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Challenge: How hard would it be to turn any modern day AAA themepark MMO into a Sandpark MMO?
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,387
Challenge for the community's imagination:
What minimum steps would you take to convert any modern day AAA themepark MMO into a Sandpark MMO?
For list of some AAA themepark MMO consider the following:
WoW
Rift
War
AoC
GW2
TSW
EQ2
Aion
SWTOR
Tera
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Comments
Sandbox games have open worlds, themepark usually have zones.. but you get the idea.
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Philosophy of MMO Game Design
honestly it is really easy to get a hybrid sort of thing going.
1. instead of armor, weapon etc drops, mats are dropped to create items
2. add item decay for armor, weapons etc
3. move raid bosses/mobs into open world.
4. ????????????????
5. proft
you always say that about everything.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Very hard.
The amount of tweaking across all levels will be huge along with majority of the content. If its just a sandpark area expansion thoguh then...itll probably be 2 expansions worth of work.
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Impossible. Sandbox is a superset of ThemePark. Meaning you can have a ThemePark in a sandbox by just adding level bracketed zones, quest hubs and single player story lines.
However to turn a ThemePark into a sandbox you would have to redesign the game completely. ThemePark MMOs are designed in a very ordered fashion so you would have to break up that order and redesign the world. Just not feasible.
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Eve has zones and is a sandbox
EQ is an open world and is a themepark
Wow has mostly open world and is a themepark.
Anyway depends on the game how easy to change to "sandpark"
An example would be the proposed 4th continent (by Sony) for ps2. Which they talked about player outfits building their own bases by gathering resources, I think that would move ps2 into being a sandpark.
Something user themeparky like swtor though, I guess it would be impossible.
Since the OP specified sandpark not sandbox...
Nerf boss drop gear.
Eliminate quest reward gear.
Buff crafted gear.
Add item decay.
Nerf level based stat progression.
Buff skill progression.
Nerf fast travel.
Nerf automatic grouping tools.
Buff guild system.
Nerf auction house so it will not sell items over "common" quality and AH fees are very expensive.
Add a marketplace location to the world.
Add player run shops / stands
I think that would get you close enough that the themeparkers would start complaining.
Or at least add bosses to open world. The more freedom of choice the better.
I believe it would actually be possible to transform those themeparks into hybrids - it wouldn't even be too costly cause you can keep a lot of stuff: world, characters, animations, graphics, art, etc. can all stay as they are.
The question, however, is why a studio/publisher would want to do that. They risk losing their existing players that prefer themeparks (arguably a large majority) and also risk that the sandbox crowd won't come cause for them there's not enough sandbox in this hybrid approach.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
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