Originally posted by tkreep Originally posted by baphametOriginally posted by Kinchyle Honeslty asking....what MMO has ever been a widely played and popular "real" sandbox? I can't remember one that hasn't been a disappointment. Also, what about the ESO single player series falls out of the sandbox category? Isn't a sandbox where you can go anywhere at any time? Skyrim very much allowed this. Sure it had a storyline to follow, but you didn't have to follow it to explore the world.As far as the PvP goes...there again. What game has ever done it so the majority loved it (DAoC maybe)? All I ever see is whining about how a certain game or another failed at it. If DAoC did it right, is ESO going along the same lines with RvR? I actually only ever did PvP in DAoC a lot, so I kinda would like to know. Loved DAoC! Just questions...cause I guess I don't get everyone elses opnion of "sandbox" really.
TES games are quest driven. you can choose not to do them but you would be missing out on a huge portion of the game.in a sandbox game, there isn't quests like that, almost all the content is created by the players.that is why its been coined "sandbox" because you create the content, much like a sand castle in a sandbox.could you do that in TES games? other than crafting gear and potions no you could not (standard in any sandbox and themepark alike).does that answer your first question?as far as pvp goes, i am in the same boat. i loved Daoc pvp but its hard to say how long the pvp will keep me interested in TESO.if there is no way to advance your character like you could in Daoc (realm points) then i would assume it wont last long for me.i know there will be alliance points similar to realm points but i am concerned that it will just be cosmetic upgrades or other things that don't actually advance your character.that was my main issue with GW2...well that and the fact that it was just a huge zerg fest and nothing more.i like the fact that in cyrodiil, it acts as a full fledged pve zone as well.that way people can hopefully still get the open world pvp feeling, even though it is still segregated from the rest of the world.the area will be huge as well.Theres a lot of content in Skyrim thats created by the players and you can build houses...In morrowind someone made a Cyrodil mod too.
I do wish TESO was more like the single player game, but I don't think the game could stand functionally without PvP elements.
Point to make here being, the TES series has generally maintained either via the main questline or through sidequests the sense of conflict taking place across the territory of the game. The simplest two examples to pull up would be from the last two games.
In Skyrim it was relatively cut and dry on the conflict. There were the Imperials and the Stormcloaks. (stormcloaks suck!)
You were given free choice to side with either end of this conflict and push it towards resolution. The conflict itself was a matter representing the fate of Skyrim in the long run. Depending on which side on it has plenty of long term meaning that exists past the actual game.
In Oblivion it was the main questline and the direct conflict with the daedric faction of Mehrunes Dagon. This was a fight over the fate of the mundus (mortal realm).
Both of these situations were concepts of direct conflict between two factions. It just happens that they took place in a single player game. When translating TES into a multiplayer game it does make sense for these things to become PvP events.
Notably because of the freedom of choice provided in TES.
Like in Skyrim, players will have varying opinions of which people they would agree with and fight for, and consequently we can't expect all players to be on the same factions. So either the conflict has to become phased and personal as well, or it can play into a greater community aspect and be a shared PvP experience.
I don't see this aspect conesquently as a concept that is opposed to TES, but instead rather can compliment the way the narrative and series tends to work.
Mostly my complaints sits more with the way in which things get implemented, and that's a separate complaint for a separate thread.
EDIT: Will comment on modding.
Theres a strong case for it here notably because Bethesda supports it. It's been a longstanding part of the TES series and relation the players have with Bethesda that they have first party and additional tools to tweak the game to their desire.
Sure, modding isn't something particularly inherent to games. In this case though it's been a part of what makes TES so popular for a long time. It's why players on the PC have over a thousand hours in Skyrim and a now almost countless amount of time invested in Morrowind and Oblivion.
To take that aspect away from the series would take away much of the reason Bethesda has such a psychotically loyal fanbase.
I generally consider it a part of TES series sandbox element as a result simply because it's something that's explicitly an attractor to gamers on the PC. An element of the series they expect to be present and utilize.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
I am fine with how they are dveloping ESO. if i want a sandbox experince i play morrowind and skyrim. These games are so amazing because they are single player sandboxes and i like it that way.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
Originally posted by Kinchyle Honeslty asking....what MMO has ever been a widely played and popular "real" sandbox? I can't remember one that hasn't been a disappointment. Also, what about the ESO single player series falls out of the sandbox category? Isn't a sandbox where you can go anywhere at any time? Skyrim very much allowed this. Sure it had a storyline to follow, but you didn't have to follow it to explore the world.As far as the PvP goes...there again. What game has ever done it so the majority loved it (DAoC maybe)? All I ever see is whining about how a certain game or another failed at it. If DAoC did it right, is ESO going along the same lines with RvR? I actually only ever did PvP in DAoC a lot, so I kinda would like to know. Loved DAoC! Just questions...cause I guess I don't get everyone elses opnion of "sandbox" really.
TES games are quest driven. you can choose not to do them but you would be missing out on a huge portion of the game.in a sandbox game, there isn't quests like that, almost all the content is created by the players.that is why its been coined "sandbox" because you create the content, much like a sand castle in a sandbox.could you do that in TES games? other than crafting gear and potions no you could not (standard in any sandbox and themepark alike).does that answer your first question?as far as pvp goes, i am in the same boat. i loved Daoc pvp but its hard to say how long the pvp will keep me interested in TESO.if there is no way to advance your character like you could in Daoc (realm points) then i would assume it wont last long for me.i know there will be alliance points similar to realm points but i am concerned that it will just be cosmetic upgrades or other things that don't actually advance your character.that was my main issue with GW2...well that and the fact that it was just a huge zerg fest and nothing more.i like the fact that in cyrodiil, it acts as a full fledged pve zone as well.that way people can hopefully still get the open world pvp feeling, even though it is still segregated from the rest of the world.the area will be huge as well.
Theres a lot of content in Skyrim thats created by the players and you can build houses...In morrowind someone made a Cyrodil mod too.
I don't care about the themepark vs nonsense. What I want from TESO isn't on the drawing board right now.
I want a large, zoneless, mostly transition-free world (interiors excepted, just like the single player games).
I want classes character construction.
I want my skill levels to affect the breadth of my abilities, not an artifical construct whose only purpose is to pigeon-hole me into certain places.
I want left-click right click aimed combat, not more of this hotbar nonsense that plagues the genre.
I want bleeding edge, realistic graphics. They're obviously not going to be able to Skyrim-level, but the cartoony nonsense we've been shown is unaccetable.
I want crime to be present and have real consequences.
I want a virtual TES world, not Tamriel Land.
They've delivered on some of that, but the rest, not so much. As it stands, I will not be buying the generic drivel they're trying to sell as TESO.
Name one MMO with modding, that wouldn't be a sandbox without it.
Keep in mind, if 'in your opinion' modding makes things a sandbox, you would also have to include games like:
Halflife
Unreal Tournament
Starcraft
Dota
in your list of sandboxes.
It depends on where and how the tools work.
In the case of Half Life and later Source engine games, it's because Valve authors the SDK so people can mess with any Source engine based game materials. As it applies to Half Life 2, it's functionally capable of being used as a sandbox, but because of the way levels are build as linear environments most of the time and the assets lack most of the information necessary to easily mess with it in the Half Life 2 game, it makes it hard to use as a sandbox.
Which is why there's Garry's Mod. Which takes all of the Source engine assets (and other things people rip/contribute) and piles it into a new game built off the same engine and system as Half Life 2, but with a lot of modifications and new scripts to enable a much more flexible use of content.
Likewise with UT, anything loaded into that game usually behaves on a relatively finite set of scripts (game and editor uses UnrealScript as well as Kismet to set many things). People can usee the Unreal SDK to make new games using UT assets, but the amount of control they have over modiying or changing things in the UT game itself is limited, generally anything big enough being introdusec as a separate component that players can download and use on custom map packs, like the UT2k4 survival RPG.
Starcraft is a game I would actually place pretty close to being a proper sandbox game even though it suffers similar restrictions to the previously mentioned games and then some. Players can't change the game's engine or introduce new script elements to change the behavior of it like they can with Epic, Source, and Bethesta's Gamebryo games. Instead the editing tool provided has enough plugins of it's own that players can use the built in scripts or some of their own within the editor and map assets to create a variety of gameplay designs that fit within the framework Starcraft 1 and 2 provides.
More notably 2 as it is the most recent and generally flexible editor, though Blizzard imposes certain data limits that makes custom maps hard to pull off at times.
Not sure where one was going with DotA as that was originally a WC3 map mod turned into it's won game genre, and honestly is kind of a hallmark example of the flexibility of the map and script editors giving the capacity to spawn new game concepts. So DotA itself wouldn't be a sandbox, but it was created because of the tools and sandbox capabilities of WC3.
Also I think an easier first question would be 'name an mmo with 'modding'.
There are those that allow UI and minor macro elements, but there's not really any that are springing to mind for me that allows a player to straight up change how the game works aside from Second Life.
And honestly, if that game didn't have it's mod tools and plugins it would he worse to play, I mean think of the average person's opinion of that game now and make it worse.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Originally posted by furbans Why do people constantly come up with these pointless polls? Newsflash... your little opinions don't mean crap to the developers. They have already set the course for the game and nothing is gonna change that. And they sure as hell not gonna take heed of anyone's poll at this site anyways. Now if it was an in depth discussion and trend on the official forums when they become available then they MIGHT listen but they sure as hell not gonna scrap their design.
Old Newsflash - there has already been a concession or two by Zenimax on the issue of core gameplay modes around freedom of exploration on single toons.
Why does everyone who has the kind of mindset which insists 'it cannot be done' then characterise any change as requiring 'scrapping' the design, attempting to validate their 'point' with this kind of gross exaggeration?
Changes rarely require scrapping core design.
'It cannot be done' is usually not the case...
There was a previously highly active poster on these forums who insisted the proposed changes on freedom of exploration at this stage of development were absolutely impossible. He/she was proven wrong on this particular point, and the changes Zenimax proposed even surprised those posters on the topic who had come up with the best forum ideas on what changes could be made.
The question should be - why do people constantly insist all polls are pointless, and the collective opinions of gamers (aka paying customers) don't matter in the slightest to the people hoping to make money from them?
Games companies exists to make money.
Money comes from gamers.
If enough gamers say "I won't buy because X needs to be Y", often enough they get some version of the Y they wanted...
As the old saying goes - "Money talks, bullshit walks..."
Actually I think this poll is fine - the questions are well enough spread.
I voted option 3 - I see I am in the minority by some margin.
Not surprising really, there are a great many TES fans who don't like the idea of factional PvP at all.
Ah well.
However one votes on such polls, then calling the validity poll into question because more people don't agree with your opinion?
Predictable...
and also fairly inevitable, i'd like to see more focus on the PVE aspects myself, and limiting PVP to a central area is fairly convenient, what i find inconvenient however is how 'locked in' everything is, i'd like to see more freedom in the game but beyond wishful thinking.. well i can hope
PvP has always been more of a mini-game to me in mmorpgs til the next content comes out or any other type of game like FPS. I grew up playing rpg games and to me rpg games are all about story and adventure, questing stuff like that. RvR style games takes that away. It would have been better if it was a PvE game with open world PvP where you can be neutral if you choose so regardless of the factions. And thieves, mages, fighters, dark brotherhood guilds should have been factions just as much as the other ones are. But as typical they want to make a simple game which that gameplay video pretty much showed.
Dint vote.... I lost faith in mmo studio's. They either get pvp totaly wrong. They create to much focus on pve They create it with arcade vision pvp, with no heavy loss when getting killed They create to much wow to less own vision
Only mmo i consider unique is Eve Online and as far is info is out World of Darkness. Both for some reason from CCP...
You see player X killing your friend NPC,you react fast and try to save your friend but some unknown force blocks your action,you cannot act and do what you want to do so you join PvP(RvR,AvA) and so does player X,there you find out that Player X is your friend and your role is be his healer.
So, did ESO have a successful launch? Yes, yes it did.By Ryan Getchell on April 02, 2014. **On the radar: http://www.cyberpunk.net/ **
Why the assumption that they are mutually exclusive?
You could have a VERY sand boxy 3 realm rvr game, without all the themepark elements TESO is throwing in.
Oh wait, camelot unchained. LOL
Still, I'm going to play TESO, but I know it's going to have the issues that CU is trying to avoid with the themepark stuff and pve/pvp balance that makes neither optimal. (gear creep being a big one)
Comments
Theres a lot of content in Skyrim thats created by the players and you can build houses...In morrowind someone made a Cyrodil mod too.
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/9782 One of the best player made quest i have seen fully voiced by actors and different land with new monsters.
Hell there are modders who are working on making it a mmorpg, they even made a whole new city for the online version...
http://forums.skyrim-online.com/portal.php
you are talking about modding, which is also only possible on the PC version of he game.
sure you can make a mod that makes it more of a sandbox, that's great!
but being able to create a mod for a game is not what makes it a sandbox heh
I do wish TESO was more like the single player game, but I don't think the game could stand functionally without PvP elements.
Point to make here being, the TES series has generally maintained either via the main questline or through sidequests the sense of conflict taking place across the territory of the game. The simplest two examples to pull up would be from the last two games.
In Skyrim it was relatively cut and dry on the conflict. There were the Imperials and the Stormcloaks. (stormcloaks suck!)
You were given free choice to side with either end of this conflict and push it towards resolution. The conflict itself was a matter representing the fate of Skyrim in the long run. Depending on which side on it has plenty of long term meaning that exists past the actual game.
In Oblivion it was the main questline and the direct conflict with the daedric faction of Mehrunes Dagon. This was a fight over the fate of the mundus (mortal realm).
Both of these situations were concepts of direct conflict between two factions. It just happens that they took place in a single player game. When translating TES into a multiplayer game it does make sense for these things to become PvP events.
Notably because of the freedom of choice provided in TES.
Like in Skyrim, players will have varying opinions of which people they would agree with and fight for, and consequently we can't expect all players to be on the same factions. So either the conflict has to become phased and personal as well, or it can play into a greater community aspect and be a shared PvP experience.
I don't see this aspect conesquently as a concept that is opposed to TES, but instead rather can compliment the way the narrative and series tends to work.
Mostly my complaints sits more with the way in which things get implemented, and that's a separate complaint for a separate thread.
EDIT: Will comment on modding.
Theres a strong case for it here notably because Bethesda supports it. It's been a longstanding part of the TES series and relation the players have with Bethesda that they have first party and additional tools to tweak the game to their desire.
Sure, modding isn't something particularly inherent to games. In this case though it's been a part of what makes TES so popular for a long time. It's why players on the PC have over a thousand hours in Skyrim and a now almost countless amount of time invested in Morrowind and Oblivion.
To take that aspect away from the series would take away much of the reason Bethesda has such a psychotically loyal fanbase.
I generally consider it a part of TES series sandbox element as a result simply because it's something that's explicitly an attractor to gamers on the PC. An element of the series they expect to be present and utilize.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Same.. Dunno what it looked like when you posted, but I chose #3.. Though it was a close one between 2 and 3.
42.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
In your opinion
Name one MMO with modding, that wouldn't be a sandbox without it.
Keep in mind, if 'in your opinion' modding makes things a sandbox, you would also have to include games like:
Halflife
Unreal Tournament
Starcraft
Dota
in your list of sandboxes.
I don't care about the themepark vs nonsense. What I want from TESO isn't on the drawing board right now.
It depends on where and how the tools work.
In the case of Half Life and later Source engine games, it's because Valve authors the SDK so people can mess with any Source engine based game materials. As it applies to Half Life 2, it's functionally capable of being used as a sandbox, but because of the way levels are build as linear environments most of the time and the assets lack most of the information necessary to easily mess with it in the Half Life 2 game, it makes it hard to use as a sandbox.
Which is why there's Garry's Mod. Which takes all of the Source engine assets (and other things people rip/contribute) and piles it into a new game built off the same engine and system as Half Life 2, but with a lot of modifications and new scripts to enable a much more flexible use of content.
Likewise with UT, anything loaded into that game usually behaves on a relatively finite set of scripts (game and editor uses UnrealScript as well as Kismet to set many things). People can usee the Unreal SDK to make new games using UT assets, but the amount of control they have over modiying or changing things in the UT game itself is limited, generally anything big enough being introdusec as a separate component that players can download and use on custom map packs, like the UT2k4 survival RPG.
Starcraft is a game I would actually place pretty close to being a proper sandbox game even though it suffers similar restrictions to the previously mentioned games and then some. Players can't change the game's engine or introduce new script elements to change the behavior of it like they can with Epic, Source, and Bethesta's Gamebryo games. Instead the editing tool provided has enough plugins of it's own that players can use the built in scripts or some of their own within the editor and map assets to create a variety of gameplay designs that fit within the framework Starcraft 1 and 2 provides.
More notably 2 as it is the most recent and generally flexible editor, though Blizzard imposes certain data limits that makes custom maps hard to pull off at times.
Not sure where one was going with DotA as that was originally a WC3 map mod turned into it's won game genre, and honestly is kind of a hallmark example of the flexibility of the map and script editors giving the capacity to spawn new game concepts. So DotA itself wouldn't be a sandbox, but it was created because of the tools and sandbox capabilities of WC3.
Also I think an easier first question would be 'name an mmo with 'modding'.
There are those that allow UI and minor macro elements, but there's not really any that are springing to mind for me that allows a player to straight up change how the game works aside from Second Life.
And honestly, if that game didn't have it's mod tools and plugins it would he worse to play, I mean think of the average person's opinion of that game now and make it worse.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Old Newsflash - there has already been a concession or two by Zenimax on the issue of core gameplay modes around freedom of exploration on single toons.
Why does everyone who has the kind of mindset which insists 'it cannot be done' then characterise any change as requiring 'scrapping' the design, attempting to validate their 'point' with this kind of gross exaggeration?
Changes rarely require scrapping core design.
'It cannot be done' is usually not the case...
There was a previously highly active poster on these forums who insisted the proposed changes on freedom of exploration at this stage of development were absolutely impossible. He/she was proven wrong on this particular point, and the changes Zenimax proposed even surprised those posters on the topic who had come up with the best forum ideas on what changes could be made.
The question should be - why do people constantly insist all polls are pointless, and the collective opinions of gamers (aka paying customers) don't matter in the slightest to the people hoping to make money from them?
Games companies exists to make money.
Money comes from gamers.
If enough gamers say "I won't buy because X needs to be Y", often enough they get some version of the Y they wanted...
As the old saying goes - "Money talks, bullshit walks..."
Actually I think this poll is fine - the questions are well enough spread.
I voted option 3 - I see I am in the minority by some margin.
Not surprising really, there are a great many TES fans who don't like the idea of factional PvP at all.
Ah well.
However one votes on such polls, then calling the validity poll into question because more people don't agree with your opinion?
Predictable...
and also fairly inevitable, i'd like to see more focus on the PVE aspects myself, and limiting PVP to a central area is fairly convenient, what i find inconvenient however is how 'locked in' everything is, i'd like to see more freedom in the game but beyond wishful thinking.. well i can hope
what's the next poll, do you prefer the sun to be blue?
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
A poll about the validity of polls would probably get a high response percentage...
I would prefer an Elder Scrolls game not an elder daoc game so i might not be playing it long term .
That said , I will try it and see can;t really say one way or the other as to how its going to play until i have played it.
Dint vote....
I lost faith in mmo studio's.
They either get pvp totaly wrong.
They create to much focus on pve
They create it with arcade vision pvp, with no heavy loss when getting killed
They create to much wow to less own vision
Only mmo i consider unique is Eve Online and as far is info is out World of Darkness.
Both for some reason from CCP...
Please explain how rvr games "take away adventure"
Have you actually played daoc?
It has 99% the same pve as early EQ (it doesn't have the wow style instanced stuff of modern EQ though)
Your in luck, this game has way more in common with something like tsw than it does daoc.
RPG PvP guidebook.
You see player X killing your friend NPC,you react fast and try to save your friend but some unknown force blocks your action,you cannot act and do what you want to do so you join PvP(RvR,AvA) and so does player X,there you find out that Player X is your friend and your role is be his healer.
So, did ESO have a successful launch? Yes, yes it did.By Ryan Getchell on April 02, 2014.
**On the radar: http://www.cyberpunk.net/ **
That made me chuckle considering how many have complained about TESO being more DAoC than TES.
DAoC - Had about 250k players at its peak
Skyrim - Sold 7 million copies in the first week
Oblivion - Sold around 5 million
I would take a guess and say that most TES fans looking forward to TESO have not played DAoC.
But over 80% of TES fans are console gamers. Unless they own a PC most TES fans won't be playing ESO.
Why the assumption that they are mutually exclusive?
You could have a VERY sand boxy 3 realm rvr game, without all the themepark elements TESO is throwing in.
Oh wait, camelot unchained.
LOL
Still, I'm going to play TESO, but I know it's going to have the issues that CU is trying to avoid with the themepark stuff and pve/pvp balance that makes neither optimal. (gear creep being a big one)
MMO history - EVE GW2 SWTOR RIFT WAR COH/V EQ2 WOW DAOC
Tuktz - http://www.heretic.shivtr.com/
Want to kill this game ? Take the focus away from faction conflict.
Not counting Digital Downloads, Skyrim sold about 3million copies on PC alone.
Yeah... I think my point still stands considering without even looking at steam numbers PC Skyrim is 3mil vs. DAoCs peak of 250k.