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This is my dream sandbox game, and what we sandboxers are looking for
TheScavenger
Member EpicPosts: 3,321
PvP system like EVE. Sandbox PvP, full deathmatch games...are more like deathmatch fps mmo games, but extremely badly done. I want something like EVE, that hs very good PvP mechanics.
Alliances, factions, "safer" areas (and not just cities)...protected by very strong security, the stronger and more numerous they get the closer to "civilization" you get. But you can still be killed.
Full loot, everyone killable, scams legal...in EVE, scamming is rampant. I've made SO much money by scamming people, earn enough every month to play for free (on 3 accounts). I then suicide gank their ship and come with an alt and take their stuff...so I get even more stuff. This makes it hardcore, it makes it a sandbox...it makes it like how the real world is. It is REALISM.
Before you say that is a bad thing, it isn't. It makes the players stronger, learn from their mistake...it makes the game harder. It is a huge part of EVE, and is even legal. It makes for very interesting stories.
I want to be able to hijack a corp from inside, take it down...corporate espionage. Just like in the real world.
That above, is alone, what makes sandbox games (like EVE), WAY more exciting and tougher and REAL realism than themepark MMOs. This is why we like it.
Other sandbox features that aren't really in...is a living world, that evolves not only from player action (which it should), but npc, environment, natural disasters etc). Ryzom does this, but not to a really big extent. Seasons change how the game looks...animals migrate. But it feels too...scripted.
Take a space game. No space game has huge natural disasters. What about asteroids or a meteor hitting a planet (effecting the economy around that planet), and having it be visible from space? What about a meteor shower going by and damaging your ship? Why is space so...empty...when in reality, there is a lot more going on in space. What if a black hole opens and takes out a bunch of galaxies? A permanent effect on the universe. Happens all the time. What about suns super novaing? That happens all the time too. The only interesting space game is X3 Terran Conflict, because it at least feels busy and not so empty...still not great though...
This would work in any space game. But, like EVE should have npc ships travelling to planets/moons/stations etc...it would make the game feel a lot more alive. Feels kind of...well...really...dead. In terms of atmosphere (heh). Maybe not sandbox specific...but it would add a nice touch to a sandbox space game, or any space game.
So more specific sandbox features. EVE does this pretty well, but could be better...but a better way to create an empire. Now here, I'm kind of out of ideas for what COULD be done. But, maybe it needs more variety in what you can build...hirable npc mercenaries...something. I don't know. Maybe even an RTS mechanic, that would be rather unique. Something like EVE, mixed with a rts, with a Spore-style galaxy. Even in 0.0, I never really felt the "empire" aspect of it...and I was in the Goons...outside a massive amount of war and defending territories...it...something was missing to feel like an "empire"...now that I bring it up, can't really put my finger to it...maybe not fully fleshed out?
Anyway...just some things that make a good sandbox game. Really, EVE is the best one out right now and only one worth playing. So, take EVE...improve it a lot...add a lot more atmosphere...maybe even an RTS element...something...to make a better empire.
I guess this turned into more of an EVE fanboy thread x_x...not meant to. But it is only good sandbox MMO out, so I guess it does a lot of things right already.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Comments
Sorry Im a sandboxer and I think Eve is a terrible game. PvP needs to be implemented in a way that it has consequences but not so harsch that it makes you afraid to engage in it. Asherons Call had the best balance, about 10-15 min "downtime", where as in Eve you can lose hours, even days, depending on what ship you fly.
Also I dont see how scamming makes it more realistic. Maybe you go around and scam people in RL but I do not, I see it as a negative thing and it has no place in a video game.
I want a sandbox game that is fun. Where you can explore and not follow a linear path. Where you can engage other people in PvP but not lose so much if you lose. Where you can build stuff and not lose it all because some people like to scam you.
No, Eve is not the blue print for sandbox MMOs, Asheron's Call is. Take that game, with an up to date engine and more sandbox elements, like being able to build more stuff and then you have a great sandbox. Eve is for jerks who enjoy screw other people.
My gaming blog
Asheron's Call was great. At least PvE wise. But the "red" server (Darktide), had the most horrid PvP I've ever seen...log in, fresh in the world. Dead. Again. Dead. Someone camped my (day one) character for 1 hour, non stop, as he tried getting into the game. So I just went to the white server.
Now...white server (I was morningthaw)...was great. I chose to be a PvPer (not sure if that was always in, or if that was implemented sometime around Bael'Zharon)...and went from a white to a red. That was a lot better, still got killed...but not nearly as bad as on darktide. And I remember some epic battles going on.
I still think EVE does the mechanics better. AC it is easier to replace items and not lose important items (can have junk items that have a nearly likely possibility of dropping on death)...but there wasn't really much in the way to punish PvPers. Not that I recall anyway.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
I agree with alot of what the OP said. Games need to be more challenging and the carebear mentality is what makes alot games boring- no risk, no reward as they say.
However with the ability to kill, scam or otherwise take down another player, there must be systems in these games that punish the offending party if they are caught. Realism is great and I am all for it but what you have in most games (even the sandbox ones like EVE) is pseudo-realism in the sense that you can kill another player but there are limited consequences. Yes, the player and their group can extract revenge but that is not realism. If an old lady is mugged on the street, it is not their family that normally goes after the offender.
If you are going to have games that simulate economies, warfare and society, the game must also simulate the order enforcing mechanisms that allow society to function. I am all for unlimited freedom in games but that freedom must also be coupled with ultimate consequences. I, for one, would love a sandbox game where you could play a criminal. I would also love to have a game where you could go and watch public executions as well.
"Suicide your ship then come and get the remains on my alt, just like in real life!"
You kinna lost me there. But...to be honest, sounds very boring. There are enough schmucks in reality, why would I voluntarily surround myself with bottom feeders in a game, also?
Haha, the OP writes like he's just taken some cocaine.
I gotta agree though, EVE is awesome. It's the only MMO I enjoy. It's the only game that gives me that fear omg feeling.
Yep i agree with second poster,i find Eve to be maybe the cheapest game i have ever seen.Small budget that still never made it to fruition until more funds could be drawn in.
Even after all these years it is still miles from being a complete Sci FI mmo,just a bunch of data bases and cheap graphics.I would cut CCP some slack if they were not making money,but hiring 650 employees tells me they made a TON of money,they simply do NOT have talent.
MY perfect MMORPG has NOTHING to do with pvp,i prefer players working together to take on the content.I want a robust crafting and Charater advancement.I want an in depth and challenging combat system with high end cap.High end cap means although you might be level 20,with proper skills and choices you can take down level 30 creatures.You play badly and you die fast and easy,so it give the game that excitement feel.
MOST important,i want NO hand holding,this means no auto pilots,no warping around,no markers on maps or npc heads,unless i put the markers on the map.I want wide open game play.meaning i can go anywhere i want,i am not confined to following some games tutorial island or map.
Here is the the developers i would want on my MMORPG
1 Epic Games
2 Naughty Dog productions
3 Square Enix
4 XL games [Jake Song].
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
What kind of content could be in a pure PvE sandbox MMO? Because with PvP, you have goals, empire/guild/clan/alliance/corp pride...and yes...you work TOGETHER with others.
A pure PvE sandbox MMO would be more like a themepark. I guess closest that would work is Horizons (now Istaria)...work together to build stuff, open up more land. But that only happened so rarely in that game. There wouldn't be quests (themepark), wouldn't be raids (that isn't a sandbox, since sandbox have no endgame and that is more of a themepark thing)...
Actually, a model like Asheron's Call 2 would work, at least one aspect of it. I remember players going to ruined towns, and gathering resources to rebuild it. Wasn't done too well, though...but the idea was good. A bit similar to Istaria in a way.
I guess there is...that egypt...sandbox...PvE game...ATiD or something as initials? Very different than the norm, most don't like it. But I guess that is a sandbox PvE game, that has no themepark qualities.
But I don't see how not having conflict (and players are a big part of that) would make an interesting game. And AI is never as good as other players.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
EVE has the perfect model, but the combat is as boring as watching paint dry.
Take EVE's idea, and put it on an MMOFPS with longer time to kill than normal FPS as to not to punish the slower folks too much. You can get abilities and specializations (i.e. PS2's certifications) that improve certain areas of your character, but you can only have so many of them "active" at a time. When you die you lose your armor and weapons, and spawn with only the most basic pistol. If you want your weapons back, you need to either go get them from your corpse, craft them, or buy them from the market (all weapons/armor should be player made). There should be plenty of methods to obtain crafting materials (i.e. PvE, mining, scavanging, transmuting, exploring, resource nodes, etc) as to not make weapons/armor too expensive.
The game, like EVE, should have a huge map, with safe and non-safe zones. Safe zones should be guarded by sentries, and if a player kills another player in a safe zone, he gets a bounty on his head (big reward for whoever kills him) and he becomes visible on the minimap sort of like APB. Non-safe zones are free for all pretty much, the only non-hostiles should be people in your team or in your guild.
There should be PvE as well. Plenty of mobs and missions (or DEs, w/e) to do that give crafting materials. The closer you get to the non-safe zones, the better the drops/rewards are.
No experience. Money and crafting materials are the only rewards you get. To level up your specializations/abilities/weapons/crafting/etc you have to use them. Additionally, there should be a lot of specializations, abilities and crafting professions. While it shouldn't be hard to max 1, it should take a while to master them all.
There should be "default" bases throughout the map except in the non-safe zone. These bases are not destroyable or capturable. There should also be plenty of designateed areas in the map where players and guilds can build various mini-bases (depending on how much money/materials they want to spend) to launch PvE/PvP operations from. These bases allow you to res-stock and change your abilities.
Vehicles, war declarations, alliances, elite areas, etc, are always a plus.
The setting should be something like Starship Troopers (i.e. futuristic society with plenty of bugs/alien monsters to kill). Post-apocalyptic wasteland could work too.
I'd pay $100 for a AAA MMO like that.
What world do you live in?
Scams are not legal. People go to jail.
Suicide gank and get stuff? That is not real. Suicide gets you nothing but dead.
When was the last time corporate espionage took down a company?
I cannot tell if you are stupid or childish. My bet is a little of each.
--John Ruskin
(note: snipping anything I'm not commenting directly to.)
[quote] Originally posted by TheScavenger
Eve's is a full-loss system (insurance notwithstanding,) but since most of it is destroyed rather than becoming lootable it's not *really* a full-loot system.
And that's better than a full-loot IMO, as it introduces a level of entropy into the system that offsets inflationary factors. And also serves to make ransoming more economical than just "kill and loot" in many cases.
As for how much room for 'griefing' there should be, I'm... not entirely sure. In the real world, after all, we have (some) recourse to external law enforcement and legal recompensation when scammed. In Eve, there's really no risk of serious consequences, and that's going a bit *too* far. Corporate takeovers happen, but there are legal consequences to getting caught engaging in insider trading.
Some degree of jurisdiction-based deterrence system would be a good plan, IMO. Both for realism, and to make a more reasonable learning-curve. (I'm sure you've seen the Eve Learning Curve graphic, yes?)
[quote] Originally posted by TheScavenger
Generally speaking, any technology capable of making space flight 'routine' is going to nullify that threat as well. And that's notwithstanding the odds of a meteor or asteroid actually hitting a habitable planet in the first place - the conditions for 'habitable planet' pretty much require that most of the rocks have already struck or otherwise been cleared out of the vicinity eons ago. So it's a once-every-million-years kind of event. Expand that over a million planets, and maybe it becomes a once-a-year kinda thing *across the known galaxy.*
Uh... because in reality, space really is bloody empty. Our nice, dense asteroid belt? Hundreds of thousands of kilometers distance between rocks.
Interesting stuff does happen all over the place, but there's millions of light years worth of virtually nothing between most of it. It looks different in sci-fi, because fiction focuses on the interesting stuff.
And this - not only is that kind of thing spread out over unfathomable reaches of space, but it's a billions-of-years process in itself. Our own galaxy orbits a giant black hole, and has been since before the earth itself was born.
We're also on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy, but that's going to take about 4 billion years - just to give a scope of the scale of things here.
[quote] Originally posted by TheScavenger[b]
I guess this turned into more of an EVE fanboy thread x_x...not meant to. But it is only good sandbox MMO out, so I guess it does a lot of things right already.[/quote]
I hear Darkfall Online is pretty good, if you like FFA PVP, first-person view and action/rpg hybrid mechanics. And it's slated to get better.
In real life you don't get to do many kamikaze attacks and then return to steal someone, just one and you wouldn't get to loot him. The way it allows someone to profit that way is truly ridiculous in my opinion.
My dream sandbox game is impossible it seems, because it has space and ground exploration and combat (no, don't even try to compare that to STO or SWTOR, I'm talking about each planet being huge like the WoW Azeroth huge) while I pretty much agree with everything else you posted.
It would also feature no equipment drops unless it comes from a sentient monster that uses the equipment like a NPC pirate, but obviously for that loot to be any good you'd need to kill a very important pirate, this way along with item loss would make crafting necessary. It would feature virtual societies in a constant change. It would be possible to bring a species to its extinction but to make it pretty much impossible for people to exterminate life from the universe there would be the green peace factions helping those planets to recover.
killing yourself and coming by as a second person so the original (now dead) you can have loots is realism?
LOL
I find it....interesting that most of the reasons the OP cites for EVE being a great game (which it is) is game-permitted griefing. I have never understood those who do not so much enjoy playing the game as they do ruining the game for others. I also fail to see how suicide ganking a player and then sweeping in with an alt to salvage the wreck is "realism." I do not believe I have ever heard of a criminal mastermind who suicide-kills people so an associate can profit from the crime scene. If such a think existed, I'm pretty sure I would have read about it in the news.
And just as a side note, my best mate is an astrophysicist, and space is astonishingly empty. Even in the famously crowded Mars-Earth asteroid belt, the distance between objects is measured in thousands and even hundreds of thousands of miles. In fact, the belt (which is quite dense by space standards) is squeezed into a belt about a hundred million miles wide by another 20 million thick. The average distance between measurable objects is 100,000 miles, enough space for the Earth to easily slip through untouched. Both Voyager and Voyage 1 went right through it and hit nothing bigger than a dust particle. An asteroid field like what we see in movies such as "Star Wars" would have long ago condensed into a moon or planetoid.
Which is all fine and good for reality, but for a game we would want space to be crowded with phenomenon, objects, and anomalies. Emptiness is boring.
Yes, lets make confusing, unvieldy UI to be exploited by scammers. And lets make a broken flagging system to be exploited by pirates. Hell, lets not implement proper tutorial or release any proper documentation to ensure that players make mistakes and are preyed by veterans.
That is the wrong kind of difficulty.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Frankly, a pre-CU SWG style system, with consenual PvP would be better. It would be extremely difficult to have a game with great crafting, which SWG had, and open, full loot PvP.
A more polished, less buggy SWG style game with some somewhat improved combat mechanics would be the ideal sandbox game, for many people. Great crafting/economy plus social/rp tools, open world, housing, and all that stuff, but a game that actually worked. And not "all combat, all the time."
I don't know when people started saying sandbox = full loot PvP, but it doesn't mean that.
It is very difficult to balance a game with great crafting/resource gathering and unrestricted full loot PvP. As a matter of fact, that would be a huge turn off for many people that enjoy crafting, especially in an era when speed hacking/macro play has become the norm. Even in Eve, the resource gathering/crafting system is not that "fun" and many people have alts and run scripts to macro farm the stuff AFK. If people are AFKing something in a game, it ain't fun or interesing.
Original SWG had a good overall balance for PvP, PvE, Crafting/Social/Econmic game play and everything else. It is a shame that the game was managed so poorly, and never polished/fixed to the point it should have been. It was still a very good game despite its many faults.
Ok, I know I keep posting this, but it seems like the game you guys are looking for, www.therepopulation.com.
It's a lot like SWG, with crafting and open world PvP. The word needs to get out because I don't think a lot of people know about it, or they do but just don't care.
When it is closer to being out in 3-4 years, people might start to care.
As it is, it is too far out to start up the hype train. And no one can say what the features will be, when they are still on the drawing board and subject to change/revision.
On top of the fact that the game might never see the light of day.
People will care about the Repop, when/if it is time to do so.
And that ain't now.
I wouldn't go that far, but a sandbox (a good one) shouldn't hold your hand for every little thing. But having a tutorial for basics and for using unique features of game, then there should be a tutorial for those. For everything else...a sandbox is for those who know how to play MMOs and have played them in the past. Or for intelligent people. Both vets of MMOs and intelligent persons, don't need a tutorial to hold your hand and so, they are more likely to like said sandbox MMO.
SWG was a good sandbox game, and it didn't have a hold your hand tutorial that I recall. Nor did Ultima Online. Both had a great mix of both PvE AND PvP. But it still had PvP. It was fun building cities, camps, taming creatures...but equally as fun was the PvP in both games.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Still, no game is adversely affected by comprehensible and intuitive mechanics, good documentation, well made tutorials and functional, efficient, flexible and informative UI. They are good to have in any game - not exactly "handholding".
It took 7 years (!!!) before CCP hired a usability engineer to slowly revamp their UI. These things don't come naturally: you have to hire specialists/professionals.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
DayZ shows that hardcore, non-handholding, no tutorial at all, full loot, open pvp, with PvE (zombies) and perma death...is a very popular formula. You login to DayZ, having no idea what to do. Can be killed by another player in seconds. And the game has taken off, even more than EVE itself. EVE holds your hand a bit too much with their tutorial, makes it too easy.
DayZ shows...HARD...games...can be very popular. What developer thought perma death wouldn't be popular? DayZ shows it DOES. No tutorial? Every developer thought every game needs one...DayZ shows it doesn't.
I don't want a sandbox-lite. And this is why a lot of sandbox games fail...they aren't enough of a sandbox. Or they make it really easy and hold your hand along the way.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
By legal he means the GAME allows it. It doesn't mean the community has too. In UO you could put bounties on people for instance. Games now a days do everything they can protect you (even so much as to have NPC's helping you in dungeons lol)
As for suiciding, in EVE it works because you have a clone anyways. I guess this wouldn't work on everything. Wouldn't make sense when applied to a lot of games!
And as for corporate espionage... a quick google will show you many companies have fallen due to ideas being stolen and other factors. All as a result of corporate espionage.
Haven't played EVE, so I wouldn't know
http://support.eveonline.com/Pages/KB/Article.aspx?id=34
It says there that scammers aren't generally punished. Can scammers be brought to "court" in EVE? To me this sounds nothing but anarchy. I guess I'd be inclined to pick this up when I'm tired of living my happy fun life in this world.