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Originally posted by Uhwop

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Originally posted by FredomSekerZ

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Not it doesn't. EVE is a very, very unique type of game. I love sandboxes, but don't like EVE. Too complicated (i like compex but not this much), my characters a ship, etc, etc. I don't think it's a bad game at all, just not for me. Also, 400k isn't a huge success. EVE is very special game where most of the "scape" it's made of is an empty void. It's even all in 1 server. How do you know that the players playing EVE like sandboxes at all? What if they just like space ships and complex styles of games and they don't care for traditional mmorpg fantasy sandboxes like AA, MO, DF, etc? EVE isn't about themeparl or sandbox. It's in a special league of it's on.

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 It's intersting that when I tried to point out that EVE isn't bigger then it is, or growing faster then it is, is because you play a spaceship a bunch of people told me I was wrong.

Yet, if you read through all the responces in this thread you see the exact same thing repeated over and over.

People saying they want to play a sandbox, but they don't want to play EVE because you're a ship. 

It's alos interesting that no matter how many times people point out that EVE is one of the very few PAY TO PLAY mmo's that has seen continual growth year in and year out, the anti-sandbox guys keep harping, yeah but it's got fewer subs then all the themeparks so it obviously doesn't work.

EVE is ONLY ONE game.  ONE game.  Even people who don't like EVE or sandboxes keep saying the same exact thing, IT'S THE ONLY GOOD SANDBOX OUT.  It's not just a single game, it wold appear that there is a unified concensus that it's the only worthwhile sandbox mmo on the market at that!

Some of you are comparing the subscription numbers OF A SINGLE GAME, to the sub numbers of ALL THE THEMEPARKS.  Guess what?  Ford sells fewer cars then every other car company in the wold!  << This is the arguement some of you keep using!On a GAME BY GAME basis, EVE HAS MORE SUBS then most of the themeparks put out.  IT HAS MORE SUBS, then DDO did before it went FREE TO PLAY, it has more subs then AoC before it want FREE TO PLAY, it has more subs then EQ2 before it went FREE TO PLAY, it has more subs then STO before it went FREE TO PLAY, it has more subs then CO before it went FREE TO PLAY, it has more subs then LoTRO before it went FREE TO PLAY.  It will probably have more subs then ToR by the time it goes free to play.

EVE is doing what all these themeparks have been incapable of doing.  GROWING.  You can combine all the themeparks together all you want, you can not ignore the one fact that remains, EVE CONTINUES TO GROW WHILE EACH THEMEPARK THAT RELEASES CONTINUALLY LOSES SUBSCRIBERS AND THEN SWITCHES TO FREE TO PLAY. 

List the subscription based themepark mmo's that continually grow, year after year.  WoW is NOT on that list today.  Name them!
 

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Originally posted by Uhwop

EVE is doing what all these themeparks have been incapable of doing.  GROWING.  You can combine all the themeparks together all you want, you can not ignore the one fact that remains, EVE CONTINUES TO GROW WHILE EACH THEMEPARK THAT RELEASES CONTINUALLY LOSES SUBSCRIBERS AND THEN SWITCHES TO FREE TO PLAY. 

List the subscription based themepark mmo's that continually grow, year after year.  WoW is NOT on that list today.  Name them!

 

So what if Eve is growing? A small game growing is still a small game.

And themepark has hit a saturation point. If Eve has 10M players (which it probably will not forever), it will stop growing too. There are more than 47M MMO players in just the US, of course the grow-rate has slowed or stopped.

Lastly, if you like themepark, there are many to choose from. There are no need to be loyal. So even if the market is growing, given so much competition, individual games may not. And competition is a GOOD thing.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Uhwop

EVE is doing what all these themeparks have been incapable of doing.  GROWING.  You can combine all the themeparks together all you want, you can not ignore the one fact that remains, EVE CONTINUES TO GROW WHILE EACH THEMEPARK THAT RELEASES CONTINUALLY LOSES SUBSCRIBERS AND THEN SWITCHES TO FREE TO PLAY. 

List the subscription based themepark mmo's that continually grow, year after year.  WoW is NOT on that list today.  Name them!

 

So what if Eve is growing? A small game growing is still a small game.

And themepark has hit a saturation point. If Eve has 10M players (which it probably will not forever), it will stop growing too. There are more than 47M MMO players in just the US, of course the grow-rate has slowed or stopped.

Lastly, if you like themepark, there are many to choose from. There are no need to be loyal. So even if the market is growing, given so much competition, individual games may not. And competition is a GOOD thing.

 

 And again.

EVE is growing as a sub based game, themeparks are not.  You guys keep ignoring this.  It doesn't matter if it's only one compared to all the themeparks.  It doesn't mater if there are 47m themepark players.  IT"S GROWING in an industry that is seeing themeparks lose subs and switching to the F2P model.

If what the market demanded was more themeparks, they wouldn't keep losing subs after release, at least one would continue to grow, but one isn't unless they stop charging people to play it.  You may consider that an insignificant fact, but it's not. 

There is NO LONG TERM GROWTH in the themepark market anymore, but a sandbox mmo that puts you in the role of a ship grows.  That's significant.  If it wasn't spaceships, if they released a walking in stations feature that actually provided gameplay options EVE would probably explode. 

I'm giving you an example of a game that is by all definition other then sandbox a niche game, yet keeps growing, and the so called mainstream style can't seem to put out a game that can do the same.  And here you are saying there is no market worth tapping into.  Pardon me, but all of the evidence available says that themeparks are only good to attract quick sales and then go F2P.

THE THEMEPARK CROWD ONLY HAS THEMEPARKS TO PLAY!!  You're ignoring that in favor of cherry picking aspects of a whole.  There is no AAA sandbox in a fantasy setting that can pointed at and used as evidence that it doesn't work, IT'S NOT BEEN DONE!   UO is not an example, it's ancient.  SWG isn't example, it had a multitude of problems that weren't associated with the sandbox part of the game.  MO and DF aren't examples, they're independant games that most people don't even consider to be good, and being sandbox isn't the reason for that.

Show us a AAA sandbox MMO that doesn't work!  Developer fears, and that's what is, isn't eveidence.  They aren't making them because there isn't a market, they're not making them because they're afraid to take a chance.  Just like every other studio was afraid to try it before WoW.  Blizzard made an MMO, showed it was possible to make one, and then every other tom, dick, and hairy has been trying to emulate Blizzard. 

If WoW was a sandbox, we'd be having an entirely diffierent conversation, that's a fact.

Aren't you forgetting now that CCP had funding problems this summer? On top of that their years of neglect of Eve finally caught up with them and they saw a decline in subs this last fall. Made them make those panicky declarations that they will do better in the future etc.

Its not a bed of roses on the sandbox side either. And it is just one game like you said. Who is to say that it isn't just a freak of nature? Time and time again themeparks have showed higher sub numbers consistently. You're grasping at straws with that growth thing. You have nothing else so you keep repeating it over and over.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Uhwop

EVE is doing what all these themeparks have been incapable of doing.  GROWING.  You can combine all the themeparks together all you want, you can not ignore the one fact that remains, EVE CONTINUES TO GROW WHILE EACH THEMEPARK THAT RELEASES CONTINUALLY LOSES SUBSCRIBERS AND THEN SWITCHES TO FREE TO PLAY. 

List the subscription based themepark mmo's that continually grow, year after year.  WoW is NOT on that list today.  Name them!

 

So what if Eve is growing? A small game growing is still a small game.

And themepark has hit a saturation point. If Eve has 10M players (which it probably will not forever), it will stop growing too. There are more than 47M MMO players in just the US, of course the grow-rate has slowed or stopped.

Lastly, if you like themepark, there are many to choose from. There are no need to be loyal. So even if the market is growing, given so much competition, individual games may not. And competition is a GOOD thing.

 

If you are in favor of competition, then you should be in favor of an AAA sandbox games being developed so that we can get more diverse gameplay in an MMO market currently saturated with themepark clones of a certain game that shall remain unnamed. Competition is good. I agree with that statement. I hope ArcheAge kicks everyone in the ass so that we can spark some kind of innovation in an otherwise stagnant genre.

Originally posted by Quirhid

Aren't you forgetting now that CCP had funding problems this summer? On top of that their years of neglect of Eve finally caught up with them and they saw a decline in subs this last fall. Made them make those panicky declarations that they will do better in the future etc.

Its not a bed of roses on the sandbox side either. And it is just one game like you said. Who is to say that it isn't just a freak of nature? Time and time again themeparks have showed higher sub numbers consistently. You're grasping at straws with that growth thing. You have nothing else so you keep repeating it over and over.

 When you ignore reality yeah, what you wrote would make sense.

Funding problems?  You mean like the rest of the world?  Or was it because they're also developing two other MMO's along with maintaning EVE?  Oh, they actually addressed that and said that like the rest of the world they weren't immune to the recession. 

Years of neglect of EVE?  You mean that every year they put out 2 expansions? 

Or are you trying to use partial truths and out of context examples, yet again, to make it look like you have facts and evidence.  Didn't I mention I've been playing EVE for many, many years now? 

If you're going to point something out then use real facts.  It was the NeX shop, a leaked memo that was supposed to be a what if scenario of developers playing devils advocate that combined gave the impression that CCP was abandoning the FiS part of the game in favor of developing a MT system that would offer more then just commetic features.

But this isn't about EVE.  EVE is just my example of a very nich game that has a sub, and continues to see overal growth every year. 

You can ignore everything I've written in favor of twisting fact and taking things out of context, your're still wrong. 

Show us the themepark MMO's that use a sub based model and continually grow each year.  There's hundreds of themeparks, and you insinuate that that's the only style that works, so surely there must be dozens of them operating under a sub based model and growing year in and year out.  Which ones are they?

This is a quote from the 2010 MMO Business Report:
"Around 47.5 million Americans play MMOs and although 90% of these play free-to-play games, more money is spent in total on pay-to-play than free-to-play MMOs."

This in its very essence is telling us that the majority of income is made in P2P MMOs and not in F2P MMOs where the majority of players seem to play Browser and Flash games and overall there is no difference made between Themepark/Sandbox so the numbers at all be no helpfull.
It could even be that the F2P Browser/Flash market is a much stronger sandbox market and WOW aside would beat the Themepark p2p market on the income side.

EVE had trouble bcs of decisions that alienated significant parts of the playerbase and bcs they developed 3 major MMOs at the same time with full stuffed teams:
EVE + Dust 514 + WoD.

AoC does not funding the development of TSW nor any other Funcom mmo, Funcom is burning cash reserves they had build up in the past b4 the launch of AoC and recently has aquired access to 22 million funds more that have to be repaid if used.
Every month Funcom is makling a few million deficit!

Rift is not funding the development of 2 other MMOs, they got fundings of 85 million in 2012 (they also got in 2007/8 fundings of around 100 million).
I dont see why they would need 85 million in 2012 if Rift is making enough money to pay for the development of 2 mmos.
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/trion-world-network

Originally posted by Uhwop

Originally posted by Quirhid
 

 When you ignore reality yeah, what you wrote would make sense.

Funding problems?  You mean like the rest of the world?  Or was it because they're also developing two other MMO's along with maintaning EVE?  Oh, they actually addressed that and said that like the rest of the world they weren't immune to the recession. 

Years of neglect of EVE?  You mean that every year they put out 2 expansions? 

Or are you trying to use partial truths and out of context examples, yet again, to make it look like you have facts and evidence.  Didn't I mention I've been playing EVE for many, many years now? 

If you're going to point something out then use real facts.  It was the NeX shop, a leaked memo that was supposed to be a what if scenario of developers playing devils advocate that combined gave the impression that CCP was abandoning the FiS part of the game in favor of developing a MT system that would offer more then just commetic features.

But this isn't about EVE.  EVE is just my example of a very nich game that has a sub, and continues to see overal growth every year. 

You can ignore everything I've written in favor of twisting fact and taking things out of context, your're still wrong. 

Show us the themepark MMO's that use a sub based model and continually grow each year.  There's hundreds of themeparks, and you insinuate that that's the only style that works, so surely there must be dozens of them operating under a sub based model and growing year in and year out.  Which ones are they?

Ship balance has been off for years throughout all ship classes. They said so themselves. It is incredible that when I point that out, the fans will fall on me like a pack of rapid dogs. But when CCP says it, fans say "uhm, well maybe it is off a little". Not to mention the numerous bugs, broken mechanics and poor UI which have been the bane of the game for years. They've only recently started adressing those. Walking on stations, PI-minigames, avatar outfits... You should be happy they are focusing on the stuff that actually matters for a change - spaceships shooting other spaceships.

Once a year they ban botters so they can say to fans that they are working on the issue. Rest of the year they couldn't care less. Again, its been like this for years. Interviewed botters have said so themselves.

Have you even played the game?

Let me break a couple other illusions too: There is no santa and girls fart too. Do yourself a favor. Take off your rose-tinted glasses and stomp on them.

Originally posted by NaughtyP

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Uhwop

EVE is doing what all these themeparks have been incapable of doing.  GROWING.  You can combine all the themeparks together all you want, you can not ignore the one fact that remains, EVE CONTINUES TO GROW WHILE EACH THEMEPARK THAT RELEASES CONTINUALLY LOSES SUBSCRIBERS AND THEN SWITCHES TO FREE TO PLAY. 

List the subscription based themepark mmo's that continually grow, year after year.  WoW is NOT on that list today.  Name them!

 

So what if Eve is growing? A small game growing is still a small game.

And themepark has hit a saturation point. If Eve has 10M players (which it probably will not forever), it will stop growing too. There are more than 47M MMO players in just the US, of course the grow-rate has slowed or stopped.

Lastly, if you like themepark, there are many to choose from. There are no need to be loyal. So even if the market is growing, given so much competition, individual games may not. And competition is a GOOD thing.

 

If you are in favor of competition, then you should be in favor of an AAA sandbox games being developed so that we can get more diverse gameplay in an MMO market currently saturated with themepark clones of a certain game that shall remain unnamed. Competition is good. I agree with that statement. I hope ArcheAge kicks everyone in the ass so that we can spark some kind of innovation in an otherwise stagnant genre.

Oh i am in favor of more diverse game-type being developed. I am just not in favor of playing sandbox myself.

And, independent of my personal preference, my point still stands.

Originally posted by Thorqemada

This is a quote from the 2010 MMO Business Report:
"Around 47.5 million Americans play MMOs and although 90% of these play free-to-play games, more money is spent in total on pay-to-play than free-to-play MMOs."

This in its very essence is telling us that the majority of income is made in P2P MMOs and not in F2P MMOs where the majority of players seem to play Browser and Flash games and overall there is no difference made between Themepark/Sandbox so the numbers at all be no helpfull.
It could even be that the F2P Browser/Flash market is a much stronger sandbox market and WOW aside would beat the Themepark p2p market on the income side.

More information.

http://www.slideshare.net/Newzoo/newzoo-trend-report-mmo-games-november-2011

In 2011, F2P MMOs are generating 47% of the revenue, and P2P 53%. The share of F2P increases from 39% to 47% from 2010 to 2011.

While you are technically correct that the majority of income in made in P2P, the ratio is pretty close to 50-50 in 2011. Given the trend, F2P is probably going to over-take P2P in 2012.

i cant believe this stupid ass thread is still going.

Originally posted by kantseeme

i cant believe this stupid ass thread is still going.

Your opinion is much appreciated.

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by kantseeme

i cant believe this stupid ass thread is still going.

Your opinion is much appreciated.

ill bet

I think it is a myth given that most people would just play a good game and could care less about this sandbox/themepark bullcrap.

Most people could go either way.

Originally posted by waynejr2

Originally posted by AdamTM

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.

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.

The market will move to where the business exists.  Like survival of the fittest, if sandbox games attracted the largest share, the style the UO presented (aka sandbox) would have continued to dominate in other games rather than EQ style (aka themepark) which dominates today.   [mod edit]

LOL did you really just call EQ1 a themepark?? You just lost all credibility there..

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by Uhwop

Originally posted by Quirhid
 

 When you ignore reality yeah, what you wrote would make sense.

Funding problems?  You mean like the rest of the world?  Or was it because they're also developing two other MMO's along with maintaning EVE?  Oh, they actually addressed that and said that like the rest of the world they weren't immune to the recession. 

Years of neglect of EVE?  You mean that every year they put out 2 expansions? 

Or are you trying to use partial truths and out of context examples, yet again, to make it look like you have facts and evidence.  Didn't I mention I've been playing EVE for many, many years now? 

If you're going to point something out then use real facts.  It was the NeX shop, a leaked memo that was supposed to be a what if scenario of developers playing devils advocate that combined gave the impression that CCP was abandoning the FiS part of the game in favor of developing a MT system that would offer more then just commetic features.

But this isn't about EVE.  EVE is just my example of a very nich game that has a sub, and continues to see overal growth every year. 

You can ignore everything I've written in favor of twisting fact and taking things out of context, your're still wrong. 

Show us the themepark MMO's that use a sub based model and continually grow each year.  There's hundreds of themeparks, and you insinuate that that's the only style that works, so surely there must be dozens of them operating under a sub based model and growing year in and year out.  Which ones are they?

Ship balance has been off for years throughout all ship classes. They said so themselves. It is incredible that when I point that out, the fans will fall on me like a pack of rapid dogs. But when CCP says it, fans say "uhm, well maybe it is off a little". Not to mention the numerous bugs, broken mechanics and poor UI which have been the bane of the game for years. They've only recently started adressing those. Walking on stations, PI-minigames, avatar outfits... You should be happy they are focusing on the stuff that actually matters for a change - spaceships shooting other spaceships.

Once a year they ban botters so they can say to fans that they are working on the issue. Rest of the year they couldn't care less. Again, its been like this for years. Interviewed botters have said so themselves.

Have you even played the game?

Let me break a couple other illusions too: There is no santa and girls fart too. Do yourself a favor. Take off your rose-tinted glasses and stomp on them.

 My goodness, you wrote a bunch of stuff.

None of it having anything to do with anything I wrote or even relevant to the very topic you started. 

Please, provide us a list of themepark MMO's that uses a subscription model, and shows continued growth every year.  This should be easier then directing us to the AAA sandbox MMO that didn't work to support your claim that there's no market for that style of game; that other thing you couldn't do.

I'm glad the thread is still going, I would have missed it. I rarely post on here, more of lurker but I do have an opinion on this subject.

I think there's plenty of people who would love to play a sandbox game. I think most "Themeparkers" would love it as well.

EvE does a lot of things well. As a matter of fact, it's almost perfect... except it's boring as hell for some people to play. I am dying for an Open World game so I forced myself to play EvE for a few months and every so often I force myself to restart my sub and try it again.

But the combat is boring, mining is boring, building ships and componants is boring, every aspect of the game I've tried has been boring... to me anyway. To those 400k that play it religiously, obviously it isn't boring to them... but I suspect more people share my opinion or they'd have way more than 400k subs worldwide.

Darkness Falls does have fun combat, but there's a major problem with noob ganking. There are some people that actually camp the starter towns and relentlessly kill people and nothing can be done about it. It is also not really a true "open world" because only one clan can be at war with another clan at a time and the gaming pop has figured out that if they make a splinter clan they can continously declare war on each other incessantly and never have to worry about losing any cities or land.

DF also started with a lot of bugs that could be taken advantage of, and people gained craploads of combat skills while offline and when those bugs were fixed, the people still had that "skill" but the new players never had access to those exploits. This created a huge divide which makes it even harder to combat that noob ganking I mentioned earlier.

EvE combats this with it's "security" system and how skills are learned over time through study and not simply mouse/keyboard clicks. Everyone learns at basically the same rate and as you and your friends get better and have better ships you can venture closer and closer to nulsec.

I think if someone could combine DF with EvE, it would be a huge success. Have "Kingdoms" that are like 1.0 sec space and the farther you get from those, the less security you have. Using an Elder Scrolls type combat system with a EvE type skill system and having clans/guilds/corps fighting for resources the farther out you get from those kingdoms and it being a free for all instead of "only one organization vs one organization" at a time with a pre-CU SWG crafting system... heaven, for me anyway.

Originally posted by Uhwop

Please, provide us a list of themepark MMO's that uses a subscription model, and shows continued growth every year.

Is there some reason you're applying to standard the themeparks that you aren't applying to sandboxes?

Does any game, either sandbox or themepark, qualify at all?  Both CCP and Blizzard reported some reduction in their sub counts for last year?

Why are we even trying to split this hair?

Odd this thread when Embers and now The Repopulation are proveing that people want a sandbox, Kickstarter is governed by the people if not the devs get no cash,so there has to be a want and desire by a player base,otherwise SWTOR would now have 10 million subs.

It's like everything comes in cycles and 2012/13 seems to be the year of indies and true innovation returning to games,38 studios crashed and burned,Bioware squandered an IP and can only send it F2P with a redface so public funded games devs can afford to take thier time and get it right, unlike big studios who follow the trend and squander millions even if that trend is now obselete.

Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by Uhwop

Please, provide us a list of themepark MMO's that uses a subscription model, and shows continued growth every year.

Is there some reason you're applying to standard the themeparks that you aren't applying to sandboxes?

Does any game, either sandbox or themepark, qualify at all?  Both CCP and Blizzard reported some reduction in their sub counts for last year?

Why are we even trying to split this hair?

The OP based an assumption off of what the industry does, that's not evidence that something wont work.  Ok, if we're looking at what the industry does to make an assumption then lets also look at how people are spending their money on these games.  Why are more and more people choosing not pay subs in an industry that's dominated with themepark mmos? 

Do people really think that blizzard knew 11m people would play WoW?  No they didn't.  They probably figured something around the order of what EQ managed, maybe a little more.  No one anticipated that millions upon millions of people would pay a subscription to play a game each month. 

Blizzard took a chance, they made WoW, WoW was a huge hit, other studios looked at "what was possible" based on what they saw.  WoW with millions of subscribers.  Ever since then studios of been churning out themepark after themepark trying to get in on the action.  It had NOTHING to do with themepark vs sandbox, it's business emulating businesses in an effort to achieve success; which is exactly what business do. 

Millions of people, thanks to Blizzard, are familliar with a particullar style of game.  It's EASIER to appeal to the familliar, then it is to create something new, even if it has a market.  Business have been doing this forever, just ask kellog.  It's simply EASIER to convince consumers to purchase a product that is familliar to them. 

People will keep playing mediocre themeparks as long as that's what's offered to them, especially when they're free.  The moment someone offers a good sandbox, in a fantasy setting, the industry will see a change.

If WoW had been a sandbox, we'd be having a different conversation.

And EVE had a dip last year because of an internal memo that leaked and alienated a lot of people, and they unsubbed.  It's the only reason they saw a dip. 

I don't even understand why anyone would be against sandbox gameplay, which the OP seems to be.  EVERYTHING you can do in a themepark MMO you would be able to do in a good sandbox MMO.  MO and DF do not represent what a good sandbox would be, something more like EVE in a fantasy setting with GW2 or even WoW combat would be a better idea.  If you like themepark MMO's there's no reason you wouldn't like a well done sandbox one.