How come mmo's can't progress like the sims

Dzone

I used to play sims 3 for along time, and in that game there were no levels. As time went on they kept dishing out expantion packs which added new neighborhoods, and tons of new items to add to your game, and various other stuff, like pets, aliians. That game expanded a ton. It was completely horizontal progression to. You could choose what adons you wanted and just ignore what you didn't want.

 

Plus other players created Tons of stuff you could download to add to your game as well.

 

How come mmo's can't be like that. Remove the level's and just expand on the game with new areas, items, so forth. Plus alow players to create objects and trade.

 

Have mmo's be horizontal instead of vertical progression.

Azaron_Nightblade

In the Sims your skills were pretty much your levels (along with your jobs), so it did have some of that progression too.

There's no reason the two can't coexist though.

Kaneth

Asheron's Call worked similar to a sim. Yes there was levels, but they only served as an overall guide and were used to gate a little bit of content (dungeons open to only certain level ranges for example). However, the entire game was actually skill based. There was a pool of skills that you could train and even specialize in. You were allotted skill points at creation and then earned skill points at intervals along the way. Additionally, each skill had one or two attributes attached to them, so you had to coordinate skills with attributes to get the maximum effect. Skills increased through use and through spending experience points that accrued in a pool, stats were also increased from the same experience pool.

The game more or less boiled down to a certain number of builds that worked well, but it was more than just a handful. I remember reading debates between which build was better; Warmage vs. Og Mage, etc. As the general community learned more about the game, certain builds were created that were extremely weak at the beginning of the game, but became powerhouses at later levels.

AC was truly a game ahead of it's time in many regards. It's any wonder that someone else hasn't come along and built upon the systems that were put in place by AC.

Dullahan

Theres actually an MMO in development right now that is basing their game on this idea.  Its a small indie project called Identity and it actually sounds pretty cool.  They managed to fund their initial kickstarter with 180k of 150k they asked for.

Reklaw

Originally posted by Dullahan
Theres actually an MMO in development right now that is basing their game on this idea.  Its a small indie project called Identity and it actually sounds pretty cool.  They managed to fund their initial kickstarter with 180k of 150k they asked for.

I feel it's something like a true next gen sim game. But like the Sims I personaly don't like the real life to much cause everything in real life I persude in real life. In a game I want to immerse myself in a place that's either fantasy or sci-fi, preferd sci fi actually. For some people there might not be a difference between decorating their ingame house. But for me the immersion factor kicks in when I can create things I could not create in real life. 

That aside, Star Wars Galaxies had that feel. I personaly never could get into the Sims, but do feel SWG came pretty close to the Sims as often in forums people who spoke about enjoying the none-combat feature's of the game where often told to go play the Sims and let SWG become more Star Warsy without all those none-combat timesinks . Oh and look where we are with today's MMO's hehe.

I do wish MMORPG's had this more virtual world feel to them like The Sims but in their own fantasy or sci-fi or everything else that doesn't mimic real life settings but addepts them to how it would be in that fantasy/scifi world. 

Azaron_Nightblade

Originally posted by Reklaw

That aside, Star Wars Galaxies had that feel. I personaly never could get into the Sims, but do feel SWG came pretty close to the Sims as often in forums people who spoke about enjoying the none-combat feature's of the game where often told to go play the Sims and let SWG become more Star Warsy without all those none-combat timesinks . Oh and look where we are with today's MMO's hehe.

I do wish MMORPG's had this more virtual world feel to them like The Sims but in their own fantasy or sci-fi or everything else that doesn't mimic real life settings but addepts them to how it would be in that fantasy/scifi world. 

It's not limited to SWG.

Just go to any forum of an MMORPG that doesn't have housing yet and ask for it to be added. You can start counting the oh so original "You want housing?! Go play The Sims!" comments within minutes. 

Kaladin

iirc, didn't the Sims expansions contain like GW2 update amounts of new material for $60 a piece?