Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
How is Archeage a Sandbox?
Or even name a single Sandbox element it contains.
First let me preface and say I"m in alpha, have been playing daily, and thoroughly enjoy the game for what it is....a large world battle arena to fight others for the sake of fighting. But this will run it's course very very soon. So I turn to the old arguement everyone falls back on when you bring up the glaring lack of content or "sandbox" tools if you will on the general forums.
"Archeage is a sandbox, if you need someone to hold your hand go back to WoW"
Ok, so I challenge you to name the sandbox elements in Archeage to drive player content. And to cross the big two right off the list, DAoC had essentially identical housing and custumizations...and noone would call it a sandbox. And the nothern continent mess of unimplemented idea is either a really shitty version of DAoC frontiers, or a really really really shitty version of territory control in Shadowbane by tree claiming.
So i will await your answers and just say that after the fun of having open PKing as an option wears off, it becomes very clear why this game is a barren wasteland in both RU and KR.
Comments
I'm with you, I played AA for about a little over a month. Got level 50, made my own boat and I stopped playing once I realized it was more of a thempark till your level 50 and then after that it was little dots of sandbox elements. and Open pvp in the war zones.
I like the game a lot and think its a step in the right direction but it is not a sandbox MMORPG.
I also think the term sandbox has been thrown around so much its starting to lose its meaning. Open world/Seamless games do not mean sandbox.
The term "Sandpark" has been created expressively for Archeage, because it is a combination of Sandbox and Themepark elements.
So Archeage is not a Sandbox............... it is better.
I believe that a successful modern MMORPG should be a mix between a Sandbox and a Themepark, and Archeage is a step toward the right direction.
People will call it sandbox but in fact it's the most sadboxy themepark out there atm.
It's still a themepark in the end of the day.
Yeah I play alpha.
It's a sandbox with quest chains, dungeons, and levelling tacked on.
If you just play to quest to 50, it's a themepark, but nobody does that so who cares? The real game is the sandobx infrastructure building and PVP.
The original question about sandbox features is so trollish I'm not going to bother to list them but anyone could.
What is trollish? Have you played the game to 50? Infrastructure building? You mean placing a house you can decorate in a pre-determined area set aside for said housing that every other themepark game for the past 10 years has allowed you to do? Or the 4 castles you can build in a once a month raid zone that was better implimented in DAoC, Lineage II, Shadowbane, Warhammer, ESO, hell GW2.....oh wait these are all themepark games. And since when is inconsequential PvP sandbox? Doesn't pretty much every single MMO on the market contain PvP in some aspect. Even World of Warcraft, the sandbox bane, has open world PvP that is arguably more hardcore than archeage. There are not roaming PvP stages with 2 hours of danger free no pvp allowed in WoW. Oh wait, there are tradepacks, so everyone can run tradepacks for the first 2 months to get the 300 guilda required to buy everything you ever need that never decays. Still waiting for a non-troll response to my question.
The term is a bit subjective.
So lets go with what makes it stand out from the typical WoW clone theme park in my mind.
The crafting system is directly tied into the world in this game in very meaningful ways. This means you have more freedom due to crafting in this game, being able to build and modify boats, flying things (gliders), subs, tractors, siege equipment, houses, furnishings and more. You can even store gear in your house, build farms, raise animals that can be used for food or as a source of materials or pets/ mounts. The fact you can make special nets to trap boss mobs, make underwater dive gear, sextants, and many other things that are all functional and have specific uses is very excellent as well.
You can make your own guild insignia and put it on your sails or your cape. You can even upload pictures and put them on the walls of your house.
The simple concepts within this game working together give the player choices that are simply not available in most regular themepark style games.
Even the player housing part of this....most MMO's dodge it completely or make an instanced version. With this you can build small, regular, large....even build castles if you have a big guild. The styles of home are nice as well with many to choose from in each size. The amount of furnishings and fact you can put your own crafting stations within your house is also great.
I have just scratched the surface here, but let's just say all the systems above are not included in typical themepark because themeparks are based mainly on chasing the group and raid dungeon content. Once everyone beats that then they have to issue another expansion and higher level caps. The Player vs player is never the main driving force in themeparks. ArcheAge does have all the themepark elements and they are done in a fashion more around 6 years ago. Nothing wrong with that in my book since it wasn't broken then.....just had these other elements missing.
What elements? Sandbox style elements.
And sure you can debate till your nose turns red about sandbox vs sandpark vs themepark and what those terms mean...just don't include me in that convo since it is more a personal frame of reference to me and not really up for vocabulary breakdowns like some on the forum have tried to do.
Most people who claim to want a sandbox actually want a themepark with a variety of types of rides. Which is exactly what archeage is.
Explain what you mean in the highlighted portion please. Specifically the "once a month raid zone".
I hate the word sandbox. Its just a word someone made up, people try and put a definition to this made up word.. There is NO ANSWER, your definition is right, and the next guys definition is right. You know you can leave it at that.
- Its no different than arguing about the color blue, you could argue forever on what shade of blue something is.
- You could argue that the 1970s game Pong is a sandbox. After all you can move the paddle left to right, you have a choice on how far you would like to move it, the sky is the limit.
HOWEVER the word sandbox could have some value in video games IF THE WORD IS USED LIGHTLY.
Example :
If someone told me game X will be released soon and its part sandbox part theme park, I would have a general idea what to expect........I just wouldn't dig too deep into it......I wouldn't hold anyone to it.......I would just know their are areas that you can do as you feel.
By the way " do as you feel " is my definition.
Try and relax, and take the game for what it is Good, Bad, or anyplace in between. Allow for some gray area !!!
I saw in a video where a guy said you can plant crops anywhere in the world and other players can steal them if you don't pick them when they ripen. I don't know if you need to meet a certain requirement to be able to do that but that's sandbox to me.
Open world
Open seas
World PvP
Plant crops
Steal crops
Go to jail
I don't know what else sandbox is supposed to have other than terraforming but I don't care. Excited for this game
The highly toted northern continent consist of what would be essentially no different than daoc style Keeps to claim. The difference here being instead of needing gold or currency to upgrade, you need raw materials. There are currently only 4 capable of being claimed as the rest are "bugged" Bugged is a loose term since the keeps are still bugged in the korean version which has been out for 2 years. These keeps once claimed are only available to be sieged ONCE A MONTH. That is it......the rest of the zone is various camps of level 50 mobs that have a few unique drops and higher percentage drop rates of high level crafting components.....that again are a make one time and never decay or make again. You do not even earn the PvP points for killing each other on this continent. It literally consist of groups of varying factions standing within sight of each other aoe farming mob camps and bots. If you run around ganking people, 9-10 times they dont even fight back, since there is no penalty to dying, they simply speed up the death process, respawn 30 seconds walk away, and come back and instantly start farming again. This is your dynamic player conflict center.
The other main "conflict" area consist of people camping turn in points for trade packs. These packs are turned into 1 of 2 places, either the opposing factions SAFE zone. This means 50 of the enemy faction stands by the NPC all capable of attacking you when you turn in the pack. You are completely unable to engage them until they attack you first. If someone buffs or heals the person who attacks you they are not flagged. It's a total mess.
The other main turn in point is a zone that cycles through war phases. After about 4 hours give or take of open PvP the zone enters a 2 hour window of NO PVP ALLOWED. At this time everyone rushes over to turn in with virtually no fear of losing items except during the ocean crossing.
The is a war zone where each side fights over a relic every 4 hours or so. This consist of 100 people on each side massing up and completely bypassing each other and having a dps race destorying the other factions relic, then going to a npc to upgrade a neckpiece you can get every 10 kills. Think WoW AV, it's scarily similar.
Outside of that 80% of the population stand outside of the main city hubs dueling and waiting for arena timers to pop (yes there is an instanced arena which stands as the fastest way to gain pvp honor or currency).
Maybe once every week you have the chance of running into a roaming gank group running around killing people experiencing in the other 10ish zones of pvp.
I made it into the mid 20s on the russian server before giving up because of the quest grind and not being able to main a crafter because of the restriction labor points put on this feature.
You can't plant stuff everywhere. There are predefined zones for this like there are housing zones. Those zones are on the open world zone, and what you see as "open world" are just zones put together like wow or as the op mentioned, daoc. Nothing new, nothing special not sandboxy. Same goes with seas iirc. But I must admit from a dev point of view it is nice to have it in the open world becaues you dont have to create content for the space these zones take up.
Just because there is world pvp doesnt make it sandboxy. Afaik you can do that in wow, sry for mentioning it again but it is THE themepark and I guess everyone agrees that is a themepark.
To make it short and not go into each feature: Imho it is a themepark with many features. Some really fun and maybe even unique (jail, stealing crops might be annoying but can be fun for some people I guess who never had to wait for 7h+ doing kind of nothing) but others are just the same old present/gift box with another box around it. Maybe I should explain this.
Take the horse raising quest as example. In other games you take a quest, turn it in and tada you get a horse. In AA you get a quest, turn it in, get a small horse, drop it in the marked "horse raising zone", click 3-4 times over the next 5 min and tada you get a horse. Same with plants, buy seeds, drop them in the "plant raising zone", click 3-4 times over the next 5min to several days(not kidding) and tada you get the plant. In other games you do the normal click plant, pick up plant thing. And same goes for the crafting. Wait until you have enough labor points, craft part1. Wait until you have enough labor points craft the next part. (insert 10-20 repeats)....Wait again and craft the final thing.
All in all it is a themepark that creates the illusion of being sandboxy by stretching the time it takes to achieve stuff. If that is what people are looking for then there is nothing wrong with that. But calling it a sandbox or even sandpark is a bit misleading imho
edit: @op
"currently only 4 capable of being claimed as the rest are "bugged" Bugged is a loose term since the keeps are still bugged in the korean version which has been out for 2 years. These keeps once claimed are only available to be sieged ONCE A MONTH"
since I never made it to max, does this "sieged once a month" mean the bugged or working keeps?
I've played AA Alpha and sold it on eBay because I didn't find it to be Sandbox like it was purported.
To me, a sandbox is where you can have a permanent impact until someone changes it, i.e. kills, destroy, build, interact - and it's that way until it differs. AA is not sandbox.
The working keeps are only available to be sieged once a month. There is literally ZERO reason for a guild to be at the keep outside of this siege time, there is nothing special that can be accomplished here, other than having a port to farming areas that are capable of producing a special tree. So i guess you can hope to gank people farming, so they can respawn 10 seconds away and start farming again.
u-u-ultra quote
Thanks for the answer. Shame... I was hoping that you ment the bugged keeps. Also the "people aren't moving" part kind of explains why a stealth-mage-cc char could cast on a group for 30sec uninterupted. off topic, sry.
Right now the word "sandbox" is being used to suggest that it's not the "other" type of game. In other words, if we had all been playing sandboxes for the last 15 years, the big word would be "themepark." It's not really saying a damn thing to be quite honest. Hybrids are the same damn thing only they are fence sitting just in case you like the "other" type of game. Either way, it's all hyperbole.
There has yet to be a game put out that has changed the state of the game. Until it happens, it's just all hyperbole.
In a word: marketing.
The people hyping this thing can claim it is a "sandbox" all they want, but it does not make it so.
It is a linear themepark with certain activities gated by cash shop / payment model.
That's it.
LOL at the quest "grind". This is one of the easiest games ever to level up in, if that's a grind I don't think you have a lot of stamina. How much time did you spend in the game, 20 hours?
You can only plant in special zones? Can't be a crafter because of labor points? Are you sure you actually played to level 20? The zoning restrictions are just for protected farming, you can plant unprotected almost anywhere. As for labor points I've been playing around 3 hours a night and got down to half my labor points maybe once. It's probably not fun to craft 6 hours straight anyway, do some trade runs!
This has turned into a general gripe thread, ie "it can't be a sandbox cuz it sucks".
Anyone approaching the situation from a neutral perspective would say this game has more sandbox features than any other AAA title on the market right now. Wurm Online is more sandboxy, but not AAA. Landmark has terraforming but little else at this point. Eve has item destruction and harsher PVP but lacks the variety of systems that AA has.
I wouldn't call it a sandbox either.
But I wouldn't call it linear.
Lots of games are extremely linear where there is one path of progression and the player has no choice. Go down that path or stop progressing.
With games linear usually means Mario Brothers. If you can decide to not save the princess and finish the game a different way or find a completely different non-trivial goal to achieve I don't call the game linear.
Some games have multiple avenues of -meaningful- progression. Like in EVE Online where you can progress down a skill tree. I dont' call EVE linear though as there are other viable meaningful ways to spend your time. Building your wallet or reputation are very popular forms of progression in EVE.
Archeage does have the boring quester path to 50. But there isn't one way to get there, and there are other meaningful goals to be had. Some more meaningful than the quest to 50 itself.
Youve never been above lvl 30 have you?
https://ashesofcreation.com/r/Y4U3PQCASUPJ5SED
Not so much anymore, lol. I'm not sure I can stand all those very stringent artificial restrictions on zones and timers and LPs. Meh. Big meh.
Thanks folks
Agreed they aint worth my time either with their trashing and troll baiting if it would be a sandpark / sandbox or not.
Let them write what they want.
I for one cant wait after all these wow copy failures of mmo's for the past decade.
ESO and Wildstar are the latest puke in box mmo's.
Glad we get Archeage where you can at least roam the sea and claim land with your guild, grow crops and with 1.2 pvp almost everywhere
The Themepark genre has never been this bad and it continues to get worse.
Hope they all go bankrupt so the endless WOW Clone milking are a day of the past.
That is not what game is, its the way you play the game.
Each player can get a definition to AA based in the way they play / behave because the game offer alot of gameplay diversity.
If that means sandbox or whatever other name, is not importante really. What matter is what the game offer to the players.
You choose to play the game like a Deathmatch Counter-Strike map, nothing wrong with that, its your style.