The way I see it, sandbox games are mostly about freedom of choice and realism within the established virtual world.
If you're out on a hunting expedition and some peasant comes by and starts insulting you for no good reason, or tries to steal your game, the sandbox ruleset should allow you to deal with that person as you would most probably want to were you a ruthless medieval warrior or a blood thirsty Uruk Hai in Middle Earth, ie by thrusting your 5 foot, 2 handed axe in his face and then stripping him of all his belongings. Realism.
People generally believe that FFA PvP attracts the worste kind of people. I believe the exact opposite to be true. Environments where people are allowed to behave in the worste possible way without fear of any repercussion whatsoever is where the bad people go.
If everyone in the world has the power to dish out his own justice, then trust me, people think twice before behaving like jerks.
Of course this goes both ways. If someone has an advantage over you and is more powerful than you, he might very well be tempted to abuse that power and make your "virtual" life miserable. This obviously happens alot in these types of games BUT you can always organize, call for help, and retribute!
There's the beauty of the sandbox game.
In my opinion, but it's just that, FFA PvP is the key element in a sandbox game without which the game no longer makes any sense.
Actually, the medievil times was the same as the cowboys days in america, and both were BLOODY!
Sure, the avg person could defend themselves against bad guys, but, this is not hollywood, the bad guys usually ran in packs. That means the avg person didnt stand a chance.
Thats when you got stuff like, knights and the possey, because the only way to really defeat the bad guys was to group up and hunt them down. You cant always do this in a MMO.
I've doing this for years now, and the only time I seen a griefer out alone, is if he was a high level toon in a low level area, ganking lowbies. Otherwise there were always more than one, working together to grief people. In EVE you saw it all the time.
There is only one way of dealing with FFA full loot PvP, and that is not to have it, because it brings out the worst in people, everytime!!
Yes and the WoW global chat is just full of upstanding citizens right?
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
The way I see it, sandbox games are mostly about freedom of choice and realism within the established virtual world.
If you're out on a hunting expedition and some peasant comes by and starts insulting you for no good reason, or tries to steal your game, the sandbox ruleset should allow you to deal with that person as you would most probably want to were you a ruthless medieval warrior or a blood thirsty Uruk Hai in Middle Earth, ie by thrusting your 5 foot, 2 handed axe in his face and then stripping him of all his belongings. Realism.
People generally believe that FFA PvP attracts the worste kind of people. I believe the exact opposite to be true. Environments where people are allowed to behave in the worste possible way without fear of any repercussion whatsoever is where the bad people go.
If everyone in the world has the power to dish out his own justice, then trust me, people think twice before behaving like jerks.
Of course this goes both ways. If someone has an advantage over you and is more powerful than you, he might very well be tempted to abuse that power and make your "virtual" life miserable. This obviously happens alot in these types of games BUT you can always organize, call for help, and retribute!
There's the beauty of the sandbox game.
In my opinion, but it's just that, FFA PvP is the key element in a sandbox game without which the game no longer makes any sense.
Actually, the medievil times was the same as the cowboys days in america, and both were BLOODY!
Sure, the avg person could defend themselves against bad guys, but, this is not hollywood, the bad guys usually ran in packs. That means the avg person didnt stand a chance.
Thats when you got stuff like, knights and the possey, because the only way to really defeat the bad guys was to group up and hunt them down. You cant always do this in a MMO.
I've doing this for years now, and the only time I seen a griefer out alone, is if he was a high level toon in a low level area, ganking lowbies. Otherwise there were always more than one, working together to grief people. In EVE you saw it all the time.
There is only one way of dealing with FFA full loot PvP, and that is not to have it, because it brings out the worst in people, everytime!!
Yes and the WoW global chat is just full of upstanding citizens right?
No, that game is full of asshats, in fact, I no longer play any Blizzard games, because the community has gone to hell.
I get the feeling that you completly missed the point of my post....
"FFA", "PvP", and "MMORPG" in reality can't be used in the same sentence, no matter how much we all squeeze our eyes shut and chant "yes they can, yes they can, yes they can".
Citing one of the examples given by the OP, that being Chess, the field of capability is levelled between contestants, as has been true of games for millenia. In an MMO however (warped red-headed step-child that it is in relation to PvP), it's all about gear and stats. So "pvp" in MMO's is more about numbers packed in the character model, not the player.
Now, if we are talking about an FPS where people zone in with standard stats and gear where you actually have to aim to hit something, now you can start talking about the Player Dynamic as dominant. If it's the Player Dynamic that's dominant it automatically makes FFA relevant as a play-style because no one is ever (relatively speaking) in a position of being helpless. You have reasonable ability to protect yourself, and there is reasonable expectation of danger if you consider attacking someone.
In an MMO where World PvP is defined by cap level players riding roughshod over lower levels unrestrained, there's not a lot of PvP to be had for anyone else, and "FFA" as a global world condition pretty much impossible to consider.
Free For All PvP has nothing to do with Sandbox MMO play. FFA PvP is actually better suited for Themepark MMOs. The idea of making the entire game FFA PvP like a gaint anything goes sandbox never works, it never did work, and it never will work either. In order to make FFA PvP paletable and accessable to the masses it has to nested within a larger circle of Faction style PvP and safe areas. In order to encourage people to get out of the safe areas the game has to put a lot of goodies out in the pvp zone. Have the main quest leveling path go striaght through the PvP territory with the slower leveling outside of pvp areas. You could still level and avoid the pvp but it would be much slower. Also put the bests harvests and best farming and best loot mobs in the contested area as well including PvE raid mobs. This is not a sandbox I am describing but a themepark.
The very best PvP I ever experienced was fighting over contested raid mobs in Everquest 2. That is holy of holys, the holy grail of MMO game play: Raiding and PvPing at the same time. It was a state of pure competition were one must test their PvE and PvP skills directly again other players for lasting rewards and server domination. The diagram I have here shows how that game was set up for a few expansions.
In pure theme park style there was progression based raiding where guilds of players would kill some easy raid mobs to get better gear for the harder raids. But in order to get the best raid loot guilds had to come out of their instances and pull a dangerous raid mob in the middle of a PvP area. Whenever the top guild went to pull contested it would attract all kinds of attention from lesser rival guilds. The lesser guilds would swarm the raiding guild with PvP while trying to wipe them so they can't kill the raid boss. Sometimes the raiders would kill the mob and the PvP and other times the raiders would wipe from all the PvP.
This fighting raid mobs and pvp'ing at the same time was a quirk that was likely created by accident as SoE did not preserve the original system because they didn't know what they had.
The way I see it, sandbox games are mostly about freedom of choice and realism within the established virtual world.
If you're out on a hunting expedition and some peasant comes by and starts insulting you for no good reason, or tries to steal your game, the sandbox ruleset should allow you to deal with that person as you would most probably want to were you a ruthless medieval warrior or a blood thirsty Uruk Hai in Middle Earth, ie by thrusting your 5 foot, 2 handed axe in his face and then stripping him of all his belongings. Realism.
People generally believe that FFA PvP attracts the worste kind of people. I believe the exact opposite to be true. Environments where people are allowed to behave in the worste possible way without fear of any repercussion whatsoever is where the bad people go.
If everyone in the world has the power to dish out his own justice, then trust me, people think twice before behaving like jerks.
Of course this goes both ways. If someone has an advantage over you and is more powerful than you, he might very well be tempted to abuse that power and make your "virtual" life miserable. This obviously happens alot in these types of games BUT you can always organize, call for help, and retribute!
There's the beauty of the sandbox game.
In my opinion, but it's just that, FFA PvP is the key element in a sandbox game without which the game no longer makes any sense.
You can believe what you like, everyone knows that has played FFA PVP for any significant time it just does not work well. Just look at Darkfall and MO, I consider both failures as they can't even hold the attention of the pvp crowd. It does bring out some of the worst kind of people along with the good ones. It only takes a few bad ones to ruin it for the majority. Banding together is a myth. By the time you have your group together the bad guys are gone.
UO had to actually ban entire guilds because they were such jerks. There is always someone willing to push the limits.
Take for example Eve, they have addressed FFA PVP by only allowing it in specific areas. Their design has holes in it, but it works for the most part. UO was a much better game when they added the non pvp area Trammel. You still had to go to Felucca for the better things in the game, but could play unmolested by pvpers if you so chose.
So it resolves itself down to consequences without penalizing those that actually just want to teach a pest a lesson. They have to be there to make people think twice about hassling others. I have not seen any rulesets yet that have been successful, hence FFA PVP still ends up being a huge deterrent to having a large population to support a game. Eve comes close, yet it still has major issues.
So lumping FFA PVP and sandbox is a bad idea because when you do, you will cause a major limit to your possible playerbase, hence why the avoidence by major labels from making sandbox games.
I love the idea of hybrid themeboxes and sandparks. I think PVP and Full Loot PVP are wonderful options. I like the idea of being able to flag yourself for either, and that being the only way you can use it against others. I like the idea of "safe zones" where even consensual pvp must take a break or move around, so that you can't harrass people by swordfighting in their faces (which some will do not for the sake of swordfighting their oponent, but to harrass the person who doesn't want to partake in a gankfest). I love the idea of open areas with environment conflict and adventure to partake in when you just want to kick back and enjoy a story that's been laid out for you, and I love the idea of being able to create your own storylines and adventures, and share them with others... (City of Heroes does a halfway decent job with this using their mission architect system. It feels like a clunky afterthough, mostly because it is a clunky afterthought, but it's still superleaps and bounds ahead of what many competitors offer for player generated content). I really miss the customizable housing in UO and SWG, though I would have preferred a method of implementation that didn't turn every patch of flat land into free for all virtual real estate. Something involving placement restriction radius dependent on local population, and maybe self-expanding zone space, could have really made that work better. Combine that with player generated adventure development and a highly customizable UI and command system, and I'd be sold.
If brute force isn't working, you're not using enough.
Sandbox seems to have different meaning to different people....Some interpret it as meaning "I can do anything at any time with no restrictions" while others see it as "I can do anything but none of it is very appealing"....This is often why FFA PVP is associated with sandbox because while there is alot todo nnone of it has any meaning and gets boring quick...... Personally I despise FFA PVP....I work too hard on my character to have some jerk/jerks kill me and take all my stuff....This type of player base tends to cater to the biggest idiots in gaming and personally I'd just as soon ahve nothing to do with them.
To be a sandbox you need also a few tools (like a little sand shovel) to be able to do as you please. A FFA PvP destroy the concept of sandbox simply because every single tool and sand is turned to pvp... And sandbox means the possibility of doing wharever you want, and not being linked to pvp if you dont want... SWG was a sandbox, for examble...
But the worst is the very elitist community, they are jerks in majority (not all), and sandbox imply on a vivid and mature community. The adrenaline of pvp ffa makes all goes to hell, its ganking, griefing and very fast the game lost it appeal to pvers, crafters and rpers...
While I agree a sandbox does not have to have FFA PvP I feel that it can add to the game immersion if done right. The problem as I see it is that no developer has bothered to implement proper consequences for PvP. They insist on this Red-Blue dynamic which is far too swallow to deal with the complex social dynamics needed to create stable communities in a FFV-PvP sandbox.
As others have mentioned there are two groups; the gatherers and the PvPers. Or at least that is the way it starts off with. It ends up as PKers/griefers and everyone else. With games like MO and DF it is too easy for so called PvPers to travel anywhere on the map, anytime and interrupt someone else's game play. In each one of those games the non-hardcore PvPers end up being the "targets". Their areas are camped during prime time and instead of playing their game they are forced to play the griefer/PvPers game. So they leave.
The game design must ensure that by the natural flow of game play PvP is restricted to certain conflict zones. Non-pvpers will sometimes be caught up in it but by and large should be able to avoid those areas. By conflict zones I don't mean PvP areas but areas that become dangerous due to in-game politics and wars. If you avoid the area you are reasonably safe except for the occassional hardcore-bandit who will be a tiny minority.
First off good reputation actually need to provide you tangible benefits in the game. A clan's reputation should be influeced by the its members reputation. If a clan declares war on another clan sure you can have a fight without reputation penalty. Obviously there are literally dozens or hundreds of caveats and additional rules to put in place, but I am just indicating that reputation needs to be permeate everything and be affected by every action.
If a player is marked as "red" or "murderer" or whatever there must be a harsh penalty; permadeath in my mind. Obviously you will have to do away with the ridiculous no-skill cap of DF to make that feasible. MO has a better skill system in that regard. The penalty MUST be HARSH because the griefer (because that is what a person is when they PvP any random without cause - you act like a bandit) has the least risk and the most to gain as it stands. They are the ones that destroy a sandbox You want to be the bandit? Fine, the harshness of your life needs to be brought in alingment with the amount of disruption you cause.
I don't mind getting killed if it makes sense in the game. If I get killed every night by the same guys, that "lolwtfpawn" in chat and shit-talk endlessly it gets annoying. It is not immersive. Then there is not RPG in MMORPG. Then I might as well play BF3 and then I am ready to PvP and can get in some licks of my own. Most people don't want to play a battlefield scenario. The mechanics of the game therefore needs to restrict PvP to certain areas of the map by using a very harsh reputation/penalty system that makes people act within the rules of warfare (i.e. fighting official enemies) for the most part.
Unfortunately, the developers of DF and MO missold the term sandbox. Yes, their games are sandboxes, but they are essentially PvP battlegrounds with a venear of a sandbox game. If you are not primarily a PvPer the game is not for you. And it is a shame that those are the only types of "sandboxes" out there because I think for most of us "sandbox" means "many different playstyles". Thousands upon thousands have tried these games and we all left because the no-consequence PvP kills off any desire to do anything else in the game.
Too often this setting invites the low life, 20 hour a day loser that just gets his thrills ganking and ruining everyone else's gameplay.....IF done right these game could be awesome, but I have never seen one yet that didn't end up being a total gankfest with a bunch of total jerks playing it.
This was a very good article. The problem with mmorpg genre is homogeneity. It would be a better genre if risk of investment did not stifle it so much and devs could learn from mistakes or experiments of other mmorpgs seeking niches of the market of mmorpg players and adapt and modify these systems.
GW2 seems to have taken a lot of lessons to forge what could be an outstanding themepark mmo.
But there should be more mmorpgs with FFA, sandbox implemented or themepark implemented of this, of good quality with a chance to see what happens over time. But the above limits finding the right balance to such as this and such as perma-death exceptions ie specific conditions met etc. Perhaps these could work on the technical side or perhaps more design on the social side of this ideas in mmorpgs?
While I enjoyed the Pathfinder Online blogs, they miss some key elements and touched only on the PvE side of things.
Any true sandbox/ffa/full loot game needs to make PC killing a last resort necesity and not a sport. Look at how killboards are ruining EVE online. Defending your space is one things, killing just for the killboard score is another.
What the hell are you talking about? The killboards aren't "ruining" Eve Online. Quite to the contrary, not only do they provide a fun kind of competition to see who can out-do the other (and have the occasional laugh at someone with an idiot fit), but more importantly they can be an increadibly vital source of information.
Whenever I'm in a hisec corporation and we get wardecced, or when we are planning on wardeccing someone ourselves, the first thing I do is through various means find every single member of the enemy corp that I can. The killboards can be one source of this info. Then, once I have that information, I go to the killboards and I study every single member, one at a time. I check their killboard records, the types of targets they've killed, what they've killed them in/with, their ship fits whenever they have losses so I know what kind of equipment they like to use...from all this I get a full tactical assessment of the enemy corporation so that we can start developing strategies to counter them, or determine that we're going to get a$$-raped six ways to Sunday and need to stay safely docked in stations until the war is over (in fact, I had to do one of these checks and came up with the a$$-rape result less than three weeks ago as of this post. Because of the research I did, and the subsequent warning I gave to all of our members, we didn't take a single loss.)
This kind of research is so useful it's practically mandatory for anyone wanting a chance at succeeding in a hisec war, and it would be virtually impossible to do without the killboards.
Long story short, that statement of yours I highlighted in green is utterlly null and void.
1. When I imagine pvp in a sandbox, I personally imagine people fighting over resources or et al. in order to increase their ability to affect the gameworld itself. I do not believe that random griefing is necessary for a sandbox to be a sandbox.
2. The way society works, as defined by enlightenment thinkers, is that we give up rights in order to gain rights. In other words, we give up the right to murder in order to gain the right (note that it's the government's job to protect this right in real life) to not be murdered. In other words, taking away the freedom to kill newbies actually gives players the freedom to not be randomly ganked. Not that I'm advocating for something as drastic of having non-pvp zones where it's impossible to damage other players.
3. I've noticed that when people talk about ffa pvp, they also talk about some players killing random pvpers. The point is that a sandbox is about people affecting the world, and ffa pvp is part of the world. In other words, the players need to be able to reduce ffa pvp, which might not be possible if it takes too much effort to find the pvper and if the death penalty for the pvper isn't high enough to discourage him. In real life, the government doesn't let people get away with stealing from stores, and as a result we can have stores selling stuff. I support a sandbox giving players the tools, such as semi-teleporting mortal finite renewable npc guards and a higher death penalty for pkers.
UO started with FFA, changed it because of it ruining the game.
Asherons Call 1 had PvE servers and a FFA PvP server.
Star Wars Galaxies had PvE servers and a FFA PvP server.
Eve, FFA PvP
Looking at the above, 3 of the best sandbox MMOs ever created went without being "all FFA". if todays game companies had half a brain and actually made games in a way to draw in the most amount of players, they would have PvE servers and PvP servers. Even with today's MEGASERVER games they could still do a PvE and a PvP server.
It all depends on the focus of the sandbox content.
Free Realms is an example of a sandbox-style game with no need at all for open world PVP, let alone FFA or full loot. As Ozmodan mentioned, SWG is another game where FFA PVP or full loot mechanics were not needed. However, if your sandbox gameplay centers around resources, crafted items or equipment being of value to the PVP-related gameplay, then a certain level of relatively unrestricted PVP and looting may be necessary.
It all depends on the focus of the sandbox content.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I feel like once Loktofelt posts in a thread that's been hanging around since 2012 waiting for more posts, it means it's OK to keep posting in that thread. Maybe that's just me.
It seems like the big issue with PvP in a sandbox environment comes down to having some choice about it after starting to play the game. Even in Eve where a player gives up opportunity for the relative safety of High Sec space, the player has a choice, and it's a choice they can make after they've started playing the game. They have a chance to get their head around what the game is and what it offers when making that choice too. The idea of a sandbox MMORPG that forces the player to choose when they purchase the game rather than when they start playing the game is forcing the player to make a choice without enough knowledge of what's going on.
Then there's the lack of incentives to play games with that OW PvP. I've come up with a scenario in my head that I don't think exists outside of my head, but I think offers the proper incentive for engaging in, or at least chancing PvP. It requires the player to be able to choose though. A very simplistic description would be taking a resource zone, and dividing it in two. On one side are PvE mobs that will attack players. The more resources it looks like a player has, the more likely the mobs are going to attack them. The mobs would be scaled such that a certain percentage of players would die and lose their stuff. I don't know what percentage, but there would be a certain level of mob toughness and AI intelligence where say 30% of players trying to gather resources or move them through the area would get killed and their stuff would leave the system. In the other zone, it's an OW PvP zone. Players take the place of mobs. I would think getting attacked would very likely result in losing, but the odds of getting attacked would be less than in the PvE zone. In this simplistic scenario players have a choice between PvE and PvP, but they are still participating in the sandbox aspects of the game. This would be considerably harder than setting up a game that has only PvP or only PvE, but I think the element of choice is what players find attractive, not just the PvP or the PvE. That's how you get a bunch of "middle of the road" players into games based around risk, loss and challenge.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I feel like once Loktofelt posts in a thread that's been hanging around since 2012 waiting for more posts, it means it's OK to keep posting in that thread. Maybe that's just me.
that or he's just getting old and didn't realize it was a necro :P
I feel like once Loktofelt posts in a thread that's been hanging around since 2012 waiting for more posts, it means it's OK to keep posting in that thread. Maybe that's just me.
that or he's just getting old and didn't realize it was a necro :P
Sadly, you're right. My bad for not checking. It's jsut such a common thread that I just figured I was late to the party on it.
Well... much later than I thought.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I remember being so excited for the development of Darkfall online then all of a sudden I kept hearing this phrase from some other fans "FFA PVP" at the time I wasn't sure what people were talking about. After a few weeks of back and forth about what should be in and what shouldn't I learned from the attitude of fans of the idea what it meant and that was all I needed to learn that regardless of all the other cool things that seemed to be a part of the games plan this was going to be something that kept me away from playing the game.
From there the conversation was never again about anything remotely sandbox it was strictly about FFA PVP and it's hard to blame the devs for taking up those peoples cause because they were such the vocal group of people.
Let me end by saying this those who advocate and fight for FFA PVP are rarey if ever the people who praise other features of sandbox gameplay. My experience is those who want FFA PVP don't care about anything other than FFA PVP they don['t care aboout community involvment (unless we are talking about guilld runs of ganking/war) they don't care about crafting,building, or community relations for that matter.
To me FFA PVP is a feature unto itself that has little to nothing to do with actual sandbox gameplay.
I couldt disagree more. most sandbox players want all aspects of gaming. the problem is a lot of people who come over to sandbox games are really carebears and have no place in a hardcore pvp game. we don't ask you to change your more rpg style games to hardcore pvp nor should you expect to change our hardcore sandboxes to a carebear theme park. you have your games. we have ours.
Comments
Yes and the WoW global chat is just full of upstanding citizens right?
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
"I'm not sure what popularized the idea of a sandbox MMORPG having a free-for-all PVP component, "
ever heard of UO ?
No, that game is full of asshats, in fact, I no longer play any Blizzard games, because the community has gone to hell.
I get the feeling that you completly missed the point of my post....
"FFA", "PvP", and "MMORPG" in reality can't be used in the same sentence, no matter how much we all squeeze our eyes shut and chant "yes they can, yes they can, yes they can".
Citing one of the examples given by the OP, that being Chess, the field of capability is levelled between contestants, as has been true of games for millenia. In an MMO however (warped red-headed step-child that it is in relation to PvP), it's all about gear and stats. So "pvp" in MMO's is more about numbers packed in the character model, not the player.
Now, if we are talking about an FPS where people zone in with standard stats and gear where you actually have to aim to hit something, now you can start talking about the Player Dynamic as dominant. If it's the Player Dynamic that's dominant it automatically makes FFA relevant as a play-style because no one is ever (relatively speaking) in a position of being helpless. You have reasonable ability to protect yourself, and there is reasonable expectation of danger if you consider attacking someone.
In an MMO where World PvP is defined by cap level players riding roughshod over lower levels unrestrained, there's not a lot of PvP to be had for anyone else, and "FFA" as a global world condition pretty much impossible to consider.
Wherever you go, there you are.
Free For All PvP has nothing to do with Sandbox MMO play. FFA PvP is actually better suited for Themepark MMOs. The idea of making the entire game FFA PvP like a gaint anything goes sandbox never works, it never did work, and it never will work either. In order to make FFA PvP paletable and accessable to the masses it has to nested within a larger circle of Faction style PvP and safe areas. In order to encourage people to get out of the safe areas the game has to put a lot of goodies out in the pvp zone. Have the main quest leveling path go striaght through the PvP territory with the slower leveling outside of pvp areas. You could still level and avoid the pvp but it would be much slower. Also put the bests harvests and best farming and best loot mobs in the contested area as well including PvE raid mobs. This is not a sandbox I am describing but a themepark.
The very best PvP I ever experienced was fighting over contested raid mobs in Everquest 2. That is holy of holys, the holy grail of MMO game play: Raiding and PvPing at the same time. It was a state of pure competition were one must test their PvE and PvP skills directly again other players for lasting rewards and server domination. The diagram I have here shows how that game was set up for a few expansions.
In pure theme park style there was progression based raiding where guilds of players would kill some easy raid mobs to get better gear for the harder raids. But in order to get the best raid loot guilds had to come out of their instances and pull a dangerous raid mob in the middle of a PvP area. Whenever the top guild went to pull contested it would attract all kinds of attention from lesser rival guilds. The lesser guilds would swarm the raiding guild with PvP while trying to wipe them so they can't kill the raid boss. Sometimes the raiders would kill the mob and the PvP and other times the raiders would wipe from all the PvP.
This fighting raid mobs and pvp'ing at the same time was a quirk that was likely created by accident as SoE did not preserve the original system because they didn't know what they had.
You can believe what you like, everyone knows that has played FFA PVP for any significant time it just does not work well. Just look at Darkfall and MO, I consider both failures as they can't even hold the attention of the pvp crowd. It does bring out some of the worst kind of people along with the good ones. It only takes a few bad ones to ruin it for the majority. Banding together is a myth. By the time you have your group together the bad guys are gone.
UO had to actually ban entire guilds because they were such jerks. There is always someone willing to push the limits.
Take for example Eve, they have addressed FFA PVP by only allowing it in specific areas. Their design has holes in it, but it works for the most part. UO was a much better game when they added the non pvp area Trammel. You still had to go to Felucca for the better things in the game, but could play unmolested by pvpers if you so chose.
So it resolves itself down to consequences without penalizing those that actually just want to teach a pest a lesson. They have to be there to make people think twice about hassling others. I have not seen any rulesets yet that have been successful, hence FFA PVP still ends up being a huge deterrent to having a large population to support a game. Eve comes close, yet it still has major issues.
So lumping FFA PVP and sandbox is a bad idea because when you do, you will cause a major limit to your possible playerbase, hence why the avoidence by major labels from making sandbox games.
I love the idea of hybrid themeboxes and sandparks. I think PVP and Full Loot PVP are wonderful options. I like the idea of being able to flag yourself for either, and that being the only way you can use it against others. I like the idea of "safe zones" where even consensual pvp must take a break or move around, so that you can't harrass people by swordfighting in their faces (which some will do not for the sake of swordfighting their oponent, but to harrass the person who doesn't want to partake in a gankfest). I love the idea of open areas with environment conflict and adventure to partake in when you just want to kick back and enjoy a story that's been laid out for you, and I love the idea of being able to create your own storylines and adventures, and share them with others... (City of Heroes does a halfway decent job with this using their mission architect system. It feels like a clunky afterthough, mostly because it is a clunky afterthought, but it's still superleaps and bounds ahead of what many competitors offer for player generated content). I really miss the customizable housing in UO and SWG, though I would have preferred a method of implementation that didn't turn every patch of flat land into free for all virtual real estate. Something involving placement restriction radius dependent on local population, and maybe self-expanding zone space, could have really made that work better. Combine that with player generated adventure development and a highly customizable UI and command system, and I'd be sold.
If brute force isn't working, you're not using enough.
Sandbox seems to have different meaning to different people....Some interpret it as meaning "I can do anything at any time with no restrictions" while others see it as "I can do anything but none of it is very appealing"....This is often why FFA PVP is associated with sandbox because while there is alot todo nnone of it has any meaning and gets boring quick...... Personally I despise FFA PVP....I work too hard on my character to have some jerk/jerks kill me and take all my stuff....This type of player base tends to cater to the biggest idiots in gaming and personally I'd just as soon ahve nothing to do with them.
To be a sandbox you need also a few tools (like a little sand shovel) to be able to do as you please. A FFA PvP destroy the concept of sandbox simply because every single tool and sand is turned to pvp... And sandbox means the possibility of doing wharever you want, and not being linked to pvp if you dont want... SWG was a sandbox, for examble...
But the worst is the very elitist community, they are jerks in majority (not all), and sandbox imply on a vivid and mature community. The adrenaline of pvp ffa makes all goes to hell, its ganking, griefing and very fast the game lost it appeal to pvers, crafters and rpers...
While I agree a sandbox does not have to have FFA PvP I feel that it can add to the game immersion if done right. The problem as I see it is that no developer has bothered to implement proper consequences for PvP. They insist on this Red-Blue dynamic which is far too swallow to deal with the complex social dynamics needed to create stable communities in a FFV-PvP sandbox.
As others have mentioned there are two groups; the gatherers and the PvPers. Or at least that is the way it starts off with. It ends up as PKers/griefers and everyone else. With games like MO and DF it is too easy for so called PvPers to travel anywhere on the map, anytime and interrupt someone else's game play. In each one of those games the non-hardcore PvPers end up being the "targets". Their areas are camped during prime time and instead of playing their game they are forced to play the griefer/PvPers game. So they leave.
The game design must ensure that by the natural flow of game play PvP is restricted to certain conflict zones. Non-pvpers will sometimes be caught up in it but by and large should be able to avoid those areas. By conflict zones I don't mean PvP areas but areas that become dangerous due to in-game politics and wars. If you avoid the area you are reasonably safe except for the occassional hardcore-bandit who will be a tiny minority.
First off good reputation actually need to provide you tangible benefits in the game. A clan's reputation should be influeced by the its members reputation. If a clan declares war on another clan sure you can have a fight without reputation penalty. Obviously there are literally dozens or hundreds of caveats and additional rules to put in place, but I am just indicating that reputation needs to be permeate everything and be affected by every action.
If a player is marked as "red" or "murderer" or whatever there must be a harsh penalty; permadeath in my mind. Obviously you will have to do away with the ridiculous no-skill cap of DF to make that feasible. MO has a better skill system in that regard. The penalty MUST be HARSH because the griefer (because that is what a person is when they PvP any random without cause - you act like a bandit) has the least risk and the most to gain as it stands. They are the ones that destroy a sandbox You want to be the bandit? Fine, the harshness of your life needs to be brought in alingment with the amount of disruption you cause.
I don't mind getting killed if it makes sense in the game. If I get killed every night by the same guys, that "lolwtfpawn" in chat and shit-talk endlessly it gets annoying. It is not immersive. Then there is not RPG in MMORPG. Then I might as well play BF3 and then I am ready to PvP and can get in some licks of my own. Most people don't want to play a battlefield scenario. The mechanics of the game therefore needs to restrict PvP to certain areas of the map by using a very harsh reputation/penalty system that makes people act within the rules of warfare (i.e. fighting official enemies) for the most part.
Unfortunately, the developers of DF and MO missold the term sandbox. Yes, their games are sandboxes, but they are essentially PvP battlegrounds with a venear of a sandbox game. If you are not primarily a PvPer the game is not for you. And it is a shame that those are the only types of "sandboxes" out there because I think for most of us "sandbox" means "many different playstyles". Thousands upon thousands have tried these games and we all left because the no-consequence PvP kills off any desire to do anything else in the game.
Too often this setting invites the low life, 20 hour a day loser that just gets his thrills ganking and ruining everyone else's gameplay.....IF done right these game could be awesome, but I have never seen one yet that didn't end up being a total gankfest with a bunch of total jerks playing it.
This was a very good article. The problem with mmorpg genre is homogeneity. It would be a better genre if risk of investment did not stifle it so much and devs could learn from mistakes or experiments of other mmorpgs seeking niches of the market of mmorpg players and adapt and modify these systems.
GW2 seems to have taken a lot of lessons to forge what could be an outstanding themepark mmo.
But there should be more mmorpgs with FFA, sandbox implemented or themepark implemented of this, of good quality with a chance to see what happens over time. But the above limits finding the right balance to such as this and such as perma-death exceptions ie specific conditions met etc. Perhaps these could work on the technical side or perhaps more design on the social side of this ideas in mmorpgs?
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
What the hell are you talking about? The killboards aren't "ruining" Eve Online. Quite to the contrary, not only do they provide a fun kind of competition to see who can out-do the other (and have the occasional laugh at someone with an idiot fit), but more importantly they can be an increadibly vital source of information.
Whenever I'm in a hisec corporation and we get wardecced, or when we are planning on wardeccing someone ourselves, the first thing I do is through various means find every single member of the enemy corp that I can. The killboards can be one source of this info. Then, once I have that information, I go to the killboards and I study every single member, one at a time. I check their killboard records, the types of targets they've killed, what they've killed them in/with, their ship fits whenever they have losses so I know what kind of equipment they like to use...from all this I get a full tactical assessment of the enemy corporation so that we can start developing strategies to counter them, or determine that we're going to get a$$-raped six ways to Sunday and need to stay safely docked in stations until the war is over (in fact, I had to do one of these checks and came up with the a$$-rape result less than three weeks ago as of this post. Because of the research I did, and the subsequent warning I gave to all of our members, we didn't take a single loss.)
This kind of research is so useful it's practically mandatory for anyone wanting a chance at succeeding in a hisec war, and it would be virtually impossible to do without the killboards.
Long story short, that statement of yours I highlighted in green is utterlly null and void.
Where's the any key?
Three comments:
1. When I imagine pvp in a sandbox, I personally imagine people fighting over resources or et al. in order to increase their ability to affect the gameworld itself. I do not believe that random griefing is necessary for a sandbox to be a sandbox.
2. The way society works, as defined by enlightenment thinkers, is that we give up rights in order to gain rights. In other words, we give up the right to murder in order to gain the right (note that it's the government's job to protect this right in real life) to not be murdered. In other words, taking away the freedom to kill newbies actually gives players the freedom to not be randomly ganked. Not that I'm advocating for something as drastic of having non-pvp zones where it's impossible to damage other players.
3. I've noticed that when people talk about ffa pvp, they also talk about some players killing random pvpers. The point is that a sandbox is about people affecting the world, and ffa pvp is part of the world. In other words, the players need to be able to reduce ffa pvp, which might not be possible if it takes too much effort to find the pvper and if the death penalty for the pvper isn't high enough to discourage him. In real life, the government doesn't let people get away with stealing from stores, and as a result we can have stores selling stuff. I support a sandbox giving players the tools, such as semi-teleporting mortal finite renewable npc guards and a higher death penalty for pkers.
UO started with FFA, changed it because of it ruining the game.
Asherons Call 1 had PvE servers and a FFA PvP server.
Star Wars Galaxies had PvE servers and a FFA PvP server.
Eve, FFA PvP
Looking at the above, 3 of the best sandbox MMOs ever created went without being "all FFA". if todays game companies had half a brain and actually made games in a way to draw in the most amount of players, they would have PvE servers and PvP servers. Even with today's MEGASERVER games they could still do a PvE and a PvP server.
It all depends on the focus of the sandbox content.
Free Realms is an example of a sandbox-style game with no need at all for open world PVP, let alone FFA or full loot. As Ozmodan mentioned, SWG is another game where FFA PVP or full loot mechanics were not needed. However, if your sandbox gameplay centers around resources, crafted items or equipment being of value to the PVP-related gameplay, then a certain level of relatively unrestricted PVP and looting may be necessary.
It all depends on the focus of the sandbox content.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I feel like once Loktofelt posts in a thread that's been hanging around since 2012 waiting for more posts, it means it's OK to keep posting in that thread. Maybe that's just me.
It seems like the big issue with PvP in a sandbox environment comes down to having some choice about it after starting to play the game. Even in Eve where a player gives up opportunity for the relative safety of High Sec space, the player has a choice, and it's a choice they can make after they've started playing the game. They have a chance to get their head around what the game is and what it offers when making that choice too. The idea of a sandbox MMORPG that forces the player to choose when they purchase the game rather than when they start playing the game is forcing the player to make a choice without enough knowledge of what's going on.
Then there's the lack of incentives to play games with that OW PvP. I've come up with a scenario in my head that I don't think exists outside of my head, but I think offers the proper incentive for engaging in, or at least chancing PvP. It requires the player to be able to choose though. A very simplistic description would be taking a resource zone, and dividing it in two. On one side are PvE mobs that will attack players. The more resources it looks like a player has, the more likely the mobs are going to attack them. The mobs would be scaled such that a certain percentage of players would die and lose their stuff. I don't know what percentage, but there would be a certain level of mob toughness and AI intelligence where say 30% of players trying to gather resources or move them through the area would get killed and their stuff would leave the system. In the other zone, it's an OW PvP zone. Players take the place of mobs. I would think getting attacked would very likely result in losing, but the odds of getting attacked would be less than in the PvE zone. In this simplistic scenario players have a choice between PvE and PvP, but they are still participating in the sandbox aspects of the game. This would be considerably harder than setting up a game that has only PvP or only PvE, but I think the element of choice is what players find attractive, not just the PvP or the PvE. That's how you get a bunch of "middle of the road" players into games based around risk, loss and challenge.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
that or he's just getting old and didn't realize it was a necro :P
Sadly, you're right. My bad for not checking. It's jsut such a common thread that I just figured I was late to the party on it.
Well... much later than I thought.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I couldt disagree more. most sandbox players want all aspects of gaming. the problem is a lot of people who come over to sandbox games are really carebears and have no place in a hardcore pvp game. we don't ask you to change your more rpg style games to hardcore pvp nor should you expect to change our hardcore sandboxes to a carebear theme park. you have your games. we have ours.