The Sandbox: Episode 8.5, Repopulation Interview.

What about quests?

My doubt is this game has quests because every game has ‘em it’s like a willing poison assumption, taken for granted, and so they didn’t mention them because they aren’t aware that they alone cruelly obliterate sandboxmanship in an instant.

I’ve read enuff. Then you sort of lied, mister, the themepark element is entirely in the hand-holding quests you wrote in god knows how much time you could save to contrive a good PvP political system, and ofc the economical one. And you sort of lied when you said players are free to do what they want. Because they’re not, they WILL do quests the way you want them to.

I don’t think sandbox fans like to be told what to do, where, and when. This game is entirely themepark, from my point of view. Sorry.

I read most of that linked article.

There are quests, and many types. That’s enough to be able to say it’s not sandbox at all, at least in MY book. Eve does have missions, but nobody does them and eve’s not a real sandbox either. Mortal Online doesn’t, Ultima didn’t, i’m not sure about Galaxies.

If you’re saying it’s a sandbox game mostly because of skill based, then… please take a step back.

“players not being forced in to a pre-determined path that is the same as other players”.

This phrase of yours, scratching the not, is the very definition of a quest.

So no, a MMo with quests cannot be sandbox, especially if it also claims to want to tell a story.

A sandbox being about player-driven economies and politics, exploration and stories clashes with the concept a scripted quest, which claims the right to tell YOU a story, to tell YOU what to explore, to tell YOU about political situations, and to tell YOU don’t need economy, because a quest, providing money and equipment, eliminates the need of crafting and selling.

And Ultima’s “escort tasks” were HARDLY quests.

and if i just may add, with a bit of malice, that you and others naively accepting quests as compatible to sandbox is the result of WoW’s tyrannical brainwash.

All: plz don’t take it personally or label me as troll, it’s just lively debating.

Erasmus: Lemme guess, the “story-driven quests” in SWG were added with the newgameexperience.

Generated “missions” are “more” acceptable. They don’t claim to tell you an epic all-encompassing story which is a paradox in a virtual world, they don’t “follow” you in your progress and hand hold you in and out of it. Even though they invade equipment collecting and money(efficiently killing economy), they don’t dictate the sequence of maps and zones you should go to. That’s what i hate the most and just CANNOT be compatible with a sandbox persistant world, because they “tell you how to train”. I don’t think anyone can deny it unless he’s lost his mind to WoW’s orwellian influence.

a “quest” is an individualistic experience, the quintessence of selfishness and “personal achievement” and its existence is in contrast with every aspect of a massively popp.ed world. It can only get you in touch with few other equally selfish and anti-social people who use you as you use them. It’s certainly the bane of an online global community. As an EVE’s player once told me in the chat “don’t do missions, they will suck your heart dry”

Players wish to do quests because they’re afraid of having to “understand” how a virtual “cosmos” works as a whole, doing “little personal” achievements is the easy way.

Erasmus: if SWG had over-arching long stories, and they were in places called “theme parks”, then that was the part of the game that was “theme park” and not “sandbox”, isn’t that logical? SWG was then a sandbox game to which they injected theme park elements, prolly later in development, with the NGE, and with WoW, no?

(why isn’t there an edit?)
i mean if such a blatantly themepark-oriented aspect, because those places were even CALLED theme-parks, as you said, and that’s how the term was probably invented!(and thanks for the historical information) is added to an otherwise sandbox game, that first aspect doesn’t magically turn into sandbox because of its “hosting” ambient, don’t you think?

UO had no quests apart from those insignificant escort tasks.

i don’t think that quests!= sandbox, whatever this maths-freak formula means(is everyone on the internet a damn engineer?) but they almost always take your freedom away. It’s a fact. If you do quests, you don’t need to trade, to gain wealth, to manufacture items, to be in a clan, to explore on your own and generally to understand how the dynamic general systems work. I repeat, it’s a fact.

There IS a way to not make quests this invasive, which is by making them coherent with those systems, but even then, they will always weaken the realism of a total simulation.