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ESO - The Building of a Sandpark?
bcbully
Member EpicPosts: 11,843
First, I'm not talking about a mincraft or EVE type sandbox or even a Wushu. ESO's today is nothing like these games. It's a semi-casual themepark that has some hardcore elements with a heavy emphasis on 3 faction pvp. However with the upcoming Guild Trader system (couple weeks) and the Justice System (still months away) ZOS seems to be adding a heavy dose of sand.
The Guild Trader System (GTS) reminds me of Age of Wushu's personal stores. Weekly players would bid on prime stall real estate all over the game world. These stalls allowed the winning bidder to sell their goods there for the week. You can even customize those stalls. ESO GTS will function in much the same way, minus the FFA pvp 
but with all the capitalism I'm sure.
The Justice System is a real deal full blown sandbox system as it stands. Let's forget about the killing of NPCs, the stealing from NPCs will be a crime. The next time you walk into an NPCs house and take a peak in their closet, reach into their backpack, or rummage through their desk looking for recipes you might just be committing a crime. Crime you could be arrested for by a player from your own faction! That's ffa pvp with risk and reward.
These are just two systems, and two systems do not make a sandbox. Two systems that are certainly a step in the direction of evergreen content though. A step in the right direction imo. If ZOS continues to move in this direction in a timely fashion we could be watching the building of a sandpark.
Here's the poll from the official forums that got me to thinking about this. The developers described opt in FFA pvp with risk and reward, and 70% of the people love the idea! 
edit- Patch 1.3 and the GTS will be here Monday August 4th.
Comments
As long as the guild stores aren't owned by botter guilds that have infinite sums of money...haha... You can have several guilds. So one guild leader could transfer gold to another guild and both could own shops becuase they are rich.
Lots of exploitables with adding more sand because it gives players (who a select few ruin things by exploiting) free will and choice.
I actually don't care. I like it either way, just want to see the population who have feelings hurt very easily stay in game. I'm not trying to be mean. A lot of gamers do tend to overreact on the simple things.
I played ESO at release and found the experience to be weak at best. To be fair, I am an "end game" more PvE type player and ESO at launch left much to be desired once you reached max level. However, I will say that Zen is adding some pretty cool features to the game and I suspect that these features will attract a decent amount of PvP focused individuals which is where I think the future of this game lies.
I may return to the game at some point in the future but I would need a little more PvE end game to help entice me. I am not talking about raids per say but solid dungeons maybe some cool world bosses etc.
I do applaud Zen for working on the vast improvements they made on this game since launch.
Agreed, one area that is definitely better, is combat. It feels so much better than it did in Beta. I hear they plan to make even more strides in that area, it feels almost crisp now, the sounds match up and it feels like it has some weight. If they can further improve it, all the better.
No Quest bugs thus far either, granted I've only put about 4 hours in thus far, but in beta, I'd have seen many by now.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The guild trader system is a good idea, but we will have to see it before we can be certain. It is needed, that's more than I can say about the Justice system, which seems to be a case of 'its in the solo game, so lets shoe horn that into the MMO.'
Were there hordes of players asking for this? All I can say is that trading has been talked about a lot online, justice system not once. If it brings something to the game fine, if it proves a pain then hopefully they will learn a lesson.
I'd say the justice system makes sense compared to how things are now, I can walk right up to a shop and start stealing swords, armor, etc, and no one bats an eye. That's kind of weird.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The Justice System has been mentioned by them every time they've mentioned the Thieve's Guild for more than a year.
Not everything has to asked for by hordes of player. Original ideas by developers are still allowed last time I looked...thank God!
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
So serious question since I am contemplating resubbing...
What PvE is there to do at max level? Also I heard something about them revamping the vet ranks? Any info will be greatly appreciated.
Vet ranks are now much easier to do. I started with the old system and had change my set up to survive. Now I am back to putting weapon skills I don't need on the bar so they level up with questing.
There are dungeons which are like raids if that's what you mean.
I would hardly call that sandbox or sandpark.
Justice system isn't a real open-PvP (People can choose to be attackable, you "steal" instanced objects, "kill" phased NPCs, ...) or free-PvP, and there isn't any decision you can take.
The store system looks good, but if you can't get store by another way than bidding, it's kind of a dumb system (Guilds with the more member and the more farmer will get stores), and since the economy in ESO is non-existent, I don't think those will be very usefull.
The first highlight is conjecture that could be made do to lack of information and/or semantics.
The second, could you explain what you mean? From my understanding people will risk being seen by NPC "stop thief!" and possibly being apprehend by guards or players, in order to pursue their potential reward.
The 3rd. The economy in ESO is bullet proof, one of the strongest I've seen. There are no artificial floors, and no one is collecting mats just to vendor them. Not sure why you would say that. Do you mind explaining what you mean here aswell?
I hope they do, ES has always been a Sandbox RPG, albeit a single player game.
I would love to see the Justice System in action. Also the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild should incorporate Sandbox elements, if it is just a quest line - skill tree I won't be satisfied.
Dark Brotherhood needs to incorporate open-world PvP somehow.
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
I don't see how any of that really adds "sand" to the game. Still seems like it would be just another themepark even with those systems in place. And as far as the "stalls" go...I've played several Asian mmo's with a similar kind of feature. It was annoying trying to find what I needed. Although, I do like that you can customize your stall.
I like those new features.
^This
Sandbox means all you're given is sand, typically in the form of resources. Resources that can be gathered, or taken from mobs, or maybe even generated by the players themselves through farming or some such similar activity. Players take those resources and make a world out of them. They make cities, weapons, and armors. They build economies. They assume roles like trader, pirate, brigand, politician, hunter, farmer, miner, mercenary, boss, etc in order to exploit those resources. Quests are player generated based on obtaining, sustaining, or protecting these resources and/or it's products. It's like...well...a sandbox. There's nothing in it but what you create. Here's a simple rule of thumb to tell if a game aspect is sandbox or not. If it was handed to you by a developer it's not. If it was created by a player, it is.
Well that just about eliminates everything... Player generated content emerges from systems developers "hand" to the players.
EVE is full of developer made systems completely controlled by the player, same as Wushu. ESO in it's current state does not have much if any of this outside of Cyrodiil. It could be argued that the economy is player driven, but there are too many mob drops imo, developers "handing" players gear.
The Justice System as described will be completely player controlled and player generated content will emerge from where there was nothing.