Is this frustrating for anyone else?

In my opinion, Shadowbane had the right idea here. Upon death, you would drop everything in your inventory, but you would retain your gear. I think this mixes the perfect amount of urgency without the overwhelming frustration that comes (atleast for me) of losing your gear. Place more valuable resource nodes or better drops from mobs in high traffic PvP areas, get a great drop or some high value resources, GTFO. You die, it sucks a lot, but you have your gear and you try again. Losing the contents of your inventory and incurring a significant death penalty would hopefully be enough to drive risk-averse behavior. The death penalty could include an EXP penalty, stat penalty, or relocation, ending up in greater travel time. Logistics should be a large factor in sandbox games.

In order to maintain a well-oiled economy, tie the same resources to crafting player gear and running player built outposts. Implement a crafting system a la DAoC, where you crafted a sword, but that same recipe would produce varying qualities of that item, somewhat dependent on your skill in that craft. This would drive repeated attempts at creating that PERFECT item, which would increase resource consumption.

I think a lot of MMO gamers grew up in a culture of games that placed a high value on static items in the game (ahem... Diablo 2). Decking your character out in the best gear with a well-scaled time sink associated with obtaining that gear is a driving force behind many MMO-gamers play style; for me this defines how I play.

I understand that there are caveats and gotchas in any system, but I'm not trying to build the outline of a perfect sandbox game here, just trying to convey a very high level view of the elements of what makes a successful sandbox game.

What are your thoughts?

There are definitly differant ways to implement Risk Aversion basically. Full Loot pvp will drive far to many away than it will gain in players interest and that is just what it is.

In my mind for economics in a sandbox tied to pvp or anything else for that matter would be simple item decay. (the non trammel introduced insurance style tyvm) It is what it is. If you have sword xxx of xxx whatever it has a health pool of xx amount and over time with use it degrades to the point of needing replacement. Crafters have continous business. PVP still has gear involved (remember pvp in UO pre trammel? EVERYONE FOUGHT NAKID.)

Death penalties you mentioned are all good ideas I am not going to speculate on any myself. My thing is with the gear attrition in sandbox's being the main barrier.

PVP mechanics are pvp mechanics. IE MECHANICS

PVP punishment is a social tangent set by the game designers on what is "good" and what is "bad" and implemented from there.

Death penalty is the suckage to make dying unnatractive. Anyone here ever die just to "fast travel res" where you wanted to be in a game..... yeah me too.

A death penalty in a sandbox should be the same imo for PVE and PVP = you die you go xxx far to res or you need this or that etc etc. Set by the devs as a  blanket death penalty system or set by style of death. PVE death vs PVP and so on. I prefer all in one myself.

But yeah losing all your "stuff" all the time tends to blow and makes a game unnatractive except to the very "few". Not a good sales pitch to investors to make a game that will attract a "couple" of players.

Now EvE does this, but they seperate your gear (has value) and your skills (which is the grind and point in eve) Your skills don't go away. Your skills dictate what you can and cannot do in the game. The gear (ships etc) are just cash.

The penalty is the time it takes to assemble the ships (and the costs obviously) after death to get back into the fight. If you die to Johnnyxx Pirate out in lala land you res up 25 "jumps" away (about 20 mins of walking time for those that dont get eve)  to get back to where you were killed. Yeah your stuff is gone and the person you are looking for is also gone. Your chances of redeeming your e-peen against the player that smoked you is probably never gonna happen (DEATH PENALTY) as you may never see them again. EVER.

Now Eve isn't perfect but they have a full loot pvp system implemented in a unique fashion. They players that play EvE complain about ALOT of things.

Losing all their shit isn't one of them. Ever notice that?

But yes I feel you. I wish I was good enough to take all my ideas and make a sword and board "EvE' type world that I could lose myself in. But Sadly I am not. But I do have hope someone will before I die of old age and disgust with the hobby.

Really its a matter of how  important gear is... If its not that important because crafters supply the best gear or at least very good gear that is competitive with the best PvE stuff... Then losing the money you invested in your gear isnt a big deal.

Full loot will never work without the economy being in the hands of the players. If you have to raid to get the best gear then its TOO punishing to have full loot.

If the economy is player ran - full loot is a good system.

I will agree, I thought Shadowbane's model was one of the best that I've seen and its a shame it hasn't resurfaced in later PVP MMORPG's.

I won't play DF because of the full loot nature of it, there's no real way to mitigate my risk, I'm basically at the mercy of the gankers and I'm just not willing to participate.

Contrast that with EVE, that had insurance of a sorts, ability to evade even in hostile areas, and I felt much more in control of my risk and enjoyed the game immensely.

the majority of the econimies of sanboxes relly on people loosing all their stuff often. only a "durability mechaninc" just doesnt do it. take EVE for example if nobody ever lost a ship (just their cargo) every time they got killed there would be almost no economy to speak of.

pvp is also a lot more rewarding when you can loot all the equipment of your enemy. not to mention that  if all you lost when you died was what is in your inventory then there would be a grand majority of people running arround ganking indiscriminately with absolutely nothing in their inventory...or the least possible anyways.  they would simply be able to greef non stop wile risking absolutely nothing.  

it just doesnt work well imo.

I would have the majority of loot, ie your normal items drop and are stealable as in most full loot pvp games. These represent a loss, and are worth something to the victor, just not a huge amount.

For more specialist items I'll use an example of a magic sword. When the sword is made it is given certain powers etc and those powers can either be left free to anyone that uses it, or tied to a specific player. If it's free then anyone using that weapon can use the powers, but if it is tied only the person who it is tied to can have the benefits.

This means that rare gear is still dropped and can still be taken by others, but it will not be so special for them. That creates a pressure for the gear to get back to the player it is tied to, because it is worth something to him, and not much to anyone else. Now the person taking it could hold onto this normal sword just to be a tool or for bragging rights, but they could also ransom it back to the player it is tied to. This way the player it is tied to has a chance of seeing their cool gear again, but there will be a (player controlled) ransom penalty. Similarly someone who "wins" the sword has an incentive to get it back to the owner.

And as these guys are likely to be enemies there could be all sorts of dodgy middle men and arms dealers exploiting the system to get things back.

Funny that you mention EVE. In my mind, my perfect sandbox game is a mesh between EvE, Shadowbane and DAoC. Shadowbane as it brings gear permanence and ties your in-game personality to a single avatar, which has a huge pyschological impact in my opinion. EvE mainly for its emphasis on logistics, economy and immersion. DAoC (although not a sandbox) for its combat, aspects of its crafting system, and PvP ranking system.

Also, none of this FPS combat crap. I think we're far away from a game that successfully combines the mechanics of FPS and MMORPG. DAoC had it right to some degree with its emphasis on reactionary styles, but combat does need to be confined enough to allow gear and strategy to play a large factor, and free-form enough to allow human reaction time and "skill" to play a part as well.

Not sure OP, if the game is not overly loot based in terms of combat items, then I fail to see the issue with item loss outside of the scope of your inventory. Some people on here moan about getting stuff taken from them as a noob in Darkfall, oddly enough it takes all of 3 minutes to get over 9000 noob weapons from Goblins and the like so what's the big deal?

One would assume that in general it is the non combat orientated people who lose the contents of their inventory who would get the most butt hurt about getting killed in an ffa, full  loot game. These people would still be impacted upon in your version of the mechanics. Quite rightly so as that is what drives trade routes, pirates, haulers and the like. But it would fail to address the issue at hand.

At the end of the day so long as the items in the game are readily available or craft/economy replaceable and so long as people are not stupid as fuck and carry a massive amount around in their inventory (unless they have got bodyguards etc). Then there should really be no problem.

The reality of the situation is that some people cannot abide the idea that someone else can kill their character in a game unless they have given some form of prior formal invitation. The actual loss of items is not the problem per say, it's the fact that some guy/gal they don't know has killed them as opposed to an npc goblin or bugbear.

Bunny, I think many players can be clumped in two groups: those who play purely for competition's sake and those who enjoy a "tangible" (funny word to use here, I know) result of their time investment. In your example, I would not be interested in playing a game where you could re-gear your character with minimal effort in the first place. I like finding very rare items and holding on to those items; each piece of gear is like a shiny new trophy.

I don't think gear permanence and sandbox PvP are mutually exclusive, I'm sure a clever developer could come up with appropriate resource sinks without implementing full loot PvP. Making sieges a heavy resource sink could be part of this, as well as the upkeep of player owned outposts. Here's another throwback to semi-Shadowbane, part of player outposts could be a resource gathering mechanic, where certain areas are richer in resources and thus more desirable, driving war and draining resources.

I think if the game was enjoyable without the best gear, a game where it's fun to be a bum who struggles to survive every day of his damn bum life, then there isn't much that speaks against full loot because it wouldn't matter as much.

Stop the achievement-related society in MMOs! (And outside!)

Also, it's not neccessarily the game's fault that some MMO players get WAY too attached to their gear. The things they own end up owning them! :|

Take Wurm Online for example, it has full loot. And I did get the crap beaten out of me on the PvP server. But I still had a lot of fun just starting from scratch, making a chisel to make a damn forge so I could produce more tools and, equally important, so I could see my home at night from far away as long as the fire was lit! :D

MMOs need to stop imitating the pressure of real life. We all have enough of that in our jobs, unis, schools, wherever. Everyone wants us to accomplish something. We need more MMOs where the moment is enjoyable, where the way is the goal. The best gear. Screw it. :D

Originally posted by bunnyhopper

The reality of the situation is that some people cannot abide the idea that someone else can kill their character in a game unless they have given some form of prior formal invitation. The actual loss of items is not the problem per say, it's the fact that some guy/gal they don't know has killed them as opposed to an npc goblin or bugbear.

The loss of items magnifies the issue.  If I put a lot of time and effort into getting an item and then someone can just walk up to my character, kill it and take all I have worked on will seem quite wrong.  The PKer has not put the same amount of effort that I did but somehow he gets all the benefits of my work and I get nothing.   To someone with a work ethic this feels criminal.   Many people can't abandom that ingrained mindset just because it is a game. 

Shadowbane had engaging total destruction design in that your city/house could be destroyed as well as your gear upon repeated death and not repairing.

What made it work was the crafting, the resource drops, and the exciting pvp. Those are my thoughts but to accomplish this in anew game is a challenge only being taken up by developers like darkfall and mortal online whom launched with systems below the standards that is required for lasting game.

Originally posted by wr036

Bunny, I think many players can be clumped in two groups: those who play purely for competition's sake and those who enjoy a "tangible" (funny word to use here, I know) result of their time investment. In your example, I would not be interested in playing a game where you could re-gear your character with minimal effort in the first place. I like finding very rare items and holding on to those items; each piece of gear is like a shiny new trophy.

I don't think gear permanence and sandbox PvP are mutually exclusive, I'm sure a clever developer could come up with appropriate resource sinks without implementing full loot PvP. Making sieges a heavy resource sink could be part of this, as well as the upkeep of player owned outposts. Here's another throwback to semi-Shadowbane, part of player outposts could be a resource gathering mechanic, where certain areas are richer in resources and thus more desirable, driving war and draining resources.

You can indeed have rare/valuable items in a sandbox replete with full looting, in fact if anything the fact that you can actually lose said rare items makes them more meaningful and valuable/noteworthy.

Most sandboxes (FFA) have been built around the ethos of easily accessible and cheap items being combat viable to a greater extent, with an edge given to rare items. If you are a noob and you lose something then no problems, if you are a vet and you choose to wander around decked out in super power items then you have to realise that whilst they may give you extra power you may indeed lose them.

Two things occur:

It seems to me to be a far better thing to have rare items actually mean something. Instead of seeing every single person decked out in the same super cape of pwning which is meant to be a unique item.

In reality most vet players have multiple copies of high end gear even in sandboxes or can readily replace them. Furthermore "lesser" items will suffice in sandboxes which are less gear grind then themeparks anyway.

I will say that you could indeed have a sandbox with a decent economy/socio political system without full loot so long as it had certain domination mechanics in place. BUT, said sandbox would be inherently more limited than one with full loot/ffa and moreover you would still have the same people complaining about it. They would simply switch to bemoaning the fact that their resources got taken from them, or clan x hogs all the resources, or sieges cost too much etc etc. Many just cannot compete outside of the scope of a 15 minute long instanced pvp battle.

The current mmo crowd in general just can't hack longer term player conflict or world simulation complexity I'm afraid. I'd love to be wrong in thinking that but sadly I doubt that is the case.

Originally posted by Torik

Originally posted by bunnyhopper

The reality of the situation is that some people cannot abide the idea that someone else can kill their character in a game unless they have given some form of prior formal invitation. The actual loss of items is not the problem per say, it's the fact that some guy/gal they don't know has killed them as opposed to an npc goblin or bugbear.

The loss of items magnifies the issue.  If I put a lot of time and effort into getting an item and then someone can just walk up to my character, kill it and take all I have worked on will seem quite wrong.  The PKer has not put the same amount of effort that I did but somehow he gets all the benefits of my work and I get nothing.   To someone with a work ethic this feels criminal.   Many people can't abandom that ingrained mindset just because it is a game. 

High end/rare items would tend to be acquired by more skilled (character and/or player) players. If someone is going to easily walk up to you and stomp on you then it is pretty clear that he to is a high end character and as such has indeed "put the time in".

If you are getting wiped out by a group well one would have to wonder what you are doing getting caught out by a gank as an experienced player with high end equipment to be honest.

Don't get me wrong I can see the issue in theory, but in general a lot of the counter arguments to full loot are just that, theoretical supposition. Because the reality of the case is that most high level/experience players who are getting rare items in games, items which can be annoying to lose, are not getting pk'd by some random passer by and losing them every 5 minutes.

It is like this because there is no logical reason as to why your gear should remain on you when you die. Sandbox games are basically a world with as few limitations and illogical restrictions as possible.

Originally posted by Fearmeirl

It is like this because there is no logical reason as to why your gear should remain on you when you die. Sandbox games are basically a world with as few limitations and illogical restrictions as possible.

logical argument has ltitle place in the face of good game design.

There is little logical reason why my dagger will add to my intelligence if i am a mage. I care a lot more if the game is FUN as opposed to a design feature is realistic.

Heck, NONE of the fantasy is logical. If i can magically teleport from one place to another, why can my gear magically teleported to my newly resurrected body?

SWG had it just fine, with gradual decay, forcing people to eventually restock.

I've been thinking about full-loot PvP's implications on a fluid market, and have come to the conclusion that it doesn't do all that much. Why? Because one person's loss is another person's gain, simply enough. One guy might have to buy more stuff, but the other guy now doesn't have to for even longer - or will hoard the wealth from it (which again is a problem with in-game economies and looting players). In the end, the economy will only fluctuate if items are removed via vendoring (somehow), because decay is the only legit way to get rid of oversaturated items.

Following exert from WTFMAN:

"Darkblight touched on a great topic in his previous post; the holy grail of an MMO is balance. Everyone knows an MMO needs 'balance' to be good, and the better the 'balance', the greater the MMO. Balance, unfortunately, is one of those terms that no one ever understands in the same way. Most of the time, whatever benefits the player's interests is considered to them to be balance. For a trammelite, balance is being able to go out into the wilderness to make money without dying every minute. For a crafter, balance is the ability to create an item and have a good economy to make a profit in. And lastly, for most of us here, balance is the opportunity to pwn the previous two people and run off with their stuff.

The balance that darkblight wants to talk about, I believe, is the balance of all these types of players, which is what made Ultima Online the epitome of MMOs to date, but instead of discussing that he does what most of us thieves, murderers, griefers do (and I'm sure I may even in this article about my point), and goes on to discuss the balance which benefits only us, the minority of players who cause grief, chaos, and anger. And this is the major problem of balance in today's MMOs.

Now, I must state I've been a thief in any RPG I've played. I absolutely enjoy stealing, backstabbing, deceiving, and generally being a nuisance to everybody. If I can profit off another person's effort with minimal risk, great. But I'm also aware of the my role's position in the grand scheme of things. In order for me to enjoy this there needs to be another person for me to profit from, and in order for me to profit off of them, he needs to be able to make money with relative freedom, and this relative freedom only comes if there are a very limited amount of people like me, and you, who want screw him over in the lich lord room after he's been there for 2 hours straight. That other player, the trammelites or anyone who loves to roleplay and decorate their virtual homes with sparkles and glitter, are needed in droves in order to run any MMO, and they need to feel as though the entire world isn't out to completely screw them over. They are the sheep to us wolves, and just like in nature, the balance lies in having less, much less predators than there are prey.

When you cater to only one of these types, the trammelite, thief, crafter, et cetera, the MMO will eventually only consist of that type. That's what makes most MMOs to date stale and boring. No one wants to steal from another thief today who's just going to steal it back from them tomorrow. On the other hand, if you put everyone in a bubble, safe from all the evils of the world, even they will find themselves bored from a constant treadmill of levels and achievements. It's important to give everyone enough protection so they don't feel scammed of all their hard work all the time, but it's also important to provide some chaos, some destructive elements, in order to keep the world changing and to stay interesting. The key to balance then is to maintain the proper proportions of these elements.

Balance doesn't lie in PvP or PvE or crafting, it lies in the mixture of all these combined. MMOs are fantasy worlds where people interact with each other, thus it's more of a social balance that needs to take place in order to truly have an outstanding MMO. Given, individual aspects such as PvP, PvE, and crafting need to be balanced themselves, but the bigger picture is a diverse and dynamic world in which politics, drama, and power struggles take place. Ultima Online was laced with bugs, imbalanced mechanics, and always was down when you wanted to play it, but it was absolutely incomparable to anything else when it came to interaction and conflict with another human. It was a melting pot of roleplayers, murderers, griefers, crafters, you name it, even though it had all its flaws and imperfections. No one cared to max their character before heading out into the dungeons because there was an enormous mix of people to run in to, whether it be a newbie who wanted to just kill some mongbats with you, or a PK who was trying to In Por Ylem you to death. Even the huge changes that made a character go from a powerhouse to a gimp overnight didn't really stop us from starting to train a new skill from scratch the next day. Everyone was kept on the same playing field because we never really knew what tomorrow would bring.

I'd like to say Ultima Online had no 'end-game'; the way I played Ultima the first day, up until the very last, was to just get out of town and see what would happen. Every time I logged in I never had a goal other than to have fun. If I ran into some of my thief buddies, we'd go stealing; if I found myself needing money badly, I'd go kill monsters. There was always something to do, always somebody new to run in to, and it never was the same thing twice, and that only works when there is a diverse balance of every type of player imaginable. MMOs today always seems to have a focus on only one certain aspect of a world, whether it be PvP, PvE, or being a furry. The next MMO that realizes the balance between having free-for-all PvP, fully-lootable corpses, and a safe enough stable for my neon horses, I'm in."

Originally posted by bunnyhopper

High end/rare items would tend to be acquired by more skilled (character and/or player) players. If someone is going to easily walk up to you and stomp on you then it is pretty clear that he to is a high end character and as such has indeed "put the time in".

If you are getting wiped out by a group well one would have to wonder what you are doing getting caught out by a gank as an experienced player with high end equipment to be honest.

Don't get me wrong I can see the issue in theory, but in general a lot of the counter arguments to full loot are just that, theoretical supposition. Because the reality of the case is that most high level/experience players who are getting rare items in games, items which can be annoying to lose, are not getting pk'd by some random passer by and losing them every 5 minutes.

*Sigh*, even a high level character can be taken down by a few noobs that attack at the right oppurtunity.

While you can have items that take a little while to get you can´t have the type of item most PvE games have in a full loot game. 

Ask any raider how long time he spent to get his gear, people just wouln't bother if they risked losing it. 

There is another reason PvP sandboxes don't have that type of items BTW and that is because they are so incredible unbalanced that they take out a lot of fun from the PvP.

Originally posted by bunnyhopper

Originally posted by Torik

Originally posted by bunnyhopper

The reality of the situation is that some people cannot abide the idea that someone else can kill their character in a game unless they have given some form of prior formal invitation. The actual loss of items is not the problem per say, it's the fact that some guy/gal they don't know has killed them as opposed to an npc goblin or bugbear.

The loss of items magnifies the issue.  If I put a lot of time and effort into getting an item and then someone can just walk up to my character, kill it and take all I have worked on will seem quite wrong.  The PKer has not put the same amount of effort that I did but somehow he gets all the benefits of my work and I get nothing.   To someone with a work ethic this feels criminal.   Many people can't abandom that ingrained mindset just because it is a game. 

High end/rare items would tend to be acquired by more skilled (character and/or player) players. If someone is going to easily walk up to you and stomp on you then it is pretty clear that he to is a high end character and as such has indeed "put the time in".

 

In a sandbox game players could be 'skilled' in different things.  If I am a high end Farmer and a high end Soldier walks up to me, he can take all I produced without ever skilling up any Farming.  At the same time I cannot use my Farming skills to take all his loot from Soldiering.   I could only succeed as a Farmer if I also skilled up as a Soldier.  A Soldier would not have to have any other skills and could just take everything he wanted from non-Soldier characters.

For this reason I do not believe that sandbox elements belong in a FFA PvP game since PvP will always marginalize the other activities.  Full loot only makes the imbalance more pronounced.