this game seems intersting, but it is hard to stay interested with the community seeming to be dead. the last news update was in feb.

My personal opinion is the difference between sandbox and themepark is how the options are layed out. Its more of a feel than specific things things that you can check in a checklist.

Take two quest systems. One is a predesigned story written by the devs. The story is a set path and the only choices you have are what the devs give you. Even if there are a hundred paths you're still limited if the devs don't give you the option. An example of this is an assassin failing a quest because the story says you must kill a target while you want to defect to the enemy side. Even if there are fifty different options to kill the target you're still limited by what choices the devs plan to program in.

The other is a random quest generator that generates quests based on actions by the player. If the generator makes a quest to assassinate someone you could decide to defect and it will generate a new set of quests based on the new situation.

The first one is themepark the second is sandbox. A simple rule is basicly, if the devs make the decisions its themepark, if the players make the decision its sandbox.

Other examples include:

pvp. if the devs decide to arbritratily limit pvp to arenas its themepark. if the players to decide to limit pvp to arenas by voting its sandbox.

Not everygame is completely sandbox or completely thempark. it is a spectrum. Its more the overall feel that decides the classification.

Sure some features are more traditionally sandbox and some are more traditionally themepark. But generally the overall feel of these features fits the basic rule. In wow all the classess are designed around combat with crafting on the side. eves skill system allows you to ignore combat skills completely.

The basic ideas are very interesting. But I think the details could use some work.
Don't really have much time to do a full on critique though.

no endgame.

personally I'd never play a game with pink pegasi sporting heart shaped wings at all. its too weird. never liked stuff like alice in wonderland or similar stories with schitzo logic. even when I was a kid.

but if there was a pegasus that looked like a normal horse with realistic wings fine. I'd prefer a gryphon, but a pegasus is fine, as long as it fit the lore.

if there was a unicorn mount in asoiaf online thats also okay. there have been mentions of unicorns in the series. as long as they don't have horns banded in the colours of the rainbow and have heart shaped markings and pink fur.

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So fighting, politics, exploring, assasinations and sex arn't the makings of a good game?.... I don't even know if I'm supposed to take this post serously? thats how laughable it is.

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i never said the tv show was bad. just that the books are a lot better. and that the tv show has too much sex.

GOT mmo. hell no. please no. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. what is there to do in GOT. fighting, sex, politics, sex, exploring the world, sex, sex, assasinations and sex.

now asoiaf would be a much better mmo. theres a lot less sex, theres a sh--load more lore and it is more accurate when compared to the source material

are any of these characters in GOT.

the bastard of bolton, young griff, the red viper of dorne, asha greyjoy, jeyne westerling, tormund giantsbane, euron greyjoy, etc. etc,

not to mention the great history that has barely been mentioned in the show. the dance of dragons, faith militent, nymeria [not the wolf], etc, etc.

the show even leaves out the important backstory. 99% of the house of the undying was cut or changed, the tower of joy was left out completely.

hell, the show even kills off characters important to the story. like drogos bloodrider.

gta-san andreas

there should be no rewards exclusively available to quests. you should do quests becuase they are fun, not becuase they give rewards. If a person hates doing quests he should have an alternate option.

compars sandbox mmos to sandbox single player games. darkfall and mo are failing. minecraft and mount and blade are thriving. I wonder what sandbox mmo developers are doing wrong?

so you'll be railroadeed into grinding quests before you can actually have fun playing the game, hell no.

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Plus it's based on the TV Series and not the books, so that's awesome!

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Insanity. The TV show may be great compared to other TV shows. But its crap [like always] compared to the books. I think you need to get your head examined if you think basing it off the TV show and not the books is "awesome!".

while I prefer skillbased to classbased, I can see how classes would work in a virtual word sandbox. and its nothing like the op.

the main thing about a sandbox is choice. the ability to choose not to fight [well in ffa pvp you may get ambushed, but I specifically mean seeking out fights, not random encouters]. the ability to choose a certain role.

I can see an easy way of doing that. have certain guilds or orders in the game and let players decide which one they want to join. if they join the shipwrighs guild they get the ability to build ships. if they join the order of the forest rangers they get ranger abilities.

of course there should be skills within those classes to help specialise. say the rangers guild has the skill options of: archery, tracking, swordsmanship. while thr scout guild would have the skill options of tracking, swordsmanship and light armour.

So different guilds could share certain similar skills becuase it makes sense. both a carpenter and a shipwright would work in wood. so they'd both need carpentry skills.

and of course the different skills would allow specialisation within that guild. the knights guild may have the skills of axework or swordmanship. one knight may specialise in a sword and the other in an axe. or onne engineer may specialise in digging ditches for armies while another may specialise in supporting the earth to stop collapses in mines.

This is just to stop each member of a guild from being a clone of every other member in that guild. it would still allow the overall specialisation of classess.

finally in order to give players a full bag of freedom while still keeping specialisation there should be secondary and hobby skills. even a foot soldier may need to ride a horse in transport. but he'd be crap at using one in fighting. someone who knows first aid might be able to do some healing, but he'd be crap compared to a dedicated healer. etc. etc.

also, the trinity should really be avoided in a sandbox. what should be done is allow the use of group tactics to work.

for example, at the battle of agincourt there were forests surrounf the english longbowmen. this stopped them getting flanked. the mud caused by rain slowed down the heavily armoured french knights [even when on foot]. in most other conditions the french [who outnumbered the english quite a bit] would have won, but the tactics the english used allowed them to destroy the french army.

similarly, in a game a mage may be able to fight a warrior at a distance. but if the warrior is fast enough to catch the mage the mage will die. someone who has a decent grasp of tactics would have another warrior destract the first and let the mage help from a distance. but if the enemy had an archer, the mage would have to hide behind a rock and time his spells to when the archer is destracted or reloading or whatever.

of course in any decent comabt there should be a lot more going one. maybe a scout is sneaking up behind the mage in order to ambush and kill him. maybe the mage has a friendly scout hidden behind him to watch for and stop any danger. maybe the weather has turned to mud slowing down the heavily armed warrior enough so the mage can kill him without another warrior destracting him.

this sort of thing doesnt need a balanced trinity. a group that works together and plans better than the enemy would win against an enemy that doesnt. and a trinity would only have three variables. if there were fifty different roles in combat it would make combat more diverse, and if you only had access to seven of those roles it would require a lot more planning and skill to be able to win.

i think the best solution would be to make group tactics, enviroment and other factors as important as character ability and player skill.

So a mage might be able to throw out ten damage per second. but a warrior with a thousand hitpoint would be able to run up to the mage and kill him every single time. why not have your own warrior distract the enemy warrior till the mage kills him.

and if an enemy archer is attacking the mage, why not have the mage hide behind a large rock timing his attacks to when the archer is reloading.

and terrain could be done in a number of other ways. Mud and swamp would slow heavy armour allowing light armour and cloth to attack [agincourt wasnt just bows you know]. or the heavy armour could wait on hill with mages and archers and force the enemy to come or have them slowly be picked off.

The main thing thats needed for this to work would be a ton of possible options for every class combination. That way there would be less dead ends.

of course then groups that can't plan or coordinate would whine that its not fair. but its still a lot closer to fair than having one class be able to kill another class with zero risk.

I'd sya minigame with option to do it based off of skilllevel.

I think a partially limitation would work. but at the end of the day there'd always need to be more stocks of resources. so no it wouldnt work, but maybe a compromise could work

so why not have deposits of resources that are huge and would take a thousand players six months to completely deplete [or whatever numbers are balanced] while the devs work on adding a new continent with new deposits. though that

Though it would still have to be based around gameplay. so lets say the game has territory control. if mines were very rare controlling a mine would be a huge thing, but if the mine runs out its gone. so either you'd have to be careful not to waste the resources or trade for it if you need it. If the devs time adding new continents to when the old mines run out it would keep a decent balance.

that said even this system has its problems. mainly the fact that the starter continents would become barren wastelands after a while. I guess another idea could be adding new abilities to the game allowing mining in deeper mines,which I think would work slightly better, but the placement of those mines would have to be very carfully thought out.

age is the most idiotic way of categorising inteligence, skill or maturity. I've recently read in a local newspaper of an eleven year old forcing a chess grandmaster to a draw.

for everyone saying racism it not race, its culture. In america eating dogs is discusting. In china it isn't. In britain shoes can be worn inside houses, in japan you leave them by the door, in some middle eastern countries polygamy is okay with certain limitations, in the west it isn't.

Race has nothing to due with it. I have absolutely no idea what part of culture would make the type of games seem different, but I also don't understand why half of the japenese generals commited suicide after being defeated in world war 2.

It depends on how you define complex.

if a complex crafting system where there are a hundred different materials you could sue to make a sword, each one requiring a different combination of oil, coal, etc. to make and there are a hundred different blade types each requiring a different combo of metals to work properly than no thanks.

If it was something where you could decide on the length or curvature of a blade using a slider. Where if you wanted to make a dagger you'd make the length and width sliders low while you'd drag them higher to make a one handed sword and make them go near the other side to make a two handed sword than yes please.

This game does have some cool features, But it is too focused on pvp. from what I've read that the focus of crafting will be based around around npcs. with the focus of that being large scale production of items for pvp with a few heavily taxed npc city stations for solo players kinda far down the to do list.

http://fallenthrones.com/forums/showthread.php?48-Regarding-Crafting

The classes are all combat based. whats sandbox about that.

the classess have a linear progression system. they do seem to have a lot of customisation, but they are still linear themepark classes.