YES. People voted with their wallets and they choose what we have today. Not being a troll just stating the absolute, undisputed truth. Nobody wants huge time sinks, nobody wants to deal with the asshats who have 23 hours a day to camp one mob for the vorpal sword.
That is not to say that some of the concepts couldn't work and work well. Player housing, deeper crafting, open world (with instanced dungeons), sure. Open world where you are a farmer, don't sell. Extreme open pvp, don't sell.
I think alot of older players look at their first experiences with SWG, EQ, UO with rose colored glasses.
I agree with this for the most part.
I'll go a step further with my view of the "older" gamers being that I am one of them. Not only do the older gamers have rose colored glasses on for much of their recollection, but also at this point these older gamers are the ones who by and large don't have the time to devote to all the huge time sinks from games in the past. Older gamers are the ones who now have full time jobs, kids, responsibilities, etc. I have a theory that in many cases it's actually the older gamers who are pushing for the less grindy content and not so much the "kids" who have a lot of time.
Beleive me i think the same thing. I was one of those guys also. I camped the mobs, I ran the raids, i did that stuff. The problem is I had a ton of fun doing it AT THE TIME. I dont look back at these things as something i would ever want to repeat.
Great insight though with older gamers pushing what they can no longer do. I think the same thing. I am a fan of play what you enjoy. I'll be honest, i enjoy SWOTOR and couldn't get past the third login to GW2. I don't hate, or judge those that like or dislike what i'm into. The point is there is so much more in this world to be upset about other than what one developer did or did not do in there video game. This website is great for getting into the weeds of details on games and i read far more than i post because there are trully some people here with much more knowledge than i have of games or how games work. But the pure spite towards companies and posters that don't agree with eachother is just sad.
I don't think age has anything to do with liking or disliking most gaming features. I love games with full looting, open world PvP, non-instanced dungeons, territory control, player housing...you know most of the features missing from AAA MMOs other than EVE. If something were to happen in my life that made it so that I had less time to play, I wouldn't just stop liking those features and start liking games like WoW or Rift. Hell I'm retiring in January after 22 years in the Army, my son goes off to college at the end of the month and the last thing I want is another MMO that can be burned through in a month due to no player driven content.
I was deployed to Afghanistan the month before Vanguard launched and although I was working 16 hour days for 15 months and rarely had a decent internet connection, it was Vanguard I chose to play when I had the time. I probably could have gained more levels or experienced more content in a casual friendly game, but those casual friendly games just dont have the gameplay I enjoy.
I'll have to disagree with the age theory, at least in my case. I played my first MMORPG when I was 44 years old and I never had enough time to camp a mob spawn for 12 hours (did it one time, sucked), but I don't begrudge the fact that the game offered such for players who did.
But I did have time to run open world dragon raids, which I did in both DAOC and WOW when it first launched. I even enjoyed it more on a PVP server when the raid could be disrupted by another group, (or on some occasions it was my group doing the disrupting)
Point is, I'd prefer MMO's offer more fully functional virtual worlds, with all the travel associated with them, and not play like simple in and and out games like so many often do.
If DAOC 2 was offered today, I would play it, even if it contained many of the mechanics of its heyday, including the heavy focus on forced grouping and long downtimes between fights, that hasn't changed because of my age.
Even though I can rarely play more than a couple of hours a night, I'd rather they offer me a full range of game features and let me pick and chose what I enjoy, than to skinny them down into simplified experiences.
Case in point, WOW's 40 man raids. I actually was a 40 man raider for over 6 months, but eventually had to give them up as they were too disruptive on my family life. But Blizzard made a mistake in my opinion in doing away with them, regardless what their reasons were.
Some portion of the player base enjoyed the effort they took to put together and the accomplishment it took to defeat them. (I recall many a 4-6 hour play session, 4-5 nights a week)
While it's true I am no longer able to do such content, they still should have continued to make it for those who did.
Not everything in a MMORPG needs to cater the the majority.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I prefer a good world pvp game with a true community where players actually play in groups, and make alliances to fight over castles-territory control-hunting grounds and open bosses instead of these rush to level cap in 3 days questing and after sit in towns and wait for queues until the next instance, repeat it over and over to get better gear in order to make this same instance easier next time.
There were games like this years ago, the only problem was lack of player interest and support (Shadowbane for instance). Another problem that granddaddy UO learned was too much player freedom lead to player griefing. Remember UO in its first year? People would build barrels in a way to bar movement and corral players into a killing zone. Houses planted next to roads so pk'rs could hide inside come out attack and run back in for safety.
The one thing I have learned from years of sandbox games is that players just find ways to grief other players. Not everyone, but enough to ruin the communities, and make them a chore to play. Actions without consequence leads to mischief in online games. I believe most people want to play a game to relax as well, not as a second job. All the sandbox games I have played require huge time committments to be competitive and survive. We would spend hours farming to improve guild structures, or guarding towns from other guilds, etc... All in good and well when you have nothing to do in the real world.
This is all based on my opinion and experiences over the past 20+ years of online gaming from MUDs and pre-internet bulletin boards, so don't get too butthurt ya'll.
Cheers!
MMO Vet since AOL Neverwinter Nights circa 1992. My MMO beat up your MMO. =S
Case in point, WOW's 40 man raids. I actually was a 40 man raider for over 6 months, but eventually had to give them up as they were too disruptive on my family life. But Blizzard made a mistake in my opinion in doing away with them, regardless what their reasons were.
Some portion of the player base enjoyed the effort they took to put together and the accomplishment it took to defeat them. (I recall many a 4-6 hour play session, 4-5 nights a week)
While it's true I am no longer able to do such content, they still should have continued to make it for those who did.
Not everything in a MMORPG needs to cater the the majority.
4-6 hour play session, 4-5 nights a week
Did that with 40s, 25s and 10s, too. Changing the size of the player-mob really had only a very minor effect, mostly a stylistic preference. The biggest change was removal of classic entry barriers.
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.
Originally posted by Magnetia Minecraft? Archage? There's gotta be some merit there.
I have found a lot to like in Minecraft, both in private servers playing with friends and on servers playing with a couple hundred people. It can have a lot of the sandbox features like a player made economy, ffa pvp, faction (guild) land ownership, and the ability to build towns from the ground up. You could even have world bosses (giants). What Minecraft doesn't do is make you wait for something. No twelve hour spawn camping or waiting through mini-games for crafting. While you're in the game, you're playing. The other thing Minecraft does is allow players to create truly safe areas. It may require a good bit of work depending on the server and the mods being run, but a player can create a truly safe place. These two things, no waiting and truly safe spaces are what Minecraft could contribute to the idea of sandbox mmorpg.
Not sure about ArcheAge. I'm not sure what it adds that's actually new besides graphics. Someone else would have to answer that. :-)
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Originally posted by Magnetia Minecraft? Archage? There's gotta be some merit there.
I have found a lot to like in Minecraft, both in private servers playing with friends and on servers playing with a couple hundred people. It can have a lot of the sandbox features like a player made economy, ffa pvp, faction (guild) land ownership, and the ability to build towns from the ground up. You could even have world bosses (giants). What Minecraft doesn't do is make you wait for something. No twelve hour spawn camping or waiting through mini-games for crafting. While you're in the game, you're playing. The other thing Minecraft does is allow players to create truly safe areas. It may require a good bit of work depending on the server and the mods being run, but a player can create a truly safe place. These two things, no waiting and truly safe spaces are what Minecraft could contribute to the idea of sandbox mmorpg.
Not sure about ArcheAge. I'm not sure what it adds that's actually new besides graphics. Someone else would have to answer that. :-)
I think that the genre is going to move back toward open world non linear sandbox type games. The reason is that those are the type of games that have endless possibilitys to really evolve the genre. Look at games like Warhammer, Age Of Conan, Star Wars and Aion. There is nonthing else that can be done with themepark mmos. Yea, Guild Wars 2 added dynamic event quest but is that really something special?
I hope that 'The Repopulation' is a go, it looks like everything I want in a MMORPG.
Give me some player content and themepark attractions and the game will keep me busy for months on out.
Pretty much guarantee their will be very little theme park as the devs have stated that the beginning tutorial area will be the only area where so called theme park mechanics are employed,but if u want open ended player content look no further as Repop pretty much throws everything including the kitchen sink into the mix.
I hope that 'The Repopulation' is a go, it looks like everything I want in a MMORPG.
Give me some player content and themepark attractions and the game will keep me busy for months on out.
Pretty much guarantee their will be very little theme park as the devs have stated that the beginning tutorial area will be the only area where so called theme park mechanics are employed,but if u want open ended player content look no further as Repop pretty much throws everything including the kitchen sink into the mix.
They listed so many features on their page, and i kind of doubt if they can actually implement all the features well. I highly doubt they can do every feature justice even if they have Blizz like budget, which they do not.
I believed I was; until I found DayZ. It's not an MMO; but it's what I wanted. A game where role-playing doesn't really matter, but outside communites can form. The reddit rescue squad and everything are perfect examples. This is why I love EvE so much.
I guess when I was playing SWG, maybe I felt the same way.
Sandbox players want a game that has never existed while claiming they used to exist. The sandbox games they remember actually consisted of killing the same monster until they skilled up so they could kill the next monster. Strategic PvP consisted of them and 20 of their friends strategicly waiting on a road until somebody walked by so they could strategicly kill them before that player's dial-up modem could show anybody. No fun, no nothing; just watching your skill number slowly go up as you played so you could pretend anybody gave a damn about it.
A good sandbox game would provide direction in the world through the use of internal game mechanics and not idiots trolling message boards about which player was able to keep their bot going the longest before their parents picked up the phone and knocked out the connection.
Sandbox players want a game that has never existed while claiming they used to exist. The sandbox games they remember actually consisted of killing the same monster until they skilled up so they could kill the next monster. Strategic PvP consisted of them and 20 of their friends strategicly waiting on a road until somebody walked by so they could strategicly kill them before that player's dial-up modem could show anybody. No fun, no nothing; just watching your skill number slowly go up as you played so you could pretend anybody gave a damn about it.
A good sandbox game would provide direction in the world through the use of internal game mechanics and not idiots trolling message boards about which player hit grand master first. Imagine if, as a guild, you had to take land from an enemy faction. Not just you and 50 people hammering away at NPCs until the enemy faction bar empties out, but an actuall war. You need to gain allies, attack supply lines, seige a keep. You have to bring in resources to build the engines of war. Even in Eve Online wars are just wars of attrition; either of in-game resources or boredom.
I didn't read the entire thread and I will do shortly, but I am gonna go ahead and tell you what I think about this particular topic.
Like the OP I loved the old sandbox feeling that was in games like UO, the whole community run everything, laws, land, you name it, people would do almost everything without the game telling them they should do it, or that they should go to X Y or Z dungeon.
But the more I think about it the more I realize that the sandbox systems that we had in the past, cannot be trusted in the hands of the new MMORPG generation, thinking about many people's concerns over open world PVP ( which I do love ), freeform construction ( which I also love ) and I can see the reasoning why they dont want it in their games, partially because it has never really been properly done apart from in very limited settings with very limited rules ( talking traditional MMORPG I know that Second Life does it, but its a different topic ), and most people because they haven't really experienced cannot understand that it will work.
The other reason is, the community has become much more "reckless" ( not sure if this is the right word tbh ), but MMORPGs since EQ have bred a community that really doesnt care about others, and in their defence they have no reason to, the game always told them it was about their experience and that their experience should be unique and special, and without a back to basics evolutionary ladder in MMORPGs all the way to full fledged sandbox features I think just making another UO will fail because people will completely misuse the system. For me this would be the equivalent of giving cavemen IPads and expect them to build a society with it, chances are they are just gonna wack eachother in the head with it.
Mind you, that I also dont believe that the evolutionary ladder is to simply work towards copying UO, I believe sandbox features ( whatever they mean, which they will mean different things for everyone ) are absolutely going to be based off old MMORPGS and MUDs that provided much more freedom and hell even the real world which they were originally based off, but it doesnt necessarily mean that everything will be strictly sandbox and that you can't just hop on do a quest and log off or whatever, these are pretty core features in any MMORPG and I doubt they will do away because sometimes you just want to login have someone tell you what to do and then logoff.
to me the games of the past are still light years ahead of the games we have now. the genre is going backwards. we are just now starting to see some hints of features that we had 10 years ago and companies act like its somthing new.
take Tera for example, they act like dodgeing skills and makeing combat skill based is somthing new. not even close, Asherons Call did it back in 1999 and did it far better than Tera could even dream of doing it in 2012.
thats just one small example of many hundreds that i can come up with. games from the past such as UO/AC were made by gamers for gamers to have fun in a WORLD not some instanced lobby with a dungeon finder because people are to lazy.
the closest experience i have gotten to those days is in DayZ. you start off the game dropped into the world with a flash light and some bandages and are expected to figure the rest out on your own. and when you die you start all over.
its a little more hardcore than any MMO i have played, but at least it doesnt hold your hand and walk you threw panzy land makeing sure you get everything you want spoon fed to you along the way. ( looking at you wow and all your clones )
^This....exactly. I could not hqve said it better. The genre IS going backwards. TSW is a step in the proper direction, but even in that game there is quuite a bit if hand holding going on.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
to me the games of the past are still light years ahead of the games we have now. the genre is going backwards. we are just now starting to see some hints of features that we had 10 years ago and companies act like its somthing new.
take Tera for example, they act like dodgeing skills and makeing combat skill based is somthing new. not even close, Asherons Call did it back in 1999 and did it far better than Tera could even dream of doing it in 2012.
thats just one small example of many hundreds that i can come up with. games from the past such as UO/AC were made by gamers for gamers to have fun in a WORLD not some instanced lobby with a dungeon finder because people are to lazy.
the closest experience i have gotten to those days is in DayZ. you start off the game dropped into the world with a flash light and some bandages and are expected to figure the rest out on your own. and when you die you start all over.
its a little more hardcore than any MMO i have played, but at least it doesnt hold your hand and walk you threw panzy land makeing sure you get everything you want spoon fed to you along the way. ( looking at you wow and all your clones )
^This....exactly. I could not hqve said it better. The genre IS going backwards. TSW is a step in the proper direction, but even in that game there is quuite a bit if hand holding going on.
Have to agree. For myself, I'm not "living in the past", I'm drawing from it.
Even so, if we never had that past, these are still the things I'd be looking for. When UO came out it was exactly the first effort for an MMORPG that I expected and wanted. A world. It made as much sense as a world that I expected for the first truly large scale offering.
I expected that MMORPGs would advance their worlds into greater things. Alas.....
I think with the BOOM of F2P here that companies are going to have to make engaging games so you stick around and buy stuff. This means they should concentrate on sandbox - esque games to keep you around for years, not months. Hopefully the days of the $60 cash grab is gone. It all depends on the cash shop set up though when it comes to these games.
People associate open - world PvP gankfests with sandbox games. I see no reason why you can't enforce Guild vs Guild full looting and when not warred with X or Y guild (or anyone for that matter if you enjoy PvE) then there is no chance to be looted. This could cut down on griefing a lot I think.
Only thing I'm slightly interested in MMO wise is The Repop and ArcheAge.
Case in point, WOW's 40 man raids. I actually was a 40 man raider for over 6 months, but eventually had to give them up as they were too disruptive on my family life. But Blizzard made a mistake in my opinion in doing away with them, regardless what their reasons were.
Some portion of the player base enjoyed the effort they took to put together and the accomplishment it took to defeat them. (I recall many a 4-6 hour play session, 4-5 nights a week)
While it's true I am no longer able to do such content, they still should have continued to make it for those who did.
Not everything in a MMORPG needs to cater the the majority.
4-6 hour play session, 4-5 nights a week
Did that with 40s, 25s and 10s, too. Changing the size of the player-mob really had only a very minor effect, mostly a stylistic preference. The biggest change was removal of classic entry barriers.
Actually, the greatest effect it had was in shredding my raiding guild, which was organized and staffed around the 40 man model.
With BC we had to split into smaller raid groups and since there really was only one solid raid leader only one small group of players progressed routinely. This lead to hard feelings and eventual disolution of the guild
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Even though I prefer sandbox mechanics over the shallow themepark format, at this point I'd just be happy with a seamless open world...but MMO devs can't even deliver that it seems.
Case in point, WOW's 40 man raids. I actually was a 40 man raider for over 6 months, but eventually had to give them up as they were too disruptive on my family life. But Blizzard made a mistake in my opinion in doing away with them, regardless what their reasons were.
Some portion of the player base enjoyed the effort they took to put together and the accomplishment it took to defeat them. (I recall many a 4-6 hour play session, 4-5 nights a week)
While it's true I am no longer able to do such content, they still should have continued to make it for those who did.
Not everything in a MMORPG needs to cater the the majority.
4-6 hour play session, 4-5 nights a week
Did that with 40s, 25s and 10s, too. Changing the size of the player-mob really had only a very minor effect, mostly a stylistic preference. The biggest change was removal of classic entry barriers.
Actually, the greatest effect it had was in shredding my raiding guild, which was organized and staffed around the 40 man model.
With BC we had to split into smaller raid groups and since there really was only one solid raid leader only one small group of players progressed routinely. This lead to hard feelings and eventual disolution of the guild
Yep. The A-Team vs B-team drama was not fun.
I will say that BC raiding was a lot of fun, but it did have a bumpy start for a lot of guilds.
Okay let me start this off by saying that I AM a sandbox fan, but what I have noticed is that most sandbox fans, myself included, typically clamor for just a few features that have been around since the nineties. For example, we all want player housing, many of us want open-world PvP, we want crafting to be a dominant force, we want a very large amount of "gatherable" resources, we want to be able to own vehicles, etc. etc.
In fact, it seems like many developers are "living in the past" as well. Just about every fantasy sandbox game I have played seems like it's living in UO's shadow. Darkfall and MO are prime examples here. They really don't try to accomplish anything that UO already didn't do...and they sadly fall short in that department.
My point in all this is that I feel like the free-form ideals of sandbox games are really the ultimate future of MMORPGs, but we're never going to get there if we keep living in the past. Many ideas of the past are great and are still applicable, but devs and players alike have to start looking forward to new sandbox ideas, instead of just trying to replicate the deified games of the past. We can't have housing, crafting, and FFA-PvP be the end all be all of sandbox gaming if we ever want it to succeed.
Thoughts?
Not all developments are better, just because they are "modern". Almost all those streamlined reduced themeparks have been short lived. So is it not sometimes true, that some things WERE better in the past?
I wonder why we must discuss this every week. Reality is, that there are hardly any Sandbox purists, but people who would like to see sandbox elements ADDED to the themepark games, simply because no story can be so good to keep people playing for more than a few months. That is why pure Themeparks are a reduced and simplistic sort of MMO, which just can't work in the long run.
So it has nothing to do if someone "lives in the past", it has to do with the question: what works and what doesn't. And pure Themeparks just simply do not work, not in the sense to keep people playing in the long run. I don't understand why this always boils down to an ideological question, as if a game could ONLY be themepark or ONLY be sandbox. That distinction is just bollocks. We are artificially limiting ourselves to ideologies of how a MMO is supposed to be, either sandbox or themepark, and sorry thats absurd rigid thinking. As long as developers think, confined inside these boxes, nothing will change.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Not everything in a MMORPG needs to cater the the majority.
...
Actually, the greatest effect it had was in shredding my raiding guild, which was organized and staffed around the 40 man model...
Yep. The A-Team vs B-team drama was not fun.
I will say that BC raiding was a lot of fun, but it did have a bumpy start for a lot of guilds.
Sure enough. But as they say, this too shall pass.
:shrug: Common reactionary theory here is that we shouldn't ever have to adapt to change; but not many folks would still be playing a game that hadn't changed at all in its (X>5) years of history, either.
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.
Originally posted by Creslin321 For example, we all want player housing, many of us want open-world PvP, we want crafting to be a dominant force, we want a very large amount of "gatherable" resources, we want to be able to own vehicles, etc. etc.In fact, it seems like many developers are "living in the past" as well.
umm.. yea but.. these things are basic features, it's not something that's "living in the past". Man, that's like saying "you want to live in a house in real life? how quaint! here's a fema trailer for you!"
Darkfall accomplished something which UO never managed and that is epic fights with dozens, if not hundreds of participants. The game might not have had as deep game systems as UO, but it exceeded UO in many ways. Aimed attacks, spells, blocking dodging jumping all made the combat much more meaningful and vastly superior to UO. City developement, and territory control... heck even more pve content than UO ever had. UO gets its kudos more from rose-tinted nostalgia than from actually being a superior experience.
AV upset many many people with their limited launch and teething problems, but it was hackers and exploiters which killed the game experience for those of us who were playing for any significant amount time. The reputation of the game has never recovered and it still receives a great deal of undeserved bashing as a result.
Not everything in a MMORPG needs to cater the the majority.
...
Actually, the greatest effect it had was in shredding my raiding guild, which was organized and staffed around the 40 man model...
Yep. The A-Team vs B-team drama was not fun.
I will say that BC raiding was a lot of fun, but it did have a bumpy start for a lot of guilds.
Sure enough. But as they say, this too shall pass.
:shrug: Common reactionary theory here is that we shouldn't ever have to adapt to change; but not many folks would still be playing a game that hadn't changed at all in its (X>5) years of history, either.
I don't think reducing the raid size was a bad thing. It made organizing them easier, but it also made raids harder for a lot of people. Not as many people could be "carried" because less people means each person is more responsible for doing their part. That too isn't necessarily a bad thing, but a lot of people were probably surprised to find out that THEY were the ones being carried...
Comments
I'll have to disagree with the age theory, at least in my case. I played my first MMORPG when I was 44 years old and I never had enough time to camp a mob spawn for 12 hours (did it one time, sucked), but I don't begrudge the fact that the game offered such for players who did.
But I did have time to run open world dragon raids, which I did in both DAOC and WOW when it first launched. I even enjoyed it more on a PVP server when the raid could be disrupted by another group, (or on some occasions it was my group doing the disrupting)
Point is, I'd prefer MMO's offer more fully functional virtual worlds, with all the travel associated with them, and not play like simple in and and out games like so many often do.
If DAOC 2 was offered today, I would play it, even if it contained many of the mechanics of its heyday, including the heavy focus on forced grouping and long downtimes between fights, that hasn't changed because of my age.
Even though I can rarely play more than a couple of hours a night, I'd rather they offer me a full range of game features and let me pick and chose what I enjoy, than to skinny them down into simplified experiences.
Case in point, WOW's 40 man raids. I actually was a 40 man raider for over 6 months, but eventually had to give them up as they were too disruptive on my family life. But Blizzard made a mistake in my opinion in doing away with them, regardless what their reasons were.
Some portion of the player base enjoyed the effort they took to put together and the accomplishment it took to defeat them. (I recall many a 4-6 hour play session, 4-5 nights a week)
While it's true I am no longer able to do such content, they still should have continued to make it for those who did.
Not everything in a MMORPG needs to cater the the majority.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
There were games like this years ago, the only problem was lack of player interest and support (Shadowbane for instance). Another problem that granddaddy UO learned was too much player freedom lead to player griefing. Remember UO in its first year? People would build barrels in a way to bar movement and corral players into a killing zone. Houses planted next to roads so pk'rs could hide inside come out attack and run back in for safety.
The one thing I have learned from years of sandbox games is that players just find ways to grief other players. Not everyone, but enough to ruin the communities, and make them a chore to play. Actions without consequence leads to mischief in online games. I believe most people want to play a game to relax as well, not as a second job. All the sandbox games I have played require huge time committments to be competitive and survive. We would spend hours farming to improve guild structures, or guarding towns from other guilds, etc... All in good and well when you have nothing to do in the real world.
This is all based on my opinion and experiences over the past 20+ years of online gaming from MUDs and pre-internet bulletin boards, so don't get too butthurt ya'll.
Cheers!
MMO Vet since AOL Neverwinter Nights circa 1992. My MMO beat up your MMO. =S
4-6 hour play session, 4-5 nights a week
Did that with 40s, 25s and 10s, too. Changing the size of the player-mob really had only a very minor effect, mostly a stylistic preference. The biggest change was removal of classic entry barriers.
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.
I hope that 'The Repopulation' is a go, it looks like everything I want in a MMORPG.
Give me some player content and themepark attractions and the game will keep me busy for months on out.
I have found a lot to like in Minecraft, both in private servers playing with friends and on servers playing with a couple hundred people. It can have a lot of the sandbox features like a player made economy, ffa pvp, faction (guild) land ownership, and the ability to build towns from the ground up. You could even have world bosses (giants). What Minecraft doesn't do is make you wait for something. No twelve hour spawn camping or waiting through mini-games for crafting. While you're in the game, you're playing. The other thing Minecraft does is allow players to create truly safe areas. It may require a good bit of work depending on the server and the mods being run, but a player can create a truly safe place. These two things, no waiting and truly safe spaces are what Minecraft could contribute to the idea of sandbox mmorpg.
Not sure about ArcheAge. I'm not sure what it adds that's actually new besides graphics. Someone else would have to answer that. :-)
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I have found a lot to like in Minecraft, both in private servers playing with friends and on servers playing with a couple hundred people. It can have a lot of the sandbox features like a player made economy, ffa pvp, faction (guild) land ownership, and the ability to build towns from the ground up. You could even have world bosses (giants). What Minecraft doesn't do is make you wait for something. No twelve hour spawn camping or waiting through mini-games for crafting. While you're in the game, you're playing. The other thing Minecraft does is allow players to create truly safe areas. It may require a good bit of work depending on the server and the mods being run, but a player can create a truly safe place. These two things, no waiting and truly safe spaces are what Minecraft could contribute to the idea of sandbox mmorpg.
Not sure about ArcheAge. I'm not sure what it adds that's actually new besides graphics. Someone else would have to answer that. :-)
what about hnh and Salem? Dayz mod?Games:
Currently playing:Nothing
Will play: Darkfall: Unholy Wars
Past games:
Guild Wars 2 - Xpiher Duminous
Xpiher's GW2
GW 1 - Xpiher Duminous
Darkfall - Xpiher Duminous (NA) retired
AoC - Xpiher (Tyranny) retired
Warhammer - Xpiher
Pretty much guarantee their will be very little theme park as the devs have stated that the beginning tutorial area will be the only area where so called theme park mechanics are employed,but if u want open ended player content look no further as Repop pretty much throws everything including the kitchen sink into the mix.
They listed so many features on their page, and i kind of doubt if they can actually implement all the features well. I highly doubt they can do every feature justice even if they have Blizz like budget, which they do not.
However, if they can do it, more power to them.
I believed I was; until I found DayZ. It's not an MMO; but it's what I wanted. A game where role-playing doesn't really matter, but outside communites can form. The reddit rescue squad and everything are perfect examples. This is why I love EvE so much.
I guess when I was playing SWG, maybe I felt the same way.
Played - M59, EQOA, EQ, EQ2, PS, SWG[Favorite], DAoC, UO, RS, MXO, CoH/CoV, TR, FFXI, FoM, WoW, Eve, Rift, SWTOR, TSW.
Playing - PS2, AoW, GW2
Sandbox players want a game that has never existed while claiming they used to exist. The sandbox games they remember actually consisted of killing the same monster until they skilled up so they could kill the next monster. Strategic PvP consisted of them and 20 of their friends strategicly waiting on a road until somebody walked by so they could strategicly kill them before that player's dial-up modem could show anybody. No fun, no nothing; just watching your skill number slowly go up as you played so you could pretend anybody gave a damn about it.
A good sandbox game would provide direction in the world through the use of internal game mechanics and not idiots trolling message boards about which player was able to keep their bot going the longest before their parents picked up the phone and knocked out the connection.
Trolololol
I didn't read the entire thread and I will do shortly, but I am gonna go ahead and tell you what I think about this particular topic.
Like the OP I loved the old sandbox feeling that was in games like UO, the whole community run everything, laws, land, you name it, people would do almost everything without the game telling them they should do it, or that they should go to X Y or Z dungeon.
But the more I think about it the more I realize that the sandbox systems that we had in the past, cannot be trusted in the hands of the new MMORPG generation, thinking about many people's concerns over open world PVP ( which I do love ), freeform construction ( which I also love ) and I can see the reasoning why they dont want it in their games, partially because it has never really been properly done apart from in very limited settings with very limited rules ( talking traditional MMORPG I know that Second Life does it, but its a different topic ), and most people because they haven't really experienced cannot understand that it will work.
The other reason is, the community has become much more "reckless" ( not sure if this is the right word tbh ), but MMORPGs since EQ have bred a community that really doesnt care about others, and in their defence they have no reason to, the game always told them it was about their experience and that their experience should be unique and special, and without a back to basics evolutionary ladder in MMORPGs all the way to full fledged sandbox features I think just making another UO will fail because people will completely misuse the system. For me this would be the equivalent of giving cavemen IPads and expect them to build a society with it, chances are they are just gonna wack eachother in the head with it.
Mind you, that I also dont believe that the evolutionary ladder is to simply work towards copying UO, I believe sandbox features ( whatever they mean, which they will mean different things for everyone ) are absolutely going to be based off old MMORPGS and MUDs that provided much more freedom and hell even the real world which they were originally based off, but it doesnt necessarily mean that everything will be strictly sandbox and that you can't just hop on do a quest and log off or whatever, these are pretty core features in any MMORPG and I doubt they will do away because sometimes you just want to login have someone tell you what to do and then logoff.
^This....exactly. I could not hqve said it better. The genre IS going backwards. TSW is a step in the proper direction, but even in that game there is quuite a bit if hand holding going on.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
Have to agree. For myself, I'm not "living in the past", I'm drawing from it.
Even so, if we never had that past, these are still the things I'd be looking for. When UO came out it was exactly the first effort for an MMORPG that I expected and wanted. A world. It made as much sense as a world that I expected for the first truly large scale offering.
I expected that MMORPGs would advance their worlds into greater things. Alas.....
Once upon a time....
I think with the BOOM of F2P here that companies are going to have to make engaging games so you stick around and buy stuff. This means they should concentrate on sandbox - esque games to keep you around for years, not months. Hopefully the days of the $60 cash grab is gone. It all depends on the cash shop set up though when it comes to these games.
People associate open - world PvP gankfests with sandbox games. I see no reason why you can't enforce Guild vs Guild full looting and when not warred with X or Y guild (or anyone for that matter if you enjoy PvE) then there is no chance to be looted. This could cut down on griefing a lot I think.
Only thing I'm slightly interested in MMO wise is The Repop and ArcheAge.
Actually, the greatest effect it had was in shredding my raiding guild, which was organized and staffed around the 40 man model.
With BC we had to split into smaller raid groups and since there really was only one solid raid leader only one small group of players progressed routinely. This lead to hard feelings and eventual disolution of the guild
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Living in the past?
rather i'd say we're living in the future, its just the present has yet to catch up
Yep. The A-Team vs B-team drama was not fun.
I will say that BC raiding was a lot of fun, but it did have a bumpy start for a lot of guilds.
Not all developments are better, just because they are "modern". Almost all those streamlined reduced themeparks have been short lived. So is it not sometimes true, that some things WERE better in the past?
I wonder why we must discuss this every week. Reality is, that there are hardly any Sandbox purists, but people who would like to see sandbox elements ADDED to the themepark games, simply because no story can be so good to keep people playing for more than a few months. That is why pure Themeparks are a reduced and simplistic sort of MMO, which just can't work in the long run.
So it has nothing to do if someone "lives in the past", it has to do with the question: what works and what doesn't. And pure Themeparks just simply do not work, not in the sense to keep people playing in the long run. I don't understand why this always boils down to an ideological question, as if a game could ONLY be themepark or ONLY be sandbox. That distinction is just bollocks. We are artificially limiting ourselves to ideologies of how a MMO is supposed to be, either sandbox or themepark, and sorry thats absurd rigid thinking. As long as developers think, confined inside these boxes, nothing will change.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Sure enough. But as they say, this too shall pass.
:shrug: Common reactionary theory here is that we shouldn't ever have to adapt to change; but not many folks would still be playing a game that hadn't changed at all in its (X>5) years of history, either.
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.
umm.. yea but.. these things are basic features, it's not something that's "living in the past". Man, that's like saying "you want to live in a house in real life? how quaint! here's a fema trailer for you!"
Darkfall accomplished something which UO never managed and that is epic fights with dozens, if not hundreds of participants. The game might not have had as deep game systems as UO, but it exceeded UO in many ways. Aimed attacks, spells, blocking dodging jumping all made the combat much more meaningful and vastly superior to UO. City developement, and territory control... heck even more pve content than UO ever had. UO gets its kudos more from rose-tinted nostalgia than from actually being a superior experience.
AV upset many many people with their limited launch and teething problems, but it was hackers and exploiters which killed the game experience for those of us who were playing for any significant amount time. The reputation of the game has never recovered and it still receives a great deal of undeserved bashing as a result.
I don't think reducing the raid size was a bad thing. It made organizing them easier, but it also made raids harder for a lot of people. Not as many people could be "carried" because less people means each person is more responsible for doing their part. That too isn't necessarily a bad thing, but a lot of people were probably surprised to find out that THEY were the ones being carried...