Old school freedom, or new style story ( poll )

Bladestrom

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by page

The list could go on and on......I'm sure many of you like me find fishing boring, BUT I'm sure many of us could pick a few out of the list that we like doing.

Yes, Fishing's a shallow system and many would find it boring.  Would you enjoy a game where fishing was absolutely required by a game and you couldn't avoid it?

I actually find fishing to be an amusing distraction sometimes.  But there's a huge difference between optional shallow distractions and mandatory shallow gameplay.

Which relates directly to slow travel (a mandatory, yet shallow system.)

 I would agree in principle, however equally no-one will allow you to slow travel where fast is available, which makes travel an interesting dilemna. Maker it slow for all, with fast in special scenarios and you get the middle ground.  

Leave travelling to the side for the sake of discussion at the moment, with regards to all those other activities, they are optional and they are found boring by a huga majority of the population, what then?

Sandboxes clearly cherish and develop across the full spectrum of optional play, themeparks focus on top activities x,y,z.  This gives a clear indication of where the different approaches lie.  One approach is holistic and is about spreading development resource, The other is about focusing on the top activites at the cost of the others.

Now imagine you like fishing say oh 5% of the time and crafting 5% of the time and 90% of the rest of the time you love raiding.  What happens in a sandbox is that the developer spreads resource across fising and crafting as well and continues to evolve it, and now it becomes more interesting, and will nibble away so now you like ot maybe 10% of the time each (still big 80% in raiding).  This is the opportunity that old-school/sandbox gives - it doesnt throw development resource in 1 basket - x,y,z, and as your mood changes you have more interesting options.  And here is the big kicker, people who love fishing are not neglected by the dev team.

Axehilt

Originally posted by Bladestrom

Sandboxes clearly cherish and develop across the full spectrum of optional play, themeparks focus on top activities x,y,z.  This gives a clear indication of where the different approaches lie.  One approach is holistic and is about spreading development resource, The other is about focusing on the top activites at the cost of the others.

Now imagine you like fishing say oh 5% of the time and crafting 5% of the time and 90% of the rest of the time you love raiding.  What happens in a sandbox is that the developer spreads resource across fising and crafting as well and continues to evolve it, and now it becomes more interesting, and will nibble away so now you like ot maybe 10% of the time each (still big 80% in raiding).  This is the opportunity that old-school/sandbox gives - it doesnt throw development resource in 1 basket - x,y,z, and as your mood changes you have more interesting options.  And here is the big kicker, people who love fishing are not neglected by the dev team.

It's certainly a viable approach.  But now we're talking about something entirely different (optional features vs. mandatory no-gameplay timesinks.)

Elder Scrolls games are successful in spite of every single one of their features being trash individually, whereas most games prefer to do fewer things very well.  But even light "forcing" of retarded gameplay (spending all of Morrowind and Oblivion jumping and running everywhere to level those skills) really harms the gameplay experience whereas in Skyrim I'm free to just play the game without feeling obligated to toss my character off a safe cliff repeatedly (seriously) just to level acrobatics.

Bladestrom

we are and in the very best sand boxes everything is optional it underpins the whole principle, and where developers could go if they dare to make the leap.  Themeparks will still be out there and pull in the biggest markets for the forseeable future at least. and if only 1 or 2 do make the leap and make an oustanding sandbox then we all win.