To change my discussion from pay to win MMOs, we'll look at sandbox MMOs and why there have only been three successful ones and all else fails.
So, lets look at singleplayer games to start with, compared to battle royale. Granted completely different games and genres...but there is a good reason battle royales are made and not high quality games like Witcher 3.
Witcher 3 cost millions to make, its budget was extremely high. Voice acting, graphics, story, real gameplay content made by the devs, the world.
Battle royale games you design a tiny map, no voice acting or very little, gameplay content is made by the players and very little by the devs.
That last part is why battle royale games are made. Cheap to make because they don't need to provide content if the players make it for free.
And that is where the discussion of why so many sandbox MMOs fail. That and all are forced PvP with no safe zones, which is one massive reason Ultima Online, Black Desert (well exception to this cause if you level too far its pvp forced) and EVE Online (the three successful ones that still officially exist without going to private/free servers) are the only sandbox MMOs that have succeeded in the genre. While EVE you CAN be PvPed anywhere, generally they made high sec safer and low sec very dangerous, then nullsec is actually safer in my experience for some reason. And BDO the pvp is so casual with no penalty to dying in pvp at all, that it is worth listing.
So that is one reason. The other...content. And this one is more important than safe zones or casual pvp content or whatever.
Ultima Online, BDO and EVE Online all provide an immense amount of content. UO has an amazing housing system, crafting, dungeons, tons of PVE content in general. EVE Online also has a ton of PVE content and many players don't even PvP despite it being considered a pvp MMO. BDO is the same way, the vast majority in BDO don't pvp either despite it being forced pvp at a certain level.
The three sandbox MMOs spent a lot of money (and time) to provide quality content to the players. Look at all the failed pvp sandbox MMOs...the only content is "players make the content". Code word for "we are an indie company that can't afford quality content, so we are gonna make a B-rate MMO and make the players provide the content for us". And this is where they fail and the companies and devs that can actually make a good QUALITY MMO win out...
Sadly, indie companies love their sandbox MMOs despite so many failing, because they think players making the content is free labor and they don't need to spend anything to make any other quality content. That makes them B-rate MMOs and deserving to fail.
Weirdly, they ignore the success of UO and EVE and keep making low budget MMOs with little quality content made by the devs.
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Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
They were both indie games IMO. At least they started out that way.
You can google more information.
UO is probably the closest thing to a sandbox mentioned as an example there, and you'd be a little hard pressed to provide a decent list of sandbox or emergent gameplay activities in it.
Also, sandboxes have a lot of content. The mechanics that allows it to be a sandbox in the first place is the content. A form of such that actually takes quite a lot of time and effort to implement well.
If you want to be critical of the difference between the non-sandbox examples that were offered versus the sandboxes that "don't create content" then we can address it more accurately with this following statement;
Most sandboxes lack "directed" content.
There are plenty of things to do and achieve in even the more basic sandbox games. From the simple side of exploring, building, and yes PvP, to more novel elements like dungeon crafting, building actual communities, and creating your own narrative content.
And that's more the rub right there. The classical concept of the sandbox is that it is an undirected narrative where collaborative user experience creates the lore and story players experience.
Problem is, most players are not roleplayers, they are metagamers.
When users don't care about creating user experiences, they have to instead be lead or pushed into them. Hence the "successful" titles that railroad people into doing certain things and behaving certain ways. Using quests, bounties, contracts, etc to guide players into specific lines of action.
If the developer is having to make a lot of the content, then it's less of a sandbox and more of a theme park with some few sandbox elements.
It's rare to find a pure sandbox game anymore. Minecraft comes close. SWG had a lot of sandbox content but there were theme park elements.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Sandbox MMOs aka PvP Forced MMOs tend to turn into a Rust lite, one big griefing simulator, and then developers wonder why they always fail?
How about some PvE Focused Sandbox with Faction based PvP? Try something different for once.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Sandboxes that come with toys, pre-built castles, and hidden surprises fair much better and are the only sandbox MMOs that have been successful. If you want to make a sandbox MMO that won't be shutting its doors in a year, it's probably a good idea to follow their example.
Or you could make another empty world and go "the players are the content! Wait why is nobody playing my game? Guess I'll die."
But games with open world PvP can do well in a sandbox format.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
You probably cannot name a single one,i can >>"Besieged".My point is that content mmo's are not delivering very good content at all,most if not all is VERY boring generic content.
Go kill this because i will give you this.
Go do this because i will give you xp.
Yeah real fun content.
The only thing i found fun was the combat "if it was intuitive/fun/challenging" and doing it with other players.So then of course your character and classes have to be really good as well to bring it all together.
The errands crap has NEVER been good in mmo's.Well by good i mean as a whole,sure there might be a few quests that had several points to connect the dots you thought were decent but overall...NOPE.
My point is that 99.9% of all games are B rated at BEST !!.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Why indie's keep making the same types of games is in the hope that this time they are doing something that will make it work better. As a game dev myself I agree that a lot of the time it obviously won't. A lot of indie's just want to make an mmo even if they don't really have any solid ideas for how to make it work. But some indie's do have ideas that might work. Or they might not, but the only way to know is to try. That's the thing about making games, it's enough of an art that until you put it all together you really don't know.
Mine had fully featured Tonka trucks that were fun to play with inside and out of the sandbox. Likewise it had a bunch of 50 cent plastic dinosaurs, again another toy that was fun in and out of the sandbox.
As utterly bait happy as the OP is they aren't fully wrong. That being said considering how "crap" of games that people do play to get something sandboxy, I personally think there are some missed business opportunities there even if risky.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."