What will keep players, playing?

Penumbrae

Here me out - there is a lot of good. yes, I've played sandbox games, such as eve, conan, etc. I don't require theme park to be happy.

But so far, on two servers, it has been the same:

- get in group, farm npcs for 16 hours a day
- try to get involved in nodes, but they have already been claimed by mega guilds, and they are just playing their own version of the game...and if we are lucky, they will give us some buy orders that their guild doesn't want to fill...otherwise, they hold the buy orders so their members can stock the resources to get the currency to buy gear.
- crafting systems are slow and not aligned with the leveling process

All that aside, when I look ahead at max level, I think - ok...so you do the typical gear chase but then? Everything seems centered on nodes that is just a minigame for zerge guilds. This will just inevitably turn into RMT politics, as seen in other games. New world had player owned nodes and it became a real money business. Swipe the credit card, and you can rent nodes for the status symbol.

Outside the node system, which I think is flawed and most players won't be meaningfully engaging with it due to the nature of player behaviors, the game feels empty and I don't see longevity in it. What am I missing?

Uncommon Sense

I think you're missing that the current play zone is 50sq km alpha network system test and the actual game world map is a suggested 1200sq km.

any RMT will likely get an account ban...