LachiusTZ
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What would you consider a sandbox MMO? I dont think any have ever been released. Eve is close? UO / DAoC a little bit?
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tad10
Elisha Dushku
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It was terrible in the newbie zones. Particularly the popular ones like Tanvu. I could deal with it, but a lot of people couldn't and ragequit at like level 4 or level 5.
Grim1
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Many people say that Star Wars Galaxies was a sandbox, I didn't play it enough to judge for myself. EvE is a sandbox mmo in many ways, although it's world building tools are minimal.
It really depends on your definition of "sandbox mmo". World building / altering tools seem to be an important aspect (Minecraft). "Open world" gaming (not a theme park on rails) is what some consider to be a sandbox, even though in it's strictest sense it isn't.
Minecraft. We've all played in a sandbox, four boards and sand, at one time or another so we all know what a sandbox is.
Muligan
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I look at it like this... if everything is static, pre-planned, and linear in terms of progression that going away from the idea of a sandbox. When you can step outside of the norm and take various paths without impacting others who are independently making choices and taking paths of their own, you are going towards a sandbox. To really hit the definition of a sandbox, you have to apply those ideas leading towards a sandbox to the entire world. If you decided to chop down a tree, to begin making a house, in Qeynos Hills, and then actually construct the house without negatively impact the foundational gameplay you have a sandbox game. Essentially everyone is a giant box with provided sand, and they can make what they want. Fortunately there is enough sand and a large enough box for thousands of concurrent users to make similar or even their own unique decisions.
I don't think we've really seen an MMO in a complete sandbox form but I do see how people would consider SWG a sandbox with all the construction and tradeskilling portions of the game.
I don't think we've really seen an MMO in a complete sandbox form but I do see how people would consider SWG a sandbox with all the construction and tradeskilling portions of the game.
tad10
Elisha Dushku
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LachiusTZ
Rogue Deathwalker Box
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Lol, I was asking what would qualify. I did not play SWG because at release I could not be a sith lord and pilot my TIE-D to rape the jedi. You had a chance to have jedi powers or something? And I think space combat was added later? Memory really fuzzy cause of years + didnt play it.
I played DAoC / UO / Eve a bit.
I really dont see EQN as being a true sandbox, but if it is more of one than EQ / UO / SWG / DAoC, with PvP . . . it should be good.
I played DAoC / UO / Eve a bit.
I really dont see EQN as being a true sandbox, but if it is more of one than EQ / UO / SWG / DAoC, with PvP . . . it should be good.
Pretty sure EVE was one of the first MMO's to advertise itself as a 'sandbox' game, their reasoning being that your actions no matter how big or small effect every player in the universe one way or another. Ex; I can say this is definitely true in an ISK sense, spending most of my time in Jita trading my billions of isk and pvping people in the wallet, I'm sure that when I raise or lower prices to force a market or to prepare a buyout of a seller it effects those purchasing or selling and the future of their ISK usage.
If EQN can bring this type of environment to the table we'll have a serious game, especially if there's some sort of player based housing that can be conquered by guilds etc. in order to hold and harvest resources similar to EVE's 0.0's.
Making a true sandbox sounds a bit daunting to me. I would be happy to just have a new MMO that isn't a WoW clone, because everything I've played in the past 12 years was exactly that.
Well it could be tweaked. My zone was good because it moved you on quickly, you started at a little graveyard then went to the dormitory which was a quest hub for about 2 levels, and then you went off around the zone. And it was a big area too.
Yeah it's odd how in 13 years there is no company that's able to truly capture the players the way EQ1 did with a more unique MMO. If they go super-sandbox with EQN it could have some sort of WoW-ish style gameplay included for 'safer' zones while offering more hardcore, corpse run, lose xp gameplay for more difficult zones, giving the player the choice like EVE does to either sit in high sec or enjoy the gains of low sec.
tad10
Elisha Dushku
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Quoted before but might as well quote again since we're 200+ pages in/
I'm pretty sure we get seasons and weather beyond that ... ;-)
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/10...d-soes-future/
Randin
Trakanon Raider
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It is also worth mentioning that when doing interviews where he talked about wanting to do sandboxy games, Smed would talk about how he was playing a lot of EVE.
On the subject of the definitions of sandbox vs themepark, I'd say you could define them adequately with the following simple phrase: themeparks are made to be complete-able; sandboxes aren't. The harder it is to justify claiming that you've 'finished' a game, the more likely it is that you can call it a sandbox.
Dr Neir
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SWG and EVE are closer to sandbox or open concept in my eyes. They offered more freeform style in what you could do. Both offered more to do than just lvling. You could do questing or just sit and chat but still gain some progress with a ton more automation and offline progression. Automation is lacking in many other games. Those that have the open idea to allow hardcore gamers and the odd 1 hour a week or 10min a day player options to have something to do can and will pull in more players. You see that a lot with Eve.
Big thing that SWG suffered was the lack of timely content releases. They were playing the dog catching its tail till it was trashed with NGE.
SWG had non-hardcoded classes, meaning you could grind up a class or multiclass with options on what points to assign to which classes and a point limit to keep players from grinding and keeping all classes maxed. With that you could clear out all points and become a noob, no-class and grind up as something new again.http://www.swgcharacterbuilder.com/swg-cb.php
It had open areas to allow players to drop a house anywhere then later Player Cities and themeparks relating to the movies to get items "Trophies". You couldn't really buy or sell items to NPC vendors. It was a player driven economy. The thing to note, you could only have 1 toon per server per account. If you wanted another toon on the same server you had to have another account.
Later they added in mounts (pets/creatures) then mechanical mounts. I think Towns hit then space and later NGE that really killed the game forcing player to be hardcoded as a class with no option to change.
The best thing from SWG was the crafting and dynamic quality of the mats. When you harvested ore/materials it had quality level. You could scan the area to get the best concentration (Think Eve-PI). Once you sample the spot to see the stats, you would decide if you wanted to continue or move off to another spot in hopes to get better mat quality.
The mats (ore/materials/etc) had stats to it, things made from this stuff helped to change the finished item. So then you have 100 gunsmiths making 100 of the same gun, the mats they used would give that gun different stats. Some would hit like a MAC truck, others had a distance so far you could hit another solar system! Others were a mix of crap that didnt hit from much and was lucky to get the round out of the barrel.
SWG lesson for those that didnt know the game or a kindly refresher for those that did.
Not sure if I would pull in the class point system but the craft would be nice to have in all games! I know both games are Sci-fi but the ideas and gameplay could be applied to any game. Hell, even the new SW game TOR has some good ideas. Companions. This is a great idea but needs to be tweeked better and more dynamic.
I think it would be nice to pickup and trade NPCs you have for your house or the guild hall or the town you are apart by giving giving them orders. Fix the wall, train some soldier, patrol the boarder, craft some armor, dig a mine..etc..etc. But NPC you could find, quest for and trade but also skill up (STO officers) and focus a master skill and then limit the amount of npcs a player can own by faction level, housing size, guild rank and town status.
The biggest thing I thought should be in EQ are more NPCs doing stuff. Not just standing there or moving in a circle but actually doing something. Like you as a player buy all the rubies from X merchant and a banker or the npc's kid, wife or co-worker goes to the bank to get coin and/or hits the jeweler shop to get more rubies and comes back. With that idea a player could if wanted, kill the delivery NPC and get the restock items. Bounty would get placed on the player if caught, posters would start being put up from NPCs and later any NPC within X range from a wanted poster would attack the player and remove X amount worth of coin the bounty was worth. Just an example but doable.
Big thing that SWG suffered was the lack of timely content releases. They were playing the dog catching its tail till it was trashed with NGE.
SWG had non-hardcoded classes, meaning you could grind up a class or multiclass with options on what points to assign to which classes and a point limit to keep players from grinding and keeping all classes maxed. With that you could clear out all points and become a noob, no-class and grind up as something new again.http://www.swgcharacterbuilder.com/swg-cb.php
It had open areas to allow players to drop a house anywhere then later Player Cities and themeparks relating to the movies to get items "Trophies". You couldn't really buy or sell items to NPC vendors. It was a player driven economy. The thing to note, you could only have 1 toon per server per account. If you wanted another toon on the same server you had to have another account.
Later they added in mounts (pets/creatures) then mechanical mounts. I think Towns hit then space and later NGE that really killed the game forcing player to be hardcoded as a class with no option to change.
The best thing from SWG was the crafting and dynamic quality of the mats. When you harvested ore/materials it had quality level. You could scan the area to get the best concentration (Think Eve-PI). Once you sample the spot to see the stats, you would decide if you wanted to continue or move off to another spot in hopes to get better mat quality.
The mats (ore/materials/etc) had stats to it, things made from this stuff helped to change the finished item. So then you have 100 gunsmiths making 100 of the same gun, the mats they used would give that gun different stats. Some would hit like a MAC truck, others had a distance so far you could hit another solar system! Others were a mix of crap that didnt hit from much and was lucky to get the round out of the barrel.
SWG lesson for those that didnt know the game or a kindly refresher for those that did.
Not sure if I would pull in the class point system but the craft would be nice to have in all games! I know both games are Sci-fi but the ideas and gameplay could be applied to any game. Hell, even the new SW game TOR has some good ideas. Companions. This is a great idea but needs to be tweeked better and more dynamic.
I think it would be nice to pickup and trade NPCs you have for your house or the guild hall or the town you are apart by giving giving them orders. Fix the wall, train some soldier, patrol the boarder, craft some armor, dig a mine..etc..etc. But NPC you could find, quest for and trade but also skill up (STO officers) and focus a master skill and then limit the amount of npcs a player can own by faction level, housing size, guild rank and town status.
The biggest thing I thought should be in EQ are more NPCs doing stuff. Not just standing there or moving in a circle but actually doing something. Like you as a player buy all the rubies from X merchant and a banker or the npc's kid, wife or co-worker goes to the bank to get coin and/or hits the jeweler shop to get more rubies and comes back. With that idea a player could if wanted, kill the delivery NPC and get the restock items. Bounty would get placed on the player if caught, posters would start being put up from NPCs and later any NPC within X range from a wanted poster would attack the player and remove X amount worth of coin the bounty was worth. Just an example but doable.
That just reminds me... has there even been any other MMOs besides Asheron's Call that implemented seasons and a more advanced weather system than random rain paired with a lessened viewing distance? I thought both of those were pretty cool aspects to the game, but none of the major games have done it that I've seen(putting up an Xmas tree in Orgrimmar doesn't count as a season changing...).
Vanguard was going down that road. You can look up and see bad weather moving across the sky, it's very cool. And it will start to rain and the rain clouds travel around. But that's as far as they went. They intended to do a lot more, including have it affect certain spells, but they ran out of time/money. One of many unfinished things in that game.
Weather effects are such an under utilized feature of MMOs. If an area or zone or whatever the shit is in a constant state of rain or sun or shadow, it gets stagnate. Something as simple as some clouds and rain in a mostly sunny region could do a lot to change the feel of the environment. This, opposed to crossing some imaginary border where fog gets thicker and lightning starts striking, could leave a lasting impression.
Flipmode
EQOA Refugee
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