Rambling about Sandboxes

Daily Ramble 89: Rambling about Sandboxes

Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving.

I relaxed and vegged out a bunch. Got a few comics read and a few games played and I’m starting to look at Life is Feudal as another sandbox game I might be interested in.

I really feel scattered about these last couple of weeks. I’m really dedicated to moving forward in Secret World Legends but I haven’t been putting much effort into the game. It’s such a good game once I’m in it but something keeps pulling me in other directions – it’s strange. Like I mentioned Life is Feudal is something that’s starting to pull me away from my focus on SWL. I haven’t really done anything in the game but I’ve been reading up on how to play. It really seems like it’s more in line with WURM Online than Albion as far as sandboxes go. You’ve gotta cut down trees and level the ground to build a house. I think that’s what I didn’t like about Albion – it may have been a sandbox but it was a higher level sandbox where you had so much already given to you. In Albion, I didn’t have to make the nails in order to make my house and I could only build things in predesignated places on my own island. It was more a housing simulator than a sandbox. I much preferred WURM over Albion though I can see the appeal of both. WURM just did’nt have much of a player base and Albion didn’t have enough to do. Perhaps Life is Feudal will be a happy medium.

One thing I worry about though is that I’m pretty sure it’s still in beta. They keep throwing around the abbreviation OBT which I thing means Open Beta Testing and it’s not out on Steam yet so they don’t indicate if it’s early access or beta or anything. From what I can gather though, the developers said there will be no more wipes so it seems it’s kinda early access, kinda beta. I’m looking forward to it but it does look like there’s more of a need to group up than in WURM. That was the others thing about Albion that I wasn’t too hot on…guilds.

The guild system in Albion worked and it didn’t work. I got in a guild but unless you were extremely coordinated it was difficult to do anything as a guild. the best spots were claimed and camped and the archaic mechanisms for guild fighting was just beyond my level of commitment. It was closer to Eve where you had to be able to have everyone in the guild show up at specific times in order to take over anything. Too much of a hassle.

One aspect of Life is Feudal that I worry about is I don’t see anything like the guard towers in WURM. Albion had the cities you could go to where there was not fighting and things were peaceful. WURM had no such place but you could defend your territory with guard towers that would help in any fight if someone came onto your deed. It provided protection from animals and random solo gankers but if there was a coordinated group they cowls overwhelmed. I think that worked well, but like I said, I’m not sure I see that in LiF.

Another issue I’m concerned about is the skill cap. The reason grouping is encouraged is because you can only level up so many skills. There’s currently no way to be good at everything. I loved that about WURM – I could be a great builder but I could also be good at mining or be a great blacksmith. I could do anything and everything I wanted to in game even though it took a lot of time. LiF put a skill cap that prevents you from being good at everything you want to do. You still can be a jack-of-all-trades, you just can’t be good at them all. We’ll see how that plays out but it seems to be the big grouping incentive ingame. I just worry that as people lose interest in the game you might lose key skills down the road.

Anyway, I’m gonna give the game a try – beta or early access r what – and I’m sure I’ll make comments and take screenshots. I sure hope this is more like WURM and is as fun as that game was.