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[Vahan]

Well, just ( and I mean JUST ) started playing this now, doesn't look too shabby. It's apparently a sandbox MMO with a few nice features.

Anyone fancy playing it? Get a B12G guild set up!

Link: http://www.ryzom.com/

[inaluct]

MAN, some of those people are ugly.

[ductape]

i used to play it.

Best idea they have is that you can construct all your abilities and spells from a toolkit, customizing power and performance and cost.

Scenery is nice kinda.

However, for me that was it. Otherwise it has a grinder like WoW without all the high-end content.

[Cthulhu]

Ouch.  No endgame is a deal-breaker for me.  If I'm playing a game and I realize that I'm not working toward anything I'll lose interest.

[Soulwynd]

It's not a sandbox, it's a grindbox. Sadly, only guilds/clans can build and the locations are very contested, as usual. The skill system is quite neat however, you can really customize your skills, same goes with the crafting, you can make pretty unique items... But the grind... oh the grind....

[Rhodan]

I really liked the setting and the creatures.  Seasons changing, resources moving around, creatures traveling in huge herds,...  The crafting was also awesome with the huge amount of resources from both animals and plants (plants being more like ore, the world being a tree and all that)

The class-less system was also quite neat, although when you look at it closely you're just 4 characters in one.  Getting better at one class doesn't affect any stats related to another class, as far as I can see.

I heard they're going to stop being free to play though, at least partially.  Hosting a game costs money so I hope it works out.  If only they could cut down on the grind, or make the grind more interesting.

Ooh, and Zorai females are hot stuffs.  And their script is made of pure awesomeness, a bunch of rectangular shapes arranged in a square, forming a concept.

[mendonca]

So this isn't a game about the struggles associated with trying to get rid of an infestation of Japanese Knotweed?

[Rhodan]

Well, if you replace knotweed with bugs, then that's pretty much the current storyline.

[Tormy]

It's not a sandbox, it's a grindbox.

So which MMO is not fallen under that "grindbox" category? 

[Rhodan]

Pretty much every non RP-enforced MMORPG is a grindfest, and probably most of the RP-enforced ones too.

Can anyone come up with massive-multiplayer RPG gameplay mechanic that does not dwindle down into grinding?
I mean, player advancement can't be too fast because you want people to be able to get ahead of each other, or group when at the same level, and those groups should last long enough to develop friendships.
Player advancement can't be too based on quests, because then it'd be more like a single-player game with chatbox functions.  You want people to work together, but the world has to be consistent for everyone, which makes possible quests very limited.  Kill this, collect that, go bring this to there,... Perhaps solve a puzzle or something.

Plot-twists, emotional involvement, drama and all that jazz can only be presented at a very basic level by the game.  The rest is supplied by players that group, guild and raid.  If you take the grinding away you just have a huge Counterstrike with fireballs.  (Which sounds kinda awesome)

The only remaining options I can think of are exploring, trading and building.  Exploring is finite unless you employ some sort of Noctis-like system, but human pattern-recognition is too flexible to fall for that.  Trading eventually becomes a grindfest in itself.  Building seems fun, but unless you want stuff popping up all over the place it should be limited by skills and resources... Which you'd have to grind for.

tl;dr: You can't have an MMORPG without some form of grinding.

[Keiseth]

Maybe we shouldn't have MMORPGs, then. Maybe a more LOVE-like system; a Not So Massively Multiplayer Online RPG. The world would be just big enough that you'd know most of the population, but also just big enough so there are a few new faces.

[woose1]

Yes you can. Here's an idea for one (That doesn't involve grinding (At least in the normal sense))

You are a citizen on mars. The game works out by starting on a broken space ship with several other new players, and the point of the game is to repair it with dwindling supplies. Your goal from then on in is to explore, fight with others, dig underground, create buildings, etc.

Instead of skills, you get a point every 8 hours that you play the game to put towards a specialization. So you can get +1 engineering and -1 biochemistry, or something.

As for money, one person becomes the wage-payer, and gives money that is obtained by-wait, damn!

Give me a second, I'll think of something.

[Keiseth]

The only way I can think of, and it's a bad way at that, is:

Grinding is done while you're offline. I think Eve does something like this. You set the abilities you want to train in, and it's done over a maximum of 8-14 hours. Then you need to log in again, and do things.

The things you do don't have to be based on the skills you want. You just have to play the game-- explore, talk to people, fight things, make things. Everything you do besides stand-still-and-idle earns you points toward a percentage bar. Even talking to people, if you can figure out a way to make that exploit proof.

So say you only hang around on the game a little bit. You earn 35 percent of the bar, then log off. Your training is done for 35 percent of the maximum amount of time. (Say, 12 hours, so 35 percent of 12 hours.)

It's also a healthy way to keep people from playing 24-hours-a-day, by making progress associated with both playing the game, and not playing the game. You'd still grind for this percentage bar, but it'd be by doing fun things. Things you want to do while you're playing a game. It wouldn't matter if you did them better or worse than other people, as long as you were active. Then inactive.

You could make your training occur even while online, if the log-off period seems silly.

Edit: Ideally this makes character power associated with how long you've played the game, but also in a way that lets you pull ahead of other people if you work hard enough. Indeed, if you stop playing for a week, you lose about a week of progress.

For extra fun, make a tiny amount of training occur even if that player has been gone for ages. That way, when they come back to play the game, they have a small bonus to look forward to!

[woose1]

What about money?

[Soulwynd]

It's not a sandbox, it's a grindbox.

So which MMO is not fallen under that "grindbox" category? 

Sadly, none so far. But I still have hopes.

What I mean was, it was wow+ level of grind. Wow is pure slow-fucking-ness past level 30 or so. Ryzom manages to be above that when it comes to slow grind.