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In search of Excellence - seeker of the true sandboxed MMORPG game
Morons
Member CommonPosts: 47
Ever wanted to get RID of the End-Game?
I have been dreaming of an game, not unsimilar to the current WoW, LoTRO, WaR etc that is totally sandboxed.
This can easily be done.
You need to start an character - any gender any race.
You gain ALL your Attributes, this include Stats as well as skills and abilities via learning (Much like EvE-Online)
You enter the library/college etc. pay for or been given skills and upon completion attributes are allocated.
This game will have ZERO Xp or levels whatsoever.
Progression is then natural so that after you completed the full learning tree for lets say an "Mage" type you can add bits of healing or tanking mix and match maybe combine Archery with Master Swordskills.
This also mean that Dungeaon will have required skills rather than levels.
Also this mean you can play with the big boys directly after creating the toon, not "you are nothing till end-game" pandemic!
Gear can then increase as an factor of your skill in equiping / deploying or managing it.
Even guild management must then be learned
It will make a game the does NOT have end-game and the game developers can no consentrate on balance, bugfixes and richer content.
Expantion is via new areas, new skills, new equipment - enhanced storyline etc.
Money is then "real" and a good trade sytem with game scale economy can then enrich those seeking to MAKE gear.
Tradeskills/money can be that of social*, gearmaking, consumable making, real-estate / property value rental of the above. * Similar to SWG were yu could entertain via song and dance! Nice for random RP players.
Real-Eestate and property can be that of an instanced pvp "guildhouse" fort or keep or sumthing that can be built, maintained and cared for by the guild members as well as include an "Home" for each player were he can make decorations - have pets gardens and tradeskill benches. Sell and resell marketplaces.
Skill can be learned (like EVE-Online) in Realtime and thus capturing constant player retention and a will to see the outcome of new skills.
This would be Ultimate fun.
With this kind of proposed game, players can spend and INVEST time because they will keep growing, never hit a ceiling that colapses at the next expantion!
... I can only dream!
L8r
EDIT: New reader Please skip the unnessesary EVE banter and read further .... Page 6 or thereabouts.
Vidi, vici, veni (pronounced ['wi?di? 'wi?ki? 'we?ni?])
I Saw, I Conquered, I Came
Comments
I like most of those elements, except the EvE training, which always struck me as absurd. You just pick a random skill to train, then you log off and it takes howmanyever hours it takes no matter what you're doing. You can train asteroid mining while you're sitting in a station. You can train engineering while you're in the middle of a fight. It just makes no sense whatsoever, it's the ultimate time sink.
I want to see a system where you get better at most skills simply by using them. That's not the "spend 3 weeks jumping everywhere to improve your jumping skill" nonsense, but if you want to be a better fighter, go out and fight. If you want to be a better healer, get out and heal. I like the AO system where increases in some skills trickle down to others, being more physically agile can make you jump better for instance, but the idea of actions not being tied to improvements in any way just strikes me as wrong.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Sounds good on paper, but often times things play out much differently.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
Failed concept.
UO tried it. What happened?
Tank mage everywhere (since there is only one solution to optimize fighting).
Eve online type training is BAD because new comers have no chance to compete. It may work in Eve, a pvp game, but i doubt it will work in a Pve game.
Hmm. EvE training bad, Well I had plenty of it almost 100 mill Skillpoints, nice external apps to manage it and even these days an 24hour queue system,
Actually I just recently took one month to be exact, to create an Freighter Caracter because I needed one, made her from scratch and new account. In that month she was useless but now she can fly with the big boys pushing 25-100 mil Skillpoints as she can fly the HUGE Charon, the largest of them.
Remember the 100 mill Character can probably fly anything even Dreadnaughts, but he cant hit an frig with anything - the bloody stuff is to fast - Now along come an player just through basic trainig - got himself into an small figate, mount an webifier, manybe Warp disrupter he looted someplace, team them up and let the lil oke do some CC on the fast ships pounding the Dread - and suddenly the Dread can now shoot the faster cruiser - maybe even one-shot after the lil oke webed the enemy - snared him for the kill.
AO - I presume Anarchy-Online, yeh I was ARK there, good ideas bad execution - I beleive Funcom can only create buggy junk games, let me not start on that, poor ppl.
Anycase I like skills aquired when you practise the skill. that works for me also. However to really make it unending you have to limit the skills and controll it in order to balance it. therefoer if I play it for 5 years and hit a lot ppl with swords - wel one-shot boffin ill become and game is screwed, think more about an skill system rather than Levels, that ugly monster will cause - "END-GAME" witch in turn mean you work yr arse off getting into "Molten Core" gear just to pickup an simple common drop item replace those at the first mob you kill the day they release the expantion - there and then you scratch the months and months of competing on boss-rolls for gear that is scrapped in one level.
Its not that I love the Learning tree of EVE, its Just I hate the End-Game, the fun is in the journey, to get to top level, then the big grind start. Maybe there is people that dread the leveling but LOVE the Social grouping in the END-GAME (sis that word even stink of termination). Anycase learning skill eve-like will satisfy those socialites also because they can immidiatly start to social, or whatever they do.
In Sandboxed games like eve, you DONT need to grind, yes initially eve was about mining droids, but these days you can pvp from day one, even become pirate and steal mined ore - money is made any place, no grind, unless you love it.
Vidi, vici, veni (pronounced ['wi?di? 'wi?ki? 'we?ni?])
I Saw, I Conquered, I Came
It would boil down to gangs of people beating up other gangs of people just like every sandbox MMO ever made. Everyone would just be beating people up while they wait for their skills to advance, their harvester to get mats so their crafter can make better weapons and armor to beat people up with. Now and then you lose what you beat someone up with because they beat you up.
If people get REALLY bored, everyone in the server tries to beat each other up, causing a server crash.
Well if your mind is stuck on Beating up other ppl... well go get yourself an CHOPPA in WaR, or sumthing.
People in general are much more intelligent in cases were they have more choices. EVE is renown for its learning curve, it take ppl with more "grey matter" to enjoy, those seldom only think BEAT UP. They tend to expand their gameplay and do commerce, build some Moon mining POS'es or seek out some hidden blueprints in far-away systems, scan down some rare items or even hunt for Gas clouds to make Drugs.
Hell stay away if you are an Dumb Arse Beat-Upper!
Vidi, vici, veni (pronounced ['wi?di? 'wi?ki? 'we?ni?])
I Saw, I Conquered, I Came
...while others try and beat them up. Seriously, You can do all that side stuff, but you can do all that in a PvE theme park even better-you can craft, explore, invent, what have you. EVE's only real innovation is to replace mobs with players, and make losing pay. The whole point is the wars in 0.0, and that's just a big metagaming of players beating up other players.
When you get rid of advancing your character except for a slow, incremental process, be it sandbox or endgame, you have two ultimate choices-either make compelling raid content, or beat people up. Yet to see sandbox build enough story to do the former, and virtually every game has the latter.
Dungeons have skill requirements but you can "play with the big boys" immediatley after creating a character? That makes no sense.
Whether you can "play with the big boys" depends on how much skills matter, and how hard the game is.
Is the game insanely easy?
What I'm getting at is you can't design a game by saying, "and there will be no downsides to anything!" It's easy to pick through individual game mechanics and go "this one's best" and "this one's best" and "this one's best", but you have to look at whether they actually work together when you put them all together. Because there will be conflicts.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
EvE is full of people sitting around gates and killing people. In fact, that's 90% of player interaction other than buying.
That only changes when you're in a mega fleet.. maybe then you can ask for someone to escort you somewhere and actually do some teamwork, or fly off into a massive fun battle and die in a few seconds or last until the end.
In EvE you -can't- compete as a new character. Not at all. It would be exactly the same in a fantasy MMO and only the people who had played the longest would be wanted anywhere. And everyone would kill everyone.
The end.
Edit: By the way, I like the idea of a sandbox MMO, but it certainly needs some heavy planning. Perhaps have a leveling system that only gives you a choice of a new skill every level so level 5s might still be as useful as level 15s in some situations. Even that system has so many flaws it wouldn't work, though.
Objectivity is delivered with a lack of personality made for the mainstream but never used for the mainstream.
EvE is full of people sitting around gates and killing people. In fact, that's 90% of player interaction other than buying.
That only changes when you're in a mega fleet.. maybe then you can ask for someone to escort you somewhere and actually do some teamwork, or fly off into a massive fun battle and die in a few seconds or last until the end.
In EvE you -can't- compete as a new character. Not at all. It would be exactly the same in a fantasy MMO and only the people who had played the longest would be wanted anywhere. And everyone would kill everyone.
The end.
roflmao
this 8 month toon begs to differ
Spending 8 months of putting skills in learning slots is still not a new character.
I suppose you could just invite like 100 total newbs in frigates to join your corporation for a battle.. but that would be a quick death indeed.
Objectivity is delivered with a lack of personality made for the mainstream but never used for the mainstream.
sorry but no...i been pvping since month 2 when i got into a battlecruiser...never ever underestimate the harbinger. Those things will wreck frigates and inties, while doing very good damage to other battlecruisers.
then you have the drake, the powerhouse which can go toe to toe with battleships.
We bring frigates all the time to pvp, cause they make absurdly great tacklers and point men. bigger ships cant hit them for squat, in fact i would rather have a fleet made up of a few battleships, couple of cruisers and a fleet of frigs than a fleet of all battleships.
.. but new players still have no skills, weapons, etc. and it takes quite a while to make your frigate useful skill-wise unless you're just tackling little rats. Epic frigates can be epic, terrible frigates are still terrible.
Objectivity is delivered with a lack of personality made for the mainstream but never used for the mainstream.
pvp can be accomplished in under 1 month of training....example:
cruiser - Maller
All tech II guns, cap booster, 1mn mwd, some energized plates and 2x1600mm plates.....you can be in on in under 3 weeks.
This ship can tank up to 3 battleships ... i know...i have done it....battleships cant hit these ships effectively, while having enough armor to tank a multitide of frigates, and if you use small guns, you will shread all frigate class ships while smiling happily as you now have about 40k effective hit points. my EHP is closer to 49k cause my engineering skills are very high, they have to be for amarr pilots, who actively armor tank
name another game which you can just in as a lvl 1 toon and pvp a lvl 80 effectively? there is none. Eve comes the closest to balance from day 1 than any other mmorpg, if you are smart enough to streamline your planning. I have my toon set up in under 8 months, to fly battleships perfectly. I go toe to toe with vets who have played for 3 years. why? cause i knew what i wanted to do, how to do it, and planned my skills accordingly. if you have a plan, specialize in that plan and not dabble all over the place, a pvpr can be pvp fit very quickley. if you are like my other toon, which is my dabble/miner/indy toon, it will take a long time. 6 months now and he is really not specialized in anything but orca.
I'm not saying that it's not possible to be semi-useful. I'm saying that people who have played longer will be infinitely more useful.
If you kill someone who is flying a frigate and has been playing for a few years.. in all likelihood they have so many skills that they can do anything that they want to and do it better than you, and you won't be able to catch up.. ever, unless they quit.
And still, even in a good ship a few weeks in, you go through a gate and see a few player pirates.. you're disabled and dead.
And that happens a lot on your own.
EDIT: By the way, I don't want to name another game like that because.. that's what EvE does, that's its thing. Doesn't mean it does it perfectly nor that it's the best system; that's the whole point of this thread. And I still call bullshit on going toe-to-toe with anyone who has been playing for longer than you when you're a tiny newblet. You'll get wasted and they'll be in groups.
Objectivity is delivered with a lack of personality made for the mainstream but never used for the mainstream.
and in another game, you enter enemy territories at choke points , the same will happen. every system can be gotten through, hell spend 1 extra month, learn cloaking 4, you can warp right through gates with no issue
name 1 game that a baby toon can go against a fully maxed out toon.......
Most games don't reward camping choke points in large groups and sitting on one side of a door to camp new players and old alike with *loot. As for the 'name one game' bull, yes, EvE is unique in what it is. Still doesn't mean that everyone wants to spend one month logging on once a day to make sure that their cloaking plan is still on schedule.
When I played I found one lucky plan that I sold for so much money that there was no point in playing for money. I couldn't survive long in 0.0 *(or 0.4 or lower) space and there was.. nothing to do.
So I sat. I sat and came on every day to check my skills.
In situations like this, however, when playing is not mandatory and has no bonuses.. many players don't have a feeling of wanting to play. After a while doing the same repeated quests over and over gets boring, mining gets boring, blah.
One thing that would make the game far more interesting is if you learned your skills over time AND by how much you play / do. That would give people a reason to play.
EDIT: To turn the perplexing BS back on you: name the only game where you can never catch up to the 'high-level' toon no matter how much you play. That's EvE. Now stop that.
Objectivity is delivered with a lack of personality made for the mainstream but never used for the mainstream.
A sandbox's design should not be swayed by preference such as a level-less system or a specific learning system. All of that should come much later once established what makes the game a sandbox design. Having level less and class less only serves to enhance sandbox instead of being it's main focus. Sandbox that is based solely on not having level, class, or any other features related to character progression is not a real sandbox. It is in fact a half-assed attempt at a sandbox.
Simply put, a sandbox is about choices and the freedom that comes with it. Having level-less or whatever system does not tell me if a game is a sandbox. It seems you are simply forcing what you want or are tired of in a game. I respect your opinion and preferences, but I just have to point out that you seem to confuse sandbox as simply removing systems you want to avoid.
Truthfully, I have heard enough opinions about sandbox and recent mmo-action game designs to make me want to throw up. However, for some reason sandbox seem to be the part where people always keep getting the wrong idea. I can even design a game that is sandbox but completely based on a pre-designed class system and it will be just as fun if not more so.
Last thing I have to say is that alot of players would not play if there are no ceiling at all. People want to be powerful and they want to hit the ceiling when gaming. Same with system where somone can just create a character and suddenly become competitive without any work. I am sorry, if a game is based on your playing skill instead of any form of in-depth and complex character progression, that game will only last as long as it is new. It will have no staying power since it is also not a proper sandbox game.
SUMMING ABOVE UP IN ONE SENTENCE: Getting rid of end-game does not automatically make the game a sandbox.
really? you do know there are finite skills which would help a battleship right? there may be 480million+ skill points, but not all apply to a battleship. your point IS moot cause not every skill will help you. I have battleship to lvl 5, engineering skills all to lvl 5, drones, i can use all tech II with some drone support skills, my gun specialization is to lvl 4, and some other skills, those are the most useful to me. What good is astrometrics, industrial, research, electronic warfare, etc etc going to do for me on a ship which doesnt utilize these skills?Each ship set there is a very finite number of skills which will be utilized out of the total 480mil skill points. Hell there are about only 25 which directly affect my abaddon. Some can reach level 5 of these skills (like engineering) in under a week. the tech 2 guns and lvl 5 battleship will prolly take you 3 months.
and you are missing the bigger picture...eve is NOT a solo game, you will almost NEVER come across 1 vs 1 pvp. This is a group game, corps and alliances define the universe, a solo pvpr will not be able to conquer space. Rarely will you run into that solo ship, but 90% of the time, he has friends waiting.
this is simply not true.
just checked in evemon, medium beam laser spec prerequisites - 22 day. but i already have 2 mil in learning skills, 3.5 millions in gunnery, set of +4 implants. add just EANM II - more than a week. add some engineering skill for capacitor, navigation, gunnery support skills and you get more realistic figure well above 2-3 month.
Miagisan, I'm glad that you agree with all the faults I find in EvE. It's not the game for me. Maybe you should stop arguing that it's perfect and I should admit that it's a good game for obsessive-compulsive planners and customizers. Maybe you should agree with me that there's a problem with not having a point to play and maybe I should concede that, correctly planned by a player who has either researched the game for 5 months or already played it before, a new toon can becomes semi-useful quickly.
I still don't agree that this is a good system. If you defeat someone who has been playing forever, the likelihood that they have a ship and skills waiting that will beat you when they come back or find you again is quite high. They are like chameleons; they can be whatever they want to be. You can only be what you trained to be until you branch out and then they are still ahead of you.
You're missing out on a lot of useful skills on that ship, there, by the way. Sure, astrometrics may not be the most useful skill, but there are so many defensive and offensive possibilities that will take a significant amount of time not playing to learn. Or playing, either way.
EDIT: Another problem I have with EvE, one of personal preference, is that I prefer quick, concise combat. Starship fighting often doesn't offer that as a possibility. It's a game of trying to bring shields down and usually ends up being very slow. Finishing one mission can take 30 minutes and then if you want to scavenge to make money then it may take an hour. This isn't a problem with game design, of course, just one of those design choices.
Objectivity is delivered with a lack of personality made for the mainstream but never used for the mainstream.
this is simply not true.
just checked in evemon, medium beam laser spec prerequisites - 22 day. but i already have 2 mil in learning skills, 3.5 millions in gunnery, set of +4 implants. add just EANM II - more than a week. add some engineering skill for capacitor, navigation, gunnery support skills and you get more realistic figure well above 2-3 month.
you would never be able to fit medium pulse/beam laser on the build i suggested, try learning small pulse/beam specialization.
edit: i use small pulses cause i go for the frigate and cruiser classes in my ship, while tanking the larger ships if they choose to target me