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What the hell is going on?
D3lit3
Member Posts: 95
Surely I cannot be the only one that is not crazy enough to pay 60$ for almost every even moderately successful game? Furthermore, I cannot be the only one that has A.D.D or some kind of goddamn neurosis that prevents me from playing themepark games for more than 10 minutes?
Look, I try and try. I've tried WoW, AoC, TERA, SWTOR and they have all been HORRIBLE MESSES. I literally cannot concentrate or devote any more than a few days max to these games because of the sheer boredom that they all bring to the table.
It's all the same thing. You were always lead down some predetermined path and fight monsters alongside people for x number of levels. This was not what I thought would be the innovation of the MMO genre when I first heard of it.
I was picturing for AT LEAST ONE game that had living breathing player cities, simple activies such as farming & crafting, no restrictions at all such as imaginary borders where you cannot attack/kill players, no set paths, player housing, huge wars among different factions and alliances, basically everything amazing that I thought would be in at *least* one game, with wars/sieges as massive and coordinated as the LOTR battles, etc etc.
The only similar game I have found (it's been 8 years) so far is Darkfall, because it was pretty much the only open world sandbox PVP game out. But why?! Surely there's a market for a game like this, for people like us where our minds are so imaginary and active that the only thing that satisfies that stimulation is SANDBOX STYLE GAMEPLAY, where anything goes and anything can happen (kinda like in real life).
EDIT: I think DayZ proves my point of a global gamer shift in consciousness towards the more "open" style gameplay.
Comments
...no you're not... I'm 'lucky enough' to have 3 such 'handicaps'
On topic. I completely agree... Most themepark MMO's I can play till cap (professional slacker, so a long way to go), and then get completely bored of doing the same thing (instance crawling) over and over again. For that reason I tihnk I've liked Lineage II (up till the end of last year when it was WoWified) so much and was subscribed with it for close to 4 years. Like you I'm now looking for something new as well. Though not DF. I'd rather wait for ArcheAge which will be released late next year (according to the current time-table).
If there is, it would already happen. Supply & demand, you know.
DayZ has less than 1M active players, and it is FREE. It is pale in comparison to games like LOL (11M)
If you use DayZ as an proof point, i will say that D3 is a much bigger (10M actually SOLD .. 8.8 if you exclude annual pass) proof point of the action co-op lobby style gameplay.
Yes, definitely not DF. Archeage looks pretty good and I'm hoping it's as sandboxy as hell so I can build a small cottage by the lake and just trade fish maybe :P. That's the beauty of sandbox.
Although I am getting desperate, and losing faith.
Why do every game have to be wow clone or hardcore open world pvp(ala every single sandbox out there). Why can't there be a mmorpf for me?
Maybe a sandbox game for carebare?
I am in agreement. Full open world PVP has become a sandbox killer for me over time for a variety of reasons. I enjoy PVP but I don't want to fool wth it 24 / 7 nor see what amounts to a culture of griefing take root as acceptable, encouraged, behaviour. Based on "my" play observations in other games, I am not sure most others "really" want that either.
I gotta say the OP leap of logic is amazing. Just to add, while 1 million might seem like a lot to someone given the amount of investment needed to build an MMORPG I doubt 1 million is really something to write home about. It has been shown time and again that open world games do not work.
Anyways, OP if a developer actually wants a successful product making it Open world is NOT the way to go. Also I love how ppl like to praise games like AA without actually having any real experience with it. Anybody remember aion, all i heard was Aion was great blah blah and in a month people were bitching and moaning how it sucked.
You could also say DayZ proves people like lobby game played over a session. Not mmorpg playing over years. Or you could say people just like to gank and kill each other.
You could say alot of things. People say anything to prove what they like is the desirable thing for the genre should become.
the reason is money you cant have anything hardly but wow clones. People that are in a business are in it to make money , even though some devs may be passonate about what they design. Since when did thinking outside the box land money to a struggling company ? Game companies out there acclaim EA SOE etc have shareholders that would not care if it was little bunny foo foo being released as long as their 401k is safe and their investments are making money. In the parent companies eyes the only safe bet to not fall flat on your face is to make another clone with risk but no where near the risk that comes with sand box mmorpgs.
Look at it this way , if you combined all the sandbox mmorpgs subscribers today uo , darkfall , Xyson, Mortal online and Eve that might net you 500k subscriptions total and I honestly think im being generous. Now add up the clones totals and you can do the math yourself.
I hate the clones like the rest of you guys and I quit 99% of them after playing a week or two also. But companies are just not going to make games that fit the nitche market in their eyes. Be very glad though that games like SWTOR failed and others because at least now in the big picture larger companies that can actually release a very polished title will be more inclined to change the game up some instead of another clone of wow.
There are some games releasing here in the West that are not clones though of wow
The Repopulation its an indie though so we dont know of quality
Planetside 2 fpsmmorpg from SOE
Guild Wars 2 Anet with not a lot of linear stuff to hold your hand.
Archeage Eastern Sandbox with what looks like harsh PK penalties
EQ Next SOE who knows but they said its about exploration again and more sandbox
I agree with that. I really like PvP, I mean really like it. But not all the time, with no boundaries (just a term). I'd love PvP to be meaningful in a territory and cult sort of way and leave everyone else alone. Leave it to the war seekers.
But outside of PvP, I want a lot of options and a world full of adventure and mystery.
Once upon a time....
You forgot to mention the 1.5KK subscribers that Lineage franchise(Lineage 1 + Lineage 2) has in eastern countries.
MMO's are becoming nothing more than online co-op throw away single player games. They are made to get you to buy them and play them for maybe a month and then that is it. You'll place the game on your self and move to the next. They are not designed any longer for long term playing - where a player plays for months and months at a time. I suspect that even Arche Age will be a free to play/ with cash shop game. I think the changes Blizzard is making to WoW, like the cross sub sharing achievements is just another way to make the transition to free to play later.
I am not sure anyone other than CCP with EVE will continue to charge a monthly fee in a few more years. People just don't want to play games that require you to put time into them any longer. They want instant gratification and the game to almost play itself.
I think the guy that made the DayZ mod was thinking outside the box. So was the guy that made Minecraft. People that think outside the box often create something new that does actually make a profit.
"QQ, the biggest and most expensive MMOs of our time isn't the small niché of games i like, this is madness!" Sorry OP but that's all i read, sandbox MMOs ain't the big shit at the moment (for many reasons, mostly because they're player-driven in nature and the MMO community is based on a younger audience that's attracted to pretty graphics and instant gratification), you should start digging through the internet and you'll find there's A LOT of very good, but very small and unknown, sandbox mmo's out there.
A quick example would be "Haven and Hearth"
It's the capitalim, mmos nowadays are like single player games with COOP, where you play for 1 month in order to burn the "end game", leave and move to the newest one next month. it's not different from single player-coop games like Call of Duty or Diablo 3, People will leave MW3 multiplayer and will go to BO2 and D3 players are bored after 1 month playing.
Stop comparing every single waaaking thing in the world to mmorpg.
oh wow, the movie Inception proves people like open free world. Why can't mmorpg be more like Inception! It shows people like sandbox game! (sarcasm off)
Per that last part, I'm not sure we can say that with certainty. There's always a small number of gamers that make their complaints and want things easier, but then there's a boat load that agree with them. But then after such changes are made, it seems that most are not happy with it after all. Look at the complaints about WoW making things "too easy". Look at other games (just about all of them), and note how they start losing numbers at that time.
Once upon a time....
Open PvP sandbox games will always be niche games because it's hard to convince people to pay to be griefed.
My favorite mode for first person shooters is team based objectives with friendly fire on. Unfortunately this style of gameplay lends itself to griefers and makes for a lousy selling point. It's hard enough to get players to play these kinds of games for free given the amount of abuse you have to endure in order to eventually find a good game much less pay for putting up with the abuse.
what i was speaking on is thinking outside the box is not what companies do. The games like minecraft are made by a guy with a vision and he didnt get any funding and people ridiculed him for it. Hes rich now with a full small studio now but thats the point the big publishers are not going to risk that sort of thing with millions of dollars. I majored in communication arts & design myself and we get paid to think outside the box with advertising and media. Problem is everyone wants something that is proven effective nowadays in all designs. Look at the music / movie industry not just gaming? How many times they going to remake batman and spiderman? how many remakes on the market now coming to theaters near you? See my point? people would rather make some money then lose a lot of money for what they put in and you cannot blame them for that.
Also linage guy L2 was not a sandbox or open world anything it was a quest driven grind game just like DAOC with open world pvp, that is not a sandbox. You did not have freedom to do anything other then grind monsters all day long. Also I do not know asian demographics Im from the states so Im not going to include them as they might have entirely different tastes then we do for all i know. The huge sandbox crowd has and always will be a myth. The most popular ones are Eve and was SWG but even that was dying before the NGE , you cannot expect a large company that has to make money for its shareholders to invest in a formula that has a proven record of failing misrably. Not saying all are failures , but the only true way a sandbox is going to work for the mainstream is to add in quests , add in open world exploration, housing , RP society, and non forced pvp. You can make a minecraft for the masses if you add in a quest system and give people goals to achieve other then forcing full loot pvp on them or building a house and then sitting in it saying okay what to do now...
Just because L2 has daily quests it doesn't mean that it is a questing game. The game is questing until level 40, after that, L2 focuses in solo-group grind/open pvp-open world raids + some daily quests and instances for epic bosses(but you can't do them over and over in a row, because there are cooldowns to make them again-3 days/1 week for example). I start my day, log in L2 make my 2 or 3 daily quests and after I grind with my clan mates(do a lot of mass pvp too because always there are enemy clans looking for our spot or open world boss).
Actually, the point can be made either way. Anytime something is said to be "free" people line up. Doesn't mean that it is more popular then something that is not free...just that people are willing to take advantage of those willing to pay for "free stuff". DayZ is popular probably because of the same reasoning but I do also think that many players are tired of not getting "much game for the value". DayZ is promising to a lot of people because of the open world aspect. Probably for some (or many) the PvP aspect. Others just like a big world to explore with some sense of danger.
With that said, it does not mean that DayZ is the catch all for the desires mentioned by the OP. I think he is just stating that the type of game DayZ represents displays a reasonable desire for more of the same on the part of many.
Let's party like it is 1863!
Single player console games run $60 ~ so it's not like pricetag is anything new.
There are several. Here's some:
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
But it's not AAA
http://financialplan.about.com/cs/creditdebt/a/UrgeToSplurge.htm
The simple answer is, spending doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. Disposable income, all kinds of other factors. Sixty bucks, a couple of times a year? Not a burden at all (for me). For Burt or George or Sally? Three different answers.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.