Originally posted by MMOExposed

Eve is not Sandbox. Its Sandpark. Thats the only reason it has been successful

EVE is not a hybrid.  Just because a game has PvE does not make it a hybrid.  Themepark games focus on an end-game.  Class-based progression in which there is a cap, and when that cap is reached players take part in an end-game.

There is no end-game in EVE.  There is only freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want.  If a new player wants to involve themselves in 0.0 warfare, they CAN.  If a new player wants to PvP, they can.  If they want to mine/manufacture, they can.  Want to play the market? They can.  Want to do wormholes? They can.  None of those are end-game features.  They're only game features, to be taken however someone wants.

There's no preferred order.  Quests aren't done in progression.  PvE is a means to an end, not an end.  You are not rewarded with tier X gear upon completion.  Even the new PvE content does not follow a themepark formula.  

A game I would consider a hybrid is Asheron's Call - Skill-based progression in which levels meant nothing.  Quests were there that you did as you 'progressed', however many of them were repeatable.  Some major quests required that you have at least a certain amount of XP before doing them or you'd probably fail.  There were level restricted dungeons, and PvP was somewhat level based.  However, they still gave players freedom because a level 75 could compete with someone twice his level in PvP due to game mechanics.  Crafting existed with a bit of detail for fletching/alchemy, but players couldn't actually create their own armor.  Armor could instead be modified.  Dungeons/quests rewarded you with loot/rare items.

These are mixed features.  It had the questing/leveling progression, and crafting of themeparks (keep in mind this was an old game before those features were even labeled as one or the other.. but you can see which ones themeparks expanded on many of these from EQ, UO, and AC).  But it had skill-based progression, and FFA PvP with loot (if you chose to partake, unless you were on the PvP server), as well as the ability for players of all levels to take part in content together, not just those at cap.

Seriously don't know how anyone can take a COMPREHENSIVE and HONEST look at EVE and not call it a sandbox.  Like I said earlier.. if EVE isn't considered a sandbox, then NO game is a sandbox, and themepark suddenly took on a whole list of features it didn't previously contain.

Originally posted by alfokenty

 

A sandbox MMO can not have quests. Quests defeat the whole purpose of a sandbox MMO. If a MMO has quests it is a theme-park MMO. It can have rich features or sandbox elements but basically it's still a theme-park MMO.

Incorrect.  When quests are the focus of a game, it becomes a themepark.  When that's what you do at end-game, is quest and raid so that you can improve your gear, that is a themepark.

In EVE, quests(missions), are only a means to an end.  A source of income.  There is no real progression.  They get more difficult when you have the proper skills to be able to take them on, but even new players can take part in the hardest missions if they have friends, and they can still benefit from them.  Missions do nothing to defeat the purpose of a sandbox.  They do not take any freedom away from a player.  They are not the focus of the game.  What's so hard to grasp about that?

And if you look at other things like sleepers/wormholes, incursions, exploration, and trade/manufacturing, PvE exists to give the world life.  PvP is still a HUGE focus of the game in every avenue.  Even in that content, PvP can come out of nowhere and throw a wrench into all your plans.

People are not looking at big pictures here, or they simply have not played EVE and actually dug into its features to realize just what can be done.

Originally posted by Siveria

I never understood why sandbox has to equil full looting of corpses in pvp, features like that personally make me stay away from it. Pvp is NO FUN when you can lose everything on you while some people like it, most of them tend to be in the greifer type of mmo player more often than not. Eve to me is not a game, its a 2nd job thats just as boring, is no fun, involves repeting the same boring tasks over and over, which is even worse when you have to click thru like 10 menus just to do anything half the time. I honestly wonder myself what kind of person actually finds eve enjoyable. I love space sims but most sims don't have you using menu's to even move your ship. I also dislike the skill system. Its kinda no fun to just have your skills given to you, and its also silly how some skills can take months to learn. People can never catch up, so PVP is never balanced. Then again I'd not care if I get ganked as long as I keep my ship and my stuff on it, if I just had to pay a repair fee on death insted of losing stuff permamently I could prob get into games like darkfall, Eve etc. Well maybe not Eve since the game is just the epitome of boring at its core in my eyes. Kinda like battlestar galatica online when u get pked, you gotta repair your ship and your killer gets exp, and loot like he killed a npc, though its usually a lil better than npc loot.

If you notice open pvp games like darkfall, Eve etc never do well, because the average mmorpg player doesn't like th efact they can be ganked anywhere, and the fact they will lose all their stuff they are carrying when they do get killed. I don't mind getting ganked if all I lose is a tiny bit of repair fee cash and the time to walk/fly/drive back to where I was. But the system in most sandbox mmo's is too steep for the average mmo player. Its better to piss off a minority like greifers/full looting on pve/pvp death advocators, than to shut yourself off to a larger playerbase.

 first of all pvp with full looting does not equate to sandbox, it is a game feature that is popular in sandboxes because it both drives the economy and provides long term social and political goals as well as being fun for some.  Secondly your likes and dislikes have got nothing to do with this thread regarding eve not being the largest sandbox (and are totally inaccurate).  If you compare chat in eve with chat in other mmorgs you will notice that the chat is a lot more mature, less 'omg gank the noob' type language etc.  In otherwords the community is healthy and is self sufficient, i.e sandbox.

'But the system in most sandbox mmo's is too steep for the average mmo player'  lol says who?  your comments make it clear you do not understand Eve and the rules that govern the game, if you spent the time to do that you would understand that your fears about being ganked in Eve are entirely unfounded and inaccurate.  Ive only been playing for a month, and am happily pve'ing, not pvping, and no risk of being ganked, it doesnt even require anything more than very very basic knowledge of the game.

Originally posted by Ghost12

Sandbox elements:

- Classless, or contains many different classes (usually more than 6 or 7)

- Player housing

- Some form of Death penalty

- Unrestricted forms of PvP

- Crafting

- City Building

- Quests tend to be longer and more complicated with bigger rewards

- Gameplay includes some measure of player skill

- Gameplay focused on a combination of activities

 

Those are not what define a Sandbox. Hell, you didn't even include ANY core sandbox elements. They MAY be elements withing a sandbox just like they are often elements in a themepark game.

Your post misses the mark entirely. You have no clue what an sandbox is. Runescape a sandbox? .... excuse me while I go laugh until my gut bursts ...

Originally posted by Sheista

 

In EVE, quests(missions), are only a means to an end.  A source of income.  

A very good point. In a sandbox MMO you have to find out by yourself how to earn money. In a theme-park MMO your income is delivered to you on a plate - quests.

Originally posted by alfokenty

Originally posted by Sheista

 

In EVE, quests(missions), are only a means to an end.  A source of income.  

 

A very good point. In a sandbox MMO you have to find out by yourself how to earn money. In a theme-park MMO your income is delivered to you on a plate - quests.

 so entropia universe would be a hard core sandbox then !probably the best on the planet by your definition

Rather interesting that while counting all the features which should be included in a sandbox such as death penalty, free PvP, skill based character development etc, people forget the most important one: TOOLS. To me, no matter how much a game tries to create freedom promoting fetures it is not a sandbox unless it got tools. By tools I mean features which are not restricted to one use and can be used in many different ways and purposes. THAT is a sandbox. Not a game with full loot and FFAPvP..

Runescape is perhaps one of the most underrated games in the MMO community and it is a sandbox, the amount of freedom you have is amazing. I don't believe I did a quest in that game until 3 months in because it unlocked a armor piece I wanted and the quests in Runescape are all story based with very little killing required, its all puzzles and badass bosses. You are indeed dropped into the world and after the tutorial free to do whatever the hell you want.

Originally posted by Gabby-air

Runescape is perhaps one of the most underrated games in the MMO community and it is a sandbox, the amount of freedom you have is amazing. I don't believe I did a quest in that game until 3 months in because it unlocked a armor piece I wanted and the quests in Runescape are all story based with very little killing required, its all puzzles and badass bosses. You are indeed dropped into the world and after the tutorial free to do whatever the hell you want.

 very true i spoke to a kids today(about 21 years old that kid)and he said to me hes been playing for a long time

i said why ?he s like,mm the community ?im like yes it is packed but why?he said i dont we chat and stuff

so even him had a hard time explaining it!he was hacked etc and he still play it!

if what he say is true he has been playing from the start!i asked him why not wow instead,he s like staring at me blankly like

wtf is he talking about!

so yes this game is insanelly popular

it is f2p probably one of the first works on everything lol

Originally posted by drbaltazar

Originally posted by alfokenty

Originally posted by Sheista

 

In EVE, quests(missions), are only a means to an end.  A source of income.  

 

A very good point. In a sandbox MMO you have to find out by yourself how to earn money. In a theme-park MMO your income is delivered to you on a plate - quests.

 so entropia universe would be a hard core sandbox then !probably the best on the planet by your definition

 Entropia is indeed a sandbox, with one of the highest focuses on real money economies that is balanced. No idea what your point is, but  Entropia does not have the complexity and depth of Eve, it is just very very grindy.

Originally posted by jarby

playing eve for about 4 years. prove me that im wrong

Playing eve since 2004, so prove to me that Eve isn't a sandbox?

Players can have a serieus impact on the gameworld, and if you say this is only in 0.0 or lowsec then yeah it is true. But last time I checked the map the majority was 0.0, add lowsec to that or even wormholes (also 0.0) and you sure see that it surpases empire space by a whole lot. However we have had a lot of players afraid of losing their ship and yes the majority of those do stay in empire space and like to believe that eve is a themepark.

Originally posted by Gabby-air

Runescape is perhaps one of the most underrated games in the MMO community and it is a sandbox, the amount of freedom you have is amazing. I don't believe I did a quest in that game until 3 months in because it unlocked a armor piece I wanted and the quests in Runescape are all story based with very little killing required, its all puzzles and badass bosses. You are indeed dropped into the world and after the tutorial free to do whatever the hell you want.

But does the player have any influence in the story or gameworld? I could play WoW as well without doing any quests and just grind. The quests are also story related, but I'm free to ignore the story as well. However this doesn't make WoW a sandbox as a player I don't have any impact on the story or I'm not able to have an impact on the gameworld either.

If above is the same, then Runescape isn't a sandbox at all, even if it gives you more meaningfull choices then to follow quests and the storyline.

For me, Eve is boring, and I never played runescape... As far as which one is a sandbox, I really don't care but I guess maybe they both are?

Isn't eve open space of nothingness?

Nobody can change a sandbox into a themepark or vice versa. You would have to reprogram the whole game.

Sandbox or themepark - this does nothing have to do with the question of skillbased, levelbased, or classbased. While sandbox is usually skillbased, this is nothing but a tradition. Themeparks can be skillbased, levelbased or classbased, there is nothing to stop them about that.

The "if somebody tells you what to do, its no longer a sandbox" definition is useless. Themeparks dont necessarily force quests upon you either.

Sandbox is if the player can change the game itself. Themeparks are static, or predefined.

There is never a perfect sandbox simply because that would require much too much coding. So there are always limits to what you can do.

Originally posted by Adamantine

Nobody can change a sandbox into a themepark or vice versa. You would have to reprogram the whole game.

Sandbox or themepark - this does nothing have to do with the question of skillbased, levelbased, or classbased. While sandbox is usually skillbased, this is nothing but a tradition. Themeparks can be skillbased, levelbased or classbased, there is nothing to stop them about that.

The "if somebody tells you what to do, its no longer a sandbox" definition is useless. Themeparks dont necessarily force quests upon you either.

Sandbox is if the player can change the game itself. Themeparks are static, or predefined.

There is never a perfect sandbox simply because that would require much too much coding. So there are always limits to what you can do.

but the limmitations of a sandbox are , by definiton, far less than that of a themepark where you have no impact on the game world. 

If enough themepark elements are introduced to a sandbox world, it does muttle things up a bit and confuse the definition.

Most posters here like to think there is 1 definiton for sandbox and themepark. The fact is there are varying degrees of both so trying to define them by "elements" is pointless.

Originally posted by jarby

I think Eve is not a sandbox at all.  especially after  2 last patches.  lots of limitations make this game turning into space kind of wow clone.

I don't see how incursions and captains quarters turned the game into wow. Man some people are quick to call the skies falling. I'm with the other guy in laughing :)

I don't think people say EVE is the biggest, they say it's the best, which Runescape does not contest.

Originally posted by sungodra

For me, Eve is boring, and I never played runescape... As far as which one is a sandbox, I really don't care but I guess maybe they both are?

 

Isn't eve open space of nothingness?

Yup people just fly off into random directions in hopes of finding someone else. We then activate spreadsheet mode to fight each other in an XML combat window that pops up. Afterwards, we're griefed over and over again by pirates because they have higher skills and we will never catch... and <input mindless assumption here>.

Originally posted by Metentso

Originally posted by Bladestrom

Originally posted by Metentso

Eve has a few 100% sandbox features. Does that make it a sandbox MMO? that's up to anyones opinions. For me it's not a sandbox game.

 As i said, being a sandbox has nothing to do with features.  It is about community and economy.  Both are Eves biggest strengths.  Pointing to a community and saying 'thats not a community' does not make it so :)

 

Darkfall players says sandbox is full PVP and full loot. Eve players say sandbox is community, economy, politics.

They are like the blind people touching parts of an elephant. Yes those are sandbox features, or caracteristics if you prefer, but a whole sandbox is much more. I won't go into what a sandobx is because that's a very open concept and will lead to endless discussions.

Someone finally gets it.

A game having quests doesnt automatically make it a " themepark " game.

A game having Open PvP and Full Loot doesnt automatically make it a " Sandbox " game.

A game having base classes doesnt automatically make the game a " Themepark " game.

A game having a classless system doesnt automatically make the game a " Sandbox " game.

Ect. Ect. Ect.

*Ahem*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGplrpWvz0I

*Achoo*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08hmqyejCYU&feature=relmfu

I don't know about runescape, but as far as i'm concerned EVE is and always will be a game with endless possibilities....