I just want to say, I notice people make assumptions whenever I mention I want to PvP in sandbox mainly over themepark.
They think I want a mostly PvP mmo which is not the case. It baffles me when they mention Darkfall or mention FFA OPvP. In terms of mmorpgs, 90 percent PvP, 10 percent PvE is a recipe for failure.
I agree with this I think, if you mean what I think you do. I also prefer a 90/10 PvE to PvP experience in an open world MMORPG. This means most of the time I'm doing PvE. In fact I'd say 95 percent or more has been PvE.
It's mainly the element of danger makes me prefer it over pure PvE.
That is also a recipe for failure, there has to be some kind of balance to make the entire universe of an mmo go around. Neglecting faction conflict makes it less of a full mmo experience and nerfs immersion. I want to see a lot going on, complex crafting, a war going on at some player's city, deep economy etc. I want to see each feature of the mmo to connect to each other if you know what I mean. Every feature and aspect is important for an mmo experience. Sure you can say some mmos(majority PvE, minority PvP 90 percent PvE 10 percent PvP as you say) like WoW have been successful in terms of selling their game and having many subscribers.
But to me personally when I want to feel like I'm living in a whole new other universe you can't neglect a single feature. I did imply PvP is my cup of tea and something that I like to participate in often but doesn't mean I'm looking for darkfall or something like that nor does it mean that I'm looking for a 90 percent PvE 10 percent PvP mmo.
I bolded my important points fyi.
If the factions aren't set by the player that's a huge immersion nerf to me. There is no immersion in fighting alongside people I despise against people I like because of the color of team we picked at the start of the game.
I do think it's a bit of an immersion nerf when people who choose to live a safer life can't go live in safer areas an not expect to be attacked at every turn too. Existing sandboxes have done little in the way to add mechanics that increase cooperation that are there in real life.
For instances if you control a city and you control the tax rates then when "noots" come into your territory for economic purposes only the most backwards and barbaric societies are going to straight up and kill them. Most people will see the value in letting people come trade in their territory and pay their taxes.
If we had more game mechanics that supported people actually being able to tax trade in their land in a reasonable way and more game mechanics that allowed people to see the benefit of letting others come and trade and work in territory they control, then you wouldn't see people kill everyone who crosses their borders in these kind of games.
Sandbox MMORPG sounds good, but it's rather hard to execute. I can't think of any good sandbox MMORPGs. Everyones playing games like World of Warcraft, FF14, GW2 and so on i mean those are most populated MMORPGs and that aint sandbox MMORPGs. I as PvP player love instanced PvP arenas n such and i think that goes against Sandbox(?) not cool then.
The difference between themeparks and sandboxes to me are mostly that, themeparks are plays with predefined plots and very limited options for interacting with the environment in where the player plays the role of an actor acting out a predefined play and sandboxes are actual games where winning and losing and failure and success are both plausible and the player has multiple options on how to play and act out and interact with the environment and therefore becoming more of a player than an actor in pivotal meaning.
Talking about games where thousands of players exist simultaneously in a single instance and mechanics related to such games.
The difference between themeparks and sandboxes to me are mostly that, themeparks are plays with predefined plots and very limited options for interacting with the environment in where the player plays the role of an actor acting out a predefined play and sandboxes are actual games where winning and losing and failure and success are both plausible and the player has multiple options on how to play and act out and interact with the environment and therefore becoming more of a player than an actor in pivotal meaning.
I kind of disagree that making a game linear makes it not a game anymore. But I agree that there is a substantial difference where your character is playing through a plotline the developers made for them with a limited number of choices, as opposed to a sandbox where a player creates their own plot in a world of nearly limitless choices.
As I mentioned earlier in this topic Minecraft is the ultimate example as a sandbox game, while the original Super Mario is the ultimate example of a non-sandbox game. They are both games. One a classic and one guaranteed to go down in history as a classic. But the difference between them is so night and day.
I used to be on the side of theme-parks for a long time because they emulated the way singleplayer RPGs worked.
Standard formula was: ~Go into a region ~Solve the problems there through a series of quests ~Get enough equipment in order to advance ~Fight the big bad boss of the entire region ~Go off to the next area and start the process all over again..
Until we reach the final boss of the story
Role-Playing in general is supposed to be different from reading a book in the sense a player could change the outcome/ending based on action. Like one of those books one reads where at the end of a passage, it reads "Turn to page 10 if you choose to do X" or "Turn to page 15 if you choose to do Y" with multiple endings be them good or bad.
Then I started enjoying the idea of a sandbox series. However, I do not know if any do a decent implementation.
Sandboxing requires a much more thorough world balance and class balance. It requires a lot more exposure to the culture of a region and its people. Sandboxing deals with "becoming one with the world and being immersed by the world"
For it to be truly sandbox, I felt one would need to make a world where people have more control of the world (like everything is crafted from the ground up, with its own economy. There would also have to be a gear progression system where rather than focus on increasing the overall power of gear, one focuses on gaining better control of the environment itself.
Stuff like "+10% Damage vs Ice Creatures" in an Ice Zone and Armor to protect against Ice attacks, etc. Then a player can walk up to me and instantly know that my home is in a town surrounded by snow in the mountains somewhere...
I also think that guilds are way too big in games. I played a game once where the initial maximum size of a guild was 50 players, but the guild's power was based on the activity of the players.
To this day I have not been satisfied with any Sandbox offerings out there.. I wish something out there existed where it was more about the world and the players living in it, than the players living in the world and trying to exploit everyone and everything in it.
Isn't the definition of these terms when applied to MMO written in the very name, though?
Themepark - step into the gates, flashing lights everywhere - choose between the rides designed by engineers. All of them ridden by many others before you. But that's how you know it's fun, right?
Sandbox - A box with some dirt in it? Meh... No flashing lights, no predetermined path to ride on.
But oh, hey - look - I can make all kinds of stuff with this dirt. I can invite friends and we can build castles to play in with our lego men or whatever. Or malls and houses to drive our toy cars around them, imagining this is our world.
This comparison is a bit too childish, but that's what it is - isn't it?
The ability to build your own story, your own environment, your own role. The sandbox is just as rich as the community makes it, as opposed to engineers and marketing designing a themepark environment to sell to you.
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Arguing about what makes an MMO a themepark or sandbox respectively, I think, is rather pointless. a) It's kind of obvious when you look at it. b) If you like the game, you like the game. It doesn't need to be specifically labeled for you to enjoy it.
Themepark entertains, sandbox entertains. The difference is in the amount of imagination you have to put in it. The difference is in the way you utilize the opportunities and tools given.
Some people prefer to ride the fastest, scariest roller-coasters. Some people would rather build their very own treehouse at home. Some people can enjoy both of these activities.
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I think sandbox especially is too wide of a term to be applied to games. I think sandbox is all about imagination. Playing in a box of dirt, to make it your own.
Sure, taking it straight-up, it means modifiable environment, ability to build and destroy, choose the path you want. But we're talking about a game here, an MMO infact, which is by definiton is modeled, programmed, scripted and molded by someone else. We are not talking about literal sandbox, but a features that make up a game.
=== This reminds me when we were little kids with my friend and we played Need for Speed 2. It's a racing game. Far from sandbox. But I remember we used one specific map to kind of role-play in. There were some houses and long roads. I think even police and traffic (or maybe the other cars that had finished the race continued to drive around the track?). We completely ignored the objective of the game - the positioning in the race, the direction of the track - and we made it our own.
In a sense, we used the space the game had provided us as our little 'sandbox' to play out our imagination in. No terraforming, no crafting, no PVP, no PVE, no character progression, no nothing. Just 2 cars in a split screen. So... NFS2 is a sandbox, I could argue.
Not really, but... you know... 0.01% sandbox.
===
Now... a game that's presented as a "sandbox" should specifically cater to this scenario. Giving the players ability to mold the game first and foremost.
And arguing about WoW having this or that feature, thus it's sandbox. Or EvE having some feature, so it's the only real sandbox...
You could have terraforming, and the best character customization, and the best crafting, and open-world this, and persistent that. But if the main activity by which the players are ranked or judged their "success" upon is based on combat, or racing, or how well they play tetris - it's not really a sandbox game, is it? It's just a game that has good sandboxy features, thus making it more suitable to use for sandboxy activities of imagination.
In the end, every game is a sandbox to a degree. But I'd say true sandbox game is the one which judges the success of the player by how well they play out their chosen role, and gives the player the right tools to do so.
Comments
I do think it's a bit of an immersion nerf when people who choose to live a safer life can't go live in safer areas an not expect to be attacked at every turn too. Existing sandboxes have done little in the way to add mechanics that increase cooperation that are there in real life.
For instances if you control a city and you control the tax rates then when "noots" come into your territory for economic purposes only the most backwards and barbaric societies are going to straight up and kill them. Most people will see the value in letting people come trade in their territory and pay their taxes.
If we had more game mechanics that supported people actually being able to tax trade in their land in a reasonable way and more game mechanics that allowed people to see the benefit of letting others come and trade and work in territory they control, then you wouldn't see people kill everyone who crosses their borders in these kind of games.
As I mentioned earlier in this topic Minecraft is the ultimate example as a sandbox game, while the original Super Mario is the ultimate example of a non-sandbox game. They are both games. One a classic and one guaranteed to go down in history as a classic. But the difference between them is so night and day.
while themepark is like number 1-999999999999999999999999999999999999
of course u need to start with 1-10 to randomly generate 99999999999999999999999999999
themepark is a fraction of sandbox
Standard formula was:
~Go into a region
~Solve the problems there through a series of quests
~Get enough equipment in order to advance
~Fight the big bad boss of the entire region
~Go off to the next area and start the process all over again..
Until we reach the final boss of the story
Role-Playing in general is supposed to be different from reading a book in the sense a player could change the outcome/ending based on action. Like one of those books one reads where at the end of a passage, it reads "Turn to page 10 if you choose to do X" or "Turn to page 15 if you choose to do Y" with multiple endings be them good or bad.
Then I started enjoying the idea of a sandbox series.
However, I do not know if any do a decent implementation.
Sandboxing requires a much more thorough world balance and class balance. It requires a lot more exposure to the culture of a region and its people. Sandboxing deals with "becoming one with the world and being immersed by the world"
For it to be truly sandbox, I felt one would need to make a world where people have more control of the world (like everything is crafted from the ground up, with its own economy. There would also have to be a gear progression system where rather than focus on increasing the overall power of gear, one focuses on gaining better control of the environment itself.
Stuff like "+10% Damage vs Ice Creatures" in an Ice Zone and Armor to protect against Ice attacks, etc. Then a player can walk up to me and instantly know that my home is in a town surrounded by snow in the mountains somewhere...
I also think that guilds are way too big in games.
I played a game once where the initial maximum size of a guild was 50 players, but the guild's power was based on the activity of the players.
To this day I have not been satisfied with any Sandbox offerings out there..
I wish something out there existed where it was more about the world and the players living in it, than the players living in the world and trying to exploit everyone and everything in it.
Themepark - step into the gates, flashing lights everywhere - choose between the rides designed by engineers. All of them ridden by many others before you. But that's how you know it's fun, right?
Sandbox - A box with some dirt in it? Meh... No flashing lights, no predetermined path to ride on.
But oh, hey - look - I can make all kinds of stuff with this dirt. I can invite friends and we can build castles to play in with our lego men or whatever. Or malls and houses to drive our toy cars around them, imagining this is our world.
This comparison is a bit too childish, but that's what it is - isn't it?
The ability to build your own story, your own environment, your own role. The sandbox is just as rich as the community makes it, as opposed to engineers and marketing designing a themepark environment to sell to you.
/////////////////
Arguing about what makes an MMO a themepark or sandbox respectively, I think, is rather pointless.
a) It's kind of obvious when you look at it.
b) If you like the game, you like the game. It doesn't need to be specifically labeled for you to enjoy it.
Themepark entertains, sandbox entertains.
The difference is in the amount of imagination you have to put in it.
The difference is in the way you utilize the opportunities and tools given.
Some people prefer to ride the fastest, scariest roller-coasters. Some people would rather build their very own treehouse at home.
Some people can enjoy both of these activities.
///////////////
I think sandbox especially is too wide of a term to be applied to games.
I think sandbox is all about imagination. Playing in a box of dirt, to make it your own.
Sure, taking it straight-up, it means modifiable environment, ability to build and destroy, choose the path you want.
But we're talking about a game here, an MMO infact, which is by definiton is modeled, programmed, scripted and molded by someone else.
We are not talking about literal sandbox, but a features that make up a game.
===
This reminds me when we were little kids with my friend and we played Need for Speed 2.
It's a racing game. Far from sandbox. But I remember we used one specific map to kind of role-play in. There were some houses and long roads. I think even police and traffic (or maybe the other cars that had finished the race continued to drive around the track?).
We completely ignored the objective of the game - the positioning in the race, the direction of the track - and we made it our own.
In a sense, we used the space the game had provided us as our little 'sandbox' to play out our imagination in.
No terraforming, no crafting, no PVP, no PVE, no character progression, no nothing. Just 2 cars in a split screen.
So... NFS2 is a sandbox, I could argue.
Not really, but... you know... 0.01% sandbox.
===
Now... a game that's presented as a "sandbox" should specifically cater to this scenario. Giving the players ability to mold the game first and foremost.
And arguing about WoW having this or that feature, thus it's sandbox. Or EvE having some feature, so it's the only real sandbox...
You could have terraforming, and the best character customization, and the best crafting, and open-world this, and persistent that. But if the main activity by which the players are ranked or judged their "success" upon is based on combat, or racing, or how well they play tetris - it's not really a sandbox game, is it? It's just a game that has good sandboxy features, thus making it more suitable to use for sandboxy activities of imagination.
In the end, every game is a sandbox to a degree.
But I'd say true sandbox game is the one which judges the success of the player by how well they play out their chosen role, and gives the player the right tools to do so.