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Should Sandbox?
medmarijuana
Member Posts: 282
I know I am always reading people talk about how the MMO's are going down hill and how they like the old sanbox style MMO better. I know alot of these people post in these forums. So, Since there seems to be a large part of the MMO community that enjoys this sort of thing, Why not have somebody create a decent sandbox game? Has to be a dev team somewhere that wants a really good sandbox game.
The ones I played recently I would have to say are pretty much rubbish for this day and age. Some people may like them, and I wont name them here, because some people seem to like the games.
They could definately come out with a sandbox style MMO with good gfx, good combat, good animations, decent gameplay, plenty of content, but to the point where you know, you can just do it the way you see fit.
The ones I played so far are either outdated, or the combat and story is lacking.
What are some ideas of how you could make a really good sandbox MMO that people will enjoy that will meet up to today's standards?
If they made a really good sanbox MMO that is enjoyable , I would probably play it myself. I have been playing MMO's since 97 , I think they are better now than they ever been, but My first MMO's were sandbox. Nexus TK was one of those, which was not a bad game for 97-2000 .
Comments
people in this forum doesnt want sandboxes, since there are plenty sandbox games out there yet they dont play em, just bitch here
what they want is a developer which against all logic drops the tens of millions that cost AAA themepark games into a sandbox game, fully knowing that sandbox games are at best EXTREMELY (yes, capital letters intended) niche and it would be a finantial suicide.
try to tell them that back when the genre was mainly sandboxes, players were counted by thousands, and now its mainly themeparks players are counted by dozens of millions. it will fall in deaf ears
some people here thinks that developers and investors MUST go bankrupt to fulfil their most nonsensical whims just because.
in the mean time 1 true sandbox game will get released yearly, made by some indie company with a lot of dedication and goodwill, but they will ignore it to (oh irony!) keep moaning here that "what we need are moar sandboxes!!!" and will let it sink.
Boy did you nail that one. A+
The problem is these "indie" companies aren't living up to their designs, or simply that they're so focused on their vision they're unable to see the greater picture (cough Darkfall cough).
If you could name a single "sandbox" game released recently worth a damn I'll actually be surprised. I'd personally love Mortal Online to live up to everything they advertised originally, but that's a pipe dream at this stage.
If sandboxes are "at best EXTREMELY (yes, capital letters intended) niche", then why do the sandbox features of Farmville & Co earn bags of money, while those games are hailed as the shape of things to come? Something doesn't make sense here.
Hype train -> Reality
All i can say is; I honestly hope that games like farmville are not "what is to come" for the MMO genre. That would jsut show that devs and companies don't give a damn anymore if what they put out is any good as long as they can trick a bunch of clowns on myspace or facebook into playing it and paying for it.
Large portion of the MMO community is not the same thing as a Vocal Minority.
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Both of these posts pretty much are dead on.
The indie companies may have a lot of dedication, but they don't have the right direction. The Sandboxy games released recently have been Mortal, Darkfall, and Fallen Earth.
If Mortal worked, I would probably play it. They called their Alpha stage Beta and now they are calling their Early Beta, Release. I guess when the game is dead and gone, that's when it will be out of Beta? They haven't done anything for me to trust them just yet. I'm not throwing $50 down the drain again.
Darkfall, has always and still does have alot of potential. As it stands right now, it's just the worst FPS ever made. They seem to be working on PVE, but not really anything that's worthwhile yet. They should have kept going with the Kraken and done more boss type fights and things that would bring people together, but I guess they got bored. They really need to work on trade skills and the economy. Both are extremely pathetic. I would love for them to make a PVE/PVP sandbox, but without a decent Trade Skill crowd and something that will make the game have something that resembles an Economy.... it's just not a sandbox. As it stands, there is nothing to do in the game besides PVP for pretty much no reason. EVE started out this way, but at least in EVE I didn't have to kill 500billion rats before I got half a point in my laser skill.
Of course you still have the issue of everyone just maxing out everything and you're not really worth a damn unless you can do it all at the same time. I don't want to be a caster, I don't care about casting and I shouldn't be forced to level it anymore than I want to........... we're talking about sandboxes in this thread.
I think that one day Darkfall may become a great game. Hopefully, they can keep the graphics updated to the point where they can keep getting new players when that day comes.... because it's still a long way off. This is a game that spent 8yrs in alpha, remember that.
Fallen Earth. I could go on for days about what went wrong here, but I'll make it short. They just simply don't know what they want to be. Is it a Sandbox or is it a Theme Park? The game lacks direction completely.
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I dont think we have to worry about all games becoming like facebook and myspace. The truth is that gaming after so many years has become mainstream. Its become more popular and people who would never play a game before are playing these little timewasters, but just becouse the audience grew and became more diverse does not mean everything will change. Look at the movie buisness and the top movies there. They are very varied, just becouse for example a few years ago stupid gross out comedies were insanely popular did not cause all other movies to cease to exist and now we have the same varied movies as we had before that trend. I think the same thing is happening here. Its a trend and trends change but dont effect the big picture in the end. Also there is the element of casual gamers, well not casual gamers the gamers that are now playing Farmville and other games of the type. These people will for the most part at some point want more. They will want more complex games, with more things to do, more choices, better graphics. Slowly they will simply become gamers just like us. The timewasters oh so popular now are just the gateway for people to experiance gaming, people whose taste will change as they gain experiance with the media. Ill use my mother as an example. I got her into gaming. It was gradual first it was simple timewasters, than it was the find an hidden object games, some platformers and now finally point and click adventure games. The amazing thing is that I did not give her the idea to play adventure games. She simply wanted something different, something more and these sort of games looked interesting with their focus on puzzles and story.
This is very true. Although I think there is a reasonable segment of the market that is pro-sandbox. Depending on your definition of sandbox. However, who remembers when this forum was almost all "FFA Full Loot or else your a pussy" threads every day. Just because there are a lot of posts on this particular forum about a topic doesn't mean the majority of possible customers for the industry are for it.
It is my believe that any MMO, regardless of the systems, is polished, looks pretty nice, and has the game running smoothly at launched both technically wise and balance/gameplay wise a lot of people will play it.
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The problem with sandbox games is that they ask us to ingore all their fauls in order to enjoy the game, but thats not how its supposed to work. To me the excuse that a dev is a small indie company is not a good one. If you are small and inexperianced you have to scale back your ambitions to something that is actually realistic. This is what in my eyes killed Mortal. The game that the Devs wanted it to be will never become a reality. Lack of funding, people, talent these are things that yound and inexperianced devs have to take in to account. I think the biggest hope for the sandbox mmo genre right now is Blizzard=) This is ofcouse a pipe dream but hell I am a dreamer. I dream that the new mmo by Blizz which is supposed to be so different from WoW that it will not take players away from it will infact be a sandbox game. People will undoubtedly scream bloody murder but Blizz has the money and common sense to make a great sandboxy game.
There are plenty of good sandbox games!
Most who come here saying mmo's go down hill and we need sandbox are prolly themepark players who wanne be a sandbox vet in eyes of all forum visitors here but never played them:P
I agree these days its all to focussed on themeparks and easy gameplay for casual but there still hardcore sandbox out there thats worth playing.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
Earthrise, where are you???????????????????????
Care to name them? The reality is that themepark or sandbox, there have not been many good MMO's released, period. You should also keep in mind that it takes more than just being a sandbox to make a game good in the eyes of many players. Most of the "sandbox" games that I see people post in answer to that question are usually small budget games that lack polish and well implemented mechanics. Those games are certainly not going to draw me in.
Yep. For me Earthrise is my last hope for the sake of Sandbox MMOs otherwise i will have to stick to FPS / Dota games few years longer :-/
PS : For people who claim there are plenty of sandbox MMOs which are worth playing them please name them.
EvE doors
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EvE online is a good sandbox to me and over 300,000 others. It is polished and has some of the best mechanics and interestin features around...Course it can tae a bit of a while to learn all seven odd years of content but it is rewarding to the polite patient players.
Not nessasarily your game which if fare enough as we all look for diferent things in a game.
Another great example of Moore's Law. Give people access to that much space (developers and users alike) and they'll find uses for it that you can never imagine. "640K ought to be enough for anybody" - Bill Gates 1981
300 000? Did you count all the alts? Almost every one who i know and plays EvE-on got 1-10 alts (alt = another account). The one with 10 alts was only a single person and was a corp leader, but i wouldnt hold my breath for the statment that eve got 300k uniq players. Maybe 200k? And how many of them are active? There is always a reason to hype something up
Besides EvE-on turns off so many players for different reasons like lack of avatar and lack of your personal actions (click = lock another click and you start atack and watch till target dies).
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It ain't that bad. Usually there are between 35k & 50k ppl on (at least when I log in.... With my one char.... No Alt.)
I agree that Eve is a good game, and is a sandbox game. I also agree that 35k-50k is normal when I log in...With my two char...1 Alt.
So far that's the only sandbox game that has been mentioned. What if you don't like Sci-Fi? What if you want to play a character, not a ship? What if the play mechanics don't suit you? This is why even though there is one good sandbox game to play, people still clamour for more.
Wow this is perfect. It's exactly how I feel about pretty much all MMORPG players today. I also feel that way about myspace/facebook users.