If EA were smart they would build a hybrid game based off of Legends of Kesmai but we all know they arent smart.
The game had it all.. Exp levels that controlled HP , Mana , Stamina based on class and skill levels that controlled hit rate , blocking ability , damage ( actual levels and not 1-100 numbers ) and several unique lands. You actually had to do a meaningful quest to become a Knight or gain extra HP.
Sanboxes and the new generation of fans think that killing each other is what a sandbox game is all about. Its sickening really. A real sandbox offers more than just sparring people for skill points or sitting in one area harvesting or sitting in a house and crafting for hours.
In other words.. Choice. There is a reason why forced FFA PvP isnt popular and why " themepark " games are ruling the day. They offer fun content and choice at the same time.. Run a dungeon if you want , harvest if you want , craft if you want , pvp if you want..ect. A good sandbox would offer the same thing but with a different twist.
I am at a point where I think some think that FFA PvP and skill points = sandbox.
This.
Exactly.
Someone wants to make a more "sandbox" type of MMO game they need to move away from what limited UO over 10 years ago and learn the same lessons Ultima learned when they did the Trammel/Felucca split -
People like choice - not having choices made for them.
True....in WOW I can elect to do a dungeon, except that the dungeon runs are INCREDIBLY easy, with the only level of difficulty coming from gear limitations than complexity of the encounter.
True....in WOW I can elect to PvP, except that PvPing in battlegrounds is a complete cluster and seems to only be driven by gear progression and not for the love of PvPing.
True.....in WOW I can gather resources and craft items, except that 90% of the gathering and 99% of the crafting is completely useless and even the best craftable items are subpar to items i can get running a 30 minute dungeon.
Point being......you can try to please all, but you utimately you fully satisfy none.
UO got away with offering the right amount of choice without forcing a particular play style because they took a lazy (albiet effective) way out by creating a mirror image of the original world and applied a different rule set.....and then somehow worked it in the lore.
True....in WOW I can elect to do a dungeon, except that the dungeon runs are INCREDIBLY easy, with the only level of difficulty coming from gear limitations than complexity of the encounter.
Wrong. There are multiple level of dififculties (you say "only level" .. i interpret that as one). Two modes for 5 man, 4 modes for raids. And sure, gear is the limitation factor on the encounter. What is the problem with that? You still have choice. And you don't have the gear to power through the highest level of dungeons.
True....in WOW I can elect to PvP, except that PvPing in battlegrounds is a complete cluster and seems to only be driven by gear progression and not for the love of PvPing.
Hmm .. choice is choice. No one can control whether other "love" pvp-ing .. but the choice is there. Love is irrelavant.
True.....in WOW I can gather resources and craft items, except that 90% of the gathering and 99% of the crafting is completely useless and even the best craftable items are subpar to items i can get running a 30 minute dungeon.
Wrong. There are usually two slot where craft items are BIS or close to BIS for each gear level from T8.
UO got away with offering the right amount of choice without forcing a particular play style because they took a lazy (albiet effective) way out by creating a mirror image of the original world and applied a different rule set.....and then somehow worked it in the lore.
UO is a bad GAME. I played it since beta and jumped ship once EQ was out and there was even less choice. You have no choice about pvp .. you are going to get ganged. You have no choice if you want to fight ... tank-mage is the only way to go. There is a reason why that game topped out at ~250k players.
When they brought in the Factions PvP system, those were the golden days...
You had Tamers that were really powerful in PvP... tamers.. with Dragons.
Anyone using Maces would crush due to the macing bonuses (I think they broke armor.)
Only nubs healed with magic, bandages were the way to go.
Axers with Lumberjacking could nearly one-shot people.
Fencing had it's bonuses with stuns... even Wrestling (unarmed) was great due to the dis-arms.
Don't forget the Stealther's and their poisons.
And of course, the Mages. Good Mages wore nothing but a spell book and death robes.
A friend of mine would stealth and pick pocket someone's own weapons out of their bag, put poison on it, and then poison and kill them with their own weapon. Another guildy of mine was a mage and actually had 100 magic resist and could take on two-three people at a time just because he was SO good and playing the game and new EXACTLY what spells to cast and when. A lot more then just spamming Corp Por and Kal Vas Flam like all the noobs did.
Beyond that, we had a large tower east of Brittania filled from floor to ceiling with rare drops, piles of gold, furniture, and all sort of other decorations. Now THAT was bragging rights - having a big house filled to the brim with valuables.
We had conquered all the dungeons, every level.
Then on the full PvP "hardcore" server we were a part of one of the most respected and hardcore RP red (PK) guilds in the game.
I've never had a MMO were the experiences came anywhere close to this.
And I never will again unless someone has the courage and genius to make a more open-world game that still has plenty of interesting content that DOESN'T gimp itself by ONLY catering to the FFA PvP crowd.
If EA were smart they would build a hybrid game based off of Legends of Kesmai but we all know they arent smart.
The game had it all.. Exp levels that controlled HP , Mana , Stamina based on class and skill levels that controlled hit rate , blocking ability , damage ( actual levels and not 1-100 numbers ) and several unique lands. You actually had to do a meaningful quest to become a Knight or gain extra HP.
Sanboxes and the new generation of fans think that killing each other is what a sandbox game is all about. Its sickening really. A real sandbox offers more than just sparring people for skill points or sitting in one area harvesting or sitting in a house and crafting for hours.
In other words.. Choice. There is a reason why forced FFA PvP isnt popular and why " themepark " games are ruling the day. They offer fun content and choice at the same time.. Run a dungeon if you want , harvest if you want , craft if you want , pvp if you want..ect. A good sandbox would offer the same thing but with a different twist.
I am at a point where I think some think that FFA PvP and skill points = sandbox.
This.
Exactly.
Someone wants to make a more "sandbox" type of MMO game they need to move away from what limited UO over 10 years ago and learn the same lessons Ultima learned when they did the Trammel/Felucca split -
People like choice - not having choices made for them.
You keep saying this, but pvp servers and pve servers are in themselves a choice.
Trammel/Felucca can be viewed just as much as someone making forcing a choice for players. As you said, there are people who enjoy one aspect of a game or another and do not enjoy getting involved in the other portion of the game.
The whole trammel/felucca split can easily be looked upon by those players as 50% of the game world they will not partake in, unless they have some playstyle forced upon them when they go there.
A pure pvp server offers pvp players the gameplay they desire in 100% of the server they are on. The same is true for pve players.
The trammel/felucca server isn't the ultimate solution to game servers. It is just another option that developers should offer.
You keep saying this, but pvp servers and pve servers are in themselves a choice.
Trammel/Felucca can be viewed just as much as someone making forcing a choice for players. As you said, there are people who enjoy one aspect of a game or another and do not enjoy getting involved in the other portion of the game.
The whole trammel/felucca split can easily be looked upon by those players as 50% of the game world they will not partake in, unless they have some playstyle forced upon them when they go there.
A pure pvp server offers pvp players the gameplay they desire in 100% of the server they are on. The same is true for pve players.
The trammel/felucca server isn't the ultimate solution to game servers. It is just another option that developers should offer.
No I agree completely!
But how many games that offer FFA PvP offer additional server types that don't have FFA PvP?
Does EvE? Darkfall? Mortal Online? No.
Even WoW has PvE and PvP servers. And you know what? It's a good idea!
Because as you say, these "options that developers should offer" indeed do let players choose how they wish to play a game, and I think that is the ultimate freedom and ultimate selling point for a MMORPG.
If the UO formula > EQ formula, why is EQ > UO? Why are games that follow the EQ formula > games that follow the UO formula?
Denial;) UO and sandboxes are only greater for the minority. The minority is not something a AAA developer seeks to capture when making a game, specifically designed to make money. MMOs are designed to make money first and foremost since there is no game without profit. Indie developers ARE making sanboxes, yet thats not enough. To appease the unappeasable a AAA developer has to gamble and risk losing millions in order to accomplish what exactly? They could make a few 100k extremely bitter elitist gamers semi-happy for a short while until they rebel and complain that the game isn't EXACTLY like its "supposed" to be according to them? Yeah, thats exactly who I'm gunning for when investing millions, years of production time, blood and sweat.
A themepark at the core with a few sandbox features sprinkled in is all any AAA developer is going to risk. What motivation is there for them to do any more than that?
Wrong. There are multiple level of dififculties (you say "only level" .. i interpret that as one). Two modes for 5 man, 4 modes for raids. And sure, gear is the limitation factor on the encounter. What is the problem with that? You still have choice. And you don't have the gear to power through the highest level of dungeons.
Even with all the itterations of the dungeons (heroic, 10 man, 25 man, etc) its the same rotations, same experience. There isn't much difference running a normal dungeon with an appropriate leveled & geared group and running a heroic dungeon with appropriate leveled & geared group.
The ONLY difference is that the monsters have more HP and maybe the Boss has 1 more attack. Again, difficulty is only defined by gear progression.
Hmm .. choice is choice. No one can control whether other "love" pvp-ing .. but the choice is there. Love is irrelavant.
When you have players joining PvP battlegrounds and AFK or do other things that games the system for GEAR rewards over fighting the other side to help your team....you have a TERRIBLE PvP experience.
Wrong. There are usually two slot where craft items are BIS or close to BIS for each gear level from T8.
Great.....so the 150+ recipes that I learned to get my crafting skill to max lvl for that 1 or 2 pieces of gear is a deep & satisfying crafting experience?
UO is a bad GAME. I played it since beta and jumped ship once EQ was out and there was even less choice. You have no choice about pvp .. you are going to get ganged. You have no choice if you want to fight ... tank-mage is the only way to go. There is a reason why that game topped out at ~250k players.
Like one of the posters said....you didn't play UO at its peak. The reason the game topped out at 250k players probably had a lot to do with the limited technology that was available during its time. When you consider that EQ came as a full 3D 360 degree experience, in a time when most people were jumping onto broadband.....its a wonder that EQ didn't fully wipe out UO completely. It's a even bigger wonder that UO is still running today. There must have been something good about it.
You keep saying this, but pvp servers and pve servers are in themselves a choice.
Trammel/Felucca can be viewed just as much as someone making forcing a choice for players. As you said, there are people who enjoy one aspect of a game or another and do not enjoy getting involved in the other portion of the game.
The whole trammel/felucca split can easily be looked upon by those players as 50% of the game world they will not partake in, unless they have some playstyle forced upon them when they go there.
A pure pvp server offers pvp players the gameplay they desire in 100% of the server they are on. The same is true for pve players.
The trammel/felucca server isn't the ultimate solution to game servers. It is just another option that developers should offer.
No I agree completely!
But how many games that offer FFA PvP offer additional server types that don't have FFA PvP?
Does EvE? Darkfall? Mortal Online? No.
Even WoW has PvE and PvP servers. And you know what? It's a good idea!
Because as you say, these "options that developers should offer" indeed do let players choose how they wish to play a game, and I think that is the ultimate freedom and ultimate selling point for a MMORPG.
Eve is not like DF or MO. CCP actually learned from what UO did. Eve's empire space is very similar to a different pvp rule set server and that is the future of sandbox games in my opinion.
My favorite sandbox games are the ones that don't force anything on a player. Eve is like this, you can stay in empire, pve all day if you want to and be safe. In games like DF people are limited by ffa pvp and this keeps a playerbase low pop.
Honestly if eve didnt go the more point to click and crazy learning cliff route it would have millions of subs and we wouldnt be discussing EQ>UO rule sets right now.
I mean even with its 320k subs. Eve is pretty high up there when it comes to mmo subs. Besides WoW what themepark mmo thats P2p has passed Eve? Aion? Maybe FFXI? Both games are nothing like WoW and are more suited to older type gamers.
So has the EQ way of doing things really proven 100% to be the cash cow over sandbox? I dont know they all seem to suck besides wow and they certainly dont have the sub numbers when compared to Eve.
There has to be a balance in my opinion. UO was my first mmo-love, so I will try not to sound too biased. But the thing that made UO so great to me (other than being the first MMO I played) was what we call sandbox. But after reading about 4 pages of this post, the OP keeps reiterating the importance of choice. That is what early-UO had, almost to a fault. The trammel/feluccia(sp?) split was not UO in it's hayday (imo, again). The player driven economy/community and the way UO made you feel while you played it.
I can list several memories/examples, but I don't want to get stuck going down memory lane. I have also played SB, RYL, Lineage 2, WAR, and most recently Darkfall. All had aspects that I liked, but nothing really hooked me like UO (loved SB, but was littered with bugs).
I am keeping my hopes high for Old Republic, just because bioware can make good games. But everyone is basically right.. the developers with the big money want to make money. There is a formula out there that is making the buku bucks. Just like most things in life, it's all about the money. It's also why we see the indie companies trying new things, but it never quite reaches it's full potential because of numerous reasons. Darkfall comes to mind, MO right now, Tabula Rusa.. etc.
I do think that sandbox games would benefit quite a bit if they managed to create a crafting system or an economy system that would be as interesting as fighting a scripted AI. You can say that killing 10,000 boars is not really much of a challenge, which certainly is true, but atleast it is entertaining whereas crafting, although interesting on meta-game level, is never interesting as an independent act. On a vast majority of games the only thing you actually do whilst crafting is clicking a button once after a tedious and time-consuming gathering session -- which involves mostly clicking your mouse button until you reach the required number. In a sense, Free Realms gathering and crafting is way more fun (atleast for a while) than what most sandbox games can offer.
There might be various time-consuming phases on crafting, it might be staged or it might require professions of a number of players but it does not change the fact that ultimately it is just a click of a button. Arguably this same can be said from killing that scripted AI but whilst doing that you atleast have to react on something even if that would be "not standing on fire" as many describe it. When a game bolsters with magnificent crafting it normally means that there is a plethora of items you can craft, not that it would hold any particular gameplay innovation. Hence, if "the" meme of a sandbox game is its economy and crafting it has utterly failed to make that one particular game-defining feature worthwhile; spreadsheet programs are nice and all, but noone calls MS Excel or OO Calc a good game, thou they can handle even the most complex of spreadsheets.
What then would be fun crafting. Well, I think that MMOG developers should look over to other gaming genres. Spore's creature creator, a sandbox feature par excellance, was massively popular not because it was open ended but because it offered you relatively large freedom of choice and making those choices was actually fun. If I would have even remotely as fun item crafting (be it house, weapon, ship, planet or cupcake) on a sandbox game I would be right away more interested to give it a try; the modules would be the game content. These could be player created if that makes it more sandboxy or you could get them from the environment to encourage exploration. It wouldn't remove the entire tediousness of lack-of-content for a random gaming session but it would be a good start.
CCP actually learned from what UO did. Eve's empire space is very similar to a different pvp rule set server and that is the future of sandbox games in my opinion.
My favorite sandbox games are the ones that don't force anything on a player. Eve is like this, you can stay in empire, pve all day if you want to and be safe. In games like DF people are limited by ffa pvp and this keeps a playerbase low pop.
Honestly if eve didnt go the more point to click and crazy learning cliff route it would have millions of subs and we wouldnt be discussing EQ>UO rule sets right now.
Even with all the itterations of the dungeons (heroic, 10 man, 25 man, etc) its the same rotations, same experience. There isn't much difference running a normal dungeon with an appropriate leveled & geared group and running a heroic dungeon with appropriate leveled & geared group.
The ONLY difference is that the monsters have more HP and maybe the Boss has 1 more attack. Again, difficulty is only defined by gear progression.
Hmm .. are you actually familiar with hard mode? And even one new ability of the new boss can change your whole strategy significantly.
Examples:
1) OS 3 drakes are very different encounter than just normal because you have to deal with the drakes at the same time as teh boss.
2) TOC 25 hard mode .. northern beast ecounter .. you may have to tank two boss at the same time compared to normal only one at a time.
3) Twin valkyries .. new ability .. doing AOE dmg to those around u .. so spacing becomes important .. you can do the fight stacking next to orb.
Examples go on and on ....
When you have players joining PvP battlegrounds and AFK or do other things that games the system for GEAR rewards over fighting the other side to help your team....you have a TERRIBLE PvP experience.
Preferably over world pvp and ganging anyway. And if you want to get your gear reward faster, you play to win. I play lots of BGs and few people are sitting there doing nothing. That is particularly true in zones like WG where you need to control it to get access to VoA.
Great.....so the 150+ recipes that I learned to get my crafting skill to max lvl for that 1 or 2 pieces of gear is a deep & satisfying crafting experience?
Crafting should not a main focus of a hack-n-slash MMORPG anyway. But there are more. There are constant demand for:
1) consumables .. made by alchemy (always useful & money maker)
2) enchanting/jewel crafting .. needed when people upgrade gear.
And sure only 2 pieces BIS for cloth, leather, plate & mail but if all the craft pieces are BIS, no one is going to raid.
Like one of the posters said....you didn't play UO at its peak. The reason the game topped out at 250k players probably had a lot to do with the limited technology that was available during its time. When you consider that EQ came as a full 3D 360 degree experience, in a time when most people were jumping onto broadband.....its a wonder that EQ didn't fully wipe out UO completely. It's a even bigger wonder that UO is still running today. There must have been something good about it.
No real sandbox games have ever rised beyond 300k or so subs. Even the great Eve .. cannot even surpass EQ at its peak. Obviously technology has nothing to do with it. The UO design just does not resignate with most people.
And whether i play at the peak of not, the problems (ganging, tank-mage, housing gettos, clicking clicking clicking to advance a skill) are still present till the peak.
No real sandbox games have ever rised beyond 300k or so subs. Even the great Eve .. cannot even surpass EQ at its peak. Obviously technology has nothing to do with it. The UO design just does not resignate with most people.
Another way to look at this is that one very niche sandbox game created by an independent developer is overwhelmingly outperforming almost every single themepark mmo on the market.
Anyone can shows facts in different lights to achieve a desired outcome.
I don't think anyone can really say that sandbox games cannot do this or that based on past offerings, because most have suffered the same flaws and errors that many themepark mmos have. If a company really took their time to make a decent sandbox game I suspect it would do well enough.
Another way to look at this is that one very niche sandbox game created by an independent developer is overwhelmingly outperforming almost every single themepark mmo on the market.
Anyone can shows facts in different lights to achieve a desired outcome.
I don't think anyone can really say that sandbox games cannot do this or that based on past offerings, because most have suffered the same flaws and errors that many themepark mmos have. If a company really took their time to make a decent sandbox game I suspect it would do well enough.
I agree completely.
In the Western world, EvE is probably the 2nd most popular and certainly longest running subscription based MMORPG. Now there are a LOT of things I don't like about EvE Online, but I always try to remember that before WoW every single MMO was for a "niche market" and games still did plenty fine.
This illusion that a game needs millions of subs to be "successful" is a myth. It's propoganda by people like the bastards at EA who are trying to outspend everyone else and gaurantee a success...
There have been plenty of high budget movies that have been terrible, and a similar number of low budgest films that achieve incredible success.
The MMORPG genre is still very young. I have been playing and following since the beginning, and since I'm not that old it proves that the genre is quite young indeed.
We'll be seeing more EvE Online's and more World of Warcraft's in the future. We'll also see a LOT more STO's and CO's and AoC's and TR's and AA's and WAR's and DF's and MO's and....
I just pray someone does a sandbox-style open world right sooner rather then later.
It's been damn near six years since WoW came out. Since then we've had a number of themepark mmos come out and none of them can touch WoWs numbers.
How many more high budget AAA themeparks do we need? Hello! look at the sub numbers of all the themeparks released since wow and they average around 100k subs.
Maybe Sandbox type games arent the answer but certainly something needs to change.
I'm sure these guys dont spend 30-50+ million dollars in Dev costs to have sub 100k numbers.
It's time to realize that noone wants another WoW. The one we have is good enough (proven by the 12.5 million that wont leave). Lets try something else. Think outside the box and no outside the box does not mean UO style either.
Comments
This.
Exactly.
Someone wants to make a more "sandbox" type of MMO game they need to move away from what limited UO over 10 years ago and learn the same lessons Ultima learned when they did the Trammel/Felucca split -
People like choice - not having choices made for them.
Its more than just choice.....
True....in WOW I can elect to do a dungeon, except that the dungeon runs are INCREDIBLY easy, with the only level of difficulty coming from gear limitations than complexity of the encounter.
True....in WOW I can elect to PvP, except that PvPing in battlegrounds is a complete cluster and seems to only be driven by gear progression and not for the love of PvPing.
True.....in WOW I can gather resources and craft items, except that 90% of the gathering and 99% of the crafting is completely useless and even the best craftable items are subpar to items i can get running a 30 minute dungeon.
Point being......you can try to please all, but you utimately you fully satisfy none.
UO got away with offering the right amount of choice without forcing a particular play style because they took a lazy (albiet effective) way out by creating a mirror image of the original world and applied a different rule set.....and then somehow worked it in the lore.
True....in WOW I can elect to do a dungeon, except that the dungeon runs are INCREDIBLY easy, with the only level of difficulty coming from gear limitations than complexity of the encounter.
Wrong. There are multiple level of dififculties (you say "only level" .. i interpret that as one). Two modes for 5 man, 4 modes for raids. And sure, gear is the limitation factor on the encounter. What is the problem with that? You still have choice. And you don't have the gear to power through the highest level of dungeons.
True....in WOW I can elect to PvP, except that PvPing in battlegrounds is a complete cluster and seems to only be driven by gear progression and not for the love of PvPing.
Hmm .. choice is choice. No one can control whether other "love" pvp-ing .. but the choice is there. Love is irrelavant.
True.....in WOW I can gather resources and craft items, except that 90% of the gathering and 99% of the crafting is completely useless and even the best craftable items are subpar to items i can get running a 30 minute dungeon.
Wrong. There are usually two slot where craft items are BIS or close to BIS for each gear level from T8.
UO got away with offering the right amount of choice without forcing a particular play style because they took a lazy (albiet effective) way out by creating a mirror image of the original world and applied a different rule set.....and then somehow worked it in the lore.
UO is a bad GAME. I played it since beta and jumped ship once EQ was out and there was even less choice. You have no choice about pvp .. you are going to get ganged. You have no choice if you want to fight ... tank-mage is the only way to go. There is a reason why that game topped out at ~250k players.
You must have not played UO post-Trammel split.
When they brought in the Factions PvP system, those were the golden days...
You had Tamers that were really powerful in PvP... tamers.. with Dragons.
Anyone using Maces would crush due to the macing bonuses (I think they broke armor.)
Only nubs healed with magic, bandages were the way to go.
Axers with Lumberjacking could nearly one-shot people.
Fencing had it's bonuses with stuns... even Wrestling (unarmed) was great due to the dis-arms.
Don't forget the Stealther's and their poisons.
And of course, the Mages. Good Mages wore nothing but a spell book and death robes.
A friend of mine would stealth and pick pocket someone's own weapons out of their bag, put poison on it, and then poison and kill them with their own weapon. Another guildy of mine was a mage and actually had 100 magic resist and could take on two-three people at a time just because he was SO good and playing the game and new EXACTLY what spells to cast and when. A lot more then just spamming Corp Por and Kal Vas Flam like all the noobs did.
Beyond that, we had a large tower east of Brittania filled from floor to ceiling with rare drops, piles of gold, furniture, and all sort of other decorations. Now THAT was bragging rights - having a big house filled to the brim with valuables.
We had conquered all the dungeons, every level.
Then on the full PvP "hardcore" server we were a part of one of the most respected and hardcore RP red (PK) guilds in the game.
I've never had a MMO were the experiences came anywhere close to this.
And I never will again unless someone has the courage and genius to make a more open-world game that still has plenty of interesting content that DOESN'T gimp itself by ONLY catering to the FFA PvP crowd.
You keep saying this, but pvp servers and pve servers are in themselves a choice.
Trammel/Felucca can be viewed just as much as someone making forcing a choice for players. As you said, there are people who enjoy one aspect of a game or another and do not enjoy getting involved in the other portion of the game.
The whole trammel/felucca split can easily be looked upon by those players as 50% of the game world they will not partake in, unless they have some playstyle forced upon them when they go there.
A pure pvp server offers pvp players the gameplay they desire in 100% of the server they are on. The same is true for pve players.
The trammel/felucca server isn't the ultimate solution to game servers. It is just another option that developers should offer.
No I agree completely!
But how many games that offer FFA PvP offer additional server types that don't have FFA PvP?
Does EvE? Darkfall? Mortal Online? No.
Even WoW has PvE and PvP servers. And you know what? It's a good idea!
Because as you say, these "options that developers should offer" indeed do let players choose how they wish to play a game, and I think that is the ultimate freedom and ultimate selling point for a MMORPG.
If the UO formula > EQ formula, why is EQ > UO? Why are games that follow the EQ formula > games that follow the UO formula?
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Denial;) UO and sandboxes are only greater for the minority. The minority is not something a AAA developer seeks to capture when making a game, specifically designed to make money. MMOs are designed to make money first and foremost since there is no game without profit. Indie developers ARE making sanboxes, yet thats not enough. To appease the unappeasable a AAA developer has to gamble and risk losing millions in order to accomplish what exactly? They could make a few 100k extremely bitter elitist gamers semi-happy for a short while until they rebel and complain that the game isn't EXACTLY like its "supposed" to be according to them? Yeah, thats exactly who I'm gunning for when investing millions, years of production time, blood and sweat.
A themepark at the core with a few sandbox features sprinkled in is all any AAA developer is going to risk. What motivation is there for them to do any more than that?
Wrong. There are multiple level of dififculties (you say "only level" .. i interpret that as one). Two modes for 5 man, 4 modes for raids. And sure, gear is the limitation factor on the encounter. What is the problem with that? You still have choice. And you don't have the gear to power through the highest level of dungeons.
Even with all the itterations of the dungeons (heroic, 10 man, 25 man, etc) its the same rotations, same experience. There isn't much difference running a normal dungeon with an appropriate leveled & geared group and running a heroic dungeon with appropriate leveled & geared group.
The ONLY difference is that the monsters have more HP and maybe the Boss has 1 more attack. Again, difficulty is only defined by gear progression.
Hmm .. choice is choice. No one can control whether other "love" pvp-ing .. but the choice is there. Love is irrelavant.
When you have players joining PvP battlegrounds and AFK or do other things that games the system for GEAR rewards over fighting the other side to help your team....you have a TERRIBLE PvP experience.
Wrong. There are usually two slot where craft items are BIS or close to BIS for each gear level from T8.
Great.....so the 150+ recipes that I learned to get my crafting skill to max lvl for that 1 or 2 pieces of gear is a deep & satisfying crafting experience?
UO is a bad GAME. I played it since beta and jumped ship once EQ was out and there was even less choice. You have no choice about pvp .. you are going to get ganged. You have no choice if you want to fight ... tank-mage is the only way to go. There is a reason why that game topped out at ~250k players.
Like one of the posters said....you didn't play UO at its peak. The reason the game topped out at 250k players probably had a lot to do with the limited technology that was available during its time. When you consider that EQ came as a full 3D 360 degree experience, in a time when most people were jumping onto broadband.....its a wonder that EQ didn't fully wipe out UO completely. It's a even bigger wonder that UO is still running today. There must have been something good about it.
Eve is not like DF or MO. CCP actually learned from what UO did. Eve's empire space is very similar to a different pvp rule set server and that is the future of sandbox games in my opinion.
My favorite sandbox games are the ones that don't force anything on a player. Eve is like this, you can stay in empire, pve all day if you want to and be safe. In games like DF people are limited by ffa pvp and this keeps a playerbase low pop.
Honestly if eve didnt go the more point to click and crazy learning cliff route it would have millions of subs and we wouldnt be discussing EQ>UO rule sets right now.
I mean even with its 320k subs. Eve is pretty high up there when it comes to mmo subs. Besides WoW what themepark mmo thats P2p has passed Eve? Aion? Maybe FFXI? Both games are nothing like WoW and are more suited to older type gamers.
So has the EQ way of doing things really proven 100% to be the cash cow over sandbox? I dont know they all seem to suck besides wow and they certainly dont have the sub numbers when compared to Eve.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
There has to be a balance in my opinion. UO was my first mmo-love, so I will try not to sound too biased. But the thing that made UO so great to me (other than being the first MMO I played) was what we call sandbox. But after reading about 4 pages of this post, the OP keeps reiterating the importance of choice. That is what early-UO had, almost to a fault. The trammel/feluccia(sp?) split was not UO in it's hayday (imo, again). The player driven economy/community and the way UO made you feel while you played it.
I can list several memories/examples, but I don't want to get stuck going down memory lane. I have also played SB, RYL, Lineage 2, WAR, and most recently Darkfall. All had aspects that I liked, but nothing really hooked me like UO (loved SB, but was littered with bugs).
I am keeping my hopes high for Old Republic, just because bioware can make good games. But everyone is basically right.. the developers with the big money want to make money. There is a formula out there that is making the buku bucks. Just like most things in life, it's all about the money. It's also why we see the indie companies trying new things, but it never quite reaches it's full potential because of numerous reasons. Darkfall comes to mind, MO right now, Tabula Rusa.. etc.
I do think that sandbox games would benefit quite a bit if they managed to create a crafting system or an economy system that would be as interesting as fighting a scripted AI. You can say that killing 10,000 boars is not really much of a challenge, which certainly is true, but atleast it is entertaining whereas crafting, although interesting on meta-game level, is never interesting as an independent act. On a vast majority of games the only thing you actually do whilst crafting is clicking a button once after a tedious and time-consuming gathering session -- which involves mostly clicking your mouse button until you reach the required number. In a sense, Free Realms gathering and crafting is way more fun (atleast for a while) than what most sandbox games can offer.
There might be various time-consuming phases on crafting, it might be staged or it might require professions of a number of players but it does not change the fact that ultimately it is just a click of a button. Arguably this same can be said from killing that scripted AI but whilst doing that you atleast have to react on something even if that would be "not standing on fire" as many describe it. When a game bolsters with magnificent crafting it normally means that there is a plethora of items you can craft, not that it would hold any particular gameplay innovation. Hence, if "the" meme of a sandbox game is its economy and crafting it has utterly failed to make that one particular game-defining feature worthwhile; spreadsheet programs are nice and all, but noone calls MS Excel or OO Calc a good game, thou they can handle even the most complex of spreadsheets.
What then would be fun crafting. Well, I think that MMOG developers should look over to other gaming genres. Spore's creature creator, a sandbox feature par excellance, was massively popular not because it was open ended but because it offered you relatively large freedom of choice and making those choices was actually fun. If I would have even remotely as fun item crafting (be it house, weapon, ship, planet or cupcake) on a sandbox game I would be right away more interested to give it a try; the modules would be the game content. These could be player created if that makes it more sandboxy or you could get them from the environment to encourage exploration. It wouldn't remove the entire tediousness of lack-of-content for a random gaming session but it would be a good start.
I agree completely.
Even with all the itterations of the dungeons (heroic, 10 man, 25 man, etc) its the same rotations, same experience. There isn't much difference running a normal dungeon with an appropriate leveled & geared group and running a heroic dungeon with appropriate leveled & geared group.
The ONLY difference is that the monsters have more HP and maybe the Boss has 1 more attack. Again, difficulty is only defined by gear progression.
Hmm .. are you actually familiar with hard mode? And even one new ability of the new boss can change your whole strategy significantly.
Examples:
1) OS 3 drakes are very different encounter than just normal because you have to deal with the drakes at the same time as teh boss.
2) TOC 25 hard mode .. northern beast ecounter .. you may have to tank two boss at the same time compared to normal only one at a time.
3) Twin valkyries .. new ability .. doing AOE dmg to those around u .. so spacing becomes important .. you can do the fight stacking next to orb.
Examples go on and on ....
When you have players joining PvP battlegrounds and AFK or do other things that games the system for GEAR rewards over fighting the other side to help your team....you have a TERRIBLE PvP experience.
Preferably over world pvp and ganging anyway. And if you want to get your gear reward faster, you play to win. I play lots of BGs and few people are sitting there doing nothing. That is particularly true in zones like WG where you need to control it to get access to VoA.
Great.....so the 150+ recipes that I learned to get my crafting skill to max lvl for that 1 or 2 pieces of gear is a deep & satisfying crafting experience?
Crafting should not a main focus of a hack-n-slash MMORPG anyway. But there are more. There are constant demand for:
1) consumables .. made by alchemy (always useful & money maker)
2) enchanting/jewel crafting .. needed when people upgrade gear.
3) enchantment done by blacksmithing (jewel slots), engineering (scopes), tailoring (leg enchant) ......
And sure only 2 pieces BIS for cloth, leather, plate & mail but if all the craft pieces are BIS, no one is going to raid.
Like one of the posters said....you didn't play UO at its peak. The reason the game topped out at 250k players probably had a lot to do with the limited technology that was available during its time. When you consider that EQ came as a full 3D 360 degree experience, in a time when most people were jumping onto broadband.....its a wonder that EQ didn't fully wipe out UO completely. It's a even bigger wonder that UO is still running today. There must have been something good about it.
No real sandbox games have ever rised beyond 300k or so subs. Even the great Eve .. cannot even surpass EQ at its peak. Obviously technology has nothing to do with it. The UO design just does not resignate with most people.
And whether i play at the peak of not, the problems (ganging, tank-mage, housing gettos, clicking clicking clicking to advance a skill) are still present till the peak.
Another way to look at this is that one very niche sandbox game created by an independent developer is overwhelmingly outperforming almost every single themepark mmo on the market.
Anyone can shows facts in different lights to achieve a desired outcome.
I don't think anyone can really say that sandbox games cannot do this or that based on past offerings, because most have suffered the same flaws and errors that many themepark mmos have. If a company really took their time to make a decent sandbox game I suspect it would do well enough.
I agree completely.
In the Western world, EvE is probably the 2nd most popular and certainly longest running subscription based MMORPG. Now there are a LOT of things I don't like about EvE Online, but I always try to remember that before WoW every single MMO was for a "niche market" and games still did plenty fine.
This illusion that a game needs millions of subs to be "successful" is a myth. It's propoganda by people like the bastards at EA who are trying to outspend everyone else and gaurantee a success...
There have been plenty of high budget movies that have been terrible, and a similar number of low budgest films that achieve incredible success.
The MMORPG genre is still very young. I have been playing and following since the beginning, and since I'm not that old it proves that the genre is quite young indeed.
We'll be seeing more EvE Online's and more World of Warcraft's in the future. We'll also see a LOT more STO's and CO's and AoC's and TR's and AA's and WAR's and DF's and MO's and....
I just pray someone does a sandbox-style open world right sooner rather then later.
It's been damn near six years since WoW came out. Since then we've had a number of themepark mmos come out and none of them can touch WoWs numbers.
How many more high budget AAA themeparks do we need? Hello! look at the sub numbers of all the themeparks released since wow and they average around 100k subs.
Maybe Sandbox type games arent the answer but certainly something needs to change.
I'm sure these guys dont spend 30-50+ million dollars in Dev costs to have sub 100k numbers.
It's time to realize that noone wants another WoW. The one we have is good enough (proven by the 12.5 million that wont leave). Lets try something else. Think outside the box and no outside the box does not mean UO style either.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP