Sandboxes and SOE and the Mainstream

[Taluvill]

Originally Posted by Uthgaard [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Your link mentions Fallen Earth a few times but it's not on your list. I played that for a month. The level of depth in the content was impressive. A lot of thought went into it, you'd have to try it out to really see what I mean. I read their newsletter every time it hits my inbox, and I hope they do succeed. But something about their gameplay bored me so much that I've never felt like trying it again.

Think of a poor man's Fallout 3 made into an MMO. Fallen Earth had a lot of potential, but the beta was extremely unimpressive from a directional "where are we going with this" standpoint. Great idea, just poorly implemented imo.

[aggresor223]

Dunno why eve is on this list, half of the game is completely player policed and there are no laws or rules to follow in 0.0 accept trust no one. Also if you have never played eve before give it a shot, it will make your brain hurt. PEW PEW!

[Henini]

I thought shadowbane was no longer?

all servers retired after being free to play for a while...?

[stormlord]

Originally Posted by Aadill [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Eve Online is okay. The PvP and PvE are both player driven from 1500+ player warfare out in the ends of the universe to solo mining in high-security space.

Almost everything on the market place, save a few seeded materials and named drops from random mobs, or "rats," is crafted by players. The market is driven by a few top-end corporations and with that the economy is very politically entangled. CCP has employed a financial analyst at this point to investigate the sheer vastness of the economy in Eve, making it by far a title well worthy of a sandbox MMO. Too bad that most people call it Spreadsheets Online... honestly, it's a really tedious game whose main accomplishments come more from the PvP aspect where only a small percentage of the people actually engage in the gameplay available to them. The rest of the carebears make up the majority of the population and CCP tunes the game towards them, resulting in multiple changes to the game's mechanics that were less than favorable (in most cases it took out the uniqueness of ships and caused every pvp fight to have the same ship makeup... it was dumb).

Lame. Of all the ways a developer can fix a design shortfall, those are the kinds of fixes I hate most. In morrowind, for example, if you level up as a thief to 10 you will be weak in combat skills because most of them are thief-based. So, originally, at level 10 you wouldn't be able to kill level 10 monsters using combat skills. Instead, you had to depend on stealth and stealing and backstabbing and things of that nature. The problem is that they were deficient. So what they did was they scaled it so that at level 10 the thief could kill the monster even with low combat skills. What this did was make combat-based characters extremely powerful. They banked (people who made morrowind) that people wouldn't catch onto this shortcoming. Ideally, every class in the game could have their own playstyle so that combat or any singular activity isn't necessary. But this is apparently exceedingly difficult to accomplish in their design because there're so many different classes.

I've always felt that eliminating diversity for the sake of simplicity is just the hallmark of being mediocre.

It's a handout. It favors the new guy. It makes everyone the same. At least it's easy to develop for.

I can see it now too. The loser in a pvp battle whines on the forum something like, "Griefer killed me! He's got Ub3r gear! Unfair! Gear shouldn't determine who wins! Give us the same gear and that's fair!" In this case I'd say that the problem is that power of a player is too linear. 1000 hitpoints > 500 hitpoints. So I'd agree it's kind of unfair. On the other hand, choosing a short (but powerful) range gun over a long (weaker) range gun and waiting in a asteroid belt to pick someone off is just smart gear selection. There's a difference between linear gear and non-linear gear. Non-linear gear means using Neumonium rather than Radianite because Neumonium gives you +2 speed and you need all the speed you can get because your pvp tactic is to come in fast, strike, and speed away before they can hurt you. In this case, power of a player is non-linear and smartness.

Different gear = tactics. Different gear doesn't have to mean he has more HP so he wins.

But naturally, if I have more money than you then I can afford a bigger more powerful ship, right? Shouldn't it have more hp, if I can afford it? Or is that unfair? Who becomes king of the hill? Who monopolizes the systems because they have the most money? Is that what we want? This is where I say different gear can be bad because it might end up with someone monopolizing the playing field. Rich guy = best pvper.

What do you think? I think different gear isn't necessarily bad. Developers have to be smart.

In the real world things get monopolized if they go unchecked. Turning a blind eye to monopolizing in a game world might not be the best choice if you have fairness in mind. On the other hand, fairness does not mean everyone wins. Fairness means not giving one side an advantage on the playing field. Now... if guildmasters only accepted high iq, high tactical knowledge and experienced players into their ranks then they could become a very powerful pvp force. Is that unfair? Isn't that also an example of players monopolizing the playing field? In wrestling, they don't let the 200 pound man compete with the 100 pound man, they instead put him in the 200 pound division. And this hypothetical guild, couldn't they pay the best players to join them? Wouldn't that also be an example of rich guilds being the best pvpers? Not really. Even in the NBA when teams form "dream" teams, there's no guarantee it'll be a working combination. This is because chemistry is so important. If your team doesn't function well as a team, it loses. But I am unsure about this point. It does bring into question whether a perfect fair playing field is even possible, but the whole point here is that a playing field that goes unchecked might very well become monopolized just like in the real world. And monopolized is far far FAR from perfect!

So... a smart developer holds people accountable and watches for signs of monopolizing.

[stormlord]

Originally Posted by Uthgaard [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Your link mentions Fallen Earth a few times but it's not on your list. I played that for a month. The level of depth in the content was impressive. A lot of thought went into it, you'd have to try it out to really see what I mean. I read their newsletter every time it hits my inbox, and I hope they do succeed. But something about their gameplay bored me so much that I've never felt like trying it again.

I went ahead and added it. It looked like from the main page it had sandboxy features. Apparently it won't release with player-owned houses/forts/structures but they're working on it.

Here:
http://forums.fallenearth.com/fallen...d.php?p=172227

zigzag - *[ORK]Gnarlug* Will there be player-owned housing/forts/structures?
FELee - Player housing is a goal, but not something we'll have for release. We'd rather delay it and do it right rather than put something in that's no good. But we eventually totoally want player forts and such.

It does make me worry because if they're this late in development and haven't added player-owned structures than this indicates it's not a core part of their design. That's significant.

[stormlord]

Added http://www.xsyon.com/features to the list.

Muddy27 posted about it here:
http://www.project1999.org/forums/sh...ighlight=xsyon

[username17]

Mortal Online is a sandbox MMO.
http://www.mortalonline.com/

There are no classes, just skills that improve as you use them.

There is no targeting, no friends, no enemies. It's all completely open, you can attack anyone and they can attack you.

I played in beta and it was ok, but I didn't follow it through to release.

[Vanech]

There was this little game done by (Digital Anvil studios?... regardless) It was produced by Microsoft Games, and it is called Freelancer. The game was released a year and a half early (thanks to M$) but the Modding community has done amazing things with the title since then, including hosting pirated log-in servers in order to keep the game running. (M$ shut down the primary host for the servers almost eight years ago.)

It has always had the ability to be something massive but the coding for multi-player can only handle about two hundred people on at a time on a server, despite the fact that the major systems (all eighty of them or so..) are capable of handling 1,000+ people.

Freelancer is one of those games that has been waiting desperately for the SDK/Code to be released as free-domain so that it could be properly visualized, but true to form M$ wont let loose a single iota of information.

Despite that the community is strong, and the overall dynamics suit a sandbox world, so while it may not be considered a true MMO, it has it's merits.

[Massive Marc]

Guild Wars.

It doesn't bring the Sandbox-Player Owned Content, but does have the multi class feeling you've suggested. What I like about Guild Wars (besides being able to changes classes on the fly) is that it isn't gear or level based. You progress by unlocking skills (spells) and grinding titles. Playing a 55hp Monk was the most rewarding class I have ever played.

Look out for Guild Wars 2. It might be the best MMO I've seen in awhile.

[bakkily]

umm i didnt read all the post skimmed it, i played up to lvl 10 of guild wars, but guild wars 2 from what ive read is going to be a bit easier then guild wars 1, though i would like to try it(will not pay to buy it) but they said that the lvling will be simple for each lvl (so not a whole lot of progression, which is what i like) sounds boring, but im going to give it a try if any of my friends get an account up