Age of Conan

After reading a few more posts from other people, I just gotta keep writing.

We had a fine house in UO on Great Lakes, full of all kinds of treasures. We'd get together and hop over to Felucca and do some Factions PvP. We'd run through some dungeons to make cash and hopefully get some rare stuff.

I'd log onto Siege Perilous and join my murderous brethren in our war against humanity. We'd defend our home from their constant attacks, we'd gather resources to build our weapons of war. We'd fight monsters around our home to build our skills. We'd sit and chat, dueling and killing each other for fun, we'd train Red healers into our camp and box them in to resurrect us when we'd die.

I know sandbox. I know we made our own stories, are own lives.

SWG was not a good Sandbox for me. Too much grinding. The beauty of UO was that there was no grinding. You can macro your skills up to almost max in no time, after that it was just about doing... whatever you wanted to.

Progression + sandbox kills the sandbox, in my opinion. The sandbox becomes a boring grind-fest of a progression because there is no content.

No progression + sandbox = a truly open world, where you make your own adventure and fun.

In a progression based game, you need something to do in order to progress. Quests and developer created story give you that something to do. Progressing your character is merely the bi-product of a successful questing game.

WoW did a great job with this, but they could have done a lot more. You only read and appreciate the quests the first time through. The quests are very static, very vanilla.

Sandbox vs. linear is really like a book. Some like to read a well crafting story, immerse themselves in the world the book creates, and go along for the ride. Others like to choose their own path, write their own story.

Some like both. So why can't we get a game with both?

Originally posted by heerobya

We had a fine house in UO on Great Lakes, full of all kinds of treasures. We'd get together and hop over to Felucca and do some Factions PvP. We'd run through some dungeons to make cash and hopefully get some rare stuff.

I'd log onto Siege Perilous and join my murderous brethren in our war against humanity. We'd defend our home from their constant attacks, we'd gather resources to build our weapons of war. We'd fight monsters around our home to build our skills. We'd sit and chat, dueling and killing each other for fun, we'd train Red healers into our camp and box them in to resurrect us when we'd die.

I hope sandboxers understand that most of these activities do not appeal to the majority of players.  It takes a very special mindset to read what heerobya describes and think it sounds like something you'd want to do for more than a week or two.

Some like both. So why can't we get a game with both?

The sort of player who likes a story-driven game does not want to think about skill templates.  Even with the minimal customization in WoW, just think about how many people would rather ask everyone around them what the best talent build is, rather than experiment and exercise this tiny amount of freedom.

The story-driven player is uncomfortable with random exploration.  They prefer guided exploration.  They want to see new things, to be sure, but they do not care so much about "being the first" or finding things no one else has seen.

The story-driven player doesn't need to impact his world.  He is content to take in the world as it is presented to him, more or less passively.

So to have a game with both styles of play would require that you create two entirely unrelated games and then smash them together.  Pretty pointless, when you can make just the one game and (assuming you do it well) reap the rewards.  Adding the sandbox bit to a story-driven game is just not cost-effective.  Your resources are better spent adding content.

I dont need a damn storyline, I will make my own in a game.  If you want a storyline, play a single player game.

The difference is that in a skill based sandbox i can kill lvl 1 cows until i max all the skills i want if i feel like it. In a quest based lvl game after i kill a certain ammount of cows i will stop getting xp therefore i will need to move on if i really want my toon to progress. That is the difference beetween sandbox and linear quest based games imo, brought to the xtreme of course

Originally posted by Calcedon

I dont need a damn storyline, I will make my own in a game.  If you want a storyline, play a single player game.

Exactly, if I am remembering correctly the "slogan" for SWG was something like "live the greatest story ever told....YOURS" and it WAS (very past tense) true.  You could literally "live" a fantasy existence and create a fantasy life however you chose, you weren't told to go see Hobbit Joe, then Hobbit Joe tells you to go see Elf Ed and so on and so on.  You went to see Ben Kenobi's home because you wanted to, you went to Krayt Valley because you wanted to, you went to Fort Tusken because you wanted to.  And when you got there, hold the @#!& on cause there was sure to be something challenging waiting for you and likely to kill you if you weren't prepared. 

Plus, do not forget what SWG did, that to my knowledge nobody else has done. You were able to unlock a force sensitive character slot.

Which, for me, was the only reason I bought the game in the first place. Not because I wanted to play as a jedi, but because there was this mystery behind everything you did. You never knew what would happen if you did whatever you did during your play time. Every second counted and was as exciting as the last one.

I remember hearing some rumors about certain places that would give you hints about the jedi.

The game revolved around this mystery. Some people made it there purpose in game to unlock jedi, others less persistant, tried and failed and some just wanted to be non-jedi. But they all had the same chances to unlock a jedi, back then of course when jedi was something to worship pre-publish 9 (ie: the jedi revamp).

The jedi of course were COMPLETELY over powered, just as it should of been, but only when you fully leveled it to Guardian 4/4/4/4 (Jedi Master slot was bugged...remember??)

As a padawan anyone could kill you, as a Knight, you could hold your own MAYBE in a 1v1, but as a guardian, you were a god to be worshiped.

One of the first light Jedi on Corbantis as I remember, he came to our city Kaitan (by the Krayt graveyard), he soloed 12-15 of us, while killing our large turrets AND finishing off and krayt dragon. He then proceded to camping our cloning center. I remember sending him a tell telling him to leave cause everyone in my guild DEF was reporting him and I dint want to see him banned.

Now you find me a freaking game where you have half the fun swg pre-cu was and Ill sign up.

Originally posted by glim3mer

Plus, do not forget what SWG did, that to my knowledge nobody else has done. You were able to unlock a force sensitive character slot.

Which, for me, was the only reason I bought the game in the first place. Not because I wanted to play as a jedi, but because there was this mystery behind everything you did. You never knew what would happen if you did whatever you did during your play time. Every second counted and was as exciting as the last one.

I remember hearing some rumors about certain places that would give you hints about the jedi.

The game revolved around this mystery. Some people made it there purpose in game to unlock jedi, others less persistant, tried and failed and some just wanted to be non-jedi. But they all had the same chances to unlock a jedi, back then of course when jedi was something to worship pre-publish 9 (ie: the jedi revamp).

The jedi of course were COMPLETELY over powered, just as it should of been, but only when you fully leveled it to Guardian 4/4/4/4 (Jedi Master slot was bugged...remember??)

As a padawan anyone could kill you, as a Knight, you could hold your own MAYBE in a 1v1, but as a guardian, you were a god to be worshiped.

One of the first light Jedi on Corbantis as I remember, he came to our city Kaitan (by the Krayt graveyard), he soloed 12-15 of us, while killing our large turrets AND finishing off and krayt dragon. He then proceded to camping our cloning center. I remember sending him a tell telling him to leave cause everyone in my guild DEF was reporting him and I dint want to see him banned.

Now you find me a freaking game where you have half the fun swg pre-cu was and Ill sign up.

I don't think there will ever find a game like that again. Hopefully AoC will at least quell my desire for SWG  type game if it wont replace it.

Originally posted by Hexxeity

I guess someone could do a fantasy one to appease the rest of the sandboxers.  It would be only minimally successful, especially compared to what the same company could do with a less open-ended game ... hm, maybe that's why no one wants to bother?

An uptodate, so called 3rd or even 4th generation sandbox would be endgame for the mmo industry. It would have anything you want, because we now have the PCs to run it and the knowledge to code it. No other company could sell a freaking game anymore. Conspiracy ? Well, maybe. There is nothing in WoW, EQ, EQ2, AO, ATITD, TR, Hellgate, CoH, Hello Kitty, what-ever-game that an AAA+ sandbox couldnt offer.

Basically this is the game we all want and thats why all games suck to some degree. They are not complete   The good thing is that companies slowly start to understand. People stop playing games at all because there is no real evolution in gaming. Playing since 85 and there really hasnt changed much. 3D rendering evolved very well, bandwitdh evolved very well, but the mechanics and features not. They even degraded. And companies try to sell me a slice of the cake over and over again. But i want the complete cake.

So, thats just another example how money blocks evolution

Oh... by the way. Brazil banned EQ and CS.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hBkj-Bi6dzGMMrid_jOE2PHFsw4g

Maybe a bit of evolution could help to save the industry ?