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Are sandboxes better at producing memorable experiences?
Creslin321
Member Posts: 5,359
In my years of MMORPG gaming I've played several games of both the sandbox and theme park variety. But when I go back and reflect on the memorable experiences I've had in those games, they are almost all from sandbox games. It led me to think that sandbox games are just better at producing memorable experiences due to their dynamic environment that emphasizes human interaction.
Theme park games can be fun, but they just feel...scripted. Like nothing unexpected is really ever going to happen.
So what do you guys think?
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Comments
I'd have to say sandboxes are better. Whenever I play a themepark game, most of the content seems bland and easily forgotten, particularly because most of what I did I was hand-held and pushed into doing by the game. In sandbox games on the other hand, most of what I do is from making a conscious decision about what I want to do, and actively paying attention as I explored or searched for a specific mob or resource kill or collect.
The SB offers a greater community experience (well usually) on that front yes, although, TP's on the other hand IMO have offered a greater amount of memorable game-play moments.
Then again FFA PVP offers the best of both worlds. IMO of course.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
It realy depends on what experience I am trying to get from a given game. I have some great memories from WoW because there I was looking for a story and character based experience as well as a team experience. I have great memories from Earth and Beyond because there I sought out craftign and guild-building experiences. I have few memories of SWG since for me the game did not deliver the experiences I sought from it. Similarly I have only very bland memories from EVE since I do not like PvP and it prevented me from the experiences I wanted from the game.
My most memorable experiences are a result of the people I was having fun with, not the activity itself. That's true whether it's an MMO, golfing, hiking, skiing or any other activity. I don't see sandboxes being any better or worse than theme parks because it's all about designing the content to foster player interactions. I would say that FFA PvP doesn't foster player interactions because everyone is paranoid about interacting with other players.
World of Warcraft is also fairly bad at fostering player interactions because of its general emphasis on solo gameplay. Raiding involves many players, but they don't interact - they follow the procedure for the raid. There's limited opportunity for players to demonstrate their personality unless they plan on wiping the raid a la LeRoy Jenkins. My experience with player personalities coming out was limited to folks making jokes and witicisms in voice chat.
My most memorable MMO experiences were in EverQuest. As much as we complained about forced grouping and grinding, EverQuest was structured to foster player interactions (that's 'fostering' with an iron fist). The pendulum swung to the other extreme with World of Warcraft and now lots of people figure that if only we had a good sandbox (the antithesis of World of Warcraft) we'd have everything just right. EVE Online demonstrates to me that sandboxes with FFA PvP only foster paranoia, and that's not conducive to player interactions either. Players fearing to interact is not conducive to a broad spectrum of gameplay.
So we just need MMOs that focus on player interactions instead of achievement, PvP, crafting or any other specific experience. Player interactions are a trait of those activities, and if an MMO design is done properly, players will walk away with a wide variety of memorable experiences because of their interactions with other players.
I vote no bcs a themepark is as good in giving you single memorable experiences as a sandbox but a sandbox gives a better overall and more versatile experience.
Daoc is not a sandbox still i have great memories.
SWG is a sandbox and i have great memories.
Even from WoW, which i did not like much, i have some great memories.
AoC with its half baked game gave me great memories.
Theyh appen on occasion and not bcs its sandbox or themepark.
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Sandboxes in general make for better player generated content and those tend to be more memorable experiences. Not to say that themepark games do not have it (which they can be generated by the player base) it's just that SB's tend to focus more on it (or should I say rely more on it) than themepark games do.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
I would have thought the exact opposite. What are all those corporations and alliances in EvE if not groups of interacting players? RL is canonical FFA-PvP-permadeath and it has no problems with "player" interaction.
I voted no. I hardly remember anything from my days of playing UO. Even most of what I've done so far in EVE is pretty forgettable. Yet my memories of EQ, EQ2, and WoW seem to stick out more. While I know the majority of people here would disagree, I think it stems from sandbox games most of what you do is mundane, chop trees, build fences, shoot rats, parry sheep... where the idea behind a themepark is to be more epic and more memorable. I also think most people will recall PvP experiences from sandbox games much more than PvE experiences.
Hell even the NAME should be a dead giveaway here. Who remembers playing in the sandbox? But who remembers riding a rollarcoast, turkish twist, or pirate ship?
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
Those corporations are examples of groups of players who have agreed not to FFA PvP each other so that they can interact more freely. They understand that FFA PvP inhibits interactions.
As for the real life comment, I would consider it largely without merit. Real life includes a tremendously broader demographic with a mandatory subscription, the permadeath is truly permanent, and it certainly has problems with player interactions. War, crime, etc.
If you want real permadeath in EVE Online, get one character and never play the game again once that character is podded. Make the entire game work like that and you'll see a change in player behavior.
I had to say yes.
The thing is, "memorable" to me means something unusual or unexpected. There are things I remember from various themepark games that were cool or fun or whatever, but I wouldn't call those things really "memorable". And Themeparks are built all around controlling your experience and actions. But in UO I have "memorable" experiences for a variety of reasons. Because they were special happenings, not usual, not scripted for everyone to do, and often unexpected.
For as much as I hated the rampant PKing, I even have some "memorable" memories of that. One of the funniest things I ever heard a player say was when a guild of PKers gated into a dungeon and one of the other guys said to them..."lets...be reasonable" as a PKer killed him.
Once upon a time....
I think this hit it on the head for me. It's the hand-holding. My memories of playing WoW-esque theme park games usually consist of this:
1. Go to quest node.
2. Click on all NPCs with exclamation points over their head and click "Accept." Maybe give the quest a cursory glance, maybe not.
3. Follow my map to quest marker.
4. Do whatever is required to complete the quest (this is almost always super easy to find out since if you mouseover a mob it tells you, you have to kill it).
5. Return to quest NPC, rinse and repeat until max level.
The fact that no thought has to be put into completing a quest makes it a very dull activity. If the game actually made you think even a little, it would be so much more memorable. Heck, I can still remember how excited I was in King's Quest V when I found out I had to hit a yeti in the face with a pie in order to advance. If the game had just told me "get a pie from the baker and hit the yeti with it," it would have been incredibly dull.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I remember once in UO I, for some reason, wanted to spy on these two players without being detected. So I turned myself into a chicken and tried to just strut around them in very "chicken-like" fashion as to not be noticed. It worked for a few minutes, but eventually one of them says "Why is that chicken named Creslin?"
Yeah...that was awkward
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Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I agree SB have more memorable people, but TP have more memorable events.
However, I would say TP are overall more memorable because while I had about double the amount of memorable people in SBs, I had 100x's more memorable events and places in TPs.
"Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people." - Eleanor Roosevelt
"Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security." -Norman Vincent Peale
In my experience, most of the memorable experiences come from the people I'm playing with, not the game itself. Especially from people doing dumb things.
For instance, way back in the day in Karazhan, our guild had made it to the Maiden and were getting ready to try and kill her again. Our rogue had stealthed and crept up onto the platform and our shaman buffed him with something. The Maiden immediately notices the rogue and runs over to stomp him. The raid wipes. OK, not a big deal. Next round, everyone is in their starter positions, I get ready to mark the maiden, except I notice an arrow slowly arcing up from my hunter towards the maiden. Uh oh. The tank runs in to try and get things under control but to no avail, the healers are still getting ready to run in when the maiden takes off. Wipe #2. OK, three times the charm, right? I'm in my spot, ready to go, the maiden is marked, the rogue is buffed and everything looks good, when I see a tiger running in from stage left in slow motion straight at the maiden. I'm not sure anyone else noticed her. The hunter that sent her realizes it and calls his tiger back...just in time for the maiden to follow the tiger back and kill everyone who's drinking and buffing. :-) The fourth time we one shotted her. That was years ago and I still remember it, not because it was WoW or Karazhan, but because we went through a Keystone Cops routine just trying to get started.
And so on. It's the people, not the games that matters.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
All of my especially-positive memories of any MMO are of player interaction, a party I went to in SWG, getting a group together to hunt something rare, joining up in a party with fellow players and just hanging out for a while. This can and has happened in Themeparks, but the difference is that sandboxes are DESIGNED specifically for this to happen. This is why the Sandbox is a superior design, in my opinion, for actual online play. I'm not saying it's more fun, and it's certainly not more profitable, but it is the reason MMORPGs even exist. Anyone who argues that, honestly, is just wrong. Not opinion, fact.
Either game type can give you positive, memorable experiences. But most of the positive experiences you're going to see, other players removed, in the themepark setting are going to be inferior versions of what you'd find in a Final Fantasy or a KotOR.
To be honest a well prepared Themepark with some sandbox elements or a well developed sandbox with some themepark elements are whats needed. Pure sandbox is empty and boring, pure themepark is over to quickly and you never feel in control.
But the most memorable expirience has nothing to do with themepark or sandbox it all about the situation and the fun you had. For some it is the community and the shared experience for others its seeing that memorable sight off of the beaten track. For others it being among the first to take on a themed dungeon and yet for others its holding the line against impossible odds and winning.
Themepark sandbox neither of these makes a memorable experieince its all down to you the player and how well the game can satisfy what you crave.
The question is loaded, leading or whatever the term is in english. Correct, neutral way to ask this would be "Which one produces more memorable experiences; sandboxes or themeparks?"
Anyway, my answer is no. Memorable experiences are not exclusively tied to things that occur only in sandboxes. They are very subjective so a memorable moment to you might be not so memorable someone else.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Sandbox are better, but you have to understand how a game mixes themepark elements with sandbox mechanics... and with the right blending offers the player the best experience.
For example, me and my friends still talk about our memories and experiences in EQ2.... and while we played WoW longer we have only a few fond memories from WoW, and those memories have nothing to do with end-game but instead were in the level 20-40 ranges we had some of our best times back in vanilla WoW.
Even right now, we can go play EQ2 LotRO and have a much better and rewarding experience than what WoW offers.
If you like chasing the carrot on the stick and running the same dungeons/raiding killing same bosses over and over then ya I guess you got your memories for the current meta game of WoW.
Played: MCO - EQ/EQ2 - WoW - VG - WAR - AoC - LoTRO - DDO - GW/GW2 - Eve - Rift - FE - TSW - TSO - WS - ESO - AA - BD
Playing: Sims 3 & 4, Diablo3 and PoE
Waiting on: Lost Ark
Who's going to make a Cyberpunk MMO?
Heh, did you tell them it was because you had been tamed? lol
Once upon a time....
But if, as you say, FFA PvP inhibits interactions, then how did said corporations/alliances form in the first place? Shouldn't the interaction required to form the group have been inhibited? By your theory it the game environment itself should have inhibited the formation of these groups.
As for RL, the vast, vast, vast majority of all "interplayer" interactions are not categorized by violence which would be expected by your theory given the FFA nature of reality.
Paranoia, fear, doubt....these are all thing that imply memorable. Good or Bad you cannot have one without the other.
thank you JB47394 for pointing out what is wrong with mmo's today and why we feel they are so lack luster.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
To me this is an important part of where the future needs to go. Causing player interactions by game design, but not forced. In PvP games, some players do interact because of that. Many just leave, but that's a separate issue. But there's other ways to accomplish this, I think, in community efforts. Again, not forced, but as part of the overall game design. This is why I think that player built cities, in a much wider scope than we've seen so far, are so important for the "next gen" in MMORPGs. Imagine cities that offer some real benefits to it's players, and so those players actively trying to help build that city up, and organizing to do so.
Once upon a time....
And the possibility of being ostracized from said city. Player cities has to actually mean player cities, not player built / developer controlled. The ability to socially ostracize (even if not via pvp) is essential for the players to be able to deal with douchebaggery, griefers, etc without involving GMs.
I think it really comes down to the "definition" of sandbox and the extent the game goes to impliment that sandbox.
a game HAS to offer some structure and limitiations.... otherwise, why play the game at all...
I voted no, a number of the most memorable experiences I've had are from EQ, GW and AoC and none of those are sandbox MMO's.
I think it's all a matter of preference, sandbox MMO's can feel empty and bland while themepark MMO's can feel alive and energetic, a lot depends on the server community you're part of.
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