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if you take a sandbox world and add tons of contents, it becomes a themepark
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,400
Check this theory out that I have realized.
If players have a world with very little contents, it is then a sandbox.
But if developers add ton and tons of contents to that same previous sandbox world, it then nolonger a sandbox game, even if all the same freedoms of the original sandbox are intact.
By contents; I mean things such as quest, raid dungeons, prestige classes, events, etc.
Even though these features are added, there is no force to doing them. But with these features, people will still naturally drift to doing this same contents on their own as they would in a themepark mmorpg railed by developers.
So in sandbox its ok to do themepark elements, but why do people simply not do what they want to do in a themepark MMORPG ? Are you really being forced to do anything?
If players have a world with very little contents, it is then a sandbox.
But if developers add ton and tons of contents to that same previous sandbox world, it then nolonger a sandbox game, even if all the same freedoms of the original sandbox are intact.
By contents; I mean things such as quest, raid dungeons, prestige classes, events, etc.
Even though these features are added, there is no force to doing them. But with these features, people will still naturally drift to doing this same contents on their own as they would in a themepark mmorpg railed by developers.
So in sandbox its ok to do themepark elements, but why do people simply not do what they want to do in a themepark MMORPG ? Are you really being forced to do anything?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
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EVE has missions (quests), raid dungeons (deadspace and complexes), events, public quests (incursions) and what most other themeparks have, but it's still considered a sandbox.
I can't think of any other "sandbox" that has those things you listed added to it either. Where did you get this theory from?
What sandbox games have u tried?
vague statements full of hyperbole make the world go round.
'tons' is the variable here.
Haha.. Just wanted to say it myself but you got ahead of me. Nice fight
Themepark=Prison, game tells you what to do no freedom.
Sandbox=freedom, game wont tell you what to do.
OP has a personal vendetta against sandbox games. I'd stop replying to him if I were you.
"Spotlight Poster"...heh.
No.
EVE is the only thing close to a real sandbox to date.
It has a lot of content.
/thread
RIFT was a *crushing* disappointment; a shallow, loveless, generic MMO the likes of which hasn't been seen in a P2P format since, well, forever.
Eagerly awaiting: World of Darkness, ArcheAge.
I don't think these words mean what you think they mean.
Hmm, OP fails to grasp what true sandbox MMO gameplay entails to.
... and no, WoW is not a sandbox MMO that has lots of content added to it (inb4 OP poses that argument in clearer words than his 1st post insinuated
)
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
This statement alone points out the cold hard truth that seems to elude you sir, and that truth is that you've never played a REAL sandbox game.
A TRUE sandbox, as the poster above me points out, does NOT tell you WHAT to do. It instead, affords you as MANY paths as hardware dictates is possible for that sandbox. Giving someone the ability to choose their path, with near limitless degrees of freedom (or is dictated again, by the sandbox's hardware) allows the player to truly become part of the world.
For instance, the greatest allocation of the word "Themepark" can be attributed DIRECTLY to the new "MMORPG" that is currently being developed by Bioware. If you've seen all the gameplay footage, leaked or not, you'd see it's almost more linear than World of Warcraft, and even holds your hand even tighter than WoW.
-Locked down travel routes that are accessed via uncontrollable vehicles (SWTOR = speederbikes, WoW = griffons.....goblin contraptions...etc etc).
-Linear leveling/zone pathing with VERY set-in-stone paths for you to take (Kill this guy, go down X path....kill this OTHER guy...go down Y path....let both live...go down Z path).
All, very very thoroughly done "Themeparks". -----^
HOWEVER, although badly done by an indie developer, darkfall allows me to log into the game where I logged out, and go realistically anywhere I want. See that big mountain off in the distance? It's not surrounded by invisible walls, or loading areas to get to said mountain, or has some kind of penacle achievement quest surrounding it where you fight some nasty big bad boss to finish a quest. It's simply a mountain that I can climb that MAY or MAY NOT be infested by monsters inside or out. I can also choose what I wish to be without being locked down to any specific class title, or "path" in which my character "should" or "should not" go.
Perhaps I origionally wanted to be a swordsman, but then I saw a badass caster guy own the crap out of three people at once. Guess what, now I drop my sword & pick up a staff or something to try and be as badass as the guy I just saw. Can't do that in a themepark, I'd have to go reroll another toon to choose the "mage" class instead of the "warrior" class that a themepark would lock you down into from the start.
Freedom, is the name of the game here people. Freedom of choice, movement, character development, character choices, equipment choices, vocation, and housing.....are the future of MMORPG gaming. If you for even ONE second think that SWTOR, or any copy-cat linear beasts like WoW are going to be the mainstay of the MMO market you're insane. Games like WoW showed the industry that MMOs MAKE MONEY. However, the industry is filled with VERY stupid people that have more MONEY than they do intelligence. These "industry Leaders" will eventually get "IT", and that "IT" being that people crave freedom. Themeparks, do NOT give you this freedom unlike what a TRUE sandbox would give you.
-Themeparks are going the wayside, where are YOU going to be when the first REALLY good AAA sandbox is developed?
-Faded
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
When Star Wars Galaxies (famous sandbox example) created the Geonosian Lab as a "dungeon" you could run (content), it had the following properties:
1) Not instanced
2) Dynamic loot drops
3) Dynamic loot stats
4) Dropped equippable gear (dynamic), crafting components (dynamic), and offered a quest to acquire crafting schematics (assembled by dynamic components to make a dynamic weapon).
What happened in this dungeon?
People farmed the dungeon for drops, and competed with other people farming the dungeon for drops.
A lot of Geonosian Lab play was trying to get monsters to aggro your competitors, and to out-dps other players against bigger enemies to get the rights to loot. You sometimes made alliances and teamed up with players you found there. The experience in the dungeon was DYNAMIC because it faced you up against a changing environment that was populated by other players (they could become allies if you befriended them, or potential competitors if not), with a loot system that was random with random stats. The Acklay "boss" at the end dropped random stuff, sometimes it was garbage, sometimes it was good, sometimes it was only useful to a few people.
In my opinion, this was the greatest "dungeon" ever made in MMO history, and then Sony came up with the instanced Corvette dungeon with a time limit, and that's when SWG began the very, very slow transformation into something different than what it was originally aiming to be.
What SWG did manage to show us with the Geonosian Lab was that you could actually create "dungeon" content for a sandbox game and it could still feel dynamic with an experience that could be shaped by the players, and the content could still feel massively multiplayer, and not like a tiny co-op game for 5 players like every other MMO today.
So in response to the original poster's topic theory, I think the theory of "add instanced, static loot content to sandbox = themepark" is true when you look at today's instanced content and predictable loot drops, but I don't think it HAS to be true if we saw developers coming up with more dynamic content that fits the feel of a massively multiplayer sandbox (such as a Geo Lab, imo).
no you only crest that illusion of a prison with your mind.you want to make your own auction house in WoW? You can do that if you have like minded people that are interested in doing so. But people choose to use the built in auction house instead. That's player choices. Nobody forced you to raid for endgame in WoW, but people do it at their own free will. And WoW would be the most themepark of them all
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
No, actually Groovy was fairly on point. You don't seem to understand that saying "nobody forced you to raid for endgame in WoW" is a copout statement because you've lost the arguement at hand.
YES, they ARE, in fact, FORCING you to raid "end game" in WoW once you've run out of content in the normal WoW. YES, in fact, they ARE forcing you to use THEIR auction house simply because it's more affordable time-wise to use. No ONE would agree to using a player-created auction house simply because they'd have to sort through the items manuelly.
It's called world driven mechanics, and they're tools put in place by the developers to make X easier so Y becomes something of a moot point. It's how developers "MOVE" people from one thing to another. Simply stating "well, no one's forcing you to do it!" is simply arrogent ignorance of your part. I appologize if that sounds rude, but it's the truth.
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
WoW forces you down a set leveling path. Forces you to raid in a certain order to be competitive. Follow certain quest lines to get certain objects. Etc, etc, etc. It is a themepark, it's not the options of making your own AH that makes it a sandbox. It's the things I said before.
Comparing it to a sandbox way to make it clear. In EVE, you can level whatever you want in what order. You can go anywhere at any time, instead of doing certain halls in raids to get there. And every object can be bough off the market or with LP, no completing a quest line to get certain items.
QFE
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
This statement alone points out the cold hard truth that seems to elude you sir, and that truth is that you've never played a REAL sandbox game.
A TRUE sandbox, as the poster above me points out, does NOT tell you WHAT to do. It instead, affords you as MANY paths as hardware dictates is possible for that sandbox. Giving someone the ability to choose their path, with near limitless degrees of freedom (or is dictated again, by the sandbox's hardware) allows the player to truly become part of the world.
For instance, the greatest allocation of the word "Themepark" can be attributed DIRECTLY to the new "MMORPG" that is currently being developed by Bioware. If you've seen all the gameplay footage, leaked or not, you'd see it's almost more linear than World of Warcraft, and even holds your hand even tighter than WoW.
-Locked down travel routes that are accessed via uncontrollable vehicles (SWTOR = speederbikes, WoW = griffons.....goblin contraptions...etc etc).
-Linear leveling/zone pathing with VERY set-in-stone paths for you to take (Kill this guy, go down X path....kill this OTHER guy...go down Y path....let both live...go down Z path).
All, very very thoroughly done "Themeparks". -----^
HOWEVER, although badly done by an indie developer, darkfall allows me to log into the game where I logged out, and go realistically anywhere I want. See that big mountain off in the distance? It's not surrounded by invisible walls, or loading areas to get to said mountain, or has some kind of penacle achievement quest surrounding it where you fight some nasty big bad boss to finish a quest. It's simply a mountain that I can climb that MAY or MAY NOT be infested by monsters inside or out. I can also choose what I wish to be without being locked down to any specific class title, or "path" in which my character "should" or "should not" go.
Perhaps I origionally wanted to be a swordsman, but then I saw a badass caster guy own the crap out of three people at once. Guess what, now I drop my sword & pick up a staff or something to try and be as badass as the guy I just saw. Can't do that in a themepark, I'd have to go reroll another toon to choose the "mage" class instead of the "warrior" class that a themepark would lock you down into from the start.
Freedom, is the name of the game here people. Freedom of choice, movement, character development, character choices, equipment choices, vocation, and housing.....are the future of MMORPG gaming. If you for even ONE second think that SWTOR, or any copy-cat linear beasts like WoW are going to be the mainstay of the MMO market you're insane. Games like WoW showed the industry that MMOs MAKE MONEY. However, the industry is filled with VERY stupid people that have more MONEY than they do intelligence. These "industry Leaders" will eventually get "IT", and that "IT" being that people crave freedom. Themeparks, do NOT give you this freedom unlike what a TRUE sandbox would give you.
-Themeparks are going the wayside, where are YOU going to be when the first REALLY good AAA sandbox is developed?
-Faded
I am sorry, but the same peoplewho's argument you are trying to defend, contradict your whole argument. Again Eve. And no game is a true sandbox except second life and those like it. Everything else you do at your own free will. You only force yourself. SWG is some place inbetween. As a hybrid.Philosophy of MMO Game Design
This is only my opinion.
Sandbox=No quests, no levels,skill based, tools for building/crafting and miscellaneous player tools, open world.
Themepark=Levels, instances, quests.
than EvE isn't a sandboxPhilosophy of MMO Game Design
Can you build houses and player cities anywhere you like? Is there a form of free territory control like experienced in EVE Online?
Do you have a player economy that's run purely/foremostly on player crafted items, where looted items and gear are (sometimes even vastly) inferior to the player crafted ones including the loot obtained from dungeons and raids?
Sort of like you saw in SWG, EVE Online, and UO?
Those are MMO mechanics that stimulate and encourage the emergent gameplay that you'll see in sandbox MMO's, among other mechanics. And these aspects have in common that tools are provided by the devs, but that the arising gameplay and content is generated by the players, which because of this will also create different situations and environments over time and from one server to another. In contrast to themepark MMO's where devs provide the content, and players have little influence on it except consuming and enjoying it.
If those gameplay mechanics are preserved when quest related content or other dev content is added, then you'll have a sandbox or hybrid sandbox MMO.
Nonsense.
If you have trouble understanding what a sandbox MMO is, then just keep for yourself in mind that UO, SWG (before the NGE) and EVE Online are good examples of sandbox MMO gameplay, and WoW is a good example (if not the ultimate example) of themepark MMO gameplay.
Then look at the differences in features and gameplay, and you'll see what core differences there are between sandbox and themepark MMO's. It's really not that difficult to understand when you look objectively at it. Actually, it's pretty simple to see the differences if you have played various MMO's.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
If you take a sandbox game and remove all the content then you must be playing an indy game.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
No, I didnt say that...
I said "In my opinion" Eve is not a pure sandbox.
Honestly your endless posting against sandbox is pathetic.
Eve and Uo are the mmo with the most content, even Wow doesn't come even close to those game content wize. I think i don't need or even want to make the list. Just taking a single domain like the number of class would be so ridiculous to compare.
ANd everything you listed exist in those sandbox anyway, and they have even few versions of those so called themepark features. Just go play those game already, with all the time you spend talking uninformed stuff about sandbox you would have had all the time needed to actually try those games and make yourself a real idea about the situation. You would actually maybe even began posting something more usefull to the comunity rather than fail Trolling attempts. Since every single post you made to discredit sandbox are everytime taken down easely. So please get a clue already.
Honestly your endless posting against sandbox is pathetic.
Eve and Uo are the mmo with the most content, even Wow doesn't come even close to those game content wize. I think i don't need or even want to make the list. Just taking a single domain like the number of class would be so ridiculous to compare.
ANd everything you listed exist in those sandbox anyway, and they have even few versions of those so called themepark features. Just go play those game already, with all the time you spend talking uninformed stuff about sandbox you would have had all the time needed to actually try those games and make yourself a real idea about the situation. You would actually maybe even began posting something more usefull to the comunity rather than fail Trolling attempts. Since every single post you made to discredit sandbox are everytime taken down easely. So please get a clue already.
you havnt explained anythingPhilosophy of MMO Game Design
As good as nothing what you said in that elaborate post was a concrete answer to the OP's post, and it was far too vague to be a good description of sandbox MMO's.
In fact, the OP's reply of Second Life as an example of sandbox gameplay held more information.
Although Second Life, even if being a good example of sandbox gameplay, isn't an MMORPG even if it's a virtual world.
Actually, he did. And I did as well, with arguments that you conveniently choose to ignore.
Which leads me to believe that you're not really interested in hearing what is sandbox gameplay if it doesn't support your (implied) argument that sandbox MMO's are nothing but themepark MMO's like WoW, but that don't have the amount of content that WoW has.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Hmm...after reading this, I might go back and read OP's post history. Sounds like it could be interesting.