AA is neither a pure sandbox, nor a pure themepark. 

I will buy the game for the sandboxy elements.

However, it does not mean that I do mind going through the quests in order to reach the max level. I, personally, do not see any value added of having DE's instead of regular quests in a game like AA. I do not mind having to grind mobs as well. I do not care that there are instances.

I would not want the game to be a pure sandbox. I think that a well made mix of both is the best way to go.

What I know about themepark part of this game is that there are character levels due to which the content will be divided. Consequently, players on different levels will play in different zones, going through different content. It splits the world to zones which is the themepark part of the game, for me.

Originally posted by Method01

Originally posted by dekou

So, AA will have housing, boats and other cool features sandbox players have wanted for years. However, this is a Korean MMO and you know what they're like. Personally, I'm not willing to complete 50 "Kill 10 Battle Hikumen, 15 Hikumen Scouts and 8 Hikumen Wizards" quests just to get to the good stuff, neither do I have any interest in grinding for months to get enough materials to build whatever I need.

Does AA have any interesting features questing wise? Do we know anything about the time investment required to participate in meaningful sandbox content?

You know that housing and boats etc. isn't what makes it a sandbox mmo right?

The meaning of sandbox, is that you are left in a world where you as a player, choose your were you wanna go. There is no A -> B & B -> C.

Housing is just a very cool feature they are adding (feature that should be in all mmo's if you ask me).

If AA is a true Sandbox the PvE would be something like EvE. Do whatever you wanna do: Quests, farm, professions etc. 

Player-created content and being able to progress outside of combat are usually considered to be the features that make a MMORPG a sandbox. There are many themeparks that don't give you a path to follow, such as Guild Wars 2 and Anarchy Online. They're still themeparks, although Anarchy has player-created cities and many other sandbox elements.

Looks like AA will have a single storyline for you to follow, with cut scenes and other "trendy" features. It'll have a "mix of the sandbox and the narrative".

Originally posted by MumboJumbo

Originally posted by dekou

So, AA will have housing, boats and other cool features sandbox players have wanted for years. However, this is a Korean MMO and you know what they're like. Personally, I'm not willing to complete 50 "Kill 10 Battle Hikumen, 15 Hikumen Scouts and 8 Hikumen Wizards" quests just to get to the good stuff, neither do I have any interest in grinding for months to get enough materials to build whatever I need.

Does AA have any interesting features questing wise? Do we know anything about the time investment required to participate in meaningful sandbox content?

As it's a sandbox-themepark hybrid: It might be useful to list the features which are themepark and those that are sandbox. Then the question could be addressed more directly?

Is there such a list/divide? /thanks.

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/349518/List-of-Sandbox-MMORPGs-Updated-August-12-2012.html

Scroll down to see a list of typical sandbox features.

Originally posted by kol56

Originally posted by Hatefull

Originally posted by kol56

Originally posted by Hatefull

Originally posted by skydiver12

 

---

Originally posted by dekou
So, AA will have housing, boats and other cool features sandbox players have wanted for years. However, this is a Korean MMO and you know what they're like. Personally, I'm not willing to complete 50 "Kill 10 Battle Hikumen, 15 Hikumen Scouts and 8 Hikumen Wizards" quests just to get to the good stuff, neither do I have any interest in grinding for months to get enough materials to build whatever I need.

 

Does AA have any interesting features questing wise? Do we know anything about the time investment required to participate in meaningful sandbox content?

---

 

Funny, you just quoted a WESTERN quest-grind game like WOW, War, Lotro, SWTOR, TSW.

 

In Korean Games especially involed with Jake Song it's:
Go the F*** out and kill what you like, build what you like, forge alliances, pvp.
you may kill 10.000 monsters along the way for a level, but YOUR Way.

So you answered your own question, the themepark aspect will be your "50" boring "quests" to do.
Because that's what you want, guidance and told to do something.

You're pretty out of touch to be honest.  For years Korean games had the reputation of being a huge grind fest.  If you played Lineage 2, then you know what I am talking about, and that is just one example.  Recently that tradition seems to be going away, and i have high hopes for AA and I do intedn to play it when it releases.

Your attitude and condecending attitude are what is wrong with the entire on-line gaming  scene today.  A bunch of self entitled children that think because they are anonymouse they can get away with whatever they want.  And for the most part they are correct.  Which is unfortunate, hopefully some day there is a system instituted that will allow people like this to be punished.

Until then.

And Western MMOs are any different?

They are still boring, kill 10 quest is still a boring grindfest.

Lol you obviously never played L2 before the big changes.  I wasn't go kill 10 of this, you had to mindlessely kill millions of things (in later levels) by just grinding them over and over again to get a level...and it could no kidding, take you a solid week of grinding to get from level 75 to 76.  No quests, not running dungeons to kill bosses, just straight grinding, so no western MMO's have never been that bad, bad yes, I grant that but never in that catagory.

At least in L2 i also had guild wars, sieges, pvp for the best spots, open world bosses/raids, pet raising, politics and a couple of other things.

In western mmos.... kill 10 quests, shallow and meaningless instanced PVP, ...... instanced raids... that's it, 1 month fillers

 

Yeah i'll take a 2 year grindfest over a shallow 1 month filler, thanks, in games like Lineage 2 i had other stuff to do than just level up and getting phat lootz

And it's not like AA will be like that at all, there are quests.

Yeah kill 10 quests sucks, and AA has them, but honestly, i don't care.

I would rather have all the features AA has over some improved version of kill 10 quests, like TSW investigation missions or SWTOR VOs.... or even GW2 Dynamic Events.

Because when that content ends, the game ends, so why even bother, just give me the tools to make my own content with other players in a virtual world.

I am not even sure what you are on about.  You make no sense...you had Guildwars? I was speaking about lineage 2, apples and oranges.  Anyway, let me make it simple so maybe you can try and keep up.  What I was saying is:

Grind = Bad no matter the setting.

Easy enough for you now?

Originally posted by Hatefull

Originally posted by kol56

Originally posted by Hatefull

Originally posted by kol56

Originally posted by Hatefull

Originally posted by skydiver12

 

---

Originally posted by dekou
So, AA will have housing, boats and other cool features sandbox players have wanted for years. However, this is a Korean MMO and you know what they're like. Personally, I'm not willing to complete 50 "Kill 10 Battle Hikumen, 15 Hikumen Scouts and 8 Hikumen Wizards" quests just to get to the good stuff, neither do I have any interest in grinding for months to get enough materials to build whatever I need.

 

Does AA have any interesting features questing wise? Do we know anything about the time investment required to participate in meaningful sandbox content?

---

 

Funny, you just quoted a WESTERN quest-grind game like WOW, War, Lotro, SWTOR, TSW.

 

In Korean Games especially involed with Jake Song it's:
Go the F*** out and kill what you like, build what you like, forge alliances, pvp.
you may kill 10.000 monsters along the way for a level, but YOUR Way.

So you answered your own question, the themepark aspect will be your "50" boring "quests" to do.
Because that's what you want, guidance and told to do something.

You're pretty out of touch to be honest.  For years Korean games had the reputation of being a huge grind fest.  If you played Lineage 2, then you know what I am talking about, and that is just one example.  Recently that tradition seems to be going away, and i have high hopes for AA and I do intedn to play it when it releases.

Your attitude and condecending attitude are what is wrong with the entire on-line gaming  scene today.  A bunch of self entitled children that think because they are anonymouse they can get away with whatever they want.  And for the most part they are correct.  Which is unfortunate, hopefully some day there is a system instituted that will allow people like this to be punished.

Until then.

And Western MMOs are any different?

They are still boring, kill 10 quest is still a boring grindfest.

Lol you obviously never played L2 before the big changes.  I wasn't go kill 10 of this, you had to mindlessely kill millions of things (in later levels) by just grinding them over and over again to get a level...and it could no kidding, take you a solid week of grinding to get from level 75 to 76.  No quests, not running dungeons to kill bosses, just straight grinding, so no western MMO's have never been that bad, bad yes, I grant that but never in that catagory.

At least in L2 i also had guild wars, sieges, pvp for the best spots, open world bosses/raids, pet raising, politics and a couple of other things.

In western mmos.... kill 10 quests, shallow and meaningless instanced PVP, ...... instanced raids... that's it, 1 month fillers

 

Yeah i'll take a 2 year grindfest over a shallow 1 month filler, thanks, in games like Lineage 2 i had other stuff to do than just level up and getting phat lootz

And it's not like AA will be like that at all, there are quests.

Yeah kill 10 quests sucks, and AA has them, but honestly, i don't care.

I would rather have all the features AA has over some improved version of kill 10 quests, like TSW investigation missions or SWTOR VOs.... or even GW2 Dynamic Events.

Because when that content ends, the game ends, so why even bother, just give me the tools to make my own content with other players in a virtual world.

I am not even sure what you are on about.  You make no sense...you had Guildwars? I was speaking about lineage 2, apples and oranges.  Anyway, let me make it simple so maybe you can try and keep up.  What I was saying is:

Grind = Bad no matter the setting .

 

Easy enough for you now?

"Grind = Bad no matter the setting ." (In my humble opinion), you forgot that last part, just helping you on the interwebs, it can be tricky!

Originally posted by JimyHumuHumu

Originally posted by Aviggin

Originally posted by skydiver12

 

---

Originally posted by dekou
So, AA will have housing, boats and other cool features sandbox players have wanted for years. However, this is a Korean MMO and you know what they're like. Personally, I'm not willing to complete 50 "Kill 10 Battle Hikumen, 15 Hikumen Scouts and 8 Hikumen Wizards" quests just to get to the good stuff, neither do I have any interest in grinding for months to get enough materials to build whatever I need.

 

Does AA have any interesting features questing wise? Do we know anything about the time investment required to participate in meaningful sandbox content?

---

 

Funny, you just quoted a WESTERN quest-grind game like WOW, War, Lotro, SWTOR, TSW.

 

In Korean Games especially involed with Jake Song it's:
Go the F*** out and kill what you like, build what you like, forge alliances, pvp.
you may kill 10.000 monsters along the way for a level, but YOUR Way.

So you answered your own question, the themepark aspect will be your "50" boring "quests" to do.
Because that's what you want, guidance and told to do something.

You're not exactly helping the game or the OP with your condescending attitude. You're saying I'm going to have to grind a lot of enemies over and over and over again just to get to anything fun? 

"Killing monsters YOUR way."

Sounds incredibly lazy, which is generally what sandboxes are. Lazy ass developers who want the players to entertain themselves because they're not at all creative enough to create decent content for those players. Looking forward to see how this one breaks the mold.

I expect very little.

 

how exactly is having 3.000 quests, out of which 2.900 require you to kill 10-15 mobs any different? Or thats considered fun now? Lazy sandbox developers? Themeparks devs spamming you with almost identical quests, from day one to 'level cap, where the real game begins in themeparks' are now less lazy?

 

Seriously, whats wrong with you people. There comes a game which has all your themepark features (lets you lvl up by doing quests, or you could just plain grind), AND on top of that has open world housing, continents to conquer, guild towns to build, boats, sea combat, etc etc and all that as a fully developed feature, unlike other games... and you call that lazy?

 

But games which features combat, and ground combat only, with their only side feature being fishing mostly, and in most cases even that one is not worth your time - they are not made by lazy devs, because of....?  Quite frankly, im a bit confused..

Hey man, at least Themepark devs have to write a little story with each quest and have to put more than two types of enemies in an area, because they have to do many quests with different ones, rather than just let you grind on one type for hours to get a level, then move on to the other type for hours. 

But hey, if you think actually running around doing stuff rather than just pushing a couple buttons grinding on the same enemies for hours or days just to get a level is less fun, that's up to you. Menial repetition is great to you. I see that. 

The games I like might not be entirely void of repetition, but at least I'm not falling asleep every 10 minutes and have to wake myself up to click the attack button before I fall back to sleep. 

I'll have to play ArcheAge to really understand the hype, but I truly doubt the developers are going to be able to pull off anything close to what you have built up in your head. 

But yes, I stick by my opinion that sandboxes are generally lazy because they generally introduce a lot of half-assed features and just kinda hope people find the fun in there somewhere. If AA turns out different, good for AA, but I'm calling 'em as I sees 'em.  I also never said Themepark games like you described weren't getting lazier as well, but they generally feel more polished and exciting to play, in my opinion. Even if it's only for a few weeks. 

But hey, one day, your precious AA will be out and we can all see if it's actually got a lot of features that work properly and are fun. Until then, you're talking out of your ass just as much as you believe me to be.

Currently known Themepark features;

-3 instanced Dungeons,  small group, 1x L20, 2x L30, one is known to be 3 player max, the others unknown. Unknown how many, if any, non-instanced dungeons there might be.

-Quest advancement, as of CBT5 interview they have quests up through L46 with a max char L50. However, the quests while being easy leveling mode, if you choose to respec one of your 3 skill schools(they are not pathed trees) you will need to level it up and with most or all quests gone it will have to be by other non-quest methods.

-Group and Siege/Raid size limits, personally not really a problem but some take offense.

-Fixed and known spawns, pretty much standard fare, very few try to change this.

-Farmville aspects of resource gathering, to me this is much more sandbox than themepark, but I have seen people complain about it.

Really that's about all I can think of atm.

See Entaro's Review of CBT4, http://archeagesource.com/topic/636-archeage-cbt4-review-and-extensive-game-info/#entry8326

He and others at AAS were active beta-testers in CBT4 and earlier, and will be returning with CBT5.

Originally posted by Aviggin

Originally posted by JimyHumuHumu

Originally posted by Aviggin

Originally posted by skydiver12

 

---

Originally posted by dekou
So, AA will have housing, boats and other cool features sandbox players have wanted for years. However, this is a Korean MMO and you know what they're like. Personally, I'm not willing to complete 50 "Kill 10 Battle Hikumen, 15 Hikumen Scouts and 8 Hikumen Wizards" quests just to get to the good stuff, neither do I have any interest in grinding for months to get enough materials to build whatever I need.

 

Does AA have any interesting features questing wise? Do we know anything about the time investment required to participate in meaningful sandbox content?

---

 

Funny, you just quoted a WESTERN quest-grind game like WOW, War, Lotro, SWTOR, TSW.

 

In Korean Games especially involed with Jake Song it's:
Go the F*** out and kill what you like, build what you like, forge alliances, pvp.
you may kill 10.000 monsters along the way for a level, but YOUR Way.

So you answered your own question, the themepark aspect will be your "50" boring "quests" to do.
Because that's what you want, guidance and told to do something.

You're not exactly helping the game or the OP with your condescending attitude. You're saying I'm going to have to grind a lot of enemies over and over and over again just to get to anything fun? 

"Killing monsters YOUR way."

Sounds incredibly lazy, which is generally what sandboxes are. Lazy ass developers who want the players to entertain themselves because they're not at all creative enough to create decent content for those players. Looking forward to see how this one breaks the mold.

I expect very little.

 

how exactly is having 3.000 quests, out of which 2.900 require you to kill 10-15 mobs any different? Or thats considered fun now? Lazy sandbox developers? Themeparks devs spamming you with almost identical quests, from day one to 'level cap, where the real game begins in themeparks' are now less lazy?

 

Seriously, whats wrong with you people. There comes a game which has all your themepark features (lets you lvl up by doing quests, or you could just plain grind), AND on top of that has open world housing, continents to conquer, guild towns to build, boats, sea combat, etc etc and all that as a fully developed feature, unlike other games... and you call that lazy?

 

But games which features combat, and ground combat only, with their only side feature being fishing mostly, and in most cases even that one is not worth your time - they are not made by lazy devs, because of....?  Quite frankly, im a bit confused..

Hey man, at least Themepark devs have to write a little story with each quest and have to put more than two types of enemies in an area BOOOORING, because they have to do many quests with different ones, rather than just let you grind on one type for hours to get a level, then move on to the other type for hours. 

But hey, if you think actually running around doing stuff And by doing stuff you mean killing mobs... right, because in those games you like, there is nothing else to do rather than just pushing a couple buttons grinding on the same enemies for hours or days just to get a level is less fun, that's up to you. Menial repetition is great to you. I see that.  LOL you are the one who likes menial repetition, enjoy grinding kill 10 quests! In AA i will have my own farm, my town, my castle, fight krakens on the sea.

In your games.... you have none of that.

The games I like might not be entirely void of repetition, but at least I'm not falling asleep every 10 minutes and have to wake myself up to click the attack button before I fall back to sleep.  It's what usually happens when you played 2 or 3 MMOs in your life, wait a couple of years and you will be bored to tears of playing the same game.

I'll have to play ArcheAge to really understand the hype, but I truly doubt the developers are going to be able to pull off anything close to what you have built up in your head. 

But yes, I stick by my opinion that sandboxes are generally lazy because they generally introduce a lot of half-assed features and just kinda hope people find the fun in there somewhere. If AA turns out different, good for AA, but I'm calling 'em as I sees 'em.  I also never said Themepark games like you described weren't getting lazier as well, but they generally feel more polished and exciting to play, in my opinion. Even if it's only for a few weeks.  TLDR, "i like simple and easy to get into shallow games so i can kill mobs all the time and get some good loot"

But hey, one day, your precious AA will be out and we can all see if it's actually got a lot of features that work properly and are fun. Until then, you're talking out of your ass just as much as you believe me to be.

Unlike you, he actually knows what he's talking about, those features he listed are all on the closed beta, which doesn't have an NDA.

Originally posted by dekou

So, AA will have housing, boats and other cool features sandbox players have wanted for years. However, this is a Korean MMO and you know what they're like. Personally, I'm not willing to complete 50 "Kill 10 Battle Hikumen, 15 Hikumen Scouts and 8 Hikumen Wizards" quests just to get to the good stuff, neither do I have any interest in grinding for months to get enough materials to build whatever I need.

Does AA have any interesting features questing wise? Do we know anything about the time investment required to participate in meaningful sandbox content?

The questing system in this is pretty fluent, enjoyable, and teaches you all the sandbox features as you progress.   The zones are not limited to invisible walls.. See a mountain? climb over it, then fly a glider to get to the next zone with absolutely no loading. 

The quests in the beginning are pretty straight forward but youll find yourself interacting with trees, boats, farm animals, rope climbing to get to secluded castles etc.  Youll even have to swim deep down in a lake to complete some quests and enjoy the developers underwater designs.  The world is simply limitless in the sense that there are no restrictions, only what you can physically get to with whatever equipment your using.

Overrall the "grind" is spread out into many many different activities aside from combat and collection quests.  The real work is going to be the end game content like player economy, housing, castle building, sea combat, and underwater development + whatever else these guys can think up.  With the CryEngine 3.  Possibilities for content are everywhere.