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Sandbox MMO keep doing something wrong: Themepark MMO keep doing something wrong: but ego keeps the
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,400
Time and time again. I notice a repeated trend. Sandboxes and Themeparks mmos keep making the same mistakes, over and over, which hampers their chance at major success. Honestly I believe the reason we havnt seen a WoW Killer (MMO term) is because each themepark and sandbox MMO that comes out, does that same stupid mistakes, which we should all already know the outcome of it. but it seem like Developer's ego is too big to ever listen to the community about anything when pointing out these issues. Why else are they repeated time and time again?
I will try to detail out some of these repeated mistakes developers make...
THEMEPARK
most themepark MMO, lack the "Non Finite Comtents". What I mean by finite content, is content, which has a limited number of times at doing something before you seen everything. (Incoming WoW example) in WoW for example, at endgame, a player can run a raid or party dungeon once, and all the rest of the times running the same instance, it is always the same. Some games randomize mobs, but again they usually loop as well to a finite point in which you seen everything. THEMEPARK MMO need a way to add more persistent contents as well. Persistent continents is usually the most casual forms of PvP and PvE . Also the world in theme park MMO is always tiered. Can't we finally make levels scale higher level players down so that all zones become useful rather than only endgame zones. The world is so big, but only a fraction of it is for max level players. That's poor design. Things like Player housing which offer a infinity possible ways of relocating and designing, should be standard in themepark MMO. Also more free design contents and events that keep the world interesting.
SANDBOX
Most sandbox MMO always follow the same fomular for PvP rulesets. Its always FFA PvP instead of factions. I have rarely seen a sandbox developer be innovating in that field other than excluding all PvP.why do sandbox MMO always have to have a harsh death penalty? This with FFA PvP just screams for harassment of other players.
hey if you disagree with anything I suggested, feel free to do so. Also if you like to add on, than tell us about it. Opinions are like cells, everybody has them. Tell me yours
I will try to detail out some of these repeated mistakes developers make...
THEMEPARK
most themepark MMO, lack the "Non Finite Comtents". What I mean by finite content, is content, which has a limited number of times at doing something before you seen everything. (Incoming WoW example) in WoW for example, at endgame, a player can run a raid or party dungeon once, and all the rest of the times running the same instance, it is always the same. Some games randomize mobs, but again they usually loop as well to a finite point in which you seen everything. THEMEPARK MMO need a way to add more persistent contents as well. Persistent continents is usually the most casual forms of PvP and PvE . Also the world in theme park MMO is always tiered. Can't we finally make levels scale higher level players down so that all zones become useful rather than only endgame zones. The world is so big, but only a fraction of it is for max level players. That's poor design. Things like Player housing which offer a infinity possible ways of relocating and designing, should be standard in themepark MMO. Also more free design contents and events that keep the world interesting.
SANDBOX
Most sandbox MMO always follow the same fomular for PvP rulesets. Its always FFA PvP instead of factions. I have rarely seen a sandbox developer be innovating in that field other than excluding all PvP.why do sandbox MMO always have to have a harsh death penalty? This with FFA PvP just screams for harassment of other players.
hey if you disagree with anything I suggested, feel free to do so. Also if you like to add on, than tell us about it. Opinions are like cells, everybody has them. Tell me yours
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I agree with you on the themepark, however I cant name a sandbox in the past 10 years with ffa pvp that has any actual sand in it, so that theory is pretty untested.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
Yep. All of these games were made with very small budgets. They simply couldn't get much in their games, code or content. That left them with pretty much empty worlds and little to do, other than the easy thing of letting players hack away at eachother.
Once upon a time....
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
I'm curious what you are basing that on other than a lack of familiarity with sandbox MMOs.
Faction is regularly added by the devs but not often used by the players because it has nothing to do with sandbox gameplay. It is a contrived and arbitrary system that is best left as a faction grind if included at all. UO has factions. EVE has factions. Darkfall has factions in the form of races. Mabinogi has both faction PVP and arena PVP. Fallen Earth has faction and guild PVP. Asheron's Call has faction and Guild PVP. Saga of Ryzom has three factions.
Actually, you'll find that several sandbox MMOs offer multiple forms of PVP. Here's a couple examples:
EVE Online
- factional warfare
- FFA PVP
- corp/alliance war declaration
Ultima Online (more info here)
- Order and Chaos
- RPK/NPK (FFA PVP)
- Guild Warfare
- Faction warfare
Player created communities are more meaningful than computer designed communities. A member of a PVP guild is usually likely to have an interest in aiding his guild mates but with factions... eh, doies one Horde player really care or even know another, let alone have any kind of tie to them?
Factions have their place, but that place is rarely in the deeper gameplay aspect of sandbox games.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
The most glaring part of the PVE issue lately is the complete absence of it.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I think the sandbox problem is at least as much the fct that they use drunk monkeys to write the code as FFA PvP. I never seen a FFA PvP game with polish so even though it is likely we can't be 100% sure that they can't be a hit.
As for the themeparks, the reason that most content gets outleveled so fast is because the gap between noob and a max leveled character is too great. A noob is a peasant that makes Balderick look like a superhero while a vet is a demi god.
But I think that an even bigger problem is the lack of imagination, almost every single themepark game have the same mechanics and a very similar world.
For sandboxes seems the problem to be that they don't learn from others misstake. In themeparks they do but they take it too far and don't dare to change the game enough, which means that most players will stay in Wow.
FFA PVP is only going to attract people if its skillbased, if every players chance is equal to an extent.
That's an interesting view of UO and EVE.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Except no matter what kind of skill you base it on every player's chance will not be equal.
As it should be. The sooner we throw out these arbitrary notions of balance the sooner we can get to more interesting styles of gameplay.
I'm not sure where this need for equality came from. Certain classes SHOULD be more powerful than others, with the tradeoff being in the gameplay features. A heavily armored warrior should be able to easily beat the stuffing out of a sneaky rogue, but you can bet your bottom that the rogue is going to be richer and far more versatile in other areas of the game. A mage should be able to flatten the warrior unless the warrior gets in close, in which case he or she is dead and simply doesn't know it.
Unfortunately, I don't see this happening anytime soon. There's actually been a move away from this type of gameplay. Remember when healers were dependent on groups (as I feel they should be)? It's been awhile.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Its called being a bad game.
TOR, RIFT, WoW, EvE and GW (Maybe a few others) are really the only games worth anything in this genre.
Everything eles is just bad and simply not a good game.
Well the thing is that level based gameplay developed from pnp rpgs which required you to have a group of friends to play with and where I am pretty sure exp was not given for who killed the most creatures. When this was translated to computer games where you didn't have a group problems started to develop. This is a common function of people creating games who didn't understand why the original designers they were mimicing set up their games the way they did.
Levels are outdated and stupid for many reasons.
As for throwing out balance making things interesting maybe to the people who are lucky to have the particular "skill" required by the system. In any case I don't see why time based leveling is not viable if we are tossing out notions of balanced play. Does it really matter to the loser whether they died because of min/maxing, twitch, or vet characters? It doesn't matter to me. Doesn't change the effects of dying. Of course I think that we should do away with dedicated healers in any case. Dedicated heroes will always require a group if they don't have good damage capabilities to level. Even if you leveled their healing based on how much they healed you would need them to be able to kill stuff, otherwise you just sit at a spawn and heal while letting creatures beat on you. That was how people leveled their blocking skill in tibia.
Actually, in a persistent state world that focuses on competitive gameplay, that matters a LOT, as the more advantage a vet player has - perceived or real - the less likely new players are to join.
This is really a topic for another thread, though, as the OP's issue isn't about how fair/balanced PVP is, rather with the types of PVP (or existence at all of PVP) in sandbox games.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I would suggest you look up Everquest.
Before WoW hit, EQ was the king of MMOs. It was brutal, and you had to be grouped to complete the far majority of content. Speaking of content, there was a shit ton of it. From PVE, to trades, to factions/languages/etc....EQ pretty much touched on everything short of allowing folks to alter the game world. The lone exception being the Sleeper in Velious.
LoTRO....another well put together game. FF XI....same thing. If ya like sandboxes, UO was the king of that sub genre. A little mix of PVP/realm combat was DAoCamelot. Or how about EQ2, which was kind of the mini WoW.
Folks would probably throw in games like SWG or Vanguard, but those games were too buggy IMO.
Maybe you were just talking present day, and if so, LoTRO still should be there.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
My two cents here.
As far as theme parks go, I think the reason we haven't seen a "WoW Killer" is because all of the themeparks seem to try and copy what WoW IS, not what WoW started out as.
When WoW first came out it was actually a good game, I played and loved it....now its some twisted distorted peice of crap that most people who play WoW don't even care for.
Right now there is still a huge market for a "pre BC WoW-esq" game.
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It's a symptom of a larger problem. We're building virtual worlds, and the best thing developers can make for us to do is have us work towards being better at killing things. RPGs have become too synonymous with combat simulators. I'm not saying that it should be a footnote, but there needs to be more to do than simply fight things.
Virtual worlds just take too much time for most people so that there isn't a market. Unless one is willing to sacrifice graphics there will never be an amazing virtual world. EU and SL don't really count because they lack are just too far from the mmorpg genre. They are a separate category.
The overhead in cost and time and content limitations imposed by really polished graphics cripples niche markets.
A good virtual world is not to much time consuming bcs it is filled with adventure spots that can be played in any amount of time you want to preset as designer.
A virtual world is NOT a monolithic world!
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Thank you, I agree. It seems the only thing you can play as is some sort of slayer. Every quest generlaly involves killing some monsters to achieve your goal... yea... that gets old.
I am still looking for a game where crafting is meaningful and can be advanced without combat.
A good sandbox needs to have good gameplay systems outside of pvp. It needs to give players ways to build political and economical systems, like what EVE has done. Players should be able to spend 100% of their time doing things other than PvP if they choose to do so, and be rewarded for it.
I agree, as well. Viable alternatives to killing things can be done, however I don't think we'll see them until MMO gamers get fed up with playing Kill 10 Rats Online over and over in different settings each year. I had thought we'd reach that point in 2008, but that year - and its disastrous entries to the genre - came and went with not a single indication that MMO gamers wouldn't rush to pre-order the next title as soon as it comes out... again and again and again...
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
What you are describing is a game, not a virtual world. I'm not sure if you understand what virtual world means.