Bored Druid ThreadFollow

I'm in that same position. WoW's just not interesting anymore.

I pre-ordered FFXIV. Hope that keeps my attention.

What do you guys mean by a sandbox game?

I personally really enjoy Elder Scroll Games, but I've yet to beat either Oblivion or Skyrim. I get too distracted doing the side quests and I never end up finishing the main quest. It's a problem. I loved beating DA:O though, that was a fantastic story. DA2 was enjoyable, but it just didn't feel as epic as the first one. Being the savior of the world is much more awesome than being the Champion of a city.

RCT3 is all about the sandbox and just building a theme park (or even just a ride). It's 99.9% a sandbox building game and 0.1% scenarios that are too easy.

I would add that in a sandbox you don't have to follow a certain progression, and you don't have to quest to progress. For instance, to me WoW, Rift, LotRO, GW2, are all not sandbox games because when I create my first character I have to go to a certain zone for my level, and then go zone by zone according to level, and (especially the "new" WoW) even go area by area within a zone by following quest givers.

In games like EVE Online and Skyrim, you can essentially go and do whatever you want. Character progression is still based upon leveling up certain skills but you can still explore, catch butterflies, shoot crabs, collect plates and leave them in a pile on the streets of Whiterun, and on and on.

I guess that's why they're called sandbox. The developers provide a place for you to go and use your imagination to find fun. In an MMO like Eve, the players actually create much, if not all, of the content. In a single player game like Skyrim, there is plenty of content but you get to choose what you want to do and even if you want to do it at all. Love dungeon crawling? Plenty of that for you. Quests? They're all over the place. Exploration? Lots of cool things to see. You can pick up most anything and then drop it most anywhere. You can craft stuff, become a werewolf, become an assassin, become a thief, stealth everywhere or beat on things with a ginormous axe, or shoot things with arrows. Stabbity? Got ya covered. Don't like the way an NPC looks at you? Kill him/her. Hell, I always wondered if it was possible to clear out all of the guards in a city before any could respawn. Probably not.

ditto

I'd like to think a decently-followed game could get by with a good 6 months-ish of subscription-only play, or at least a F2P limited to a trial version only.

I don't think its impossible for a sub game to succeed. But it would have to be way better, compared to the competition, than WoW was at launch compared to its competition.

I expect FFXIV to succeed, and it's a sub game. But I expect it to succeed like FFXI succeeded, not the way WoW succeeded. I also expect a lot of prior FFXI players will be picking it up, and that the PS3 version is vastly increasing access to it.

A sub game has a lot to prove itself to a potential audience even before they get to play it. Assuming its a purchase cost, at least. Or they could take the EVE model, where you get a 2 week trial, then have to pay $20 to keep going, and then it's $15 a month. Or like $5 upfront, if you get a starter pack on sale.

A F2P game just needs you to get interested enough to commit to an X gb download. And that's it.

Will they be as profitable as MMOs were in the real WoW era? Probably not. But I think it's safe to say that the ship has sailed, there.

I wouldn't say that in GW2 you have a particular zone progression you have to do. The zones adjust to your level, as long as you're a higher level. So you could do all the starter zones without penalty if you wanted, instead of going from zone to zone in the "correct" way. That was one of the things I liked about the game.

I suppose. I can't seem to stomach the $50 for GW2, but I had no problems spending $40 over 3 months unlocking parts of TERA.

I think that if you don't offer that something for everyone experience, you'll miss out on the giant group of people who do a little of everything but don't go for one thing. And while most of those are probably still playing WoW, I'm guessing that more and more will start to look for something else as a game inevitable becomes stale after playing it for the better part of a decade.

I wanted to get into the MOBA/ARTS genre, but the community pretty much terrifies me. It's like the PUG raid from hell - every match.

But those are the people who most frequently leave because they actually exhaust the content, which is primarily due to the way content is currently structured in games. I you have to wait 3 months between new raids, it's not surprising you're going to get burned out. Create a dynamic content system that doesn't rely on a developer patch schedule to create the content, and you'll be more likely to keep those players.

But my experience with F2P games suggest that you're actually fusing two very distinct groups into one category of "dabblers" without actually looking at the reason they dabble.

There are people who dabble because they're not committed to any content and are just sort of meandering through content. These people largely don't invest much in the game. This is the group I'd actually call dabblers.

But then there's the group of people that are incredibly popular who are invested in areas of the game not typically associated with something like endgame content, and so end up dabbling in other bits of content because they're pursuing that end without any dedicated content. In TOR, these are typically people who love the story aspect, and are constantly creating new characters, playing the game as an RPG, and perfecting their characters' looks. They'll probably run dungeons at least once, for the story factor and any particular gear skins they want. I almost never see them PVPing.

They aren't "dabbling." They're pursuing a horribly under-utilized content stream that should be there, but isn't.

These are the people who would spend money and time to get their in-game house exactly how they want it, and do it multiple times for multiple characters. They easily have the highest ROI in the game.

Raiders have never been WoW's most profitable group. Nor have PVPers. Ever. But they've been the most consistently serviced until recently. The reality is that, had things like pet battles and the farm been introduced two expansions ago, and given a small fraction of the attention they gave raiding, the game would have gone much stronger, much longer.

A dynamic world actually pursues those players with the sort of content they're inclined to care about - the content that lets them pick and choose which battles to fight based on RP reasons, and not just give them a single "kill the bad guy" objective. A game that figures out how to design content for the "casual" players who care is a game that's going to make a lot of money.

Which is downright tough to do, especially in an MMO context. With that many people activially competing within a system, it has to be really robust to not become simplified and competitive.

It's a rare system that's both easy to pick up for someone playing casual, and also complex enough to keep them interested for the long run. Once patterns emerge it can make the content stale fast. Look how easy it is for PvP to fall into a set pattern. PvP is by it's very nature highly dynamic, but at the same time a decent PvPer will know how to counter virtually every situation they encounter (and complain constantly about those they can't of course). You end up with certain classes that dominate, they tend to use a couple of powerful moves, and a force certainly a predictable response. If there isn't careful balance you get: Warrior does X, Mage counters with Y, Warrior does Z, Mage runs to go get a shaman. The game is like rock paper scissors all of a sudden, which is, well as exciting as rock paper scissors.

Or you just zerg rush everyone and hope for the best.

Random spawns get old, big ones get scheduled so people that play causally can to be there to gear up...

Then there's something that's new out there for free, always for free.


And then get bored when they have all the costumes the want, and go play dress up in another game until more content is released. Because some people seem to think loading up the cash shop with pretty clothes isn't content.