I want to detail why I believe Sandbox concept doesnt hold up well in modern day MMORPG Community.

I believe its due to the Dull PvE elements.
Lets be real here.

PvE in most Sandbox MMORPG consist mainly of Crafting(Collecting and Crafting)

Usually the NPC lack any form of major scripting, due to the the fact that most Sandbox MMORPGs dont have Class System, which means they also dont have any form of Trinity. This means, PvE combat becomes nothing more than a DPS Zergfest of out-numbers.

Seriously,,,, combat NPC in Most sandbox designed MMORPG, are so spaced out and scarce, that you would think that these creature was on an Endangered Species List, somewhere.

Where is the seriousness of PvE Combat in Sandbox design MMORPG?

Most Themepark designed MMO, as we call them, focus their endgame on some format of Serious Endgame PvE elements, such as Raid Dungeon progression, and normal dungeons.

But in Sandbox, what do we get as a player of PvE?


Its time that developers realize this once and for all.

PvP Focused MMORPG are a Niche Group, no matter if they are Sandbox or not. (Just look at Warhammer if you want an example of this. PvP focused MMO, without great PvE to go along with it, will flop nowadays)

Most Sandbox MMORPG are PvP Focused, for some unknown reason developers choose to do so.

But another key fact.

PvE Focused MMORPG are also a Niche group. 

There has to be a Balance of both.

Sandbox MMORPG developers keep trying to take the easy road out of the problem, by developing these PvP Focused MMO in my opinion, but they always flop because they have no serious PvE, which leaves it open for things such as Harsh Death Penalty, which scares off the few remaining PvE players and smaller guild player base.


 

Xsyon has some of the elements you describe and has plans to implement more.

Originally posted by MMOExposed

Most Themepark designed MMO, as we call them, focus their endgame on some format of EPIC lootz



 

I think thats what you meant.

To me sandbox MMO's are more focused on player created content. For myself and  others this is the part we enjoy.  We dont log in and say ok what does the game want me to do next some quests, dungeons, dailys. I log in and see what the clan, guild is doing, maybe its harvesting mats, crafting, farming npcs, or PVP its all on the table, but epic loot isnt the daily goal.

Originally posted by MMOExposed

I want to detail why I believe Sandbox concept doesnt hold up well in modern day MMORPG Community.

 

The main problem, for me, is that you need to invest a lot, and I mean a lot, of time into building player relationships in sandboxes to enjoy them.

And I (and most other people) don't have that time.

If you don't have that time, there is nothing those games can offer you that online FPS do not do better.

Thus Sandbox is destined to be extremely niche games without big successes - simply because the number of people who can invest their time into them is small.

If you don't have that time, there is nothing those games can offer you that online FPS do not do better.

 

Thus Sandbox is destined to be extremely niche games without big successes - simply because the number of people who can invest their time into them is small.

Not really. Eve Online doesnt require time played to be decent. It also is a very sucessfull game with 20-50k players on at any givein time and has  2 xpacs year. Eve simply supplies the tools and the players make what they want of it. Now Eve is the exception to the norm in the last few years. Yes sandbox games need to be more creative.

Its all about choices and freedom for players to do whatever it is they want.

Where to begin...

-Sandbox MMOs don't have anything equivalent to raiding since they usually have emphasis on crafting. That means that most, if not all, the items in the game can be crafted. One does not need to go killing bosses when little bit of grinding for materials and a minigame can do.

-PvP is endgame. If it is not some lame raid treadmill, it is this. Good PvP really prolongs the lifespan of a game. Other is replayability. But PvP also offers a money/gaer sink which actually promotes crafting. You get killed, you lose your stuff, you go buy stuff from a crafter, get back into game. The economy rests on this cycle - on PvP.

-PvE focused MMOs are a niche? Umm... No they're not. Great majority of MMO players do it for the PvE. GW1 was a PvP focused game and yet they had to start shifting more towards PvE in the following expansions since something like 90% of the people playing that game hadn't played PvP and didn't care for it. That amount is staggering. It surprised the devs aswell. Even Eve has huge portion of their players in running just PvE in high sec.

Warhammer was a decent game for the first 3 weeks after which it had absolutely nothing to offer. RvR was lame (scenarios were good however), and there was very little to do in the PvE front. I had rolled 2 characters to tier 4 in that time.

-I don't know what scripting has to do with this but having no classes doesn't mean that there is no Trinity, and therefore there is no DPS zergfest. I think people who claim that are too entrenched to the archaic mold of combat - the Trinity combat. There can be plenty of group dynamics without a healer or a tank. And who says there has to be only three roles?

Why aren't sandbox MMOs more popular then? I bet there are many reasons, but I don't agree with these.

and why cant epic PvE be developed in sandboxes?

dynamic PvE would solve this issue wouldnt it?

in eve when more people gate into a room in a plex with a station, the station starts hitting harder. to account for the extra players. why cant bosses gain abilities and strength based on size of force they're up against?

Originally posted by WINGCLIP

Not really. Eve Online doesnt requre time played to be decent.

Oh, come on. I've played EVE for many years. Not sure about right now, but you spend your first two weeks just getting into a cruiser. You can get proper agent-running with a battleship, and it takes a month, minimum. It takes at least couple of months to get into pvp. As for being competitive in manufacturing, or, gods forbid, inventing and t2 production, you need how much time?

Admittedly, you don't need to grind if you don't want to, selling plexes you can get enough isk to just have fun anytime you want, and you can play for 3-4 hours a week and not get behind those playing whole day in skills department, but that relies on the real life $ you are ready to spend.

Yeah, you can get into salvaging (ninja-salvaging) or exploration nearly immediately, and get decent isks from it, but it's not as if it's easy. Lots of competition.

That said, EVE is a great game, the best sandbox out there, hands down, but it took it many years to get to that point. Many years of extremely clever and pointed development. And STILL it's a niche game.

As for 50k accounts online, well, I always tripple-boxed in EVE (liked to run lvl5 missions solo, with 3 ships :) ), and most people I knew at least dual-boxed, except for pvp times, so the real number of players is a bit lower.

Originally posted by Grahor

Originally posted by WINGCLIP

Not really. Eve Online doesnt requre time played to be decent.

Oh, come on. I've played EVE for many years. Not sure about right now, but you spend your first two weeks just getting into a cruiser. You can get proper agent-running with a battleship, and it takes a month, minimum. It takes at least couple of months to get into pvp. As for being competitive in manufacturing, or, gods forbid, inventing and t2 production, you need how much time?

 

My point was, say it takes 30 days to get into a BS. If you play 100 hrs a week or 1 hr a week it still takes 30 days. If it takes 200 days to fit it with all top mods if you play 1hr a month or 400 hrs it still takes 200 days. It caters to both the casaul and hardcore player. Leveling is taken out of the equation and your free to do whatever else you want to.

Even if everybody 2-3 boxed in the game which is unlikely, I dont. It is still 5-10 times the pop of any other single server in any other mmo.

You got that right. PvP focused MMOs are a niche market.

Sandbox games promote PvP only. So the majority of people, including me :D, won't play sandbox games. I don't wanna craft all day for what? For money? Why would I need that? To craft some more? I don't care if my items are viable, crafting is boring and kinda pointless if there is nothing else to do.

=>>> Sandbox MMOs are not for PvE players. =>>> Sandbox games will never get big numbers. If I wanted to play "PvP" only I would play an shooter or a competitive strategy like SC.....

Originally posted by WINGCLIP

If it takes 200 days to fit it with all top mods if you play 1hr a month or 400 hrs it still takes 200 days. It caters to both the casaul and hardcore player. Leveling is taken out of the equation and your free to do whatever else you want to.

 

Even if everybody 2-3 boxed in the game which is unlikely, I dont. It is still 5-10 times the pop of any other single server in any other mmo.

Indeed it does, but, again, it took EVE many years to get to that point. And still, if you want to truly experience EVE at its best as a sandbox, you need to get into sandboxy part: 0.0 alliances or serious manufacturing.

And that needs lots of time for develoment of in-game connections with players, even though EVE done everything it could to ease that.

As for the population, I never understood that idiotic decision to separate communities BY SERVER, as other mmorpgs do. What the hell? Create a single universe with AREAS separated by server, as EvE did! That allows for single, united community within the world, and it just solves so many MMORPG's inherent problems that I can't imagine why nobody copies Eve's ideas here.

First of all. Sandbox and Themepark are not the only two options. It's not you have to be White OR Black. There's a huge line of Gray color shade in between.

Extreme Black or Extreme White (Sandbox or Theme Park) is BAD. Even though extreme Sandbox is more bearable to me than extreme Themepark.

Secondly, please stop saying Trinity. It is NOT trinity. World of Warcraft trivilized the Class Roles to Tank, Healer and DPS. This is the extreme simplified system of Class Roles. Where did the Pullers go? Where's Crowd Control? Where's Debuffers? There are many roles that you can be turned into a necesseity based on the encounters difficulty. Encounters should require more than just these 3 roles to overcome. But the PvE content now a days are too easy to even require something like "Pulling" from EQ. These roles shouldn't be as obvious as the current game design, for instance when you rolled a Monk in EQ it didn't say "This class is good for pulling monster to your group" you as a player would discover that. Give every class options to fulfill multiple roles.

Sandbox doesn't lack serious PvE content. It is the mindset of segregating Sandbox and Themepark concepts when you clearly can always have the merits of both world in one game. Once you join the positive points of both worlds you're going to get a monster of a game.

If you can add meaningful PvE to a sandbox MMO without turning it into a treadmill, go for it.

Most themepark games have dull pve, oh wait running the same endgame raid ad nauseam is 'fun' now is it?

Common misconception is that a sandbox can't have epic PVE. Wrong. Sandboxes can have as many themepark rides as devs want to put in. A sandbox just ALSO has other tools for the persistent world.

Originally posted by Grahor

As for the population, I never understood that idiotic decision to separate communities BY SERVER, as other mmorpgs do. What the hell? Create a single universe with AREAS separated by server, as EvE did! That allows for single, united community within the world, and it just solves so many MMORPG's inherent problems that I can't imagine why nobody copies Eve's ideas here.

Eve is about space. It's easy. Just space (read "nothing"), a star, maybe planets, maybe moons, maybe asteroid belts and maybe stations. Add some gates and your new portion of territory is done. And how about MMORPGs that isn't about space? You can't just do it all like Barrens in WoW: "Nothing, nothing, mob, nothing, nothing, tree, nothing, nothing, bush...". So to make that ammount of locations will take so much time and efforts that no one in their minds will do it.

Originally posted by Evile

Common misconception is that a sandbox can't have epic PVE. Wrong. Sandboxes can have as many themepark rides as devs want to put in. A sandbox just ALSO has other tools for the persistent world.

Absolutely true. There is no actual barrier between sandbox and themepark. It all is just the tools, all of it, sandboxy parts, themepark parts, it's just the set of tools. For example, EVE now adding a lot of themepark tools into their model.

The only limit is time and resources to develop, balance and polish those tools.

Originally posted by Newfr

So to make that ammount of locations will take so much time and efforts that no one in their minds will do it.

You misunderstood. You don't need that many locations, you just need all those servers to be in one universe. The only limit is overloading, but if, say, there are 1000 players in one small location (which overpopulates it), you instance that location into 2, 3, 10 on different servers, but all those instances are still in the same world, so people can connect, trade, etc with each other, and if players group or otherwise unite they all end up in one instance with each other, etc.

Lotro does that, as far as I remember. But trade instruments kind of suck big times in Lotro, which is a big no-no.

I miss static PVE grinding.

Originally posted by yewsef

 

Secondly, please stop saying Trinity. It is NOT trinity. World of Warcraft trivilized the Class Roles to Tank, Healer and DPS. This is the extreme simplified system of Class Roles. Where did the Pullers go? Where's Crowd Control? Where's Debuffers? There are many roles that you can be turned into a necesseity based on the encounters difficulty. Encounters should require more than just these 3 roles to overcome. But the PvE content now a days are too easy to even require something like "Pulling" from EQ. These roles shouldn't be as obvious as the current game design, for instance when you rolled a Monk in EQ it didn't say "This class is good for pulling monster to your group" you as a player would discover that. Give every class options to fulfill multiple roles.

EQ did not invent the holy trinity. The holy trinity has been around long before WoW/EQ, long before this genre was even born. It goes back to the "oldschool hardcore" RPGs which are the base for all MMOs that why they were called massive RPGs back then.

Holy trinity - damage dealer, healer and tank. These three roles are required for you to succeed. You have other roles but they are not required. You don't need to have a specialised puller or CC. That's why they are not part of the holy trinity. The holy trinity does not mean that there are only 3 roles in a game. It means that there are only 3 required roles. Of course, you have action RPGs which do not have the holy trinity as they boil down to having damage dealers only.