EQ Never

Tauntworth_sl said:

Also gotta look at when your definition of 'Sandbox' was created. Casting your now evolved definition of 'Sandbox' on a game that came out in '99 may not be fair. Looking at EQ now, you can easily say 'this is not Sandbox'. But 14 years ago, I think a lot of people felt EQ was sandbox as fuck. Definitely not as user defined as a MUD around the same time, maybe, but with the given technology you may argue it either way.

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It wasn't a sandbox. UO was the quintessential sandbox, and EQ and UO, while both were fantastic games, had so little in common that it's almost surreal this discussion keeps popping up. EQ was unique in that you could have your in-game character do whatever the hell you wanted him to do, be friends with whatever group of people (NPCs or other players) you wanted him to be friends with - but it wasn't a sandbox. I don't even know how that's arguable.

At most, EQ was a character-driven, freely-explorable playground.

Deisun_sl said:

How was EQ not sandbox? You basically spawned and went wherever the hell you wanted to go with zero regard for quest "hubs" and "quest flow" progression. Maybe I'm not understanding the "Sandbox" term but I never felt like I was on Rails in Everquest. I basically went wherever and did whatever I wanted to do. I also experienced no such thing as "quest hubs", never was led to a leveling area by a quest, and never felt like I had to be in a specific zone at any level. One of the cool things I liked about Everquest was that there were a lot of zones with mixed elements of danger and places where people of all levels could do something. Take for instance, the Oasis...when you were level 10ish it had its great leveling spots but it also had things like Sand Giants and Spectres that would attract higher level players to the area too and added an element of danger to the lower levels to watch for. I miss that in MMO's these days. They're too cut and dry these days with little to no variation.

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I'm still trying to catch up with the end of the thread, so this is from a few pages back. I completely agree that WAS and still is one of the best things about EQ. Elements of danger were always present, no matter what level you were and what zone you were adventuring it. I remember Sgt. Slate running through the EC tunnel, slaying all the darkies and trolls and ogres, people yelling NOOOOOO don't run him here!! Spectres to zone!! Lockjaw to zone!! So much death. So much fun.

I loved UO and it was cool, but c'mon, it was one step above Zork. 2D Iso vs 3D full open world is an apples and oranges comparison.

I've only read the gama article, but the goal seems to be keeping players interested with wacky unexpected things. Step one is realizing you can't create quest style content faster than it is consumed. The math of it really hit me when working with the designers on tabula rasa back in 2006. It took two people a month at best to make an experience a player could burn through in thirty minutes.

Think of the amazing stories that come from Dwarf Fortress. Even after you've built your 10th fort, the game continues to surprise you in amazing ways. That seems to be the grail for an mmo. You log in because you don't want to miss something new happening, and if you do miss it, you at least hear about it second hand or watch someone's recording of it at work the next day.

Player building is a difficult problem I've been looking into myself. It is much simpler if you only allow lego style blocks like dwarf fort or minecraft. Raw triangle meshes to me seems impossible (like a max import), but in between you have the semi blocky CSG style convex volume stuff that old games used to build levels. It is much harder to build something that will break the game out of that stuff, but it does require a lot of processing to be useful.

Gecko_sl said:

To me EQ had less freedom in that you did not have the variety of options one has in todays MMOs, including modern Everquest.

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You know how you sound like? Your definition of freedom is like being in prison but having the choice of 31 flavors of ice cream and you look at the window with huge field and you say "One field, less options... less freedom."

That's how your logic work, kind Sir.

Smedley wants to tap into theinsanitythat leads people to create stuff like this:

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/01/30/ga...-in-minecraft/

The hard part is figuring out how to do it in a photo real-style world, without just using blocks or very simple structures that make all player creations look the same.

Laura_sl said:

You know how you sound like? Your definition of freedom is like being in prison but having the choice of 31 flavors of ice cream and you look at the window with huge field and you say "One field, less options... less freedom."

That's how your logic work, kind Sir.

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EQ wasn't a sandbox, and it had less options for players at release-velious than it has today. That's not an opinion, it is straight up fact.

Early EQ: All non-pet/druid/wizard classes could not solo effectively past a certain level, and then in most cases could not solo period to endgame. You were confined to Uninstanced content so your options of where and what to do were inversely proportional to the amount of active players during your playtime. Healers were not interchangeable in most cases so it was cleric or bust. CC was not interchangeable so it was enchanter or bust. Tanks were in no way interchangeable during Kunark/Velious for the vast majority of raid bosses.

All that stuff up there? Flip it around and you have the options that exist in today's EQ. You really don't understand the word option, Laura, do you? There is questing to a degree in EQ now... yup! There is also the exact same shitty camp style grinding in EQ. So uh, right there? There are more options for gameplay in EQ now than there was at release. Classes can solo with the aid of mercs far more effectively and in most cases to max level these days when they could not do so in early EQ. Yeah that's freedom and an option there too.

EQ was not a sandbox. The faction system is the closest you could come to being sandboxy unless you add in the Sleeper release. You know, the most often reviled mechanic/event in EQ. Everything you could do in Early EQ you can do in modern EQs... but you generally have more options in modern MMOs. Again, this isn't an opinion, this is fact.

If you define a "sandbox" as the ability for a player to basically do whatever they want to do within the realm of the game, i.e. freedom, then I'd say that EQ is more of a sandbox now than it was at launch. These days, as mentioned so many times already, you have gear that you buy off vendors, you join guilds that have gear stacked up to the ceiling and then have tank/healer mercs that are always on hand. You can two-box a tank and healer merc and run two of whatever the hell else you want and go to town until you hit lvl 80 or 90 or whatever.

So if sandbox = freedom, then my question is, the freedom to do WHAT. I keep on seeing these arguments back and forth about it and I'm just wondering what everyone's vision of ultimate freedom really is. To me, one of the most appealing aspects to EQ was the freedom and ability to develop your character into something that was unique, at least to a point. I remember feeling so badass, running around as maybe one of the 10 Wizards on the server that had their epic weapon. I was unique, and cool and THAT was fun. That's also one of the most unappealing aspects of games like WOW. That's just a fucking treadmill, with you running a marathon whose only destination is to look and be equal to everyone else running that same class. The marathon ends, and you're still right back where you started, just with more retarded looking gear.

Fuck everyone being equal. That's what sandbox means to me.

Cthon_sl said:

If you define a "sandbox" as the ability for a player to basically do whatever they want to do within the realm of the game, i.e. freedom, then I'd say that EQ is more of a sandbox now than it was at launch. These days, as mentioned so many times already, you have gear that you buy off vendors, you join guilds that have gear stacked up to the ceiling and then have tank/healer mercs that are always on hand. You can two-box a tank and healer merc and run two of whatever the hell else you want and go to town until you hit lvl 80 or 90 or whatever.

So if sandbox = freedom, then my question is, the freedom to do WHAT. I keep on seeing these arguments back and forth about it and I'm just wondering what everyone's vision of ultimate freedom really is. To me, one of the most appealing aspects to EQ was the freedom and ability to develop your character into something that was unique, at least to a point. I remember feeling so badass, running around as maybe one of the 10 Wizards on the server that had their epic weapon. I was unique, and cool and THAT was fun. That's also one of the most unappealing aspects of games like WOW. That's just a fucking treadmill, with you running a marathon whose only destination is to look and be equal to everyone else running that same class. The marathon ends, and you're still right back where you started, just with more retarded looking gear.

Fuck everyone being equal. That's what sandbox means to me.

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At least you are honest about Content Denial being what makes a sandbox for you. Some of the other mmo hipsters are in denial about it.

Eq is no more a sandbox than wow meaning neither is a sandbox. Just because you weren't told to xp in a certain spot by a quest doesn't make it freedom.

mkopec_sl said:

EQ might not of been a sandbox game related to, say, a UO. But related to wow and the other mmorpgs since, it was definitely sandy as fuck with tons of emergent game play elements. Also many people which played EQ never touched UO. Like asking a WoW player in 2008 if they even heard of EQ.

The game does not have to be a true sandbox though, just take game play back of the damn rails that it has been stuck on for the past 10 yrs. Lets put it this way, WoW basically taught millions of people what to do on rails. Now we need a game to get off those rails now that people generally know wtf to do inside of a mmorpg.

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Sadly I am not even sure the current dev teams could create something like this. With so much influence from current state, to design/code for a game like this would be very difficult since it is easy to fall into the "the easy path" when things get to crunch time.

Rezz_sl said:

At least you are honest about Content Denial being what makes a sandbox for you. Some of the other mmo hipsters are in denial about it.

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You're adressing the wrong part of his message there. Without going into an argument about content distribution in EQ 10 years ago, what he describes as missing in todays MMO, feeling that your character isnt a copy of almost every other character that picked the same class, is imo one of the things a new game needs to re-capture.

You can easily do that without any content denial if you as the dev team actually *want* players to be able to differentiate their character from others of their class. The last decade of MMO design was pretty moving in the opposite direction. There are so many ways you can allow players to feel just that tiny bit different. Various clickies for convenience (being allowed a million active spells at once made that sorta moot, but I sure loved my epic for the clicky that essentially saved me a spell slot and not for its stats), different ability/spell effects (WoW took a stab at that with a different skin for polymorph around the time I quit but afaik it wasnt really picked up on), factions that matter (the rare iksar in freeport didnt have a meaningful character power advantage but he sure stood out), hard to get illusion items (always rubbed me the wrong way being an enchanter, but people loved those). I'm sure you can think of more. One important aspect is any such "reward" requiring at least some effort, because it feels more worth it to the player then no matter how insignifant it is. Hell I finished that coldain shawl thing at a point where I was wearing better because I wanted to, not because I had to do it to keep up with the joneses.

Edit: GW2 took a right step with skins/cosmetic items being a supposed long-term thing, although that fell flat on its face due to the fact that most of it is an AH grind and not playing specific content or interesting stories, and the treadmill masses demanding +gooder items and apprently getting them.

mkopec_sl said:

EQ might not of been a sandbox game related to, say, a UO. But related to wow and the other mmorpgs since, it was definitely sandy as fuck with tons of emergent game play elements. Also many people which played EQ never touched UO. Like asking a WoW player in 2008 if they even heard of EQ.

The game does not have to be a true sandbox though, just take game play back of the damn rails that it has been stuck on for the past 10 yrs. Lets put it this way, WoW basically taught millions of people what to do on rails. Now we need a game to get off those rails now that people generally know wtf to do inside of a mmorpg.

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Badly-thought-out game design does not a sandbox make. EQ didn't have 'emergent game play elements' (read: exploits and bugs) because of some grand desire to let the players run free and wild, it had them because nobody at Verant had any design plans more complex than "Copy SojournerMUD, put it in our D&D campaign setting, add graphics".

Emergent gameplay doesn't need to be an exploit or bug. Things like breaking a room with multiple spawns, deciding where to set up camp, or when to move to a different part of the zone are gameplay decisions the player has to make, and they have real (and farreaching) impact on the success of the player/group. You can't really design these decisions in to the game, you can only take them out. Stick the player on rails and these types of decisions are taken away from the player.

Now that post was pretentious. Splitting pulls is emergent? Oh man.