Mmo, so much potential.

[Nauticus]

Hello, would like to start out by introduce myself!....Hi

Now lets get to the topic!

For me the mmo-future is looking very bland. Yes, there is alot of effort behind KOTOR and I have no doubt its story and world will be as good as previous kotor-games, but by the looks of it they have just added the letters MMO to a rpg game, and I do not think it will bring any engaging massive multiplayer features, and most features will not be so massive multiplayer-based. And by the looks of the gameplay videos it seems to follow the DAOC and EQ template of gameplay.

I was hoping someone could bring back the sandbox to MMOs.
Sure, i might just go and play some sandbox game now and be good for the day, but it is really in a mmo enviroment the sandbox concept would shine.
When you buy a MMO, that lets say was just realeased, everything is already created, npcs ready to give you quest so you can start do the linear effort of reaching the cap, you choose a class and a faction, and run end content that have been waiting for you since release.

But if you give the player the ability to create, and by that i dont mean to create npcs, stories and worlds. All you simple need to give him is the necessity to be able to evolve the world with other players.
Instead of forcing the player to choose Between 2 or more factiions, often being the standard good and evil with obvious believs, politics and order. Give the players the ability to start a faction, with their believs and politics, and gain followers and grow into a real faction. And from that, theyre a part of the world that is ockupied with other playerrcrerated factions who has their own ways of how they want to rule the world. From that something called CONFLICT Is created. And thats only one part that todays MMO is missing, theres no conflict between the hord and alliance in world of warcraft that affects you at all, by choosing one faction only means that you have to watch out for the opposing factin players, and to make sure you have something to compete against in instanced pvp-matches.

And if this faction, made by players, is big ebough, you could encourage then to build a village, and from that a town, and that could evolve into a city. And now you got a point of interest there players could trade, live and take on quests. And eventually defend when a opposing faction endangers it.

This is just one of many ideas i belive i share with many others. Just one way to see how when the game gives the player some controll, they make some amazing feats, good or bad. One example is to look what conflicts between people in EVE can create, everything from political superpowers, huge battles to underrcover spies that end up destroying a whole factions economy

What is your idea of your kind of MMO?

 

[weker]

Your idea is built in things like minecraft and wurm online, but the general idea is too experimental for any high budgets.
Much of it is community supported which is difficult to gain without heavy heavy construction to start with.
Also griefing problems in mincraft would be massive in this.

My idea is a spectacle fighter mmo as something I would enjoy rather then profitable.

 

[richd213]

you've described tribal wars to a degree with the own alliance system but this soon falls down in the face of people just joining the most powerful faction.

 

[DaHero]

This goes wrong on SO many levels it's not even funny.

Sorry but I'm having horrible visions here...

The top clan waits by the new player centers and tells them to join their clan or die...then kills them. Since they pretty much are the top clan, nobody can do anything. New players are forced into the concept that they will never be able to do anything without being grief-camped until they join a gang faction. Sure it sounds like a cliche in need of a hero to step in and stop it, but this isn't a single player game where you can pause or have a chance. Imagine if super mutants came after you while you were fresh out of the vault, that's how bad it would be.

Bottom line: A sandbox MMO would have worked around 10 years ago, humanity has since become more about being a douchebag and less about being mature people. Your concept is idealistically plausible and even sounds fun, but what you're asking for is an invitation to a total and complete power fetish to today's modern "nuke em and t-bag em" gamer.

 

[Nauticus]

I had the matureness in mind when I tought this out, there may be not an answer to this problem. But when I thought that u could ginve the ålayer controll I did not mean the controll over other players.

To answer the ones sceptical to the technical part of this;
I dont think devolopers have any resictions to be able to create something like the ideas i mentioned, afterall, this kind of ideas was made and used in a multiplayer-setting way before even ULtima online and earlier offical MMO games was out.

Looking forward to Planetside 2 though, it may not be such an mmo as i tried to describe, but its a more conflict based(since its 1 big war) that only pplayers controls the outcome.

 

[Stall]

SWG was the single best sandbox MMO ever created. It pretty much had everything you outlined in the game, though I honestly assume you played it since you described so many of its aspects to the tee. It was the last game in the "Golden Age" of MMOs, and really just incredibly. It's a shame what happened to it, but oh well.

But, there are a few modern sandbox MMOs floating around. Earthrise and Fallen Earth are the two I know of. There are also plenty of UO private serves, and there's always SWGEmu. I think MMO culture has just fully adopted the theme park model of play, for better or worse. It's got its pros and cons, but I enjoy the social interaction and cooperative nature of MMOs beyond anything else, so as long as I get that, I'm happy.

Bottom line: A sandbox MMO would have worked around 10 years ago, humanity has since become more about being a douchebag and less about being mature people. Your concept is idealistically plausible and even sounds fun, but what you're asking for is an invitation to a total and complete power fetish to today's modern "nuke em and t-bag em" gamer.

That's so incredibly wrong on so many levels it isn't funny. Do you seriously think the game designers wouldn't be cognizant of a scenario like you outlined, and place checks in their game to make sure that DOESN'T happen? Do you seriously think all game designers are morons? Or do you only have the narrowest and totally flawed definition of a sandbox game such that you beleive its all PVP all the time? I mean, I haven't even read about that happening in any of the modern sandbox games out there. Your argument is just bad. I could debase it as well on the lines that sandbox MMOs are a niche of an already niche genre, so it is unlikely that it will pull from your totally inaccurate and absolutely baseless generalization of modern gamers. And speaking of your horrible and rash generalization, that is another way you just totally miss the base, and yet another way your logic is just beyond flawed.

So, to be forward: you are wrong.

 

[StriderShinryu]

To some degree, you just described The Matrix Online. Too bad it was bought up by SoE and run into the ground before being shut down.

 

[DaHero]

SWG was the single best sandbox MMO ever created. It pretty much had everything you outlined in the game, though I honestly assume you played it since you described so many of its aspects to the tee. It was the last game in the "Golden Age" of MMOs, and really just incredibly. It's a shame what happened to it, but oh well.

But, there are a few modern sandbox MMOs floating around. Earthrise and Fallen Earth are the two I know of. There are also plenty of UO private serves, and there's always SWGEmu. I think MMO culture has just fully adopted the theme park model of play, for better or worse. It's got its pros and cons, but I enjoy the social interaction and cooperative nature of MMOs beyond anything else, so as long as I get that, I'm happy.

Bottom line: A sandbox MMO would have worked around 10 years ago, humanity has since become more about being a douchebag and less about being mature people. Your concept is idealistically plausible and even sounds fun, but what you're asking for is an invitation to a total and complete power fetish to today's modern "nuke em and t-bag em" gamer.

That's so incredibly wrong on so many levels it isn't funny. Do you seriously think the game designers wouldn't be cognizant of a scenario like you outlined, and place checks in their game to make sure that DOESN'T happen? Do you seriously think all game designers are morons? Or do you only have the narrowest and totally flawed definition of a sandbox game such that you beleive its all PVP all the time? I mean, I haven't even read about that happening in any of the modern sandbox games out there. Your argument is just bad. I could debase it as well on the lines that sandbox MMOs are a niche of an already niche genre, so it is unlikely that it will pull from your totally inaccurate and absolutely baseless generalization of modern gamers. And speaking of your horrible and rash generalization, that is another way you just totally miss the base, and yet another way your logic is just beyond flawed.

So, to be forward: you are wrong.

Fate of Mankind

Great idea, died due to mass gang PvP. Try downloading it now and you will run out of your 10 lives faster than a CoD match. If it's one thing I've learned from 10+ years of gaming history, it's that people in large groups become douchebags.

Second example, bit more modern: All-Points Bulliten: Reloaded

Run by a handful of bad gangs, cops are stupidly underpowered and the bad guys are all high levels, making the matchmaking beyond one-sided. Also it's a forced PvP, no PvE content so people can't level at a decent rate.

Until MMOs are rid of this PvP power fetish, it only gets worse. Leave the "can I shoot them?" FPS noobs to Activision. Just gimme my character sheet, a world to save, and leave the "OMG HORDE FTW!!!" kids out of my sight.

 

[Pseudoboss]

My interpretation of the OP is that you want a world in which the things that the players do have an impact on the world itself?
Yes, this would be awesome, but I can't imagine it working well in the state that MMO's are at now. If you had factions that players could control, how would you monitor the new people, make sure that they don't get killed the second they start off? Would you have safe period where until you do this, you can't get killed by other players? but there is often a massive difference in power even at higher levels, depending on who has the better gear.
how would you maintain factions from being too one-sided, people will want to go with the most powerful faction. Would there be a player per faction cap? would that damage the premise that the game is based around, that you created this massive army of actual players from the ground up. If there was a cap, then once again, newer players would be osctricized because they're not powerful enough to get into a faction that is required to be selective by the nature of the game. but if you didn't have the cap, then there might only be one or two massive superfactions that crush any starters.
If you lower the max power of each player, then players are more inclined to leave faster. they'll have achieved all that they can, and now they'll only log on to chat with friends, not become part of the game. This poses many problems around population, because MMO's need many more active players to populate the game world to make it enjoyable than any other game type. Maybe you could make a world that expands with its population, so you always have a moderate to fairly low density but make regions which are attractive to high level players, but then thins out to where underpowered players can gain power unharassed, because they're so far between that no powerful players would want to spend the time to track them down. but then you might as well have a singleplayer game.
There's a lot of factors going into a game like this, and if you don't get it just right, then the MMO is going to die very fast.

 

[zehydra]

"I was hoping someone could bring back the sandbox to MMOs."

Go play Minecraft. It's basically a sandbox mmo.

 

[Nauticus]

SWG was the single best sandbox MMO ever created. It pretty much had everything you outlined in the game, though I honestly assume you played it since you described so many of its aspects to the tee. It was the last game in the "Golden Age" of MMOs, and really just incredibly. It's a shame what happened to it, but oh well.

But, there are a few modern sandbox MMOs floating around. Earthrise and Fallen Earth are the two I know of. There are also plenty of UO private serves, and there's always SWGEmu. I think MMO culture has just fully adopted the theme park model of play, for better or worse. It's got its pros and cons, but I enjoy the social interaction and cooperative nature of MMOs beyond anything else, so as long as I get that, I'm happy.

Bottom line: A sandbox MMO would have worked around 10 years ago, humanity has since become more about being a douchebag and less about being mature people. Your concept is idealistically plausible and even sounds fun, but what you're asking for is an invitation to a total and complete power fetish to today's modern "nuke em and t-bag em" gamer.

That's so incredibly wrong on so many levels it isn't funny. Do you seriously think the game designers wouldn't be cognizant of a scenario like you outlined, and place checks in their game to make sure that DOESN'T happen? Do you seriously think all game designers are morons? Or do you only have the narrowest and totally flawed definition of a sandbox game such that you beleive its all PVP all the time? I mean, I haven't even read about that happening in any of the modern sandbox games out there. Your argument is just bad. I could debase it as well on the lines that sandbox MMOs are a niche of an already niche genre, so it is unlikely that it will pull from your totally inaccurate and absolutely baseless generalization of modern gamers. And speaking of your horrible and rash generalization, that is another way you just totally miss the base, and yet another way your logic is just beyond flawed.

So, to be forward: you are wrong.

Fate of Mankind

Great idea, died due to mass gang PvP. Try downloading it now and you will run out of your 10 lives faster than a CoD match. If it's one thing I've learned from 10+ years of gaming history, it's that people in large groups become douchebags.

Second example, bit more modern: All-Points Bulliten: Reloaded

Run by a handful of bad gangs, cops are stupidly underpowered and the bad guys are all high levels, making the matchmaking beyond one-sided. Also it's a forced PvP, no PvE content so people can't level at a decent rate.

Until MMOs are rid of this PvP power fetish, it only gets worse. Leave the "can I shoot them?" FPS noobs to Activision. Just gimme my character sheet, a world to save, and leave the "OMG HORDE FTW!!!" kids out of my sight.

Face of mankind worked great last time i played it, i joined 1 of the weaker more trade focused factins and still had a great time in mass battles, and for tje griefesrs, just bring a bigger gun on your trading routes i do not know how the community looks now but I imagine its can be easily be affected by the fps noobs. I left since it was only US, and i prefer to not play a game with around 200 ms, even if it was a good game.

I have missed all the supposed to be great games such as UO and SWG, i just hope someone bring em back to life. Or ill just have to make an effort with private servers, wich i have been unlucky with.

 

[Drizzitdude]

my idea for an mmo revolves around having a perfect dynamic combat system while still managing to have a huge game world with plenty do and interactive enviroments and gameplay elements. I talked about this somehwat in my earlier thread about physics in mmos.

 

[Nauticus]

my idea for an mmo revolves around having a perfect dynamic combat system while still managing to have a huge game world with plenty do and interactive enviroments and gameplay elements. I talked about this somehwat in my earlier thread about physics in mmos.

I dobt think we will see physics in any larger scale mmo.

Planetside 2 will have physics but i do not know yet if its an open world or battles are instanced scenarios