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"Themepark" bad?
Total_Havok
Member UncommonPosts: 21
Why do we keep referring to the "themepark" feel of some MMO's (WoW as an example) as a terrible thing?
In all honesty, some players like the stability of having things to do that have been set up by the developers...everyone seems to get really mad or irritated at a somewhat guided path to new "attractions". Personally, if there isn't even a small amount of guidance with some of the MMOs I have been able to play, then I would've lost interest very quickly. I feel like the developers do a great job of taking us where they think we should go (not all of the time, but I haven't experienced a bad example of this).
With WoW specifically, I remember walking into StormWind for the first time after all the dumb little fetch/kill quests and thinking "Wow...this place is huge, and AWESOME!". I felt like I had accomplished something and that I had worked to get to that point. It felt rewarding.
Sandbox MMOs do a lot of things right in the way of harboring exploration and creativity, but stability is a good thing sometimes. GW2 seems to do a great job of managing the hand-holding, while letting you explore to your hearts content, but even still, there are a lot of things that the game does wrong.
With all of the upcoming MMOs/Beta testings/etc. has anyone really felt that there are some great concepts that manage these ideas well? Are there any games that people can't get enough of that maybe do lean more towards a "themepark" mentality? I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts and opinions!
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Maybe because a portion of players think themeparks are terrible? Are you trying to say they are not allowed that opinion?
Is an opinion about certain products even debatable? It's like telling people they are wrong for hating the color orange
Why would you draw the conclusion that I think people aren't allowed to have an opinion? That is rather strange as I said nothing of the sort, in fact, I want to hear that side of things, I would love to know why people don't like them, those opinions are invited. Not sure why you took a question and made it look like I don't want people to have opinions...And again, never said anything was a wrong opinion...not sure where you're getting these ideas.
EDIT:
I played Rift for a while (A year and a half) and I have to completely agree. It was great for a while but grew repetitive and annoying as I had played WoW for a long time before I even got into Rift. There was nothing new to do...in fact I think that the only reason I played it for as long as I did was because the graphics were slightly more realistic, as opposed to "cartoony" WoW.
Maybe I'm reading your question wrong then, because it looks to me you are trying to sway the negative connotations about the term 'themepark' with an explanation how it's not all inherently bad.
My bad then, moving on
It's all good, if you thought that was the case, then others might have done the same as well and in that respect you did me a favor by bringing it up so I could explain that it wasn't!
I guess if you're not looking for the typical raid/daily/rep grind a themepark is going to offer you very little at end game which means it's not going to be a long term game for you.
If long term is really want you want in an mmo but are tired of themeparks then seeing another after another would be frustrating. More so when very little else is ever offered.
That is actually a really fantastic point! Disneyland is great, but after you've been to Disneyland so many times (even after rides and concessions have been added over the years), it is still Disneyland.
Every time I come to this site I see threads like this in the highlights, same oooold crap. Sandbox, good? Subscription fee, bad? lol Every game is different or should be at least. In the end it all comes down to personal taste.
Themeparked MMO's are always going to be more successful because people don't get lost in them without knowing what to do next. It always points the way to the next objective whether the game's main goal is to provide you a fun and immersive journey until max level or a simple fun introduction until max level when stuff really open up afterwards with endgame. Or both but that's yet to come....
Sandbox MMO's players make their own content. If they are out of ideas they get lost without knowing what to do, get bored and leave. Since there is less player vs environment content, its crucial to socialize with others players since content comes from them.
Truth is MMO's should have a mix of both worlds, theme park and Sandbox since you're not always in the mood to depend on other people to play your game.
A game with large scale open world pvp, battlegrounds, arenas, immersive questing and lore, dungeons, raids. housing, criminal system with "cops" and "crooks" with bounties on their heads, dynamic quests with random events, meaningful crafting, working economy etc. The problem is that these features are all spread across different MMO's. I think MMO developers are a bit "confused" at the moment. The only dev team I've seen so far with a solid mindset is Carbine but their game is a theme park mostly.
MMO's are meant to be a social game that has many games inside of one big package, leaving you with lots to do or choose from. Go wherever you want, do whatever you feel like in a living world full of players and NPC's alike. Create your own content alongside your buddies or just follow the railways the game offers you. Choice and lots of interactivity. I think MMO's are still something very new and unexplored, definately the future of gaming though.
I have to agree with you here. Things get grindy and boring at max level. I experienced this most recently with GW2.
I don't mean to be redundant, just wanted to have some conversation about this. I agree with your statement on MMOs being social, but for the intrinsic player that needs to be bale to play and have a good time, socializing doesn't particularly work for him. A lot of the people I have met in the past played MMOs (for the most part) by themselves. They liked the idea of running around in a world with real people on the other end (it gives life to an otherwise npc/mob-filled environment). But I have to say that I am a very social player, so I agree with that point.
The term is just a classification .. there is no good or bad. That is subjective.
It's the classic sandbox vs themepark argument.
Some people, such as myself, tend to play MMORPG's with the mindset of actually playing an RPG in a virtual world. Themeparks tend to destroy this as the game ends up being "on rails" as you get guided from A ->B ->C -> Endgame. This doesn't end up feeling like a virtual world that you live in so much as a single player RPG where other players are also happening to be near you playing the same single player rpg.
Of course now people are getting a bit tired of this and it's becoming less about "sandbox vs. themepark" and more about "themepark is old and we're tired of playing wow".
Some people find structure nice, some people can't imagine living life any other way than the way they have been told, or having their hands held. Some people just want to go out and take on the world in the way that they want to.
For this I bring up Asherons Call. When i first started there was a very short, very crappy training area. You were left with minimal equipment, a VERY crude map, and basically told "here's the world, do as you please" At first I had no idea what was going on, but I met people, found cities, learned about travel, found allegiances, etc. Exploration was beneficial as rare-spawns and loot were aplenty.
Fast forward to wow. You spawn, click the exclamation point, then proceed to do that until you were max level. Sure they added a bit of variance over the years, but your path was pretty much laid out. Doing anything other than the themepark in the order it was designed to be done wasn't very beneficial. This hasn't really changed in many MMO's.
Now, Take a sandbox and throw in a themepark as one of MANY paths in which to play the game, sure... great. But as pretty much the only path, bleh... boring. I want to live in a virtual world, not play a co-op rpg/chatroom.
Edit to add: I personally find that in themeparks you play the game and story that the devs give you, in sandboxes you play the game and story that the characters make. I Know you weren't really looking for a themepark vs sandbox argument but the argument is why "themepark is bad" exists. Most of the people that browse these forums seem to be older mmo-vets who want the older days of pre-wow mmo's, ya know... pre themepark.
Watch this, it's 8 mins long and a good example of what sandboxes are capable of:
Looking for MMORPG to play
Hope for long term play , meet and be friend with a lots players
Get a short term multiplayer online RPG with major time solo quest hubs and it label as "themepark"
Rage and see any all "themepark" MMORPG are just lie to customer who search for MMORPG to play.
> "themepark" is bad and full of lies .
> "themepark" is bad
> bad
People associate themepark with a rather limited quest driven play style where you are guided through from area to area. This is boring especially for a vet mmo player. In reality, games that just build a virtual world and let people play like EQ are still themepark. So people would be perfectly happen with a themepark if it was done in a more permanent open world style.
OTOH a true sandbox - with actual player created content (not just open world PvP) isn't something that would be popular at all, IMHO. Players are lousy developers.. What the people around here really want are more 'open' themeparks that can feature such things as emergent play and better AI and good procedural content. None of this stuff seems to come to MMOs. Skyrim for example has quite a lot of procedural content and some semi-respectable AI but none of that made it to ESO. So people are disappointed.
They're not bad, they're just boring after you've done it a million times. It's just like anything you do; you want something fresh, that's why people are clamoring for 'sandpark/box' MMO's right now.
I agree with this very much.
The first time I played WoW in 2004/5, I found it to be AMAZING - totally addictive. But 10 years later, I find it too predictable and I don't find 3rd person perspective immersive enough.
The new excitement for me is the upcoming Elite: Dangerous because it's far less predictable - it relies on a combination of:
1) An enormous computer generated universe (proceedural generation - this is a 'sandbox' component on steroids)
2) Developer made activities (this is a sort of 'themepark' component)
3) Other players who will be unpredictable (this is set up as a 'sandbox' component because the NPC universe responds to player activity for a long duration - and players respond to players)
It's this fusion which I find more amazing these days.
I think it is OK when people voice their opinion. What I don't appreciate is being insulted for my choice in gaming. Which happens every time a "I hate themeparks" post hits. Folks want to make it personal, rather than sticking to the merits of their argument.
I agree.
The one that irks me the most is the condescending attitude that you need a higher intelligence to play a sandbox game.
Far from it actually, an imagination is probably more important.
I think both sandboxes and themeparks can be virtual worlds if done correctly. I also think that most people who claim they want a sandbox actually want a themepark with more varieties of rides. They just don't know it.
I'm just bored of the class based trinity, quest grind to max level, do raid dungeon to get better gear to do different raid dungeon to get better gear to do yet another raid dungeon model.
It was fun for a while, it's played out now. Let's try something different.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
I wish we could forget the quest grind and do 5-man dungeon to get better gear to do different 5-man dungeon to get better gear to do different 5-man... some crafting and a few very long and challenging quest chain in between. Ofc we couldnt finish the dungeons in first attempt, it should take time until we were able to kill the last boss.
Honestly, I really hope this is the case. A marriage between both of the concepts would really strike a chord with a large audience, as opposed to just limiting itself to one side of the coin.
The mix of theme park with sandbox is by far the best option in my opinion. Themepark gameplay to get you introduced to the worldspace,lore and gameplay while you reach max level. Sandbox allows players to make their own content.
At max level you ll just do the endgame content like raids or pvp or managing the market. Thing is, that content gets repetitive after a while if they don't introduce fresh content now and then. That's where the sandbox features play a role, keeping players busy and entertained with themselves while the developers cook something new.
By sandbox gameplay I mean giving players meaningful features in a persistent world. Housing that they can customize, farming, Guild keeps that they can defend and attack, a criminal system with bounties and jail time to avoid griefing, dynamic events that you can jump in once you see them where there is a mix of pve and pvp. Being in a guild and making friends in a sandbox environment is a must.
I think MMO's are heading into this direction considering the increase of bandwith and machine power as time goes by. Graphics don't have to be amazing in a MMO, just believable enough, the rest of the horse power needs to go to making that world feel alive and fun.
So my opinion, a true MMO needs a mix of both worlds to be amazing. Themepark and Sandbox. I don t know of a good and recent MMO and blends the two stuff together nowadays.
Oh yes, this is so true.
Sounds like a perfect MMO for me.