Originally posted by Diross

Looking at so many games over the years, why aren't more sandbox MMORPG's being made over the number of linear MMORPG's?  

In my opinion people want to be entertained rather then work for things themself. Look at WoW, WAR, AoC etc. All the themepark MMO's have one thing in common and that is that players don't need to really put a lot of effort into being entertained. They can start a character and just follow the story, there is raid content pvp content etc. All players have to do is gather some friends and go do them. and usually to have fun you have to do some of the content that is created as people seem unable to actually create their own fun.

A sandbox MMO on the other hand is the opposite, players are thrown out in a world and pretty much left to themself. The beauty of SWG Pre NGE was just this. You started a character and there was no one to hold your hand and tell you where to go and what to do. My first steps in the game was done by walking around and looking at Bestine. Finding the mission terminal and choosing a mission. Later on when my characters skills was maxed it was time to start experience the world and you would start looking for resources for the guild crafter, build a house and decorate it. It was up to you as a palyer to create your own fun, no one held your hand and forced you to raid dungeons to have fun. You could sit in the cantina, roleplay, talk, or just chill having a great time with friends ingame, If you wanted to try something new you simply retrained your character. In the end you built up a reputation for your character which pretty much followed you throughout your career. PvP was fun as there was always some fighting going on, and alliances and politics actually did matter in the big fights.

Damn I miss Good old SWG :(

Originally posted by Crashloop

Originally posted by Diross

Looking at so many games over the years, why aren't more sandbox MMORPG's being made over the number of linear MMORPG's?  

 

In my opinion people want to be entertained rather then work for things themself. Look at WoW, WAR, AoC etc. All the themepark MMO's have one thing in common and that is that players don't need to really put a lot of effort into being entertained. They can start a character and just follow the story, there is raid content pvp content etc. All players have to do is gather some friends and go do them. and usually to have fun you have to do some of the content that is created as people seem unable to actually create their own fun.

A sandbox MMO on the other hand is the opposite, players are thrown out in a world and pretty much left to themself. The beauty of SWG Pre NGE was just this. You started a character and there was no one to hold your hand and tell you where to go and what to do. My first steps in the game was done by walking around and looking at Bestine. Finding the mission terminal and choosing a mission. Later on when my characters skills was maxed it was time to start experience the world and you would start looking for resources for the guild crafter, build a house and decorate it. It was up to you as a palyer to create your own fun, no one held your hand and forced you to raid dungeons to have fun. You could sit in the cantina, roleplay, talk, or just chill having a great time with friends ingame, If you wanted to try something new you simply retrained your character. In the end you built up a reputation for your character which pretty much followed you throughout your career. PvP was fun as there was always some fighting going on, and alliances and politics actually did matter in the big fights.

Damn I miss Good old SWG :(

Agreed. I think sandboxes are a niche and although still a potentially profitable niche they're trickier to make than a linear themepark so it's not surprising which way the dev money goes. I think the way to do a sandbox is to combine it with another niche e.g sandbox plus ultra-PvP or sandbox plus ultra-crafting and then gradually add more and more elements to it, including small themeparks scattered around inside the open-ended box or, as others have said, model it on the Fallout, elder scrolls way of doing things minus the main quest e.g i modded Morrowind so that the main quest didn't start until you were either a guild leader or head of a house. If you do something like that then those games are very like mmorpgs where you just wander around bumping into quest mini-themeparks rather than being led by the nose.

Originally posted by tupodawg999

Agreed. I think sandboxes are a niche and although still a potentially profitable niche they're trickier to make than a linear themepark so it's not surprising which way the dev money goes. I think the way to do a sandbox is to combine it with another niche e.g sandbox plus ultra-PvP or sandbox plus ultra-crafting and then gradually add more and more elements to it, including small themeparks scattered around inside the open-ended box or, as others have said, model it on the Fallout, elder scrolls way of doing things minus the main quest e.g i modded Morrowind so that the main quest didn't start until you were either a guild leader or head of a house. If you do something like that then those games are very like mmorpgs where you just wander around bumping into quest mini-themeparks rather than being led by the nose.

Why would you combine something niche with something extra niche, shutting out more players? The beauty of the sandbox is that it provides options and rewards all courses.  You CAN do a themepark mission trail, or you can just farm beets and rp with your 'wife' and 'kids' Or you can chart new maps and areas, or write books and run a library for other characters/players.

The idea of Sandbox being hardcore or PVP-centric is killing the genre imho. More options, not less, or what's the point?

Originally posted by Hype

Originally posted by tupodawg999

Agreed. I think sandboxes are a niche and although still a potentially profitable niche they're trickier to make than a linear themepark so it's not surprising which way the dev money goes. I think the way to do a sandbox is to combine it with another niche e.g sandbox plus ultra-PvP or sandbox plus ultra-crafting and then gradually add more and more elements to it, including small themeparks scattered around inside the open-ended box or, as others have said, model it on the Fallout, elder scrolls way of doing things minus the main quest e.g i modded Morrowind so that the main quest didn't start until you were either a guild leader or head of a house. If you do something like that then those games are very like mmorpgs where you just wander around bumping into quest mini-themeparks rather than being led by the nose.

 

Why would you combine something niche with something extra niche, shutting out more players? The beauty of the sandbox is that it provides options and rewards all courses.  You CAN do a themepark mission trail, or you can just farm beets and rp with your 'wife' and 'kids' Or you can chart new maps and areas, or write books and run a library for other characters/players.

The idea of Sandbox being hardcore or PVP-centric is killing the genre imho. More options, not less, or what's the point?

The one thing that interest me with sandbox is simply the idea to become who you want, rather then become who the developers planned for you to be. I loved SWG pre-NGE for this. It had all the tools needed to become either the most feared player in PvP or known as the best crafter on the server. And it wasn't just because of the classes you choosed but your ability to use the tools provided by the game. Smugglers were selling information about bases vunereblities on their faction side to be able to sell more themself. There was a lot of things that made that game really good. The worst thing a sandbox MMO can do is try to cater just one part of the population.

A true sand-box MMORPG will never be created until a company has the balls and the genius to release the source code and allow players to build their own quests and dungeons.  If they can figure out how to do this, build an interface that non-programmers could build things into the world, prevent hackers and exploiters from ruining the world, then....

then we will all throw our T.V.s out the window, cancel our WoW subscriptions, and get divorces because this will be the MMORPG that destroys modern civilization.

Originally posted by Crashloop 

The one thing that interest me with sandbox is simply the idea to become who you want, rather then become who the developers planned for you to be. I loved SWG pre-NGE for this. It had all the tools needed to become either the most feared player in PvP or known as the best crafter on the server. And it wasn't just because of the classes you choosed but your ability to use the tools provided by the game. Smugglers were selling information about bases vunereblities on their faction side to be able to sell more themself. There was a lot of things that made that game really good. The worst thing a sandbox MMO can do is try to cater just one part of the population.

That makes sense.  I misunderstood what you meant by "ultra PvP"

IMO SWG had the greatest feel of an open, sandbox game. The ONLY loading screens were between planets, going into space, and between instances like HK-47, Tusken King, etc.

It even made it viable for player housing that didnt rely on instancing. It was pretty cool being able to stumble across your enemies house or pvp anywhere you wanted.

Sandbox games FTW

 Why would more and bigger companies do sandbox rpgs?

Even the good and recent ones like darkfall or fallen earth have an extremelly small comunity. You think thats profittable? The only one with a decent comunity (even if its smaller than many theme park mainstream mmo's) is EvE and even that took many years to achieve.

Sandbox brings no profit to the big companies, and its a rather big risk for small and indie companies.

Originally posted by boognish75

Because people dont want to roleplay anymore , seems that people like to have every detail laid out for them. This was brought up in another thread, the last spans of mmo's play more like a platform game with content added every so often an mmo but not a true mmorpg, the way it is looking the mmo's are being made so people dont have to use there imagination to create a virtual identity and roleplay as it is all written down in the game how it is and will be for you, little to no choice except to make yer toon and follow the story arc, there are few games left that create a world and leave you to make the storyline for yerself.

While you may have a point, certainly people are less interested in roleplaying.. I don't think roleplaying has anything to do with what a sandbox game is.  You can have a sandbox game and not roleplay.  Lack of roleplaying doesn't break a game.  It's lack of a good game that pushes everyone away.  The last good sandbox was UO.  Thirteen years ago.

simple reason why not many are being made, they suck and are not as profitable.

all of them have a very short shelf life in which they really good because there is nothing to do, once you have explored the world then you get bored. pvp will only take it so far.  most people dont like ffa full loot pvp and that is generally what most people want in a sandbox and that type of gameplay doesnt encourage new people to join considering when they log in some asshat at max level are with way more experience than them kill them over and over for fun like angry children in a real sandbox.  sandbox gamers can only blame themselves for the lack of sandbox games, they acted like asshats and were mean to the other kids so the other kids left and went to a themepark game so they wouldnt have to deal with the little brat kid in the sandbox. 

Besides, why do you need more sandbox games being developed, go play one of the many games that are out right now.  Lets see we have ultima online still around, asherons call, darkfall, eve, mortal online, xsyon and im probably still missing a few, go play one of those, personally i think that is way more than enough boring games for people that want to be jerks.

as to the comment about how innovative sandbox games are, i think you need to brush up on that definition, there is nothing innovative about a sandbox, they create a world, populate it with some monsters and maybe some dungeons, and the players go out into the world and explore it.  that is not innovative, that is boring, the developers didnt do anything there but create basically a blank canvas.  world of warcraft was innovative because it did something different at the time and it made a ton of money doing it.  If sandbox games want to compete they are going to have to become a hybrid of the two games which is to make themepark content but keep the game with the freedom to explore and do what you want also like a sandbox game of old.  Personally i think that is what swtor is shooting for and i hope they do it very well but a ultima online type game will never make it nowadays, the players have seen what more can be done and they wont play a game by lazy developers that dont wanna entertain the players.

Originally posted by LackeyZero

 

Originally posted by privatep37

i also loved in swg, that if you didnt feel like hunting, you could find resources for crafting, lounge with friends at the cantina, get together with imperial/rebel friends and attack the opposite bases, decorate your house, and pretty much anything you wanted to do. i want a game that provides feedom again. Hopefully one day the devs will understand that there are many players that are looking for open-ended gameplay.

Whoa whoa whoa. Hold it right there! You can do that in just about any game... In World of Warcraft, "if you didnt feel like hunting, you could find resources for crafting, lounge with friends at " any damn where, "get together with [allied] friends and attack the opposite bases"... You don't get the Barbie houses, but you still get the other stuff. (*Note - This isn't anything meant to insult or offend anyone. Think of it as a fun/silly jab)...

From Wikipedia, "A sandbox game (or a video game with an optional sandbox mode) is a video game with an open-ended and non-linear style of gameplay, or a mode of gameplay within a game that is more often played in a goal-directed manner." ...

So... what's up with all of the examples that exists in these "linear" games as well... As far as I see, the only thing differentiating them at the moment is the location in which characters are allowed to go/do due to level restrictions and the linear way in which it's done (in other words, the "level"/difficulty maps aren't scattered, but instead are presented linearly from one to the next)... I don't see anyone even mentioning this. Instead, people seem to be mentioning stuff that's just about in any game. So, what's the deal?

I don't think anyone ever mentioned maps and how they are displayed to you in the post that you're responding to.  Back to the point.  There is a difference because in a sandbox game, people can do whatever they want.  You say that WoW is the same, except that it isn't and here is why.  In WoW, you are forced to fight in order to level up your crafting profession.  In order to make gear and in order to continue gaining more skill, you must continue to level up by fighting.  In a sandbox, you don't have to fight.  You can be a miner and blacksmith and still be successful.  WoW forces you to do something, while a sandbox doesn't. 

Originally posted by DAS1337

 in a sandbox game, people can do whatever they want. 

And this is why sandbox games aren't being made. They most often suck.

Originally posted by Plasuma!!!

Sandbox games are difficult to make, assuming "sandbox" means minimal boundaries and limitations. With more linear games, you can predict what players will do because you set more concrete boundaries.

That's pretty much it. Sandbox games are notoriously complex and packed with all kinds of systems and dynamic content. The more complex something is, the more difficult it is to maintain and entertain people with.

The reason why so many games are "linear" is because they're naturally easier to manage and debug when problems arise.

I disagree with the second part, since most of the content in the game is player driven, you just have to give them the tools and let them run with them.  You're basically creating a huge empty world.  Adding some points of interest, like cities, caves, dungeons, and so forth.  Creating craftable items, which I admit can be daunting.. if everything is made by players.  But, you don't have to create scripted battles, entire detialed dugeons, thousands and thousands of quests and lore.  It's the developers job to make all of these parts come together seamlessly.  Most of the sandboxes have made very poor choices, so they've failed.

The first and third points a agree with.

Originally posted by VPellen

Checklist for why sandbox games are rarer:

• Sandbox games are harder to make. True
• There are more successful linear games than successful sandbox games. There are also a ton more linear games made than sandboxes.  I bet if you took the percentage of sandboxes and theme parks that made profit over the onese that didn't, it would be really close.  UO, EVE, Darkfall made/make profit.  Shadowbane died and Mortal Online hasn't been released.  So that's a 75% profit chance. 
• Investors are drawn to areas of big success.  True
• Nobody wants to invest 8 figures on a "maybe".  Again, see above answer. Developers perception isn't reality.

That really is about it. The best thing sandbox fans can really hope for is a left-field indie title; And even then, no indie title is going to have as high production values as an 8-figure AAA title, so it'd have to win out of innovation alone. But hey, anything is possible.

Can someone please win the lottery and pay a big company to make a good sandbox? lol

Originally posted by Hyanmen

Originally posted by DAS1337

 in a sandbox game, people can do whatever they want. 

And this is why sandbox games aren't being made. They most often suck.

Explain why they suck.  It's the indie companies with no MMO knowledge that create these crappy games.  It's not the game mechanics that made the bad game.

Originally posted by DAS1337

Originally posted by Hyanmen

Originally posted by DAS1337

 in a sandbox game, people can do whatever they want. 

And this is why sandbox games aren't being made. They most often suck.

Explain why they suck.  It's the indie companies with no MMO knowledge that create these crappy games.  It's not the game mechanics that made the bad game.

The answer is within the sentence I quoted.

When people can do whatever they want, the quality of content drops. The more they can do within the game, the worse content will be, overall.

People expect some amount of polish from a game they play- and sandboxes can't offer that kind of polish, without at least taking away some the sandbox elements.

Originally posted by elvenangel

Play time has nothing to do with mechanics it comes down to how badly you want something.   If you want to be first at everything, top at everything, or just show off or keep up with people who have no lives then any and every game requires you (except maybe eve from what I hear) to spend a large amount of time in game.     I could never play UO enough to keep up with the PK's or even my own RL friend.   In EQ the only person I worried about keeping up with was no one absolutely no one.   I managed to make friends with similiar play styles or they were accepting and helped me out on occasion when I wanted to play catch up.    Granted I went through an EQ1 addiction and spent obscene amounts of time playing that game but half the time it was just to hang out and adventure not accomplish levels and some huge dungeon goal (i did do that stuff but it was secondary to fun).

 

Games and play time are what you make of them.  If your only goal is to compete then every game is a time sink.

I guess you and I had vastly different game experiences then.  I played UO for 5 years.  Loved nearly every second of it.  Not once did I have a 7x GM.  Had a 5x GM mage, 4x GM warrior and a 5x GM crafter.  I played before Trammel and did not encounter many problems with PK's.  You learned to stay away from the high traffic areas such as crossroads and moongates.  You hated it.

I tried going to EQ1 and lasted about a month before I quit.  I felt there was a greater community in UO.  There were people in that world that were known server wide for their exploits.  Good or bad.  You didn't have to keep up, there was a skill cap.  You would eventually get there.  I don't think play time matters in either game.  I quit WoW because I had to grind 4-6 hours daily to be ready for raids and have all my gear.  I felt like it was a second job.  In UO, I never felt like that.  I could play for 1 hour or 10 hours and still enjoy it.

We all have our opinions.

This might be far fetched, however, a good model to look at would be that of Grand Theft Auto 4.  You have a base storyline progression, but can deviate from that story to do side missions.  It's not a full open sandbox, but I think this could work for MMO's.

A full sandbox game just doesn't work.  SWG is a perfect example.  They tried, it failed.  Believe it or not, people want direction, even the naysayers.

Originally posted by elvenangel

 

Originally posted by vajuras

 

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Originally posted by edmonal

 

As for the previous comment on levels; it doesn't matter if it's level based or skill based it's all the same grind in the end. You have to do just as much annoying tasks to get your skills up as you do to level, the exception being Eve with it's time based skills. Skills give you the option for more customization, but both WoW and EQ2 allow for customization with their talents and AAs.

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Not really true at all. In a skill based game "each skill" levels independantly of each other.

So assume our hypothetical (sp?) game has 4 skills: Axe, Sword, Mace, Jumping

If player A just wanted to max out 'Axe' he can. Thus, he can quickly become competitive with a veteran in this area. Because this player focused purely on Axe swinging he is now just as good as a vet

So if you follow you can see why this is attractive to players. When you knock down the Level barriers the game becomes more sandbox and the difference between vet and newb becomes skewed

you can see a little of this in EVE Online a newbie can jump into fleet battles really early but a better example is Crackdown xbox360 (coop RPG). you can see how newbies and vets play the game together and have enjoy each other's company very nicely First off you can't compare a co op 2 player mode RPG with an MMO they are inheritantly different and there's an end to such a game.  There is no true end to MMO's sure a level cap or end of content but the game doesn't end.     This topic has nothing to do with vet vs newbies it has to do with Sandbox once again vs Everything else.

edit- sorry so my point is in a sandbox title you dont have to grind to be the best in a specific area. In a Level grinder, you must grind to be the best in a specific area (must reach level cap). that is why a Level based MMO is 'Linear'. A skill based game is a 'Sandbox' or at least, a sandbox in regards to character advancement is my understanding

Im not sure what crack your smoking but in Skill games other than EVE where skills are acquired over time equally you usually have to grind like hell. 

 

Want to build up your magery in UO? Then stand somewhere and cast X spell X million times per day just make sure you bought or foraged a crap load of spell compenents.   Want to shoot bows?  Find a target and shoot at it till it maxes go out and hunt and shoot at some random beast that can't auto kill you and repeat.   Musician skills? Stand somewhere adn beat on a tamborine for several hours per day.  Rinse and repeat and in a far less entertaining fashioned then games with quests.

 

Skill based Systems aka 'sandbox' are every bit as repeatative and grind filled as level based games, infact some of them are even worse because there's no varying content or ways to do things.   Very few sandbox like games have deviated from this path. 

 

Calling a game linear based only on progression of level and not storyline or the adventure path taken is completely narrowminded btw.   While some games like Lord of the Rings are actually extremely linear because they do it in a chapter like story progression otehr games don't.  You can go where you want to quest when you want even if you might die more in some areas than others.    Its all about personal experience if your only goal is to worry over level and progress of skill then whats the point of playing an MMORPG?  It should be about the fun & the adventure, some developers and players have lost sight of this and it sucks ecause its how good games go bad.   I guess thats just the RPGer in me talking.

I think you may have had some bad days in UO lol.  Wasn't that the beauty of skill progression as well?  If you didn't want to go hunt, you could sit in your house and practice a skill without being in any danger.  It gives the player options.  In linear level based games, you typically can't go to high end areas and survive the run to the flightpath.. or wherever you were going.  It's level based.  You have no way to kill a creature because the number over it's head is 4 or 5 levels above yours.  In a skill based game, maybe you can kill something at range that you couldn't kill in melee.  it may take a long time.. but it was possible.  but yeah, both games you have to grind.  It's just the meaning to grind in a sandbox made it less of a grind for me personally.

Originally posted by TheTooke

This might be far fetched, however, a good model to look at would be that of Grand Theft Auto 4.  You have a base storyline progression, but can deviate from that story to do side missions.  It's not a full open sandbox, but I think this could work for MMO's.

A full sandbox game just doesn't work.  SWG is a perfect example.  They tried, it failed.  Believe it or not, people want direction, even the naysayers.

GTA4 is as themepark as it gets!