From MO Forums - Devs, Crafters, PvPers read

[PeonSanders911]

The OP has good points, the the one he missed, is that players like us ( who are reading this, and not playing WOW or other such games), are always looking for something better. It's not the PvP aspect, nor the crafters, or even the care bears, it's simply the players get board, and move onto the next game, that promises something new or improved.

I've played UO, ShadowBane, DarkFall, Mortal, and yes, even some PvE games, and the reason I left each of those games, was that I was always chasing the UO/ShadowBane rush I got playing them. The fear of losing my stuff when I got wasted, the worrying about another guild destroying my city, the joy I got stomping my enemies, etc, was why I left games in search of the next one.

This game will be no different. Something better will come along eventually ( or soon...who knows) and myself and others will leave.

But until the next UO/SB/DarkFall comes along.....I'm here, with high expectations of the game, and will love every minute of it.....until it's time to move onto the next one.

It's like upgrading your cell phone......the old one worked just fine, and you had no problems with it......you just want the new one to see how it works.....

[bodangly]

Fighting over nothing gets boring in time and Crafting to create the same items as your neighbor gets boring fast... give us depth, rare resources and recipies, rare locations... make an investment in time in any vocation worth while so players get a sense of accomplishment. Otherwise, boredom sets in fast and players leave.

People like to compare games to the granddaddy of all graphical MMO sandboxes, UO.

Well what people need to realize is UO was built with the ECONOMY as the focus as you state, because Lord British understood that without a functioning economy there could be no purpose behind anything.

The real required reading should be this link:

http://www.mine-control.com/zack/uoecon/uoecon.html

[jaqknife]

I am certain, countless numbers of those who have left the game did so not because of server instability, not because of exploding horses, not because of limited pve content, but because they were tired of fighting, day in, and day out, for no purpose, with no hopes of ever actually achieving goals beyond destroying everything their enemy had. Many PvPers will probably never actually own up to that, because it would be too 'carebear-ish' or seen as an excuse. Instead, they point the finger at SV, at bugs, at exploits, at anywhere but the fact that they're just sick of fighting for the sake of fighting.

And here's what's left. Hardcore pvpers, who struggle against all odds to find enjoyment in the last game the casino offers admist the bugs, the lack of diversity in combat, the inability to win a fight thats supposed to be based on player skill, when player skill hardly factors in at all, let alone against lag, complex combat systems that don't work properly if at all, and unbalanced skills or abilities and cookie cutter spec'd characters that are more of a rock-paper-scissors or a guilds numerical battle match than combat based on skill. They fight because its what they know, its what they enjoy, but most of all, because its all they have to do. And so they fight, and fight and fight, until people end the war in the only way they can, by leaving the game.

That is why I left MO. The guild I was in was no stranger to PvP but it wasn't their main focus either. Since then that guild has left also. If players cannot build faster than others destroy or there is no break in PVP long enough then players will leave. I don't know what the solution is. Maybe put in a political system also might be a nice thing to put into this game. That way tribes can war dec maybe have to put resources in a war chest in order to keep the war dec going.

[mindtrigger]

Couldn't have said it better myself...

I agree completely. As a side note, what is described in the OP is one of the main reasons I spent so much time arguing against the War & Peace servers. No matter what anyone thought the server rules represented, it became very obvious that PvE oriented people were heading for Peace, and PvP people were heading to War. It would have split the community up and the game wouldn't be the same at all. If we must have multiple servers to deal with a large population, I think the rules should be the same on all servers.

One of the things that happened to Star Wars Galaxies as part of the NGE, was that they dumbed down the Trader aspect of crafting, and they turned off decay. This along with expanding the Bazaar (basically an action house now) so that it eliminated having to visit crafter's shops, make friends, or even CARE who the crafter was, ruined the most interesting aspect of the game. What made SWG spark into an amazing community, was the economy based on a rich crafting, trading and resource system in tandem with mostly weak weapon loot and item decay. Crafters in SWG had brands! They had reputations, and players not only sought out their shops and traveled great distances to buy high-quality items, but made custom orders, sometimes for their entire Tribes. Crafters kept track of their customers and sent out notices and coupons when new runs of products were released. These crafters had relationships with contract hunters (something I enjoyed), and resource gathering businesses. It was incredible, and I could write a book about it.

Hell, when compared to the potential of Xsyon, SWG was barely a sandbox, but it had enough features to get by as one and to give us all a taste. I suspect many of the people who tried MO and who are here, played pre-NGE SWG like I did because they felt the magic of a true in-game community, and a live world, not just some digital Disneyland full of fake props and repetitive rides. I love combat, but I love community building just as much. In SWG, I would sometimes spend weeks completely avoiding combat so I could work on crafting, or just get into the social aspects of the game. Sometimes I would do the same with combat where I would leave crafting alone, and join battles, hunts and other adventures.

What both sides of the PvP vs PvE argument need to understand, is exactly what the OP was saying. In a sandbox, you need both sides to function for the game to remain interesting. If Xsyon manages to find that balance and give us the features we need for both, this game will be one hell of a magical experience. All the awesome graphics and fancy features in the world pale compared to the immersion factor of a working sandbox. Six years later I continue to tell people stories about how much fun I had in SWG, and that fun was a great balance between combat and non-combat adventuring.

I would also like to add one more point which is key to what I have said above. When you build a PvP focused game, you get PvP focused people. This isn't to say that all PvP people care about is PvP, but that is what most of them mainly care about. When you make a game that caters to other types of players such as crafters, entertainers, cooks, scientists, religious, political, etc you draw in players that might not have otherwised even played an MMO. You also turn people on to things they never would have suspected they would like. I came to SWG fom years of FPS games, and all I knew was combat. Turned out that I loved community building and non-combat *at least* as much as I did combat, once I got to try other things. Point is, you get a richer community of people, with different goals, attitudes and agendas, and types of gameplay will emerge that no one even considered during development.

A good example of this in SWG was that people got together and put on actual theater shows in the game. They wrote scripts, made props, and put on friggin SHOWS for players to watch in the cities, and people loved going to them. That is emerging gameplay, and that only happens in sandboxes. This is just a single example. I had already thought an interesting way to play Xsyon would be to have a nomadic entertainer and crafting tribe that roams around and visits other tribes to put on shows and trade. The possibilities are only limited to our imagination if Notorious gives us the right tools.

[ffff]

What the heck is MO?

[Mitsarugii]

TL : DR

[Mitsarugii]

What the heck is MO?

a massive fail that should be not spoken about so it can die with dignity

[mindtrigger]

TL : DR

It's people like you who are making the entire world more stupid. Learn to read.

[Mitsarugii]

It's people like you who are making the entire world more stupid. Learn to read.

id rather keep watching celebrity juice then let my eyes get crit by that wall of txt

[mindtrigger]

id rather keep watching celebrity juice then let my eyes get crit by that wall of txt

I consider an 800+ page book a wall of text, and I still read them. It took me about two minutes to read the OP. Maybe if you read instead of taking the time to post TLDR and the other substance-free comments you made since, you would have got through the whole thing.