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Why do most new Sandbox MMORPG (not Sci-F) seem to fail at the masses?
tro44_1
Member Posts: 1,819
From reading this forum, it seems the MMORPG community or hardcore players from older MMORPGs, want new Sandbox MMOs.
But when a company gets the funding to make such a game, to appeal to this population----- They some how fail, and get little support from the Hardcore crowd, which are the people screaming for these Sandbox games in the first place.
the only popular Sandbox mmos out there of the new age, are Sci-Fi bases(EvE). Where the Fantasy subgenre support? Darkfall?
So far, I heard, World of Warcraft as a reason for the unsuccessful cycle.
But what other reason could be out there, for most of the developers with funding to make Sandbox games that, Fail || doesn’t appeal to the "Hardcore old school MMORPG Sandbox Wanting Fanboys"?
Comments
Quality issues?
Simple, *what* new "sandbox" MMORPGs? In any genre.
There hasn't been a game worthy of the name released, so how can you claim the "masses" didn't support it?
I'm not trying to turn this into a "bash darkfall" thread, but seriously it just doesn't count...way too many issues, missing features and problems to be taken seriously. If it keeps limping along it may eventually evolve into the sort of true sandbox fantasy MMO that deserves a real following...but it's not there now.
Every other release has either been solidly "themepark" or has been so content-lite that the question is irrelevent.
(exception to the above, Fallen Earth is pretty close to a proper "sandbox" but it has serious bug/stability issues as well as being a very niche genre...even so, it is developing a solid fan following and is getting plenty of support from those who really love the genre)
This. Darkfall lacked crafting content, proper player housing and was solely based around ffa pvp, this isn't the main attraction for me, and surely applies to many others as well.
Most of the games are utter crap, are badly advertised and are conceptually more difficult than "normal" MMO games. Two out of those three are usually the stumbling blocks. ( Three out of three never happens. )
http://www.havenandhearth.com
The Best New Sandbox Game Out There.
Maybe the sandbox format isn't as popular amongst the masses as the vocal minority that inhabit MMO forums would like to think. Maybe the sandbox games that get released are pure crap. Maybe the IP isn't interesting enough. Maybe design decisions like FPS combat or full loot or too much PvP turn off the masses. Lots of potential reasons to pick from.
Anyway, things go in cycles...maybe a few more years of no MMOs other than WoW breaking a sustained sub mark of over 300k will get one of the big boys to risk big bucks on an old school sandboxy MMO.
- not as 'accessible'
- 'rewards' are not dangled in front of the player (the next 'level up', quest chains, etc)
- lack of quality (?)
- rely much more on well-thoughout game mechanics
- often (?) PvP focused, which not everyone enjoys
I guess a sandbox game you need to learn how to 'play' - explore the game mechanics to see what works for you. In more themepark oriented games you log in and it's quite clear what is expected from you. You keep going from quest to quest, level to level - and that is the motivation ('reward' , if you will). It's rarely about immersion, but a more direct way to get the feeling of 'success' and accomplishment. People like that feeling...
The self-selected "hardcore" games are pretty much a notoriously fickle crowd, each with their own idea of the "right" way to do a game and unwilling to accept any compromise. Since there's no real definition of what a "sandbox" game is, no actual implementation will ever please all or even most. Further, they refuse to accept that they're a small (and shrinking) niche which cannot attract the kind of money needed to a truly A-list product, but that's what they demand/expect. No one is going to spend the estimate 50 to 150 million needed to make, and support, a truly top of the line title when the best game in that arena -- EVE -- has barely made it to 150K subscribers. (And that took several years of slow, steady, growth, building on a small subset of the current feature set, and there's a lot of reasons why EVE works but a sandbox game with a more traditional MMO style, ala EQ or SWG, could not.)
Of course, "You're a small market, so you might be appealing to companies with small budgets which know they can't compete with WOW, EQ2, LOTR, or KOTOR (upcoming) but which might be able to hook those who like to think their way of pretending to be a magical elf in fairlyand is somehow more macho than someone else's way" isn't what they want to hear, so they will pretend that, somehow, there's a huge mass audience out there for the "right" sandbox game, and if only the blind, stupid, foolish, developers REALIZED this and invested 150M in making such a game, the audience would come. Anyone who disagrees is a "stupid carebear" and can be safely ignored. Thus, they are trapped in the paradox of wanting a game with the quality and ongoing support of a 150M dollar title, while despising the vast bulk of actual gamers needed to support such a title. I suppose the assumption is that there's a vast market of people who don't currently play MMORPGs, but *would*, if only there was a game where they could be ganked and teabagged before their character had finished loading into the newbie zone.
Acknowledging this contradiction is impossible, so there's a lot of not-very-repressed anger out there. (Which, in turn, only further alienates anyone who might be a little curious about such games. In a sandbox game, your enjoyment rests almost entirely on the quality of the community, and a quick look at, say, the Darkfall forums gives you an idea what the community is like,)
If you don't like EVE Online or Darkfall, you're pretty much SOL as regards sandbox games. Oh, I'm sure, someone will link to some company promising the next big thing, as they have been for a decade. When I played Ultima Online back when it first came out, as people became annoyed at changes made to try to keep the game from bleeding customers like a topless teenager in a Friday the XIII movie (long before Trammel), the usual crowd latched onto "Horizons", at the time promised as the ultimate total freedom sandbox world. We all know what it looked like when it actually shipped, many years later and with a completely different feature set. Darkfall at least made it out the door, but it's probably at the largest audience it's ever going to get.
(I wish I could find the USENET post, then on rec.games.ultima, where the promised features of Horizons were laid out... among other things, you'd be able to cut down trees so they'd stay cut down, dig up the landscape to make walls or pits, and so on. It wouldn't be technically viable NOW, much less a decade ago, but people believed it. One born every minute.)
EDIT: Between when I started writing this and when I posted it, a bunch more responses appeared, nicely proving my point in paragraph 1. Sorry, folks. If you don't think Darkfall is "sandboxy" enough, you will never, ever, be satisfied. Might as well stop hoping and save yourself some grief.
More or less.
There's a lot of reasons really.
I mean the most successful sandbox mmo -WAS- SWG. Back when it was sandbox (meaning no real linear progression, you do what you want to when you want to for the most part) and at it's height, even with all the bugs it had about or over 600k subscribers. I think they were nearing 800k when the CU hit and then 400k+ people quit. From that point to the NGE (about three months) about 80-90% of their highest subscriber population left the game. How SOE has failed to admit their mistake is just beyond me.
The second most successful sandbox so far has been Eve. It has shown steady, if very slow, growth.
Why the sandbox genre has such a tough time is primarily because of a lack of structure coupled with a lack of content. Making a sandbox game (even a single-player one) is a massive undertaking. There has to be content, but little to no linear order in which you have to do that content. The only limiting factor should be mobs having access to skills and damage that will be extremely difficult to overcome with a low number of skills yourself.
-Most- people have a hard time wrapping their heads around a sandbox game. Just go look at threads in Eve the common factor is, "what is there to -do-??" Well in Eve there's plenty to do. There's deadspace plexes, missions, mining, piracy and so on that you -can- start doing on day one. The main determining factor on what you can do and how successful you'll be at it right on your day one is determined by how you create your character. From there it's determined by how much of a social creature you are. If you start up Eve with a bunch of friends and at least one of you has done a little research then there's a lot you can go out and do.
That is the basic spirit of a sandbox - there is a bunch of stuff to do, but -you- have to decide what it is that you want to do. Once you've figured out what it is you want to do you just go do it. L1 plexes are designed to be done by frigs and you can go at them on day one.
The real problem with recent sandbox releases (I can only think of one, DF) is that the devs didn't really throw in stuff to do. Just a bunch of mobs and pvp chances and that seemed to be it. I don't know myself because I never played it, but that was the general complaint by people who quit.
There is plenty of room to make a hybrid game and I believe that should be the future of this entire industry. Instead of themepark OR sandbox there should be a measure of both. For example, 30% themepark, 70% sandbox. Using deadspace plexes from Eve as a reference those are themepark elements. There is a beginning of the plex and an end. I would say Eve is at most 10% themepark and 90% sandbox.
I believe there is plenty of room out there to make a 40/60 hybrid. What that game would look and play like would take a lot of thought and study. Personally I think that, orginally, MMO's were more of a hybrid of these two genres. It was only later that somehow these distinctions were made. Not only that, but the mentality of a game -had- to be this OR that took over everything. Nowadays you can't answer the question, 'What type of MMO are you making?' with 'A game that people will enjoy'. Oh no, if you say that people will jump all over you with negativity. You HAVE to define yourself as this or that or another thing.
I've said it before and I'll continue to say it. I think it's past time for devs to take a breather and go back to basics. Stop thinking along these lines of this or that. Just make a game without regard to what genre your game falls into or what market you're trying to exploit. We've gotten into this whole mess of terrible games because devs aren't making games they want to make the way they want to make them.
EVE has 300k subscriptions, not 150k, which is a pretty huge difference than how you put it. IMO, that goes to show that a 'niche' game can have success outside of its niche audience, because 300k to me is no longer niche when it begins to appeal to more people than several AAA non-sandbox titles. Developers should start realizing that if they make a POLISHED game that delivers at least mostly on what it advertises (instead of being released bug-ridden and practically broken with a lack of features that would make the game -truly- sandbox *cough Darkfall*)
As of now, 'sandbox' is largely associated with broken games or games that ripped people off, because there is only one success story out of the bunch.
IMO - a true sandbox is where the world is really a functioning world. Not just a group of areas you stay in for a while while you're doing quests, until you move to the next area to do the same thing. A sandbox should simply be as close to a world as possible, where the features all rely on one another, yet no one feature tries to be the dominant one (IE; raiding, battlegrounds)
It doesn't necessarily have to do with what features the game has.. IE - FFAPvP seems to be associated with sandbox. Well I really don't think that makes a game a sandbox. In this regard, I don't think Darkfall is a very well executed sandbox at all. It has a sole focus, that being PvP with everything coming second. It is just as theme park as the rest of them until it gets better PvE and crafting.
Instead, I think FFAPvP should simply be a feature of sandbox games. Just as quests are just a feature. Raids should just be a feature.. something to do, and not the end-all "get all the awesome gear you can before everyone else gets it" like it currently is. Quests should be QUESTS, not "Kill X and return here". Quests from games like Asheron's Call were REAL quests.. Could take you months to collect pieces for a quest to get some awesome armor, or to finally get access to this dungeon where you'd get to fight one of the major storyline villains. The dungeons had puzzles, rolling balls of death.. platforms you had to jump on, pits of acid to jump over. etc..
In EVE, the economy is reliant on both PvP and PvE, and likewise PvPers and PvEers rely heavily on a working economy in order to buy things for themselves and be able to make money selling things.
To sum up this sort of 'rant' - Sandbox games should be polished, because a proper sandbox game should have features that all work together to make the game function. No one feature should be the focus of the game, and really, it should feel like a -world-, not a game. EVE -feels- like a universe. The single server thing is, IMO, necessary for a true sandbox.
The next step to sandboxes in the fantasy genre is a planet. A single planet which can be entirely explored, settled, conquered, complete with its own unique lore, creatures, races, etc.. It shouldn't be a game BASED on conquering, but should instead be a world where it just so happens that people fight a lot and cities and regions change hands. The main focus of the game should instead be the world itself.. where those things are an accepted part of what goes on, in addition to whatever small or large-scale raids against high-end mobs might take place.. etc..
I hope I've made some sense.
This is an awfully broad definition. By this, if you removed quest givers from WOW and turned on FFA PVP, it would be a sandbox. You could mine and craft, or kill monsters, or join up with a group of people to explore a dungeon. With the exception of a handful of quests easily done via other means, you wouldn't need to change much at all. Hell, other than a few quests to unlock class abilities, you can level to 80 in WOW entirely by self directed means. Go kill whatever monsters you want. (By the same token, you can play EVE as a purely quest given game by just sticking to highsec space and taking missions. Because of how the skill system works, you'd be just as skilled, in game mechanics, as someone who jumped into PVP.)
Very few succesful games FORCE you onto a path. The path is there, but you can walk away from it. Everquest 2 used to have a mountain of zone-unlock quests and level-limited zones, but over the years they've dropped them.
Even in more "sandboxy" games, there are usually leveling/skill-up guides, optimal builds, and so on, published by players. What's the difference, really, between some NPC saying "Go kill 50 wolves. They're north of here. I'll mark it on your map." and reading a guide online which says, "The best way to work up your skills is to kill wolves. They're north of the starting zone at 56,19.", except that a few people may feel that "researching" online is somehow more sophisticated than doing what the NPC says?
SWG was probably the most sandbox game I've played, but contrary to what you said, its population was not growing pre-CU, but shrinking; CU made it shrink faster and NGE made it collapse. I began playing it on Day 1 and continued until the time when they released those frackin' holocubes that made everyone drop their profession and macro dance in the cantinas in order to become a "Jedi". During that time, well before CU, I watched every city shrink, watched worlds go from overcrowded to empty, watch the player base contract more and more, saw endless ghost towns of abandoned houses and empty shops and smoking harvesters. (At least the harvesters despawned back then, I understand they don't anymore.)
Sandbox isn't popular. People want to know what to do and have defined goals and stages. A well designed game gives you a path, but allows an experienced player to wander off it.
But, more importantly to this thread, what most people MEAN when they say "sandbox" is "FFA PVP with full looting". And that style of play is probably never going to be popular enough to justify an A-list MMORPG. It was tried in the earliest days of the genre because a lot of the developers came from the MU* world or the nascent LAN FPS world and didn't think about other possible playstyles. Once it became obvious that most people preferred a game that reminded them more of "Lord of the Rings" than "Lord of the Flies", that playstyle was either consigned to a ghetto server or simply left unsupported. (When did they take Priests of Discord out of EQ1?)
This. Darkfall lacked crafting content, proper player housing and was solely based around ffa pvp, this isn't the main attraction for me, and surely applies to many others as well.
Exactly. In the 8yrs I was watching Darkfall leading up to it, I wasn't around a computer at release. (Army stuff) And when I finally did come back to where I could play the game, I didn't want to. FFA PVP shouldn't be the sole focus of a game, it should be just another reason to play the game and it has to be combined with quite a few other factors to make the FFA PVP even worth half a sh**.
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EVE has 300k subscriptions, not 150k, which is a pretty huge difference than how you put it. IMO, that goes to show that a 'niche' game can have success outside of its niche audience, because 300k to me is no longer niche when it begins to appeal to more people than several AAA non-sandbox titles. Developers should start realizing that if they make a POLISHED game that delivers at least mostly on what it advertises (instead of being released bug-ridden and practically broken with a lack of features that would make the game
You're correct; I was very out of date on EVE's player base. Gratz to the folks at CCP!
However, this makes it even harder for a new game to grab an audience; EVE *wasn't* polished on release and had far fewer features than it has now. It got to grow because it was the only halfway decent game appealing to the sandbox audience. But now it is there, with a very healthy player base, and that means another game which releases in the same state EVE released in won't find the audience it needs to sustain itself while it develops.
Your definition of sandbox is really not practical. Quite simply put, if FFA PVP is possible, it WILL become the dominant mode of play, as the organized PVPers will effectively control access to all content. If there are "PVP Zones", people will claim it's not "sandbox". Basically, a game either has some form of controlled PVP -- zones, level limits, etc -- or it is fundamentally a PVP game with some other options.
I don't know anyone that has ever claimed, much less backed up, the notion that SWG ever had more than 400k after the first month, much less 600-800k. Source? If SWG was growing like that, those changes wouldn't have been made. The fact is SWG was losing subs long before CU. I don't doubt CU cost them subs because I was one of them , and NGE cretainly did, but the game was tanking anyway.
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Except that isn't really what defines a "sandbox" game at all.
They *can* be FFA full loot, but do not have to be.
The essence of the definition is that the game has very "open" mechanics that allow players to generate their own content through interaction; as opposed to a "themepark" game where the content is totally dev provided and you "ride" through it.
Contrary to that though, the developers in EVE state that a VERY small percent of their subscribed player base is in 0.0 space. I seem to recall the number being somewhere around 10% or less. Of course, in a large single-server player base, that number is a decent amount of people... but that means that the majority (well over the majority) doesn't even take part in the 'main' PvP portion of the game.
So yes.. PvP is a major feature in EVE, but people automatically assume that they have to PvP when that just isn't true. And plenty of people NEVER PvP in EVE. There are people who have played for years, who have probably gotten involved in PvP situations less than 10 times in those several years.
Asheron's Call is a game that I think was a good example of a hybrid of sandbox and theme park that WORKED, and worked WELL. There was PvE, with the option of FFA PvP on those PvE servers. There was a decent sized community of PvPers on each server, and that stayed pretty consistent for several years. I loved going on guild quests while a large group of us were 'red' at the time.. you'd be running from one place to another, and might randomly come across groups of people, or single people.. fights would happen all over the place, and then people would keep doing what they were doing. It wasn't the -focus- of the game. The reason it worked, was because the game had PLENTY of PvE content. And not 'Kill X and bring to Y', but real content. Lore quests, quests for unique things, collection quests that could last MONTHS. etc..
A truer example would be the PvP server. I will concede that Darktide didn't have the most mature community. But its players didn't simply PvP all the time. They played the game.. guilds would guard dungeons so their members could level in them. People went on quests, grinded mobs for XP, searched for loot.. etc.. all without regard. And then, sometimes.. PvP would happen. Another guild would force the first guild out of the area.. they'd probably fight for a bit, and then things would settle down and the victors could continue doing whatever it is they were doing before-hand.
Now.. that is an environment where EVERYTHING is PvP-enabled. Even EVE is not 100% PvP. There is a HUGE area of the game that is high-security space.. and if you stay there, and use the game mechanics smartly, you can avoid PvP 99.99% of the time if you want.
It seems to me you think that FFAPvP means PvP any time, any place. And in a game like Darkfall, that's mostly true. But as I said, Darkfall is not a good sandbox without the other features to balance the PvP side. Your definition of sandbox is simply different than mine. Hell, Darkfall does so many other things wrong that I don't even like bringing it into this conversation.. because really, it's not a sandbox AT ALL. It's just a PvP game. Hands down, that's what it is. It needs a lot more character customization, way better crafting, and PvE content to be even close to a sandbox.
I think a sandbox game SHOULD have FFAPvP, but NOT all the time, and NOT anywhere. It should just have -good- PvP that happens when it happens.
Eric pretty much nailed it. "What" new sandboxes? If there was a solid effort by a big name comapny who had the funding to pull it off rather well it'd gain a healthy playerbase. I too am not trying to "bash" Darkfall but if it was done with the same concepts but with the funding of a EA-Bioware or Turbine I'd most likely still be suscribed to and playing that game.
I also agree with eric in that too many people try to make FFA PvP Looting as a fixture of sanboxes. Well, it's not. It's a certain mechanic that some players like, whether in a sandbox or a themepark. While I love PvP with a purpose (other than "because I can...see DAoC as an example of PvP with purpose), I'm not a fan of FFA PvP Looting.
If a modern effort was made at it, with proper backing and polish, I'd have a subscription day one.
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Making a space game is easier.
1)build giant cube and texture it with stars
2)Add round blobs and texture them as stars and asteroids
3) add stations and wormholes to other giant cubes
4) Add player ships and make them spawn inside giant cubes
eves servers only have to handle 1/3 of the items in basic setting than MMOs with actual maps.
You can build game like Eve with low budget, you cant build a fantasy sandbox with low budget.
Honestly, I would like to see a version of PvP similar to SWG's put into a fantasy sandbox. I didn't care for the game, but I think it had a fairly solid PvP system:
Overt - Completely PvP enabled, all the time, until you do something in-game to turn it off. Quest or something..
Covert - Secretly PvP-Enabled, allows you to be incognito and do your things in town without worrying. If you attack an Overt person, you should turn Overt for a certain amount of time after that. This lets any other Overt people, or Covert people to attack you (thus turning them Overt)
Non-PvP - As it says.. you just don't PvP until you do a quest which allows you to go Covert or Overt.
Except that isn't really what defines a "sandbox" game at all.
They *can* be FFA full loot, but do not have to be.
The essence of the definition is that the game has very "open" mechanics that allow players to generate their own content through interaction; as opposed to a "themepark" game where the content is totally dev provided and you "ride" through it.
What does that MEAN, exactly?
If you mean there are scenario buidling tools, which I don't think you do, then COH/V is now a sandbox game.
Do you mean any game with player housing and crafting? Then there's a lot of sandbox games.
No game I'm aware of allows, say, the creation or destruction of "baseline" world geometry -- if the developers put in a city, the players can't tear it down, though they may be able to build other cities. In SWG, you couldn't kill Luke or Darth -- at least not permanently. I can't remember if you could even target them, but I think not.
Again, you seem to be drawing some kind of line between "I am going to go out today and kill wolves" and "I just got this quest to go kill wolves." Such a line would be valid if there were mainstream games where you couldn't go kill wolves whenever you wanted, but I can't think of one offhand.
If you mean that there's content of various levels of difficulty and players are "led" to areas of appropriate content, then, again, we're back to a mostly meaningless distinction. I can (and have) wandered into way-too-high-level areas in WoW, as I did in EQ and in SWG. (Take your n00b SWG character to Endor, see how long he lasts.) The distinction between "You'll be told when it's a good idea for you to visit the Temple Of Hideous Slaughter" and "Man, I wandered into the Temple of Hideous Slaughter and got killed in a second" is pretty small. In UO, there were different types of monsters in different places, and some were intended for new characters and some for grandmasters. Could you go where you weren't "supposed" to? Yes, and you'd die. Just like you do in WoW or EQ2 or any other "theme park" game. (It is worth noting, BTW, that one of the things the UO developers did just as soon as the servers stopped crashing every half hour was try desperately to add in content. Remember reading the "message boards" to find escort quests? Or the NPCs spamming "Ho, {{Player_Name}}! Bring me a {{Item_name}} and you shall be rewarded!"
I can only think of two traits a hypothetical "sandbox" game has that most "theme park" MMOs do not -- non instanced housing (player cities, etc) and FFA PVP.
You seem to be conflating the option of following quest chains with being *compelled* to follow them. If the content of two games (monsters, loot, crafting, etc) is identical, but one has a bunch of guys with glowing punctuation suggesting you go here or there (but doesn't compel you or lock out content), and one just lets you wander until you find what you want to kill, what's the real distinction? (Especially past the first week, after which everyone has complete guides and walkthroughs.)
Brilliant.
If only the developers could come up with a system that would fool the griefers into just thinking they were causing others misery.
Well the tag-line for sandbox MMO's is usually something along the lines of:
"A sandbox MMO gives me the freedom to do whatever I want."
It doesn't, of course. You're as limited by game mechanics as in a themepark game. You can only do what the developers of the game allow you to do within the structures of the game engine.
There's not much that you can do in a sandbox game that you can't do in a themepark game.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
But you're also thinking in terms of graphics, which isn't the same as server latency. I'm willing to bet WoW has a higher server cap than people think. (I've heard the number 10,000 get thrown around, but I've heard as low as 5k too). Now, when you consider how visually impressive the small number of graphics in EVE -are- (just in the past year, the graphics engine was redone from the ground up.. they're still upgrading it as we speak.. the effects and visuals, are stunning), combined with how many people can be in ONE area. And that is impressive server structure.
Cause they've all been developed by small developers so the games have dated graphics, poor animations, really buggy and a horrible elitist community.
Darkfall just has to much going wrong with it to be any good. The combat is boring. The GUI is poorly executed(does anyone really like their inventory system at all?). The fact that macroer's can train up skills 24/7. The lack of diverse mobs to fight. The lack of real weather and the effects that they promised would be in game and are not. The lack of wildlife. The poor implementation of resource gathering and crafting is tedious. OMG need I go on.
EvE works because it is simply a spreadsheet micromanagement game tacked onto a very robust graphics engine. Under its skin EvE is a simple game construct.
Why do we not have a good sandbox fantasy based MMORPG? Because nobody has ever made one worth a damn except for UO, but that is a 2D isometric view game and not a full 3D world. Take UO and make it a full 3D game like most other MMORPG's and it would be a good example of what a sandbox MMORPG should be like.