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[Preview] Shards Online: Rethinking the Meaning of Sandbox
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Developed by a core team spanning decades of MMO development (Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer Online), Citadel Studios is filled to the brim with people whose games you’ve loved and lost (poor Tabula Rasa). During PAX we met up with Derek Brinkmann and Chris Ondrus to get an early look at the pre-alpha client of their game and talk with them about the direction they want it all to go.
Read more of Bill Murphy's Shards: Rethinking the Meaning of Sandbox.
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Comments
I like the concept, but Unity can be very problematic.
Definitely interested. On paper it's everything a lot us have been wanting for years. Their goals are set seriously high, which concerns me.
There is another indie sandbox on the horizon. The Repopulation. It may be the litmus test for future sandboxes.
O_o o_O
Unity I use Daily, there is nothing wrong with it, I have released 3 games so far with no issues, so I'm lost by this ... This is one of the few less problematic game engines on the market and biggest growing...
You lost us at Neverwinter proving anything other then why you shouldn't stry too far from your roots.
Have to keep an eye on this game, it has possibilities
Regardless of how you feel Neverwinter was a very good game. At it's core it does a lot of things really well. Sadly due to it's budget is doesn't do enough of it and has to rely on the crappy Perfect World business merger. I'd still be playing Neverwinter if the Foundry System was properly incentivized and the classes were more fleshed out.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
You can quote me on this in the future, but I predict that this game either won't launch, or it'll bomb right out the door. This game has FAIL written all over it.
If you read up on it some you'll see its just a bunch of overly excited developers that have a bunch of big ideas that haven't even remotely been thought out. There are so many major issues with their plan that there is just no way this game can be successful. I highly doubt it will ever release. If it does ever release, prepared to be Molyneux'd (lots of promises, and none of them met).
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Cool idea that depends too heavily on the rational aspect of people to freely develop fun and interesting worlds.
There is an iPhone/iPad app similar to this. Basically you create small little worlds and then you publish them for others to play in and change as they see fit. Unfortunately you see a fair amount of maps/Shards with large phallic trees, crude phrases spelled out in sand, and various other giggle worthy moments. That's what YouTube is for, not what an MMO is for.
Sadly I just don't think this will work...
You miss the point of my post. Was not to say Neverwinter was a good or bad game but that the PMC was often on the level of awesome for what they had to work with. Most times out stripping what the devs made. IMO PMC will be a large part of the future of MMOs if we are given the right tools.
Love the concept, especially player driven content.
I was underwhelmed with the voice over in the video though. Sounded like they asked a friend to read the script. Just a tad overdone.
Still, I'll be keeping an eye on this one.
You miss the point of my post. Was not to say Neverwinter was a good or bad game but that the PMC was often on the level of awesome for what they had to work with. Most times out stripping what the devs made. IMO PMC will be a large part of the future of MMOs if we are given the right tools.
Not to mention rife with exploitation and abuse.
Thats the biggest problem with Player Made Content- developers and fans go into it with grand ideas of endless possibilities, everyone else however just looks to see how they can abuse it to their advantage.
Player Made Content will never be the "future" of MMOs because to do that they would need to eliminate human nature and that wont happen with the "right tools."
Thank God we have you to protect us from the filthy manipulative devs.
It doesn't change your interpretation of them, correct, but just for funsies: Some people, myself included, love creating things just for the joy of expressing that primal creative need in some way ( I do some metal work and video editing, others may create whole worlds at a whim because that is what they like to do ) and if these people do not care they do not get any money as long as they scratch that particular itch who are you, someone who obviously does not create things for the joy of creating them...maybe except weird takes on current situations, to critique either side of an equation you stand nothing to gain from in a assets sense and everything to gain from people creating content which as Nan already pointed out has outliers which far outstrip dev made content ( to this day I remember a PMC mission in STO I was doing to grind dilithium but which stuck with me because its story just clicked with me, it was about a alternate reality version of the borg who did not become a collective but something akin to cyborg space hippies with really powerful ships and how your incursion into that alternate universe had also let in elements of your version of the borg and you had to protect that univers's borg from being assimilated).
The moment you have a right as an outside observer to complain is the moment the devs sell PMC as their own, until that point cork it and enjoy the show cause you certainly aren't working to contribute to it.
Was there any screenshots or gameplay video shown? Was it given best indie of pax just on the concept?