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[Interview] Divergence Online: Introducing a 'Hardcore Sandbox MMO'
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Divergence Online bills itself as a hardcore sandbox MMO for many reasons. We managed to catch up with Creator and Project Manager Ethan Casner to talk about those reasons. See why Divergence Online might just be the answer to your prayers. Talk about the interview in the comments.
MMORPG: How far along in the development process is Divergence?
Ethan Casner: A lot of the “heavy lifting” is ready. What this means is that these types of games generally have to spend a year or more creating the infrastructure just to support the features they want, such as database, back end and handling. Although the game has a good ways to go before we'll feel comfortable letting people log in, as you can see in the video, you physically can do those things right now. With the structure nearly complete to support the kind of game we want to make, it's just a matter of plugging in various features like our combat formulae and cleaning up character creation and management.
Read more of Suzie Ford's Divergence Online: Introducing a 'Hardcore Sandbox MMO'.
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Comments
(It sucks you dont wanna see it)
Good ideas, but this game will fail for one reason... there's no safer areas for people to just do some PvE without being forced to constantly watch their backs.
EvE Online has shown, that you need these safer areas to make open world FFA PvP work.
Who ever said there wont be safe areas, or heavily gaurded areas? All he said is there is FFA PvP, didn't say it's impossible to have a safe place, just that you CAN be attacked anywhere. People have to be daring enough to do so, and if you go on the game's forums and read what he has detailed about how factions work you would realize it is extremely risky to attack anyone without consideration and preperation for the consequences.
(It sucks you dont wanna see it)
Edit: The word backers is used a lot.. so I assume it's the same old bollocks that the expert investors want nothing to do with and the mugs will drool over.
For clarification: My issue isn't with this game.. it's with what the gaming industry is turning into.
Wow, all i can say is wow....Please let this game get finished and released, concepts, the world, open world pvp etc...This is my new most anticipated MMO. Going to back it for 50$, really hyped about this game after watching the two videos and reading the info on indiegogo.
HYPED 10.
I agree, some of these games just get spit out to receive backer money, and many never see the light of day. But problem is most of these great game concepts never get funded as bigger game corporations suck up all the money, most of these indie developers are either forced to fold the project (I can name many games that have) or put it on hold. Kickstarter enables them with a chance.
On the other side of the coin, BIG gaming companies do it andimo its more criminal, look at all these eventual F2P games that are asking up too $200 for founders packs etc just to get into beta and play with some extra items. IMO that is 10x worse than backing an indie developer and taking the risk of them not finishing and taking my 20-50$.....
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
I guess I'm just let down by too many FFA PvP MMOs in the past, that simply didn't get this part of the equation right.
Also. You need some amount of easily consumable PvE for the carebears to support a living game-universe, which is shown by EvE Online aswell, where 75% of the players never leave high-sec.
The guy has a great message, ideas and theme. Its a rough market out there though and perhaps he should be invoking the Anarchy-Online/SWG folks to establish a player base.
Personally I would invest/try it if the game had more completed so I could better judge the game and not the man behind it. The guy making this seems earnest, passionate and dead-set on making the game. So no worries there, what concerns me is the time/money and coding to make his concepts a reality and into a game where you would be willing to risk permanent death.
Right off hand Shadowbane comes to mind... Fail for no safe areas? Shadowbane only had TINY cities (like what... 5?) that were safe areas. The rest of the world was free game. Even your Guild hall was! It was an amazing pvp system and still stands in my opinion as one of the best.
Then you have Ultima online... no safe areas? Sure they had guards in town, but you could get away with killing some people there as well. This is another example of one of the best pvp sandbox games out there.
They don't make games like they use to, and I believe it's because of all of the carebear bunch.
Fail because no safe areas... ugh. Makes me want to slap myself in the face until I'm dreaming of true hardcore pvp games again.
Indiegogo site shows 126 backers but over $8,000 raised... hmm
The DO beta web site seems slow, trying to show off too much dynamic HTML??? and a bit cluttered, difficult to navigate. I was set back a little by that even though it says (Beta Website).
I never said "safe", I said "safer". That's a huge difference.
Look at EvE Online. There's no 100% safe areas, yet high sec is safe enough to not constantly having to watch your back and only do some PvE-stuff like farming money in missions, or doing some trading etc.
Look at all the MMOs released during the last five years, where there was FFA PvP... they all failed for the reason of not having safeR areas with some PvE-content for the carebears.
The carebears are the reason why EvE Online works (75% of the players never leave high-sec!), wihtout them the game would be dead.
Like it or not, you need these PvE-players to make for a big enough community, so that the game is financially stable.
I'm a diehard PvP-player myself, but I'm not blind and not foolish enough to forget about the needed PvE-players.
If you want 100% PvP, then go play an online-shooter. There's penty of them.
At least they are only after 15k instead of 1 or 2 million like some crazy and greedy indie devs are after.
Tabletop RPG gaming since Chainmail and D&D was a blue book with some cheap plastic dice and a crayon. MMORPGing since MOOS/MUDS, when forums were just bulletin boards and players actually roleplayed their characters.
Looking at: The Repopulation
Preordering: None
Playing: Random Games
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Currently playing: Black Desert Korea (Waiting for EU)
Always hating on instances in MMOs! Open worlds, open PvP, territory control and housing please. More persistence, more fun.
Agreed, nice to see some sandbox games coming out, but the fact still remains there is a finite number of gamers that will put up with a Full loot PvP game period, but every sandbox dev thinks they need that in their "sandbox" Whats going to happen is simple, all these sandbox full looters are going to come out and the same small number of players are just going to get further spread out. Meaning most will never achive any real success numbers wise, and just limp along like DF and Mortal have.
They will all just canabiize each other. No the rest of the gamers wont come around to Full Loot, its just not going to happen, dream on indies.