No Darkfall and Mortal Online do not count because they have full loot ffa and that makes them a whole differed cup of tea. Sandboxes are about building stuff but these games are only about destruction. (And Mortal online is so bugged is close to unplayable.)
I’m not sure if there is a themepark that has full loot world pvp, but just imagine what wow was like if a random guy could just take all your raiding gear from you just like that.
The games that count are: Eve obviously, xsyon, wurm online, rysom and uo. Xsyon has its flaws but it is ok for a small budget indi game.
But I don’t want a small indi game or one that is 20 years old. I want a big AAA Sandbox that is not about starships!
Considering how expensive it is to create games most of the major publishers are actually looking to the indies to see what is super popular/successful and then building games based on that. Do keep in mind that average mmo dev time is 5 years though. So if you truly want a "big AAA sandbox" then go play the indie version of what you want. No one is blowing $50-100m on what you think may just be the next big thing. That is just not how business works.
Considering how expensive it is to create games most of the major publishers are actually looking to the indies to see what is super popular/successful and then building games based on that. Do keep in mind that average mmo dev time is 5 years though. So if you truly want a "big AAA sandbox" then go play the indie version of what you want. No one is blowing $50-100m on what you think may just be the next big thing. That is just not how business works.
Ok, so everyone go play Xsyon now! You can now play for free with some limitations. Not free like f2p but just free.
Mortal Online and Dark Fall doesn't count. We all know those are stupid. Who the fuck wants to run around in a fantasy MMORPG in first person mode? wth?
And that right there is the answer to the question.
There are dozens of sandbox games out there. Most with open world design
There are also more being developed for release soon. However only the ones that he likes count.
Want to know why they aren't making games such as you stated? Because you restricted the definition so much that a developer would have to be crazy to make a game that catered to only your definition.
Darkall is an open world game sandbox game, but it doesn't count as an open world sandbox game. Gotcha.
No Darkfall and Mortal Online do not count because they have full loot ffa and that makes them a whole differed cup of tea. Sandboxes are about building stuff but these games are only about destruction. (And Mortal online is so bugged is close to unplayable.)
I’m not sure if there is a themepark that has full loot world pvp, but just imagine what wow was like if a random guy could just take all your raiding gear from you just like that.
The games that count are: Eve obviously, xsyon, wurm online, rysom and uo. Xsyon has its flaws but it is ok for a small budget indi game.
But I don’t want a small indi game or one that is 20 years old. I want a big AAA Sandbox that is not about starships!
Of course they count. The OP did not state no ffa pvp. He stated open world sandbox. Those games are open world sandbox.
The point is if you start restricting the definitions, the more restrictive you go, the less games will meet that definition and the more unlikely it is that devs will cater to that definition.
If I say why isn't there any open world sandbox games, but really mean open world sandbox, with no ffa pvp, no looting (his definitions), must have flight, must have brick and board housing, craftable spells (things that I would like) - then virtually no games meets the definition.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Ok, so everyone go play Xsyon now! You can now play for free with some limitations. Not free like f2p but just free.
Oh hell no. I don't play that indie f2p crap! :P
I understand what your doing, but I really do not care for sandbox games. Outside of my brief stints with Eve about once a year (because playing pirate is too damn fun) I stay away from them.
Mortal Online and Dark Fall doesn't count. We all know those are stupid. Who the fuck wants to run around in a fantasy MMORPG in first person mode? wth?
And that right there is the answer to the question.
There are dozens of sandbox games out there. Most with open world design
There are also more being developed for release soon. However only the ones that he likes count.
Want to know why they aren't making games such as you stated? Because you restricted the definition so much that a developer would have to be crazy to make a game that catered to only your definition.
Darkall is an open world game sandbox game, but it doesn't count as an open world sandbox game. Gotcha.
No Darkfall and Mortal Online do not count because they have full loot ffa and that makes them a whole differed cup of tea. Sandboxes are about building stuff but these games are only about destruction. (And Mortal online is so bugged is close to unplayable.)
I’m not sure if there is a themepark that has full loot world pvp, but just imagine what wow was like if a random guy could just take all your raiding gear from you just like that.
The games that count are: Eve obviously, xsyon, wurm online, rysom and uo. Xsyon has its flaws but it is ok for a small budget indi game.
But I don’t want a small indi game or one that is 20 years old. I want a big AAA Sandbox that is not about starships!
How can UO count and not DarkFall or MO because of full loot? You do realize that UO in its best days was a full loot pvp game right?
Mortal Online is playable atm just lacks a lot of content but from all the MMO's I've tried it sadly is the closest thing to UO. I just wish someone would make a UO2 and not fuck it up (EA would most likely screw it up).
The thing that I don't understand is that these companies are looking to make lots of money, if they looked at successful sandbox games they'd see that there is a lot of money to be made by a well developed sandbox. UO is still going on and at one point had over 200k subs, SWG in its more sandbox days had I think close to 500k? subs or maybe was over 250k. All of those people who played those games are still looking for a good sandbox game.
"MMO's today are nothing like they were 10-15 years ago when they were being released. People then had huge worlds you can run from one end of the world to the other with no load screens and a million different ways to get there."
Where is this mythical army of MMOs from 10-15 years ago with no loading zones and seamless worlds?
I never said there was an army of them, but EQ, Shadowbane, Eve, WoW, SWG, Asherons Call, Asherons Call 2. I never said they weren't zoned.
When I mean zoning, I mean instanced zoning. 1 Zone is instanced and cut off from the zone next to it so that when you go over to the next zone you have to go through a gate and enter it via a loading screen.
Originally posted by fantasyfreak112 There are many. They're just all made by terrible/has-been developers that don't play test their own games and think a return ping of 500ms is the status quo.
Mortal Online and Dark Fall doesn't count. We all know those are stupid. Who the fuck wants to run around in a fantasy MMORPG in first person mode? wth?
Originally posted by fantasyfreak112 There are many. They're just all made by terrible/has-been developers that don't play test their own games and think a return ping of 500ms is the status quo.
Mortal Online and Dark Fall doesn't count. We all know those are stupid. Who the fuck wants to run around in a fantasy MMORPG in first person mode? wth?
There is a third person option... and no, those games are EXACTLY what the OP is looking for.
Mortal Online and Dark Fall doesn't count. We all know those are stupid. Who the fuck wants to run around in a fantasy MMORPG in first person mode? wth?
And that right there is the answer to the question.
There are dozens of sandbox games out there. Most with open world design
There are also more being developed for release soon. However only the ones that he likes count.
Want to know why they aren't making games such as you stated? Because you restricted the definition so much that a developer would have to be crazy to make a game that catered to only your definition.
Darkall is an open world game sandbox game, but it doesn't count as an open world sandbox game. Gotcha.
No Darkfall and Mortal Online do not count because they have full loot ffa and that makes them a whole differed cup of tea. Sandboxes are about building stuff but these games are only about destruction. (And Mortal online is so bugged is close to unplayable.)
I’m not sure if there is a themepark that has full loot world pvp, but just imagine what wow was like if a random guy could just take all your raiding gear from you just like that.
The games that count are: Eve obviously, xsyon, wurm online, rysom and uo. Xsyon has its flaws but it is ok for a small budget indi game.
But I don’t want a small indi game or one that is 20 years old. I want a big AAA Sandbox that is not about starships!
Of course they count. The OP did not state no ffa pvp. He stated open world sandbox. Those games are open world sandbox.
The point is if you start restricting the definitions, the more restrictive you go, the less games will meet that definition and the more unlikely it is that devs will cater to that definition.
If I say why isn't there any open world sandbox games, but really mean open world sandbox, with no ffa pvp, no looting (his definitions), must have flight, must have brick and board housing, craftable spells (things that I would like) - then virtually no games meets the definition.
I said look at Eve...
It has full open world PVP and you can loot people. Do I want full FFA player looting? That would depend. Although I prefer the Shadowbane PVP loot. You only drop whatever is in your bags. Gold, farming mats...whatever you forgot to put into the bank before you went out. However If someone destroyed a rival guilds city they should be able to plunder their stuff.
Originally posted by fantasyfreak112 There are many. They're just all made by terrible/has-been developers that don't play test their own games and think a return ping of 500ms is the status quo.
Mortal Online and Dark Fall doesn't count. We all know those are stupid. Who the fuck wants to run around in a fantasy MMORPG in first person mode? wth?
There is a third person option... and no, those games are EXACTLY what the OP is looking for.
More Darkfall than MO.
Ive played Darkfall 1.0, and its my understanding that in that game you pretty much have to Max out Magic in order to even remotely be competitive in PVP. Magic is not my forte. Almost every fight I got into with my guild in Darkfall it was just magic magic magic.
EVE, is a very simple game to 'expand' upon. EVE's zones consist of one SKYBOX and a few 3-dimensional spehere's (planets), that's all EVE's "expanding universe" is really are about, making more skyboxes with few spheres.
You cannot land on any planet (par from a space station, which is only a premade screen for your spaceship.)
When you DARE to face the facts, EVE is = SKYBOX + 3D orbs + excel trading and sub-par / mediocre button mash gear dependant combat.
What happened to the MMORPG genre is the same that happened to the entire game scene. Publishers are now run by managers who go for the quick bucks. The game industry is one of the most well earning sectors, even though there is a world wide crisis there are still sold many many games. It happened when the PS2 and Xbox became a very wide success, followed by the PS3 and xbox 360. It attracted a new kind of gamer, the mainstream gamer. These mainstream gamers are the biggest group of gamers these days. The same people who shouted you where a fat virgin nerd 10 years ago if you said you where a gamer are now the same people who call you all kind of names in CoD and look at you as if you are a freak if you say you don't like CoD.
The mainstream gamer brought something else with them. They had the urge to feel good about themselves in games or they wouldn't buy games anymore (words from the publishers back then). So how do you meet their requirements? You make games more easy and on top of that much shorter. Most games aren't so hard to complete anymore on hard mode. Many hard modes these days where the same modes we used to call "medium difficulty" in the good old days. Everything has to be pointed out as well cause we do not want the mainstream gamer to get lost in their game now do we?
Great example is Dragon Age. Dragon Age Origin had many skills too choose from, you could make a warrior who dual wield two swords, you could equip your companions with all kind of armor and weapons to enhance your parties strengths and the combat was rather strategic. The game was a huge success, but ho wait.....The console version of the game didn't work out so great, off course this was natural as the game was made as a PC game and already long in development before the 360 and PS3 where even announced. But the mainstream gamer began to complain (as they are often console gamers, but read careful I'm not saying console gamers are all mainstream gamers), so what happens. EA sees that Dragon Age was a success, but wanted more money. So they forced Bioware to rush out a quick Dragon Age 2, a game that was dumb down like insane. You hardly could customise your characters skills, there where only a hand full compared to Dragon Age Origin cause the mainstream gamer got lost in all the skills and omg they cried so hard they didn't know what too choose and what was the BEST way to play booohooo, equipting your party members was completely removed, yeah you could give them another weapon but often their own weapons where the best they could get so there wasn't much use of giving them another. The combat became a action game and to make it even worse they removed the amazing looking execution animations from DA:O for exploding corpses >.< And the level designs...gods they didn't even try to hide it was just corridor walking, i never felt so clausterphobic in a game as in DA2.
But it doesn't stop with RPG's, shooters, gods how i loved games like Rainbow Six and SWAT 3 and 4 cause they where hard, one shot one kill. You had to think, you had to plan and going in gunblazing resulted more often then not in your own death or the death of innocents. Now a shooter gets minor points by the game press if you don't have some magic auto healing if you rest for three seconds behind one of the many walls. Cause the game press these days are mainstream gamers. People who don't want to die at the same spot more then once. Who see death in a game as a game fault instead of them trying to learn why they keep dying there and find a way around it. But publishers like EA and Activision see this group as the only group they need to please cause its where the most money is. Give them short and easy games so these gamers feel good about themselves and will buy the next game.
In the MMORPG's its the exact same. WoW did something other MMORPG's didn't manage to do as much as WoW did (this is not a fanboy stand of view, its how it went). WoW made the genre popular, and when Activision merged with Vivendi WoW suffered a terribly faith.....Boby Koytick and the need to please only the mainstream gamer. He orderd that WoW had to be more accessable for the mainstream gamer and the rest is history. Seeing WoW generated a huge amount of money each month other publishers wanted to profit from this as well. And in their logics you can only get that if you offer the exact same as the competition cause that is clearly what people want to have....totally forgetting that people aren't gonna leave a highest lvl fully pimped char for a new char in a new game where they gotta work their way up again. So for many MMORPG's the number of subs stayed low. To counter this they looked at other genres and asked the mainstream gamer what they wanted (i assume they asked only the mainstream gamer cause EA keeps saying they asked us gamers our opinion where i never received any question from EA) and noticed that the most important thing is great graphics. But with great graphics comes the instanced bullcrap. Worlds can't be seamless anymore as that would be to demanding for the servers, so byebye nice big worlds where it can take up 2 hours to walk from one corner to the other without ever seeing a loading screen. And you don't really think the mainstream gamer is gonna travel all the way to a dungeon right? Nooooo they want quick access so LFG tools are standard now or the mainstream gamer won't play.
I noticed in this subject that some people said "Fact is that no one will play semi sandbox games once they are released". That is nonsense. People will, the difference is that it would go back to the normal numbers MMORPG's had before WoW. Yeah it won't be a Million+ subs. But is that a problem? Not really, cause frankly look at many of the AAA MMORPG's that came out after WoW, they all started perhaps with a couple of million players, but these days they all have only a couple of thousand perhaps a million at most while being F2P now even. Publishers should take enough with that, cause look at EVE it doesn't have the numbers of WoW, but it been around for many years and has a very loyal player base where most other MMORPG's hardly have a community after 3 months anymore. But the managers who run most publishers want quick money, so to get that you make a standard MMORPG by the template of WoW and EQ, its easy, its basic as you don't really have to add anything extra beside raids and pvp battlegrounds. With instanced zones it also more easy for mainstream gamers to remember where they are and by removing a lot of freedom in exploring you won't have mainstream gamers getting lost so they will enjoy the game a lot more, they also need to have giant arrows and exact quest locations shown on the map so they feel like true explorers in a game that doesn't know exploration anymore.
MMORPG's suffered from the current state of the gaming scene. Unless publishers will stop trying to please just one group of gamers and take enough from the other groups there won't really be any major chance in how MMO's are designed i fear. Maybe a small studio might try it here and there but unless one of the seamless sandbox-ish games becomes a real success that earns millions of profit its just not gonna happen. But i would love them to proof my worries to be wrong.
I would like to see the Sandbox game first,i have not seen one yet and doubt i will for many years to come.They are all linear scripted paint by number games.The closest thing to sandbox right now is NW and the Foundry system but that is still limited to instances and very little content to work with.
I have thought about it for many years and it is just VERY tough to ever make a sandbox game.
The reason is simple,where would all the user created files get stored?You cannot simply toss out an empty sandbox without adding the sand and the shovel.It is most certainly possible and imo would be THE game to set new standards but is just near impossible to pull off.
I was thinking that perhaps anything a player creates would get stored on their computer,however they would have to be online for people to D?l the content.Also they would need unlimited bandwidth to handle all the traffic.SO really how is this possible,i don't see it.
Seamless world is possible "to the eye" but it would ALWAYS be a FAKE seamless world,it would still have to have invisible zones.
So bottom line is a TRUE seamless Sandbox will never happen in the next 20+ years,unless there is something i am really missing here as i am sure there are a lot of smart people out there that can pull off miracles.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
A "few" years back there wasn't much competition and the technology was in a huge shift-phase going from 2D to 3D amongst other things. Proper nerds with passion sat down and created wonderful things from their imaginations, without the thought of "making huge piles of cash" clouding their judgment. Today the competition is harsh. Huge investors throw cash in to the market and expect/aim for WoW-like returns. Those nerds with a passion are controlled by those who think "money first". Yes, they can still lurk in their basement and work their ass off to make that game, but i imagine it's quite hard when big companies offer nice pay-checks to feed their family. Only the best of the best can make these kind of games, and they get recruited as soon as they look out the door.
There is also a much larger customer-base that swarmed in from every corner (/genre) of the industry to try this new hip thing. These "new" players probably outnumber the old niche players that grew up with the genre, thus making them the vocal majority. Running through terrain for 40 minutes straight to get to that specific place just wasn't their thing.
Anything that becomes popular enough is eventually broken down to the lowest common denominator to please the statistically average user. In the end, nobody get's everything they want, but everyone get's something. Also, it's not new anymore, and the technology isn't taking these huge visible leaps as it did then. The innovation is behind the scenes now days (server/network tech and optimisation), because that's where we are in the development stage of this kind of technology (at least it's what's being prioritized to maximize profit). Graphically not much is really happening (visibly), because each new game tries to cater to more and more players, so the curve stays pretty straight since you need to sacrifice graphics to fit more players, and affordable processing power is sort of halted for personal computers.
A return of niche-games, that aim for a few thousand players instead of a few hundred thousand or millions, would save the day. A visionary/company/enthusiast who can see the value of a long-term relationship with a selected few is needed (read EVE). A 10 year project, instead of a cash-grab arcade. Sure there are some out there, but so far i haven't seen any that can produce the kind of quality people expect now days. And it's not a project you can begin with the mind-set of becoming filthy rich.
On a side-note. There seems to be some kind of misconception amongst developers that every mmo-player wants huge battles with 100's vs 100's (or 1000's) players on screen at once. Who planted that seed? I don't believe it's true.
What happened to the MMORPG genre is the same that happened to the entire game scene. Publishers are now run by managers who go for the quick bucks. The game industry is one of the most well earning sectors, even though there is a world wide crisis there are still sold many many games. It happened when the PS2 and Xbox became a very wide success, followed by the PS3 and xbox 360. It attracted a new kind of gamer, the mainstream gamer. These mainstream gamers are the biggest group of gamers these days. The same people who shouted you where a fat virgin nerd 10 years ago if you said you where a gamer are now the same people who call you all kind of names in CoD and look at you as if you are a freak if you say you don't like CoD.
The mainstream gamer brought something else with them. They had the urge to feel good about themselves in games or they wouldn't buy games anymore (words from the publishers back then). So how do you meet their requirements? You make games more easy and on top of that much shorter. Most games aren't so hard to complete anymore on hard mode. Many hard modes these days where the same modes we used to call "medium difficulty" in the good old days. Everything has to be pointed out as well cause we do not want the mainstream gamer to get lost in their game now do we?
Great example is Dragon Age. Dragon Age Origin had many skills too choose from, you could make a warrior who dual wield two swords, you could equip your companions with all kind of armor and weapons to enhance your parties strengths and the combat was rather strategic. The game was a huge success, but ho wait.....The console version of the game didn't work out so great, off course this was natural as the game was made as a PC game and already long in development before the 360 and PS3 where even announced. But the mainstream gamer began to complain (as they are often console gamers, but read careful I'm not saying console gamers are all mainstream gamers), so what happens. EA sees that Dragon Age was a success, but wanted more money. So they forced Bioware to rush out a quick Dragon Age 2, a game that was dumb down like insane. You hardly could customise your characters skills, there where only a hand full compared to Dragon Age Origin cause the mainstream gamer got lost in all the skills and omg they cried so hard they didn't know what too choose and what was the BEST way to play booohooo, equipting your party members was completely removed, yeah you could give them another weapon but often their own weapons where the best they could get so there wasn't much use of giving them another. The combat became a action game and to make it even worse they removed the amazing looking execution animations from DA:O for exploding corpses >.< And the level designs...gods they didn't even try to hide it was just corridor walking, i never felt so clausterphobic in a game as in DA2.
But it doesn't stop with RPG's, shooters, gods how i loved games like Rainbow Six and SWAT 3 and 4 cause they where hard, one shot one kill. You had to think, you had to plan and going in gunblazing resulted more often then not in your own death or the death of innocents. Now a shooter gets minor points by the game press if you don't have some magic auto healing if you rest for three seconds behind one of the many walls. Cause the game press these days are mainstream gamers. People who don't want to die at the same spot more then once. Who see death in a game as a game fault instead of them trying to learn why they keep dying there and find a way around it. But publishers like EA and Activision see this group as the only group they need to please cause its where the most money is. Give them short and easy games so these gamers feel good about themselves and will buy the next game.
In the MMORPG's its the exact same. WoW did something other MMORPG's didn't manage to do as much as WoW did (this is not a fanboy stand of view, its how it went). WoW made the genre popular, and when Activision merged with Vivendi WoW suffered a terribly faith.....Boby Koytick and the need to please only the mainstream gamer. He orderd that WoW had to be more accessable for the mainstream gamer and the rest is history. Seeing WoW generated a huge amount of money each month other publishers wanted to profit from this as well. And in their logics you can only get that if you offer the exact same as the competition cause that is clearly what people want to have....totally forgetting that people aren't gonna leave a highest lvl fully pimped char for a new char in a new game where they gotta work their way up again. So for many MMORPG's the number of subs stayed low. To counter this they looked at other genres and asked the mainstream gamer what they wanted (i assume they asked only the mainstream gamer cause EA keeps saying they asked us gamers our opinion where i never received any question from EA) and noticed that the most important thing is great graphics. But with great graphics comes the instanced bullcrap. Worlds can't be seamless anymore as that would be to demanding for the servers, so byebye nice big worlds where it can take up 2 hours to walk from one corner to the other without ever seeing a loading screen. And you don't really think the mainstream gamer is gonna travel all the way to a dungeon right? Nooooo they want quick access so LFG tools are standard now or the mainstream gamer won't play.
I noticed in this subject that some people said "Fact is that no one will play semi sandbox games once they are released". That is nonsense. People will, the difference is that it would go back to the normal numbers MMORPG's had before WoW. Yeah it won't be a Million+ subs. But is that a problem? Not really, cause frankly look at many of the AAA MMORPG's that came out after WoW, they all started perhaps with a couple of million players, but these days they all have only a couple of thousand perhaps a million at most while being F2P now even. Publishers should take enough with that, cause look at EVE it doesn't have the numbers of WoW, but it been around for many years and has a very loyal player base where most other MMORPG's hardly have a community after 3 months anymore. But the managers who run most publishers want quick money, so to get that you make a standard MMORPG by the template of WoW and EQ, its easy, its basic as you don't really have to add anything extra beside raids and pvp battlegrounds. With instanced zones it also more easy for mainstream gamers to remember where they are and by removing a lot of freedom in exploring you won't have mainstream gamers getting lost so they will enjoy the game a lot more, they also need to have giant arrows and exact quest locations shown on the map so they feel like true explorers in a game that doesn't know exploration anymore.
MMORPG's suffered from the current state of the gaming scene. Unless publishers will stop trying to please just one group of gamers and take enough from the other groups there won't really be any major chance in how MMO's are designed i fear. Maybe a small studio might try it here and there but unless one of the seamless sandbox-ish games becomes a real success that earns millions of profit its just not gonna happen. But i would love them to proof my worries to be wrong.
On a side-note. There seems to be some kind of misconception amongst developers that every mmo-player wants huge battles with 100's vs 100's (or 1000's) players on screen at once. Who planted that seed? I don't believe it's true.
I would like to see the Sandbox game first,i have not seen one yet and doubt i will for many years to come.They are all linear scripted paint by number games.The closest thing to sandbox right now is NW and the Foundry system but that is still limited to instances and very little content to work with.
Ultima online, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Xsyon, Wurm Onlnie.. just to name a few that pop into my head there are more.
I have thought about it for many years and it is just VERY tough to ever make a sandbox game.
Actually a lot easier than making a themepark game.
The reason is simple,where would all the user created files get stored?You cannot simply toss out an empty sandbox without adding the sand and the shovel.It is most certainly possible and imo would be THE game to set new standards but is just near impossible to pull off.
Not at all take a look at Xyson or Wurm online both games done on a very low budget, but you can do anything you want in those games.. rise lower the terrain, build where you want, build what you want.. Technology has been there for years its just big AAA publishers are only after the WOW money. Still kickstarter has allowed some really good looknig standbox games to get funded and the AAA publishers are starting to catch on.. Archeage and EQnext being big titles that are or will be sandbox games.
I was thinking that perhaps anything a player creates would get stored on their computer,however they would have to be online for people to D?l the content.Also they would need unlimited bandwidth to handle all the traffic.SO really how is this possible,i don't see it.
No any changes made to a game would would just get stored in a database on the server like anything else. Allowing players to store anythign on their computers would be very bad move and would lead to easy hacks.
Seamless world is possible "to the eye" but it would ALWAYS be a FAKE seamless world,it would still have to have invisible zones.
When people talk about seamless worlds they talk about worlds with no loading zones, the technology behind how the world works not really matter. Take a look at the games I mentioned they are all seamless worlds where you can run from one side of the world without any loading screens.
So bottom line is a TRUE seamless Sandbox will never happen in the next 20+ years,unless there is something i am really missing here as i am sure there are a lot of smart people out there that can pull off miracles.
Nope the games already exist no need to wait 20 years.
Yes, it sucks that the majority of gamers aren't as passionate as you guys about sandboxes, but that's the downside of being a niche market. There are pleanty of games / mechanics I'd love to see either make a comeback or be adopted into an MMO, but I'm not going to complain every time a designer makes a game without them.
First Love Syndrome.
"The game I liked best was [x]. Any game that's not just like [x], at least by 'feel', will never make me happy."
Don't worry, the syndrome is not exclusive to sandboxes.
[x] is usually something encountered at least ten years in the past.
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.
I would like to see the Sandbox game first,i have not seen one yet and doubt i will for many years to come.They are all linear scripted paint by number games.The closest thing to sandbox right now is NW and the Foundry system but that is still limited to instances and very little content to work with.
I have thought about it for many years and it is just VERY tough to ever make a sandbox game.
The reason is simple,where would all the user created files get stored?You cannot simply toss out an empty sandbox without adding the sand and the shovel.It is most certainly possible and imo would be THE game to set new standards but is just near impossible to pull off.
I was thinking that perhaps anything a player creates would get stored on their computer,however they would have to be online for people to D?l the content.Also they would need unlimited bandwidth to handle all the traffic.SO really how is this possible,i don't see it.
Seamless world is possible "to the eye" but it would ALWAYS be a FAKE seamless world,it would still have to have invisible zones.
So bottom line is a TRUE seamless Sandbox will never happen in the next 20+ years,unless there is something i am really missing here as i am sure there are a lot of smart people out there that can pull off miracles.
Neverwinter is about as far from being a sand box as you can get. Not even the foundry is remotely sandbox.
SWG was a massive sand box, UO, wurm, Darkfall, there have been many sandbox games. Neverwinter is not one of them.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
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Considering how expensive it is to create games most of the major publishers are actually looking to the indies to see what is super popular/successful and then building games based on that. Do keep in mind that average mmo dev time is 5 years though. So if you truly want a "big AAA sandbox" then go play the indie version of what you want. No one is blowing $50-100m on what you think may just be the next big thing. That is just not how business works.
http://chroniclesofthenerds.com/nerdfight/
Y U NO FLIP TABLE?!?!?!
Ok, so everyone go play Xsyon now! You can now play for free with some limitations. Not free like f2p but just free.
Of course they count. The OP did not state no ffa pvp. He stated open world sandbox. Those games are open world sandbox.
The point is if you start restricting the definitions, the more restrictive you go, the less games will meet that definition and the more unlikely it is that devs will cater to that definition.
If I say why isn't there any open world sandbox games, but really mean open world sandbox, with no ffa pvp, no looting (his definitions), must have flight, must have brick and board housing, craftable spells (things that I would like) - then virtually no games meets the definition.
Oh hell no. I don't play that indie f2p crap! :P
I understand what your doing, but I really do not care for sandbox games. Outside of my brief stints with Eve about once a year (because playing pirate is too damn fun) I stay away from them.
http://chroniclesofthenerds.com/nerdfight/
Y U NO FLIP TABLE?!?!?!
How can UO count and not DarkFall or MO because of full loot? You do realize that UO in its best days was a full loot pvp game right?
Mortal Online is playable atm just lacks a lot of content but from all the MMO's I've tried it sadly is the closest thing to UO. I just wish someone would make a UO2 and not fuck it up (EA would most likely screw it up).
The thing that I don't understand is that these companies are looking to make lots of money, if they looked at successful sandbox games they'd see that there is a lot of money to be made by a well developed sandbox. UO is still going on and at one point had over 200k subs, SWG in its more sandbox days had I think close to 500k? subs or maybe was over 250k. All of those people who played those games are still looking for a good sandbox game.
I never said there was an army of them, but EQ, Shadowbane, Eve, WoW, SWG, Asherons Call, Asherons Call 2. I never said they weren't zoned.
When I mean zoning, I mean instanced zoning. 1 Zone is instanced and cut off from the zone next to it so that when you go over to the next zone you have to go through a gate and enter it via a loading screen.
Darkfall is not all first person.
There is a third person option... and no, those games are EXACTLY what the OP is looking for.
More Darkfall than MO.
I said look at Eve...
It has full open world PVP and you can loot people. Do I want full FFA player looting? That would depend. Although I prefer the Shadowbane PVP loot. You only drop whatever is in your bags. Gold, farming mats...whatever you forgot to put into the bank before you went out. However If someone destroyed a rival guilds city they should be able to plunder their stuff.
Ive played Darkfall 1.0, and its my understanding that in that game you pretty much have to Max out Magic in order to even remotely be competitive in PVP. Magic is not my forte. Almost every fight I got into with my guild in Darkfall it was just magic magic magic.
They actually did. It's called perpetuum online.
Yes, perpertuum, which is a direct plagiarism of EVE, but in a mech.
People relate to avatars (humanoid), not machines, like EVE's ships/pods or perpetuums mechs.
EVE did 'avatars', too little too late.
I discuss this very issue in my latest editorial video here...
http://youtu.be/Tc4SjI0OF8k
Let's just put it on the table.
EVE, is a very simple game to 'expand' upon. EVE's zones consist of one SKYBOX and a few 3-dimensional spehere's (planets), that's all EVE's "expanding universe" is really are about, making more skyboxes with few spheres.
You cannot land on any planet (par from a space station, which is only a premade screen for your spaceship.)
When you DARE to face the facts, EVE is = SKYBOX + 3D orbs + excel trading and sub-par / mediocre button mash gear dependant combat.
http://planetexplorers.pathea.net/
Is all you need to know!!
What happened to the MMORPG genre is the same that happened to the entire game scene. Publishers are now run by managers who go for the quick bucks. The game industry is one of the most well earning sectors, even though there is a world wide crisis there are still sold many many games. It happened when the PS2 and Xbox became a very wide success, followed by the PS3 and xbox 360. It attracted a new kind of gamer, the mainstream gamer. These mainstream gamers are the biggest group of gamers these days. The same people who shouted you where a fat virgin nerd 10 years ago if you said you where a gamer are now the same people who call you all kind of names in CoD and look at you as if you are a freak if you say you don't like CoD.
The mainstream gamer brought something else with them. They had the urge to feel good about themselves in games or they wouldn't buy games anymore (words from the publishers back then). So how do you meet their requirements? You make games more easy and on top of that much shorter. Most games aren't so hard to complete anymore on hard mode. Many hard modes these days where the same modes we used to call "medium difficulty" in the good old days. Everything has to be pointed out as well cause we do not want the mainstream gamer to get lost in their game now do we?
Great example is Dragon Age. Dragon Age Origin had many skills too choose from, you could make a warrior who dual wield two swords, you could equip your companions with all kind of armor and weapons to enhance your parties strengths and the combat was rather strategic. The game was a huge success, but ho wait.....The console version of the game didn't work out so great, off course this was natural as the game was made as a PC game and already long in development before the 360 and PS3 where even announced. But the mainstream gamer began to complain (as they are often console gamers, but read careful I'm not saying console gamers are all mainstream gamers), so what happens. EA sees that Dragon Age was a success, but wanted more money. So they forced Bioware to rush out a quick Dragon Age 2, a game that was dumb down like insane. You hardly could customise your characters skills, there where only a hand full compared to Dragon Age Origin cause the mainstream gamer got lost in all the skills and omg they cried so hard they didn't know what too choose and what was the BEST way to play booohooo, equipting your party members was completely removed, yeah you could give them another weapon but often their own weapons where the best they could get so there wasn't much use of giving them another. The combat became a action game and to make it even worse they removed the amazing looking execution animations from DA:O for exploding corpses >.< And the level designs...gods they didn't even try to hide it was just corridor walking, i never felt so clausterphobic in a game as in DA2.
But it doesn't stop with RPG's, shooters, gods how i loved games like Rainbow Six and SWAT 3 and 4 cause they where hard, one shot one kill. You had to think, you had to plan and going in gunblazing resulted more often then not in your own death or the death of innocents. Now a shooter gets minor points by the game press if you don't have some magic auto healing if you rest for three seconds behind one of the many walls. Cause the game press these days are mainstream gamers. People who don't want to die at the same spot more then once. Who see death in a game as a game fault instead of them trying to learn why they keep dying there and find a way around it. But publishers like EA and Activision see this group as the only group they need to please cause its where the most money is. Give them short and easy games so these gamers feel good about themselves and will buy the next game.
In the MMORPG's its the exact same. WoW did something other MMORPG's didn't manage to do as much as WoW did (this is not a fanboy stand of view, its how it went). WoW made the genre popular, and when Activision merged with Vivendi WoW suffered a terribly faith.....Boby Koytick and the need to please only the mainstream gamer. He orderd that WoW had to be more accessable for the mainstream gamer and the rest is history. Seeing WoW generated a huge amount of money each month other publishers wanted to profit from this as well. And in their logics you can only get that if you offer the exact same as the competition cause that is clearly what people want to have....totally forgetting that people aren't gonna leave a highest lvl fully pimped char for a new char in a new game where they gotta work their way up again. So for many MMORPG's the number of subs stayed low. To counter this they looked at other genres and asked the mainstream gamer what they wanted (i assume they asked only the mainstream gamer cause EA keeps saying they asked us gamers our opinion where i never received any question from EA) and noticed that the most important thing is great graphics. But with great graphics comes the instanced bullcrap. Worlds can't be seamless anymore as that would be to demanding for the servers, so byebye nice big worlds where it can take up 2 hours to walk from one corner to the other without ever seeing a loading screen. And you don't really think the mainstream gamer is gonna travel all the way to a dungeon right? Nooooo they want quick access so LFG tools are standard now or the mainstream gamer won't play.
I noticed in this subject that some people said "Fact is that no one will play semi sandbox games once they are released". That is nonsense. People will, the difference is that it would go back to the normal numbers MMORPG's had before WoW. Yeah it won't be a Million+ subs. But is that a problem? Not really, cause frankly look at many of the AAA MMORPG's that came out after WoW, they all started perhaps with a couple of million players, but these days they all have only a couple of thousand perhaps a million at most while being F2P now even. Publishers should take enough with that, cause look at EVE it doesn't have the numbers of WoW, but it been around for many years and has a very loyal player base where most other MMORPG's hardly have a community after 3 months anymore. But the managers who run most publishers want quick money, so to get that you make a standard MMORPG by the template of WoW and EQ, its easy, its basic as you don't really have to add anything extra beside raids and pvp battlegrounds. With instanced zones it also more easy for mainstream gamers to remember where they are and by removing a lot of freedom in exploring you won't have mainstream gamers getting lost so they will enjoy the game a lot more, they also need to have giant arrows and exact quest locations shown on the map so they feel like true explorers in a game that doesn't know exploration anymore.
MMORPG's suffered from the current state of the gaming scene. Unless publishers will stop trying to please just one group of gamers and take enough from the other groups there won't really be any major chance in how MMO's are designed i fear. Maybe a small studio might try it here and there but unless one of the seamless sandbox-ish games becomes a real success that earns millions of profit its just not gonna happen. But i would love them to proof my worries to be wrong.
I would like to see the Sandbox game first,i have not seen one yet and doubt i will for many years to come.They are all linear scripted paint by number games.The closest thing to sandbox right now is NW and the Foundry system but that is still limited to instances and very little content to work with.
I have thought about it for many years and it is just VERY tough to ever make a sandbox game.
The reason is simple,where would all the user created files get stored?You cannot simply toss out an empty sandbox without adding the sand and the shovel.It is most certainly possible and imo would be THE game to set new standards but is just near impossible to pull off.
I was thinking that perhaps anything a player creates would get stored on their computer,however they would have to be online for people to D?l the content.Also they would need unlimited bandwidth to handle all the traffic.SO really how is this possible,i don't see it.
Seamless world is possible "to the eye" but it would ALWAYS be a FAKE seamless world,it would still have to have invisible zones.
So bottom line is a TRUE seamless Sandbox will never happen in the next 20+ years,unless there is something i am really missing here as i am sure there are a lot of smart people out there that can pull off miracles.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
A "few" years back there wasn't much competition and the technology was in a huge shift-phase going from 2D to 3D amongst other things. Proper nerds with passion sat down and created wonderful things from their imaginations, without the thought of "making huge piles of cash" clouding their judgment. Today the competition is harsh. Huge investors throw cash in to the market and expect/aim for WoW-like returns. Those nerds with a passion are controlled by those who think "money first". Yes, they can still lurk in their basement and work their ass off to make that game, but i imagine it's quite hard when big companies offer nice pay-checks to feed their family. Only the best of the best can make these kind of games, and they get recruited as soon as they look out the door.
There is also a much larger customer-base that swarmed in from every corner (/genre) of the industry to try this new hip thing. These "new" players probably outnumber the old niche players that grew up with the genre, thus making them the vocal majority. Running through terrain for 40 minutes straight to get to that specific place just wasn't their thing.
Anything that becomes popular enough is eventually broken down to the lowest common denominator to please the statistically average user. In the end, nobody get's everything they want, but everyone get's something. Also, it's not new anymore, and the technology isn't taking these huge visible leaps as it did then. The innovation is behind the scenes now days (server/network tech and optimisation), because that's where we are in the development stage of this kind of technology (at least it's what's being prioritized to maximize profit). Graphically not much is really happening (visibly), because each new game tries to cater to more and more players, so the curve stays pretty straight since you need to sacrifice graphics to fit more players, and affordable processing power is sort of halted for personal computers.
A return of niche-games, that aim for a few thousand players instead of a few hundred thousand or millions, would save the day. A visionary/company/enthusiast who can see the value of a long-term relationship with a selected few is needed (read EVE). A 10 year project, instead of a cash-grab arcade. Sure there are some out there, but so far i haven't seen any that can produce the kind of quality people expect now days. And it's not a project you can begin with the mind-set of becoming filthy rich.
On a side-note. There seems to be some kind of misconception amongst developers that every mmo-player wants huge battles with 100's vs 100's (or 1000's) players on screen at once. Who planted that seed? I don't believe it's true.
+1 to you sir.
I agree, idk who put that idea in their heads.
First Love Syndrome.
"The game I liked best was [x]. Any game that's not just like [x], at least by 'feel', will never make me happy."
Don't worry, the syndrome is not exclusive to sandboxes.
[x] is usually something encountered at least ten years in the past.
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.
Neverwinter is about as far from being a sand box as you can get. Not even the foundry is remotely sandbox.
SWG was a massive sand box, UO, wurm, Darkfall, there have been many sandbox games. Neverwinter is not one of them.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.