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Is there something the Sandbox genre can do better at?
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,387
To improve the Sandbox genre, is there something that need to be improved? What can be done to improve the genre?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
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I did battle with ignorance today, and ignorance won.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
Quite a lot, but the most obvious is that moment-to-moment gameplay needs to not suck. Games like ATITD or Haven & Hearth get close, as their crafting is involved enough and varied enough to be rather enjoyable. Basically it has to feel like you're actually playing a game and not simply wasting time in a massive decision-less timesink, like harvesting resources in most sandboxes.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
That's like saying a hammer can do better at being a screwdriver. Probably, but it seems like that's more a matter of the person using the wrong too than the tool needed to be better at the other task.
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've posted this link two times before, but when it's relevant to the thread at hand, I'll continue doing so.
It's called "Un-ruining the MMO" and specifically talks about Themeparks versus Sandbox and how Sandbox type games will essentially save MMOs if people start making them since their most valuable assets are the player and pure innovation / creativity.
Like the Axehilt said, pretty much everything, but the worst of all is the moment to moment gameplay. They are mostly about doing arduous and mundane activities with few peaks of actual fun here and there. Often its not worth it all. The fun you may have in them is not worth the effort.
I also think too many games have just too much unnecessary shit tacked on to them. "Ooh, but the flowers turn towards the sun!" -Nobody really gives a crap! Features like that are wasted manhours and resources. How can they concentrate on fluff like that when half the time the core gameplay already makes you want to stick toothpicks under your toenails and kick a wall?
Make sure the game is fun and works before adding unnecessary shit.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I think a big thing they could do to achieve more mainstream success is to stop scaring away the pve crowd with pvp-focused gameplay. I know most of this site's forum-goers are big supporters of open-world-pvp, but the second you decide to make pve players unwilling targets, you've gone from a mainstream title to a niche title. I absolutely believe there should be open-world-pvp sandboxes out there (and there are), but we need a AAA, mainstream, financially successful sandbox if we ever want to see the model catch on.
Conventional wisdom tends toward the belief that social and political conflicts between players are the only way to give long-term life to a sandbox. While such conflicts can certainly add longevity to the game, they're not the only method of doing so (see: A Tale in the Desert), nor is player-versus-player combat always necessarily when it comes to conflict resolution. The best way to make a breakthrough sandbox, in my opinion, is to build with a focus on systems rather than "content." Provide player authoring tools, social tools, deep crafting systems with dynamic resources, a skill system rather than a class system, a huge open world, and include some goals that give those new to MMOs a sense of direction.
That last part's important. Mainstream adoption means grabbing people from a broader market, and most people just have no clue what to do when they log into a sandbox; they wander around for awhile, get listless, then leave. That's fine if you're CCP and you're aiming for a fairly specific demographic, but it's never going to result in market penetration. There has to be some sort of linear quest mechanism in place; it shouldn't be the focus of the game, but it should be there, it should be of decent quality, and it should be supplemented by the aforementioned player authoring tools (hopefully peer-reviewed), so people have direction if and when they need it. Also have things like City of Heroes' badge/title collections. It was quite a simple system, but collecting badges and titles provided concrete goals for achievers and explorers.
Also, I'm probably totally wrong, because I know nothing about game design. Maybe I should have put that sentence first...
Nah!
Not at all. Generally speaking I am against player created content simply because you have to wade through so much garbage to get to the good stuff. However, when player created mods tell better stories within the same medium than the vanilla game there is a problem. It seems like every sandbox developer around completely forgets that merely creating place is not the same thing as a setting.
I did battle with ignorance today, and ignorance won.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
You have a problem with the first part. Sandboxes mimic real life to a great extent and mundane and repetitive tasks are part of your daily life (work, school etc.). Even the themeparks get this wrong. You end in a gear/raid/quest treadmill in the end. Sandboxes usualy have the advantage of you picking the means to an end, themeparks do not.
Anyway on topic: Backstory/RP influence on the world. The worst part of sandboxes is that they usualy don't have continuous backstory. It stops at a point and then the players are let loos on to the world. However there should be goals based on the backstory that advance the world and are milestones for player activity. This way the game has direction but players are free to achieve the goals as they see fit. You even get the bad guys to appear this way. They simply disrupt the players working at the backstory goal.
F.e. you can have some apocalyptic event in the future (a prophecy) and players try to avert it. The prophecy evolves based on the player factions completing goals. It can even end in a bad way so the world gets a "fresh start" all withing the limits of the backstory and direction.
http://thewordiz.wordpress.com/
Make the players build the cities. No respawning monsters(you hardcore sandbox players would love it, and you know it). Limited resources. Wait a minute this is sounding way too much like that thing that exists outside, I think it's called real life?
Alright my bitching aside, the building of the cities I think does need to happen, and don't just say minecraft did it.
The more I'm around the forums on this site, the more bitter I become.
-sighs- better =/= more people playing it, someone already went that route and I am still giggling about that particular person's logic.
A mainstream sandbox is like the cure for cancer, it will never happen within the current frame of reference for video games and MMOs in particular. The only way sandbox games will cater to a wider audience is if multiple developers accept the fact their games will be niche products and go for broke building the best sandboxes possible within their niche and that's already happening (EVE dominates its SF niche quite well and there are multiple sandbox projects already under way to create games for the medieval/fantasy niche).
That said I will repeat: A sandbox without pvp is a singleplayer game, a open world game is what you get when you strip MMO sandboxes of their PVP, stop mistaking one for the other gents.
Reposting what I post below the blog:-
The sandbox games need time to engross oneself into it. It is not a good medium for story telling. Because of a lot of options presented, the focus of the game shifts completely.What sandbox game most needs is not to be repititive. If it has a lot of similar things sprinkled around, it becomes boring very soon.
However, for that, the amount of work to differentiate one area of game from the rest completely in terms of gameplay - is a lot more resource consuming and a break even point for all that work may never be possible.
Hence the only solution is to build a sandbox community and let the community design content of each and every part of game. UGC is perhaps the only way to keep sandbox profitable and of high quality.
Foundry Feedback | Foundry Tutorials
Better showcasing and recording of player impact on the game world. One of the biggest features of a sandbox-focused MMO is the one that seems least served by most developers - the history written by the players. Single-shard universes (ex: ATITD, EVE Online) would benefit greatly from putting such content on display for several reasons:
Sometimes the chronicling of history is done by the devs, but it usually is in such a manner that it's not readily digestible or unclear that it isn't fiction. In most cases, there often is no single place a player can go for a clear answer as to what the latest major events are or what is currently playing out in-game.
Some MMOs put the history on a wiki. Game wikis are great for looking up information, but they are bland, limited in functionality, and they don't seem to do justice to what is one of the biggest selling points of sandbox-focused MMOs.
Some examples of player-created timelines.
Now imagine a dev-created resource in-game or on the main website (interactive, preferrably) where players could see or even update the history, emergent gameplay, politics, shifts in power, player venues, momentous events, etc.
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
Production quality?
That's all I've got.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
It's not worth it to even go there on these boards.
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
http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/The_Book_of_EVE - goes to show when you don't gawk well at things you generally don't see it in front of you (btw that contains both backstory and stories where players were a driving force in pushing the timeline of EVE ahead, examples: the first Incursions were live events where players repulsed sansha attacks without any real idea what to expect, they did things which Incursioners from nowadays would look at as being retarded but in that context it made sense because the event itself was not automated, the sansha fleets were led by live event gms and another example would be the turning of Sarum Prime from a low sec to a high sec system through live events in which players helped push things along).
Appealing to customers? Marketing and advertisement?
/snerk
More seriously-realise when and where you are self-limiting your player base's ultimate size. If it's intentional (say Darkfall marketing "death penalty=mad l33t yo"), ok then it's a design choice, hello micro company.
If it's EVE taking years to realize it need players to do their learning curve education for them...that's just devs not paying attention, and/or a player base determined to be insular.
Your players are going to shoot for maximum exclusion. That's just how gamers behave, and not limited to 'hardcore' either.
If you want your game to sell more; you need to be aware that it's happening, and actively work against it.
But that would make you Blizzard. Is that really what you want to be?
That link is a great example of what I was saying above; thanks for posting it!
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
Try downloading the PDF please ^^' (in EVE there are no major events, at least not in the sense that "oh yeah this shit was big!" because in the grander scheme of things you donno what else is coming down the pipeline and what impact it would have on you, as a gamer with set goals in the sandbox of EVE, ergo major events do not exist as a universal constant, some events might be major to you, say the begining of Sansha's incursions, but to me it's just a annoying little event that crops up every now and then in my mission hubs) and as for devs telling the stories players live out... that's like asking a war report how a soldier's life is, he/she might give a good idea but you'll never hear the full story.
Edit: You can find chronicles of the wars in EVE quite easily and with a little back reading you get the general gist of things easily.
Examples: The first Great Northen War and one of my favourites Rooks and King's Clarion's Call 3
The main thing that any dev making a sandbox needs to do is not listen to the I want it all now kiddies..
I see you've confused two terms: sandbox and simulation. Sandboxes don't need to simulate real life, simulations/simulators on the otherhand, are meant to simulate life.
No, sandboxes do not have to simulate anything. All they need to do is be sandboxes.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I'm very familiar with the Book of EVE. In addition to it being a great example of all of the issues presented above, the content in it ended three years ago... and it's 1,000 pages long.
"in EVE there are no major events..."
As stated in my first post, the events I am referring to aren't dev events but player events. In EVE, those are the ones that shape and change the game world. Some individual examples would be:
The Great War
The Ubiqua Seraph assassination
The Battle of Asakai
Burn Jita
Hulkaggedon
Goons Disband
Attack on Chribba's POS - this one is a beautiful example of not only the collaboration of players from all walks of EVE life, but also of the ripple effect the event had beyond the event itself.
Some examples of sites that cover these player events would be:
Shadowbane used to have a regular herald feature and an interactive dynamic map of the world on their site. A player interested in the latest politics, current balance of power, ongoing player venues (training towns, libraries, merchant cities, etcs) could go to the site and get this information. They could find out what was happening now in the world of Shadowbane.
Ultima Online players could do the same at http://uo.stratics.com (as close to official as you're going to get since the main site is now just marketing and maintenance news), where the latest story, player events, tournaments and such are posted.
To reiterate, I'm not saying that no dev records this kind of stuff, only answering the OP's question - it's one area where sandbox games can do better.
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