most user generated stuff is crap. I would much rather just play professionally produced content.
The key, as I said in my previous post, is to find the right blend of both. Star Wars Galaxies is one of the places the term "themepark" in mmo games came from because there were places you could go in the game to engage in Star Wars lore quests and instances, and they were called themeparks by the players and the devs. They ranged from simple dungeons/bases to quest lines to instances.
You lived in a Star Wars themed world, where largely you just did whatever you wanted, but you could go get involved in Star Wars themepark content whenever you wanted. It was always there, and was completely voluntary, and we did use them. Later on, the devs were putting in regular story updates to their main quest line (chapters basically), and that was awesome too, because every month we had some new story content to do, but it was a fun thing to go do, not the meat and potatoes of the game.
Games like The Repopulation will hopefully do something similar. Give us a world that is largely player-driven, though not completely, while still having themepark content we can go enjoy when we want.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
For what it's worth, I think Star Citizen is going to run into the opposite problem. They are blurring the line between space sim and MMORPG, but a lot of the people who are backing the game are leaning towards it being an MMORPG game rather than a more single player space sim experience. Trouble is, most of the games structure will be completely driven by game code, and players are largely just pilots flying around in instanced (culled) space. It's not going to be MMO or sandbox enough for a lot of people and if they stay on that path, people will get bored with it much like they do FPS games.
Time will tell, and I'm hoping Roberts brings us a neat new experience to enjoy, but I don't think Star Citizen is going to be a home away from home style mmo game. The design seems quite confused on paper with what sounds like a ton of MMORPG-like features, but put into very limited game "world" as far as players are concerned.
For an example of what I mean by limiting player involvement, read up on their crafting and trade system, which seems to be largely hands-off driven by game code other than the ability to help or hurt "supply lines".
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
"As for Smed's text... i find it perfect. Exactly what I (and many others) have been piping for a long time - you can't have a continuous, endless game which is story (or "content") driven. The very idea of a mmo is directly opposed to the one where you "consume" a set amount of content and then bug off. A story is defined by a beginning and an end, and if you have a game which relies on a player never reaching the end... You'll have a big problem if you make it story-driven - because by their very definition stories end. Sadly, Bioware and others, so obsessed by their story-telling model where it pays if players burn through content quickly and demand more, never managed to realize this. Their answer to everything was "more story" without realizing it is exactly this story-reliance what is killing their mmos longevity. It's heartening to finally see a big name developer realize this simple fact. I must say I'm, dare I say it, cautiously optimistic tho I can't help feeling a little bit sad that so many years of development and genre evolution were wasted on this misguided obsession with stories."
You sell developers short. They ABSOLUTELY understand the downside to developer driven story based content. The advantage of the bioware model is that they can create GOOD content. It really boils down to three choices for developers.
#1) Try to encourage lots of player driven content - but run the risk of creating alot of mediocre to bad content. An example would be minecraft. Sure it CAN be fun but often it isn't. It's also extremely prone to griefing and runs a high likely hood of giving noobs a bad time. If you have alot of time to invest it can work out.
#2) Create lots of high quality 'story' based content - but run the risk of players burning through the content quickly. This is the approach that games like WoW, GW2, WIldstar etc try to manage. They try to balance the burn through rate with time gating (raiding once a week), difficulty, achievements (GW2), and grinding (faction grinds - WoW).
#3) Procedurally driven content - Try to make your gameworld still story driven but work in variation based on randomness and/or player performance/wants/needs. This is the aspect that's present is some single player games but developers are loathe to put into MMOs. Its obviously a challenge - but its a better way to extend content. Skyrim has a fair amount of this - as do some other single player games. But the last MMO with it that I played was EQ - who had an expansion with procedurally generated dungeons. (EQ2 might have had some of that too). This exists only in small amounts in current MMOs as the dungeons are mostly 'fixed' but have some variation based on player mix and performance.
Obviously you can mix and match all three approaches. But the much hated 'themepark' approach has been the most successful - and the big reason is its better to give people a short but sweet experience then a long but lousy one. Lots of people want it all - endless play with a great story and plot. But that's not going to happent. It's a trade off - the more you play the more grind/gating you need for themepark or the more patience you need to muddle through 'player created' content.
My main point though that there is no free lunch. "Sandbox' is not some cure all from the 'crap' that comes out of hand crafted developer driven games. More often then not it's of such poor quality and so boring to create that these games are little more then the pastime for people who sufffer from too much time on their hands. PvP works best as a 'sandbox element' and thats' why developers are okay with tacking that on.
Guys are all like 'Smedley gets it". But what he likely gets is that Sony can't compete with the AAA studios in the themepark space and is moving to the minecraft space where there is less competition. But even good versions of minecraft aren't going to match the AAA experience you get out of story driven game.
Pretty much agree with your points except the last one with "Sony can't compete with the AAA studios in the themepark space and is moving to the minecraft space where there is less competition. But even good versions of minecraft aren't going to match the AAA experience you get out of story driven game."
Imo you didn't get the core point... it really isn't about the amount of resources you sink into the game - it is about the core concept of what the game is trying to do with players and their time.
If you sell the game as an experience that has a beginning and an end, something which guarantees that you will spend a certain LIMITED number of hours having fun, basically a movie/TV series model - then the Bioware concept is the correct one. "Buy this box and we guarantee you 8/20/whatever hours of fun! And the only way you can GUARANTEE that the game is going to provide the player with a meaningful experience is if you direct it - and that means story - with a beginning and an end. This is what I call "console" concept and that's why I never touch the beastly things. This is basically where "themeparks" come from.
And then there is the other core concept - you don't GUARANTEE that all the time spent in the game is going to be sizzling, searing directed fun. No, what you do is you present the game as a virtual space, an environment, a room that you can visit occasionally and spend as much time as you want there. So, here you don't sell tickets to a movie, what you do is rent a playground, a sandbox where you can play with yourself or with others. This is what sandbox is - and this is what mmos, with their dependency on player retention, will naturally evolve into. Smedley (and others, thankfully) are perfectly correct in realizing that trying to occupy this room with a constant stream of directed content is extremely costly and, finally, a fool's errand. If Bioware with all its experience and resource couldn't do it, not even close, then who can? To push the simile further, if you have a kindergarten full of toddlers you'll go crazy trying to entertain them every single minute of the day. It is much easier, and some would say better for the children, to simply give them a box of legos and various other toys and let them invent their own fun - with your discreete and responsible guidance of course. We don't want the kiddies to spoil each other's fun or break the legos.
So, i'm not against themeparks and directed content per-se. On the contrary. However, the very nature of mmos, with their dependency on player retention naturally gravitates toward player-created content rather than developer-created "stories." As I said already, a story is defined by having a beginning and an end. And you don't want a good mmo to end - not as a player and DEFINITELY not as a developer. That's the root of all the talk about "endgame" in mmos being the most important... an endgame is nothing else than a release from developer-driven story content.
And all this has nothing to do with a game being "AAA" or not. It's about different core concepts, different yardsticks used to measure how successful a game is in what it's trying to accomplish. A movie is considered good if it is exciting and emotionally engaging throughout its duration. A playground where excitement and emotions never subside is draining and chaotic. When a good movie ends, you want to leave the theater because you've had your fill of content and feel satisfied... while a good playground is a place you would never want to leave. Quality of a playground is measured by how many different activities (aka toys) you can perform there without feeling presured as well and how well policed and secure it is; while a movie without clear direction is always considered a flop. What is good in one case is usually bad in the other. It's not to say that they should always be kept separated - a good themepark can profit greatly by including some player freedom and choice, just as every sandbox can greatly benefit from a well-placed nudge from the developers (even the legendary Elite had eight pre-designed missions), but the natural core design of a massively online game where you are supposed to spend indefinite time is obviously player-driven or "sandbox" (with procedural-generated content also being a very viable option.)
"As for Smed's text... i find it perfect. Exactly what I (and many others) have been piping for a long time - you can't have a continuous, endless game which is story (or "content") driven. The very idea of a mmo is directly opposed to the one where you "consume" a set amount of content and then bug off. A story is defined by a beginning and an end, and if you have a game which relies on a player never reaching the end... You'll have a big problem if you make it story-driven - because by their very definition stories end. Sadly, Bioware and others, so obsessed by their story-telling model where it pays if players burn through content quickly and demand more, never managed to realize this. Their answer to everything was "more story" without realizing it is exactly this story-reliance what is killing their mmos longevity. It's heartening to finally see a big name developer realize this simple fact. I must say I'm, dare I say it, cautiously optimistic tho I can't help feeling a little bit sad that so many years of development and genre evolution were wasted on this misguided obsession with stories."
You sell developers short. They ABSOLUTELY understand the downside to developer driven story based content. The advantage of the bioware model is that they can create GOOD content. It really boils down to three choices for developers.
#1) Try to encourage lots of player driven content - but run the risk of creating alot of mediocre to bad content. An example would be minecraft. Sure it CAN be fun but often it isn't. It's also extremely prone to griefing and runs a high likely hood of giving noobs a bad time. If you have alot of time to invest it can work out.
#2) Create lots of high quality 'story' based content - but run the risk of players burning through the content quickly. This is the approach that games like WoW, GW2, WIldstar etc try to manage. They try to balance the burn through rate with time gating (raiding once a week), difficulty, achievements (GW2), and grinding (faction grinds - WoW).
#3) Procedurally driven content - Try to make your gameworld still story driven but work in variation based on randomness and/or player performance/wants/needs. This is the aspect that's present is some single player games but developers are loathe to put into MMOs. Its obviously a challenge - but its a better way to extend content. Skyrim has a fair amount of this - as do some other single player games. But the last MMO with it that I played was EQ - who had an expansion with procedurally generated dungeons. (EQ2 might have had some of that too). This exists only in small amounts in current MMOs as the dungeons are mostly 'fixed' but have some variation based on player mix and performance.
Obviously you can mix and match all three approaches. But the much hated 'themepark' approach has been the most successful - and the big reason is its better to give people a short but sweet experience then a long but lousy one. Lots of people want it all - endless play with a great story and plot. But that's not going to happent. It's a trade off - the more you play the more grind/gating you need for themepark or the more patience you need to muddle through 'player created' content.
My main point though that there is no free lunch. "Sandbox' is not some cure all from the 'crap' that comes out of hand crafted developer driven games. More often then not it's of such poor quality and so boring to create that these games are little more then the pastime for people who sufffer from too much time on their hands. PvP works best as a 'sandbox element' and thats' why developers are okay with tacking that on.
Guys are all like 'Smedley gets it". But what he likely gets is that Sony can't compete with the AAA studios in the themepark space and is moving to the minecraft space where there is less competition. But even good versions of minecraft aren't going to match the AAA experience you get out of story driven game.
Pretty much agree with your points except the last one with "Sony can't compete with the AAA studios in the themepark space and is moving to the minecraft space where there is less competition. But even good versions of minecraft aren't going to match the AAA experience you get out of story driven game."
Imo you didn't get the core point... it really isn't about the amount of resources you sink into the game - it is about the core concept of what the game is trying to do with players and their time.
So a key core is looking at badly form UV maps that sparkle, instead? Don't you think it's better to polish the game instead of forcing players to look at white sparkles while still wanting their money for gun unlocks and appearance camo, and calling the game out of beta, to do so???
Really hope they've learned from the WRECK that was SWG. And YES, I am talked pre-CU/NGE.
Hey, you guys want more content?
OK- grind out a dozen or more professions you have zero interest in to unlock your FS slot. There, enjoy your content?
No thanks!
Why don't you guys actually fix the game-breaking bugs in the Rebel/Imperial/Jabba's Palace theme parks?
Are you kidding? We've got to add banthas for you to ride!
Umm you are not doing speeders first?
NO! Too complex?!
What about housing?
Oh, you mean that feature that is going to turn all the currently EXTREMELY lively and active towns/cities into ghost towns?
Yeah, that one.
It's coming after the speeders.
Space?
After we push you out with the Holocron thing, oh, and it's going to be nothing like X-Wing/Tie-Fighter!
Oh.. ummm.... what about game balance?
You don't like 1-shot mind shot Riflemen? Here- we made Commando and Combat Medic OP now, Rifleman suck.
Does everyone have to get Creature Handler too in order to compete?
YES!
What about Smugglers, will we ever get to do anything but suck?
You can make stims!
Slicing?
Doesn't work... but at least you are better than Pistoleer!
Your time in the game must have really sucked. I absolutely loved it, and played for three years straight with my friends, having many adventures and making many new friends along the way. I have yet to have an MMO come close to offering the number of options, or the diverse community of SWG.
We're you a huge fan of SWTOR? I remember you here on these forums defending it to death. That explains a few of our differences, I suppose.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
"As for Smed's text... i find it perfect. Exactly what I (and many others) have been piping for a long time - you can't have a continuous, endless game which is story (or "content") driven. The very idea of a mmo is directly opposed to the one where you "consume" a set amount of content and then bug off. A story is defined by a beginning and an end, and if you have a game which relies on a player never reaching the end... You'll have a big problem if you make it story-driven - because by their very definition stories end. Sadly, Bioware and others, so obsessed by their story-telling model where it pays if players burn through content quickly and demand more, never managed to realize this. Their answer to everything was "more story" without realizing it is exactly this story-reliance what is killing their mmos longevity. It's heartening to finally see a big name developer realize this simple fact. I must say I'm, dare I say it, cautiously optimistic tho I can't help feeling a little bit sad that so many years of development and genre evolution were wasted on this misguided obsession with stories."
You sell developers short. They ABSOLUTELY understand the downside to developer driven story based content. The advantage of the bioware model is that they can create GOOD content. It really boils down to three choices for developers.
#1) Try to encourage lots of player driven content - but run the risk of creating alot of mediocre to bad content. An example would be minecraft. Sure it CAN be fun but often it isn't. It's also extremely prone to griefing and runs a high likely hood of giving noobs a bad time. If you have alot of time to invest it can work out.
#2) Create lots of high quality 'story' based content - but run the risk of players burning through the content quickly. This is the approach that games like WoW, GW2, WIldstar etc try to manage. They try to balance the burn through rate with time gating (raiding once a week), difficulty, achievements (GW2), and grinding (faction grinds - WoW).
#3) Procedurally driven content - Try to make your gameworld still story driven but work in variation based on randomness and/or player performance/wants/needs. This is the aspect that's present is some single player games but developers are loathe to put into MMOs. Its obviously a challenge - but its a better way to extend content. Skyrim has a fair amount of this - as do some other single player games. But the last MMO with it that I played was EQ - who had an expansion with procedurally generated dungeons. (EQ2 might have had some of that too). This exists only in small amounts in current MMOs as the dungeons are mostly 'fixed' but have some variation based on player mix and performance.
Obviously you can mix and match all three approaches. But the much hated 'themepark' approach has been the most successful - and the big reason is its better to give people a short but sweet experience then a long but lousy one. Lots of people want it all - endless play with a great story and plot. But that's not going to happent. It's a trade off - the more you play the more grind/gating you need for themepark or the more patience you need to muddle through 'player created' content.
My main point though that there is no free lunch. "Sandbox' is not some cure all from the 'crap' that comes out of hand crafted developer driven games. More often then not it's of such poor quality and so boring to create that these games are little more then the pastime for people who sufffer from too much time on their hands. PvP works best as a 'sandbox element' and thats' why developers are okay with tacking that on.
Guys are all like 'Smedley gets it". But what he likely gets is that Sony can't compete with the AAA studios in the themepark space and is moving to the minecraft space where there is less competition. But even good versions of minecraft aren't going to match the AAA experience you get out of story driven game.
Pretty much agree with your points except the last one with "Sony can't compete with the AAA studios in the themepark space and is moving to the minecraft space where there is less competition. But even good versions of minecraft aren't going to match the AAA experience you get out of story driven game."
Imo you didn't get the core point... it really isn't about the amount of resources you sink into the game - it is about the core concept of what the game is trying to do with players and their time.
So a key core is looking at badly form UV maps that sparkle, instead? Don't you think it's better to polish the game instead of forcing players to look at white sparkles while still wanting their money for gun unlocks and appearance camo, and calling the game out of beta, to do so???
What? I don't even...
No, really what are you talking about? PS2? What does this have to do with anything except "SOE is evil, I hate them?"
Different people like different aspects of games. For a very long time MMO's have largely been concentrated on a narrow range of aspects of gaming. In part due to technical issues of those being easiest to concentrate on and in part because of the perception that was where the largest audience was at.
Two things have happaned, IMO. Firstly the technology and craft behind making games has evolved and gotten more sophisticated, meaning it's easier to do some of the things games haven't tackled before.
Second though the size of the gaming audience has grown significantly......the number of games in competition with one another have absolutely exploded. Games need to be able to significantly differentiate from their competition in order to have a good chance..... they need to reach out to new audiences that have been underserved or not even considered before or they find themselves fighting a very difficult uphill battle against well established competitors.
Now some people love to sit down and read a good script or watch a good movie. That's basicaly the Themepark model that companies like Bioware do well. It's one type of gaming activity that people enjoy. Nothing wrong with it. I don't think it's going away any time soon. Heck, I even enjoy it when I'm in the right mood for it.
However, it's NOT the ONLY type of activity in gaming that people in enjoy. There are people, like myself, that really enjoy playing a more creative role in helping to WRITE the script too. That's a big part of what TableTop Role-Playing games like D&D or Pathfinder are about. It's also the type of gaming that things like MineCraft represent......and it's largely been absent from the MMO scene.....but it's a large part of what sandbox gaming is able to tap into.
For those that complain that the type of content that players produce doesn't stack up well to "proffesionaly" written scripts. Even if we take that as an absolute axiom, you really don't get it. For the people that like to go out on a baseball field and play a game of baseball or softball, they aren't bothered by not being able to play as well as the NY Yankees because it's the act of PLAYING baseball not WATCHING baseball be played that's the draw for them. Same thing here....for the people that enjoy this type of things it's the ACT of CREATING content and sharing it with others that's the real draw.....not experiencing content that others created.....it litteraly doesn't matter if the content is any good as long as you had fun CREATING it.
Comments
I like both dev made content and sandbox features.
Also, I like the idea of temporarily damaging dev made structures.
Ex.
1. My iksar travels to Kelethin and is subsequently attacked by Wood Elf guards.
2. Iksar flees, then comes back with a train of 20 Orc Centurians, feigns near one of the lifts. The 20 orcs quickly overrun the guards and burn the lift. Players are forced to use the other lift for 10 or so minutes, while Wood Elf engineers repair the damage.
-WL
Werewolf Online(R) - Lead Developer
I've been saying everything he said in this article for the past 6+ years as an MMO player. We "bittervets", as some like to call us, were around to play those games that were more virtual world than themepark, and so themeparks largely never lived up to what we always thought the future of MMOs would hold.
The part about themeparks being unsustainable is key, and it's the main reason why people are MMO hopping these days. I'll go a step further and simply say that today's MMO's are not hard enough. Again, Star Wars Galaxies had a neat idea with different *ENTIRE* planets, with varying degrees of difficulty. When the game was new, I remember not even going anywhere near Dathomir for like six months, because even as a high level player, it was almost insta-death unless you went in with a full group.
I can understand casual players wanting easy-mode content, and there's no reason why we can't have both easy and super hard content in these games, both being fun / rewarding, and let the players choose which they want to play.
The only game that looks interesting to me right now is The Repopulation. TESO, Wildstar, probably EQN will be more of the same themepark, dressed up a little. No thanks.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
It can't because CCP is interested in defining the definition of a "sandbox" with "our way or the highway".
A true sandbox can turn a FFA PvP game into a PvE game, purely by how many dominate the game. Not the devs pushing their ideas of an "sandbox", itself.
So I will never consider EvE a sandbox game no matter how CCP tries to say it's one.
The ONLY sandbox games are offline, as they allow modding to truly customize their gaming experience. Devs can't dictate what you can't do offline (other than redistributing content that questionable -- p0rn and modding in brand name items).
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
You're welcome to make up your own definition of sandbox game, but don't pretend to speak for others.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Not you, but I don't live in a basement and sprouting nonsense, either.
A sandbox is USER CREATED content. Not dev directed content in a pseudo-sandbox concept.
As long as devs are directing game direction and it's content...it's NOT a sandbox, period.
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
I also don't think EVE is a good example of a game to emulate, but for somewhat different reasons. While EVE is a successful game, it's biggest claim to success is it's ability to generate a desire for multiple accounts from within it's existing player base. (re-monetization) What I mean is this. In a time where new games are struggling to maintian even 1 subscription, pointing to a game that is making the majority of its revenue on multiple subs may not be wise. If we remove the PLEX accounts from EVE and just look at the actual number of active players EVE has, it's really not very impressive at all.
I disagree. There are verying degrees of "sandboxyness". SWG is a perfect example of what was basically a hybrid, with some rules, lore, faction, etc. Still, the players made it their own, broke rules, did things the devs didn't expect, etc. You can argue that it's not a "pure" sandbox, and I would agree.
Pure sandboxes are garbage. For example, EQ Landmark right now is just a builder space. Since there's currently no driving reason for me to build, I can't get into it. Xsyon had a very similar problem. There was no "game". No factions, barely any PvE or PvP (or a real reason to PvP). Even with the bugs the game had, I knew it could have been very interesting if there was more guidance for the players in the form of lore, factions (or ideologies), and a reason to spend all that time crafting and building.
EQ Landmark, in it's current Alpha form, is a dumbed down SecondLife, really. If they don't add some game parameters, it will just be a builder space. They are planning to, from what I understand, but I'm just making a point about pure, 100% player-driven sandbox as MMO. They don't work.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
"Sandboxyness" is like trying to classify LoL as a MMORPG to justify it even included on a MMORPG site. -_-
A true sandbox is USER CREATED content.
Anything else is not true to the definition, nor should EVER be marketed as a sandbox when they're not, like LoL would never be considered a MMORPG.
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
"As for Smed's text... i find it perfect. Exactly what I (and many others) have been piping for a long time - you can't have a continuous, endless game which is story (or "content") driven. The very idea of a mmo is directly opposed to the one where you "consume" a set amount of content and then bug off. A story is defined by a beginning and an end, and if you have a game which relies on a player never reaching the end... You'll have a big problem if you make it story-driven - because by their very definition stories end. Sadly, Bioware and others, so obsessed by their story-telling model where it pays if players burn through content quickly and demand more, never managed to realize this. Their answer to everything was "more story" without realizing it is exactly this story-reliance what is killing their mmos longevity. It's heartening to finally see a big name developer realize this simple fact. I must say I'm, dare I say it, cautiously optimistic tho I can't help feeling a little bit sad that so many years of development and genre evolution were wasted on this misguided obsession with stories."
You sell developers short. They ABSOLUTELY understand the downside to developer driven story based content. The advantage of the bioware model is that they can create GOOD content. It really boils down to three choices for developers.
#1) Try to encourage lots of player driven content - but run the risk of creating alot of mediocre to bad content. An example would be minecraft. Sure it CAN be fun but often it isn't. It's also extremely prone to griefing and runs a high likely hood of giving noobs a bad time. If you have alot of time to invest it can work out.
#2) Create lots of high quality 'story' based content - but run the risk of players burning through the content quickly. This is the approach that games like WoW, GW2, WIldstar etc try to manage. They try to balance the burn through rate with time gating (raiding once a week), difficulty, achievements (GW2), and grinding (faction grinds - WoW).
#3) Procedurally driven content - Try to make your gameworld still story driven but work in variation based on randomness and/or player performance/wants/needs. This is the aspect that's present is some single player games but developers are loathe to put into MMOs. Its obviously a challenge - but its a better way to extend content. Skyrim has a fair amount of this - as do some other single player games. But the last MMO with it that I played was EQ - who had an expansion with procedurally generated dungeons. (EQ2 might have had some of that too). This exists only in small amounts in current MMOs as the dungeons are mostly 'fixed' but have some variation based on player mix and performance.
Obviously you can mix and match all three approaches. But the much hated 'themepark' approach has been the most successful - and the big reason is its better to give people a short but sweet experience then a long but lousy one. Lots of people want it all - endless play with a great story and plot. But that's not going to happent. It's a trade off - the more you play the more grind/gating you need for themepark or the more patience you need to muddle through 'player created' content.
My main point though that there is no free lunch. "Sandbox' is not some cure all from the 'crap' that comes out of hand crafted developer driven games. More often then not it's of such poor quality and so boring to create that these games are little more then the pastime for people who sufffer from too much time on their hands. PvP works best as a 'sandbox element' and thats' why developers are okay with tacking that on.
Guys are all like 'Smedley gets it". But what he likely gets is that Sony can't compete with the AAA studios in the themepark space and is moving to the minecraft space where there is less competition. But even good versions of minecraft aren't going to match the AAA experience you get out of story driven game.
Yes, because the world we live in is so "black and white". A child's view of the world, perhaps.
Address my point: Pure 100% player driven sandbox does not work as a game. The kind of sandbox you are talking about where there's only a blank slate and some tools, doesn't work as a game. It *could* work, if you could find enough people who want to create and *enforce* an entire social structure, factions, rules, laws, and the ability to build/script gaming systems in-game to go along with a 100% player-made construct.
There are degrees of sandbox capability, and whether or not you personally believe so doesn't really matter to anyone but you. I personally believe there is a balance that needs to be struck between sandbox and developer content in order for a game to make sense to most people. I think Star Wars Galaxies, though it needed better developer content, was very close to getting that blend right back pre-NGE. That's my opinion.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
In that case, I won't touch a sandbox game with a ten foot pole .. most user generated stuff is crap. I would much rather just play professionally produced content.
"Content" is an extremely ambiguous word. You could say that a shack you build in Minecraft is "content".
What do you mean when you say "content"?
He's not talking about user created content like Never Winter, he's talking about MMORPGs with a high Meta Game content. Such as player driven economies and societies based on systems already implemented into the game.
Whcih brings us right back to what Smed is trying to do. Redefine what a sandbox is.
The difference is that in traditional sandbox MMORPGs, nobody was adding anything new to the game but rather working within what was already there to create a different experience.
Sandbox does not describe the content. Being a sandbox means the tools are in place for players to create their own content, it has nothing to do with the content itself. They are putting the tools in place to play the game the way you want to and not be forced into some linear script like most mmorpg.
A quick and easy litmus test is to log into 5 different servers in the same spot and look at what you see. If you see the same exact thing it isn't a sandbox. A sandbox world is impacted by what the players do. In say Shadowbane you could log into 5 different servers and see something completely different but it was mostly just castles moving around.
The concept in EQN is you can actually impact where mobs exist, destroy parts of the world, build part of the world, change which mobs control different areas, build entire NPC cities or have them destroyed etc. You log into 5 different EQN servers and you see 5 different scenes in the same spot.
The key, as I said in my previous post, is to find the right blend of both. Star Wars Galaxies is one of the places the term "themepark" in mmo games came from because there were places you could go in the game to engage in Star Wars lore quests and instances, and they were called themeparks by the players and the devs. They ranged from simple dungeons/bases to quest lines to instances.
You lived in a Star Wars themed world, where largely you just did whatever you wanted, but you could go get involved in Star Wars themepark content whenever you wanted. It was always there, and was completely voluntary, and we did use them. Later on, the devs were putting in regular story updates to their main quest line (chapters basically), and that was awesome too, because every month we had some new story content to do, but it was a fun thing to go do, not the meat and potatoes of the game.
Games like The Repopulation will hopefully do something similar. Give us a world that is largely player-driven, though not completely, while still having themepark content we can go enjoy when we want.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
For what it's worth, I think Star Citizen is going to run into the opposite problem. They are blurring the line between space sim and MMORPG, but a lot of the people who are backing the game are leaning towards it being an MMORPG game rather than a more single player space sim experience. Trouble is, most of the games structure will be completely driven by game code, and players are largely just pilots flying around in instanced (culled) space. It's not going to be MMO or sandbox enough for a lot of people and if they stay on that path, people will get bored with it much like they do FPS games.
Time will tell, and I'm hoping Roberts brings us a neat new experience to enjoy, but I don't think Star Citizen is going to be a home away from home style mmo game. The design seems quite confused on paper with what sounds like a ton of MMORPG-like features, but put into very limited game "world" as far as players are concerned.
For an example of what I mean by limiting player involvement, read up on their crafting and trade system, which seems to be largely hands-off driven by game code other than the ability to help or hurt "supply lines".
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Pretty much agree with your points except the last one with "Sony can't compete with the AAA studios in the themepark space and is moving to the minecraft space where there is less competition. But even good versions of minecraft aren't going to match the AAA experience you get out of story driven game."
Imo you didn't get the core point... it really isn't about the amount of resources you sink into the game - it is about the core concept of what the game is trying to do with players and their time.
If you sell the game as an experience that has a beginning and an end, something which guarantees that you will spend a certain LIMITED number of hours having fun, basically a movie/TV series model - then the Bioware concept is the correct one. "Buy this box and we guarantee you 8/20/whatever hours of fun! And the only way you can GUARANTEE that the game is going to provide the player with a meaningful experience is if you direct it - and that means story - with a beginning and an end. This is what I call "console" concept and that's why I never touch the beastly things. This is basically where "themeparks" come from.
And then there is the other core concept - you don't GUARANTEE that all the time spent in the game is going to be sizzling, searing directed fun. No, what you do is you present the game as a virtual space, an environment, a room that you can visit occasionally and spend as much time as you want there. So, here you don't sell tickets to a movie, what you do is rent a playground, a sandbox where you can play with yourself or with others. This is what sandbox is - and this is what mmos, with their dependency on player retention, will naturally evolve into. Smedley (and others, thankfully) are perfectly correct in realizing that trying to occupy this room with a constant stream of directed content is extremely costly and, finally, a fool's errand. If Bioware with all its experience and resource couldn't do it, not even close, then who can? To push the simile further, if you have a kindergarten full of toddlers you'll go crazy trying to entertain them every single minute of the day. It is much easier, and some would say better for the children, to simply give them a box of legos and various other toys and let them invent their own fun - with your discreete and responsible guidance of course. We don't want the kiddies to spoil each other's fun or break the legos.
So, i'm not against themeparks and directed content per-se. On the contrary. However, the very nature of mmos, with their dependency on player retention naturally gravitates toward player-created content rather than developer-created "stories." As I said already, a story is defined by having a beginning and an end. And you don't want a good mmo to end - not as a player and DEFINITELY not as a developer. That's the root of all the talk about "endgame" in mmos being the most important... an endgame is nothing else than a release from developer-driven story content.
And all this has nothing to do with a game being "AAA" or not. It's about different core concepts, different yardsticks used to measure how successful a game is in what it's trying to accomplish. A movie is considered good if it is exciting and emotionally engaging throughout its duration. A playground where excitement and emotions never subside is draining and chaotic. When a good movie ends, you want to leave the theater because you've had your fill of content and feel satisfied... while a good playground is a place you would never want to leave. Quality of a playground is measured by how many different activities (aka toys) you can perform there without feeling presured as well and how well policed and secure it is; while a movie without clear direction is always considered a flop. What is good in one case is usually bad in the other. It's not to say that they should always be kept separated - a good themepark can profit greatly by including some player freedom and choice, just as every sandbox can greatly benefit from a well-placed nudge from the developers (even the legendary Elite had eight pre-designed missions), but the natural core design of a massively online game where you are supposed to spend indefinite time is obviously player-driven or "sandbox" (with procedural-generated content also being a very viable option.)
Really hope they've learned from the WRECK that was SWG. And YES, I am talked pre-CU/NGE.
Hey, you guys want more content?
OK- grind out a dozen or more professions you have zero interest in to unlock your FS slot. There, enjoy your content?
No thanks!
Why don't you guys actually fix the game-breaking bugs in the Rebel/Imperial/Jabba's Palace theme parks?
Are you kidding? We've got to add banthas for you to ride!
Umm you are not doing speeders first?
NO! Too complex?!
What about housing?
Oh, you mean that feature that is going to turn all the currently EXTREMELY lively and active towns/cities into ghost towns?
Yeah, that one.
It's coming after the speeders.
Space?
After we push you out with the Holocron thing, oh, and it's going to be nothing like X-Wing/Tie-Fighter!
Oh.. ummm.... what about game balance?
You don't like 1-shot mind shot Riflemen? Here- we made Commando and Combat Medic OP now, Rifleman suck.
Does everyone have to get Creature Handler too in order to compete?
YES!
What about Smugglers, will we ever get to do anything but suck?
You can make stims!
Slicing?
Doesn't work... but at least you are better than Pistoleer!
So a key core is looking at badly form UV maps that sparkle, instead? Don't you think it's better to polish the game instead of forcing players to look at white sparkles while still wanting their money for gun unlocks and appearance camo, and calling the game out of beta, to do so???
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
Your time in the game must have really sucked. I absolutely loved it, and played for three years straight with my friends, having many adventures and making many new friends along the way. I have yet to have an MMO come close to offering the number of options, or the diverse community of SWG.
We're you a huge fan of SWTOR? I remember you here on these forums defending it to death. That explains a few of our differences, I suppose.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
What? I don't even...
No, really what are you talking about? PS2? What does this have to do with anything except "SOE is evil, I hate them?"
Get a grip dude, we're grownups here.
Different people like different aspects of games. For a very long time MMO's have largely been concentrated on a narrow range of aspects of gaming. In part due to technical issues of those being easiest to concentrate on and in part because of the perception that was where the largest audience was at.
Two things have happaned, IMO. Firstly the technology and craft behind making games has evolved and gotten more sophisticated, meaning it's easier to do some of the things games haven't tackled before.
Second though the size of the gaming audience has grown significantly......the number of games in competition with one another have absolutely exploded. Games need to be able to significantly differentiate from their competition in order to have a good chance..... they need to reach out to new audiences that have been underserved or not even considered before or they find themselves fighting a very difficult uphill battle against well established competitors.
Now some people love to sit down and read a good script or watch a good movie. That's basicaly the Themepark model that companies like Bioware do well. It's one type of gaming activity that people enjoy. Nothing wrong with it. I don't think it's going away any time soon. Heck, I even enjoy it when I'm in the right mood for it.
However, it's NOT the ONLY type of activity in gaming that people in enjoy. There are people, like myself, that really enjoy playing a more creative role in helping to WRITE the script too. That's a big part of what TableTop Role-Playing games like D&D or Pathfinder are about. It's also the type of gaming that things like MineCraft represent......and it's largely been absent from the MMO scene.....but it's a large part of what sandbox gaming is able to tap into.
For those that complain that the type of content that players produce doesn't stack up well to "proffesionaly" written scripts. Even if we take that as an absolute axiom, you really don't get it. For the people that like to go out on a baseball field and play a game of baseball or softball, they aren't bothered by not being able to play as well as the NY Yankees because it's the act of PLAYING baseball not WATCHING baseball be played that's the draw for them. Same thing here....for the people that enjoy this type of things it's the ACT of CREATING content and sharing it with others that's the real draw.....not experiencing content that others created.....it litteraly doesn't matter if the content is any good as long as you had fun CREATING it.
lololol
WoW players would describe me as a EQ2 fanboi.
So, you're sooooooooo wrong on that, then check my gender and age.
Yeah, sooooooooooo wrong on many points in but 2 sentences.
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
Man, you managed to confuse me completely. I'm lost. Help! Won't please someone explain!?!