Yeah - the future is behind the balanced mix of theme-park experience and old-school MMO features: housing, meaningful and useful crafting, socialising, adventuring - ect.

It's not fun being ganked over and over again while you try to mine with your non-combat character. What might be funny - some zones with special rewards (e.g. veins with special resources, required for the guilds only - not worthy for individual players) where the player killing is not prohibited, so there would be organised mining raids with guards and all to fight for guild resourses... maybe even putting some quick to build fortifications around the mining site to avoid being overrun by the enemy raid quickly. The possibilities are limitless and this won't harm the new players or those who like to wander alone...

Originally posted by DaddyDark

Yeah - the future is behind the balanced mix of theme-park experience and old-school MMO features: housing, meaningful and useful crafting, socialising, adventuring - ect.

It's not fun being ganked over and over again while you try to mine with your non-combat character. What might be funny - some zones with special rewards (e.g. veins with special resources, required for the guilds only - not worthy for individual players) where the player killing is not prohibited, so there would be organised mining raids with guards and all to fight for guild resourses... maybe even putting some quick to build fortifications around the mining site to avoid being overrun by the enemy raid quickly. The possibilities are limitless and this won't harm the new players or those who like to wander alone...

I think that while mining/gathering you should receive some sort of buff. It would help you shake off that first hit and really pure crafters who aren't in armor shoudl be able to outrun anyone wearing battle gear.

Anyone know that awkward moment when you've totally crushed your opponent, and you and your friends are sitting on their corpses simultaneously realzing that everything is about to become really dull?

Originally posted by moosecatlol

Anyone know that awkward moment when you've totally crushed your opponent, and you and your friends are sitting on their corpses simultaneously realzing that everything is about to become really dull?

Yes, it lasts but a moment before you and your friends go look for more opponents while being completely smug.

The way I see it, sandbox games are mostly about freedom of choice and realism within the established virtual world.

If you're out  on a hunting expedition and some peasant comes by and starts insulting you for no good reason, or tries to steal your game, the sandbox ruleset should allow you to deal with that person as you would most probably want to were you a ruthless medieval warrior or a blood thirsty Uruk Hai in Middle Earth, ie by thrusting your 5 foot, 2 handed axe in his face and then stripping him of all his belongings. Realism.

People generally believe that FFA PvP attracts the worste kind of people. I believe the exact opposite to be true. Environments where people are allowed to behave in the worste possible way without fear of any repercussion whatsoever is where the bad people go.

If everyone in the world has the power to dish out his own justice, then trust me, people think twice before behaving like jerks.

Of course this goes both ways. If someone has an advantage over you and is more powerful than you, he might very well be tempted to abuse that power and make your "virtual" life miserable. This obviously happens alot in these types of games BUT you can always organize, call for help, and retribute!

There's the beauty of the sandbox game.

In my opinion, but it's just that, FFA PvP is the key element in a sandbox game without which the game no longer makes any sense.

Originally posted by DaddyDark
It's not fun being ganked over and over again while you try to mine with your non-combat character

Of course not. What is fun, however, is finding a way to make sure it doesn't happen again. Ask guild mates to escort you (opportunity to socialize), go find a safer spot to mine (opportunity to explore), give up mining for the time being, whip out your combat toon and stalk your aggressor until you're in a favorable enough position to dish out some vengeance (opportunity to PvP).

FFA PvP creates obstacles, obstacles that need to be surpassed. Figuring out how to  beat those obstacles is where the fun is, to some of us at least. The great thing, unlike in themeparks, is that these obstacles are totally unpredictable because they're generated by other players.

Most of you see gankers as a nuisance, I see them as an event :)

Originally posted by raistlinm

I remember being so excited for the development of Darkfall online then all of a sudden I kept hearing this phrase from some other fans "FFA PVP" at the time I wasn't sure what people were talking about. After a few weeks of back and forth about what should be in and what shouldn't I learned from the attitude of fans of the idea what it meant and that was all I needed to learn that regardless of all the other cool things that seemed to be a part of the games plan this was going to be something that kept me away from playing the game.

From there the conversation was never again about anything remotely sandbox it was strictly about FFA PVP and it's hard to blame the devs for taking up those peoples cause because they were such the vocal group of people.

Let me end by saying this those who advocate and fight for FFA PVP are rarey if ever the people who praise other features of sandbox gameplay.  My experience is those who want FFA PVP don't care about anything other than FFA PVP they don['t care aboout community involvment (unless we are talking about guilld runs of ganking/war) they don't care about crafting,building, or community relations for that matter.

To me FFA PVP is a feature unto itself that has little to nothing to do with actual sandbox gameplay.

This^  I'd love to see a good sandbox MMO, but not enough to put up with forced PvP.

Originally posted by Charas

Originally posted by DaddyDark

It's not fun being ganked over and over again while you try to mine with your non-combat character

Of course not. What is fun, however, is finding a way to make sure it doesn't happen again. Ask guild mates to escort you (opportunity to socialize), go find a safer spot to mine (opportunity to explore), give up mining for the time being, whip out your combat toon and stalk your aggressor until you're in a favorable enough position to dish out some vengeance (opportunity to PvP).

FFA PvP creates obstacles, obstacles that need to be surpassed. Figuring out how to  beat those obstacles is where the fun is, to some of us at least. The great thing, unlike in themeparks, is that these obstacles are totally unpredictable because they're generated by other players.

Most of you see gankers as a nuisance, I see them as an event :)

 

I've played Ultima - actually what you would like to do when ganked is - switch to a combat character, level the combat skills up and even then you can't really protect yourself, cause gankers usually travel in groups and have lots of experience killing players like you, as they have spent all the time you crafted doing combat. So... the only way is to group up with others ... The whole thing really limits the versatility of the gameplay. The reason why many people want to play the sandbox games is because they don't want to limit their experience to the PvE and PvP combat, they want to travel, to craft, to build houses...  but as soon as there is unlimited FFA PvP - the game quickly transforms into the fighting/ganking grounds... it also sets up the hierarchy in which combat is better than crafting as a good fighter can kill the crafter and steal his resources, but not the vice versa... furthermore - game devs looked at this and decided that it is because players really WANT to fight more than to craft - so games like WoW made everything except combat and raiding something little extra ... but the truth is - the gankers were the reason everybody else HAD TO get involved in combat... instead of regulating zones like I described above - most modern MMOs decide there should be only combat left... Really really sad.

Originally posted by Charas

The way I see it, sandbox games are mostly about freedom of choice and realism within the established virtual world.

If you're out  on a hunting expedition and some peasant comes by and starts insulting you for no good reason, or tries to steal your game, the sandbox ruleset should allow you to deal with that person as you would most probably want to were you a ruthless medieval warrior or a blood thirsty Uruk Hai in Middle Earth, ie by thrusting your 5 foot, 2 handed axe in his face and then stripping him of all his belongings. Realism.

People generally believe that FFA PvP attracts the worste kind of people. I believe the exact opposite to be true. Environments where people are allowed to behave in the worste possible way without fear of any repercussion whatsoever is where the bad people go.

If everyone in the world has the power to dish out his own justice, then trust me, people think twice before behaving like jerks.

Of course this goes both ways. If someone has an advantage over you and is more powerful than you, he might very well be tempted to abuse that power and make your "virtual" life miserable. This obviously happens alot in these types of games BUT you can always organize, call for help, and retribute!

There's the beauty of the sandbox game.

In my opinion, but it's just that, FFA PvP is the key element in a sandbox game without which the game no longer makes any sense.

 

"If you're out  on a hunting expedition and some peasant comes by and starts insulting you for no good reason, or tries to steal your game, the sandbox ruleset should allow you to deal with that person as you would most probably want to were you a ruthless medieval warrior or a blood thirsty Uruk Hai in Middle Earth, ie by thrusting your 5 foot, 2 handed axe in his face and then stripping him of all his belongings. Realism."

yup, i am all for realism. therefore after you did this, peasants "superiors" will come and either permakill you or throw you in jail for years of RL time.

"People generally believe that FFA PvP attracts the worste kind of people. I believe the exact opposite to be true. Environments where people are allowed to behave in the worste possible way without fear of any repercussion whatsoever is where the bad people go.

If everyone in the world has the power to dish out his own justice, then trust me, people think twice before behaving like jerks."

yeah, thats one of the usual FFA PVP fans "arguments", but is completely false.

reason is simple - more or less no game (with maybe exception of haven & hearth) has serious enough consequences for being a jerk. because if it would have, most of the people would not play such game ("why should i "play" a game where i do spend most of time in jail?). those same ffa pvp fans would cry how the game is ruined by punishment for their crimes.

that you can always get "revenge" by killing and looting them? yeah right - thats really revenge, when as someone who would prefer building/crafting/harvesting/pve you can "punish" pvp fan by pvping him.

The major mistake that most developers make when implementing FFA PvP into a sandbox is lack of consequences.  A Sandbox as the article stated is a world created for the players to populate and evolve.  In order for this to be a success it must by definition mirror the real world in some aspects, and in the real world there are real consequences if you just walk up to a helpless kid and smash him across the head with a baseball bat ( in the virtual space of course this equates to griefing, noob killing or whatever you wish to call it ).   CCP went partway with Eve towards adding the consequences, with Concorde showing up to blow the crap out of you if you grief in high-sec space without good reason ( kill rights or war ) but they didn't take it far enough and that is why we see so much griefing going on in high-sec.  I just used Eve as an example but the concept is valid in any sandbox setting. 

The hard part of this is in deciding just how severe those consequences are; not severe enough and they do not act as the intended detterent, too severe and you lose players as the perp now sees himself as the victim and rage-quits.  Without these consequences in place though you end up with a low pop sandbox struggling to survive ( Darkfall ) where 90% of the sandbox elements are ignored in favour of the FFA bloodbath and grieffest.

Originally posted by Charas

The way I see it, sandbox games are mostly about freedom of choice and realism within the established virtual world.

If you're out  on a hunting expedition and some peasant comes by and starts insulting you for no good reason, or tries to steal your game, the sandbox ruleset should allow you to deal with that person as you would most probably want to were you a ruthless medieval warrior or a blood thirsty Uruk Hai in Middle Earth, ie by thrusting your 5 foot, 2 handed axe in his face and then stripping him of all his belongings. Realism.

People generally believe that FFA PvP attracts the worste kind of people. I believe the exact opposite to be true. Environments where people are allowed to behave in the worste possible way without fear of any repercussion whatsoever is where the bad people go.

If everyone in the world has the power to dish out his own justice, then trust me, people think twice before behaving like jerks.

Of course this goes both ways. If someone has an advantage over you and is more powerful than you, he might very well be tempted to abuse that power and make your "virtual" life miserable. This obviously happens alot in these types of games BUT you can always organize, call for help, and retribute!

There's the beauty of the sandbox game.

In my opinion, but it's just that, FFA PvP is the key element in a sandbox game without which the game no longer makes any sense.

 

 

Actually, the medievil times was the same as the cowboys days in america, and both were BLOODY!

Sure, the avg person could defend themselves against bad guys, but, this is not hollywood, the bad guys usually ran in packs. That means the avg person didnt stand a chance.

Thats when you got stuff like,  knights and the possey, because the only way to really defeat the bad guys was to group up and hunt them down. You cant always do this in a MMO.

I've doing this for years now, and the only time I seen a griefer out alone, is if he was a high level toon in a low level area, ganking lowbies. Otherwise there were always more than one, working together to grief people. In EVE you saw it all the time.

There is only one way of dealing with FFA full loot PvP, and that is not to have it, because it brings out the worst in people, everytime!!

Originally posted by Adalwulff

Originally posted by Charas

The way I see it, sandbox games are mostly about freedom of choice and realism within the established virtual world.

If you're out  on a hunting expedition and some peasant comes by and starts insulting you for no good reason, or tries to steal your game, the sandbox ruleset should allow you to deal with that person as you would most probably want to were you a ruthless medieval warrior or a blood thirsty Uruk Hai in Middle Earth, ie by thrusting your 5 foot, 2 handed axe in his face and then stripping him of all his belongings. Realism.

People generally believe that FFA PvP attracts the worste kind of people. I believe the exact opposite to be true. Environments where people are allowed to behave in the worste possible way without fear of any repercussion whatsoever is where the bad people go.

If everyone in the world has the power to dish out his own justice, then trust me, people think twice before behaving like jerks.

Of course this goes both ways. If someone has an advantage over you and is more powerful than you, he might very well be tempted to abuse that power and make your "virtual" life miserable. This obviously happens alot in these types of games BUT you can always organize, call for help, and retribute!

There's the beauty of the sandbox game.

In my opinion, but it's just that, FFA PvP is the key element in a sandbox game without which the game no longer makes any sense.

 

 

 

Actually, the medievil times was the same as the cowboys days in america, and both were BLOODY!

Sure, the avg person could defend themselves against bad guys, but, this is not hollywood, the bad guys usually ran in packs. That means the avg person didnt stand a chance.

Thats when you got stuff like,  knights and the possey, because the only way to really defeat the bad guys was to group up and hunt them down. You cant always do this in a MMO.

I've doing this for years now, and the only time I seen a griefer out alone, is if he was a high level toon in a low level area, ganking lowbies. Otherwise there were always more than one, working together to grief people. In EVE you saw it all the time.

There is only one way of dealing with FFA full loot PvP, and that is not to have it, because it brings out the worst in people, everytime!!

Yes and the WoW global chat is just full of upstanding citizens right?

"I'm not sure what popularized the idea of a sandbox MMORPG having a free-for-all PVP component, "

ever heard of UO ?

Originally posted by TruthXHurts

Originally posted by Adalwulff

Originally posted by Charas

The way I see it, sandbox games are mostly about freedom of choice and realism within the established virtual world.

If you're out  on a hunting expedition and some peasant comes by and starts insulting you for no good reason, or tries to steal your game, the sandbox ruleset should allow you to deal with that person as you would most probably want to were you a ruthless medieval warrior or a blood thirsty Uruk Hai in Middle Earth, ie by thrusting your 5 foot, 2 handed axe in his face and then stripping him of all his belongings. Realism.

People generally believe that FFA PvP attracts the worste kind of people. I believe the exact opposite to be true. Environments where people are allowed to behave in the worste possible way without fear of any repercussion whatsoever is where the bad people go.

If everyone in the world has the power to dish out his own justice, then trust me, people think twice before behaving like jerks.

Of course this goes both ways. If someone has an advantage over you and is more powerful than you, he might very well be tempted to abuse that power and make your "virtual" life miserable. This obviously happens alot in these types of games BUT you can always organize, call for help, and retribute!

There's the beauty of the sandbox game.

In my opinion, but it's just that, FFA PvP is the key element in a sandbox game without which the game no longer makes any sense.

 

 

 

Actually, the medievil times was the same as the cowboys days in america, and both were BLOODY!

Sure, the avg person could defend themselves against bad guys, but, this is not hollywood, the bad guys usually ran in packs. That means the avg person didnt stand a chance.

Thats when you got stuff like,  knights and the possey, because the only way to really defeat the bad guys was to group up and hunt them down. You cant always do this in a MMO.

I've doing this for years now, and the only time I seen a griefer out alone, is if he was a high level toon in a low level area, ganking lowbies. Otherwise there were always more than one, working together to grief people. In EVE you saw it all the time.

There is only one way of dealing with FFA full loot PvP, and that is not to have it, because it brings out the worst in people, everytime!!

Yes and the WoW global chat is just full of upstanding citizens right?

 

No, that game is full of asshats, in fact, I no longer play any Blizzard games, because the community has gone to hell.

I get the feeling that you completly missed the point of my post....

"FFA", "PvP", and "MMORPG" in reality can't be used in the same sentence, no matter how much we all squeeze our eyes shut and chant "yes they can, yes they can, yes they can".

Citing one of the examples given by the OP, that being Chess, the field of capability is levelled between contestants, as has been true of games for millenia.  In an MMO however (warped red-headed step-child that it is in relation to PvP), it's all about gear and stats. So "pvp" in MMO's is more about numbers packed in the character model, not the player.

Now, if we are talking about an FPS where people zone in with standard stats and gear where you actually have to aim to hit something, now you can start talking about the Player Dynamic as dominant. If it's the Player Dynamic that's dominant it automatically makes FFA relevant as a play-style because no one is ever (relatively speaking) in a position of being helpless.  You have reasonable ability to protect yourself, and there is reasonable expectation of danger if you consider attacking someone.

In an MMO where World PvP is defined by cap level players riding roughshod over lower levels unrestrained, there's not a lot of PvP to be had for anyone else, and "FFA" as a global world condition pretty much impossible to consider.

Free For All PvP has nothing to do with Sandbox MMO play. FFA PvP is actually better suited for Themepark MMOs. The idea of making the entire game FFA PvP like a gaint anything goes sandbox never works, it never did work, and it never will work either. In order to make FFA PvP paletable and accessable to the masses it has to nested within a larger circle of Faction style PvP and safe areas. In order to encourage people to get out of the safe areas the game has to put a lot of goodies out in the pvp zone. Have the main quest leveling path go striaght through the PvP territory with the slower leveling outside of pvp areas. You could still level and avoid the pvp but it would be much slower. Also put the bests harvests and best farming and best loot mobs in the contested area as well including PvE raid mobs. This is not a sandbox I am describing but a themepark.

The very best PvP I ever experienced was fighting over contested raid mobs in Everquest 2. That is holy of holys, the holy grail of MMO game play: Raiding and PvPing at the same time. It was a state of pure competition were one must test their PvE and PvP skills directly again other players for lasting rewards and server domination. The diagram I have here shows how that game was set up for a few expansions.

In pure theme park style there was progression based raiding where guilds of players would kill some easy raid mobs to get better gear for the harder raids. But in order to get the best raid loot guilds had to come out of their instances and pull a dangerous raid mob in the middle of a PvP area. Whenever the top guild went to pull contested it would attract all kinds of attention from lesser rival guilds. The lesser guilds would swarm the raiding guild with PvP while trying to wipe them so they can't kill the raid boss. Sometimes the raiders would kill the mob and the PvP and other times the raiders would wipe from all the PvP.

This fighting raid mobs and pvp'ing at the same time was a quirk that was likely created by accident as SoE did not preserve the original system because they didn't know what they had.

Originally posted by Charas

The way I see it, sandbox games are mostly about freedom of choice and realism within the established virtual world.

If you're out  on a hunting expedition and some peasant comes by and starts insulting you for no good reason, or tries to steal your game, the sandbox ruleset should allow you to deal with that person as you would most probably want to were you a ruthless medieval warrior or a blood thirsty Uruk Hai in Middle Earth, ie by thrusting your 5 foot, 2 handed axe in his face and then stripping him of all his belongings. Realism.

People generally believe that FFA PvP attracts the worste kind of people. I believe the exact opposite to be true. Environments where people are allowed to behave in the worste possible way without fear of any repercussion whatsoever is where the bad people go.

If everyone in the world has the power to dish out his own justice, then trust me, people think twice before behaving like jerks.

Of course this goes both ways. If someone has an advantage over you and is more powerful than you, he might very well be tempted to abuse that power and make your "virtual" life miserable. This obviously happens alot in these types of games BUT you can always organize, call for help, and retribute!

There's the beauty of the sandbox game.

In my opinion, but it's just that, FFA PvP is the key element in a sandbox game without which the game no longer makes any sense.

 

You can believe what you like, everyone knows that has played FFA PVP for any significant time it just does not work well.   Just look at Darkfall and MO, I consider both failures as they can't even hold the attention of the pvp crowd.  It does bring out some of the worst kind of people along with the good ones.  It only takes a few bad ones to ruin it for the majority.    Banding together is a myth.  By the time you have your group together the bad guys are gone.  

UO had to actually ban entire guilds because they were such jerks.  There is always someone willing to push the limits.

Take for example Eve, they have addressed FFA PVP by only allowing it in specific areas.  Their design has holes in it, but it works for the most part.   UO was a much better game when they added the non pvp area Trammel.   You still had to go to Felucca for the better things in the game, but could play unmolested by pvpers if you so chose.

So it resolves itself down to consequences without penalizing those that actually just want to teach a pest a lesson.   They have to be there to make people think twice about hassling others.  I have not seen any rulesets yet that have been successful, hence FFA PVP still ends up being a huge deterrent to having a large population to support a game.  Eve comes close, yet it still has major issues.

So lumping FFA PVP and sandbox is a bad idea because when you do, you will cause a major limit to your possible playerbase, hence why the avoidence by major labels from making sandbox games.

I love the idea of hybrid themeboxes and sandparks. I think PVP and Full Loot PVP are wonderful options. I like the idea of being able to flag yourself for either, and that being the only way you can use it against others. I like the idea of "safe zones" where even consensual pvp must take a break or move around, so that you can't harrass people by swordfighting in their faces (which some will do not for the sake of swordfighting their oponent, but to harrass the person who doesn't want to partake in a gankfest). I love the idea of open areas with environment conflict and adventure to partake in when you just want to kick back and enjoy a story that's been laid out for you, and I love the idea of being able to create your own storylines and adventures, and share them with others... (City of Heroes does a halfway decent job with this using their mission architect system. It feels like a clunky afterthough, mostly because it is a clunky afterthought, but it's still superleaps and bounds ahead of what many competitors offer for player generated content). I really miss the customizable housing in UO and SWG, though I would have preferred a method of implementation that didn't turn every patch of flat land into free for all virtual real estate. Something involving placement restriction radius dependent on local population, and maybe self-expanding zone space, could have really made that work better. Combine that with player generated adventure development and a highly customizable UI and command system, and I'd be sold.

        Sandbox seems to have different meaning to different people....Some interpret it as meaning "I can do anything at any time with no restrictions" while others see it as "I can do anything but none of it is very appealing"....This is often why FFA PVP is associated with sandbox because while there is alot todo nnone of it has any meaning and gets boring quick...... Personally I despise FFA PVP....I work too hard on my character to have some jerk/jerks kill me and take all my stuff....This type of player base tends to cater to the biggest idiots in gaming and personally I'd just as soon ahve nothing to do with them.

To be a sandbox you need also a few tools (like a little sand shovel)  to be able to do as you please. A FFA PvP destroy the concept of sandbox simply because every single tool and sand is turned to pvp...  And sandbox means the possibility of doing wharever you want, and not being linked to pvp if you dont want... SWG was a sandbox, for examble...

But the worst is the very elitist community, they are jerks in majority (not all), and sandbox imply on a vivid and mature community. The adrenaline of pvp ffa makes all goes to hell, its ganking, griefing and very fast the game lost it appeal to pvers, crafters and rpers...