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What about a sandbox and themepark game?
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This is exactly my issue.. I don't want to play a pre-program game on rails.. I want the freedom to have a large variety of things to do at my discretion.. I also want more non combat things to do as well.. I get tired of hacking and slashing everything the moment I log on.. There are times I want to go fishing, cooking or farming mats.. I'm so burnt out on story driven content.. Let me created my own BIO, by the actions I take.. The world should be filled with choices at each turn.. I want the ability to kill my own faction and become KOS, while gaining faction with my enemies.. Of the games I played EQ1 did that part right.. Earning and losing faction was great..
and it actually meant something..
A true sandbox game have everything, both themepark features and sandbox.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
Thought I don't even want to think about the cost of developing such a game, at least in AA+ level.
I'm sure that many great projects have been started but if the game can't cover the cost of its development and make money then it pretty clear that it won't be made..
With "fans" like those, who needs enemies?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Still it does not make what they wrote less true.
It's weird to reconcile the revisionist-historian vesion of gamer's paradise, with what we know was their behavior like before the shutdown announcment, isn't it?
This is the fan base that hounded developers relentlessly for NGE, and still (often) does. Now they portray the post-NGE period, up til shutdown announcement date, as happy funtime sunshine and rainbows in the perfect gaming paradise?
The game never had a chance.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
actually lukas arts killed it with the wow approach in a game that was just fine.
that wasn't bioware's fault, SWG went down the river some time ago (i think it was the JTL addon)
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Of course it had a chance.
For a game that released in so unfinished state and was so unstable and full of such major bugs, playerbase was very forgiving. Playerbase was initially stable and later on bleeding down much slower than it happens in most mmorpg nowadays.
SWG was released in a state that nowadays would be called early-beta at best. Any game released nowadays like that would lose 70-90% of playerbase in 2 months.
Until NGE that is, where changes were made with big, rusty knife when game needed scalpel.
Anyway we'll never know.
1. You can make a grand tutorial and minigames/instanced dungeons for those who want it, but it should not cover most of the game world and it should be completely optional for those who just want to get into the wild from start.
2. A game where gear matter and loot matter while most trades are done through player auctions/markets is what you say is impossible, but it is actually very possible.
3. Just make those end-game dungeons drop crafting material but never full gear.
4. You are right here, but you can make a game that has excellent combat and excellent non-combat.
5. No, but you can let the developers make a rough draft while the players choose all the details.
Yeah you're right, I totally see in my initial post where I pointed out that pre NGE the game was a gamers paradise with zero problems and "happy funtime sunshine". There may be plenty of rose tinted vets, but that is not the case here.
It has nothing to do with being a "fan" of the game in either form, merely it is pointing out the reality of the situation. In it's later years the game tried to be all things to all people and competely lost any real direction and failed to be anything to anyone.
The game "never had a chance" because it made wholesale changes which both alienated it's original audience whilst at the same time, failed to provide a product good enough to attract a newer audience.
Eitherway it is certainly far from a good example of what a themepark/sandbox hybrid should be like.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
This is not true.
1. having quests take you from one place or another does not mean the game must be a level based game. By removing this horrible aspect of MMOs you remove the need for a game to have "zones" or "walls" to prevent players from entering areas way beyond their abilities.
2. You CAN have a loot economy AND a player run market economy. No BoPs allow everything that can be looted to be sold by players...and make a damn crafting system worth something...Just because you can loot an uber mace of smash your face it doesnt mean a player should not be allowed to make something similar. The only thing that should be different is the LOOK which will drive the player market even more.
3. See above, loot system and crafting system are NOT exclusive systems...you just think they are because game designers are too god damn lazy to work on both. A game should be made with a vast variety of weapon and armor design, the more look options there are the more players will enjoy their characters. So, dungeon 1 drops one look, dungeon 2 drops another look, dungeon 3 drops a 3rd look and player made items have looks 4,5 and 6.
4. this makes no sense at all. What does sandbox have to do with a game being combat-centric or not?
5. This is 100% player dependant. If you have never been able to roleplay in a themepark game, it was YOUR choosing. A game having a story and quests does not take away your ability to go do whatever you wanted in the world that was created...hell, one of my guildies never reached level 80 in WoW because he was playing a town drunk who had a habit of falling off of Thunder Bluff in a blind stupor...he would ALWAYS be drunk, even in raids and we made it so he could charge mobs in a drunken rage for RP reasons.
And dont even get me started on the RPing that can be done in each of the superhero games like City of Heroes, Champions Online or DCUo...or LoTRo for that matter...lol...it has a story and yet you can do NOTHING but farm if you wanted to.
Sadly very true.
Completely agree, but I don't have a lot of faith they get this.
Its called roblox or second life.
I thought I knew what people meant when they said "sandbox." I thought they meant a reason to explore without being forced to level to get to a zone; plus a crafting system that makes you feel like you live in the game instead of just playing a game. But I have looked at these old "sandboxes" they keep referring to and the graphics are so gawd awful ugly I wouldn't play them if someone paid me to. So now I'm confused why they think their sandbox was so great? Sorry, guys, but your past games sucked. I don't even want to begin to guess at what the hev they mean by themepark.
"Core" Sandbox gamers have been compromising for the last 8-10 years. I think its the themeparkers that need to learn compromise. Sandboxers are about challenge and immersive play (virtual world). Themeparkers are about ease of access and casual play (money grab lobby).
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
We had those. They were called MMORPGs. Then WoW happened.
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