...I mean, can you name one sucsessful Sci-Fi book, show, movie or anything at all where 95% of it is just "Wee! I'm flying through space! Look at me going from one planet to another, breifly stoping, and then going back again!"? ...
*dies laughing*
Ummm.....
The entire Star Trek Franchise,short of DS9, for one.
Not really, they wouldn't go back around, they would go on forwards. Sometimes going back but for the most part moving on to new planets that we'd not seen before.
"In this case, my friend (We'll call him Harold), was a major player in a rather large Alliance in Eve for over two years. His experience with other MMOs was limited since he was not interested in playing a game with grind and tedious time-sinks."
Actually EvE is one the biggest timesink/grind feasts out there.
First, to get any 'leveling' done, you have to wait months real life time for the skill to train- timesink, blatant 'give us more money' ploy
So if you aren't working hard to 'level' - practicing your skills to get better at them, etc (like most mmo's - the grind), what are you doing? Sitting on a gate for hours for 20 seconds of pvp, or spending a few hours looking at asteroids occasionally emptying your cargo hold or you are just grinding npc ships for parts/money.
Eve has a great sandbox style going for it with the way POS's and cappable stations are set up, but the basic systems of the game leave much to be desired.
Originally posted by randomt "In this case, my friend (We'll call him Harold), was a major player in a rather large Alliance in Eve for over two years. His experience with other MMOs was limited since he was not interested in playing a game with grind and tedious time-sinks."
Actually EvE is one the biggest timesink/grind feasts out there. First, to get any 'leveling' done, you have to wait months real life time for the skill to train- timesink, blatant 'give us more money' ploy So if you aren't working hard to 'level' - practicing your skills to get better at them, etc (like most mmo's - the grind), what are you doing? Sitting on a gate for hours for 20 seconds of pvp, or spending a few hours looking at asteroids occasionally emptying your cargo hold or you are just grinding npc ships for parts/money. Eve has a great sandbox style going for it with the way POS's and cappable stations are set up, but the basic systems of the game leave much to be desired.
I think most systems in EVE are well tought out and deep. They have some very cool stuff in there. You can run missions and make money while you train skills.
I do think that some parts of EVE are not what they should be. Like combat, it is imho, pretty boring. It is soo sloow, I cant play EVE after 12 cause I fall asleep behind the keyboard.
If EVE would have been FPS combat, like the space expansion in SWG, and if EVE would have a ground game ala Pre CU-SWG ( with planetside combat style ) and quest ( missions ) content like WoW, then it would be my ultimate game
Honestly I dont see why sandbox and linear has to be seperated from eachother.
You can perfectly make a Pre-CU/NGE SWG kind of game, but stuff it with quests that go from 1 area to another, just as in WoW. Then you could choose to go linear or sandbox from the start. Or logically you start with linear progression, but once you get older, you widen up and get into the sandbox part of the game.
Actually EVE does this currently, with the missions system, you have something to hold on to, a way for linear progression, meanwhile you can also broaden your horizon and play around with the more sandboxy features of the game.
Thing is, EVE has very slow paced combat and not so well worked out mission system. Wich makes it pretty hard to get into the real game of space conquest.
Greetz
If you are interested in subscription or PCU numbers for MMORPG's, check out my site : http://mmodata.blogspot.be/ Favorite MMORPG's : DAoC pre ToA-NF, SWG Pre CU-NGE, EVE Online
I played Eve and Daoc for a while sometimes at the same time on different computers, whats the beef? 'Sandbox to Linear', when are we going to have a sandbox mmoRPG, we have done the swords and sorcery bit to death now, the linear progression. When can we chop down or plant forests? When can we build structures, not premade buildings, but atually design buildings based on physics rules ? When can we atually MINE ore and CREATE cave networks? It would be so nice to leave a persistant mark on a games server, they are marketed as 'persistant' worlds, but nothing a player can do remains when he logs out (no I am not counting housing zones or auctions) so the persistance to my mind is just marketing drivel....
wurm online allows ya to do that. its made by a small team and the graphics not the best thus its not really known. but it allows exactly that, chopping down trees and building houses.
As for Wurm Online :
Yes Wurm Online allows Players to fully interact with the virtual environment. You can chop down trees and harvest them to build your own house, fences, furniture, tools, etc. You can replant trees according to species such as Oak, Birch, Cedar, etc., and you can harvest the fruit from fruit trees, sap from Maples, on and on. You can dig the ground and level it, or dig down to bedrock and start and Mine for stone for construction or mine Iron and precious metals for crafting. Wurm Online is a true Sandbox style of MMO, in fact it is the only true Sandbox game available...so much so that it is classified as a Simulation rather than a game. Yes, ther are creatures and Monsters to fight, fish to catch, animals to tame. It's awesome.
Now for the bad news....Wurm Online is written to use Java programming. It requires that your computer MB and video card be able to utilize OpenGL 1.5.... SO if you are an AMD and ATI fan like me you may be unable to run the game. There is only a handful of Video Cards, Processors, and MB's that can run Wurm without alot of crashes and graphics bugs. As for your character....ever male character will always look just like every other male character, Armor does not show up when it equipped, and the viewpoint is only first person perspective.
All and all if my own Computer wasn't AMD and ATI, as well as built to optimize DirectX, then I would be playing Wurm now. I was until about a few months ago when the hassle of trying to get Wurm Online running on my machine outweighed the pleasure I got from playing.
If you are looking for a true Sandbox style MMOG, and can live with the unique issues of the software, then I recommend it highly. I only wish other Development Teams in the MMO industry would take a look at Wurm and see if they couldn't create a MMOG that runs industry standard in what types of computer platforms can run it.
As for Wow:
I played for a month or two, and I can see why so many Players enjoy this MMO. I however came to a decision that what I wanted in an MMO in the endgame is not what WoW delivers. I do not enjoy at all a Raid centric and Item accumulation Endgame, which is what WoW does very well. To each Player their own...if you enjoy WoW then play it, I just didn't enjoy it like 11 million other Players do.
As for EVE:
Right now EVE is THE single best "partially" Sandbox style MMOG on the market. I say partially because I see a much greater depth of possibility in how far "sandbox" a MMO can be designed to be. EVE has many very good sandbox elements to it, and if you are looking for the best in both sci-fi and sandbox, EVE is the game to play. I played it off and on since 2004, but the fact that EVE is primarily designed to PvP game always contributes to me cancelling my sub. It's not that I don't want to PvP, it''s just that I simply do not have the personality, the skills, the talents, nor the instinct necessary to play EVE and do it well. Even after that I still recommend EVE wholeheartily.
Someone mentioned SWG:
I should leave this alone...but oh well here goes....I wanted to say it is a shame that one of the best sandbox style MMOGs ever created was mishandled so badly. The whole incident has hurt the MMOG genre, the Players, and even the Industry itself. The SWG mess is the main reason why we don't see more Sandbox style MMOGs in my honest old man's opinion.
Comments
Ummm.....
The entire Star Trek Franchise,short of DS9, for one.
Not really, they wouldn't go back around, they would go on forwards. Sometimes going back but for the most part moving on to new planets that we'd not seen before.
sheeesh nub writers
WORD LIFE LAWL SAUCE
and the possiblity to set own goals.
But Nuff said : with Winterblinks words
omg I knew that I had seen a cartoon of this before...
2005 was a good while back...
"In this case, my friend (We'll call him Harold), was a major player in a rather large Alliance in Eve for over two years. His experience with other MMOs was limited since he was not interested in playing a game with grind and tedious time-sinks."
Actually EvE is one the biggest timesink/grind feasts out there.
First, to get any 'leveling' done, you have to wait months real life time for the skill to train- timesink, blatant 'give us more money' ploy
So if you aren't working hard to 'level' - practicing your skills to get better at them, etc (like most mmo's - the grind), what are you doing? Sitting on a gate for hours for 20 seconds of pvp, or spending a few hours looking at asteroids occasionally emptying your cargo hold or you are just grinding npc ships for parts/money.
Eve has a great sandbox style going for it with the way POS's and cappable stations are set up, but the basic systems of the game leave much to be desired.
I think most systems in EVE are well tought out and deep.
They have some very cool stuff in there.
You can run missions and make money while you train skills.
I do think that some parts of EVE are not what they should be. Like combat, it is imho, pretty boring. It is soo sloow, I cant play EVE after 12 cause I fall asleep behind the keyboard.
If EVE would have been FPS combat, like the space expansion in SWG, and if EVE would have a ground game ala Pre CU-SWG ( with planetside combat style ) and quest ( missions ) content like WoW, then it would be my ultimate game
Honestly I dont see why sandbox and linear has to be seperated from eachother.
You can perfectly make a Pre-CU/NGE SWG kind of game, but stuff it with quests that go from 1 area to another, just as in WoW. Then you could choose to go linear or sandbox from the start. Or logically you start with linear progression, but once you get older, you widen up and get into the sandbox part of the game.
Actually EVE does this currently, with the missions system, you have something to hold on to, a way for linear progression, meanwhile you can also broaden your horizon and play around with the more sandboxy features of the game.
Thing is, EVE has very slow paced combat and not so well worked out mission system.
Wich makes it pretty hard to get into the real game of space conquest.
Greetz
If you are interested in subscription or PCU numbers for MMORPG's, check out my site :
http://mmodata.blogspot.be/
Favorite MMORPG's : DAoC pre ToA-NF, SWG Pre CU-NGE, EVE Online
wurm online allows ya to do that. its made by a small team and the graphics not the best thus its not really known. but it allows exactly that, chopping down trees and building houses.
As for Wurm Online :
Yes Wurm Online allows Players to fully interact with the virtual environment. You can chop down trees and harvest them to build your own house, fences, furniture, tools, etc. You can replant trees according to species such as Oak, Birch, Cedar, etc., and you can harvest the fruit from fruit trees, sap from Maples, on and on. You can dig the ground and level it, or dig down to bedrock and start and Mine for stone for construction or mine Iron and precious metals for crafting. Wurm Online is a true Sandbox style of MMO, in fact it is the only true Sandbox game available...so much so that it is classified as a Simulation rather than a game. Yes, ther are creatures and Monsters to fight, fish to catch, animals to tame. It's awesome.
Now for the bad news....Wurm Online is written to use Java programming. It requires that your computer MB and video card be able to utilize OpenGL 1.5.... SO if you are an AMD and ATI fan like me you may be unable to run the game. There is only a handful of Video Cards, Processors, and MB's that can run Wurm without alot of crashes and graphics bugs. As for your character....ever male character will always look just like every other male character, Armor does not show up when it equipped, and the viewpoint is only first person perspective.
All and all if my own Computer wasn't AMD and ATI, as well as built to optimize DirectX, then I would be playing Wurm now. I was until about a few months ago when the hassle of trying to get Wurm Online running on my machine outweighed the pleasure I got from playing.
If you are looking for a true Sandbox style MMOG, and can live with the unique issues of the software, then I recommend it highly. I only wish other Development Teams in the MMO industry would take a look at Wurm and see if they couldn't create a MMOG that runs industry standard in what types of computer platforms can run it.
As for Wow:
I played for a month or two, and I can see why so many Players enjoy this MMO. I however came to a decision that what I wanted in an MMO in the endgame is not what WoW delivers. I do not enjoy at all a Raid centric and Item accumulation Endgame, which is what WoW does very well. To each Player their own...if you enjoy WoW then play it, I just didn't enjoy it like 11 million other Players do.
As for EVE:
Right now EVE is THE single best "partially" Sandbox style MMOG on the market. I say partially because I see a much greater depth of possibility in how far "sandbox" a MMO can be designed to be. EVE has many very good sandbox elements to it, and if you are looking for the best in both sci-fi and sandbox, EVE is the game to play. I played it off and on since 2004, but the fact that EVE is primarily designed to PvP game always contributes to me cancelling my sub. It's not that I don't want to PvP, it''s just that I simply do not have the personality, the skills, the talents, nor the instinct necessary to play EVE and do it well. Even after that I still recommend EVE wholeheartily.
Someone mentioned SWG:
I should leave this alone...but oh well here goes....I wanted to say it is a shame that one of the best sandbox style MMOGs ever created was mishandled so badly. The whole incident has hurt the MMOG genre, the Players, and even the Industry itself. The SWG mess is the main reason why we don't see more Sandbox style MMOGs in my honest old man's opinion.