Players have little control over visual assets except your toon. He cannot scripted a story scene in most games.
You don't seem to understand what judgment is ... I never say his style is good or bad .. just more suited in some other ways.
How is that judgment? You seem to have to twist english meaning of words just to make an argument.
It's judgement because in order to say X is better for one than Y, you have to have deemed it to be so.
Somewhere along the line you dictated what was right and wrong for another by telling them what was better or worse when it ultimately is simply a matter of what they enjoy, not what you enjoy. You saying they are 'more suited' to writing a book rather than gaming entirely ignores the reason they may elect to game rather than write. It's an absent minded weighing of values that you have imposed.
As for limited animations, that's limited excuse at best. Many MMOs provide rather nice emote lists alongside the fact a player has access to any of their regular character animations. True, the average MMO restricts you from using much more than your personal avatar, however, that does not restrict players from collaborative efforts in using environments as backdrops.
Neither does that stand entirely true for those with player created content like EQ2, Cryptic titles, or other games where players are given environments and dungeons they can personalize and share for regular gameplay or RP purposes.
A good example here is the Cortex RP system in Starcraft 2. It's a mechanic for a game that's technically an RTS, which exposes many of the content elements to players to use them during active play.
You also have the likes of EQN and Landmark on the horizon that promises to let players take their level of interaction to the level of shaping the flow of the gaming world. It's the notion that you right here have said is not suited to the genre, yet an entire game has been built with that principle of player narrative and interaction being the core driving force in moving the global narrative of the game world.
EDIT: CoH is another example, it's popularity longstanding being the combined fact that you had high degree of control over the design of your own characters, a still minor genre of subjectively 'good' superhero MMOs, and that you had an almost universal sense of playing your avatar as the hero they were rather than simply being the class you picked.
"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 suppose you don't play SP games? Personally, i find i am bored if there is no professional stories in games .. but that, of course, is only me.)
Yeah lots of single player strategy games allow you to create your own stories those are the ones I play and good RPGs at least give you a lot of freedom over the type of characters you play even if there is a story there (mostly the stories themselves suck but the games can still be fun despite that).
Pen and paper RPGs are way better than video games IMO but for obvious reasons it's a lot harder to get my gaming group every time i want to play than just boot up a video game.
"If you tell a lie long and loud enough, people will eventually start to believe it."
This certainly applies to the growing trend around here, and other places, where certain individuals have repeated the words enough times to convince themselves it's the truth, while reality is far more complicated. Why do so many sandbox enthusiasts have trouble defining what that really means, or is? Because, like themeparks, there are a multitude of sub-genres, which in the sandbox school of design have not been attempted or replicated in the MMO medium. There are art creationist sandboxers, who believe the point of these games should be to build and create; the PvP focused sandboxers, who want all restriction regarding player interaction to be unprohibited; the people who just want to exist in an online environment without being forced into some form of linear progression; or the gamers who prefer simulation style environments.
There are far more permutations than anyone can truly imagine, and the crazy thing about themeparks is that, if you were to ask a group of people what that meant, or what type of game a themepark is, you'd get as many different answers as there were individuals. So to say that sandbox enthusiasts don't know what they want is about as ridiculous as saying that themepark players don't know what they want. It's just another way of discrediting a particular side of an argument, and it's utter bullshit. Of course, we all want different things! (whowouldaguessedit)
As for why people relate the term "themepark" to a negative experience, I think has more to do with market saturation than anything else. You could call it "trendy" to dislike linear games right now, but it's only natural for people to want some form of change after repeating the same, or similar, activities for nearly fifteen years. Sure, some or most people might be okay with that, but there's obviously a growing number of MMO players who would like to see some truly remarkable differences between the games that are currently releasing, and the crowd of themepark superstars that have decided now and forever what type of game we will be playing for eternity.
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
Originally posted by drowelf Oh like my cat runing form room to room not knowing what she wants only that she wants what is not there and she has no idea what it is.
"I hate themepark MMOs!"
"Why?"
"I want a sandbox MMO!"
"Cool, what's that?"
"No idea."
It's like the Abbot & Costello of the MMO world. Brilliant!
What I find the most hilarious of this situation is that, if we go by "their" logic of MMO's being "Too themeparky", every game is a theme park.
Grand Theft Auto is a themepark for sociopaths. Metal Gear Solid is a themepark of espionage. Call of Duty is the themepark of war. Need for Speed is a racing themepark. American McGee's Alice is a themepark of a fudged up Alice in Wonderland.
The point is, more or less, every video is a themepark of it's source material- some more than others. You cannot limit it to one genre. And honestly, if some MMO elitest says a game is "too themeparky", it's probably doing it's job right. In translation: "too themeparky" means "not my particular taste of theme". Some people prefer Universal Studios to Disney World.
Worst Online Communities: WoW/WoD(the OG MMO Trolls), DayZ/WarZ, SMITE/LoL/DOTA, EVE Online, APB "Im ready for All the comparisons I think its dumb and its embarrassing Im switching off No longer listening Ive had enough of persecution and conditioning Maybe its instinct- Were only animal" - Lily Allen, Sheezus
Originally posted by drowelf Oh like my cat runing form room to room not knowing what she wants only that she wants what is not there and she has no idea what it is.
"I hate themepark MMOs!"
"Why?"
"I want a sandbox MMO!"
"Cool, what's that?"
"No idea."
I don't understand why you guys tell yourselves these things. I know exactly why I don't like themeparks: Because I'm not interested in having things fed to me, and I'm not intrigued by being told how I'm supposed to enjoy myself. I also know exactly why I prefer sandboxes: Because I know that the most enjoyable experiences are the ones that come about naturally and organically.
There is certainly a degree of undue bias, but there is also simply the fact that people have become increasingly familiar with the underlying mechanics that define the global genre of the MMO space and simply want a less mechanical experience.
They call it sandbox, but that's not entirely accurate to the desire, and is likely the term used because it's the counter to the more common descriptor of MMOs as typically "theme-parks".
The concept is close. Treadmills become tiring after a while. The basic notion of running around fighting things endlessly gave way to the expansion of crafts and tasks, and we saw the more standardized use of questing, and now we have more malleable narrative experiences on the horizon.
However, change in MMOs is slow. Development as a whole not only lags behind other gaming genres, but also simply takes longer.
The other aspect is that MMOs as a platform have often had the issue of not taking advantage of what makes their platform unique, and instead provide the social version of what could be played and experienced on a smaller scale.
Themepark as a consequence is bad not because people hate it, but because it's a banner to ascribe their ire. Sandbox conversely gives them a banner of their own to wave, even if the meaning for either isn't concrete.
What they may very well want is what's come too slowly. They don't want to play the same game mechanics reskinned for the hundredth time, there needs to be a clear evolution and advancement of game play.
Though as this is derived from my stance, it may very well just be vouching for myself.
Themepark and sandbox may be somewhat vague, but they do actually have tenets that they globally stand by, which is where people who attack either side seem to generally lose their way.
Like fox for example rails off on 'every game is a themepark'. The notion established there seeming to be that, because the game has an encompassing theme and your actions take place residing within that theme, then therefore it's contents are always 'themepark' in their nature.
The thing is that themepark implicates that the user experience is predetermined. That's the fundamental aspect of it and any of it's sub-genres.
The inverse is that the user has some degree of agency in their play. Sandbox takes this notion, where your game play is in part derived from some emergent values not explicitly scripted for you to experience.
That would be the point where people refer to GTA as a sandbox versus a themepark. Where the core story line might be fixed, the open world game play and the things you are allowed to do is highly varied and there is no predetermined manner in which you have to go about doing things in that game world. The bugs and glitches, driving around, and simple antics you can get up to are perhaps some of the most entertaining parts of the game for some people.
Additionally, PC gaming in general has a habit of introducing the element of mods, which when combined with open world gaming in the likes of GTA, Saints Row, or Elder Scrolls has led to some of the most varied major title game experiences offered.
"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
There is certainly a degree of undue bias, but there is also simply the fact that people have become increasingly familiar with the underlying mechanics that define the global genre of the MMO space and simply want a less mechanical experience.
They call it sandbox, but that's not entirely accurate to the desire, and is likely the term used because it's the counter to the more common descriptor of MMOs as typically "theme-parks".
The concept is close. Treadmills become tiring after a while. The basic notion of running around fighting things endlessly gave way to the expansion of crafts and tasks, and we saw the more standardized use of questing, and now we have more malleable narrative experiences on the horizon.
However, change in MMOs is slow. Development as a whole not only lags behind other gaming genres, but also simply takes longer.
The other aspect is that MMOs as a platform have often had the issue of not taking advantage of what makes their platform unique, and instead provide the social version of what could be played and experienced on a smaller scale.
Themepark as a consequence is bad not because people hate it, but because it's a banner to ascribe their ire. Sandbox conversely gives them a banner of their own to wave, even if the meaning for either isn't concrete.
What they may very well want is what's come too slowly. They don't want to play the same game mechanics reskinned for the hundredth time, there needs to be a clear evolution and advancement of game play.
Though as this is derived from my stance, it may very well just be vouching for myself.
Themepark and sandbox may be somewhat vague, but they do actually have tenets that they globally stand by, which is where people who attack either side seem to generally lose their way.
Like fox for example rails off on 'every game is a themepark'. The notion established there seeming to be that, because the game has an encompassing theme and your actions take place residing within that theme, then therefore it's contents are always 'themepark' in their nature.
The thing is that themepark implicates that the user experience is predetermined. That's the fundamental aspect of it and any of it's sub-genres.
The inverse is that the user has some degree of agency in their play. Sandbox takes this notion, where your game play is in part derived from some emergent values not explicitly scripted for you to experience.
That would be the point where people refer to GTA as a sandbox versus a themepark. Where the core story line might be fixed, the open world game play and the things you are allowed to do is highly varied and there is no predetermined manner in which you have to go about doing things in that game world. The bugs and glitches, driving around, and simple antics you can get up to are perhaps some of the most entertaining parts of the game for some people.
Additionally, PC gaming in general has a habit of introducing the element of mods, which when combined with open world gaming in the likes of GTA, Saints Row, or Elder Scrolls has led to some of the most varied major title game experiences offered.
Very well said. Such words, Many 's
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
That would be the point where people refer to GTA as a sandbox versus a themepark. Where the core story line might be fixed, the open world game play and the things you are allowed to do is highly varied and there is no predetermined manner in which you have to go about doing things in that game world. The bugs and glitches, driving around, and simple antics you can get up to are perhaps some of the most entertaining parts of the game for some people.
GTA is NOT a sandbox. <g> It's just an open world game. If GTA is a sandbox then so is Skryrim, and Fallout 3 and a whole bunch of other single player games. EQ and GW2 would come really close to being sandbox as well - because you can go and do whatever you want in those games - you just might die a lot.
My god man - have you ever been to a themepark before? The good ones charge you at the entrance and you can then go a do WHATEVER YOU WANT. Disneyworld is the a themepark.
That would be the point where people refer to GTA as a sandbox versus a themepark. Where the core story line might be fixed, the open world game play and the things you are allowed to do is highly varied and there is no predetermined manner in which you have to go about doing things in that game world. The bugs and glitches, driving around, and simple antics you can get up to are perhaps some of the most entertaining parts of the game for some people.
GTA is NOT a sandbox. It's just an open world game. If GTA is a sandbox then so is Skryrim, and Fallout 3 and a whole bunch of other single player games. EQ and GW2 would come really close to being sandbox as well - because you can go and do whatever you want in those games - you just might die a lot.
My god man - have you ever been to a themepark before? The good ones charge you at the entrance and you can then go a do WHATEVER YOU WANT. Disneyworld is the a themepark.
That would be the point where people refer to GTA as a sandbox versus a themepark. Where the core story line might be fixed, the open world game play and the things you are allowed to do is highly varied and there is no predetermined manner in which you have to go about doing things in that game world. The bugs and glitches, driving around, and simple antics you can get up to are perhaps some of the most entertaining parts of the game for some people.
GTA is NOT a sandbox. It's just an open world game. If GTA is a sandbox then so is Skryrim, and Fallout 3 and a whole bunch of other single player games. EQ and GW2 would come really close to being sandbox as well - because you can go and do whatever you want in those games - you just might die a lot.
My god man - have you ever been to a themepark before? The good ones charge you at the entrance and you can then go a do WHATEVER YOU WANT. Disneyworld is the a themepark.
Originally posted by drowelf Oh like my cat runing form room to room not knowing what she wants only that she wants what is not there and she has no idea what it is.
"I hate themepark MMOs!"
"Why?"
"I want a sandbox MMO!"
"Cool, what's that?"
"No idea."
Why i hate themeparks (although i play GW2 now): they become boring and usually their pvp is based on realm v realm, also they prevent you from doing what ever you want and everything is on rails like you watch a movie .
Why i love sandboxs : they have usually open world pvp and its based on guild versus guild which means every players build shis own story he becomes a part of his whole server history and relations means something they are not pointless, also you can do whatever you want and you are free, some people prefer to die in order be free in real life...
It is more of a design philosophy than a list of features. The themepark metahpor is not very accurate either, since a ride would be something akin to a TV show/movie-like experience, not a game where you actively participate in it. Then again, none of the proclaimed sandboxes are really sandboxes when compared to titles such as Second Life.
This very much. You could say it's basically what people say when they want a game with features that don't inhibit immersion. It doesn't actually matter that much what features there are, but how much they coincide with what the player wants to do, how much they bind him and how much they make him think as if he were in the game himself.
It's too bad a sandbox game these days is (imo, of course) very difficult to design as so many players are very much used to hand holding and rushing to the end game. If the player has no need for or appreciation for immersion, there is small chance he will respect design decision that compromise comfort to increase immersion. We'll see how eqn does and how much of a sandbox it is. I have a bit hope for AA too tho.
So, to try to (once again) put in words an answer to OP, a themepark typically aims for player fun and comfort and has quite little regard for immersion.
As mentioned by most people here already,excessive hand holding is the main problem people have with theme park mmos.Other than that theme park is a very good way to experience and consume content in mmo without being overwhelmed.
The user and all related content has been deleted.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Reality: In game story arcs need to follow some sort of progression. Quest hubs make it easy to focus the players on the story.
Future: The story will be told as it unfolds in as many locations as possible. Different story elements will all tie into the overall story arc.
The problem is very few people actually care about the story in these quest hubs. Why? Because it sucks. Why? Because they can't afford to pump out quality content at a pace comparable to how quickly people devour it. It's a terrible model, and that's why it produces terrible games, and that's why the term has negative connotations.
There's nothing wrong with the term Themepark. They're fine, however when creating a themepark MMO with very little content it's hard to justify continuously payment for the game's content. Unless you progress very slowly in a video game. A person will typically finish the game within the first month.
I don't agree. You can't judge content use by content locusts. Themepark designers are generally looking for ways to keep the content hard enough to slow down completition and yet not so hard that players quit out of frustration/boredom. The right way to do this is through slow increases in the difficulty. Another approach is the modern WoW system of everthing is easy except for some hard raids. I don't like that approach but hey it clearly works to some extent as well. Its also a lot cheaper from the cost side - no need to balance most of the lower content.
But that's all off the main point.. The real issue is that right now - Sandbox is a tradeoff and often can hurt a game. Why? If we take sandbox to mean 'player generated content' - then you run into a lot of issues with players creating a lot of mediocre content that doesn't feel 'real.'
If we take sandbox to mean 'open world' - (not true but people on this forum seem to want to use it that way) then you run into trouble with creating a narrative structure for your game. This is easy enough to see in single player games - Fallout 3 has less of a story then say Dishonored because Dishonored is less 'open world.'
I think GW2s downleveling (which incidentally a ton of people hate) is the best way at enhancing this open world freedom and I feel bad that more games aren't embracing it. You can try removing levels but that seriously diminishes the idea of progression that all these MMOs are built on.
TL:DR
MMOs are all about tradeoffs. There is no free lunch. Themeparks pick a bunch of a bunch of options and in general it works well. You get high quality content and a nice narrative for your character. You lose some open world aspects and don't get player made content. Most players are down with those tradeoffs. For those that want real sandboxes there is Landmark, Wurm, and Minecraft. For those that think open world and PvP is a sandbox there is EVE, Day Z etc.
That would be the point where people refer to GTA as a sandbox versus a themepark. Where the core story line might be fixed, the open world game play and the things you are allowed to do is highly varied and there is no predetermined manner in which you have to go about doing things in that game world. The bugs and glitches, driving around, and simple antics you can get up to are perhaps some of the most entertaining parts of the game for some people.
GTA is NOT a sandbox. It's just an open world game. If GTA is a sandbox then so is Skryrim, and Fallout 3 and a whole bunch of other single player games. EQ and GW2 would come really close to being sandbox as well - because you can go and do whatever you want in those games - you just might die a lot.
My god man - have you ever been to a themepark before? The good ones charge you at the entrance and you can then go a do WHATEVER YOU WANT. Disneyworld is the a themepark.
Not really. Same thing Quirhid seems to have looked over.
Themepark is the concept of predetermined experience. You might pick the order in which you do things, but you don't have any emergent value to the experience.
Essentially where people get lost is, to use the themepark analogy, you can't choose to veer left in the middle of a ride.
GTA is admittedly on the low end of the spectrum for what one might consider having sandbox gameplay elements. Open world for example is not explicitly a sandbox feature, however, it's a design element that caters to open play and free form elements that themepark gameplay has traditionally failed to capitalize on. Hence the increased trend in using lobby styled game worlds as well as more segmented server loads.
Skyrim and FO3 actually would be more sandbox in the long run. Not entirely necessarily natively, but it has been the longstanding reason for playing any Bethesda title on the PC is the support of user made content.
Aside from that was what I mentioned very briefly in passing, and that is emergent gameplay. Elements of a game that are not scripted into the game, but instead crop up dues to other gameplay features being used in unexpected ways or the interplay between a few features resulting in a new game element. These are features that are considered to exist on the sandbox end of the spectrum, as they generally create choices for gameplay that vary widely from any intended design of the developers.
GTA, Skyrim, and Fallout have all had such features displayed in their play, and as noted before, outside of the main questlines the open world format allows players to generally find their own activities to entertain themselves. That is the fundamental aspect that defines sandbox play.
It's not like themepark and sandbox live polar to one another here. You can have sadnbox features in a themepark game as much as you can have the inverse.
"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
That would be the point where people refer to GTA as a sandbox versus a themepark. Where the core story line might be fixed, the open world game play and the things you are allowed to do is highly varied and there is no predetermined manner in which you have to go about doing things in that game world. The bugs and glitches, driving around, and simple antics you can get up to are perhaps some of the most entertaining parts of the game for some people.
GTA is NOT a sandbox. It's just an open world game. If GTA is a sandbox then so is Skryrim, and Fallout 3 and a whole bunch of other single player games. EQ and GW2 would come really close to being sandbox as well - because you can go and do whatever you want in those games - you just might die a lot.
My god man - have you ever been to a themepark before? The good ones charge you at the entrance and you can then go a do WHATEVER YOU WANT. Disneyworld is the a themepark.
Not really. Same thing Quirhid seems to have looked over.
Themepark is the concept of predetermined experience. You might pick the order in which you do things, but you don't have any emergent value to the experience.
Essentially where people get lost is, to use the themepark analogy, you can't choose to veer left in the middle of a ride.
GTA is admittedly on the low end of the spectrum for what one might consider having sandbox gameplay elements. Open world for example is not explicitly a sandbox feature, however, it's a design element that caters to open play and free form elements that themepark gameplay has traditionally failed to capitalize on. Hence the increased trend in using lobby styled game worlds as well as more segmented server loads.
Skyrim and FO3 actually would be more sandbox in the long run. Not entirely necessarily natively, but it has been the longstanding reason for playing any Bethesda title on the PC is the support of user made content.
Aside from that was what I mentioned very briefly in passing, and that is emergent gameplay. Elements of a game that are not scripted into the game, but instead crop up dues to other gameplay features being used in unexpected ways or the interplay between a few features resulting in a new game element. These are features that are considered to exist on the sandbox end of the spectrum, as they generally create choices for gameplay that vary widely from any intended design of the developers.
You can have 'emergent' gameplay in a themepark. they had the factions in EQ. Then again maybe EQ is a 'sandbox' in your world view who knows..
GTA, Skyrim, and Fallout have all had such features displayed in their play, and as noted before, outside of the main questlines the open world format allows players to generally find their own activities to entertain themselves. That is the fundamental aspect that defines sandbox play.
Find their own activities to entertain themselves.. That sounds swell and all but generally it boils down to killing stuff to gain character power. In EQ you could kill any NPC so I suppose that's fun for some. But really this emergent gameplay doesn't seem to keep a heck of a lot of people interested. The real problem for developers is its a lot of engineering and complexitiy for vanishingly small payoff - especially in an MMO. So much can go wrong - and even if it goes right its not that great.
It's not like themepark and sandbox live polar to one another here. You can have sadnbox features in a themepark game as much as you can have the inverse.
Only if you redfine sandbox to be open world games where you can kill any npc (or PC). Real sandbox games have actual player created content.. But we don't have to debate semantics.. If you like open world games - so do I generally. Its just it leaves players without a strong narrative structure and feeling of purpose. Archeage is coming - you think it will be a big hit?
The 'openish' world in WoW seems to have won out in terms of design..
Because most older players come from a background of paper RPG and MUDs. What most of us want in a game is a world that we can help shape and a community that we can be an important part of.
What we get with all of these WoW clones is a series of stories that we walk through in order. To me that isn't even a MMORPG.
What I want is a world that I can personally affect, a world where every time I log on I don't know what I'm going to see. A community where if I go on vacation for a week in RL I want to tune into the forums to see what I missed. I don't want a series of 1000 quests I do in order just like every other player.
Because most older players come from a background of paper RPG and MUDs. What most of us want in a game is a world that we can help shape and a community that we can be an important part of.What we get with all of these WoW clones is a series of stories that we walk through in order. To me that isn't even a MMORPG.What I want is a world that I can personally affect, a world where every time I log on I don't know what I'm going to see. A community where if I go on vacation for a week in RL I want to tune into the forums to see what I missed. I don't want a series of 1000 quests I do in order just like every other player.
You can have 'emergent' gameplay in a themepark. they had the factions in EQ. Then again maybe EQ is a 'sandbox' in your world view who knows..
Find their own activities to entertain themselves.. That sounds swell and all but generally it boils down to killing stuff to gain character power. In EQ you could kill any NPC so I suppose that's fun for some. But really this emergent gameplay doesn't seem to keep a heck of a lot of people interested. The real problem for developers is its a lot of engineering and complexitiy for vanishingly small payoff - especially in an MMO. So much can go wrong - and even if it goes right its not that great.
Only if you redfine sandbox to be open world games where you can kill any npc (or PC). Real sandbox games have actual player created content.. But we don't have to debate semantics.. If you like open world games - so do I generally. Its just it leaves players without a strong narrative structure and feeling of purpose. Archeage is coming - you think it will be a big hit?
The 'openish' world in WoW seems to have won out in terms of design..
To repeat myself, not really.
EQ factions wasn't emergent gameplay of itself. Where it might have spawned some emergent factors like the ability to use guards against another player, but this right here is the distinction.
Killing any npc you see, isn't emergent gameplay. That's a designed element of the game.
I already said what emergent gameplay was, please re-read. Address what was said rather than a straw man.
I'm not redefining open world games to define sandbox, in fact I said as much with my remark that they are not inherently open world, but rather are more prone to promoting sandbox play.
Finding activities to entertain oneself actually rather meant the menagerie of peculiar things that the community of each game has a habit of getting up to and sharing clips and pictures with anecdotes about. Even Shadow of the Colossus held a remarkably long running fandom that essentially did everything but combat and the storyline just to explore the world and find every oddity about the game they could. Now that isn't sandbox play, but that is the kind of mindset and direction of play that I note when talking about the games like Skyrim, Fallout, and GTA that support more arbitrary and emergent elements simply due to the nature of their game design having more loose ends interacting with one another.
'Real sandbox games' only requires player agency, the ability to create content directly is only one form of such.
For example Starcraft 2 is not a sandbox game, but the Cortex RP maps turns it rather directly into one. You don't get to make new content, you have to use the assets and code that Blizzard and the map scripts have implemented. However, by fiddling around with all the exposed commands and assets you can generate some rather far flung and novel experiences.
That one hits rather directly on being a sandbox, scaling it back to even Skyrim or Fallout, or GTA you still retain the same capabilities. Get bored of playing the game straight? There s command console a tilde key away (might need to enable it for rockstar). Not even touching that, or the user modbase, you still have all the wonderfully wacky things that the engine throws at you when you start abusing the game in unintended ways. There's many who even simply use the game and it's assets as backdrops and graphical libraries to generate their own stories, photoshoots, videos, etc that all vary rather widely from anything the game was ever fundamentally designed to be used for.
And that's why they are sandbox titles, because where many stop thinking about them at the point where combat stops, there's still a lot that can and does get done with these titles in the name of entertainment.
Narrative and open world of a game itself (and more specifically MMOs) is separate issues, both of which I think have a lot of improvements and major changes to me made.
"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
Aside from that was what I mentioned very briefly in passing, and that is emergent gameplay. Elements of a game that are not scripted into the game, but instead crop up dues to other gameplay features being used in unexpected ways or the interplay between a few features resulting in a new game element. These are features that are considered to exist on the sandbox end of the spectrum, as they generally create choices for gameplay that vary widely from any intended design of the developers.
For example? Listen if you want to prove to us this is a better way of building a game how about some examples of this. it sounds just like some bugs in the game that could happen in themeparks or sandbox.
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It's judgement because in order to say X is better for one than Y, you have to have deemed it to be so.
Somewhere along the line you dictated what was right and wrong for another by telling them what was better or worse when it ultimately is simply a matter of what they enjoy, not what you enjoy. You saying they are 'more suited' to writing a book rather than gaming entirely ignores the reason they may elect to game rather than write. It's an absent minded weighing of values that you have imposed.
As for limited animations, that's limited excuse at best. Many MMOs provide rather nice emote lists alongside the fact a player has access to any of their regular character animations. True, the average MMO restricts you from using much more than your personal avatar, however, that does not restrict players from collaborative efforts in using environments as backdrops.
Neither does that stand entirely true for those with player created content like EQ2, Cryptic titles, or other games where players are given environments and dungeons they can personalize and share for regular gameplay or RP purposes.
A good example here is the Cortex RP system in Starcraft 2. It's a mechanic for a game that's technically an RTS, which exposes many of the content elements to players to use them during active play.
You also have the likes of EQN and Landmark on the horizon that promises to let players take their level of interaction to the level of shaping the flow of the gaming world. It's the notion that you right here have said is not suited to the genre, yet an entire game has been built with that principle of player narrative and interaction being the core driving force in moving the global narrative of the game world.
EDIT: CoH is another example, it's popularity longstanding being the combined fact that you had high degree of control over the design of your own characters, a still minor genre of subjectively 'good' superhero MMOs, and that you had an almost universal sense of playing your avatar as the hero they were rather than simply being the class you picked.
"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
Yeah lots of single player strategy games allow you to create your own stories those are the ones I play and good RPGs at least give you a lot of freedom over the type of characters you play even if there is a story there (mostly the stories themselves suck but the games can still be fun despite that).
Pen and paper RPGs are way better than video games IMO but for obvious reasons it's a lot harder to get my gaming group every time i want to play than just boot up a video game.
"If you tell a lie long and loud enough, people will eventually start to believe it."
This certainly applies to the growing trend around here, and other places, where certain individuals have repeated the words enough times to convince themselves it's the truth, while reality is far more complicated. Why do so many sandbox enthusiasts have trouble defining what that really means, or is? Because, like themeparks, there are a multitude of sub-genres, which in the sandbox school of design have not been attempted or replicated in the MMO medium. There are art creationist sandboxers, who believe the point of these games should be to build and create; the PvP focused sandboxers, who want all restriction regarding player interaction to be unprohibited; the people who just want to exist in an online environment without being forced into some form of linear progression; or the gamers who prefer simulation style environments.
There are far more permutations than anyone can truly imagine, and the crazy thing about themeparks is that, if you were to ask a group of people what that meant, or what type of game a themepark is, you'd get as many different answers as there were individuals. So to say that sandbox enthusiasts don't know what they want is about as ridiculous as saying that themepark players don't know what they want. It's just another way of discrediting a particular side of an argument, and it's utter bullshit. Of course, we all want different things! (whowouldaguessedit)
As for why people relate the term "themepark" to a negative experience, I think has more to do with market saturation than anything else. You could call it "trendy" to dislike linear games right now, but it's only natural for people to want some form of change after repeating the same, or similar, activities for nearly fifteen years. Sure, some or most people might be okay with that, but there's obviously a growing number of MMO players who would like to see some truly remarkable differences between the games that are currently releasing, and the crowd of themepark superstars that have decided now and forever what type of game we will be playing for eternity.
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
It's like the Abbot & Costello of the MMO world. Brilliant!
What I find the most hilarious of this situation is that, if we go by "their" logic of MMO's being "Too themeparky", every game is a theme park.
Grand Theft Auto is a themepark for sociopaths. Metal Gear Solid is a themepark of espionage. Call of Duty is the themepark of war. Need for Speed is a racing themepark. American McGee's Alice is a themepark of a fudged up Alice in Wonderland.
The point is, more or less, every video is a themepark of it's source material- some more than others. You cannot limit it to one genre. And honestly, if some MMO elitest says a game is "too themeparky", it's probably doing it's job right. In translation: "too themeparky" means "not my particular taste of theme". Some people prefer Universal Studios to Disney World.
Loves: SMITE, WildStar, Project Zomboid, PSO2, DCUO,
Worst Online Communities: WoW/WoD(the OG MMO Trolls), DayZ/WarZ, SMITE/LoL/DOTA, EVE Online, APB
"Im ready for
All the comparisons
I think its dumb and its embarrassing
Im switching off
No longer listening
Ive had enough of persecution and conditioning
Maybe its instinct- Were only animal" - Lily Allen, Sheezus
I don't understand why you guys tell yourselves these things. I know exactly why I don't like themeparks: Because I'm not interested in having things fed to me, and I'm not intrigued by being told how I'm supposed to enjoy myself. I also know exactly why I prefer sandboxes: Because I know that the most enjoyable experiences are the ones that come about naturally and organically.
There is certainly a degree of undue bias, but there is also simply the fact that people have become increasingly familiar with the underlying mechanics that define the global genre of the MMO space and simply want a less mechanical experience.
They call it sandbox, but that's not entirely accurate to the desire, and is likely the term used because it's the counter to the more common descriptor of MMOs as typically "theme-parks".
The concept is close. Treadmills become tiring after a while. The basic notion of running around fighting things endlessly gave way to the expansion of crafts and tasks, and we saw the more standardized use of questing, and now we have more malleable narrative experiences on the horizon.
However, change in MMOs is slow. Development as a whole not only lags behind other gaming genres, but also simply takes longer.
The other aspect is that MMOs as a platform have often had the issue of not taking advantage of what makes their platform unique, and instead provide the social version of what could be played and experienced on a smaller scale.
Themepark as a consequence is bad not because people hate it, but because it's a banner to ascribe their ire. Sandbox conversely gives them a banner of their own to wave, even if the meaning for either isn't concrete.
What they may very well want is what's come too slowly. They don't want to play the same game mechanics reskinned for the hundredth time, there needs to be a clear evolution and advancement of game play.
Though as this is derived from my stance, it may very well just be vouching for myself.
Themepark and sandbox may be somewhat vague, but they do actually have tenets that they globally stand by, which is where people who attack either side seem to generally lose their way.
Like fox for example rails off on 'every game is a themepark'. The notion established there seeming to be that, because the game has an encompassing theme and your actions take place residing within that theme, then therefore it's contents are always 'themepark' in their nature.
The thing is that themepark implicates that the user experience is predetermined. That's the fundamental aspect of it and any of it's sub-genres.
The inverse is that the user has some degree of agency in their play. Sandbox takes this notion, where your game play is in part derived from some emergent values not explicitly scripted for you to experience.
That would be the point where people refer to GTA as a sandbox versus a themepark. Where the core story line might be fixed, the open world game play and the things you are allowed to do is highly varied and there is no predetermined manner in which you have to go about doing things in that game world. The bugs and glitches, driving around, and simple antics you can get up to are perhaps some of the most entertaining parts of the game for some people.
Additionally, PC gaming in general has a habit of introducing the element of mods, which when combined with open world gaming in the likes of GTA, Saints Row, or Elder Scrolls has led to some of the most varied major title game experiences offered.
"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
Very well said. Such words, Many
's
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
GTA is NOT a sandbox. <g> It's just an open world game. If GTA is a sandbox then so is Skryrim, and Fallout 3 and a whole bunch of other single player games. EQ and GW2 would come really close to being sandbox as well - because you can go and do whatever you want in those games - you just might die a lot.
My god man - have you ever been to a themepark before? The good ones charge you at the entrance and you can then go a do WHATEVER YOU WANT. Disneyworld is the a themepark.
GTA Online Sandbox mode
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/As it is GTA is definitely not a sandbox, but an open world action game.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Why i hate themeparks (although i play GW2 now): they become boring and usually their pvp is based on realm v realm, also they prevent you from doing what ever you want and everything is on rails like you watch a movie .
Why i love sandboxs : they have usually open world pvp and its based on guild versus guild which means every players build shis own story he becomes a part of his whole server history and relations means something they are not pointless, also you can do whatever you want and you are free, some people prefer to die in order be free in real life...
This very much. You could say it's basically what people say when they want a game with features that don't inhibit immersion. It doesn't actually matter that much what features there are, but how much they coincide with what the player wants to do, how much they bind him and how much they make him think as if he were in the game himself.
It's too bad a sandbox game these days is (imo, of course) very difficult to design as so many players are very much used to hand holding and rushing to the end game. If the player has no need for or appreciation for immersion, there is small chance he will respect design decision that compromise comfort to increase immersion. We'll see how eqn does and how much of a sandbox it is. I have a bit hope for AA too tho.
So, to try to (once again) put in words an answer to OP, a themepark typically aims for player fun and comfort and has quite little regard for immersion.
It's the whole "been there, done that" syndrome.
Themepark hater: Not another quest hub.
Reality: In game story arcs need to follow some sort of progression. Quest hubs make it easy to focus the players on the story.
Future: The story will be told as it unfolds in as many locations as possible. Different story elements will all tie into the overall story arc.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
The problem is very few people actually care about the story in these quest hubs. Why? Because it sucks. Why? Because they can't afford to pump out quality content at a pace comparable to how quickly people devour it. It's a terrible model, and that's why it produces terrible games, and that's why the term has negative connotations.
I don't agree. You can't judge content use by content locusts. Themepark designers are generally looking for ways to keep the content hard enough to slow down completition and yet not so hard that players quit out of frustration/boredom. The right way to do this is through slow increases in the difficulty. Another approach is the modern WoW system of everthing is easy except for some hard raids. I don't like that approach but hey it clearly works to some extent as well. Its also a lot cheaper from the cost side - no need to balance most of the lower content.
But that's all off the main point.. The real issue is that right now - Sandbox is a tradeoff and often can hurt a game. Why? If we take sandbox to mean 'player generated content' - then you run into a lot of issues with players creating a lot of mediocre content that doesn't feel 'real.'
If we take sandbox to mean 'open world' - (not true but people on this forum seem to want to use it that way) then you run into trouble with creating a narrative structure for your game. This is easy enough to see in single player games - Fallout 3 has less of a story then say Dishonored because Dishonored is less 'open world.'
I think GW2s downleveling (which incidentally a ton of people hate) is the best way at enhancing this open world freedom and I feel bad that more games aren't embracing it. You can try removing levels but that seriously diminishes the idea of progression that all these MMOs are built on.
TL:DR
MMOs are all about tradeoffs. There is no free lunch. Themeparks pick a bunch of a bunch of options and in general it works well. You get high quality content and a nice narrative for your character. You lose some open world aspects and don't get player made content. Most players are down with those tradeoffs. For those that want real sandboxes there is Landmark, Wurm, and Minecraft. For those that think open world and PvP is a sandbox there is EVE, Day Z etc.
Not really. Same thing Quirhid seems to have looked over.
Themepark is the concept of predetermined experience. You might pick the order in which you do things, but you don't have any emergent value to the experience.
Essentially where people get lost is, to use the themepark analogy, you can't choose to veer left in the middle of a ride.
GTA is admittedly on the low end of the spectrum for what one might consider having sandbox gameplay elements. Open world for example is not explicitly a sandbox feature, however, it's a design element that caters to open play and free form elements that themepark gameplay has traditionally failed to capitalize on. Hence the increased trend in using lobby styled game worlds as well as more segmented server loads.
Skyrim and FO3 actually would be more sandbox in the long run. Not entirely necessarily natively, but it has been the longstanding reason for playing any Bethesda title on the PC is the support of user made content.
Aside from that was what I mentioned very briefly in passing, and that is emergent gameplay. Elements of a game that are not scripted into the game, but instead crop up dues to other gameplay features being used in unexpected ways or the interplay between a few features resulting in a new game element. These are features that are considered to exist on the sandbox end of the spectrum, as they generally create choices for gameplay that vary widely from any intended design of the developers.
GTA, Skyrim, and Fallout have all had such features displayed in their play, and as noted before, outside of the main questlines the open world format allows players to generally find their own activities to entertain themselves. That is the fundamental aspect that defines sandbox play.
It's not like themepark and sandbox live polar to one another here. You can have sadnbox features in a themepark game as much as you can have the inverse.
"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
You can have 'emergent' gameplay in a themepark. they had the factions in EQ. Then again maybe EQ is a 'sandbox' in your world view who knows..
Find their own activities to entertain themselves.. That sounds swell and all but generally it boils down to killing stuff to gain character power. In EQ you could kill any NPC so I suppose that's fun for some. But really this emergent gameplay doesn't seem to keep a heck of a lot of people interested. The real problem for developers is its a lot of engineering and complexitiy for vanishingly small payoff - especially in an MMO. So much can go wrong - and even if it goes right its not that great.
Only if you redfine sandbox to be open world games where you can kill any npc (or PC). Real sandbox games have actual player created content.. But we don't have to debate semantics.. If you like open world games - so do I generally. Its just it leaves players without a strong narrative structure and feeling of purpose. Archeage is coming - you think it will be a big hit?
The 'openish' world in WoW seems to have won out in terms of design..
Because most older players come from a background of paper RPG and MUDs. What most of us want in a game is a world that we can help shape and a community that we can be an important part of.
What we get with all of these WoW clones is a series of stories that we walk through in order. To me that isn't even a MMORPG.
What I want is a world that I can personally affect, a world where every time I log on I don't know what I'm going to see. A community where if I go on vacation for a week in RL I want to tune into the forums to see what I missed. I don't want a series of 1000 quests I do in order just like every other player.
Yupppp. To me, this is what sandbox means.To repeat myself, not really.
EQ factions wasn't emergent gameplay of itself. Where it might have spawned some emergent factors like the ability to use guards against another player, but this right here is the distinction.
Killing any npc you see, isn't emergent gameplay. That's a designed element of the game.
I already said what emergent gameplay was, please re-read. Address what was said rather than a straw man.
I'm not redefining open world games to define sandbox, in fact I said as much with my remark that they are not inherently open world, but rather are more prone to promoting sandbox play.
Finding activities to entertain oneself actually rather meant the menagerie of peculiar things that the community of each game has a habit of getting up to and sharing clips and pictures with anecdotes about. Even Shadow of the Colossus held a remarkably long running fandom that essentially did everything but combat and the storyline just to explore the world and find every oddity about the game they could. Now that isn't sandbox play, but that is the kind of mindset and direction of play that I note when talking about the games like Skyrim, Fallout, and GTA that support more arbitrary and emergent elements simply due to the nature of their game design having more loose ends interacting with one another.
'Real sandbox games' only requires player agency, the ability to create content directly is only one form of such.
For example Starcraft 2 is not a sandbox game, but the Cortex RP maps turns it rather directly into one. You don't get to make new content, you have to use the assets and code that Blizzard and the map scripts have implemented. However, by fiddling around with all the exposed commands and assets you can generate some rather far flung and novel experiences.
That one hits rather directly on being a sandbox, scaling it back to even Skyrim or Fallout, or GTA you still retain the same capabilities. Get bored of playing the game straight? There s command console a tilde key away (might need to enable it for rockstar). Not even touching that, or the user modbase, you still have all the wonderfully wacky things that the engine throws at you when you start abusing the game in unintended ways. There's many who even simply use the game and it's assets as backdrops and graphical libraries to generate their own stories, photoshoots, videos, etc that all vary rather widely from anything the game was ever fundamentally designed to be used for.
And that's why they are sandbox titles, because where many stop thinking about them at the point where combat stops, there's still a lot that can and does get done with these titles in the name of entertainment.
Narrative and open world of a game itself (and more specifically MMOs) is separate issues, both of which I think have a lot of improvements and major changes to me made.
"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
That is just semantics. If so, i want non-MMORPGs.
For example? Listen if you want to prove to us this is a better way of building a game how about some examples of this. it sounds just like some bugs in the game that could happen in themeparks or sandbox.