Originally posted by Uhwop

EVE:  One of the few games that uses a subscription model, is a dyed in the wool sandbox right down to the economy, puts you in the role of a spaceship, has FFA pvp with full loot, and is one of only a very few MMO's with a subscription fee that has continued to see overall growth in the 9 years it's been live.  Let me repeat this.  It's one of only a few MMO's with a subscription model that continues to see overall growth in the 9 years it's been live.

Why does everyone who describes EVE leave out the full story and how it reached that level of success? It reached it by support, by true dedicated fan support, that success would be possible for any of these sandboxes if they received support to the extent EVE did. EVE had a very rocky start, it wasn't "developed to release quality" before it launched, it had huge network/game-play issues, and was a total shell of what it became.

People supported it even though it wasn't ready, had huge issues, etc.. because they wanted that game, this is how "indie" works in any other genre or interest. Gamers stopped being supporters and became "every day consumers".

Sandbox game A to Z

Full PvP

Full loot

Horrible PvE

Sandbox game, as rare as finding a bag of diamonds on the beach

PvE

Sci-fi sandbox game ON LAND, as rare as finding two bags of diamonds on the beach

PvE

All there is, is Anarchy Online (ancient), Ryzom (actually good) and there was SWG, but it died and was murdered

So two 3d sci-fi MMOs, that are sandbox, on land...Or the hundreds of sandbox MMOs as described in the beginning.

And only two fantasy sandbox 3d games with a PvE focus, that being Asheron's Call and Ultima Online...but those are ancient.

DayZ being an exception to a full loot, perma death game that I like...mostly cause I've been wanting a sandbox, open world, multiplayer/online zombie game for many years and it really works...but some consider it MMO and others don't.

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Originally posted by ltank

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Originally posted by Yalexy Games like DF, MO, etc have failed hard, as they didn't offer any security or PvE-content, simple as that. DF, MO, etc were nothing more then FFA shooters with huge maps basically, but that's not a sandbox. A sandbox needs to provide tools for the players to create content aswell as providing some readily available PvE.  

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MO's PvE was pretty non-existent sure, but the next patch is finally supposed to bring the more advanced AI they've wanted since the beginning such as the trolls picking up players and biting their heads off and minotaurs charging into players and knocking them down. Also I disagree that MMO is a FFA shooter, considering it probably has the most elaborate crafting system out there. Lastly I'm not sure people who would be into MO want security. The game is about to add better NPC guards controlled by the new aformentioned AI which will patrol cities and roads and could serve the security purpose you propose. But by no means do I think MO players want to turn the game into a carebear game.

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It has nothing to do with turning a game into a Hello-Kitty-Carebear-Land. You just need to offer "safer" zones for the players who are not that much interested in the PvP and rather do some PvE while contributing to the economy etc.
That's the reason why EvE is succesful and still going strong after 9 years. You can play EvE and feel like a part of the universe allthough you never engage in PvP. I know tons of crafters and mission-runners who are playing EvE for years in that regard, but they're no carebears, they're valuable players in the system as they contribute to the main-part of the game... the economy.

A player-driven economy is - imho - the most interesting part of a sandbox, all items are crafted by players and all items are prone to being destroyed sooner or later. You could even make a wonderful sandbox without any PvP at all, you just need to make sure, that items are being destroyed as fast as they enter the game, and that all these items require people to gather ressources and craft them, selling them on the market, trading with others etc.
The FFA PvP in EvE is one way to destroy massive amounts of items, but you could get the same result with a system of item-decay. Think a minute about it, what would happen, when your items would be completely destroyed after they've taken too much damage over the time. You can only repair an item so often until it breaks and becomes useless junk.
To make this work, you just need to change the loot from NPCs. Instead of items they'd drop ressources and the dungeon-bosses would drop epic ressources for the best items to be crafted.

ArcheAge will have an economy working this way, and there'll even be ressources you can grow and harvest instead of farming specific spawn-points. How awesome is that?

But back to your message... You can have both, PvE and FFA-PvP alongside without turning it into Hello Kitty Online. It's proven by EvE Online that it works and ArcheAge will show it aswell.

Originally posted by TheCrow2k

Just think about the concept of an actual themepark for a moment, they are full of rides & things to do, but could you enjoy spending an entire week in one, a month ?, a year ? 

Just think about the concept of an actual sandbox for a moment.  They are full of sand and you can create whatever you want, but could you enjoy spending an entire week in one?  A month?  A year?

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by TheCrow2k

Just think about the concept of an actual themepark for a moment, they are full of rides & things to do, but could you enjoy spending an entire week in one, a month ?, a year ? 

Just think about the concept of an actual sandbox for a moment.  They are full of sand and you can create whatever you want, but could you enjoy spending an entire week in one?  A month?  A year?

I didnt think I needed to state the obvious in my original post but perhaps you will recall I finished on this note:

Originally posted by TheCrow2k
-SNIP-

For longevity IMHO MMO's need a good blend of themepark (guided content) and sandbox (unguided content) throughout their games so that at end game they have enough to keep players playing without needing to hammer out new content at an impossible rate.

 

I wasnt arguing against themepark at all, I just used it as my main focus because the post I quoted was indicating that everyone loves themeparks and so all MMO's should be themeparks.

Originally posted by Distopia

Originally posted by Uhwop

EVE:  One of the few games that uses a subscription model, is a dyed in the wool sandbox right down to the economy, puts you in the role of a spaceship, has FFA pvp with full loot, and is one of only a very few MMO's with a subscription fee that has continued to see overall growth in the 9 years it's been live.  Let me repeat this.  It's one of only a few MMO's with a subscription model that continues to see overall growth in the 9 years it's been live.

Why does everyone who describes EVE leave out the full story and how it reached that level of success? It reached it by support, by true dedicated fan support, that success would be possible for any of these sandboxes if they recieved support to the extent EVE did. EVE had a very rocky start, it wasn't "developed to release quality" before it launched, it had huge network/game-play issues, and was a total shell of what it became.

People supported it even though it wasn't ready, had huge issues, etc.. because they wanted that game, this is how "indie" works in any other genre. Gamers stopped being supporters and became "every day consumers".

 You have to have an actual game first!

I supported MO for a year.  It's still doesn't function correctly, is missing most of it's features, and is riddled with bugs.  People are still supporting though, just not me at this phase of it's life.  That doesn't mean that 5 years from now it won't finally be a game worth investing in.

You can't expect hundreds of thousands of people to simply pay for something that is incomplete or in a lot of cases, simply not fun.  If there is no purpose, no content, or doesn't work properly, it's not going to attract anyone, and no one should be required to support them just because several years from now it MIGHT be worth something.

Nor does that mean there isn't a market for that sort of game.  It means that only people with balls enough to take the chance are small indipendant studios who would rather ATTEMPT TO MAKE A GOOD GAME, as apposed to caving in and just rehashing what's been done hundreds of times already.

A themepark has a guaranteed market, it's visible.  It's SAFE. 

20m people are playing themepark MMO's, and it has more to do with a market that caters to that kind of game, and less to do with there not being a market for sandboxes. 

Until a company comes along with real money, real development, real time, and real marketting, you can't say it's not possible.

Imagine if the Wright brothers gave up after the first attempt to fly, because they didn't do it right.  It's analogous to the MMO market. 

Except for this internet spacship game that continues to grow. 

Let me put it this way. 

A real sandbox MMO will give you EVERYTHING you find in a themepark.  Believe it or not, EVE provides all the same stuff you find in a themepark mmo, but with all of the freedom of a sandbox.

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Originally posted by Axehilt

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Originally posted by TheCrow2k Just think about the concept of an actual themepark for a moment, they are full of rides & things to do, but could you enjoy spending an entire week in one, a month ?, a year ? 

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Just think about the concept of an actual sandbox for a moment.  They are full of sand and you can create whatever you want, but could you enjoy spending an entire week in one?  A month?  A year?

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I enjoyed playing EvE for six years before I became bored of it, the nature of the game that let's you create your own stories, like waging wars against other alliances, playing the market, being the lone wolf looking for PvP around the universe, doing some PvE once in a while, exploring wormholes, crafting for profits, etc, etc, etc... In EvE you write history and make your name heard in so many different ways, and that's something you don't find in a themepark, especially when there's dozens of servers splitting up the community.

OTOH I've never stayed for longer then some six month in a themepark, as I've become bored very quickly after clearing the content, having all the shiny epics, left with nothing to do anymore. Themepark-MMOs are basically nothing else then RPGs with a multiplayer-mode. You play through the game one or two times and that's it.

Originally posted by Uhwop

 

 You have to have an actual game first!

I supported MO for a year.  It's still doesn't function correctly, is missing most of it's features, and is riddled with bugs.  People are still supporting though, just not me at this phase of it's life.  That doesn't mean that 5 years from now it won't finally be a game worth investing in.

You can't expect hundreds of thousands of people to simply pay for something that is incomplete or in a lot of cases, simply not fun.  If there is no purpose, no content, or doesn't work properly, it's not going to attract anyone, and no one should be required to support them just because several years from now it MIGHT be worth something.

Nor does that mean there isn't a market for that sort of game.  It means that only people with balls enough to take the chance are small indipendant studios who would rather ATTEMPT TO MAKE A GOOD GAME, as apposed to caving in and just rehashing what's been done hundreds of times already.

A themepark has a guaranteed market, it's visible.  It's SAFE. 

20m people are playing themepark MMO's, and it has more to do with a market that caters to that kind of game, and less to do with there not being a market for sandboxes. 

Until a company comes along with real money, real development, real time, and real marketting, you can't say it's not possible.

Imagine if the Wright brothers gave up after the first attempt to fly, because they didn't do it right.  It's analogous to the MMO market. 

Except for this internet spacship game that continues to grow. 

 

 

Let me put it this way. 

A real sandbox MMO will give you EVERYTHING you find in a themepark.  Believe it or not, EVE provides all the same stuff you find in a themepark mmo, but with all of the freedom of a sandbox.

True it does also take a game people want to support, I have nothing against MO due to my only experience with it being the Open Beta version of it. SO I have no idea how that's actually come along since. It doesn't seem to have many fans at all though.

You're also right that the Genre also caters to the other sub-genre far more.

I'm not saying every game is going to be worth supporting or should be supported. Only that that's how EVE got there, and that I doubt we'll ever see that again in this genre.

I agree with that last part. SWG had more than any themepark has to offer and everything they do offer, in abundance. I doubt we'll see that again for a long time (Waiting on AA for that).

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by TheCrow2k

Just think about the concept of an actual themepark for a moment, they are full of rides & things to do, but could you enjoy spending an entire week in one, a month ?, a year ? 

Just think about the concept of an actual sandbox for a moment.  They are full of sand and you can create whatever you want, but could you enjoy spending an entire week in one?  A month?  A year?

I get so tired of this misconception........... have you ever tried building a castle in a sandbox? Never worked out to well without water which is why most people reserved building sand castles on the beach.

The pull of the sandbox was that it offered more possibilities than say a slide a swing or a seesaw. The swing, seesaw and the slide offer few predetermined activities while the sandbox activities were limited only by your imagination. Take your construction toys out and play builder, GI Joes and play war, burry stuff, play pirates and look for burried treasure, etc.

Why you young guys want to take a term we used and turn it into something that doesn't even make sense. I mean sure, if we were reffering to a beach you might have a point..... but again.... try building anything in the sandboxes we had growing up lol.

Originally posted by Distopia

Originally posted by Nevulus

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by AdamTM

Originally posted by Quirhid
 

So now that you are done belittling everyone and their opinion and taste, do you have any arguments besides your "feeling" and the absence of evidence.

Because the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

So if I'm saying that there is no flying spaghetti monster, I need to prove there really isn't one?

The ball is in your court, man. You need to prove that there is one. You need to prove that there is a sandbox crowd worth making an AAA MMORPG.

So are you the almighty godfather of MMOS? Why does anyone have to prove anything to you? Are you some multi-millionaire investor, because last time I checked investors with large capital go about doing their headhunting by different means, not trolling forums.

Gotta love responses like this which totally ignore what the person was responding to and in turn asks these redundant nonsensical questions. I'm a sandbox fan like many here, yet I can see how insignificant we are to the overall genre. We're a niche within a niche you can't get much more drowned out than that, unless you're a mute with no fingers to type with.

 "don't feed the trolls"

redundant nonsensical questions in a redundant nonsensical topic. Goes hand -n- hand <3

Themepark vs Sandbox...... who cares. Do you think when creating UO or EQ the devs were worried about being labeled a sandbox or themepark experience? No, it was about having great gameplay, a massive world with a multitude of players. It's just that simple. Themepark, nor sandbox dictate a great game, engaging gameplay experiences do.

But instead of actual ideas and productive discussions we get ridiculous debates about "this vs that" which continue to segment the genre until it becomes a dilluted cespool of rehashed "next best idea" clone games, We will end up with pay-to-play lobby games. Heck, we even had a thread recently wanting to do away with the whole MASSIVE world in mmos, and instead have instant leveling, and small scale structured pvp instances. A freaking console FPS is what it sounds like to me.

It's the whole "gang mentality" highschool drama that fuels these ridiculous topics backed by a "my game is better than yours" attitude.

I think it is at least 1/5 of the total mmo players.

That is pretty massive imo.

Make a poll though or you are just talking shit.

Originally posted by GrayGhost79

Why you young guys want to take a term we used and turn it into something that doesn't even make sense. I mean sure, if we were reffering to a beach you might have a point..... but again.... try building anything in the sandboxes we had growing up lol.

 

 

The term had an original meaning in relation to games, that much is true but it's not just young people who have taken that term and turned it on it's head. It came from older RTS games and sImulation games, modes that had no campaign and were freeform were dubbed Sandbox modes. Since then it's been twisted to mean so many different things in relation to games. Starting long ago.

We could get into whether they used the term based on the game-play or freedom if we want, but I don't see it going anywhere but loose wiki references or something.

Originally posted by Nevulus

 

 "don't feed the trolls"

redundant nonsensical questions in a redundant nonsensical topic. Goes hand -n- hand <3

 

Themepark vs Sandbox...... who cares. Do you think when creating UO or EQ the devs were worried about being labeled a sandbox or themepark experience? No, it was about having great gameplay, a massive world with a multitude of players. It's just that simple. Themepark, nor sandbox dictate a great game, engaging gameplay experiences do.

 

But instead of actual ideas and productive discussions we get ridiculous debates about "this vs that" which continue to segment the genre until it becomes a dilluted cespool of rehashed "next best idea" clone games, We will end up with pay-to-play lobby games. Heck, we even had a thread recently wanting to do away with the whole MASSIVE world in mmos, and instead have instant leveling, and small scale structured pvp instances. A freaking console FPS is what it sounds like to me.

It's the whole "gang mentality" highschool drama that fuels these ridiculous topics backed by a "my game is better than yours" attitude.

I agree wholeheartedly here. The labels have become tedious subjects at this point, and you're right that devs had no thought about these labels when they were designing these games. They most likely still don't, labels typically are a fandom creation, not an artistic one.

I'd like to point out another game.

Lineage 2

A lot of people consider it a sandbox MMO, I'm not sure if I agree or not.  However, the game was less themepark then most MMO's today.  There was a lot of freedom in the game to do a variety of things, which is why I think a lot of people consider it a sandbox MMO as apposed to a themepark. 

Anyways.

It's the only MMO that was ever comparable to WoW in subscription numbers.  Most people don't seem to realize this, mostly because it wasn't that big in the US, that L2 actually had something near 12 million people playing it at one point.

Yes, it was primarilly Asians, but so is WoW.

Which may also have some correlation to the fact that the only sandbox games in develoment with real financial backing, are coming out of asia. 

It's a small niche unless you take away FFA PVP looting

Originally posted by FrodoFragins

It's a small niche unless you take away FFA PVP looting

 No it's not.  It's a small niche if you only count a single part of the world, the west.

The reality is, games are global these days.

Originally posted by Quirhid

Indeed! I'm calling BS on the notion that there is this mythical mass of players that want a sandbox virtual world MMO. If there was one, I would hear about it, devs would see it, and there would be games for that crowd. As it stands, there's hardly one, and it has been like that for so long that merely saying there hasn't been the right one yet is not going to cut it. Many have tried, many have failed and even if these games were any good they would've showed much more interest from the public, don't you think?

How can you have a "massive" virtual world when you only have a handful of players to fill it. And how can you get funding to something that has such a small audience. You are doomed to wander from indie game to indie game...

Admit it. You are to rest of the MMORPG players what LARPers are to P&P role players. "Regular people" snicker at people who play D&D but everyone laughs at LARPers (no offense meant - but they do).

Ben "Yahtzee" Crosshaw hit the nail in the head: -"Eve players are to nerds what nerds are to normal people."

Even if some recent themeparks have failed or will fail in your eyes, I'm quite confident in saying that there will be no major shift towards sandboxes of any sort. People still love themeparks - they just don't like shitty games, thats all.

Lol...you are 100% wrong...nuff said

True. The mases that like themepark mmo's, and aren't too particular might be likened to those that prefer McDonalds.  Then there are those that are more mmo entertainment nutritious conscience , who prefer fine dining in a sandbox.

The idea of  "sandbox" vs "themepark" is a myth.  

People need to play Asheron's Call.

The problem with the 'sandbox' crowd is that even if they existed and were huge there is really no great agme out there to prove it.  When Starcraft 2 came out it showed there was an RTS crowd something that Electronic Arts (Command and Conquer) felt no longer existed.

Minecraft is a very low budget very cheap game.  Likely a lot of people who bought this game were not exactly fans of "sandbox" games.  The same is true of Terraria and Gary's Mod.