Guild Wars 2

Currently I log in to update my living story installments, but that’s about it. I loved the basics of the game (the questing primarily) but that’s all at this point. If this game added some sandbox features it’d be huge, and would certainly have my unwavering attention! Things like

Housing
Improved crafting system
Trading system
Town ownership
Guild halls
More use of the sea (either ships or something else)

Yeah I know, a lot of AA features in there, but they’re features a lot of games are now adding. It’d be great to know if this game has a future which includes more than just moar quests.

But there is nothing to sandbox about.
The only reason why sandbox games are fun is because they are highly
competitive.
In sandbox games , you need to compete for resources, world bosses ,and pretty much everything.
For a “CASUAL” game like gw2, adding sandbox features is very unlikely.

Just wait till black desert come to NA.

^ That’s not what sandbox is.
Think of GTA or The Elder Scrolls. Those are Sandbox games and are not competitive.
Sandbox is like a real sandbox, you go in and do what you want with the sand.

GW2 is a mild sandbox and it is perfect for casual since you can go at your own pace without really having to care about people getting ahead of you.
In a Themepark game you have to keep up with everyone if you want to play with them because they’ll have little to no reason to go back with you if you’re behind. Or they will come to rush you through and you’ll just miss everything.

The biggest problem people usually have with sandbox is that they don’t know what to do or where to go because there are no set path they have to follow. You tell them “do what you want” and they will ask “but what?”.

Haishao.6851:

^ That’s not what sandbox is.
Think of GTA or The Elder Scrolls. Those are Sandbox games and are not competitive.
Sandbox is like a real sandbox, you go in and do what you want with the sand.

GW2 is a mild sandbox and it is perfect for casual since you can go at your own pace without really having to care about people getting ahead of you.
In a Themepark game you have to keep up with everyone if you want to play with them because they’ll have little to no reason to go back with you if you’re behind. Or they’ll come to rush you through and you’ll just miss everything.

The biggest problem people usually have with sandbox is that they don’t know what to do or where to go because there are no set path they have to follow. You tell them “do what you want” and they will ask “but what?”.

Which is a lot of people’s problem with gw2. Too much to do without being told, they get lost.

a sandbox game only works well in an environment where player actions matter and have lasting consequences. That includes a harsh pvp setting or at very least real competition between players. This will never happen in GW2, never. And probably never again outside the already established games. Times have changed.

This will never happen, it seems to me that their game engine just doesn’t support that.

They do seem to be expanding the importance of home districts and we just had a guild hall CDI.

KngGilgamesh.3481:

They do seem to be expanding the importance of home districts and we just had a guild hall CDI.

But that’s somehow different than sandbox, GW2 is themepark. We can’t say we got true sandbox features, home instance was just a very very poor attempt.

We got home instances which isn’t really good in my opinion and the idea of implementing guild halls into the game was discussed in a CDI a couple of months ago so chances are that will be coming to the game sooner or later. Other than that, GW2 is purely themepark based it seems.

We’re absolutely going to see more sandbox stuff – starting with the home instance. No doubt about it.

Apart from guild halls (which i don’t see anything sandbox about it) and player housing there is nothing i see as needing this feature in the game.

Again, for a game to be sandbox it needs much more than an instance filled with pre-made objects. GW2 isn’t sandbox, it is themepark, for sandbox refer to EverQuest Next: Landmark, etc.

making Gw2 sandbox mode would make Megaservers useless.

Also what kind of World bosses you would have then?

700 people against 1 Tequatl?

Since Boss Britz we know how scalling work.

When GW2 was being developed it sounded a lot more “sandboxy” than it ended up being, and yes that was a selling point for me. I loved GW1, but there were always certain things I wished it had more of, and sandbox features were definitely on that list. GW2 did bring many things GW1 lacked (and also removed lots of great things), but one thing they did not do was go in the sandbox direction. Instead they went for more of themepark clone direction. That was really disappointing, but hey ..nothing is ever really set in stone for the most part. Never know what the future holds. Though after the type of decisions they have made over and over, by now I don’t much get my hopes up. But still, ..never know.

Currently I’m playing AA for my sandbox fix (and oh am I ever getting close to getting my Junk). But there are also enough things I don’t like about it so I know I won’t be with it super long term. The foreseeable future, yes. But EQN is definitely lined up to replace it when the time comes. Where will GW2 be by then? I don’t know, but I’m not as optimistic as I used to be. I’m starting to accept that it’s going to be relegated to being a secondary themepark only to be played when they bother to put a tiny bit more story content out. But maybe that’s exactly what Anet is aiming for? If so, then uh ,,kudos to them I guess. But if they feel inclined to actually be competitive and give us meaningful player-driven things to do in between LS updates, they are MORE than welcome to do so.