Originally posted by Theocritus
     Its funny that the term "sandbox" is used at all because I dont remember any kids killing other kids in the sandbox when I was that age......

Not sure what you did in a sandbox, but we built forts/castles and had wars with our superheroes and army men.

It is very possible and is out there. Xsyon has a PvE only server coming where you just live in the world and the only threat is the creatures.

Most PvP centric Sandbox games are not truly sandbox since they are missing the core meaning of sandbox also. A true sandbox you play how you want to play fully developing your character the way you want him to play. There isn't really any true sandbox games out that anyone is interested in because gamers don't really want a fulll sandbox game. Look at all the grief Xsyon gets but it is truly a sandbox game and has more features than we have seen in any sandbox game to date.

Originally posted by qwave

If you do not have PvP in a sandbox, there is constant power and wealth entering the economy indefinitely.  Players do not fear consequences for their actions.  The game world becomes one massive 'city', where there are no real objectives, conflicts, or politics.

I am the developer for an upcoming sandbox MMORPG, Topia Online, and I would love to hear a solution to the above problems.  My design team and I have struggled for a long time on how to possibly create a sandbox without PvP or Permadeath.  What will the players be doing all day, and what would stop things like inflation if nothing ever 'goes away'?

Yet somehow ATITD, Puzzle Pirates, Free Realms and UO manage to pull it off. No one said anything about nothing ever going away, and there's more to PVP than just PVP combat.

  For "a ground-breaking approach to sandbox games" your team is certainly struggling with some pretty basic concepts.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Theocritus
     Its funny that the term "sandbox" is used at all because I dont remember any kids killing other kids in the sandbox when I was that age......

Not sure what you did in a sandbox, but we built forts/castles and had wars with our superheroes and army men.

I support these posts. Yes both of them.

I like the idea of a sandbox being free to choose whether you want to pvp or not. So if you have the one kid that likes to do nothing but build sandboxes, and his buddy wants to do nothing but have wars with the superheroes and army men, they can both exist in the same place.

It just gives the kid building the sandcastle more to do when the superheroes nock it down.

Analogy aside, having the option to pvp if you choose and the option not to pvp if it's not your thing.  The hard part is having a system that lets you do that. 

Originally posted by CreepProphet

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Theocritus
     Its funny that the term "sandbox" is used at all because I dont remember any kids killing other kids in the sandbox when I was that age......

Not sure what you did in a sandbox, but we built forts/castles and had wars with our superheroes and army men.

I support these posts. Yes both of them.

I like the idea of a sandbox being free to choose whether you want to pvp or not. So if you have the one kid that likes to do nothing but build sandboxes, and his buddy wants to do nothing but have wars with the superheroes and army men, they can both exist in the same place.

It just gives the kid building the sandcastle more to do when the superheroes nock it down.

Analogy aside, having the option to pvp if you choose and the option not to pvp if it's not your thing.  The hard part is having a system that lets you do that. 

I'm very partial to either tiered safety (with no area 100% safe) or competitive gameplay without direct combat. Many seem to find the former generally acceptable and the latter is widely accepted as marketplaces, shop ownership, townmanagement and other forms of competition seem to go over very well as the 'griefing' is both perceived as and accepoted as part of the political and competitive gameplay.

Grrrrr every time I see a topic like this it reminds me again of Star Wars Galaxies.

Not sure why today's games have so much difficulty giving players the options like Covert/Overt/Neutral

And I am sure that a FFA full loot sandbox MMORPG's would be so much larger in populations/subs if they gave players these options.

So yes we can have a sandbox, co-op, MMORPG but with pvp as a option as SWG has shown it could.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by CreepProphet

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Theocritus
     Its funny that the term "sandbox" is used at all because I dont remember any kids killing other kids in the sandbox when I was that age......

Not sure what you did in a sandbox, but we built forts/castles and had wars with our superheroes and army men.

I support these posts. Yes both of them.

I like the idea of a sandbox being free to choose whether you want to pvp or not. So if you have the one kid that likes to do nothing but build sandboxes, and his buddy wants to do nothing but have wars with the superheroes and army men, they can both exist in the same place.

It just gives the kid building the sandcastle more to do when the superheroes nock it down.

Analogy aside, having the option to pvp if you choose and the option not to pvp if it's not your thing.  The hard part is having a system that lets you do that. 

I'm very partial to either tiered safety (with no area 100% safe) or competitive gameplay without direct combat. Many seem to find the former generally acceptable and the latter is widely accepted as marketplaces, shop ownership, townmanagement and other forms of competition seem to go over very well as the 'griefing' is both perceived as and accepoted as part of the political and competitive gameplay.

 

I almost entirely agree, I do like the idea of High Sec in EVE. Granted though even there you can technically be fired upon, it just makes a bad day for whoever does the firing.

While I like the idea of 'civilization' type games that have no player combat, they sound fascinating.

I admitedly prefer the SWG combat model that The Repopulation is trying to recreate. Where you can pvp if you want to, if you get out to where pvp happens. But if you're in places where pvp doesn't happen, you don't have to pvp. 

To me that's more of a choice than saying "you get one or the other kid, now get off my lawn." *angry fist shaking included*

Originally posted by qwave

If you do not have PvP in a sandbox, there is constant power and wealth entering the economy indefinitely.  Players do not fear consequences for their actions.  The game world becomes one massive 'city', where there are no real objectives, conflicts, or politics.

I am the developer for an upcoming sandbox MMORPG, Topia Online, and I would love to hear a solution to the above problems.  My design team and I have struggled for a long time on how to possibly create a sandbox without PvP or Permadeath.  What will the players be doing all day, and what would stop things like inflation if nothing ever 'goes away'?

If you think you have the answer to make a non-PvP sandbox world a lasting and fun experience, please tell me!

Therein lies the key problem. There must be balance. Creation needs destruction, life needs death, otherwise one of them spirals out of control and you get a crappy world. So for you to have a balance without PvP you are going to need a much harsher PvE environment.

Someway, somehow, the "stuff" that players create MUST get destroyed eventually, otherwise the market and prices snowball into a mess. I think you're going to have to take several of the ideas in Eve Online and adapt them to your purposes (though for gods sake get CCP's permission first!)

1) Fully player run economy. Maybe at first have NPC merchants that will accept stuff sold to them so that the initial player base can build up some cash, but once it gets to a certain point ELIMINATE THE NPC MERCHANTS THAT CAN BUY STUFF FROM PLAYERS!!! If the only customers for industrial players are other players, if the indy spams out a bunch of lower grade stuff it won't sell because no one will want to buy it, so he will have just wasted his time. Ideally, the knowledge that this will happen will prevent him from building a bunch of useless crap which will hopefully control how much input into the market there will be. The only things NPC merchants should do is sell to players the basic tools they would need to function in the world (think of Eve's skillbooks and blueprint originals).

2) All new players (or newly killed players) get at least a bare-bones set of tools that they would need if they have nothing else available to them (i.e, akin to Eve's rookie ships). That way, even if they've lost every last dime they have they could still start mining and/or fighting for resources.

3) Lack of grind skills to train skills. Most MMOs require you to train skills such as crafting by grinding out tons of low level stuff to gain "experience" in that crafting skill, then grind out higher grade stuff, on and on as you go. That leads to a lot of crap getting created and glutting the market. If you implement point 1 you must not have that creation grind for crafting. Players need some way of training their skills that does not result in a bunch of "stuff" getting created at the same time. Maybe make some kind of training area and have a minigame there which gives them skillpoints in that crafting skill, but doesn't make any items.

4) Equipment destruction. Whether by PvE or PvP, this must happen. It's simple fact. It might be harsh, but without it the market will snowball out of control. You will have to be careful on what you mean by "permadeath". Don't utterly cripple the player's character via drastic skillpoint or xp loss, but rather focus on their equipment going poof, unless the player can get back to it in time (although some of it must get destroyed no matter what). To also avoid having "meta-PvP" by having players lure a bunch of NPCs over to a particular player and killing him so that the luring players can loot his corpse, you should have a player's equipment hard-locked to their character so that they cannot be looted, except perhaps for ammo. If your MMO is a futuristic one, maybe have it so that their armor and weapons are genetically hardwired to them, cannot be used by anyone else and will self destruct within 30 minutes of death to prevent the technology getting into the enemy NPCs hands.

Those are the best ideas I can think of. You have set a very difficult goal for yourself, I must say. Good luck with it.

What galls me about sandbox developers is that the notion of PvP *ALWAYS* means combat.  There could be all kinds of PvP content that doesn't involve WTFBBQPWNing someone.  Religion or Civil systems that expand influence based on building and upgrading structures, where only the largest/most advanced "controls" a region.  Build the largest temple and keep the "faith points" at the highest level and your faction or guild or whatever receives the bonus. 

Want to make a region free-for-all anarchy, then build a shrine to the god of chaos and keep whatever point system is in place above all the others and the region "falls" into anararchy.  If you want a carebear crafter paradise then build and upkeep structures that give those protections and bonuses, etc. etc.

Even in games where the primary form of PvP is fighting, there can still be content that non-PvPers can take part in and support their guild/faction/whatever.  Weapon crafters could make and sacrifice weapons to the god of war and give attack/damage/armor bonuses to their fighters.

Instead of these sorts of systems, though, what we usually get is inordinate amounts of time spent on PvP balancing when someone gets butthurt because they got rolled by Plat3dud3 and his BS OP halberd or something.

Originally posted by Drevar

What galls me about sandbox developers is that the notion of PvP *ALWAYS* means combat.  There could be all kinds of PvP content that doesn't involve WTFBBQPWNing someone.  Religion or Civil systems that expand influence based on building and upgrading structures, where only the largest/most advanced "controls" a region.  Build the largest temple and keep the "faith points" at the highest level and your faction or guild or whatever receives the bonus. 

Want to make a region free-for-all anarchy, then build a shrine to the god of chaos and keep whatever point system is in place above all the others and the region "falls" into anararchy.  If you want a carebear crafter paradise then build and upkeep structures that give those protections and bonuses, etc. etc.

Even in games where the primary form of PvP is fighting, there can still be content that non-PvPers can take part in and support their guild/faction/whatever.  Weapon crafters could make and sacrifice weapons to the god of war and give attack/damage/armor bonuses to their fighters.

Instead of these sorts of systems, though, what we usually get is inordinate amounts of time spent on PvP balancing when someone gets butthurt because they got rolled by Plat3dud3 and his BS OP halberd or something.

I spy an old school UOer.

I like your ideas. I am hoping some of the mechanics of Civ 5's Gods & Kings expansion rub off on MMO game devs. There are plenty of ways to create competitive gameplay and allow for meaningful player interaction with the game world/participants outside of unregulated homocide.

Originally posted by Drevar

Instead of these sorts of systems, though, what we usually get is inordinate amounts of time spent on PvP balancing when someone gets butthurt because they got rolled by Plat3dud3 and his BS OP halberd or something.

This last bit made me chuckle, awesome.

I snipped for brevety, but I think your previous statements could bame for more interesting non combat based PvP. 

Granted though, more for folks that don't feel the need to be Plat3dud3. But you know, he's probably covered.

Sandbox is about freedom to interact with and transform the enviroment and influences others. PVP artificial restrictions is a themepark thing that damages the ingame politics, diplomacy, social and even the economic enviroment. As the players interaction represents a huge proportion of the game, so a sandbox cant have such themepark thing in so much proportion. Even more, sandboxes have a huge amount of disputable itens in the open world, and the players disputing these itens represents about 50% of the fun "content" from the game (90% in the "endgame").

For all this, my answer to the thread is "no". Sandboxes cant have artificial pvp restrictions.

Originally posted by maccarthur2004

Sandbox is about freedom to interact with and transform the enviroment and influences others. PVP artificial restrictions is a themepark thing that damages the ingame politics, diplomacy, social and even the economic enviroment. As the players interaction represents a huge proportion of the game, so a sandbox cant have such themepark thing in so much proportion. Even more, sandboxes have a huge amount of disputable itens in the open world, and the players disputing these itens represents about 50% of the fun "content" from the game (90% in the "endgame").

For all this, my answer to the thread is "no". Sandboxes cant have artificial pvp restrictions.

Again, there are more ways to have player vs player conflict than just hacking at each other with weapons.

Originally posted by maccarthur2004

Sandbox is about freedom to interact with and transform the enviroment and influences others. PVP artificial restrictions is a themepark thing that damages the ingame politics, diplomacy, social and even the economic enviroment. As the players interaction represents a huge proportion of the game, so a sandbox cant have such themepark thing in so much proportion. Even more, sandboxes have a huge amount of disputable itens in the open world, and the players disputing these itens represents about 50% of the fun "content" from the game (90% in the "endgame").

For all this, my answer to the thread is "no". Sandboxes cant have artificial pvp restrictions.

 Is there no other way to have political, diplomatic, social and economic interaction than by killing another player?

Why does a sandbox need to have disputable items?  I don't think it does.  I don't think that is even the draw.

edit - I will say the penultimate sandbox has pvp, because it is about freedom.  Howver being able to do whatever you want, whenver you want is not a game.  Games by definition have rules. 

It's not the PvP that's the problem, it's the griefing.  Unwanted PvP is just a tool that a griefer uses.  The more verbs you include in a sandbox, the more tools a griefer can find to kick the sand in peoples' faces.

If you look at UO for example, the differences between Fel and Trammel are not limited to just the ability to hit another player with a sword - it also has various other tweaks like whether you can block people's movement with improvised barricades or not.  If you look at a game with as much freedom as Minecraft, there's simply no effective way to prevent the landscape from being terraformed into deathtraps, so instead the game gives player-admins sweeping powers to moderate who can connect to their server.

Originally posted by maccarthur2004

Sandbox is about freedom to interact with and transform the enviroment and influences others. PVP artificial restrictions is a themepark thing that damages the ingame politics, diplomacy, social and even the economic enviroment. As the players interaction represents a huge proportion of the game, so a sandbox cant have such themepark thing in so much proportion. Even more, sandboxes have a huge amount of disputable itens in the open world, and the players disputing these itens represents about 50% of the fun "content" from the game (90% in the "endgame").

For all this, my answer to the thread is "no". Sandboxes cant have artificial pvp restrictions.

I have always found open world FFA  PvP very restrictive for player interaction. In an FFA PvP world a player is afraid of his playmates....if he is out fishing and sees someone running toward him he gets ready to fight or runs away. Won't stand still and greet the other one friendly.  He won't even chat on local chat so that he could avoid random PKers hitting on him. So we get a lonely, quiet player out in the woods.

Same about politics and diplomatic. ATITD has a great politics system with player elected semi-pharaos and player voted in-game laws ( the devs code a law if it gets enough votes). This doesn't happen in a game where you can solve your problems by punching the other player in his face. Try to convince him when there is no way to kill him...that is what I call diplomatics. Otherwise its just brute force. Use your mind, your wit, your charm , your friendlyness to convince someone, that's much more interesting and challenging than simply using your sword.