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Looking for a good sandbox MMORPG, preferably isometric.
inferno89
Member UncommonPosts: 16
Hi all,
I am looking for a decent sandbox MMORPG to sink into and after some suggestions. My co-op buddy and I prefer isometric games as UO was our first and favourite MMORPG, and we've played most of the western MMORPGs to date. We enjoyed Legends of Aria while it was being actively developed but that has died off, and similar with Fractured Online. We are essentially looking for UO2 but haven't found it yet. Britaria seems to have some promise under its new development team but NFT's give a foul taste. I am enjoying Embers Adrift for its slower pace and more oldschool MMORPG feel, but it's a little too slow-going for our couple of hours here and there #dadgamer playsessions.
We don't class games like Valheim, Conan Exiles etc as MMORPGs though as we're getting desperate for a decent game to dive into, we may need to go back to something like that. Theme park MMORPG's are ok and we jumped back into New World, but it's the same old rinse and repeat of grabbing quests in an area, running there and smashing those then turning them in. We're looking for a bit more free thinking, pick a direction and slay everything in our path and maybe picking up some good loot along the way.
Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated.
I am looking for a decent sandbox MMORPG to sink into and after some suggestions. My co-op buddy and I prefer isometric games as UO was our first and favourite MMORPG, and we've played most of the western MMORPGs to date. We enjoyed Legends of Aria while it was being actively developed but that has died off, and similar with Fractured Online. We are essentially looking for UO2 but haven't found it yet. Britaria seems to have some promise under its new development team but NFT's give a foul taste. I am enjoying Embers Adrift for its slower pace and more oldschool MMORPG feel, but it's a little too slow-going for our couple of hours here and there #dadgamer playsessions.
We don't class games like Valheim, Conan Exiles etc as MMORPGs though as we're getting desperate for a decent game to dive into, we may need to go back to something like that. Theme park MMORPG's are ok and we jumped back into New World, but it's the same old rinse and repeat of grabbing quests in an area, running there and smashing those then turning them in. We're looking for a bit more free thinking, pick a direction and slay everything in our path and maybe picking up some good loot along the way.
Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Comments
Once upon a time....
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
He's been my only hope for a long time.
Once upon a time....
Not many choices in recent years under the heading of sandbox MMORPG, good or otherwise.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I have tried to get into EVE Online many times over the years but always get overwhelmed. My last attempt I actually got through most of the tutorial missions but then got stuck on something and didn't go back. I might try it again.
Fallout 76 isn't a bad suggestion either. We do like the game and it does tick some sandbox 'boxes', but we have to be in the mood for that wasteland setting. At the moment we're in a fantasy/medieval setting mood. Sounds weird but it happens haha. Still, good suggestions thanks.
I have the same basic question about Project Gorgon, for anyone who's played it...what Sandbox features does it have? Or lack?
Once upon a time....
There are quests, but they don't drag you about by the nose from character creation onward. Rather, you can just set off on a tangent of your choosing and explore the world as you wish. In that way it's kind of like a sandbox.
If any of you have any specific questions I'll try to answer them for you but I'm not an expert on it so I may not be address them all.
You can do this method in theme park MMORPGs, but there is a much higher benefit to grabbing a bunch of quests and going where they tell you to go without much thought, clicking through quest dialogue and not understanding why you're doing what you're doing. The challenge is there in a different way but it's a very guided way, and you may get some random loot while hunting but the majority of benefit comes from turning the quest back in.
We jumped into New World last night and decided to do the main story quest. This has us running for about 10 minutes. We killed things along the way to make use of the 2x XP atm. Once we got to the story quest, it then sent us to an area a few zones away, so we fast travelled over. It made the journey disjointed and we were just fast travelling all over the map from quest to quest. We stopped and just ran to a village taking out the monsters but xp was hard to come by that way.
The journey will be different for everyone, but we get more value out of sandboxes and making our own decisions each play session. So long as we feel we've got value out of the 1/2/3 hour session, that's the main thing.
I think freedom of movement around the world is the first step in creating a Sandbox game.
Next step is worldly interaction.
After that and closely following is the social aspects, tools and systems for player interactions and organizations.
But then you need a great world to do all of that in.
You need the basic hack and slash and spellery.
And then you need to add reasons to interact in the world. Fun reasons.
It's like Exploration. It's not enough to just see what's over the hill. You need Discoveries every once in a while, too. Fun and rewarding Discoveries, in one way or another.
Once upon a time....
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out if "broken lore" was actually broken or some big and very cool secret.
There were marble pillar circles that seemed connected. They were identicle, if I remember. One was near the entrance to Shame, and the other was in the southern jungles.
But that one (in the jungles) would disappear from time to time, and then reappear again later. I think it had to do with updates and old saves, just a fluke. But I always wondered, so my Mage would Recall back and forth, trying different things, making notes and checking for reactions both immediate and in days to come.
I never figured anything out, but it was a fun time waster for a player who likes riddles.
By the way, in case you've never seen it...
https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/487824/the-greatest-quest-artifact-to-ever-exist-in-mmorpgs
Once upon a time....
There are guilds. They are customizable in that you can change the names of the ranks to suit your preference and guild storage is available. There are tools for setting permissions and such. I don't think there are actual guild halls. I've never been part of one so don't know much about them.
There is plenty of hacking, slashing, and spelling one can do. There are numerous types of magic and other unusual abilities. Fire mages, ice mages, necromancers, priests, mentalists, combat psychologists and more.
Beyond that are more esoteric abilities.
One can become a Druid, which comes with special powers but also obligations in game. There are periodic crises that they must strive to solve. They get no XP from any other activity until they do. Those that do participate get rewarded.
You can open up the ability to create Fairy characters, which have their own magic unique to them.
Players can be cursed with or seek out animal forms. Should they remain in those forms they can learn abilities specific to them. However, early on there is a disadvantage in that non-animals won't be able to understand you well. Basically, you get a Beast Speech skill when you're an animal and the higher it is the better you can communicate in chat. The lower it is the more often whatever you type is turned into animal sounds.
Another feature of the game is that you can build relationships with many of the NPCs by either doing them favours or giving them appreciated gifts. Doing so will lead to varying benefits depending on the NPC, such as being given items, gaining access to training opportunities, being granted more storage space, and kinds of other things.
A neat little feature is that those NPCs you have a high relationship with will sometimes give you gifts during the holidays if you speak to them at that time. There is no housing as of yet, but one of the features suggested may be part of it is occasional visits to your home by NPCs you have a strong relationship with. Some nice touches there.
There are all kinds of things to find out in the wilderness from puzzles to solve to hidden away alternate entrances that can serve as backdoors to dungeons.
Also, there are little touches here and there you don't often see. For example, if you are set on fire and taking damage over time if there is water nearby going in will douse the flames, ending that ongoing damage.
There are so many things that can be said about the game I'm barely scratching the surface here. Their Wiki provides much more in the way of detail, but reading too much of that will spoil the exploration and discovery elements of the game as their disclaimer says, so read at your own risk.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
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We've been playing Fractured Online, but we have seen everything we wanted to see in this early access version. Knowing that our characters will be wiped before launch means we don't want to invest much more time into it as it'll be wasted. We at least know which mobs to target and which skills/talents to unlock as priorities when the game does launch.