this sounds like the game i was suggesting would come along after guild wars 2. Something that marries themepark and sandbox in a fun way without going overboard to either camp. I like the idea of player made dungeons. 

The only thing i worry about with this game is is it a subscription or not. The game has me hooked either way, just as GW2 did, but i worry about the success of any sub game in this environment. I also worry about the use of ccash shops.  Will it be time enhancements or will it be you can't do dungeon x until you have this many things from the cash shop 

Originally posted by Tierless
I think it' a great concept and it works really well for the players that are into it, but I'm more old school, I prefer to write my own story about love, loss, gain, failure, success, not play out scripted ones. 

Unsure of how this is old school? cant say there were any rpgs in my hay day (tabletop or video) where i could run around and come up with stories in my head. 

In hindsight, i think my biggest problem with Star Wars was that there weren't more instances. Open world content is really lame. Kill this many this, collect this many of that. There's no story to be told usually (GW2 did agood job of getting around this with dynamic quest chains, but the one offs feel very uninteresting most of hte time). 

I've grown to realize that the problem with MMOs is that I don't want to play them with everyone. When I first heard about mmorpgs i assumed everyone playing them was rpg fans, and that has not grown to be the case. So things like story and immersion are only interesting to a handful of us. I prefer instances because  Ican get that story and immersion without dealing with everyone else. I"d just prefer games either go all one way or all another but not make these mismashes where to get to good instances, personalized content i have to go do 100 mundane tastes that have nothing to do with the real story. I've realized that I don't like the mMO player and rarely want to intereact with the average person. If I have friends and family, I love playing with them, but its player aeralim8 that seem to populate most games  and make MMOs less interesting for me. 

I've played NWN for 3 hours so far, so far so good. I like that a good many parts of the game are instances or isolated instanced. It does feel a bit linear, but i'm mostly playing it to see what the foundries offer. 

I think that's the bread and butter, as, unfortunately, publishers have been very sad at providing really good adventure stories in mmos. 

Originally posted by orbitxo

I love GW2- will be my fav Fantasy mmo- but havent logged in in months. last time i think was Bounty hunting with my Guild just to check it out. 15min n logged back out.

I think what they are doin is smart making the game a Huge living breathing ongoing evolvement-deploring expansions as we been fed in past mmos-i respect that.

And with that= i have more time to play other mmos (TSW, FF, and Defiance)..until something from GW2 will redirect me back to it. but as of now, the personal story has been put in the back burner with Anet-and well?.... thats what i enjoyed about GW2-and when they revisit that -so will i.

I really thought they would put personal story adventures chapters in the cash shop- but never happened-something i would of like to see in the future.

 

My hope for the future of the game would be for them to focus more on the story too. My wife and i only log on to complete each others quests. Honestly we don't mind the elder scroll approach. I'd rather have a multiplayer RPG, which was the original intention of the MMORPG, instead of the "MMO" which focuses on getting items it seems.  The flame and frost content was very fun for us and definately engaged us both back again into hte game. I'd like to see more of this. I'd love it if they released a couple of adventures a season. I"d be open if they even sold them. 

Originally posted by colddog04

Originally posted by AlBQuirky

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Originally posted by baphamet
i think the fact that you could save in TES single player games made its permadeath not really permadeath, so the argument is invalid.

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People still TES single player games with a self-imposed permadeath option. They turn off auto save and do not save at any point in time. They play their characters until they are dead. I think, and I could mistaken, it is called "DID", or "Dead Is Dead."

You can do that in ESO as well. When you die, you delete.

Yeah, I have been playign since arena and never heard of anyone else doing that. Still, any game can be played like that, just make a new character when you die. Role playing is what you make it. Though I will go with whatever myth in the land stops me from permdying. 

I feel I will be repeating this alot.

Elder Scroll is a single player Role playing game with a sophisticated AI that attempts to react realistically to your decisions.  Yes, good NPCs can attack you and you can cause strife with NPCs and steal from them.  They are programmed to react in a way that does not break your emmersion (well they are at least attempted to be programmed that way).

In an MMO, you can not replace these nPCs with PCs. it doesn't translate. Most MMO players have abandoned the RPG element and don't role play at all. PVP is "death match" to them.  This was not the case in the first, more open, rpgs as the only people who initially attempted to play mmos back in the day were those of us who loved single player rpgs.  So the few minority of us who would love to see more sandbox areas need to realize that the reality of an open world pvp would be one whre most of the games resources have to force people to role play and won't do a good job of it, just creating an unpleasant place to do role playing game stuff.  

I do like Elder Scroll solution. Essentially it makes sense. As i've said a billion tims, open world pvp is the most unemerrsive thing in the world. Unless its call to duty, it doesnt make sense for a non battlefield area (an area that is mainly focused on open warfare) to have people openly attack people while doing everyday adventuring. 

Originally posted by Nanfoodle

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by Nanfoodle
I dont think the majority of the people in this thread know what a sandbox game is.

Actually, many of know what a sandbox style game is, we just don't agree on what that really means.

Sandbox is just that, a box you get to make it as a player or group of players into what you want the world to be. Same with your char, want to play a rake weilding, heavy plated warrior who has a wizards cap as a hat then you have a sandbox class system. If you have both you now have a real sandbox game. If content directs you in any way you are now playing a temepark game or a hybrid sandbox/themepark game. There has been very few real sandbox games. Now days at best, MMOs will add some sandbox elements. 

And that's the disagreeemnt. By your defitnion there is no such thing as a sandbox game. the content only allows for particular things to happen in the game, that is every game design. 

If folk stop beintg so adversarial, they'd realize they aren't arguying sandbox or themepark, there is no 100 percent either way. They are arguying the degree of sandbox and themepark. 

If I go back to the days of DND, you need a DM or someone to make the paths for the stories and the community. Surely any game could have had a "sandbox game" with no story. However, most games, particularly RPGs center on the story. It's primary. So it feels a bit wierd for so many to clamaro for a style of game in a genre that is built on the opposite of what you want. I"d almost like people to distinguish between if they want an MMO or if they want an MMORPG. Because of you want the RPG part, you need story and that means less sandbox.

That doesnt mean you can't have sandbox elements. Again, darkcloud was a great rpg, and it had some great sandbox items in it. 

Originally posted by evilastro

Originally posted by jfoytek

A) Have theamparks been succesfull even with huge IP's backing them like Star Wars and Star Trek???

Answer: NO

 Not sure what you have been smoking, but SWTOR (a themepark, and not a very good one at that) was far more commercially successful than SWG (a sandbox, and a fairly decent one) ever was, using the same IP.

Sandboxes are niche. Everything about them is niche. It would be like comparing a noir film with an action blockbuster. Or a 5 star meal to McDonalds. You just compete with the numbers.

It doesnt make it a bad thing, but sandboxes simply cannot compete with the mainstream for numbers. Which is why they wouldnt throw their money down the toilet by making this AAA IP into a sandbox.

 

I 've always thought that if both sides stopped fighting there would be a happy medium that would actually please both sides.

Sandboxes give another objective other than kill/fight/level.  Dark Cloud 2 was one of my favorite games of all time, and very rarely did you care as much about leveling than you did about building up your city and taking pictures.  

Building up lands and cities  could be a sandboxy goal of the game. 

I love the insulting word "carebear" put to people who just want to play a game. Also the idea that a "real gamer" wants to be harrassed by 13 year olds why they delve into a game.

The main reason I am glad that pvp is segmeented out is because it breaks the immersion factor of the game. Now, if you were smart, AI oriented PVP where it made since in the story, id be all for it, but in the came of most pvp, its just people randomly attacking people which doesnt exist in any other type of game.  

I'd be all for a type of game play if there was a strong AI monitored system that only allowed PVP at particular times, settings and scenes.  IN other words, very similar to a battlegrounds.  This makes logical sense.  The idea that the world is about to end and I need to kill this dragon, but player KILLALL PLAYERS is following me and shooting me is just silly. 

Now, what i'd like to see if a very themparked land where players get to choose which side they want to fight for in each area and thats who you fight for in that area. But, you can not just openly kill people. Instaed you only see your opposition in particular settings or parts in the adventure. 

Originally posted by kartool

Regardless of how you feel about DE's, they're not new. They're still basically questing - same as every other MMO. GW2 is the Apple of dynamic events. They took a bunch of ideas from other people and put them in a nice package.

I personally think GW2 is a well made game, but the lore and repetiveness of the quest bores me to tears. The quests themselves are the same as any other game - escort, kill or fetch. Sure there's a couple of nicely done quests in the game but it's really just more of the same.

This is such BS.  And its annoying. By this logic nothing is new, a game was invented thousands of years ago, so Arenanet did nothing that the guy who made catch did.  Just give folk credit where credit is do, their implication on quests is new and innovative. 

Killing enemies should never be an objective of real war games, it forces one playstyle as well. 

The best solution is to add a reward system that is neither killing nor taking territory but obtaining resources..  Having a resource based pvp system allows the designer to have large or small battle zones and have them scale and become as random as they can. You can have resource areas appear and grow as they are ignored

Originally posted by azzamasin

Originally posted by Karteli

To get to any meaningful PVP, doesn't everyone need to suffer through all the funneled themepark PVE content first, then get to endgame and do PVP "in the middle", since every faction is segregated?

 

 

Where is this funneled PvE content you speak of?  If Funnled PvE content equals freedom to explore anywhere and go where ever you want is funneled....then yes PvE is funneled.

Haters , don't mind them. I think they should just make a subsection of game called MMOPVP and that way pvpers don't have to worry about the actual role playing game stuff and can gank to their hearts content just like they were 13 again.  The idea that pvp is zoned makes me want to at least try this game. 

I wouldn't even mind if they figured out how to do a Dark Cloud 2 system where pvp actions (not killing a bunch of people, but actually building a community) effected the real world in some type of statistical or item availablity area. 

PVP takes away the realism of any game. No world has peopel , even of opposite factions, randomly killing folk for no particular reason other than i hate u, u hate me.  The only way I"d ever do open world pvp is if you had to join an army for it, and could only particupate in  organized battles according to a general. This would provide far more realistic impressino for me and force players to actually understand how real war and opposing factions work. 

Originally posted by BlackUhuru
@dontadow

Here's a list of D&D game designers working on Pathfinder Online!

Ed Greenwood the creator of D&D Forgotten Realms.

Kieth Baker creator of D&D Eberron Campaign setting.

Frank Mentzer creator of countless D&D adventure paths.

Rich Baker game designer for 3rd Edition D&D, game designer for 4th Edition D&D.

Just to name a few... Can you tell which D&D game designers or creative writers are openly not supporting Pathfinder Online?

 

I write in the industry, so i'm not going to put people out there, but notables would be wolfgang baur, monte cook (the actual designer and 3.5) and skip williams.  And there's a ton more. It's not knocking the game. Sandbox is not dnd.  If you honestly can say that this description is AnY dnd game you've ever played i'll write you a check for my life's savings.  This sucks ,because pathfinder is a great system, and should be reflected, not used as a means to push a fantasy teabagging fest . No one wants this game to fail, but we know that if it does its bringing down pathfinder as the game with it, a horrible thing to do considering 5th edition is just around the corner. 

Now, if paizo had said, we're going to actually make a game based on our system, that is one where i get together with friends and go out and adventure throughout hte land it wold be awesome. But piss fests between teenager built cities doesnt sound all that fun. nor does it sound like anything that's not out there. 

Originally posted by strangiato2112

open world pvp + not earning your skills = no thanks

time based exp is just silly to me, completely non-immersive with no logic to it whatsoever.  How this can be a foundation of a game is beyond me.  Yes, I know EvE uses it as well.  I just hope this 'feature' goes no further.

This scares me, because if this fails it could be an end to Pathfinder. The game is very very unlike dnd in design.  A lot of rpg industry writers, freelancers and artists aren't supporting this product, it's too anti dungeons and dragons.  Why not just make a game, no big overall story but small adventurers where you band together in a cooperative role playing game... u know dnd.