Originally posted by apocoluster

  Disagree.  Give me somthing to relax with after a long day of work.  Sandbox games for me seem to be essentially a 2nd job.  I want to have fun on the few remaining hours that are available to me between Dinner and bedtime.   Rather than sitting in line waiting for Doctor buffs so I can hunt HQ times for my Armorcrafter machines, or suck  vibrant sweat off of beasts with dozens of others to sell to crafters or Down load my Millionth Veldspar rock...I want to be told to walk 50 feet and kill 10 rats.  Thank you.

 

Then play the myriad of MMOs on the market that suit your style of gaming? A lot of MMORPGs are time investments, they always have been. I can't say I'd want to spend $15 a month on a game I can "complete" in a week or so. If you're going to claim that games should suit your limited amount of playing time, I say a game's scope shouldn't be limited by those who are unable/unwilling to invest time and effort. The door swings both ways. You're also telling me that leveling up your character, gearing your character, grinding for levels/gold, running the raid treadmill isn't time consuming? It sure as hell is! These sort of "commitments" are found and required (in order to be viable in both PVE and PVP) in practically every themepark MMO in existence. Not to mention, the way a lot of themeparks are structured, you have to constantly be on the same page as your friends in terms of quests and zones, or you'll find yourself being left behind.

You said what would be the point in creating a world when the majority of gamers would ignore it? Let me ask you this, do you know that for certain? I certainly don't. How many recent, AAA sandboxes/sandparks have there been? Certainly not enough to make that sort of assessment. For a lot of people, WoW was their first MMO experience. Subscribers have either been playing it since release, or have hopped between different, but similar games. Because of that, they've never really been exposed to MMOs that offer more freedom or have a different design philosophy. Why? For the last 7 years or so, everyone has been chasing WoW's shadow. This resulted in a wave of derivative MMOs that continue to flood and dominate the market. If there were more options available (backed by bigger companies), maybe these people would find those sort of games interesting and it would spawn a whole new fanbase. Who knows? Like others have said, a lot of recent gamers have been conditioned to expect combat, combat and more combat while they travel from point A to point B.

Choice. That's all I ever ask for.

Originally posted by Kenze

Originally posted by Waybackwhen
Agreed OP. We have enough theme parks, its time for a virtual world to play in.

 

whats wrong with Xyson or Second Life? they both seem to offer what you guys are looking for. I think you sandboxer are just like us themeparkers.. we cant be satisfied.

Yeah but every theme park mmo player thinks ever mmo should cater to them. Just saying you guys have enough theme parks to keep you busy for a long time. People who love sandboxes are stuck with mediocre sandbox mmos. 

---

Originally posted by Neherun

Its called freedom, that guy wanted you killed, so he killed you.

---

I am sorry to inform you but that is not what freedom is.

Freedom implies there is equal right for those who are unwilling to fight as those who are willing.

Originally posted by Aelious
Muffins

Yeah, why wouldn't they? I see the difference between sandbox and themepark as what I can do, not what I see.

yeah,  that was kind of a dick comment.  sorry.  i like having some sand park elements in games.  i could never getting into the terraforming and building side of sandbox games.  but i can see how some people can.  i've played xyson,  although very briefly but some of the houses and homesteads people have built in that game are incredible.  it may not have the best graphics,  but i always prefer gameplay over graphics. 

out of curiosity is xyson missing certain elements that keeps people from playing it?  or is it simply cause it looks dated?

Originally posted by muffins89

Originally posted by Aelious
Muffins

Yeah, why wouldn't they? I see the difference between sandbox and themepark as what I can do, not what I see.

yeah,  that was kind of a dick comment.  sorry.  i like having some sand park elements in games.  i could never getting into the terraforming and building side of sandbox games.  but i can see how some people can.  i've played xyson,  although very briefly but some of the houses and homesteads people have built in that game are incredible.  it may not have the best graphics,  but i always prefer gameplay over graphics. 

 

out of curiosity is xyson missing certain elements that keeps people from playing it?  or is it simply cause it looks dated?

Look at it this way. Say you're a big fan of themepark MMOs, but you don't like the tradtional fantasy setting. You can turn to SWTOR, STO, DCUO, CoX, etc. Perhaps you prefer the art style of Rift over WoW. See where I'm getting at? There are a lot of themeparks out there to choose from. You can't just list one of the few examples of a sandbox-esque game and go, "Hey sandbox fans, here's one option available to you. What do you mean you don't like it, it's the style of game you're asking for!"  Like I said above, a lot of the more recent sandbox/sandpark MMOs are underfunded, unpolished, lack support and are a bit bland because of it. The best way to alleviate these issues is with money and man power, which most of these sandbox games just don't have.

Originally posted by Aelious
Muffins

You are further along than me in expanding your horizons, I've never played Xyson hehe. I've known about it though. The reason I haven't played it is because while it seems to offer a full sandbox experience it doesn't have other elements I enjoy in an MMO. I'm definitely in the "sandpark" crowd though so that may be the reason.

lol.  i hated it.  i spent the first 3 hours collecting grass and making it into string.  then i just wandered around and looked at all the houses previous players had built.  the whole time wondering how long they to gather grass in order to graduate to the next crafting material,  what ever that is. 

Agree with the op. I want a world to explore, not a mindless theme park to ride.

OP, I think you've got some food for thought in all these posts. Obviously, not everyone wants a world. And of those who do, it's divided on what to put in that world.

It takes all kinds of people to make a world. See, we've got one right here... ;)

Yes I would like a world.

Seems a lot of people here are saying that they prefer games over worlds.  My response to that is, go play your games, because there are hundreds of them.  

Can you find it in your heart to give us ONE world?  Would it somehow make your life meaningless if you allowed others to have something that they enjoy in the MMO space?  

It doesn't matter, as long as the vast majority of gamers are okay with cheap thrills and dumbed down content, developers will never try to appease such a 'niche' crowd.

As taken from a 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 to 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 as ever. 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 something entirely weird. 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 tom_gore

Us "Worlds, not Games" guys have currently ZERO viable choices if we want anything that isn't full loot FFA PvP or made by incompetent and/or underbudgeted dev teams.

Originally posted by Arclan

Agree with the op. I want a world to explore, not a mindless theme park to ride.

Building and running a virtual world adds much more difficulty for the developers than setting up a more ordered game.   If the elements called for drive away more people than they'll bring in, you will have to accept 'cheaper' versions of virtual worlds.  They cost more to do, and are harder to maintain.  Thus there are fewer of them.   And since the ones that are out there aren't supported well,  the incentive to do more of them is not there.  

You can wait for one of the great sandbox hopes to come in (archeage, eqnext, wod, etc), and maybe that will do the trick for you.   But these types of games are years in development.   You'll have to wait. 

Seeing the complaints about every single element of gaming (graphics not good enough, animations bad, an instance spotted, PvP too open, PvP too narrow, too many elves, not enough elves, etc), it's not a given that any particular iteration will get enough support to be economically viable.  

Originally posted by monstermmo

I find Sandbox games boring and pointless. "Do what you want"? What exactly is there to do? walk around and collect wood if i "want" to? lol Yeah right, no, no that is not for me. I dont want to boot up a game and collect wood. 

I love exploring, i love it, but i do want a goal and a goal in a game is not "do what you want" when theres no content that actually offers anything i want to do. 

Games need direction otherwise theyre pointless and boring. Some people like pointless and boring thats cool, but i think most people do not enjoy pointless and boring.

Most "do what you want" refers to open world PvP and collecting materials. While a more linear MMO or game offers both that and actual goals, a purpose.

 

Kingdoms of Amalur is a perfect example of a linear but huge beautiful amazing world but still has ton of content and actual goals other than "do what you want." I hate seeing this "do what you want" when describing sandbox games because theres nothing to freakin do in them. Every single time i see that description im like ok these guys simply dont have content.

The difference really in KoA is that you can do the quests if and when you want to, or just explore and kill which would probably end up in also fulfulling quests giving it more meaning.

Please tell us which sandbox games you have played for any length of time, so we can try to understand what in THE HELL you are talking about.    Thanks.

Originally posted by BadSpock

Originally posted by Kenze

Originally posted by Neherun

Originally posted by Thane

you wanna know why? because people are cheaters, exploiters, destroyers. not crafters, explorers and gatherers.

if they would build a free to roam world people would find a way to destroy it, so they could get the best stuff with the least work - as always.

it's not as simple as you think, no matter how many words you use to describe it.

Naturally, if you decide to let them take it, they will. That's the issue, people don't want to lose anything, but they don't have what it takes to keep everything. Then they want bunch of artifical barriers to protect them, and the vicious cycle of instancing and roller coaster rides begun.

 

yeah cause nothing is more fun than a survival of the fittest, death sport,penal colony world filled with crafters and politicians...

Exactly.

You know what I like to do in Skyrim these days?

Sneak around cities and towns, stealing whatever isn't chained down, and assassinating NPCs in their sleep (or in the case of guards, while they are walking lol.)

You know what Skyrim Online would look like?

Oh, jeeze. I just wanted to come to this town and bank - but the tellers are all dead. The guards are all dead. OK let's try another city... *gank* ouch I just got 1 shot from behind with no warning or chance to defend myself!

OK fine... rez outside of town... there is a dungeon over there, let's go explore this cave shall we?

Wow.. kind of empty in here... all the mobs are dead.. oh, look a massive end-room - and there are 37 other players in here waiting for the Named to respawn... *gank* damnit that assassin got me again wtf was he following me?

OK let's get some revenge on that assassin - guildies, will you come help me kill this griefer?

No? You're too busy decorating your house? And you're too busy ganking noobs in the starter zone? Didn't you get ganked in the starter zone a lot? Oh, you're getting revenge for how you were treated...

I guess I'll just log off... or maybe I'll hop on my alt.

Yay, a fresh new toon to play with! *gank* GD it dude I'm like level 1! WTF is wrong with you?

I think this says a lot about what kind of person you are, whether these are virtual people, or not.  I don't do the kinds of things you do to players or NPCs.  Also, sandbox doesn't mean the game has to be full open PvP either. 

Now, I have no problem with faction combat and whatnot, and if we are at war and you are on the other team, it's on.  But as for running around and indiscriminately kiling/griefing characters in a video game, I guess that's just not my thing.  I prefer to defend others against people like that.

Originally posted by Arglebargle

Building and running a virtual world adds much more difficulty for the developers than setting up a more ordered game.   If the elements called for drive away more people than they'll bring in, you will have to accept 'cheaper' versions of virtual worlds.  They cost more to do, and are harder to maintain.  Thus there are fewer of them.   And since the ones that are out there aren't supported well,  the incentive to do more of them is not there.  

 

You can wait for one of the great sandbox hopes to come in (archeage, eqnext, wod, etc), and maybe that will do the trick for you.   But these types of games are years in development.   You'll have to wait. 

 

Seeing the complaints about every single element of gaming (graphics not good enough, animations bad, an instance spotted, PvP too open, PvP too narrow, too many elves, not enough elves, etc), it's not a given that any particular iteration will get enough support to be economically viable.