Ramblings in focus...

Spurious comments and your insightful feedback on the mmo I am developing, graciously received, and the long, winding road to it's realization.

Author: biofellis

I think that it comes down to the feel of game that you enjoy, and the people who stay in those kinds of games are people who want to be there. 

If anything these games needs global objectives to force communities to organize and build social structure.  You can move the game away sandbox, but you completely fracture the social/community aspects that players enjoyed. 

Well, I'm more emphasizing 'not building' this style of sandbox game than I am changing what others are happy with. I could argue that the only thing keeping many of these types of games alive is 'the treadmill', or guilds, but I'd like to think that everone (to some degree) would like an evolving world to play in- or at least more 'idle time' things to do. The 'shooting gallery' style of adversary (whack-a-mole?) builds into it both limited challenge and 'instant' gratification, which is difficult to evolve with. If 'over the hill' there's always a band of orcs, the 'sandbox style' limitation of deciding "Gees, let's clean those pesky Darkclaw Orcs off Sawback Hill for good" is an impossibility. But, if Orcs are killable, and perhaps tribal or nomadic, maybe the player can accomplish his goal (at least for a time) and say "Once there used to be Darkclaw Orcs infesting Sawback Hill, but we cleaned them out." Maybe later the stronger Blackfang Orcs will sweep in. Maybe the Darkclaws were a buffer no one knew about. Or maybe instead people will claim the land and build homes. This would be true 'sandbox-style' gaming.

Some people wouldn't like this. They like knowing where their next 'challenge' is. Others like the idea of having to travel to the 'front', or explore 'new' territory. I think it would make for a better dynamic.

What sort of global objectives were you considering?

Noble aspirations and I wish you luck with it. I wish I'd played Ultima Online so I could get a better sense of what can go both right and horribly wrong with a sandboxy game.

On what your first contributer has said about global objectives: I would think that given enough tools, players should be able to work that kind of thing out for themselves. You can use the real world as your design model for some things.

For example: If your game had enough horsepower to support real estate and player-built-buildings, the limiting factors for production could be the locations of resources, the distance of trade routes, geographic and monster hostility along those routes etc. In that case, a community that is spread out might have trouble trading with one-another and never flourish, whereas if the communities form towns, consolidating their power, and sharing resources, then they'd be much stronger. 

I'd go on about how I'd like to see the commodity trading and trade routes of every space game since Elite, but in a fantasy setting. It beats me why this is something practically never touched on. Building empires seems far more appealing in a fantasy setting than in the vast emptiness of space. But that's another thing.

I imagine (all I have is armchair theory I'm affraid) that in building the foundations of a game world where you hope communities will thrive, you have to seperate the HOWs and the WHYs of human endeavour and look at them in the context of your game world.

Because on the flip-side of my above example, many attempts at community building have failed dreadfully because of the artificial methods used to put them together. I remember in Earth & Beyond how lonely the space-station bars were. Perhaps the developers thought people would meet in there as they do in real life? Of course they wouldn't. All the actual GAME was either in the trading room or in space.

I can't remember if I'm on topic at all any more. But good luck with your development!

Thank you.

I do have a strong sense of how I think putting tools in which will build a community can be done. It's tough to figure out where to draw the line between ease of use and detail/realism. I'm big on the carrot (rewarded gameplay), not so big on the stick (forced gameplay), and pretty strong on stick implementations being properly intuitive or forewarned. ie 'You don't guard your city, monsters may wander in.' or 'the monster tries to bite you, despite the fact that you're trying to free it..'

I also want to be able to build (or give the toold to allow to be built) different 'cultural' community types. It's tough though, because the need for 'standardization/protocols' does exist in real life. Is it really good to drag too much 'diversity' into a 'game'- will it still be fun, or will it be fun because of the diversity?

In any case, thanks for the comments- I really appreciate it!

It sounds like you're asking yourself all the right questions at this stage of planning.

As for "It's tough to figure out where to draw the line between ease of use and detail/realism."  There's another way to look at it. Just ask yourself "what does this achieve in the context of gameplay?" 

Let's say you were keen on entering a system of contractable diseases into your game. If you were going for realism, it'd be nothing other than a total pain in the ass for the player. But factor it back through as many elements of your game design as you can and you have something more interesting. Give the player choices about how to overcome it, let certain monsters leave you alone when you're infected, explore the possibilities of spreading it socially.

The idea is, if you present a dynamic world where the introduction of new elements sets everything of

Factor all this in and then put yourself in the shoes of the player and ask yourself a theoretical question: "I have just contracted a disease. How do I feel about it?"

If the answer is "What a fucking nuiscance. This will slow down my leveling." then you have a poor design. The game design is so narrow that the player can only consider the one thing.

If the answer is "Oh no I'm diseased! Should I return to town for a cure now or try and ride it out? Or maybe I'll invite a friend over and infect him heheh." then you have good design. The world is large and complex enough that there is much more to consider than just leveling.

Er, I think this suggestion has actually tried to address that other question of yours... they seem kind of tied together. Will it be fun because of the diversity? If that diversity effects multple layers of your world design, then I should think yes. If its just cosmetic, not so much so. The more you have to create extra stuff just for the sake of having extra stuff, you're creating more work for yourself. One tiny new element, when rolled through all your design, could have a huge impact, but that I think is the most fun you can ever have as a designer.

I'm not totally talking out my ass here. I've been making a (non-mmo) game for the past couple of years with a design philosophy that is based on the above rant. If one new game element does not effect at least 3 other elements, I try to think of something else.

Good points.

I don't know that I neccesarily want (assuming I do put diseases in) people not to say 'omfg!'. I don't of neccesity want people to up and quit because it's not fun anymore- but I do think a lot of the 'challenge' is gone out of games because it's somehow not 'fun', and though I am for 'solutions' and 'fun' I'm also for 'problems' and 'challenge'.

I'd definantly be interested in seeing some of what you're working on if you've got it online or feel like typing a bit.

Thanks for the input though- it helps!

Hey no worries. Its fun to share ideas, and you got me thinking about my own game. I have a few clips on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM6HnMymM7I

I crave feedback too, but putting it out there is still a work in progres.

Its a single-player action rpg made with Gamemaker. I will staunchly deffend Gamemaker against any detractors - there's just no better tool for rapidly getting game ideas in action.

I was most inspired by Gauntlet, Diablo and Zangband (and other roguelikes). My plan was to just combine the parts of each I liked and bake with my own sensibilities and a few new ideas. I most wanted a game where dodging was paramount. It took me most of my lifetime to realize that that was what I most enjoyed in a game. Curiously, I find it even more satisfying than shooting back.

From Zangband: Randomly generated rooms, and a single dungeon. My maps have randomly generated rooms connected by tailored corridors.

From Gauntlet: generators. Placing generators rather than spawn points adds a huge element to the design of encounters.

From Diablo, treasure. But a statless gear system where every item has a unique property.

I'm really pleased with it, but I can't really do much with it until the new version of GM comes out. At present, the game takes nearly 3 minutes to load. But through a beta of GM8, its only 25 seconds.

I agree, sandboxes as they are in real life are boring and not quite as much fun as most would assume.

Most kids I knew never liked them outside of playgrounds. Which is what most MMORPGs are... playgrounds...

Anyways, I was fortunate in my childhood to have a mudbox. That's right - a backyard full of nothing but clay-like mud. All I needed was a little water from the garden hose and it was perfect for sculpting city-scapes in which the imaginary citizens of my ever-expanding dirtropolis could live and thrive.

I knew that if I built the structures too high, they would collapse under their own weight - and that if I used too much water, the mud would become runny and useless slosh.

Disasters would happen periodically - floods (both of nature and of my own creation), and monster attacks (various insects). As the city was destroyed each time, I would re-build it to better withstand the previous disaster.

With my friend Kenny from across the street, we would work cooperatively to build an impressive metropolis - or build mud forts and duke it out with stone-launching catapults made from twigs and soil. We would make massive reservoirs of water above our cities (citizens had to drink clean water, after all), but that was the hazard: if the dam broke, the city would be flooded. The flooded city would be declared the loser.

We tried our hardest to break eachother's dams. My aim was always so terrible...

Fun times...

Basically, that was my SimCity before I had a computer.

The wet-dream of a sandbox game is to be able to do what you want within a few loose parameters.

Like Legos. If you ignore the instruction book, there are millions of ways you can put those pieces together to make something you want. And you have fun in exploring those possibilities, because even the determining factor of whether or not the final product was a failure or success was your own creation (unless you wanted to build for a competition).

The sandbox is a great concept. In theory. It has yet to be practiced properly.

Badgerer- Good stuff! I really want to give it a go later- looks like fun! Let me know when it's available for dl.

Plasuma- I know what you're saying. Actually- populous was probably much closer to the ideal as far as older games go- I spent hours in that thing. I wonder if a modern remake is out there anywhere?

I like the idea of sandbox gaming as much as the next guy- I just know that if ever I claim to have it- it will in fact be more so than is out there- which is why I probably won't claim it- it covers a lot.

Friggin' Marketing...

 The problem with sandbox games is not that they are a sandbox but usually that they are somebody else's sandbox and as such they are never good enough.

So if you are smart enough, or at least as smart as I think you pretend you are, he he, make it so a game can adapt to the player. I don't want to be limited by the design of some geek who sat in a cube and did nothing but play freaking Everquest all day.

You don't need to make an adaptive game to make a sandbox. That's a myth.

It's like forcing somebody to sit in a chair. You can force them to sit in a wooden chair, worn and splintered and very uncomfortable; or you can force them to sit in a very ergonomic chair that moulds to their contour and is quite possibly the most comfortable seating known to man.

Either way, you're forcing them to sit down. They'd prefer to stand. The game needs to be more open.

The idea of a sandbox is not to make a cloud of moral ambiguity that hugs the player gently and reacts to their every movement, it's to... create a giant open field of virgin snow and let them do as they please - so to speak. You give the player some materials and let them do stuff with it, with the added bonus of a goal-driven purpose.

That, of course, is easier said than done.

boyan:

Adaptive gameplay is not easy to do. Not easy to do well I should say. Skill levels, play styles- perspectives. If the player is limited, how can you tell? Do you try to teach what's missing or breadcrumb till they figure it out? Or just let them sit till they sort it out? Some people want time to figure- some will be impatient. If they're paying, how do you make it challenging & not discourage/lose them?

Plasuma:

I think it should probably be the kind of chair appropriate to the player. Available for if they choose to sit in it. Standing is great, but if the play dynamics make standing tiring, siting should prove attractive. And if standing is dangerous, then sitting will be a smart choice. I don't know that moral ambiguity is a positive gameplay direction- It's certainly popular nowadays, but I'm that maybe a world theme with a focused direction is good, which encourages a style of gameplay, and only punishes the extremes of contrary decisions. Sometimes we need enemies. Sometimes we need to be villians. What exactly makes being neutral or chaotic without consequences fun? What kind of choices are those? Is it even a game after you just run around performing actions- actions without meaning? Of course it is. It can even be very fun I'm sure. But I don't know how much staying power such a game will have unless the players 'project' into the faceless, apathetic world their own brand of collaboration & goal. Which is good too- but no reward to the devs.

Biofellis, I agree that the "sandbox" is a hard balance to strike. I mean, really, if you have no direction at all... do you not basically wind up with SecondLife? A place where people build and do whatever they want, with basically no direction from dev other than to have made the basic tools and provided an interface? (And now some zoning to protect puritans from nudity.)

Anything shy of that and you will have at least some detractors saying it "isn't -really- a sandbox" but if you go as far as SL then it "isn't really an RPG" but a glorified chat interface with user content.

I for one don't see a problem with cosmetic expansion for diversity, like releasing new content a "new frontier" where you meet and interact with some new race of people in new areas. This allows you to learn new blueprints, new clothing styles, new this and new that.

It plays to the personalities who are hoarders; the "gotta catch em all" types that want to see/learn/do everything, content-wise. Depending how things are laid out it can also allow players to side step areas of content they are not interested in... and some people will never be interested in everything a game offers. We all have zones/quests/etc which we do not enjoy doing, and having the option to NOT do certain things we we do not want to is an appeal of sandboxes as much as the option to do "whatever we want". More so for some players.