Originally posted by fantasyfreak112 There are many. They're just all made by terrible/has-been developers that don't play test their own games and think a return ping of 500ms is the status quo.
Mortal Online and Dark Fall doesn't count. We all know those are stupid. Who the fuck wants to run around in a fantasy MMORPG in first person mode? wth?
Darkfall can be completely played in third person. Even archery and magic. the game has other flaws of course.
I can see why some games feel the need to make end gear easy to get , I for one like that idea, because raiding bores the crap out of me and really don't have the time for it anymore.
I don't like instanced PvP , my favourite game ever Daoc is what I am after in a game in most respects.
The gear grind is a load of crap in most games , just give us a game where crafting is like Daoc was the first few years before Dragon gear, where you can actually make your own end game gear.
Come to think of it why the hell have stats on gear ? Heavy armour = more armour rating and less agility , light armour more agility , less armour rating . Big bloody sword = more damage but less speed , two daggers more attacks but smaller damage. Why has everything gotto have stats in it ??
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Blizzard market studies probably showed the money they earn(ed) with the model they have is sufficient.
+ players want effort-->reward there, world pvp does not have a meaning or reward, everything respawns in a few minutes. There is no gain, and with open world battlegrounds -or no battlegrounds for that matter- everything's unbalanced as f*ck, ppl get blobbed, start complaining about being ganked and blammo, one sub less because the player is emoquitting.
Most WOW players can not deal with open world pvp. It's mostly carebears and IF they pvp, it's when they choose to.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
We should start to see more SWG-like games. It's taken almost 10 years for developers to realize that the pure Theme Park model is a recipe for disaster.
Entropian Universe (10 years old now) And Afterworld (Beta) are true sandbox. Yes there subscription system (especially EU) are disliked by many but hey they are there.
We should start to see more SWG-like games. It's taken almost 10 years for developers to realize that the pure Theme Park model is a recipe for disaster.
We need the best of both worlds...
AND STOP HOLDING MY HAND
SWG (Pre-cu) nailed it imo. They had theme parks within the sand box. But they weren't required in order to enjoy the game. No levels, etc... I am preaching to the choir here I get it.
At any rate, the future is starting to look a bit better. Of course, only time will tell but at least there are a couple titles out there worth waiting for.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
Minecraft is the MMO that is most like a sandbox and it's hugely popular. Just do a youtube search for the name. It only allows 20 players last time I checked and that's below massively multiplayer But you can build your own things just like with actual sand in a sandbox.
Second Life allows you to upload your very own 3D models and textures. It's a true MMO with over 500K players.
There are still hundreds if not thousands of DIKU MUDs out there. You know how people say "WoW clone"? what they should say is DIKU clone cause DIKU did it first. I think the largest MUD only has 300 players. The difference is DIKU allows certain players to construct content.
The new MMO Neverwinter allows players to construct content. That's not as sandboxy as Minecraft but it's a start.
OmaliMMO Business CorrespondentMemberUncommonPosts: 1,177
"MMO's today are nothing like they were 10-15 years ago when they were being released. People then had huge worlds you can run from one end of the world to the other with no load screens and a million different ways to get there."
Where is this mythical army of MMOs from 10-15 years ago with no loading zones and seamless worlds?
It's a virtual guarantee that once the new wave of sandboxes hit, we'll hear the same outcry as we have now. How the new generation of sandboxes aren't hardcore enough, how there isn't enough player co-dependency and forced grouping, how the carebears and casuals have dumbed down the genre beyond repair, how the skill system isn't as open or interesting as it should be, etc. It's a virtual guarantee. What this thread points out most to me is how much variation exists within what people consider sandbox gaming and how, even with at least a handful of credible sandbox options on the market, many people who hunger for sandboxes refuse to play them.
To answer the OP's titular question: there are no seamless sandbox-ish MMORPGs anymore because they have tended not to fare as well in the market as themeparks. There are lots of reasons for this: bad development leading to unpolished games, an emphasis on FFA PvP that drives away potential customers, a general playerbase who seems to prefer being the hero of their own story rather than an extra in a world's story, a slooow and often aimless start that leaves new players shrugging and moving onto something else, sheer familiarity of the themepark systems and gameplay which sandboxes have tended to lack.
For me, sandbox play offers a player the most opportunity for long-term (months and years of) engagement but it's not just a matter of ticking off a bunch of feature boxes to make it work. To have success of the EvE kind, a game needs to do things differently and have an even better implementation. The worst thing a dev could do is try to recapture the mythical sandbox past, considering there is only 1 game of its type that has managed to earn and keep AAA status and popularity among a throng of successful themeparks of the same generation.
* The success of existing sandboxes is relative. SWG never reached even half the level that SOE expected of the game. Eve took a good twelve years to become the game it is today. From the perspective of a developer, who needs to convince investors that they know what they are doing, neither of these is a success case.
* The games that a developer wants to write may or may not need to be a sandbox. I can't be sure about this, but I suspect that the people who design and develop games do not start with the idea of building a sandbox or a theme park. Not on a regular basis anyway. They want to write a Wild West Thriller, or a Zombie Survival game, and from that point the theme park elements or sandbox elements will dominate.
* Developers may start with the idea of a sandbox or virtual world, but realize there are issues that are not easily resolvable without a constant human presence. In a theme park you'll have players breaking the rules, but they generally do this by exploiting a flaw in the game. With a sandbox game, players do not have to exploit flaws in the game to break the rules and it requires a human to step in a fix things. This is in addition to the usual exploits that theme parks have.
That's really all I can think of. I think it mostly comes down to the games that developers want to write just don't need to be sandboxes. Whatever the idea they have isn't a sandbox idea from the start, so it's not a sandbox game when it finishes. I think investors are going to have an impact, but investors invest in developers, not games. If a developer can show they are a good developer, then there's no reason an investor wouldn't invest in a developer working on a sandbox game. I think the least likely scenario is a developer thinking about doing a sandbox and then deciding it's not worth it.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
how did wow do it? By doing what it did. So if you want the investors to cough up cash, you kind of have to stick to the same style with your own twist. Not to mention players want things handed to them, they don't want to grind for it, or spend hours camping it anymore.
...
This is exactly the way of thinking that drove so many games since wow right into the wall (or the star destroyer right into the death star).
In other genres this is the way to go. If you’re doing the next shooter or action adventure game make it the same as the last one and just ad a new ip and one or two new features.
But developing a mmo is differed the game will only succeed if you look at every single feature and try to improve it.
The good news is that developers start to learn this. They learn slowly and under greater expense but finally they seem to give up the idea to produce a WoW-clone “with their own twist”.
I think we are seeing a clear trend that more and more developers that try to break the mould of wow. I think Guild Wars 2 is a good example, the may not have achieved all what they went for in their “manifesto-video” but the industry clearly on the way.
So even if Everquest Next turns out not to be the sandbox we where looking for and not all of the new projects in development succeed, we will clearly see more games having more sandboxy features in the future.
The sandbox will maybe return as some sort of sandbox 2.0, like vanilla wow was a themepark 2.0 compared to Everquest, or as what Eve already is compared to UO, but I’m sure an AAA fantasy sandbox will come across in the next 1-3 years, it’s only a matter of time.
Originally posted by fantasyfreak112 There are many. They're just all made by terrible/has-been developers that don't play test their own games and think a return ping of 500ms is the status quo.
Mortal Online and Dark Fall doesn't count. We all know those are stupid. Who the fuck wants to run around in a fantasy MMORPG in first person mode? wth?
Originally posted by fantasyfreak112 There are many. They're just all made by terrible/has-been developers that don't play test their own games and think a return ping of 500ms is the status quo.
Mortal Online and Dark Fall doesn't count. We all know those are stupid. Who the fuck wants to run around in a fantasy MMORPG in first person mode? wth?
And that right there is the answer to the question.
There are dozens of sandbox games out there. Most with open world design
There are also more being developed for release soon. However only the ones that he likes count.
Want to know why they aren't making games such as you stated? Because you restricted the definition so much that a developer would have to be crazy to make a game that catered to only your definition.
Darkall is an open world game sandbox game, but it doesn't count as an open world sandbox game. Gotcha.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
The development cycle is starting to come back to more sandbox features. The cycle is slow, and had to go through 6-8 years of, "I wanna be the next WoW". Which in turn kicked off a f2p craze, as these mmos weren't that great and people wouldn't pay to play them. This also gave the illusion that f2p mmos are generally good, as most the ones worth playing for free were failed p2p mmos, and budgeted accordingly. Take away the designed to be p2p ones, and you aren't left with much, so we will see how that all shakes up in the end.
Their is a huge list of sandbox and hybrid style games coming out, mmos just take time to make. Hopefully we can get further away from the lobby/co-op/super railed/shallow system mmos that have become the normal, in this failed development cycle. MMOs are not supposed to be console games to be played for 2-4 weeks and dumped, enjoying them as such, just displays how much of a failure they are.
Originally posted by Livnthedream Originally posted by lizardbonesUO is the reason there are no seamless sandbox-ish MMORPGs anymore?
While I would not go that far there is merit in the argument that UO proved why many of those features should not be passed on.
I could see that. I didn't understand the original statement though. They just said, "Ultima Online", dropped their mic and left the stage. It was too esoteric and I wasn't sure if it answered the OP or the other half of the thread dedicated to explaining why sandboxes will return.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Originally posted by lizardbonesUO is the reason there are no seamless sandbox-ish MMORPGs anymore?
While I would not go that far there is merit in the argument that UO proved why many of those features should not be passed on.
I could see that. I didn't understand the original statement though. They just said, "Ultima Online", dropped their mic and left the stage. It was too esoteric and I wasn't sure if it answered the OP or the other half of the thread dedicated to explaining why sandboxes will return.
I take it as someone mad at open world pvp and sandbox often being linked, even though you don't need both to be a sandbox type game.
Originally posted by lizardbones I could see that. I didn't understand the original statement though. They just said, "Ultima Online", dropped their mic and left the stage. It was too esoteric and I wasn't sure if it answered the OP or the other half of the thread dedicated to explaining why sandboxes will return.
I figured he was just making the point that they are not "gone".
As for the sandbox return, it will be short lived. Small playerbases can keep a game "alive" but it cannot make it thrive. Even Eve is only at the level it is today because of its skill system, not because its sandbox.
Mortal Online and Dark Fall doesn't count. We all know those are stupid. Who the fuck wants to run around in a fantasy MMORPG in first person mode? wth?
And that right there is the answer to the question.
There are dozens of sandbox games out there. Most with open world design
There are also more being developed for release soon. However only the ones that he likes count.
Want to know why they aren't making games such as you stated? Because you restricted the definition so much that a developer would have to be crazy to make a game that catered to only your definition.
Darkall is an open world game sandbox game, but it doesn't count as an open world sandbox game. Gotcha.
No Darkfall and Mortal Online do not count because they have full loot ffa and that makes them a whole differed cup of tea. Sandboxes are about building stuff but these games are only about destruction. (And Mortal online is so bugged is close to unplayable.)
I’m not sure if there is a themepark that has full loot world pvp, but just imagine what wow was like if a random guy could just take all your raiding gear from you just like that.
The games that count are: Eve obviously, xsyon, wurm online, rysom and uo. Xsyon has its flaws but it is ok for a small budget indi game.
But I don’t want a small indi game or one that is 20 years old. I want a big AAA Sandbox that is not about starships!
Comments
Darkfall can be completely played in third person. Even archery and magic. the game has other flaws of course.
I can see why some games feel the need to make end gear easy to get , I for one like that idea, because raiding bores the crap out of me and really don't have the time for it anymore.
I don't like instanced PvP , my favourite game ever Daoc is what I am after in a game in most respects.
The gear grind is a load of crap in most games , just give us a game where crafting is like Daoc was the first few years before Dragon gear, where you can actually make your own end game gear.
Come to think of it why the hell have stats on gear ? Heavy armour = more armour rating and less agility , light armour more agility , less armour rating . Big bloody sword = more damage but less speed , two daggers more attacks but smaller damage. Why has everything gotto have stats in it ??
NVM
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Blizzard market studies probably showed the money they earn(ed) with the model they have is sufficient.
+ players want effort-->reward there, world pvp does not have a meaning or reward, everything respawns in a few minutes. There is no gain, and with open world battlegrounds -or no battlegrounds for that matter- everything's unbalanced as f*ck, ppl get blobbed, start complaining about being ganked and blammo, one sub less because the player is emoquitting.
Most WOW players can not deal with open world pvp. It's mostly carebears and IF they pvp, it's when they choose to.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
1 wow and EQ are in no way sandbox AT ALL
2 coh is older than wow, wow borrowed a lot of ideas from coh.
We should start to see more SWG-like games. It's taken almost 10 years for developers to realize that the pure Theme Park model is a recipe for disaster.
We need the best of both worlds...
AND STOP HOLDING MY HAND
HomePage/Gaming Blog - http://dalewj.com . MMORPGer - Current game: http://AfterWorld.ru .
Author of Diaries of Afterworld- http://www.jconsult.com/afterworld and the Outside Sci-Fi series- http://www.jconsult.com/outside
SWG (Pre-cu) nailed it imo. They had theme parks within the sand box. But they weren't required in order to enjoy the game. No levels, etc... I am preaching to the choir here I get it.
At any rate, the future is starting to look a bit better. Of course, only time will tell but at least there are a couple titles out there worth waiting for.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
Minecraft is the MMO that is most like a sandbox and it's hugely popular. Just do a youtube search for the name. It only allows 20 players last time I checked and that's below massively multiplayer But you can build your own things just like with actual sand in a sandbox.
Second Life allows you to upload your very own 3D models and textures. It's a true MMO with over 500K players.
There are still hundreds if not thousands of DIKU MUDs out there. You know how people say "WoW clone"? what they should say is DIKU clone cause DIKU did it first. I think the largest MUD only has 300 players. The difference is DIKU allows certain players to construct content.
The new MMO Neverwinter allows players to construct content. That's not as sandboxy as Minecraft but it's a start.
I was wrong, there are Mincraft servers with over 100 players so Minecraft is massively multiplayer online or MMO.
"MMO's today are nothing like they were 10-15 years ago when they were being released. People then had huge worlds you can run from one end of the world to the other with no load screens and a million different ways to get there."
Where is this mythical army of MMOs from 10-15 years ago with no loading zones and seamless worlds?
It's a virtual guarantee that once the new wave of sandboxes hit, we'll hear the same outcry as we have now. How the new generation of sandboxes aren't hardcore enough, how there isn't enough player co-dependency and forced grouping, how the carebears and casuals have dumbed down the genre beyond repair, how the skill system isn't as open or interesting as it should be, etc. It's a virtual guarantee. What this thread points out most to me is how much variation exists within what people consider sandbox gaming and how, even with at least a handful of credible sandbox options on the market, many people who hunger for sandboxes refuse to play them.
To answer the OP's titular question: there are no seamless sandbox-ish MMORPGs anymore because they have tended not to fare as well in the market as themeparks. There are lots of reasons for this: bad development leading to unpolished games, an emphasis on FFA PvP that drives away potential customers, a general playerbase who seems to prefer being the hero of their own story rather than an extra in a world's story, a slooow and often aimless start that leaves new players shrugging and moving onto something else, sheer familiarity of the themepark systems and gameplay which sandboxes have tended to lack.
For me, sandbox play offers a player the most opportunity for long-term (months and years of) engagement but it's not just a matter of ticking off a bunch of feature boxes to make it work. To have success of the EvE kind, a game needs to do things differently and have an even better implementation. The worst thing a dev could do is try to recapture the mythical sandbox past, considering there is only 1 game of its type that has managed to earn and keep AAA status and popularity among a throng of successful themeparks of the same generation.
* The success of existing sandboxes is relative. SWG never reached even half the level that SOE expected of the game. Eve took a good twelve years to become the game it is today. From the perspective of a developer, who needs to convince investors that they know what they are doing, neither of these is a success case.
* The games that a developer wants to write may or may not need to be a sandbox. I can't be sure about this, but I suspect that the people who design and develop games do not start with the idea of building a sandbox or a theme park. Not on a regular basis anyway. They want to write a Wild West Thriller, or a Zombie Survival game, and from that point the theme park elements or sandbox elements will dominate.
* Developers may start with the idea of a sandbox or virtual world, but realize there are issues that are not easily resolvable without a constant human presence. In a theme park you'll have players breaking the rules, but they generally do this by exploiting a flaw in the game. With a sandbox game, players do not have to exploit flaws in the game to break the rules and it requires a human to step in a fix things. This is in addition to the usual exploits that theme parks have.
That's really all I can think of. I think it mostly comes down to the games that developers want to write just don't need to be sandboxes. Whatever the idea they have isn't a sandbox idea from the start, so it's not a sandbox game when it finishes. I think investors are going to have an impact, but investors invest in developers, not games. If a developer can show they are a good developer, then there's no reason an investor wouldn't invest in a developer working on a sandbox game. I think the least likely scenario is a developer thinking about doing a sandbox and then deciding it's not worth it.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
UO is the reason there are no seamless sandbox-ish MMORPGs anymore?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Because no one owes you a game you like?
May be you should read up on econ 101 and figure out how market works.
This is exactly the way of thinking that drove so many games since wow right into the wall (or the star destroyer right into the death star).
In other genres this is the way to go. If you’re doing the next shooter or action adventure game make it the same as the last one and just ad a new ip and one or two new features.
But developing a mmo is differed the game will only succeed if you look at every single feature and try to improve it.
The good news is that developers start to learn this. They learn slowly and under greater expense but finally they seem to give up the idea to produce a WoW-clone “with their own twist”.
I think we are seeing a clear trend that more and more developers that try to break the mould of wow. I think Guild Wars 2 is a good example, the may not have achieved all what they went for in their “manifesto-video” but the industry clearly on the way.
So even if Everquest Next turns out not to be the sandbox we where looking for and not all of the new projects in development succeed, we will clearly see more games having more sandboxy features in the future.
The sandbox will maybe return as some sort of sandbox 2.0, like vanilla wow was a themepark 2.0 compared to Everquest, or as what Eve already is compared to UO, but I’m sure an AAA fantasy sandbox will come across in the next 1-3 years, it’s only a matter of time.
I am enjoying it.
And that right there is the answer to the question.
There are dozens of sandbox games out there. Most with open world design
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/349518
There are also more being developed for release soon. However only the ones that he likes count.
Want to know why they aren't making games such as you stated? Because you restricted the definition so much that a developer would have to be crazy to make a game that catered to only your definition.
Darkall is an open world game sandbox game, but it doesn't count as an open world sandbox game. Gotcha.
While I would not go that far there is merit in the argument that UO proved why many of those features should not be passed on.
http://chroniclesofthenerds.com/nerdfight/
Y U NO FLIP TABLE?!?!?!
The development cycle is starting to come back to more sandbox features. The cycle is slow, and had to go through 6-8 years of, "I wanna be the next WoW". Which in turn kicked off a f2p craze, as these mmos weren't that great and people wouldn't pay to play them. This also gave the illusion that f2p mmos are generally good, as most the ones worth playing for free were failed p2p mmos, and budgeted accordingly. Take away the designed to be p2p ones, and you aren't left with much, so we will see how that all shakes up in the end.
Their is a huge list of sandbox and hybrid style games coming out, mmos just take time to make. Hopefully we can get further away from the lobby/co-op/super railed/shallow system mmos that have become the normal, in this failed development cycle. MMOs are not supposed to be console games to be played for 2-4 weeks and dumped, enjoying them as such, just displays how much of a failure they are.
I could see that. I didn't understand the original statement though. They just said, "Ultima Online", dropped their mic and left the stage. It was too esoteric and I wasn't sure if it answered the OP or the other half of the thread dedicated to explaining why sandboxes will return.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I take it as someone mad at open world pvp and sandbox often being linked, even though you don't need both to be a sandbox type game.
I figured he was just making the point that they are not "gone".
As for the sandbox return, it will be short lived. Small playerbases can keep a game "alive" but it cannot make it thrive. Even Eve is only at the level it is today because of its skill system, not because its sandbox.
http://chroniclesofthenerds.com/nerdfight/
Y U NO FLIP TABLE?!?!?!
No Darkfall and Mortal Online do not count because they have full loot ffa and that makes them a whole differed cup of tea. Sandboxes are about building stuff but these games are only about destruction. (And Mortal online is so bugged is close to unplayable.)
I’m not sure if there is a themepark that has full loot world pvp, but just imagine what wow was like if a random guy could just take all your raiding gear from you just like that.
The games that count are: Eve obviously, xsyon, wurm online, rysom and uo. Xsyon has its flaws but it is ok for a small budget indi game.
But I don’t want a small indi game or one that is 20 years old. I want a big AAA Sandbox that is not about starships!