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I've been reading in an attempt to understand the differences, pros and cons of theme park and sand box mmos.
My question is: Are they mutually exclusive?
Is it not possible to have a theme park mmo with such extensive resource/environment manipulation mechanics that it could function as a sandbox? Likewise, couldn't a sandbox have optional yet engaging quests to follow if you'd like some direction and story to your exploration?
Or is there something I'm missing/oversimplifying about the two that prevents them from being combined into a hybrid? Personally, I think combining the two is a key to solving some of the cons that inhabit them seperately. It's a daunting task though.
Mend and Defend
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They're not mutally exclusive... see ArcheAge for proof of concept.
They are two of several components that make up almost all MMOs. Most MMOs focus on one aspect of design more than the others. Some examples:
WOW - heavily themepark content
Second Life - heavily sandbox content
Red Light Center - heavily social content
Each one of those is comprised of all three components but places more emphasis on one than the others.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I agree with this. I also don't see a game exclusively as themepark or sandbox. I think it can be combined.
You could create a mod in Minecraft that adds lineair themeparky quests. This doesn't stop you from blowing up the quest npc though or dig a hole beneath him, fill it with lava and use a piston to push him in it. Or multiple times if the modcreator made sure it respawns as countermeasure
I just realised that Minecraft is the perfect game to take your revenge on some annoying questnpc.
This is not thought well. You limit choices with out reeson.
EvE gets away with it pretty nicely. And have been working on PvE content.
I mean I'm pretty sure far to many people over there don't see that the entire design for the game was based on the market over everything else. Even the fact that it's a sandbox.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
The tough part is that no one (and I mean no one) is on the same page as far as definitions of themepark and sandbox. You mentioned environment manipulation mechanics as though that makes a game sandboxy. To me, that's got nothing to do with sandboxes. A game's a themepark if it is designed around a particular way to play, and it's a sandbox if content is not explicitly put into the game but emerges naturally from its mechanics.
So even if you put a lot of engaging quests into a sandbox, that doesn't make it any more like a themepark if you feel like you can ignore them. It's not the quests that make a game a themepark, it's the fact that the whole game is based around the assumption that you are going to do the quests. It's the whole point of the game, so to speak. In reality, there aren't very many mandatory quests in themeparks, are there? You do them because the game intends for you to do them, not because it forces you to.
And now toss my post in the garbage because it really only applies to my definitions of the terms, which aren't the same as everyone else's. Such is life.
A real sandbox game will offer you everything that a themepark game offers.
No, they aren't mutually exclusive. One is just about giving you the freedom to exist in a virtual world, the other is about moving through the virtual world on your way to "endgame".
No they are not.
BUT
Such hybrid would be well hybrid and it would be designed diffrently and could lack few elements of "hardcore" sandbox or themepark.
Still it is very much possible to make a game with sandbox and themepark elements.
As a gamer, Sandbox & Themepark features should not be exclusive to each other. But with what MMORPG developers have been doing in practice, it is. It's been going that way for alot of years now with no signs of letting up.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
SWG had both but that game was ahead of its time or from the future because I haven't seen anything release with as much mechanics since...
Depend how you define them, i think those words kind of lost their original meaning over time. But sandbox refer to sandbox type of developing software method, and if you keep that in mind, then yes they are kind of exclusive.
But if you think about sandbox as the list of "sandbox" features, then you can probably mix them. But you know there is a difference between a sandbox game that is coded like a sandbox software, and a game with sandbox features. For me they are only very few real sandbox mmo, but a bunch of pretenders that only use some features but in fact they are nothing like sandbox.
Absolutely not, but it is the sandbox crowds attitude towards any kind of structured fun that keeps a decent sandbox from being made. Never met a more closed minded community (in gaming anyway) than the sandbox one.
This Thread: MMORPGs in diagrams
EvE: Exemplar Sandbox: Super Set
WoW: Exemplar Themepark: Exclusive Sets
Reference: User: Rokoto
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
I love how the bottom image makes the acronym for "Open World Interaction" look like "Ow!" That's the kick in the nuts this genre has suffered going almost 8 years now.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
That's a crazy weird way to look at things. For one, what does he mean by open World Interaction? Two, since this is social spheres, is he saying that the auction house crowd is a different social sphere from the PvE crowd? Three, if it's the social spheres, where do roleplaying, politics and metagaming fall into that?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Owi!!!! LOL!!!!
That's funny. It's true though the "open world" means very little once leveling is done.
Besides doing dailies and gathering materials which are solo activities people most play lobby games in WoW.
Nothing wrong with that imo, its just kind of odd that the traditional, classic mmo formula evolved into that.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
Depends who you ask; same answer as most questions involving those terms.
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.
Mutually exclusive? I would say yes, but that doesn't mean that themeparks can't have some sandboxy features. Look at LotRO or Vanguard for example: both are themeparks but have some sandboxy features, like fishing and music in LotRO or diplomacy and in-depth crafting like in Vanguard or housing in both.
Does that make these games a sandbox? No. Does it make those games more "sandboxy" than most themeparks? Yes. Nothing wrong with hybrids.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
No.
Most MMOs are actually a hybrid, though the weighting of each varies.
Pure sandboxes and pure themparks are extremely rare.
It's part of why I don't get why most here think in absolute terms about it all.
Ahhh, have to drag my brain back to when last considering this. Off top of my head, I think it's mostly illustrative/top-level: Proportions, relationships between spheres of activity/interaction that are self-contained game systems but which also link to others (if sandbox). OWI, would be events or combinations of events from other spheres interacting with their sub-sets. Politics would be like this
eg Dungeons around the map and who owns this territory so who has access: Affects PvE, Crafters after rare materials and RP'ers adventuring?
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Interesting approach. Thanks for the info, Mumbo
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
TSW blurs the lines with sandbox crafting, leveless progression, and a classless system. You can't alter the game world, but they went a long way towards the middle ground. Further than what's been done before.
Yes, they are.
That's not true a sandbox is supposed to create the background so the players could create content that are not coded by the original developers, which is the difference with usual mmo where everything a player/user can do must be coded to begin with. This is how work the concept of sandbox in software development, you have a core any one can use or extend and change freely depending on his needs. Thus the name "sand box", the core is a box full of sand where the kids can do their own stuff.
In Uo to give a specific example they were a lot of class that were never coded by the developers like treasure hunters, there is no way that you would find "player made" class in a themepark is it, they have to be coded by the developers? There is a treasure hunter class class in lineage 2too that is a themepark game, but the class is hard coded by the developers. In Uo players mixed the skills they could use and create a treasure hunter class because it was meant to hunt treasures. In L2 treasure hunter was not meant to hunt treasures at all, it was just the name given to a rogue kind of class.
This page is not very informative and probably a bit hard to understand but it still give you hint on what is a sandbox from a developer point of view rather than aplayer point of view that don't know much about those things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox_%28software_development%29
As you see in this article they use Wikipedia as an example of sandbox because the users can make or change the articles themselves, a non sandbox online encyclopedia forbid that. So there is no chance a non sandbox game offer the same things a normal game do, even if both are games, or both are encyclopedia. It is a question of concept behind the software, do you allow your players to change your game or not, so it is an on off switch from that point of view, and that is why they are considered as exclusive.
That is 100% false.
A game can have a storyline you must follow while in an open world with plenty of tools for players to create their own content. That storyline CAN be done in a way without levels or even without streamlining the world to FIT only that story. A game having a...phase or instanced raid/dungeon...does not mean the game cannot also have sandbox open features.
City of Heroes could very well be called sandbox because you are free to level as you please as well as use their tools to create your own quests and even a character or guild driven storylines that anyone can play.
By your definition, SWG did not actually become a sandbox until they added the guild tools to create content....because afterall you did say "a sandbox is supposed to create the background so the players could CREATE content that are NOT CODED BY THE DEVELOPERS".
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