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What about a sandbox and themepark game?
Dreamo84
Member UncommonPosts: 3,713
I'm not talking about a mix of the two. I mean just straight up, throw it all in there. Have all the sandbox elements you would expect, but ALSO have all the "rides" you can go on.
So you could go create your own adventures but then the townsfolk might also have some quests for you if you have been lacking creativity.
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we had that.
it was called SWG.
But SWTOR killed it.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
You wish.
LA/SOE killed it by frankensteining it (while it was in perfect health, mind you).
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
thats just a sandbox game.
theres nothing in the rules of sandbox games that disallow players from running dungeons/quests/raids or any other typical themepark content.
my personal opinion is that we don't see this because why build the whole online world when you can just build one of the themepark rides in it and turn a profit? why not just focus on that one bit of content that most people seem to think is all they want and just sell that alone.
Well I've noticed a big problem myself seems to be that the focus is on the supposed "end game". Everything before that is just filler. Tera is the worst offender, I mean my god the questing is just abyssmal and so pointless the mobs just placed in clumps roaming about waiting to be slaughtered.
In my opinion it is the players fault though. Why develope interesting quests and content when players are just going to gloss by it to get to the supposed "good stuff" at the end and then complain there is nothing to do. You always hear it, "wait till there's no end game, wait till theres no end game".
Good RPGers are usually able to find something to do.
Core sandbox players would call any game with themepark aspects...a themepark game.
Sandbox to them means its ALL open, no rails, no guides...no rides...no stories...no quests. And that is why there are not many sandbox games, the playerbase for those types of games does not compare to themepark players. If only more sandboxers would be willing to compromise we could end up with a game like SWG that actually had a team that can make content for a game instead of people like Koster, the destroyer of MMOs.
I want Wurm online with GW2 gameplay
you have a very good point there.
it is a shame some define sandbox gaming by "what it cannot have" rather than by "what it should offer."
it really betrays the whole spirit of the sandbox.
This is very true....
Regardless of the small, always whining, never happy with any game they cant to the top of litterbox community a AAA themebox done right would be a revolution many of us as gamers of most genres would love to see and would support..
Unfortunately it will never happen because of the yank me gank me litterbox bunch..
Vast empty worlds of overbearing player ruled content alone is just not very appealing to most gamers..
Eve is the only close to perfect sandbox in existance but it is insanely tough coming in new unless you are buddies with one of the few ruling corporations leaders and many of litterbox kittys that fail rant whine and bail..
Playing GW2..
Quests or not does not define whether a game is a themepark or a sandbox. Freedom does. A game that has the features of a sandbox and offers quests (or rather missions) is still a sandbox.
It's very hard (to almost impossible) to have both types of gameplay in one MMORPG:
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
Archeage...............
why not? most of that seems perfectly reasonable in some form or fashion, assuming one doesn't simply copy complete systems from other games.
perhaps i misunderstand you, but why exactly can a dev not create a story and at the same time leave it optional and allow the players to instead or in tandem create their own?
why could i not design a game where loot and crafting were intertwined along with a player driven economy? eve online has one of the most robust player driven economies of any game ever created and one can make their fortune looting NPCs quite easily there.
i don't want to go down the list addressing each point, perhaps this is enough for you to see why these statements seem unreasonable and if you have interest -- clarify my misunderstanding of your point.
True. SWG was taken offline the exact same date SWTOR was launched.
There were several themeparks in SWG, alas long questlines. I see no problems with incorporating themeparks in a sandbox, since the sandbox concept allows just about any content to be added.
Except that there were like 3 'themeparks' in old SWG (literally called 'themeparks' too), but the legacy questline wasn't added until they butchered the game itself to be repackaged for the masses.
So yes, it's possible, but in SWG's case the three themeparks were never that popular compared to other outlets. People would rather crawl around the Tusken Village than do quests for Vader... as strange as that sounds.
Maybe the climate's changed to the point where that's the only thing people *would* do, and everything else gets forgotten about... or maybe it's just something that changes person to person - like the varying levels of creativity and initiative (or lack thereof) people tend to have.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
There would be some conflicting and competing mechanics and features that define each game.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
ArcheAge tries to do it.
Yeah, but I worry that they will try to occupy all available space with overarching quest goals, like a full-out themepark, when it's much better to relegate sections of the game world to this kind of stuff so that people doing gated content are more likely to bump into each other, while leaving the others that are going about their own business to do so without interfering with each other. No idear how big the world itself is, though.
Otherwise, that would be like getting peanut butter in my chocolate, and I'm highly allergic to nuts.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Uh no. SWG still was better than SWTOR and still is.
Lets be really honest though... only a handful of people thought it looked well in the first place. Some thought it was in perfect health, a lot thought it needed putting down.
If as many people had been playing SWG as now lament it the NGE would never have been needed
AA... sigh...
The only thing I want to hear about now anout this game is what alternate rule servers they are considering for launch.
I don't want to be stuck in any game with the same of Darkfall type crowd ever again.
Afaik first two continents are mostly themeparkish. You have quests and most of them are kinda standard like in WoW, Aion or most themeparks. You can also build houses or boats in designated places in open world on those two continents, so bit of sandboxy thing.
Still 3 rd contient is where themepark content is either non-existatnt or scarce and where people, groups, guilds can build castles and get teritorial control, do sieges, where you transport certain resources to or get it back, etc
Levelling up to certain level will be / have to be done on two themepark continents. Then you can go on 3rd continent or stay on two continents or travel back and forth. Not sure how certain content level wise is on continetns later on.
So there is PARTIAL separation. Most hardcore sandbox and most meaningful pvp will be done on 3rd continent.
Most themepark contents - most quests, most dungeons, some of open world bosses, rare mobs, etc will be on two faction continent.
AFAIK game world is BIG and seamless. Even if you would take boat or ship and sail from one continent to other there is no loading screens at all.
Only loading screens are in those few instanced dungeons (there will be also open dungeons afaik) that will exist, in pratice battlegrounds (mostly cosmetic rewards) and in sieges.
All buildings, areas, continents, etc are not instanced at all. There is no zoning.
Check out The Repopulation. Not launching until next year some time but the devs are working to take the best of both the themepark and sandbox worlds and merge them in a F2P game.
http://www.therepopulation.com/
Rather than adding a storyline to your world, why not look at your proposed storyline and ask why those sorts of adventures aren't spontaneously emerging from the simulations in the world?
( usually the answer is simply that even in a typical "sandbox" there are barely any actual simulations running - they are just inert worlds waiting around for a player to kick something )
Change was needed. Problem is that SoE / LA instead of fixing bugs, exploits and improving on pre-nge game design, CHANGED game design instead.
Sure SWG was bleeding subs before, but after NGE there were mass quits very fast, so I dare to say that NGE was a mistake.
SoE should fix things and eventually add some themepark things.
Instead they cut out many of sandbox elements and replaced them with alien design that did not fit well in eyes of many players + overly brutally simplified and streamlined alot of game mechanics.
Result speaks for itself.
It tried to do both things, it did neither of them well. All it had was good crafting in a shockingly bad economy, a sandbox with no decay and/or no looting = hyper inflation fucked economy.
SWTOR didn't kill SWG, the development decisions over the last x years killed it. The game was just bad, really bad, by the end.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
It used to have decay, loot loss on corpses you couldn't reach in time, and a really good economy. >_>
~but yeah, it really seemed like the devs couldn't make up their minds as to what the game needed. How many armor value revamps were there? 2-3?
They completely lost sight of scope.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture