I used to love the word sandbox now I am very skeptical.
It usually means little to no actual content
As a general rule of thumb, sandboxes tend to have limited quests because the players are supposed to provide most of the content. It's by design. Where a lot of sandboxes fail is that they fail to provide the mechanisms for players to actually be able to provide the content. People complain about sandboxes because it isn't themepark in the aspect of a lot of quests. That's like complaining that themeparks have too many quests. Themeparks are geared towards quests and such.
I think they are trying to already do so much with their game that their budget, development time, and user's hardware simply can't do good realistic graphics on top of everything else.
Which left them with option between doing realistic graphic that looks outdated or choosing to do stylized graphics.
I also agree that too much realism dates you, I would not recommended that for any MMO, but you don't have to be really cartoony or garish to do the game on a budget.
The problem with the logic of having an impact on the world and changing it, is if the world is just procedurally generated and empty, I will not care about it. So I wanted a static crafted world that we get to fall in love with first, but then it being one we can change. If it's going to be like No Man's Sky.... Then I do not care about any world in that game and it was why the game sucked and no one liked it.
So if it's like SWG where you have say 10 or so set worlds, you have all the cities and and the themeparks and the dungeons made. However the player cities and stuff takes up the large space inbetween and you keep adding crafted content... Then fantastic! I don't want planets like Kash, but I do want areas of the planets to be crafted by the developers and to have directed content.
What I'm not looking for is Minecraft, where everyone jumps in and builds and that is the game. If the building is restricted like SWG, so say you can have player cities but you cannot just build anywhere.... Then that is good as well. I'm just worried this is just going to be a building game and not one about content, which is something SWG desperately needed.
I think they are trying to already do so much with their game that their budget, development time, and user's hardware simply can't do good realistic graphics on top of everything else.
Which left them with option between doing realistic graphic that looks outdated or choosing to do stylized graphics.
I also agree that too much realism dates you, I would not recommended that for any MMO, but you don't have to be really cartoony or garish to do the game on a budget.
Some isometric/2.5d games are able strike that nice balance between low-budget and not-cartoonish (Fractured Online, Foxhole etc) but then you will get people complain about not having 3D. You cannot please everyone.
Personally I do not mind it, I liked Wildstar's/NMS aesthetics. But some of the creatures I saw in the trailer were a bit too silly even for my tastes. I wonder if that's the result of procedural generation. I did not see something like that mentioned in the article.
Scot puts his hand up to complain about it not being 3d. They can never please us all that's a given, the real problem is pleasing enough of us! Have we heard from the "its not first person brigade yet"?
We're all like battered housewives here, we want to believe things will change, but we've heard it time and time again.
Maybe we should get excited one final time? But I see a cat person and already I want to hate it lol.
Also they require a Google account to register and I've deleted everything Google and gone the way of GrapheneOS, so no way am I making a Google account now.
Games like NMS have already taken this space and made it their own. Look at the Chinese game Auroria on Steam or Plant Crafters or World Shards.
I personally like levels and classes. That is the MMORPGs I want. Like the old days. Classic Fantasy. Tough Dungeon crawls with pals, Epic Dev controlled boss fights, No cosmetic shop (which this game will have) This just seems like another version of games that have already littered Steam for years now. Not to mention I am not convinced they will have the proper funding needed to create a version of the game they are promising. The game industry is in a tough spot right now. People are keeping their money close to the chest. Not at all interested and I do not think a large population of gamers will be either. There are too many other games and too few hours to spend on them.
Good luck with your hope but be prepared to be let down interested people.
To be fair SWG had classes in the name of professions and the only difference to say WoW is say the skills were locked to the talent tree and you could mix and match..... Kinda like what Season of Discovery is doing a bit.
If it's an MMO like SWG, then it is an MMORPG but with a bit more freedom. However what the preview has made it look like is yeah like No Man's Sky or one of the many thousands of survival crafting early access games on Steam.
One big concern is griefing. If taking good care of your planet is non-trivial even if you're actively trying to do well, then how do you stop griefers who are actively trying to destroy it from doing so?
I'm not saying that it's impossible. You could, for example, set things up such that once a guild has developed a planet enough, no one else is allowed to touch that particular planet without getting permission from that guild. So long as there are plenty of planets out there, this doesn't become a problem of other players being locked out of content. There are a lot of other ways to do it, too.
Griefing would be far more of a problem here than in most games. In most games, griefers can only temporarily make players miserable, and then the world fully recovers the instant that the griefers are gone. Here, one bout of griefing could permanently ruin a world that you worked a long time to build. That's a nearly guaranteed way to get even most dedicated players to quit overnight.
But game developers that allow non-consensual PVP typically don't have robust measures to prevent griefers from ruining the game for everyone else. You can't just say "you can kill the griefers"--and then expect a guild to actively patrol a planet at all times on the off chance that griefers may show up occasionally. If you don't have some seriously robust measures to deal with griefers, the game has no chance of lasting long.
My concern about the graphics is different from what others have said. The question isn't whether the graphics look pretty enough. I thought plenty of SNES games looked pretty enough. Rather, the question is whether I can tell what I'm looking at. If there is a ton of simulation going on under the hood, allowing players to see and understand what is happening will be difficult to do without the game being buried in so much interface that it feels like you're playing a spreadsheet rather than a video game. I don't care how pretty a picture is if I can't tell what it means.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Graphics are good enough, but too cartoony and garishly coloured. I did a search on the page and was astonished to find the word "cozy" was not mentioned, but that's a plus!
"As Raph explained the role the Servitors play in Stars Reach, from enforcing PvP rules" - hmm that could go badly wrong, depends what the actual system is, sounds like tagging.
Single shard good, but "soft grouping" sounds like a solo first philosophy. The SF setting is a breath of fresh air, loads more I like the sound of but to paraphrase Ralph "we shall see", well that's what I always do.
Only thing we know for sure, it'll be out before Star Citizen.
Once again, western art design has taken a turn into goofy. Can't stand it.
Goofy and ugly if you want beautiful art look toasian games
Absolutely. Of course they have no issues with varying degrees of tone. So amazing and beautiful art design with players also wearing tennis outfits and driving an ambulance mount.
Yeah they have alot of stupid stuff but on character design and world building they are just superior to the west
There's western artists that are top notch. Gaming companies just typically can't afford them or they don't want to work in gaming. Frank Frazetta inspired most of what you see as modern fantasy art.
Note I also love Eastern artists.
Im talking about games not art in the general sense And dont tell me the big companies cant afford a good artist but the dozen f2p mmos that come from korea each year can Its obviously a design choice as is that the characters are getting uglier each year
Sorta necro-ing an earlier reply here but while I don't know the going rate for artists, I do know the going rate for developers and I can tell you American developers get paid way more than their Eastern counterparts. I can only assume artists are the same. While AAA studios probably can afford it they probably don't budget for it opting for "good enough". Additionally if it's a design decision that's probably not coming from the artist but the game director who probably isn't an artist. I wouldn't necessarily blame Western artists for the look you see in Western games.
Graphics are good enough, but too cartoony and garishly coloured. I did a search on the page and was astonished to find the word "cozy" was not mentioned, but that's a plus!
"As Raph explained the role the Servitors play in Stars Reach, from enforcing PvP rules" - hmm that could go badly wrong, depends what the actual system is, sounds like tagging.
Single shard good, but "soft grouping" sounds like a solo first philosophy. The SF setting is a breath of fresh air, loads more I like the sound of but to paraphrase Ralph "we shall see", well that's what I always do.
Only thing we know for sure, it'll be out before Star Citizen.
Once again, western art design has taken a turn into goofy. Can't stand it.
Goofy and ugly if you want beautiful art look toasian games
Absolutely. Of course they have no issues with varying degrees of tone. So amazing and beautiful art design with players also wearing tennis outfits and driving an ambulance mount.
Yeah they have alot of stupid stuff but on character design and world building they are just superior to the west
There's western artists that are top notch. Gaming companies just typically can't afford them or they don't want to work in gaming. Frank Frazetta inspired most of what you see as modern fantasy art.
Note I also love Eastern artists.
I absolutely agree that there are amazing western designers. But gaming companies tend to lean towards this cartoony stuff.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Graphics are good enough, but too cartoony and garishly coloured.
We have a lot of work to go on the graphics yet, for sure.
But is that what I’m talking about? You’re the developer so you have more insight into the terminology, but to me, graphics encompass things like lighting, how many pixels, 3d or 2d, etc.
not art design.
I get wanting to have stylized art design but so many companies make these cartoony characters and cartoony worlds and it’s just too silly for my taste.
Ashen comes to mind. Heck, Journey comes to mind as well.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
But is that what I’m talking about? You’re the developer so you have more insight into the terminology, but to me, graphics encompass things like lighting, how many pixels, 3d or 2d, etc.
not art design.
I get wanting to have stylized art design but so many companies make these cartoony characters and cartoony worlds and it’s just too silly for my taste.
Ashen comes to mind. Heck, Journey comes to mind as well.
Yeah, we need art geniuses working on MMOs.
I am coming down in the middle here, not so cartoony or garish but I don't expect them to impress players like you. Come on you know thats hard?
I have always been more concerned with the quality of the animation than the realism level. In the movement smooth?
Also, just no over the top combat effects.
Animation is quite secondary for me, magic spell effect fine as long as they don't stop you seeing the combat, yes some MMOs are like that! I can remember some guilders talking about how good and bad some swords strokes were in ESO. I was like what? The toon runs smooth I don't expect a Hong Kong Action movie when they swing a sword. Another time when we got goat mounts in Lotro this girl was going on about how the equipment on the saddle bounces up and down so realistically. Err Ok.
For me if the toons and environment look good moves are quite secondary. This one thread should show anyone how differently we all come at this, there is nothing we really all agree on.
As to people saying its usually 3rd person they want in MMOs (sure you are correct), just wait if this thread goes on long enough someone will say "why no 1st person"?
Maybe we should get excited one final time? But I see a cat person and already I want to hate it lol.
Wait, wut?
In EQ2 when I played in 2004 I thought nothing of them, they seemed fine. However now they're some weird sexual furry thing and so I hate seeing them in games because they attract perverts.
Comments
So if it's like SWG where you have say 10 or so set worlds, you have all the cities and and the themeparks and the dungeons made. However the player cities and stuff takes up the large space inbetween and you keep adding crafted content... Then fantastic! I don't want planets like Kash, but I do want areas of the planets to be crafted by the developers and to have directed content.
What I'm not looking for is Minecraft, where everyone jumps in and builds and that is the game. If the building is restricted like SWG, so say you can have player cities but you cannot just build anywhere.... Then that is good as well. I'm just worried this is just going to be a building game and not one about content, which is something SWG desperately needed.
Maybe we should get excited one final time? But I see a cat person and already I want to hate it lol.
Also they require a Google account to register and I've deleted everything Google and gone the way of GrapheneOS, so no way am I making a Google account now.
Look at the Chinese game Auroria on Steam or Plant Crafters or World Shards.
I personally like levels and classes.
That is the MMORPGs I want.
Like the old days.
Classic Fantasy. Tough Dungeon crawls with pals, Epic Dev controlled boss fights, No cosmetic shop (which this game will have)
This just seems like another version of games that have already littered Steam for years now. Not to mention I am not convinced they will have the proper funding needed to create a version of the game they are promising. The game industry is in a tough spot right now. People are keeping their money close to the chest.
Not at all interested and I do not think a large population of gamers will be either.
There are too many other games and too few hours to spend on them.
Good luck with your hope but be prepared to be let down interested people.
I'm not saying that it's impossible. You could, for example, set things up such that once a guild has developed a planet enough, no one else is allowed to touch that particular planet without getting permission from that guild. So long as there are plenty of planets out there, this doesn't become a problem of other players being locked out of content. There are a lot of other ways to do it, too.
Griefing would be far more of a problem here than in most games. In most games, griefers can only temporarily make players miserable, and then the world fully recovers the instant that the griefers are gone. Here, one bout of griefing could permanently ruin a world that you worked a long time to build. That's a nearly guaranteed way to get even most dedicated players to quit overnight.
But game developers that allow non-consensual PVP typically don't have robust measures to prevent griefers from ruining the game for everyone else. You can't just say "you can kill the griefers"--and then expect a guild to actively patrol a planet at all times on the off chance that griefers may show up occasionally. If you don't have some seriously robust measures to deal with griefers, the game has no chance of lasting long.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
But is that what I’m talking about? You’re the developer so you have more insight into the terminology, but to me, graphics encompass things like lighting, how many pixels, 3d or 2d, etc.
not art design.
I get wanting to have stylized art design but so many companies make these cartoony characters and cartoony worlds and it’s just too silly for my taste.
Ashen comes to mind. Heck, Journey comes to mind as well.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I am coming down in the middle here, not so cartoony or garish but I don't expect them to impress players like you. Come on you know thats hard?
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
For me if the toons and environment look good moves are quite secondary. This one thread should show anyone how differently we all come at this, there is nothing we really all agree on.
As to people saying its usually 3rd person they want in MMOs (sure you are correct), just wait if this thread goes on long enough someone will say "why no 1st person"?
In EQ2 when I played in 2004 I thought nothing of them, they seemed fine. However now they're some weird sexual furry thing and so I hate seeing them in games because they attract perverts.