Goblin Squad Member
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What server were you on? I had a blast on Intrepid, the server celebre (first jedi, had a cultural museum that got reviewed...by a non gaming magazine).
And yeah, no other game I know had such a fun concept and community. I recall being in a starport, and some frantic new player races in screaming about the dark jedi that was chasing him. We all grouped up, set up at the entrances, had folks tossing out buffs, guarding the doctors, and set up firing lines. And then the dark jedi waded in. Dozens of guns opened up, to no effect. Lots of new players ran then. About 20 of us spent a good 5 minutes trying to kill the bugger, with medics racing out to revive fallen troops, Squad Leaders tossing off a few buffs, and guns blazing all over. We had imps and rebels, side by side, cheering when the thing went down. Amazing time, amazing community, amazing game. I miss it.
The best times were spent in cantinas and camps, talking.
"Thats a nasty wound. What got you?"
"Diseased vynock bite."
And that wasn't RP, it was honest communication. We need some of that in Goblinworks, some enforced downtime.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The problem with said structure is that the story you create is going to only be *very* small scale, pretty light on structure or plot, and run out of steam fairly quickly.
I put it to any player to show me how they have managed to make something REALLY substantial in a sandbox without some sort of NPC setup.
Lets face it, it takes a a shedload of planning just to get a decent PnP session up and running, so how do you poropse to make something robust and interesting that is running in realtime 24/7? unless you have 48 hours a day I suspect it will be a bit dinky. though I have put it out there, I'd now like to see the challenge met and quality examples provided.
yeah 4499 might have faced off against the big bad in WOW, but coming from 'EQ Endgame' I could actually NAME the people on my server who'd ever done it. In fact we could name the one guild that was out in front across all servers.
You're kind of running on empty here; almost everything I enjoyed in both SWG and UO were institutions both created and ran by players in an environment I would assume you would call empty. You're ultimately calling most of the most organic and creative players social creations (in UO especially) unsubstantial, which is ridiculous as they were the fabric which founded the genre of sandbox which we crave.
You're love for auction houses speaks volumes; in a sandbox, players would create the trade hubs required in order to establish successful marketplaces, actions which would be invaluable as PLAYER creations. Auction houses are just another form of automation which takes initiative away from players and doesn't belong in a sandbox game.
yeah 4499 might have faced off against the big bad in WOW, but coming from 'EQ Endgame' I could actually NAME the people on my server who'd ever done it. In fact we could name the one guild that was out in front across all servers.
I could quote the names of many players on UO; famous theives, honest crafters, tradebrokers, entertainers, roleplayers, treasure hunters...the meat of their existence and renown came not from their ability to jump through hoops or complete expectant goals, but for displaying qualities the game did not ask of them. The joy of a sandbox is succeeding in ways in which the game does not expect. Read any famous story from Eve Online; many of which are events which twist the very fabric of what is possible in a sandbox MMORPG.
To Ryan
You've correctly stated that SWG failed to perhaps reach the goals it had laid out for itself; what it did do however is encapsulate the sandbox MMORPG market which 90% of posters on this forum will no doubt be part of. Many of us would open our wallets repeatedly for any form of return to a sandbox like early SWG.
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Goblin Squad Member
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umm Ryan ... SWG was hugely successful for the players
your mention of SWG giving players what they didn't want (complex systems, roleplaying) has me confused ... I thought that was what we did want?!?
unbelievable fun
I would go to bed at 1am and set my alarm at 4am to play a couple hours before work ... crazy, crazy, fun ... all player driven
the crafting was and has had NO rival in MMOs, please take a look at it
I could care less what SOE had to do to please its investors, they got the sandbox part right
so I hope GW doesn't look at SWG as a failure, it was the opposite of that pre-patches
shifty, it's too bad that you didn't "get it" ... SWG was 100% player driven sandbox ... SOE didn't provide much plot, but we didn't let that stop us, we created our own
am I missing something, I thought that is what a sandbox was
and you have stated 13 times that not having an auction house is a deal breaker ... but have not expounded on the reasons why ... so i assume you keep repeating yourself to generate discussion about auction houses but no one has anything to discuss off of an "not having auctions houses is lame" comment x13
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Goblin Squad Member
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I was on Calistra. I loved just how easy it was to fall into role play, and the large number of emotes that were available. You could pretty much just type /any_basic_action_you_can_think_of and your character would do it, from dancing to tapping your foot in boredom. I used to use /tap a lot, it actually hurried people up.
One of my proudest moments was when I purchased a mouse droid (one of those little tiny black droids on wheels) and I filled it full of beer and took my droid and a fishing pole to the one little mud hole on Tatooine and started fishing and drinking beer. About five minutes later some random person stops and asks what I am doing. I tell him drinking beer and fishing so he joins me. Then a second person. Then their friends, and their friends friends, and it was a beach party, on Tatooine.
That wasn't "Starwarsy" enough apparently for Sony, but I had a heck of a time.
God bless the simple events. I loved the random encounters that turned into something. I think what I missed most about SWG was the sense of community. If I was in the wild, down and injured, most folks would stop by, patch me up, /tiphat, and carry on. The forced waits at starports gave you a chance to find out what everyone else was off to, big plans they might have. It was an amazing experience.
I also loved the big events
I loved the swoop bike events (#1 on intrepid, woot!), the fishing, the RP Masqued Ball that was held yearly (had a tailor run up a Rebel Alliance Dress Uniform).
The vast majority of SWG, I would love to see in PFO. An update to the city system, for sure, and the PvP nature of PFO is good, but the crafting, the downtime, the way fast travel was limited...those things I want to see again, badly.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yes, SWG had the perfect amount of bottle necks. I saw Vader just waiting for the shuttle off planet. I pulled a Han Solo and immediately opened fire, then died. It was perfect. One day out of the blue Vader is out on the ass end of the universe and I'm a rebel with a gun. Sure I didn't have a chance but I really think it was better that way. I mean, I got to die a Rebel terrorist, and try to assassinate Darth Vader, and he wasn't just some static spawn.
Same here. Vader force choked me. Publicly. In a plaza on Naboo. I never felt more awesome as I fell to the ground.
As for the terrain...if the River Kingdoms area ends up being expaned, say a biiiit to the east, I'll have to create a small village, since that is where my home game players built their town. Long live Medina Tova!
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Goblin Squad Member
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And I will proudly try to raze your village, because a man is only as good as his enemies.
I don't care if it is only an Inn located there, there shall be *something* there as a shout out to my stubborn players. Gotta love freeform home games. They tell me what they want to do the next week, I get to figure out how to make it go horribly wrong :D
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Goblin Squad Member
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I 100% agree with the op.
SWG for me had the best economy a sandbox could ever dream of. I was on the Bria server with a guildhall/city (Silvercity) on Naboo. The best thing Ryan & Goblinworks can take is the player driven economy & personal shops/vendors. This type of interaction between the players is essential. This creates a portion of the content for our Sandbox. People working together or against one another. This allows people to make their " mark " in a dynamic, breathing world.
In terms of resources in the game, something along these lines..
Dynamic resource spawns on planets needed for complex crafting. Each having unique name and random quality of appropriate resource statistics. Resources are divided into complex tree of origins and properties. All player made items require specific resources listed in schematic. Statistics of gathered and used resources determine item's parameters
Resource collecting was a game in itself. I don't want a carbon copy, but the essence of what made it special to the community.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You're love for auction houses speaks volumes; in a sandbox, players would create the trade hubs required in order to establish successful marketplaces, actions which would be invaluable as PLAYER creations. Auction houses are just another form of automation which takes initiative away from players and doesn't belong in a sandbox game.
yeah real good that one, unless you are an off-peak player.
What happens for the rest of the world is that when 3/4 of the population goes to bed there is no (or only a VERY small) marketplace going on, and this means you can't really find what you need or are looking for. The presence of an AH doesn't PREVENT a player market (People still sit in the AH and do deals all day in OOC/chat etc) but the AH means that there is still a chance to catch what you need outside those core hours.
I really don't want to have to get up at 3am to go hunt down vendors anymore, similarly, trekking a long way to someones hut to buy the goods isn't my idea of entertainment.
No initiative is taken away, I had tradeskillers in EQ1 and EQ2 and an AH actually HELPED play, not detract from it.
Aside from that, the player driven storylines above seemed interesting, but once again the sort of thing taht really oply happens when you are part of a build clan/guild, and once again only in core hours. Newer players are thus forced to have to join a guild to really participate.
It's also the sort of thing you could do in Call of Duty, except it is a bit more fair in gameplay terms on a FPS where it is more a game of skill rather than whose guildcrafter churned out more MacGuffins.
A good MMO has to have a good central story, and preferably one the players can get into from the get go.
There's a reason games like Skyrim are popular - Sandbox AND storyline.
You could do everything you guys have claimed a sandbox does in a themepark too, I remain very inconvinced.
What sort of thieves guild could I set up in your sandbox?
Is their a burglary mechanic? Can I raid the city treasury? What will the guards do?
So much missing, and there's no way you guys will be able to create the content to fill that sort of gap.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You're love for auction houses speaks volumes; in a sandbox, players would create the trade hubs required in order to establish successful marketplaces, actions which would be invaluable as PLAYER creations. Auction houses are just another form of automation which takes initiative away from players and doesn't belong in a sandbox game.
yeah real good that one, unless you are an off-peak player.
What happens for the rest of the world is that when 3/4 of the population goes to bed there is no (or only a VERY small) marketplace going on, and this means you can't really find what you need or are looking for. The presence of an AH doesn't PREVENT a player market (People still sit in the AH and do deals all day in OOC/chat etc) but the AH means that there is still a chance to catch what you need outside those core hours.
I really don't want to have to get up at 3am to go hunt down vendors anymore, similarly, trekking a long way to someones hut to buy the goods isn't my idea of entertainment.
No initiative is taken away, I had tradeskillers in EQ1 and EQ2 and an AH actually HELPED play, not detract from it.
Aside from that, the player driven storylines above seemed interesting, but once again the sort of thing taht really oply happens when you are part of a build clan/guild, and once again only in core hours. Newer players are thus forced to have to join a guild to really participate.
It's also the sort of thing you could do in Call of Duty, except it is a bit more fair in gameplay terms on a FPS where it is more a game of skill rather than whose guildcrafter churned out more MacGuffins.
A good MMO has to have a good central story, and preferably one the players can get into from the get go.
There's a reason games like Skyrim are popular - Sandbox AND storyline.
You could do everything you guys have claimed a sandbox does in a themepark too, I remain very inconvinced.
What sort of thieves guild could I set up in your sandbox?
Is their a burglary mechanic? Can...
Then, frankly...don't play. A sandbox game can do all the things you want it to do, if you put effort into it. If you don't want to try it and see what happens, that is your call. But the rest of us will enjoy our sandbox game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Right, so my criticisms were on point.
It isn't really a sandbox, it is simply a game without infrastructure.
If that is truly what comes out of all this then I reckon it will be a shortlived game.
The goonswarms kind of just sound like griefing to me - once again, something better found in FPS land where the odds are a bit more 'fair'.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What happens for the rest of the world is that when 3/4 of the population goes to bed there is no (or only a VERY small) marketplace going on, and this means you can't really find what you need or are looking for.
Not really, you have buy orders, sell orders, and contracts all available at all hours in Eve's market and it works perfectly fine. I mainly play in the late hours myself.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So how is that not an AH/Auction House?
The lack of auctions. The lack of bidding. If I place a order at a farmer's market am I creating a auction? No. Is anyone bidding on my order? No. To you and I would say most people from say like WoW who exclusively did buy outs not bidding the difference is systematic in name only I would guess. But there is a difference in a auction house and a market.
But how are contracts like AH's is my question?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm more used to the concept of both. True auctions/Buynow price/and out of character selling. Consignment sales/COD mailboxing also exists in EQ2.
Early games like EQ (at launch) had no facility for off-line selling, which frankly blew chunks. I resent having to be online just to sell gear but completely hate having to chase up on-line vendors or have empty market place.
I did my days at the Commonlands tunnels, never again.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Because this isn't other games. This is a sandbox. You want to know what is for sale at some guy's shop? Go check it out. A global auction house gets rid of the need for shops, it makes them backwards and worthless. If you want a game just like all the other games out there....why aren't you playing one of them?
What does your dream MMO look like?
What do you want PFO to look like?
What do you want PFO to look like?
A game I can play in, enjoy the time I spend in, and can be competitive in.
While working 40+ hours a week, spending time with my wife and child, running pathfinder with my friends, and still be able to get decent sleep tonight.
If it can accomplish that then the game will definatly derserve a good month or two of my money to test it out.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So why can't markets and shops co-exist with a global auction house system in PFO? It seems to work ok in other games.
To quote you, "So how is that not an AH/Auction House?". My answer to you , "Semantics". So if you can except that there isn't a global AH (as in not linked) but just AH's then you are good. Non-linked markets are important in simulating a virtual economic of supply and demand from region to region as well as emulating and facilitating exports and imports. And this is fine as it 'works in other games'.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Cool so I can play a Rogue and rob your shop if its a sandbox?
Can I just PVP your merchant and strip him naked and take all your stuff? No?
I'd prefer to actually be playing the game, than standing a round hitting a macro '/ooc WTS 2 MWork SSwords, +2 Leather, +1 chain PST' all day. Similarly I dont want to sit there '/ooc WTB +Will save items' while rummaging through the stores of a score of players, blindly hoping that one has what I want.
I want to be able to drop into an auction area, hit up my WTS/WTB, and if there are none around I want to be able to pull up the auction window and see if theres what I need for sale. A real live vendor is preferable, as we can haggle and trade, but if not then i want a facility to be able to buy/order/pay for what I need.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Cool so I can play a Rogue and rob your shop if its a sandbox?
Can I just PVP your merchant and strip him naked and take all your stuff? No?
In Eve I'm sometimes a ore thief (haters). I show up where some noob has spent HOURS mining into a "can" that has no password protection on it in high NPC guarded space. If I take from that can the owner can attack me freely for 15min. I warp jump on top of him, emtpy the can into a hauler as I'm already warming up to jump out to a station where I hide for 15min. You will be able to do this kind of thing in PFO.
See a wagon leaving a mining camp with no guard, kill the guy and take it. OR what I do in low sec is I threaten to kill him unless they pay ransom. Which they do and then you can kill them anyway or let them go. (Tip: if you are known to honor your deals other people will pay ransom vs telling you to go "F#$% off".)
Since there are three NPC settlements I'm sure their market places will be the center for most trading as they will be secure from destruction most likely. Thornkeep will most likely be the new 'Jita'.
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Goblin Squad Member
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See that sort of bastardry sounds engaging, but its the sort of gameplay that others might cry about and call it griefing. There's plenty on these boards who have already been up in arms about stopping that sort of behaviour, so I'm guessing it would get pretty hot for us very quickly and we'd be facing a banhammer for it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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See that sort of bastardry sounds engaging, but its the sort of gameplay that others might cry about and call it griefing. There's plenty on these boards who have already been up in arms about stopping that sort of behaviour, so I'm guessing it would get pretty hot for us very quickly and we'd be facing a banhammer for it.
Not a banhammer, just my hammer. Its a sandbox. You want to play cops and robbers? Cool, you rob someone, I'll enact medieval justice.
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Goblin Squad Member
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See that sort of bastardry sounds engaging, but its the sort of gameplay that others might cry about and call it griefing. There's plenty on these boards who have already been up in arms about stopping that sort of behaviour, so I'm guessing it would get pretty hot for us very quickly and we'd be facing a banhammer for it.
That's the price of a sandbox and that's the social contract you sign to play. If they don't like it, tough luck. (This coming from a carebear.) Its griefing if you target the same guy OVER and OVER and OVER again. Its another if you are playing the game as intended. If they don't think they can play in such a world than maybe this isn't their game.
In Eve there is kinda of a saying. The "Undock" button is the "I consent to PvP" button.
You don't want to be robbed? Bring guns and hope your guns are bigger than the robber/s.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Not a banhammer, just my hammer. Its a sandbox. You want to play cops and robbers? Cool, you rob someone, I'll enact medieval justice.But how will you know whodunnit?
That's the next thing I don't like - the lack of a way to conceal identity.
That's the balancing act in a single shard (server) sandbox game. How much is your rep worth to you? In WoW not so many people would ninja loot raids if they can't server swap, name change on a dime. However as Entwine said some players not only don't care, they pride themselves on being evil bastards. And frankly in a game where you have alignments don't you want people who are "evil"? In this game buddy-ing up to people in a "guild" to get promoted to 2nd in command only to ninja from the whole "g-bank" will be fair play and if you do that you have to deal with the social ramifications. This also makes being a "spy" a legitimate goal for your character. You report to your true guild where their rivals where their mining operations are, where they plan on exploring next, and possibly aid in a backstab during a key city siege.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think its cheezy that all you have to do is scroll over your attacker and then you have their name etc. Do attackers irl staple their drivers licence above their skimask?
No, but evidence is found most of the time. And to use a more classic story example EVERYONE knew who Robin Hood was, they just couldn't catch him. But NO GAME is 100% true to life and when it isn't there are reasons. As stated the reason here is possible social fallout and if you are willing to deal with it for being a a#&@%++.
Plus being known is MUCH more powerful than being unknown in a game. If I roll up, and warp scramble someone in Eve and they know who I am then they are already tossing money my way. Because they know I pod people that don't pay up fast. (Podding is not only killing the ship but the character which might have valuable implants in their head, think double whammy.)
Otherwise they might try to be cute and stall for time (buddies to the rescue) or lie about their net worth. Also because I'm known they know once I have their cash they will be let free and I will not attack them again for at least a day (personal rule is 2). On the other hand if some random joe jumps them they might assume (correctly a lot of the time) that he will take their money AND blow their ship and just say, "F%^& You, just shoot me already because I'm not paying you s%$&."
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Goblin Squad Member
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I never got the chance to try the SWG crafting system, but it sounded like it had some cool ideas.
However let me stick another name and crafting design concept out there, that may even be compatible with the SWG crafting model based on what I know of it.
Wurm Online in my opinion has the hands down best crafting I have ever had the privilege to use, even if you remove the sandbox features like terraforming and structure building.
What makes the Wurm Online crafting system so amazing is in the way that it works. Even in games like EVE online that don't require you to grind out thousands of worthless items to become a master crafter, the material vs. finished good prices are not as good as I would hope for.
The root cause is resource gathering time vs. production time are drastically imbalanced with resource gathering time being massive and production time being very small in comparison. Wurm addresses that issue head on.
Almost every game I have played has a crafting system of selecting the recipe you want to use, the possibly the resources, and then executing recipe to pump out a full quality item in a few seconds.
In Wurm once you assemble all your components and put them together you make a very LOW quality item. That is where the fun comes in. Once your low quality item is created the system offers various prompts like "Add more steel", "Sharpen the blade", "Temper the blade," "Polish the blade," etc that you can do as long as the blade is glowing hot (Which requires letting it sit in a forge if it has cooled down since you created it.) You can do these things to improve your items quality, but failing will do a slight amount of damage to the item, so you have to repair it losing a small bit of quality. As the item gets higher quality it gets harder to improve and easier to damage making it so without a very high skill level it is very difficult to make high quality items, and even with one it is a lengthy process.
Personally seeing these types of measured required to make masterwork items in this game would really make me a happy camper.
Having a smith spend an hour on an amazing quality sword vs. 10 seconds really fixes the low production time issue.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The one thing SWG was missing was true experimentation, you could 'experiment' stats up, but you couldn't get random components, put them together and see what happens.
@this little side sandbox discussion,
PFO is not a virtual world, it is not an RPers dream, it is open for RP but it is far from a true sandbox, a true sandbox is not marketable as a MMO. Until a system is created that makes the risk of crime high enough, a true sandbox MMO will never exist.
@Alexander_Damocles: "It was nice having a game about being just a citizen in the universe, not "teh one last greatest bestest hope for freedom and justice evar". Ran a small hunting business on talus, worked on taking down the empire (tho they did fail in that world PvP was just cosmetic), paid off the cost of my ship, and lived the life. It worked for me!"
Strongly agree. I really think it just makes the whole world feel more real and believable and I can get into it a lot more this way.
@Forlarren: First of all, I just wanted to say that despite all the bad things I still do like narrative arcs >_>. They just have to be done well, which... isn't done very often. Also, I like it when narrative arcs supplement the story. After all, a sandbox game should be a sandbox game, first. There can and I think SHOULD be narrative arcs, but they shouldn't be the focus of the game, they should be side missions (and some SHOULD be very involved and intricate side missions, some spanning a long period of time, some missions with a running plot that threads between several side missions.... but side missions nonetheless!) that add to the story and atmosphere and world.
"I never picked a class or skill because it was the best, you didn't have to, you could pick what was fun and not be punished. That was the greatest strength of SWG, something I have never seen before or since."
This was honestly one of my favorite parts about SWG and I'd love to see it again, here. That's a big draw of Pathfinder in general, and it's an element I'd sincerely like to see carried over to PFO.
@Shifty: Unfortunately, I can't disagree with you more about your love of auction houses. Global/server-wide/massive auction houses destroy countless possibilities for fostering a strong community. You never have to interact with other players, go explore new areas to find new people in new places, or even bargain with anyone. You just load up the auction house, search for the stats you want to min/max your character, and purchase the item.
I sincerely believe the inclusion of a singular global auction house is one of the simplest ways to pre-emptively neuter many of the possibilities for an MMOs community.
As for when 3/4th of the population goes to bed, there are a couple options. 1) Figure out when the guy you want to buy from is going to be online, and then go see him! 2) Go out and make the equipment yourself! 3) Get more people to play the game so there are more merchants available all the time! Finally, 4) maybe you could let players hire NPCs to run their shops for them for a set amount of time for pre-determined maxmimum time. So for 12 hours a day they could have an NPC there, but if they wanted to sell for the other 12 they had to be there at some point online themselves. Or something.
... the point is... ... there are many more elegant and interesting solutions than "make an auction house."
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Goblin Squad Member
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I personally would like to see something like a newspaper or global advertising medium but still have to travel to deliver or pick up the items. I also would like to see a moderated global chat. Moderated so the inevitable gold spammers can be booted. Oh, and a way to block tells from them also.
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Goblin Squad Member
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umm Ryan ... SWG was hugely successful for the players
your mention of SWG giving players what they didn't want (complex systems, roleplaying) has me confused ... I thought that was what we did want?!?...
SWG may have been the dream of those that actually played it, but too few (for SOE) did and those that didn't had obviously problems with the game as it were (too complicated, not hero like...).
This was something that Blizzard got right. Everyone I knew said that he felt that (finally) there was an MMO that seemed accessible enough right from the start so that even non MMOers could hop right in, somethign they did not thought possible with the old games out there (UO, M59, EQ, AC, DAoC & SWG).
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Goblin Squad Member
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This was something that Blizzard got right. Everyone I knew said that he felt that (finally) there was an MMO that seemed accessible enough right from the start so that even non MMOers could hop right in,
I can't even count how many people I knew in that game that told me, "I don't play video games. WoW is the only one I have ever played."
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Goblin Squad Member
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Questing, combat and the way the in-game stories unfold on SWG was utterly awful I hope PFO stay away from that mold.
That is what sandboxes do. There are no real quests, you make your own. Combat wasn't bad, I enjoyed it, but we don't know what PFO combat will look like yet. In game stories, same as SWG: you make em, you live em. They give you the tools to be able to make your own stories, and you have to use em. It takes a mindset shift, but a sandbox is a world of possibilities.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Questing, combat and the way the in-game stories unfold on SWG was utterly awful I hope PFO stay away from that mold.
It's funny that people look for good 'questing' in an MMORPG. Questing has and always will be a lackluster device employed by MMORPGs in order to give offer you a straight forward means of progression. People who jump from WoW to Rift to SWTOR to Tera can keep questing tbh as there are many games who do that borefest extremely well.
Quests have no place in a sandbox MMORPG game, not in their conventional form anyway.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I remember the time when DAoC was new and unfinished as all MMOs were these days.
There were almost no quests, no radar/ingame map and thus you hadn't got any idea where to go after you outlevelled your starting area. Also the world was larger than in most of the games avaiable today.
Good leveling areas were gradually discovered and kept secret to prevent overcrowding.
That caused a sense of being part of a real world, of real discovery.
Nowadays you are pointed into the direction in laughably small zones which is obviously what being "mass marketable" is all about - getting led by a leash 24/7 called "quests".
Oh man, I played Ragnarok Online back in the day and loved that aspect of it. Before Private Servers started coming out with free quick travel options right-off-the-bat to every location ever from the game, it really felt like a game of exploration. Me and a few friends would party up and then set out and just explore. We'd find new towns other people hadn't discovered yet, uncover hidden and exotic dungeons, and had a blast doing it. As you charted more and more territory, THEN you got more and more "quick travel" options, but even then they were limited.
Quick travel, I think, is another bane of a great MMO community. By removing the exploration aspect of these sandbox games (which in and of itself should be a crime), it also removes the social benefits that come from it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Let's not forget. There will be some theme park content in PFO at the start, and they plan to add more as they go, though it will remain largely a sandbox style game.
Quote from the first blog, A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins With a Single Step. https://goblinworks.com/blog/
"Focusing on the sandbox doesn't just save time and money, though—we think it's an ideal way to explore the Pathfinder world. In a sense, Paizo's own Pathfinder lines actually combine sandbox elements (by way of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting line) with theme park elements (via the Pathfinder Adventure Path and Pathfinder Module lines). Though the sandbox will be our initial focus, the Pathfinder brand is known for great stories and adventures, and over time, we'll add lots of opportunities for theme-park style adventure into the fabric of the world to give depth and richness to the Pathfinder Online experience."
Only time will tell whether it will be enough for those that like theme park content, like Shifty.