Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by Caliburn101

Originally posted by BadSpock
 

I disagree with your first point Spock old chap - I firmly beleive you can take everything which works in themepark and sandbox and put them in the same game.

It hasn't been seriously tried yet - ironic as that is.

It has been mishandled and mis-sold. It has been badly designed and implemented.

All this is true.

BUT - none of that means it is right to conclude that the best elements of both game 'styles' are mutually exclusive. That confuses the limitations of designers to date with the limitations of the definitions of each playstyle.

NOT the same thing I assure you.

I'm sorry, but you are wrong. There are too many design decision which are in direct conflict with each other and cannot be included in the same game.

Say you can feed and care for your mount in a tamagochi style - make it a minigame. Now if the minigame is not the main point of the game, that minigame can be an inconvenience to people who would like to use a mount but not take care of it. This is also why more features does not make the game necessarily better. Some players want everything simulated just because it would make it "more realistic" or "more alive", when others would be comfortable with a high level abstraction and concessions from realism to usability i.e. that same mount does not require feeding, sleep and could be summoned on demand.

I entirely dissagree with your conclusion - and must say that I feel your example doesn't really deal with the relevant issue. I am talking about sandbox and themepark synergies - not something with such a minority RP focus.

Please give it some thought and illustrate with a directly related example and I'll do my best to make it clear how it could be integrated in a hybrid game.

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by Icewhite

Don't people tell us every day that "catering to the majority" is a mistake?

While simultaneously discussing a dozen or so threads about some really deeply different games?

A market that's too broad and varied to be covered this way (as corporations keep rediscovering).

Sorry Cali; gotta go with 'trying to be a jack of all trades means only that you master none of them."

I agree. No one is a fan of compromise.

Why make the assumption that 'compromise' is an unnavoidable element of a hybrid game?

It is merely what has been done in the past - it doesn't set the future in stone.

The kinds of compromises I have seen are those made for reasons of expediency and/or budget - and are by no means the only way elements of sandbox and themepark can be brought together.

Some of them are plain lazy, most, just very unimaginative and badly executed.

Not a single company has tried to hybridise across the board to date - so it remains to be seen if it can be done.

It will never be attempted however if we make assumptions in the negative and convince ourselves not to try.

In other words, you people are hard to please :P 

Everyone has different tastes and be grateful, there are different genres of mmo's for you to choose from. There's no such a thing as the Ultimate MMO and there will never be one.

I'm biased but, WoW is good enough for me. It has everything I expect in a MMO. Although I do wish there's more variety to crafting and have it endless instead of having it capped.

Player housing should be added so furniture could be made. I'll settle with the Sunsong Ranch.

Originally posted by Lobotomist

1. Simulated world - doesnt mater how complex - but with systems realistic to given simulation.

2. Content that comes from interaction with worlds factions.

3. Posiblity to change the world trough interaction.

4. Inter player and inter community dependency.

5. Suply and demand based economy and posession.

6. Player character development that lets you be unique , specialised and needed in other player and world interaction.

 

All rest is up to imagination of developer.

1. “Simulated world” - WTF does this even mean. You probably defined this term in your previous post. But until it becomes part of our vocabulary you must redefine it every time you use it. First thing that came to mind when I read this was weather. Then I realized you probably meant a totally destructible world. Buildings, terrain, NPCs, resources all destructible or consumable.

Here is the other side of the coin. A game level takes time and money to design and build. If that level is constantly changing, then the initial time and money spent designing that level will be thought of as a waste or even a loss. When a level is static and never changing the cost of development is depreciated over time. It is seen as a wise investment. If the level is dynamic, then it must be updated on each and every client. This could be handled as a pre-game patch download, or a dynamic download as you enter a zone. Either way this will take time.

SWG had dynamic game worlds, and it did dynamic downloads as you entered a zone. This cause delays between when you entered a zone and a new list of all the dynamic elements could be built. The static world was there, but you would have to wait 10 seconds for the player built structures to pop up in the world. Then the dynamic mobs might even get stuck inside one of these slow spawning factories or harvesters

2. “Content that comes from interaction with worlds factions.” This just sounds like standard themepark quest system to me, so I will just skip it.

3. “Possibility to change the world through interaction.” Imagine a quest location a cemetery populated with undead and living ghouls. All in a below ground catacombs. The quest hub give a quest to clear out 20 undead and 20 ghouls. But player number 2 decides to dig a canal from a nearby river to the catacombs and flood it out. All the ghouls below ground are drowned, but the undead still live. But you can't get to them without a scuba tank or a water breathing spell.

Players will try to take possession of game resources and deny others access to said resources. This could be quest hubs, traffic paths to other zones, or crafting resources.

4. “Inter player and inter community dependency.” Lesson learned from games that have tried this, gamers don’t want to rely on others for their gaming needs. ALL games that have tried this have had to remove the inter-dependency from their databases, due to mass player frustration with it.

Player one says in chat, “I am trying to make item A, but it says I need two item B’s that I don’t know how to make. My profession trainer doesn’t even teach the recipe for item B. Where do I get one?” Player two responds, “From profession X. I can make you two , for $1 Billions dollars.” (said like Dr Evil) Most modern MMOs allow the player to have around 10 character per server, so most players handle inter-dependency themselves across their characters. Even in games that had one character per server, players bought additional accounts or formed guilds to get around inter-dependency.

5. Supply and demand based economy and possession. You want a toothbrush, that will be $1 Billion dollars. BTW most guilds have crafters and just give stuff away to active members. The only people buying at those jacked up prices are maxed out players who have a guild bank on each of their alts. The up and coming player who doesn’t have 1/10th what a chest piece his level costs thinks that the auction house is screwed up. He can’t buy the gear he needs to join dungeon runs. He is excluded from PvP. Maybe he gets to max level without ever experiencing that side of the game. People ask him if he bought his account on ebay because he doesn't know how to use his class in groups. More likely he leaves the game and writes about how janked the game is on website forums.


6. Player character development that lets you be unique , specialised and needed in other player and world interaction. Aka “Flavor of the Month” (FOTM), and the “I hate the trinity thread.” I always play a healer so I love the trinity. The point of a classless skill based system is to build a FOTM that everyone will copy. People think that all their problems will go away if they could only play a classless skills based game. Those who max their skills out first accomplish their goal of player superiority. Those who come in last do not. They are the cannon fodder for those who got there first. They leave and write about how janked the game is.

A class based game often incorporates balance. The only thing that alters this balance is first and foremost player skill with the game controls. Secondly are buffs and gear stat modifiers. Because success and notoriety in a class based theme park depends mostly on individual player skill, they are derided by the fans of classless skills based games. Where the only requirement is you get to max level first or the fastest.

OK let's get back on thread shall we - the top 6 things....

Whilst a tit for tat spat about whether a hybrid could work is an innevitability on such forums - what I am really intersted in is collating the things people value most and then taking a long hard look at what comes out on top - how it has been integrated in this game and that and where new ideas would be necessary.

If you want to shoot the idea down in flames then first find a previous example of an MMO that tried to meld themepark with sandbox on every level (not simply shoe-horning in some of this and that), and if you can (I certainly can't think of one), then lets have a discussion abut what worked or what didn't.

Saying such a game is impossible, or my contention that it can be done is just plain wrong means precisely nothing unless you discuss in detail why....

Anyway - top 6 things please....

Getting rid of this ridiculous questing system that is present in every game since the first wow expansion would be a huge step.

You know what I am talking about. You get a bunch of quests that each take about 5 minutes to get done with, because everything is conveniently placed around the corner. After that you get send to the next place with a bunch of more quick quests until you at some point done all the quests and reached the max level. Then you proceed to repeat the same quests and dungeons every day until you ask yourself: Where was the part I got to have fun?

This questing style turns everything into a chore and a race to the end of chain-questing. Nothing seems special or memorable. You don't even get to explore anything because you have to take this guided tour. Of course there is nothing to find or to gain by just wandering of.

Quests should be more of an additional way to get a huge chunk of experience (or whatever you get for char progression) and a appropriately (huge) reward. Of course this also means it takes a lot of time to complete one quest and that there is only a small amount of quests available, which are remarkable. Of course interrupting and continuing of quests should be at the players discretion, meaning you can log out in between quests and log in again later to continue at the same point. Also this kind of quests should be no chain of small quests and of course should be of significance for the lore or the world.

No longer will you have to save kittens,gather 10 of x, speak with a dozen people and repeat the same stuff again in the next location and every day.

Of course this requires certain things like a huge and at least seemingly seamless world. Game mechanics that support this kind of quests and allow for more diverse quests and more.

On more thing that is missing from many games is the lack of item diversity. There is always 1 item that is currently better than all the others. Overall there are only 3 similar items that are even on the same level. Yes there are only 3 places where you can get them. Yes you go there as often as possible waiting exactly for those 3 items, while you know that 2 of those items aren't even that good...

An ultimate mmo should be flooded with similar but slightly different items. There should always be so many alternatives at so many (maybe even random) places that you don't even bother looking up where a certain item drops. Also of course make the look slightly different. Amateur modders for games like Skyrim pump out hundreds of differents skins for items - why can't a professional company with enough funds in the background pump out more than a dozen different designs for each items type in the whole game.

Originally posted by Caliburn101

What no-one seems to have seriously considered is making an MMO which caters for each 'side' by integrating both elements fully into an MMO.

I think this has been a mistake.

They are out there, the MMO that comes to mind is Fallen Earth, which incorporates elements of both theme park and sand box MMo's.

Originally posted by Cepheiden

Quests should be more of an additional way to get a huge chunk of experience (or whatever you get for char progression) and a appropriately (huge) reward. Of course this also means it takes a lot of time to complete one quest and that there is only a small amount of quests available, which are remarkable. Of course interrupting and continuing of quests should be at the players discretion, meaning you can log out in between quests and log in again later to continue at the same point. Also this kind of quests should be no chain of small quests and of course should be of significance for the lore or the world.

No longer will you have to save kittens,gather 10 of x, speak with a dozen people and repeat the same stuff again in the next location and every day.

Of course this requires certain things like a huge and at least seemingly seamless world. Game mechanics that support this kind of quests and allow for more diverse quests and more.

On more thing that is missing from many games is the lack of item diversity. There is always 1 item that is currently better than all the others. Overall there are only 3 similar items that are even on the same level. Yes there are only 3 places where you can get them. Yes you go there as often as possible waiting exactly for those 3 items, while you know that 2 of those items aren't even that good...

An ultimate mmo should be flooded with similar but slightly different items. There should always be so many alternatives at so many (maybe even random) places that you don't even bother looking up where a certain item drops. Also of course make the look slightly different. Amateur modders for games like Skyrim pump out hundreds of differents skins for items - why can't a professional company with enough funds in the background pump out more than a dozen different designs for each items type in the whole game.

To address your points in turn:

I agree about questing - GW2 does this well - insofar as it avoids the questing paradigm.... the trouble is the Dynamic Events used do not have enough variety. So despite using a new mechanism they fell halfway into the same trap.

Significant quests which are varied enough to hold interest are clearly diffcult to program. That said, can you imagine Conan, Gandalf or Elric being asked to collect 20 fungal spores and deliver them to Bob the Alchemist in return for enough coin to repair their armour once... you can  imagine the well-crafted responses...

On items - I agree.

Lets take the example of a sword. Make cultural hilts, pommels and blades (a selection of each) and then mix and match randomly when looting members of that race. If you only make 6 different types of each - that's 216 different swords right there....

... and I just came up with that off the top of my head whilst reading your post. Add magical effects - glows, flame, runes etc and the amount skyrockets.

The trouble I have with game designers is that they seem to be either restricted by technology or by lack of tangential thinking - and as a customer I never know which it is - I merely suspect it's the latter more often than not.

Originally posted by Johnie-Marz

Originally posted by Caliburn101

What no-one seems to have seriously considered is making an MMO which caters for each 'side' by integrating both elements fully into an MMO.

I think this has been a mistake.

They are out there, the MMO that comes to mind is Fallen Earth, which incorporates elements of both theme park and sand box MMo's.

That's quite a coincidence - I was chatting about this MMO (amongst others) at the weekend. I have never played it myself but got the impression that it mixed some elements well - but didn't go nearly far enough to be the kind of full hybrid I am talking about here.

I imgine it's ways of dealing with things would be a solid enough starting point though.

Originally posted by Caliburn101

Originally posted by Johnie-Marz

Originally posted by Caliburn101

What no-one seems to have seriously considered is making an MMO which caters for each 'side' by integrating both elements fully into an MMO.

I think this has been a mistake.

They are out there, the MMO that comes to mind is Fallen Earth, which incorporates elements of both theme park and sand box MMo's.

That's quite a coincidence - I was chatting about this MMO (amongst others) at the weekend. I have never played it myself but got the impression that it mixed some elements well - but didn't go nearly far enough to be the kind of full hybrid I am talking about here.

I imgine it's ways of dealing with things would be a solid enough starting point though.

Only, FE is bad with both. It is all in all, a sad game really. Only thing it had going for it was the milieu, and in the end it, didn't quite deliver either.

Like Caliburn said earlier, no "real attempts" have been made.

1. Pick a specific niche and make it the best example of that niche ever.

2. Pick a specific niche and make it the best example of that niche ever.

3. Pick a specific niche and make it the best example of that niche ever.

4. Pick a specific niche and make it the best example of that niche ever.

5. Pick a specific niche and make it the best example of that niche ever.

6. Pick a specific niche and make it the best example of that niche ever.

I'm of the belief that making something for everyone makes for a mediocre game with a vast array of mediocre things to do. Assuming this isn't just a fantasy wish list that doesn't take limited resources and time into account, I can't see a game having everything for everyone. In fact, I think that's what's lead us to where we are today. You can see it especially in single player RPGs that try to attract the e-sport shooter type folks who, generally, aren't the type of people to get into the spirit of roleplaying immersion. Instead of turning them on to the RPG way of doing things, they bring their "I pwn j00!" sensibilities into the RPG domain.

Instead, give them their own playground. A game like Planetside 2, for example, seems perfect for that. For those of us who are more into story and character-driven gameplay, make the best story-based  character driven game possible. It's all nice and kumba-ya to try to bring all these groups together, but we've seen time and again that sometimes they just don't play well together.

Originally posted by Caliburn101

Originally posted by Quirhid
 

I entirely dissagree with your conclusion - and must say that I feel your example doesn't really deal with the relevant issue. I am talking about sandbox and themepark synergies - not something with such a minority RP focus.

Please give it some thought and illustrate with a directly related example and I'll do my best to make it clear how it could be integrated in a hybrid game.

You really believe there is an ideal solution with no compromise needed for every conflict? I'd call you an optimist if the idea wasn't so silly.

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by Caliburn101

Originally posted by Quirhid
 

I entirely dissagree with your conclusion - and must say that I feel your example doesn't really deal with the relevant issue. I am talking about sandbox and themepark synergies - not something with such a minority RP focus.

Please give it some thought and illustrate with a directly related example and I'll do my best to make it clear how it could be integrated in a hybrid game.

You really believe there is an ideal solution with no compromise needed for every conflict? I'd call you an optimist if the idea wasn't so silly.

Again you are being dismissive without engaging on the issues with anything specific.

I really do get that you don't agree - I don't really need to hear it again, even spun with the extra sarcasm.

From my point of view - your failure to even consider thinking outside of the box is your failing. From your point of view, my innability to accept the box cannot be thought outside of is mine.

Let's just drop the tete-a-tete at this point shall we - it acheives nothing constructive.

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
Albert Einstein

How much more true is this quote when dealing with something as simple as an MMO world when compared to the real world.

Perhaps it will take a minor genius to change things in the MMO genre (a kind of MMO Einstein if you will) - but I doubt it - most significant change brought about in any arena is from group effort.

Stating so definitively that fundamental change cannot happen is self-defeating, and as history demonstrates again and again - nearly always wrong.