If people are wanting a Sandbox MMO that you can ''dig a hole'' in the ground and it stays there forever then there is a problem you all are over looking.
Let's take Minecraft for instance. I never played it but I hear a lot of my friends every day saying OMG SOMEONE GAME IN OUR SERVER AND GRIEFED ALL OF OUR STUFF.
Now let's combine that with an open server the equivalent to WoW's size. (Only using it because of the fact is more people have played WoW than not). You cannot have a persistently changing world with no rules in a game with thousand upon thousands of people. If you want your Sandbox I'd stick with the idea behind Oblivion with a stronger storyline. No super crazy enviromental changes can happen from 1 person but you can go wherever you please.
Long story short... You can't directly alter the world in an MMORPG due to the fact it will be the equivalent to what we are doing to earth just multiplied by like... a million.
Some things I'd like to see evolving for Sandbox Worlds....
Lots of worldly interaction. Nothing that hasn't been done before.
opening and closing doors
sitting in chairs, setting things on tables, moving said chairs and tables around, decorating with, showing off collected trophies, making "work stations", etc.
Drawbridges, secret doors, sliding stone slabs (doors and floors), spinning doors (the infamous secret fireplace entrance), murder holes, iron bar gates, etc.
Expand that last idea into trick secrets, for example filling a large water basin with water to cause it to sink into the floor, causing a secret sliding stone slab door that's otherwise undetectable to open into a secret tunnel.
items to use to climb (Ropes, climbing gear for rock faces and walls), to walk across (ropes bridges, fallen logs, stone bridges, etc.).
I'd like to see players holding objects.
Torches and lanterns
banners and flags
mugs, glasses, if a player is in an tavern drinking, that should be animated as well as visually seeing the characters holding the vessel
pipes and smoking animations
Crystal Balls and other implements of magic, again with animations when used
Thief tools, and other tools of trade skills too
carrying loads and bundles, the injured and even corpses if the game requires them for resurrections
This would go a long, long ways towards immersion and the ability to roleplay.
I'd also like to see the mouse used as the player's hands and senses inside the game world. Most games have this to one degree or another, but it can be used far more. Handling things, checking things out, with ranges appropriate to the use ("you are not close enough to: a) pick that up; b) inspect that"). I'd like to see Sandbox worlds where checking things out matters, where things can be discovered or learned about. This can range from just curiosities to very important things. Clues can be hidden in objects, or objects can be trip levers, there are many uses that the objects in our game worlds can have to make things a lot more interesting.
Let's take Minecraft for instance. I never played it but I hear a lot of my friends every day saying OMG SOMEONE GAME IN OUR SERVER AND GRIEFED ALL OF OUR STUFF.
You don't understand that this is what a real sandbox players wants to have.
Please do not hype any gam.. oh wait, nevermind... forgot what forum I was on.
If people are wanting a Sandbox MMO that you can ''dig a hole'' in the ground and it stays there forever then there is a problem you all are over looking.
Let's take Minecraft for instance. I never played it but I hear a lot of my friends every day saying OMG SOMEONE GAME IN OUR SERVER AND GRIEFED ALL OF OUR STUFF.
Now let's combine that with an open server the equivalent to WoW's size. (Only using it because of the fact is more people have played WoW than not). You cannot have a persistently changing world with no rules in a game with thousand upon thousands of people. If you want your Sandbox I'd stick with the idea behind Oblivion with a stronger storyline. No super crazy enviromental changes can happen from 1 person but you can go wherever you please.
Long story short... You can't directly alter the world in an MMORPG due to the fact it will be the equivalent to what we are doing to earth just multiplied by like... a million.
This is a problem. But what if, as said earlier, it took lots of time and effort to do such things? What if, while doing so, you can't see what's happeing around you very much, so MOBs can sneak up and attack you while unarmed? Basically making it a risky business.
That would leave a problem of players doing these sorts of things around player centers of activity. So what if there's a control feature, whether for player owned land or city zones of control? Ownership rights to lands. And an ability to defend against unwanted activities. This would help foster groups, such as guilds and player built cities, while the lone powerful mage might defend his own small area of control where his tower sits.
This is a problem. But what if, as said earlier, it took lots of time and effort to do such things? What if, while doing so, you can't see what's happeing around you very much, so MOBs can sneak up and attack you while unarmed? Basically making it a risky business.
That would leave a problem of players doing these sorts of things around player centers of activity. So what if there's a control feature, whether for player owned land or city zones of control? Ownership rights to lands. And an ability to defend against unwanted activities. This would help foster groups, such as guilds and player built cities, while the lone powerful mage might defend his own small area of control where his tower sits.
Not that anybody sane has spent the time to go read my one design document for an imaginary SF MMORPG, but it's actually pretty easy to make such a thing completely IC and part of the lore.
If a big AI is running something, it can literally keep people from altering other people's terrain. Don't even need any hand-wavium 'Well, it's a game mechanic'.
Heck, in the middle of writing my last sentence I came up with a halfassed way of explaining it in fantasy. The land is connected to the rulers, and when you rule over an area, it gives you a mystic connection with the land. Nothing really too far off from what people thought in the real world. So the land itself would rebel against attempts to alter it within the sphere of influence of somebody who is a leader.
(I'm not arguing with you or anything, I was just cheerily pointing out it's perfectly possible to make non-griefing mechanics official game lore, without resorting to the old computer game standby 'Because I said so.')
This is a problem. But what if, as said earlier, it took lots of time and effort to do such things? What if, while doing so, you can't see what's happeing around you very much, so MOBs can sneak up and attack you while unarmed? Basically making it a risky business.
That would leave a problem of players doing these sorts of things around player centers of activity. So what if there's a control feature, whether for player owned land or city zones of control? Ownership rights to lands. And an ability to defend against unwanted activities. This would help foster groups, such as guilds and player built cities, while the lone powerful mage might defend his own small area of control where his tower sits.
Not that anybody sane has spent the time to go read my one design document for an imaginary SF MMORPG, but it's actually pretty easy to make such a thing completely IC and part of the lore.
If a big AI is running something, it can literally keep people from altering other people's terrain. Don't even need any hand-wavium 'Well, it's a game mechanic'.
Heck, in the middle of writing my last sentence I came up with a halfassed way of explaining it in fantasy. The land is connected to the rulers, and when you rule over an area, it gives you a mystic connection with the land. Nothing really too far off from what people thought in the real world. So the land itself would rebel against attempts to alter it within the sphere of influence of somebody who is a leader.
(I'm not arguing with you or anything, I was just cheerily pointing out it's perfectly possible to make non-griefing mechanics official game lore, without resorting to the old computer game standby 'Because I said so.')
You could use your idea in a fantasy world. If I understand this right, you'd have forces of nature that resists attempts to alter the game world, so "Forest Spirits" would send out Sprites of Nature to fill in the holes, or maybe even attack those who disfigure Nature's beauty. Am I on the right track here?
You could use your idea in a fantasy world. If I udnerstand this right, you'd have forces of nature that resists attempts to alter the game world, so "Forest Spirits" would send out Sprites of Nature to fill in the holes, or maybe even attack those who disfigure Nature's beauty. Am I on the right track here?
Exactly, that's another way of doing it. I mean, look, there's two of us, we probably spent about 5 minutes between the two of us, and we came up with at least 2 different ways of making this all legitimate and kosher, where there are in-game mechanisms to reduce griefing and SIMULANEOUSLY improve immersion and lore!
Actually, that's something I like doing when I'm at work and bored... trying to think of ways to take video game conventions and explain them away using lore and story.
Like I have an idea for an FPS that explains why everybody is roughly the same size and height, just why you keep coming back when you die, and even manages to have adaptive difficulty explained using lore, rather than 'Well, you kinda' suck, right? So we'll give you easier AI.'
Actually, huh. Okay, that's another idea to evolve sandboxes... obviously since it's a game, there has to be rules and restrictions of SOME sorts, otherwise you end up with Second Life. It would be nice if somebody managed to write away and explain every restriction (Like the 'You can't dig in other people's territory' or whatever) and rule with lore, so rather than being an arbitrary 'Game developers are so pushy' restriction, people can nod and go 'Oh! Well, that makes sense I guess.'.
edit: I reread what you said, and something occurred to me. Not sure if you realized it, but you created a perfectly good way of explaining how claiming territory works. Rather than something completely arbitrary, you could be making a pact with the spirits of the land... and if you have more followers, they help bolster your pact with nature, which gives you limited rights and abilities within the land, and built in defenses. Like if somebody tries to PK somebody on their homeland, those same nature spirits that usually just go 'Hey! Stop digging holes!' could actually come out and help join in fighting off the invaders.
Wouldn't stop a big, concerted attack, but it would keep small roving gangs from just randomly killing off solo people who are in their home territories.
You could use your idea in a fantasy world. If I udnerstand this right, you'd have forces of nature that resists attempts to alter the game world, so "Forest Spirits" would send out Sprites of Nature to fill in the holes, or maybe even attack those who disfigure Nature's beauty. Am I on the right track here?
Exactly, that's another way of doing it. I mean, look, there's two of us, we probably spent about 5 minutes between the two of us, and we came up with at least 2 different ways of making this all legitimate and kosher, where there are in-game mechanisms to reduce griefing and SIMULANEOUSLY improve immersion and lore!
Actually, that's something I like doing when I'm at work and bored... trying to think of ways to take video game conventions and explain them away using lore and story.
Like I have an idea for an FPS that explains why everybody is roughly the same size and height, just why you keep coming back when you die, and even manages to have adaptive difficulty explained using lore, rather than 'Well, you kinda' suck, right? So we'll give you easier AI.'
Actually, huh. Okay, that's another idea to evolve sandboxes... obviously since it's a game, there has to be rules and restrictions of SOME sorts, otherwise you end up with Second Life. It would be nice if somebody managed to write away and explain every restriction (Like the 'You can't dig in other people's territory' or whatever) and rule with lore, so rather than being an arbitrary 'Game developers are so pushy' restriction, people can nod and go 'Oh! Well, that makes sense I guess.'.
edit: I reread what you said, and something occurred to me. Not sure if you realized it, but you created a perfectly good way of explaining how claiming territory works. Rather than something completely arbitrary, you could be making a pact with the spirits of the land... and if you have more followers, they help bolster your pact with nature, which gives you limited rights and abilities within the land, and built in defenses. Like if somebody tries to PK somebody on their homeland, those same nature spirits that usually just go 'Hey! Stop digging holes!' could actually come out and help join in fighting off the invaders.
Wouldn't stop a big, concerted attack, but it would keep small roving gangs from just randomly killing off solo people who are in their home territories.
That's one way of doing it. I think you can also do it in the social sphere of the players. And you can mix it up.
In the social sphere of players, and include NPC areas here as the same (humans, Orcs and Trolls, Pixies, all of them under one umbrella), you can give them the means to claim lands. And as you said, dependant on numbers. So a solo player could claim a plot to build a house on, a guild of 10 a plot that's 10x bigger, and a player city group larger areas of control dependant on their citizenship numbers.
I think there are probably lots of ways to get into the specifics here. But what it does is place the players into a world, rather than just playing a game.
In a real sandbox there is no real limit to griefing, maybe some kind of bank that can't be robbed but otherwise it's not a real sandbox.
If that was true (... and I'm not saying it is), no wonder why sandbox MMORPGs sell so poorly. I mean, the population of people who enjoy being abused by jerks can't be that big, right? ... and just like any other prey/predator relationship, the amount of abusees affects how many abusers there can be.
You don't understand that this is what a real sandbox players wants to have.
I'm not sure that wanting limitless griefing is the way you can identify a sandbox player. Might be a bit hard to prove that's the case...
In a real sandbox there is no real limit to griefing, maybe some kind of bank that can't be robbed but otherwise it's not a real sandbox.
Yeah, well, in a real real Sandbox, murderers are executed (perma-death).
A REAL sandbox doesn't have muderers. It has sand. Maybe a bit of wood around the borders to keep the sand in. At best you'll find a few lost action figures or some cat poop.
A REAL sandbox player can want some very specific thing yet the next REAL sandbox player will want something completely different. That is the nature of the beast. That is why its a sandbox.
And I really really like this idea that if you grief, you get flagged for permadeath. It would solve a lot of problems. This is the real motivation why people don't grief very much IRL.
In a Real Sandbox only players can kill you(perma-death), they will have to hunt you down and take everything back that you stole and take your life as you took another.
Please do not hype any gam.. oh wait, nevermind... forgot what forum I was on.
To get sandboxes out of the realm of lofty dreams you have to pick out the parts that keep them from being practical.
First off sandbox isn't a single genre, the niche group is comprised of different groups that want different things. Some want simulations, some want FFA PvP, some what open world MMORPGs. All different.
The biggest problem with sandbox games I think is the design. The idea that you can have a game that has RPG, action, fishing, exploring, building, simulation, economics, gardening, politics, terra forming etc. is just stupid, nobody can develop a game with a feature lits longer than their arm nor develop a game that includes so many different design concepts into one thing, especially not do it all well.
Games need focus, a bunch of armchair designers and upstart companies try to have it all but it will not work. Focus your concept and focus your mechanics on that, if you want to make a simulation game tailor your gameplay around it, you may not have the best combat, fishing, roleplaying or whatever, but you don't need it either because your game is about simulation. You can make hybrids, you can have secondary mechanics and minigames, you can't have it all though.
By focusing your game and not taking a kitchen sink approach to design you might find that the niche isn't as small as you think and the quality of games improve.
All men think they're fascinating. In my case, it's justified
The biggest issue with Sandbox MMOs is that it doesn't have a very good plot/char. This is a given due to its nature but I would like to see some sort of an over-arching plot that involves the players in the first few levels.
Single Player sandbox games uses varies methods on making you care for someone (even if it is the protaganist) in the first few minutes (Fallout3, Elder Scrolls, etc) and I'd like that mechanic to be used in the Sandbox MMO.
Yeah it'll be 'plot on rails' but if you continue down the path of 'Sandbox' for the philosophy of it, Sandbox will never capture players that want a good story/char.
I know story is important to a lot of you. (even kind of important to me) but I just want to point out that in real sandbox games, it wasn't about the developer telling you a story. It was about the players creating a story. Every single person I've met irl that has played MMO's before WoW agrees that the experiences and stories created by them and their fellow players trumps any story-on-rails any time of the week. I agree with them. Give me the freedom to truely create/tailor my character, my world, my community, and I'll take a pepsi-challenge with dev. built story-on-rails any day.
This is not a troll, flame, or anything else worth banning me over. It is simply my pure opinion, and I have a right to share it.
The first few pages of this thread are a gold mine of fantastic ideas.
I believe in addition to those that what is missing from MMORPGs is dynamic behavior on the part of the developers. It is the developers who have created this world that we the players inhabit and use. We do not know all the secrets and ins-and-outs of this world, and nor do we have the ability to alter it in a way other than how the developers of this world intend for us to alter it.
Instead of expecting a game developer to "foresee" the actions that all players are ever going to do to this world that they have created, they should instead operate under the assumption that there are going to be many players who are smarter than them, a huge host of players that will use the world as these developers intend for them to use it, and a bunch of incompetents who will never understand the world in any substantial way at all.
You can only predetermine so many things until we, the players, will find the pattern and develop the impression that this world isn't dynamic at all..it's all static and similar. Once you reach this point of enlightenment this place will no longer feel like a world anymore but rather it will just become another game.
In order therefore for us players to be provided with a true sandbox that is living the people who developed that world need to be making constant observations of what the players are doing to the world. The developers of this world are basically its architects..they are the "gods" who have actual ability to impact the world and the players and are a part of the game themselves.
If the players organize themselves and do something truly unique and create their own sort of story, then the developers should follow this story and put obstacles in their way or really make them feel like they're doing something. The NPCs all say things the developers tell them to say, the weather is what the developers want it to be..everything that the player does not control is either happening at random or is something that the developer creates, and therefore there should exist an interesting relationship between player-and-developer.
Take it a step further..perhaps you should have really intelligent and creative directors who are very much a part of the game. Acknowledging the fact that this world is one that is living at the fingertips of these developers, there are endless possibilities of what they could do to the player. If you're chopping down a bunch of trees or "digging a hole," then perhaps you're upsetting someone who doesn't want the land to be disturbed, and this "developer god" attacks you..with bees. I don't know.
The point is, the developers give the player a world, and they say "here's your world, here's your tools, do something." The players take action and this impacts the world that the developers have created, and how the world acts is how the developers want the world to act. Building pre-determined events means that you are just being fed the illusion that this is a living world; in order for an MMORPG to be a living world, it means that the people responsible for creating the world need to be roleplaying AS the world. Indeed, all the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players. The players exist on the world and they use the tools they're given to alter it, and the way the world responds is how the people who created it want it to respond.
"Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a man who stood up." - Robert DeNiro
"The biggest argument against democracy is a 5 minute discussion with the average voter." - Winston Churchhill
We live in a captialistic world. If there is a demand, someone will meet that demand.
You just have to prove that the demand is large enough for investment. If there really is a demand, it shouldn't be hard to do so though.
That is not actually true. Investors have choices. And regardless of demand, if they can choose between two investments of differeing risks, they'll choose the less risky one. And even if it were as simple as you say, it simply hasn't been proven, to the satisfaction of the investors, that the demand is large enough.
We are talking millions of dollars in potential revenue. You are going to sit there and tell me that investors aren't looking into what the market demands are?
Every year we have billions spent on market studies, surveys etc on finding out what people will BUY (not want, as what people want and buy are two different things). If the demand is really high for a sandbox, why hasn't any market research paper come up with it?
You can dismiss 'market research, studies, surveys' as 'not really the real world' all you want but at the end of the day, that's where the millions will go to.
Did you know that usually by March the large retail chains know what most people are going to buy on Xmas that year? :P
And why is the 'risk' higher for sandbox? If the demand is there then surely it'll be less risky?
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
And why is the 'risk' higher for sandbox? If the demand is there then surely it'll be less risky?
List of Demands A
- I want raids and big frikken dragons
- I want shiny epic loot
- I want battlegrounds with ranking
- I want to have stuff to do lined up end to end as I level up
- I want to craft stuff I can use
List of Demands B
- I want immersion
- I want to impact the game world
- I want a massive game world
- I want to explore
- I want a deep crafting system
It's easy to fill the demands of List A because they are definable and rather universal. List B is just abstract desires that don't really give anyone any clue what they want. Now, when you get into specifics, you see that the demand for a sandbox game would require maybe five or six different games to even try to satisfy just one segment of the sandbox world. Most sandbox fans want to impact the game world or to have meaningful interaction with the game world. Obviously, that means that they are affecting someone else's game world unless instances or phasing are used - both of which are bad bad words to use around many sandbox enthusiasts. Almost as bad as ... well... allowing someone's actions to negatively affect yours? As you start to establish a game world for any one segment of sandbox market, you really do start ending up with really small pools of people for any one unified 'demand'.
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
We live in a captialistic world. If there is a demand, someone will meet that demand.
You just have to prove that the demand is large enough for investment. If there really is a demand, it shouldn't be hard to do so though.
That is not actually true. Investors have choices. And regardless of demand, if they can choose between two investments of differeing risks, they'll choose the less risky one. And even if it were as simple as you say, it simply hasn't been proven, to the satisfaction of the investors, that the demand is large enough.
We are talking millions of dollars in potential revenue. You are going to sit there and tell me that investors aren't looking into what the market demands are?
Every year we have billions spent on market studies, surveys etc on finding out what people will BUY (not want, as what people want and buy are two different things). If the demand is really high for a sandbox, why hasn't any market research paper come up with it?
You can dismiss 'market research, studies, surveys' as 'not really the real world' all you want but at the end of the day, that's where the millions will go to.
Did you know that usually by March the large retail chains know what most people are going to buy on Xmas that year? :P
And why is the 'risk' higher for sandbox? If the demand is there then surely it'll be less risky?
I think what you're missing is choice. Investors have a choice of what to invest in. Sandboxes are riskier than Themeparks because they rely on the community to drive them. Community can take a while to form, and it is also a vague comcept not easily reduced to an analyst's spreadsheet. Investors don't know when they'll see a return, if ever, as there is no guarentee the MMO will be successful. That being the case, projects based on sandboxes will face greater hurdles in requests for funding than themeparks since the argument made for a well hyped themepark, especially if based on an existing IP is that the investors can often count on making their money back just off of boxsales EVEN IF THE MMO FAILS in the first year. For an investor that is a mighty inviting investment.
Every year we have billions spent on market studies, surveys etc on finding out what people will BUY (not want, as what people want and buy are two different things). If the demand is really high for a sandbox, why hasn't any market research paper come up with it?
Would you even know it if there were market studies that show a demand for a sandbox game? Probably not. Its not like MMOG designers can turn around a product in a few months to meet demand. This isn't the fashion industry. There could have been sandbox MMOG's that started development 3 years ago that we haven't even heard of yet. I'm not saying its likely, just that we don't know what market studies are coming up with at all and we won't for a long time.
Every year we have billions spent on market studies, surveys etc on finding out what people will BUY (not want, as what people want and buy are two different things). If the demand is really high for a sandbox, why hasn't any market research paper come up with it?
Would you even know it if there were market studies that show a demand for a sandbox game? Probably not. Its not like MMOG designers can turn around a product in a few months to meet demand. This isn't the fashion industry. There could have been sandbox MMOG's that started development 3 years ago that we haven't even heard of yet. I'm not saying its likely, just that we don't know what market studies are coming up with at all and we won't for a long time.
I've never seen a poll by a game developer that didn't completely miss the Sandbox ideal.
Also, it wasn't until recently that gamers seemed to realize, to be able to express, what it is they really want or don't want. This only came about as three things happened (in my opinion, of course).
Gamers realized that they are, indeed, bored with the current fair and that there are things missing in their game play as a massive multiplayer environment.
The "few" who could put these things into words did so (not an easy task as the depth of concept outreaches a few paragraphs), and over time that number kept growing, to the point where "the masses" were starting to understand. To put meaning and recognition to those words, and visa versa.
Gamers started to realize that the Developer quote "It can't be done" only meant that "they" didn't believe in it, and that it actually has been done before.
*Takes a moment here to thank the gods for UO* (Just not the rampant PKer part)
*Takes a moment here to thank the gods for UO* (Just not the rampant PKer part)
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
Comments
If people are wanting a Sandbox MMO that you can ''dig a hole'' in the ground and it stays there forever then there is a problem you all are over looking.
Let's take Minecraft for instance. I never played it but I hear a lot of my friends every day saying OMG SOMEONE GAME IN OUR SERVER AND GRIEFED ALL OF OUR STUFF.
Now let's combine that with an open server the equivalent to WoW's size. (Only using it because of the fact is more people have played WoW than not). You cannot have a persistently changing world with no rules in a game with thousand upon thousands of people. If you want your Sandbox I'd stick with the idea behind Oblivion with a stronger storyline. No super crazy enviromental changes can happen from 1 person but you can go wherever you please.
Long story short... You can't directly alter the world in an MMORPG due to the fact it will be the equivalent to what we are doing to earth just multiplied by like... a million.
Some things I'd like to see evolving for Sandbox Worlds....
Lots of worldly interaction. Nothing that hasn't been done before.
opening and closing doors
sitting in chairs, setting things on tables, moving said chairs and tables around, decorating with, showing off collected trophies, making "work stations", etc.
Drawbridges, secret doors, sliding stone slabs (doors and floors), spinning doors (the infamous secret fireplace entrance), murder holes, iron bar gates, etc.
Expand that last idea into trick secrets, for example filling a large water basin with water to cause it to sink into the floor, causing a secret sliding stone slab door that's otherwise undetectable to open into a secret tunnel.
items to use to climb (Ropes, climbing gear for rock faces and walls), to walk across (ropes bridges, fallen logs, stone bridges, etc.).
I'd like to see players holding objects.
Torches and lanterns
banners and flags
mugs, glasses, if a player is in an tavern drinking, that should be animated as well as visually seeing the characters holding the vessel
pipes and smoking animations
Crystal Balls and other implements of magic, again with animations when used
Thief tools, and other tools of trade skills too
carrying loads and bundles, the injured and even corpses if the game requires them for resurrections
This would go a long, long ways towards immersion and the ability to roleplay.
I'd also like to see the mouse used as the player's hands and senses inside the game world. Most games have this to one degree or another, but it can be used far more. Handling things, checking things out, with ranges appropriate to the use ("you are not close enough to: a) pick that up; b) inspect that"). I'd like to see Sandbox worlds where checking things out matters, where things can be discovered or learned about. This can range from just curiosities to very important things. Clues can be hidden in objects, or objects can be trip levers, there are many uses that the objects in our game worlds can have to make things a lot more interesting.
Once upon a time....
You don't understand that this is what a real sandbox players wants to have.
Please do not hype any gam.. oh wait, nevermind... forgot what forum I was on.
I'm not sure that wanting limitless griefing is the way you can identify a sandbox player.
Might be a bit hard to prove that's the case...
This is a problem. But what if, as said earlier, it took lots of time and effort to do such things? What if, while doing so, you can't see what's happeing around you very much, so MOBs can sneak up and attack you while unarmed? Basically making it a risky business.
That would leave a problem of players doing these sorts of things around player centers of activity. So what if there's a control feature, whether for player owned land or city zones of control? Ownership rights to lands. And an ability to defend against unwanted activities. This would help foster groups, such as guilds and player built cities, while the lone powerful mage might defend his own small area of control where his tower sits.
Once upon a time....
Not that anybody sane has spent the time to go read my one design document for an imaginary SF MMORPG, but it's actually pretty easy to make such a thing completely IC and part of the lore.
If a big AI is running something, it can literally keep people from altering other people's terrain.
Don't even need any hand-wavium 'Well, it's a game mechanic'.
Heck, in the middle of writing my last sentence I came up with a halfassed way of explaining it in fantasy. The land is connected to the rulers, and when you rule over an area, it gives you a mystic connection with the land. Nothing really too far off from what people thought in the real world. So the land itself would rebel against attempts to alter it within the sphere of influence of somebody who is a leader.
(I'm not arguing with you or anything, I was just cheerily pointing out it's perfectly possible to make non-griefing mechanics official game lore, without resorting to the old computer game standby 'Because I said so.')
You could use your idea in a fantasy world. If I understand this right, you'd have forces of nature that resists attempts to alter the game world, so "Forest Spirits" would send out Sprites of Nature to fill in the holes, or maybe even attack those who disfigure Nature's beauty. Am I on the right track here?
Once upon a time....
Exactly, that's another way of doing it. I mean, look, there's two of us, we probably spent about 5 minutes between the two of us, and we came up with at least 2 different ways of making this all legitimate and kosher, where there are in-game mechanisms to reduce griefing and SIMULANEOUSLY improve immersion and lore!
Actually, that's something I like doing when I'm at work and bored... trying to think of ways to take video game conventions and explain them away using lore and story.
Like I have an idea for an FPS that explains why everybody is roughly the same size and height, just why you keep coming back when you die, and even manages to have adaptive difficulty explained using lore, rather than 'Well, you kinda' suck, right? So we'll give you easier AI.'
Actually, huh. Okay, that's another idea to evolve sandboxes... obviously since it's a game, there has to be rules and restrictions of SOME sorts, otherwise you end up with Second Life. It would be nice if somebody managed to write away and explain every restriction (Like the 'You can't dig in other people's territory' or whatever) and rule with lore, so rather than being an arbitrary 'Game developers are so pushy' restriction, people can nod and go 'Oh! Well, that makes sense I guess.'.
edit: I reread what you said, and something occurred to me. Not sure if you realized it, but you created a perfectly good way of explaining how claiming territory works. Rather than something completely arbitrary, you could be making a pact with the spirits of the land... and if you have more followers, they help bolster your pact with nature, which gives you limited rights and abilities within the land, and built in defenses. Like if somebody tries to PK somebody on their homeland, those same nature spirits that usually just go 'Hey! Stop digging holes!' could actually come out and help join in fighting off the invaders.
Wouldn't stop a big, concerted attack, but it would keep small roving gangs from just randomly killing off solo people who are in their home territories.
That's one way of doing it. I think you can also do it in the social sphere of the players. And you can mix it up.
In the social sphere of players, and include NPC areas here as the same (humans, Orcs and Trolls, Pixies, all of them under one umbrella), you can give them the means to claim lands. And as you said, dependant on numbers. So a solo player could claim a plot to build a house on, a guild of 10 a plot that's 10x bigger, and a player city group larger areas of control dependant on their citizenship numbers.
I think there are probably lots of ways to get into the specifics here. But what it does is place the players into a world, rather than just playing a game.
Once upon a time....
In a real sandbox there is no real limit to griefing, maybe some kind of bank that can't be robbed but otherwise it's not a real sandbox.
Please do not hype any gam.. oh wait, nevermind... forgot what forum I was on.
If that was true (... and I'm not saying it is), no wonder why sandbox MMORPGs sell so poorly. I mean, the population of people who enjoy being abused by jerks can't be that big, right? ... and just like any other prey/predator relationship, the amount of abusees affects how many abusers there can be.
Yeah, well, in a real real Sandbox, murderers are executed (perma-death).
Once upon a time....
A REAL sandbox doesn't have muderers. It has sand. Maybe a bit of wood around the borders to keep the sand in. At best you'll find a few lost action figures or some cat poop.
A REAL sandbox player can want some very specific thing yet the next REAL sandbox player will want something completely different. That is the nature of the beast. That is why its a sandbox.
And I really really like this idea that if you grief, you get flagged for permadeath. It would solve a lot of problems. This is the real motivation why people don't grief very much IRL.
In a Real Sandbox only players can kill you(perma-death), they will have to hunt you down and take everything back that you stole and take your life as you took another.
Please do not hype any gam.. oh wait, nevermind... forgot what forum I was on.
I agree with you
all true what was said
To get sandboxes out of the realm of lofty dreams you have to pick out the parts that keep them from being practical.
First off sandbox isn't a single genre, the niche group is comprised of different groups that want different things. Some want simulations, some want FFA PvP, some what open world MMORPGs. All different.
The biggest problem with sandbox games I think is the design. The idea that you can have a game that has RPG, action, fishing, exploring, building, simulation, economics, gardening, politics, terra forming etc. is just stupid, nobody can develop a game with a feature lits longer than their arm nor develop a game that includes so many different design concepts into one thing, especially not do it all well.
Games need focus, a bunch of armchair designers and upstart companies try to have it all but it will not work. Focus your concept and focus your mechanics on that, if you want to make a simulation game tailor your gameplay around it, you may not have the best combat, fishing, roleplaying or whatever, but you don't need it either because your game is about simulation. You can make hybrids, you can have secondary mechanics and minigames, you can't have it all though.
By focusing your game and not taking a kitchen sink approach to design you might find that the niche isn't as small as you think and the quality of games improve.
All men think they're fascinating. In my case, it's justified
I know story is important to a lot of you. (even kind of important to me) but I just want to point out that in real sandbox games, it wasn't about the developer telling you a story. It was about the players creating a story. Every single person I've met irl that has played MMO's before WoW agrees that the experiences and stories created by them and their fellow players trumps any story-on-rails any time of the week. I agree with them. Give me the freedom to truely create/tailor my character, my world, my community, and I'll take a pepsi-challenge with dev. built story-on-rails any day.
This is not a troll, flame, or anything else worth banning me over. It is simply my pure opinion, and I have a right to share it.
The first few pages of this thread are a gold mine of fantastic ideas.
I believe in addition to those that what is missing from MMORPGs is dynamic behavior on the part of the developers. It is the developers who have created this world that we the players inhabit and use. We do not know all the secrets and ins-and-outs of this world, and nor do we have the ability to alter it in a way other than how the developers of this world intend for us to alter it.
Instead of expecting a game developer to "foresee" the actions that all players are ever going to do to this world that they have created, they should instead operate under the assumption that there are going to be many players who are smarter than them, a huge host of players that will use the world as these developers intend for them to use it, and a bunch of incompetents who will never understand the world in any substantial way at all.
You can only predetermine so many things until we, the players, will find the pattern and develop the impression that this world isn't dynamic at all..it's all static and similar. Once you reach this point of enlightenment this place will no longer feel like a world anymore but rather it will just become another game.
In order therefore for us players to be provided with a true sandbox that is living the people who developed that world need to be making constant observations of what the players are doing to the world. The developers of this world are basically its architects..they are the "gods" who have actual ability to impact the world and the players and are a part of the game themselves.
If the players organize themselves and do something truly unique and create their own sort of story, then the developers should follow this story and put obstacles in their way or really make them feel like they're doing something. The NPCs all say things the developers tell them to say, the weather is what the developers want it to be..everything that the player does not control is either happening at random or is something that the developer creates, and therefore there should exist an interesting relationship between player-and-developer.
Take it a step further..perhaps you should have really intelligent and creative directors who are very much a part of the game. Acknowledging the fact that this world is one that is living at the fingertips of these developers, there are endless possibilities of what they could do to the player. If you're chopping down a bunch of trees or "digging a hole," then perhaps you're upsetting someone who doesn't want the land to be disturbed, and this "developer god" attacks you..with bees. I don't know.
The point is, the developers give the player a world, and they say "here's your world, here's your tools, do something." The players take action and this impacts the world that the developers have created, and how the world acts is how the developers want the world to act. Building pre-determined events means that you are just being fed the illusion that this is a living world; in order for an MMORPG to be a living world, it means that the people responsible for creating the world need to be roleplaying AS the world. Indeed, all the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players. The players exist on the world and they use the tools they're given to alter it, and the way the world responds is how the people who created it want it to respond.
"Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a man who stood up." - Robert DeNiro
"The biggest argument against democracy is a 5 minute discussion with the average voter." - Winston Churchhill
Content. Sandboxes definitely need more content.
We are talking millions of dollars in potential revenue. You are going to sit there and tell me that investors aren't looking into what the market demands are?
Every year we have billions spent on market studies, surveys etc on finding out what people will BUY (not want, as what people want and buy are two different things). If the demand is really high for a sandbox, why hasn't any market research paper come up with it?
You can dismiss 'market research, studies, surveys' as 'not really the real world' all you want but at the end of the day, that's where the millions will go to.
Did you know that usually by March the large retail chains know what most people are going to buy on Xmas that year? :P
And why is the 'risk' higher for sandbox? If the demand is there then surely it'll be less risky?
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
List of Demands A
- I want raids and big frikken dragons
- I want shiny epic loot
- I want battlegrounds with ranking
- I want to have stuff to do lined up end to end as I level up
- I want to craft stuff I can use
List of Demands B
- I want immersion
- I want to impact the game world
- I want a massive game world
- I want to explore
- I want a deep crafting system
It's easy to fill the demands of List A because they are definable and rather universal. List B is just abstract desires that don't really give anyone any clue what they want. Now, when you get into specifics, you see that the demand for a sandbox game would require maybe five or six different games to even try to satisfy just one segment of the sandbox world. Most sandbox fans want to impact the game world or to have meaningful interaction with the game world. Obviously, that means that they are affecting someone else's game world unless instances or phasing are used - both of which are bad bad words to use around many sandbox enthusiasts. Almost as bad as ... well... allowing someone's actions to negatively affect yours? As you start to establish a game world for any one segment of sandbox market, you really do start ending up with really small pools of people for any one unified 'demand'.
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 think what you're missing is choice. Investors have a choice of what to invest in. Sandboxes are riskier than Themeparks because they rely on the community to drive them. Community can take a while to form, and it is also a vague comcept not easily reduced to an analyst's spreadsheet. Investors don't know when they'll see a return, if ever, as there is no guarentee the MMO will be successful. That being the case, projects based on sandboxes will face greater hurdles in requests for funding than themeparks since the argument made for a well hyped themepark, especially if based on an existing IP is that the investors can often count on making their money back just off of boxsales EVEN IF THE MMO FAILS in the first year. For an investor that is a mighty inviting investment.
Would you even know it if there were market studies that show a demand for a sandbox game? Probably not. Its not like MMOG designers can turn around a product in a few months to meet demand. This isn't the fashion industry. There could have been sandbox MMOG's that started development 3 years ago that we haven't even heard of yet. I'm not saying its likely, just that we don't know what market studies are coming up with at all and we won't for a long time.
I've never seen a poll by a game developer that didn't completely miss the Sandbox ideal.
Also, it wasn't until recently that gamers seemed to realize, to be able to express, what it is they really want or don't want. This only came about as three things happened (in my opinion, of course).
Gamers realized that they are, indeed, bored with the current fair and that there are things missing in their game play as a massive multiplayer environment.
The "few" who could put these things into words did so (not an easy task as the depth of concept outreaches a few paragraphs), and over time that number kept growing, to the point where "the masses" were starting to understand. To put meaning and recognition to those words, and visa versa.
Gamers started to realize that the Developer quote "It can't be done" only meant that "they" didn't believe in it, and that it actually has been done before.
*Takes a moment here to thank the gods for UO* (Just not the rampant PKer part)
Once upon a time....
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