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WildStar: Sandboxes & Theme Parks - Further Analysis
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The WildStar team has posted a provocative new article on the official site that discusses the ongoing 'battle' between MMOs as theme park or as sandbox environments. The article starts right off the contention that the WildStar team is attempting to make the game a true hybrid of the two.
We try to have both ways - I like examples, because they are clear. In most zones, there is an overall 'theme park' overlay - a main quest line that brings you through the zone, has some clear story to it, and is strongly directed. So you always have a guidepost for where you "need" to go (you can skip it, but most people do it). But in the same area, you can find random quests that are either dynamic (through discoveries, for instance), or some zones have elements like poachers who might get bored, build camps, and then there is a prisoner in the camp with a quest for you.
Read more on the WildStar site.
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Comments
I have a feeling that the devs have no idea what a sandbox is...
Ah yes. Because when themeparks fail, all of a sudden, companies start saying "Sanfbox is the future!". Even though players have been asking for sanbox for years, and giving quite detailed examples.
I don't like the combat in Wildstar. It's quite frankly dumb and insulting. Red circles or cones around every attack you might possibly face. It's so mind numbling .. why can't players discover stuff for themselves any more?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
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... I was really looking forward to Wildstar, this article was a huge turn off. Seems like they missed the point of a sandbox entirely. I think where it started going wrong was were they suggested that "those of us who prefer to explore for ourselves" was some kind of crucial trait for people playing in a sandbox. Oh dear. Now I will probably be called a CCP fan boi for posting this but...
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/179176/CCP_Onlines_three_design_pillars_for_sandbox_MMOs.php#.UIvknm_MiMA
Thats someone who knows what a bloody sandbox is supposed to be, freeform progression as they suggest at Wildtstar is just scratching the iceberg and if you try to impliment with no other reasoning than that it needs to be freeform, because freeform is a good sandbox trait, then you are doing it wrong.
I was keeping an eye on this one too but seems from article they have no clue what a sandbox is. Ah well another themepark. Like we don't have enough mediocre ones already.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
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To say you don't have a point would be wrong, but I think you missed mine by quite a bit. Yes skill progression is infact progression. However, in UO for example I can equip any weapon I want without restriction and use it. In theory it would be possible to kill the same monster with 20/100 skill and 100/100 skill. Yet, the best part about a game like UO is that combat wasn't even a requirement to enjoying the game. I could go and be a blacksmith, fisherman, or cartogropher and never have to fight anything. In a levels based game it is more or less a requirement. GW2 has come close to being the exception. It is possible to craft to max level. Although it would be extremely difficult without being fueled by resources from either your guild, or by spending real money. I think what this all boils down to is choice. I'm talkin about REAL choice. A themepark will give you a choice of rides. They will be slightly different, but they are still rides for you to ride on and enjoy. In a sandbox the players create the rides. I personally like both. I enjoyed wow for years, as well as UO for years. I am not here to say one is better than the other. But I will always choose the game with the most freedoms. Limitations on ways to progress were the exact opposite way this genre started out.
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Just like every other game, since the opening of this site.
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.
Can't be a sandbox when you have classes. Just does not fit the mold, sorry.
Oh and what a silly argument about levels. You can have levels in a sandbox, AC1 had levels, which were in part meaningless except it just indicated you had more skill points to spend. AC1 was a hybrid sandbox, Wildstart is not even close.
Seems like everyone is running around with their own personal set of rules about what is or isn't a sandbox. And that's fine, but being a sandbox is more of meeting at least a few criteria out of a wide array rather than meeting every single one.
Those criteria are:
1. large open areas that require real exploration to discover significant amounts of content.
2. can terraform or customize geography in some way, housing, player cities, guild forts.
3. crafting is as efficacious as combat
4. quests don't tell you where to go (I don't really count this one but I throw it in because some do)
5. player is not guided towards questgivers and content aka the escalator
6. players must rely on other players at some level
7. limited ability to grief other players in some way, through property destruction, disruption of content, or non-consentual pvp
8. no classes or levels, maybe even no xp. skills are emphasized.
9. highly involved character creation and customization
10. Graphics that attempt to be less stylized, more realistic for the immersion factor.
11. Some sort of frontiers or world pvp that involves capturable terrain or structures for profit.
12. Large powerful enemies roam open world where any number of players can raid.
13. Open world dungeons, factional/group pvp dungeons (once again, a bit iffy but mmos have become so instanced and dynamic that this is considered sandboxy by comparison).
That's 13. I'm sure I'm missing some, but someone should compile a list, clean it up, and just repaste every time a topic comes up, and in my opinion, if you have 5 of these, you are on the cusp of being a sandbox at the least, maybe could be considered a hybrid if you can come up with even 3. Even then, I'm skeptical Wildstar could without stretching the truth a bit.
You'll note dynamic events is NOT on the list lol.
The UO I remember had "level" restrictions on weapons and armor.. Strength level that is. If you didn't have the necessary number of points in STR you wouldn't wear or wield certain items, that IS a restriction.
What about the Uncanny Valley? The immersion can be broken if something realistic does something unrealistic, like clipping through a wall or something along that line. I'd argue that immersion can occur with something stylized if the world does a good enough job of getting you interested in the world in the first place?
The thing that is worrisome to me about that article, is that what makes a game a sand box just isn't about linear vs non-linear content, or quests vs open exploration. You can have both of these in both types of game, and not substantially change one of them into a "hybrid".
What makes a game a sandbox game is much more involved. It's a change from developer-only created content, to giving the players more power to create their own content though all kinds of different means, including combat and non-combat gameplay classes or professions, and maybe even requring a skill-based system so people can dabble and mix-match skills to build unique characters.
It's also about a player-driven economy where crafting and resources are not only more fun to play, but also mean something in the game world. There needs to be mechanics such as item decay, and drops need to be limited more to resources and some loot items that are not quite as powerful as crafted items in *most* cases, not all.
It's about creating a large virtual world where players can make a real impact on how your particular server evolves through things like player housing, bases, player cities, etc.
i'm just scratching the surface here, but all I really wanted to say is that whether or not you have quest based or free-roaming exploration really isn't the main issues in making these games more fun and have more longevity. Returning power back to the players to put in a large part of the content by giving them the tools to do so, is.
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.
yeah, they think sandbox means "random shit happening" or something.
theres not 1 sandbox feature in that entire atricle. Been able to progress through events or not doing quests isnt sandbox.
Theres lots of themeparks that arent quest heavy - e.g. GW2, daoc, everquest
1 NO ENDGAME
2 player driven content
3 fully persistent world no instanced dungeons, no minigame pvp, multi copies of world zones etc..
4 player actions alter the world, permenantly
Yep. They seem to think that if they add some random quests around on the map then that is sandbox elements. Pfft, go back to your ThemePark building guys, you have no idea how to design a sandbox game. Hint would be: player made content and not dev. made content.
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Sandbox has always been centered on PLAYER DRIVEN CONTENT, everything else is just gravy and optional and some have even nothing to do with sandbox.
Ofcourse you can have end game in a sandbox, if that is what the players decided to "create".
Crafting is not integral to sandbox, players can create content which has nothing to do with crafting.
PvP minigames can be part of a sandbox game, again if players decide to create PvP minigames then that is exactly what sandbox is about. In Eve you have lots of player driven PvP mini-games and even dev. initiated one's. What is important is who drives the content.
Graphical immersion has nothing to do with sandbox. That is like saying UO was not sandbox because it had shitty 2.5D non realistic gfx.
So again, what defines a sandbox is player driven content and nothing else.
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Exactly this, this is sandbox. Create a virtual and give players the tool to drive the content forward rather than developer creating the content and let players consuming it. That is the core of sandbox games.
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I dont know why people think quests = automatic themepark.
Every Sandbox should have quests, Eve has them, AC had them. What differs is you arent forced to do them at a specific time as the only way to level. You can go anywhere you want and do any quest you want at any "level" or not at all and have alternative ways to level
It sounds like thats what they are trying to do
With them shutting down City of Heroes the way they did, I am not touching this with a barge pole
Even if that was not the case the screenshot in the OP does not make it look attractive, it looks like a cheap F2P game
The way they describe it being a thempark/sandbox hybrid sounds the same as SWTOR in finding its extra side quests. So does not make it sound too interesting.
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This thread should be locked and posters pointed to
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/317478/Sandbox-vs-Themepark-Discussion-Thread.html
Guild wars 2 is a game based entirely on questing, just because the "dynamic events" arent called quests doesnt mean they dont follow the same format as quests