The reality of the issue goes over many people's head.
Its not about how Themepark or Sandbox a MMO is. It's all about how interesting the feature list is to the MASSES.
The term Sandbox isn't what turns people off about a Sandbox MMO.
what turns people off is the way Developers tend to always have the same unpopular features in Sandbox.
*FFA PvP just is not popular no matter how much you try. So stop trying this.
*Full Loot just is not popular. So stop doing it already.
*Aim based controls, just isn't popular. Stop doing it!
*Playing as a vehicle, just isn't popular. Don't do this.
*lack of PvE developer made content, just isn't fun in the long run. Stop doing that than.
Man this list goes on. But usually most of these can be found in any so called Sandbox MMO. But people wonder why that genre isn't popular right now. Change many of these listed here in your sandbox and you can expect much growth.
but of course, most sandbox MMO developers will never do that and stay in their little box of mind.
I don't really agree with this because let's face it since the WoW boom there hasn't been any sandbox games with any of these features worth a damn so there are literally millions of new age gamers that have never experienced sandbox gameplay in any real form. All the above features can be great when done right but horrible when done wrong which they almost always are. So really the popular opinion is irrelevant here because its not based on ones own experience but rather hearsay and then most of that hearsay comes from tired old gamers who don't possess the skill needed to be successful in a more competitive environment. Mind you I'm 32 and starting to notice my reaction times slowing as I start the downward slope from my peak of prowess, but I strongly support these features implemented in the right fashion because there is nothing like the adrenaline rush you get from the situations these types of games give you. Both the highs of getting the kill and loot from someone reknowned or the lows of giving it all back with one bad decision. It's a lot like gambling.
Sandbox games are different. To make a good sandbox game, you have to have a number of complicated game mechanics that work together in complex ways. And they need to work together very, very well. You need for interesting gameplay decisions to arise in very complicated ways--and for players to not have a single way to short-circuit the intended complexity.
That is the second type of hard discussed above. Most game programmers can't do it. They could try, but the game would probably be a train wreck.
However, a sandbox game isn't the first type of hard. You don't need hundreds of custom-done quests, and hundreds of custom-done mobs, and so forth to make a good sandbox game. The game will succeed or fail on the basis of whether your sandbox mechanics make for interesting gameplay.
Well.. that is just to some degree correct. Because a sandbox mmorpg is basicly both types of hard, at least a full fledged out sandbox mmorpg, or maybe better called virtual world.
But you have to differ here. If you mean just a empty world with sandbox mechanics you would be right. But a real virtual world and as i would call a full fledged out sandbox mmorpg you need the world, too.
With the world i mean a world simulation run by npc factions all alone without the player, but fully changeable by the player. And with it you get your first type of hard again. Maybe not in that amount of a themepark, because you dont need a lot of scripted content. You dont have to do every single Quest/Encounter script by your own. But you need a background simulation/AI(think of dwarfen fortress) that let everything run. And you need to create the world, with cities, landscapes, and some kind of npc faction and npc history/story. (Look at UO or SWG)
EvE was rather empty, but not completely. And it is by far easier to do something in a space sim than in a fantasy based games. Comparsion is here between Elite and Dwarfen Fortress as examples. And EvE was the only successful indy sandbox mmorpg out of 15? or more indy attempts for a sandbox mmorpg.
If you want to have a thousand quests, you have to do a bunch of things custom a thousand times.
But do you really do a bunch of things custom a thousand times for AI? If you do, then you're doing it wrong. Maybe you have several different AIs. Maybe each has a fair bit of variety from plugging in different parameters. It's intrinsically difficult to do that well, so it's the second type of hard. But doing something several times rather than a thousand times is not the time-consuming first type of hard--which is my point.
Sorry to say that this generation of gamers want everything to be perfect right out of the gate. I'm sorry but they are being greedy and childish. For example, TSW was released with them basically saying. Yes the game is not done yet however this game will continue to grow, new animations will be added, PVP will be redone, Missions will be added monthly, and the story will be on ongoing experiance.
What did the gamers complain about.
Lack of content
Bad PVP
Short story
Bad animations.
This just proves to me that the current generation wants games the size of WoW and Eve upon release. They want every little feature that has been invented, put in at the start of the game. IF you guys want a good Themepark OR Sandbox game you need to find a title and stick with it as they grow the game. I've seen games drop subs and go F2P just to survive. Now when a game is fighting to survive to you honestly think that Growing the game is first on their minds, No suddenly Making money to make sure the game stays playable is.
There is no such thing as perfection out of the gate. suck it up, Play the game in its infant stages so it has the oppotunity to become one of the "Adult" size games.
Because i can. I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out. Logic every gamers worst enemy.
Originally posted by Deathenger If a company could do exactly what EvE has done except in a traditional fantasy setting , everything else would pretty much be blown out of the water.
Im talking.about the entire game. Combat depth, crafting, market, social, the whole shabang.
Eve works since it has the advantage of space making it vastly easier to really 'work' for players as it involves huge areas of black space to explore with customization being more so 'ship based' which in a way is just 'editing your avatar' of sorts. Yes, you can call it a sandbox but it really has very little sandbox elements around people actually would want. Even with its minimal sandbox elements in place, it still shows that issue with a sandbox mentality with the markets.
Don't get me wrong, not trying to bash eve, it works for what it is due to the setting it is in involving solely focused on the ships and space which really don't provide that level of 'creationism' that a fantasy world might provide. Taking eve and making it work in fantasy would involve adding a LOT more sandbox elements and content to the game. Making players stay (keeping the same world never reset) would require even more work.
Not so sure about the "most game programmers just can't do it" mentality. EVE isn't exactly the most complex game in the world.... Most of the complexity comes from the well thought out mechanics and systems they put in place but after that it's mostly just graphical spaceship spreedsheets.
But well thought-out complex mechanics and systems are hard. They're the second type of hard from my original post.
What actually got me thinking about this was not sandboxes but tessellation. Just over three years ago, DirectX 11 launched and brought hardware tessellation capabilities to games. At the time, I thought that tessellation was going to be a huge deal. Rather than having fixed models of characters, you can have low polygon base models that look fine from far away, and use tessellation to break them up into high polygon models up close that still look smooth. And you can have a huge number of interpolated models, without having an obvious jump when the game switches from one model to another, as games that try to have two or three models for something commonly do.
More than three years later, I'm not aware of a single commercial game that has done that. There are some games that use tessellation, of course. But they tend to start with fairly high polygon models, and then use tessellation to break it up even more. That's missing the point.
Fast forward to 2012. I decided to learn how to do computer graphics, to see if I could make a simple game myself. I still thought tessellation sounded cool in the abstract, and wanted to see if I could do it. I found a number of explanations online of how to do lighting, texturing, and so forth. But if tessellation was mentioned at all, it was mostly, "You don't want to do that, because it's really hard."
But I did want to do tessellation, so I pressed ahead. The first graphical feature I learned how to make was to draw a triangle. It was a single white triangle on a black background, and basically the OpenGL equivalent of a "Hello World" program. The second thing I learned how to do was tessellation.
And it wasn't that hard. Or at least, I thought it wasn't. Sometime later, in another thread on this forum, Castillle said something to the effect of, "We can't do tessellation because we don't have any good algorithms for it." I didn't say this at the time, but my reaction was basically, "Umm, duh. Isn't it obvious?" I was incredulous at his comment, even though it seemed common when tessellation is discussed online. It was as if, knowing how to add two numbers, someone can't figure out how to add three numbers.
It was only later that I realized, to most computer programmers, it most certainly isn't obvious. I've studied manifolds with boundary, simplicial homology, stellar subdivisions, diffeomorphisms, and a number of other relevant concepts. For someone with my background in mathematics, it's obvious how to do tessellation. But how many people will see any of those concepts before they finish an undergraduate degree? Maybe some relatively advanced math majors, but not many. Most game programmers haven't seen the concepts, don't even know what is out there, and wouldn't even know where they should look.
In one sense, games seem kind of magical. You press a key and things move on the screen. It's a lot of work to make that happen. Coming from a background of trying to program my calculator, which didn't have 3D graphics built in, it seems impossible to make that work.
But that got me thinking, if game programmers don't know the mathematics that they need to know in order to use tessellation--which they really should use, because it's awesome--then maybe there are other things that they should do but can't because they don't know how. As I got further into programming my game, I realized that I was using a ton of mathematics that most computer programmers have never seen. Some of it was graduate level stuff, and some merely upper level undergraduate stuff.
Is advanced mathematics really what's missing from sandboxes? Not necessarily. But some of the stuff I've tried to do and compared to commercial games on the market today led me to look at what other games did and think, they did it that way because it's all that they know or can figure out how to do.
Sandbox is overrated in these forums.... but the truth is that not many people like them and/or play them.
Most players are not interested and would avoid any game with permadeath, full loot, forced open PvP and other characteristics that avid sandbox fanboys always demand on any MMO beeing released.
That is the main reason no big company makes a triple A one.
If you want to have a thousand quests, you have to do a bunch of things custom a thousand times.
But do you really do a bunch of things custom a thousand times for AI? If you do, then you're doing it wrong. Maybe you have several different AIs. Maybe each has a fair bit of variety from plugging in different parameters. It's intrinsically difficult to do that well, so it's the second type of hard. But doing something several times rather than a thousand times is not the time-consuming first type of hard--which is my point.
Yeap.. Thats true about the AI/Simulation Part. But not true for the world. Ok, you could do a lot with procedural world generation, on the other side, it is extremely difficult, and to write a good procedural 3D world generator is extremely time consuming. And you would need a lot of work(first type hard) to do to draw/design all assets like different types of trees(size and type), and all other parts the world generator would use. And that is really to do things custom a thousands and more times.
But because a good procedural world generation is a project on its own, a lot of sandboxes handcraft their world, and that is also a lot of first type hard work, and not just the world, the inhabitants, the cities, the landscape in general and almost everything, what is in your world, and with what you can toy around. With other words, all the animation, graphic, art, sound everything not programmed is the first type of work.. and there is a lot of it. Ok, if you cut a lot of it out, you get what i said before a empty world.
And dont underestimate the amount of work all those 2nd type hard things will cost. A good AI system(and you need a few AI layers working with and against each other for a good simulation) is a lot of work. To make all Items/Objects changeable, and fitting in the world requires a lot of work, too. (and even more in a 3D world) Sandbox Tools require a lot of thought and work to be done.
The point is i guess, that the initial costs(in other word work time) for a AAA sandbox is even higher than a AAA themepark, with the difference, that it is much easier to generate long term appeal, and to expand the world. At least if you asume of the same level of detail and polish of your product.(and without a single quest) Almost all indy projects were rather empty and barren worlds, which is one reason why the failed in the first place.
And EvE is somewhat a exception, and one reason is, because it is in Space.. a Galaxy full of stars and planets is rather easy to generate.. especially if those planets are either not visitable or empty and procedural generated. With other words CCP was cabable because to craft their world was rather easy in comparsion to create, and even more easier to expand.
The truth is no one wants to make a sandbox that isn't about killing each other 100% of the time.
How then do you explain A Tale in the Desert?
or Free Realms, There, Muxlim, Red Light Center, Kaneva, Second Life, or Sociolotron
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
But because a good procedural world generation is a project on its own, a lot of sandboxes handcraft their world, and that is also a lot of first type hard work, and not just the world, the inhabitants, the cities, the landscape in general and almost everything, what is in your world, and with what you can toy around. With other words, all the animation, graphic, art, sound everything not programmed is the first type of work.. and there is a lot of it. Ok, if you cut a lot of it out, you get what i said before a empty world.
But because a good procedural world generation is a project on its own, a lot of sandboxes handcraft their world, and that is also a lot of first type hard work, and not just the world, the inhabitants, the cities, the landscape in general and almost everything, what is in your world, and with what you can toy around. With other words, all the animation, graphic, art, sound everything not programmed is the first type of work.. and there is a lot of it. Ok, if you cut a lot of it out, you get what i said before a empty world.
I'm not sure I agree with the conventional MMO fan site definitions of sandbox vs. themepark. In my mind those definitions are usually biased by our own experiences in MMOs of the past--what we enjoyed and what we didn't.
MMOs attempt to create an interesting virtual world where you can, more or less, behave in a fashion that is consistent with that world. A sandbox game would allow us more freedom to do things in unique ways that are not (it appears) predetermined by the developers--sort of like in real life-- and Themeparks limit those choices based on the developer's assumptions about what interesting things we want to do and we're 100% aware of those limits. Sandboxes are built to encompass the unexpected and the extremes, themeparks are not. But in reality, it's all an illusion: sandboxes only seem to not have predetermined things when in fact tthey have to predetermine the outcomes for many more possibilities.
According to my own definition, a true sandbox is just a theoretical goal--MMO utopia. The technology doesn't exist except in Scifi books or shows. The best an MMO can currently do is lean one way or the other.
I don't think complexity of mechanics nor quantity of content has anything to do with the distinction. Themeparks and Sandboxes can both be complex or simple and they can both have a lot of content or a small quantity.
"Openness" for lack of a better word is the real distinction. Another way of describing a sandbox game is "if I can think of it, I should be able to do it." In a real sandbox fantasy simulator, I should be able to "invent" my own unique spells that do something totally different than the one you may invent or create a sword that has a secondary effect like freezing you for 30 minutes. I should be able to figure out a way to befriend dragons and ride on their backs, build a castle, collect taxes from people I protect... or make horeshoes for the village and accept protection from the local lord.
Pie in the sky unbalancing crap? Yup, of course. So by necessity the developers of that world add limits to just how much damage a spell can do, how far you can teleport, limit freezing secondary effects of swords to 6 seconds or even remove dragons altogether. All of those choices create "rails" that limit us and contain the world. Do too much of that and you get the Themepark label even if you can do other things that we commonly associate with sandboxes.
PK with harsh consequences? Themeparks have had those (although it's rare now.) Build your own house? Check...see LOTRO and others. World boundaries and zoning? Check...sandboxes have those too. Quick travel? They both have those capabilities in some fashion. Trading mechanics including mail and AHs? Yup again...both. Quests? Yup...both, although mass-produced themeparks use this as their core mechanic and sandboxes tend not to.
Try as I might, I can't think of a single feature that is 100% unique to games labeled tehemepark or sandbox. All I see is a continuum from a lot of freedom to very little freedom with every MMO somewhere in the middle but leaning in one direction.
And I also see a significant difference in popularity that leans heavily toward the mass-produced MMO on rails with limited choices. The people with the $$ seem to think that's what sells and they haven't been proven wrong yet. This, mpre than anything else is what forces the more sandboxy games to be developed by indies: no one with the big bucks wants to fund their project. The decision about what type of game to make doesn't happen after the budget has been determined, it happens before that and then you try to get the funding. This is what has pushed the more sandboxy MMOs into niche spaces.
And sorry, I see no evidence anywhere that a sandbox design would benefit less from a cash infusion than a themepark. The ideal genre-changing sandboxy MMO that we're all waiting for would need to have all the polish and even more diversity than a 2012 themepark... that game needs actually more content than the themepark not less, since I'll be able to be a hybrid lion tamer accountant in it.
Anyway...those are my thoughts before my second cup of coffee. Cheers and good OP to get this discussion going.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
But because a good procedural world generation is a project on its own, a lot of sandboxes handcraft their world, and that is also a lot of first type hard work, and not just the world, the inhabitants, the cities, the landscape in general and almost everything, what is in your world, and with what you can toy around. With other words, all the animation, graphic, art, sound everything not programmed is the first type of work.. and there is a lot of it. Ok, if you cut a lot of it out, you get what i said before a empty world.
A sandbox isn't just a theme park without quests.
Than what is Darkfall?
An incomplete attempt at creating a game.
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
The reality of the issue goes over many people's head.
Its not about how Themepark or Sandbox a MMO is. It's all about how interesting the feature list is to the MASSES.
The term Sandbox isn't what turns people off about a Sandbox MMO.
what turns people off is the way Developers tend to always have the same unpopular features in Sandbox.
*FFA PvP just is not popular no matter how much you try. So stop trying this.
*Full Loot just is not popular. So stop doing it already.
*Aim based controls, just isn't popular. Stop doing it!
*Playing as a vehicle, just isn't popular. Don't do this.
*lack of PvE developer made content, just isn't fun in the long run. Stop doing that than.
Man this list goes on. But usually most of these can be found in any so called Sandbox MMO. But people wonder why that genre isn't popular right now. Change many of these listed here in your sandbox and you can expect much growth.
but of course, most sandbox MMO developers will never do that and stay in their little box of mind.
i agree with your FFA full loot pvp. it is an aquired taste, that however is gaining popularity with games like Dayz.
however, aim based combat IS popular, LoL is aim based (or at least party aim based), Cod is aim based, Skyrim is aimed based, Dayz is aim based, all the newer popular games are aim based.....come to think of it the ONLY game that is still very popular dispite tab targeting is WoW.a pure tab targeting system is an quickly becomeing an old system and the future is aim based combat.
in the end, because a sandbox require a lot more complex mechanics that interact with achother in countless different ways, they are just harder to make, and require a lot more complex coding. When an investor looks at making a game they will not look favourably at the harder concept (the sandbox), which by the way has proven a failure more times the not. they will look at the safest way to make a game that has the highest chance of selling: the themepark.
god i hope not. Not a fan of this style of combat.
But because a good procedural world generation is a project on its own, a lot of sandboxes handcraft their world, and that is also a lot of first type hard work, and not just the world, the inhabitants, the cities, the landscape in general and almost everything, what is in your world, and with what you can toy around. With other words, all the animation, graphic, art, sound everything not programmed is the first type of work.. and there is a lot of it. Ok, if you cut a lot of it out, you get what i said before a empty world.
A sandbox isn't just a theme park without quests.
Than what is Darkfall?
Persistant FPS with full loot and bad graphics.
I have some hope for Archage tho. Only promissing sandbox game other than Eve.
I think for these games to make it, they are not going to work as a sanbox and i hate themeparks. Most of the sandparks just dont have enough content to keep you interested in it long enough to make the game company any real lasting money.
To me a themepark is a game where you are lead around by the nose from one area to the next and if you try not to follow it in that way your not going to be able to advance in the game.
A sandbox is like a freeroam. Go where you want and do what you want and is basicly skill driven.
My best examples of a Themepark is WOW or STO both popular games and both themeparks.
My best examples of sandbox is Wurm or Xyson. Both pretty good games but just not enought o hold you there for long.
Missing story line and quest.
Where as you have Ultima Online (yes its still going) and SWG that is now dead. I consider both of these games Sandparks.
They let you freeroam with lots of content that is made by the developers as in quest and story line.
What developers are missing in my book is more Sandparks not sandboxes or Themeparks.
What type of game we really need is like Wurm online (crafting animal training and breeding combat) but with decent cities and dev created quest.
I'm still in wonder over why SWG died by far the best AAA game ver made. yeah yeah i know they ruined it with a series of patches, but that game was bad ass until that point.
PVP should be optional and here is why. I have alot of friends that game, not all of them will even attempt to play a game with pvp, while i enjoy pvp i also dont want it full time, i enjoy going out and questing chopping trees or what ever else the game might offer without having to watch my back every second.
I think camelot had it right here with massize zones that full pvp was allowed and the rest of the game was themepark i would sub that themepark for sandpark and make the game great.
just my measily 2 cents on this age old debate.
We do have a game coming to America at some point that fits this bill. I will wait until then.
one of the important things people forget is the more money a company brings in the better they can make the game for all.
While you have the pvp junkies screaming only FFA you really need to cater to both types to get the full flow of money coming in that a game needs to become great.
played M59,UO,lineage,EQ,Daoc,Entropia,SWG,Horizons,Lineage2.EQ2,Vangaurd,Irth online, DarkFall,Star Trek and many others that did not make the cut or i just plain forgetting about.
The reality of the issue goes over many people's head.
Its not about how Themepark or Sandbox a MMO is. It's all about how interesting the feature list is to the MASSES.
The term Sandbox isn't what turns people off about a Sandbox MMO.
what turns people off is the way Developers tend to always have the same unpopular features in Sandbox.
*FFA PvP just is not popular no matter how much you try. So stop trying this.
*Full Loot just is not popular. So stop doing it already.
*Aim based controls, just isn't popular. Stop doing it!
*Playing as a vehicle, just isn't popular. Don't do this.
*lack of PvE developer made content, just isn't fun in the long run. Stop doing that than.
Man this list goes on. But usually most of these can be found in any so called Sandbox MMO. But people wonder why that genre isn't popular right now. Change many of these listed here in your sandbox and you can expect much growth.
but of course, most sandbox MMO developers will never do that and stay in their little box of mind.
I'd go the other route. I don't think devs should stop doing those things, rather they should target their audiences better. For example, EVE Online has always been upfront about what it is to set the proper expectations. You can't get much more upfront than this: http://trial.eveonline.com/en/eveishard.aspx
What happens with a lot of these sandbox MMOs is they pitch to a much broader audience than their game is actually designed for. I can't begin to guess the thinking behind that because if you sell your game to five types of players but it is only designed to appeal to one type, then you end up with four times as many people talking about how your game sucks than there are that enjoy it. Had they targetted the one group specifically, they would ahve gotten one-fifth the initial people, but they also would have a stronger community, less negativity and no 'mass exodus' to deal with. At that point, as new content comes in, proper targeting is done, and the existing playerbase evangelises the game.. well, the game and its community both grow!
Those things are what need to be changed - the way in which the games are pitched (and that includes dev interviews and exec comments as well as marketing) needs to be dialed back to reality.
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
The reality of the issue goes over many people's head.
Its not about how Themepark or Sandbox a MMO is. It's all about how interesting the feature list is to the MASSES.
The term Sandbox isn't what turns people off about a Sandbox MMO.
what turns people off is the way Developers tend to always have the same unpopular features in Sandbox.
*FFA PvP just is not popular no matter how much you try. So stop trying this.
*Full Loot just is not popular. So stop doing it already.
*Aim based controls, just isn't popular. Stop doing it!
*Playing as a vehicle, just isn't popular. Don't do this.
*lack of PvE developer made content, just isn't fun in the long run. Stop doing that than.
Man this list goes on. But usually most of these can be found in any so called Sandbox MMO. But people wonder why that genre isn't popular right now. Change many of these listed here in your sandbox and you can expect much growth.
but of course, most sandbox MMO developers will never do that and stay in their little box of mind.
I'd go the other route. I don't think devs should stop doing those things, rather they should target their audiences better. For example, EVE Online has always been upfront about what it is to set the proper expectations. You can't get much more upfront than this: http://trial.eveonline.com/en/eveishard.aspx
What happens with a lot of these sandbox MMOs is they pitch to a much broader audience than their game is actually designed for. I can't begin to guess the thinking behind that because if you sell your game to five types of players but it is only designed to appeal to one type, then you end up with four times as many people talking about how your game sucks than there are that enjoy it. Had they targetted the one group specifically, they would ahve gotten one-fifth the initial people, but they also would have a stronger community, less negativity and no 'mass exodus' to deal with. At that point, as new content comes in, proper targeting is done, and the existing playerbase evangelises the game.. well, the game and its community both grow!
Those things are what need to be changed - the way in which the games are pitched (and that includes dev interviews and exec comments as well as marketing) needs to be dialed back to reality.
This is probably not going to happen because the more they sell from the start they are hoping the more they keep. While i agree completely with what you are saying i just dont see it happening because of the greed to get the most money off the bat.
played M59,UO,lineage,EQ,Daoc,Entropia,SWG,Horizons,Lineage2.EQ2,Vangaurd,Irth online, DarkFall,Star Trek and many others that did not make the cut or i just plain forgetting about.
No, Quiz, I think you make your point fit your analogy. It is not as simple as that. Why sandboxes are made by indie developers? -Because they are a significantly smaller market niche. And small niches are not attractive to the big developers and small developers can hardly ever compete with the big ones. Like Jeff Strain said in a speech few years back, "you can't out do WoW with less than half the budget" - you shouldn't even try. So you go and capture some other audience.
You can view it like an ecosystem. One herbivore eats all the plants effectively leaving little to nothing to the other species. These other herbivores need to find some other plant to eat, some other source of food, to survive. Its how nature works and its how market works too.
Also, if you can't outdo something, you compete with price. If you can't compete with price, you differentiate your product -> go for a different niche.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Originally posted by Deathenger If a company could do exactly what EvE has done except in a traditional fantasy setting , everything else would pretty much be blown out of the water.
Im talking.about the entire game. Combat depth, crafting, market, social, the whole shabang.
I dont know what those elements are, care to elaborate on what makes Eve so good?
Playing: GW2 Waiting on: TESO Next Flop: Planetside 2 Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
Originally posted by Deathenger If a company could do exactly what EvE has done except in a traditional fantasy setting , everything else would pretty much be blown out of the water.
Im talking.about the entire game. Combat depth, crafting, market, social, the whole shabang.
I dont know what those elements are, care to elaborate on what makes Eve so good?
Atleast not combat depth, thats for sure.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
But because a good procedural world generation is a project on its own, a lot of sandboxes handcraft their world, and that is also a lot of first type hard work, and not just the world, the inhabitants, the cities, the landscape in general and almost everything, what is in your world, and with what you can toy around. With other words, all the animation, graphic, art, sound everything not programmed is the first type of work.. and there is a lot of it. Ok, if you cut a lot of it out, you get what i said before a empty world.
A sandbox isn't just a theme park without quests.
Well.. that is true. But a mmorpg with quests is not a sandbox, just because it have quests. Quests could be in a sandbox, they could even made sandboxlike. The same is more or less true for anything else.
My point is, that you have to deliver a full fleshed out world for a AAA mmorpg. With nations, history and story, sandbox or themepark.. and it doesnt have to do with it.
See it as that. Think about a full world. Where everything would work and evolve even without player(simulation). Nations would wage war. Merchants would trade. Craftsmen would produce stuff and so on. Now make it sandbox. With other words that all elements, or almost all elements are creatable, modifyable, interactable and destroyable. And then let the players in. And the player can now change the world, take the position of any npc, can create a new nation, destroy the old one or what ever they want to do.
Is that a sandbox or not? Of course, it is.
But, for being a game, and not just a sandbox it is better to have a very detailed world. This will the sandbox not stop to be a sandbox, as long as you can change everything in it. But it will become a better game.
And after all, we are talking about sandbox mmorpgs.. with other words sandbox games, and not about Second Life.
The idea about features solely useable for themeparks and sandboxes is ridiculous. Because it is not so much the features which defines something, it is much more how you implement said feature in the world. If this feature can exist in a sandbox world(with other words with changable content) it will fit in very well.
As i said somewhere else, what for me defines a sandbox is
If you can create, modify, interact and destroy persistent objects in a persistent world. And ideally every object would behave like that. But that is of course not possible, or at least rather hard to do. No only the amount of it.
Back to Quests. As example. In some country/city a lot of trees got over the last weeks/month harvested and the landscape becomes to get barren. The npc major(could be a player too) then handles out the Quest, to plant trees and recultivate the landscape. If there are enough trees again around, the quest will disappear.
Or
A wandering ork tribe gets bigger and bigger and attacks different nearby towns. Would it not be rather logically that the lord of the land would hand out a Quest to hund down those orks and protect the nearby towns? After the ork tribe is vanished or banished the quest will disappear.
And so on... there is a lot of things possible in a sandbox mmorpg. And its not about a feature called Quest, it is about how you will implement it. At the same time could be those Quests be created by players for some requests they have to handle. The Quests in itself could be able to be created, modified, interacted and destroyed, to come back to my sandbox definition.
It is rather simple to deliver a empty world, deliver a few sandbox tools, and say the player.. come on, play with it. But that does not make necessarily a good game.
If you can create, modify, interact and destroy persistent objects in a persistent world. And ideally every object would behave like that. But that is of course not possible, or at least rather hard to do. No only the amount of it.
I tend to agree that this is a core concept and it's what often divides the philosophical approach to MMO design: Do you want to give everyone an opportunity to experience all of your content in an egalitarian fashion or is it a first-come-first-served world?
If you can change the world, those coming after you will never see the world as you saw it, they'll see your leftovers. If you kill Harry the ultimate troll boss who wields The Club of Tremendous Smashing, he'll saty dead, you'll get the club and no one else will be able to meet Harry or take his club.
I sort of think I want to play in that world and take my chances but I'm in a minority I think. The more changeable a world is the more it tends to become an elite club for early adopters...noobs need not apply 3 months after the game is released...
Unless there is a comitment on the part of the devs to continue developing new content just as fast as we consume the old content so that the next guy can meet Harry's other brother Harry who has The Club of Horrible Maiming and this will be every bit as rewarding as what you saw...but in a way, that is just a small distinction from having the original Harry reset for the next player.
Same thing with the concept of building a kingdom and becoming the king. I think we all want avoid seeing the world "reset" for the next guy...it does ruin the credibility of the world. But I also think we all want to be the king who eats the main course and not the serf who gets the leftovers.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
They certainly have more of a chance, starting small and quiet, than major titles (from any publisher) are ever given.
Perhaps it's because the expectations aren't quite as massive..
On the other hand, I listen to sandbox players arguing over minutae and sometimes conclude there is no difference. Any new title, any pubisher, we'll rip them all apart just as a matter of course.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
If you can create, modify, interact and destroy persistent objects in a persistent world. And ideally every object would behave like that. But that is of course not possible, or at least rather hard to do. No only the amount of it.
I tend to agree that this is a core concept and it's what often divides the philosophical approach to MMO design: Do you want to give everyone an opportunity to experience all of your content in an egalitarian fashion or is it a first-come-first-served world?
If you can change the world, those coming after you will never see the world as you saw it, they'll see your leftovers. If you kill Harry the ultimate troll boss who wields The Club of Tremendous Smashing, he'll saty dead, you'll get the club and no one else will be able to meet Harry or take his club.
I sort of think I want to play in that world and take my chances but I'm in a minority I think. The more changeable a world is the more it tends to become an elite club for early adopters...noobs need not apply 3 months after the game is released...
Unless there is a comitment on the part of the devs to continue developing new content just as fast as we consume the old content so that the next guy can meet Harry's other brother Harry who has The Club of Horrible Maiming and this will be every bit as rewarding as what you saw...but in a way, that is just a small distinction from having the original Harry reset for the next player.
Same thing with the concept of building a kingdom and becoming the king. I think we all want avoid seeing the world "reset" for the next guy...it does ruin the credibility of the world. But I also think we all want to be the king who eats the main course and not the serf who gets the leftovers.
I don't think you have played sandboxes, the content is not quests to kill Harry, the content is interactions between the players, killing a troll is just a task to earn cash or gain resource to fund those interactions.
Kingdoms rise and fall, the newer players become part of keeping the kingdom intact or toppling it with their own.
Comments
I don't really agree with this because let's face it since the WoW boom there hasn't been any sandbox games with any of these features worth a damn so there are literally millions of new age gamers that have never experienced sandbox gameplay in any real form. All the above features can be great when done right but horrible when done wrong which they almost always are. So really the popular opinion is irrelevant here because its not based on ones own experience but rather hearsay and then most of that hearsay comes from tired old gamers who don't possess the skill needed to be successful in a more competitive environment. Mind you I'm 32 and starting to notice my reaction times slowing as I start the downward slope from my peak of prowess, but I strongly support these features implemented in the right fashion because there is nothing like the adrenaline rush you get from the situations these types of games give you. Both the highs of getting the kill and loot from someone reknowned or the lows of giving it all back with one bad decision. It's a lot like gambling.
I'm a unique and beautiful snowflake.
If you want to have a thousand quests, you have to do a bunch of things custom a thousand times.
But do you really do a bunch of things custom a thousand times for AI? If you do, then you're doing it wrong. Maybe you have several different AIs. Maybe each has a fair bit of variety from plugging in different parameters. It's intrinsically difficult to do that well, so it's the second type of hard. But doing something several times rather than a thousand times is not the time-consuming first type of hard--which is my point.
Sorry to say that this generation of gamers want everything to be perfect right out of the gate. I'm sorry but they are being greedy and childish. For example, TSW was released with them basically saying. Yes the game is not done yet however this game will continue to grow, new animations will be added, PVP will be redone, Missions will be added monthly, and the story will be on ongoing experiance.
What did the gamers complain about.
Lack of content
Bad PVP
Short story
Bad animations.
This just proves to me that the current generation wants games the size of WoW and Eve upon release. They want every little feature that has been invented, put in at the start of the game. IF you guys want a good Themepark OR Sandbox game you need to find a title and stick with it as they grow the game. I've seen games drop subs and go F2P just to survive. Now when a game is fighting to survive to you honestly think that Growing the game is first on their minds, No suddenly Making money to make sure the game stays playable is.
There is no such thing as perfection out of the gate. suck it up, Play the game in its infant stages so it has the oppotunity to become one of the "Adult" size games.
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
Eve works since it has the advantage of space making it vastly easier to really 'work' for players as it involves huge areas of black space to explore with customization being more so 'ship based' which in a way is just 'editing your avatar' of sorts. Yes, you can call it a sandbox but it really has very little sandbox elements around people actually would want. Even with its minimal sandbox elements in place, it still shows that issue with a sandbox mentality with the markets.
Don't get me wrong, not trying to bash eve, it works for what it is due to the setting it is in involving solely focused on the ships and space which really don't provide that level of 'creationism' that a fantasy world might provide. Taking eve and making it work in fantasy would involve adding a LOT more sandbox elements and content to the game. Making players stay (keeping the same world never reset) would require even more work.
But well thought-out complex mechanics and systems are hard. They're the second type of hard from my original post.
What actually got me thinking about this was not sandboxes but tessellation. Just over three years ago, DirectX 11 launched and brought hardware tessellation capabilities to games. At the time, I thought that tessellation was going to be a huge deal. Rather than having fixed models of characters, you can have low polygon base models that look fine from far away, and use tessellation to break them up into high polygon models up close that still look smooth. And you can have a huge number of interpolated models, without having an obvious jump when the game switches from one model to another, as games that try to have two or three models for something commonly do.
More than three years later, I'm not aware of a single commercial game that has done that. There are some games that use tessellation, of course. But they tend to start with fairly high polygon models, and then use tessellation to break it up even more. That's missing the point.
Fast forward to 2012. I decided to learn how to do computer graphics, to see if I could make a simple game myself. I still thought tessellation sounded cool in the abstract, and wanted to see if I could do it. I found a number of explanations online of how to do lighting, texturing, and so forth. But if tessellation was mentioned at all, it was mostly, "You don't want to do that, because it's really hard."
But I did want to do tessellation, so I pressed ahead. The first graphical feature I learned how to make was to draw a triangle. It was a single white triangle on a black background, and basically the OpenGL equivalent of a "Hello World" program. The second thing I learned how to do was tessellation.
And it wasn't that hard. Or at least, I thought it wasn't. Sometime later, in another thread on this forum, Castillle said something to the effect of, "We can't do tessellation because we don't have any good algorithms for it." I didn't say this at the time, but my reaction was basically, "Umm, duh. Isn't it obvious?" I was incredulous at his comment, even though it seemed common when tessellation is discussed online. It was as if, knowing how to add two numbers, someone can't figure out how to add three numbers.
It was only later that I realized, to most computer programmers, it most certainly isn't obvious. I've studied manifolds with boundary, simplicial homology, stellar subdivisions, diffeomorphisms, and a number of other relevant concepts. For someone with my background in mathematics, it's obvious how to do tessellation. But how many people will see any of those concepts before they finish an undergraduate degree? Maybe some relatively advanced math majors, but not many. Most game programmers haven't seen the concepts, don't even know what is out there, and wouldn't even know where they should look.
In one sense, games seem kind of magical. You press a key and things move on the screen. It's a lot of work to make that happen. Coming from a background of trying to program my calculator, which didn't have 3D graphics built in, it seems impossible to make that work.
But that got me thinking, if game programmers don't know the mathematics that they need to know in order to use tessellation--which they really should use, because it's awesome--then maybe there are other things that they should do but can't because they don't know how. As I got further into programming my game, I realized that I was using a ton of mathematics that most computer programmers have never seen. Some of it was graduate level stuff, and some merely upper level undergraduate stuff.
Is advanced mathematics really what's missing from sandboxes? Not necessarily. But some of the stuff I've tried to do and compared to commercial games on the market today led me to look at what other games did and think, they did it that way because it's all that they know or can figure out how to do.
How then do you explain A Tale in the Desert?
Sandbox is overrated in these forums.... but the truth is that not many people like them and/or play them.
Most players are not interested and would avoid any game with permadeath, full loot, forced open PvP and other characteristics that avid sandbox fanboys always demand on any MMO beeing released.
That is the main reason no big company makes a triple A one.
Not enough market,simple as that.
Yeap.. Thats true about the AI/Simulation Part. But not true for the world. Ok, you could do a lot with procedural world generation, on the other side, it is extremely difficult, and to write a good procedural 3D world generator is extremely time consuming. And you would need a lot of work(first type hard) to do to draw/design all assets like different types of trees(size and type), and all other parts the world generator would use. And that is really to do things custom a thousands and more times.
But because a good procedural world generation is a project on its own, a lot of sandboxes handcraft their world, and that is also a lot of first type hard work, and not just the world, the inhabitants, the cities, the landscape in general and almost everything, what is in your world, and with what you can toy around. With other words, all the animation, graphic, art, sound everything not programmed is the first type of work.. and there is a lot of it. Ok, if you cut a lot of it out, you get what i said before a empty world.
And dont underestimate the amount of work all those 2nd type hard things will cost. A good AI system(and you need a few AI layers working with and against each other for a good simulation) is a lot of work. To make all Items/Objects changeable, and fitting in the world requires a lot of work, too. (and even more in a 3D world) Sandbox Tools require a lot of thought and work to be done.
The point is i guess, that the initial costs(in other word work time) for a AAA sandbox is even higher than a AAA themepark, with the difference, that it is much easier to generate long term appeal, and to expand the world. At least if you asume of the same level of detail and polish of your product.(and without a single quest) Almost all indy projects were rather empty and barren worlds, which is one reason why the failed in the first place.
And EvE is somewhat a exception, and one reason is, because it is in Space.. a Galaxy full of stars and planets is rather easy to generate.. especially if those planets are either not visitable or empty and procedural generated. With other words CCP was cabable because to craft their world was rather easy in comparsion to create, and even more easier to expand.
or Free Realms, There, Muxlim, Red Light Center, Kaneva, Second Life, or Sociolotron
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
A sandbox isn't just a theme park without quests.
Than what is Darkfall?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
I'm not sure I agree with the conventional MMO fan site definitions of sandbox vs. themepark. In my mind those definitions are usually biased by our own experiences in MMOs of the past--what we enjoyed and what we didn't.
MMOs attempt to create an interesting virtual world where you can, more or less, behave in a fashion that is consistent with that world. A sandbox game would allow us more freedom to do things in unique ways that are not (it appears) predetermined by the developers--sort of like in real life-- and Themeparks limit those choices based on the developer's assumptions about what interesting things we want to do and we're 100% aware of those limits. Sandboxes are built to encompass the unexpected and the extremes, themeparks are not. But in reality, it's all an illusion: sandboxes only seem to not have predetermined things when in fact tthey have to predetermine the outcomes for many more possibilities.
According to my own definition, a true sandbox is just a theoretical goal--MMO utopia. The technology doesn't exist except in Scifi books or shows. The best an MMO can currently do is lean one way or the other.
I don't think complexity of mechanics nor quantity of content has anything to do with the distinction. Themeparks and Sandboxes can both be complex or simple and they can both have a lot of content or a small quantity.
"Openness" for lack of a better word is the real distinction. Another way of describing a sandbox game is "if I can think of it, I should be able to do it." In a real sandbox fantasy simulator, I should be able to "invent" my own unique spells that do something totally different than the one you may invent or create a sword that has a secondary effect like freezing you for 30 minutes. I should be able to figure out a way to befriend dragons and ride on their backs, build a castle, collect taxes from people I protect... or make horeshoes for the village and accept protection from the local lord.
Pie in the sky unbalancing crap? Yup, of course. So by necessity the developers of that world add limits to just how much damage a spell can do, how far you can teleport, limit freezing secondary effects of swords to 6 seconds or even remove dragons altogether. All of those choices create "rails" that limit us and contain the world. Do too much of that and you get the Themepark label even if you can do other things that we commonly associate with sandboxes.
PK with harsh consequences? Themeparks have had those (although it's rare now.) Build your own house? Check...see LOTRO and others. World boundaries and zoning? Check...sandboxes have those too. Quick travel? They both have those capabilities in some fashion. Trading mechanics including mail and AHs? Yup again...both. Quests? Yup...both, although mass-produced themeparks use this as their core mechanic and sandboxes tend not to.
Try as I might, I can't think of a single feature that is 100% unique to games labeled tehemepark or sandbox. All I see is a continuum from a lot of freedom to very little freedom with every MMO somewhere in the middle but leaning in one direction.
And I also see a significant difference in popularity that leans heavily toward the mass-produced MMO on rails with limited choices. The people with the $$ seem to think that's what sells and they haven't been proven wrong yet. This, mpre than anything else is what forces the more sandboxy games to be developed by indies: no one with the big bucks wants to fund their project. The decision about what type of game to make doesn't happen after the budget has been determined, it happens before that and then you try to get the funding. This is what has pushed the more sandboxy MMOs into niche spaces.
And sorry, I see no evidence anywhere that a sandbox design would benefit less from a cash infusion than a themepark. The ideal genre-changing sandboxy MMO that we're all waiting for would need to have all the polish and even more diversity than a 2012 themepark... that game needs actually more content than the themepark not less, since I'll be able to be a hybrid lion tamer accountant in it.
Anyway...those are my thoughts before my second cup of coffee. Cheers and good OP to get this discussion going.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
An incomplete attempt at creating a game.
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
god i hope not. Not a fan of this style of combat.
Persistant FPS with full loot and bad graphics.
I have some hope for Archage tho. Only promissing sandbox game other than Eve.
(Retired)- Anarchy Online/Ultima Online/DAoC/Horizonsz/EQ2/SWG/AC1&2/L2/SoR/WoW/TMO/Requiem/Atlantica Online/Manibogi/Rift+(SL)/Lol/Hon/SWTOR/Wakfu/Champions Online/GW/Lotr/CO/TcoS/Tabula Rasa/Meridian 59/Vanguard/Shadowbane/Fury/SotW/Dreamlords/HGL/RoM/DDO/FFXI/Aoc/Eve/Warhammer Online/Gw2/TSW/Tera/Defiance/STO/AoW/DE/Firefall/Darkfall/Neverwinter/PS2/ESO/FF14/Archeage/Gw2
I think for these games to make it, they are not going to work as a sanbox and i hate themeparks. Most of the sandparks just dont have enough content to keep you interested in it long enough to make the game company any real lasting money.
To me a themepark is a game where you are lead around by the nose from one area to the next and if you try not to follow it in that way your not going to be able to advance in the game.
A sandbox is like a freeroam. Go where you want and do what you want and is basicly skill driven.
My best examples of a Themepark is WOW or STO both popular games and both themeparks.
My best examples of sandbox is Wurm or Xyson. Both pretty good games but just not enought o hold you there for long.
Missing story line and quest.
Where as you have Ultima Online (yes its still going) and SWG that is now dead. I consider both of these games Sandparks.
They let you freeroam with lots of content that is made by the developers as in quest and story line.
What developers are missing in my book is more Sandparks not sandboxes or Themeparks.
What type of game we really need is like Wurm online (crafting animal training and breeding combat) but with decent cities and dev created quest.
I'm still in wonder over why SWG died by far the best AAA game ver made. yeah yeah i know they ruined it with a series of patches, but that game was bad ass until that point.
PVP should be optional and here is why. I have alot of friends that game, not all of them will even attempt to play a game with pvp, while i enjoy pvp i also dont want it full time, i enjoy going out and questing chopping trees or what ever else the game might offer without having to watch my back every second.
I think camelot had it right here with massize zones that full pvp was allowed and the rest of the game was themepark i would sub that themepark for sandpark and make the game great.
just my measily 2 cents on this age old debate.
We do have a game coming to America at some point that fits this bill. I will wait until then.
one of the important things people forget is the more money a company brings in the better they can make the game for all.
While you have the pvp junkies screaming only FFA you really need to cater to both types to get the full flow of money coming in that a game needs to become great.
played M59,UO,lineage,EQ,Daoc,Entropia,SWG,Horizons,Lineage2.EQ2,Vangaurd,Irth online, DarkFall,Star Trek
and many others that did not make the cut or i just plain forgetting about.
I'd go the other route. I don't think devs should stop doing those things, rather they should target their audiences better. For example, EVE Online has always been upfront about what it is to set the proper expectations. You can't get much more upfront than this: http://trial.eveonline.com/en/eveishard.aspx
What happens with a lot of these sandbox MMOs is they pitch to a much broader audience than their game is actually designed for. I can't begin to guess the thinking behind that because if you sell your game to five types of players but it is only designed to appeal to one type, then you end up with four times as many people talking about how your game sucks than there are that enjoy it. Had they targetted the one group specifically, they would ahve gotten one-fifth the initial people, but they also would have a stronger community, less negativity and no 'mass exodus' to deal with. At that point, as new content comes in, proper targeting is done, and the existing playerbase evangelises the game.. well, the game and its community both grow!
Those things are what need to be changed - the way in which the games are pitched (and that includes dev interviews and exec comments as well as marketing) needs to be dialed back to reality.
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
played M59,UO,lineage,EQ,Daoc,Entropia,SWG,Horizons,Lineage2.EQ2,Vangaurd,Irth online, DarkFall,Star Trek
and many others that did not make the cut or i just plain forgetting about.
No, Quiz, I think you make your point fit your analogy. It is not as simple as that. Why sandboxes are made by indie developers? -Because they are a significantly smaller market niche. And small niches are not attractive to the big developers and small developers can hardly ever compete with the big ones. Like Jeff Strain said in a speech few years back, "you can't out do WoW with less than half the budget" - you shouldn't even try. So you go and capture some other audience.
You can view it like an ecosystem. One herbivore eats all the plants effectively leaving little to nothing to the other species. These other herbivores need to find some other plant to eat, some other source of food, to survive. Its how nature works and its how market works too.
Also, if you can't outdo something, you compete with price. If you can't compete with price, you differentiate your product -> go for a different niche.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I dont know what those elements are, care to elaborate on what makes Eve so good?
Everything you need to know about Elder Scrolls Online
Playing: GW2
Waiting on: TESO
Next Flop: Planetside 2
Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
Atleast not combat depth, thats for sure.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Well.. that is true. But a mmorpg with quests is not a sandbox, just because it have quests. Quests could be in a sandbox, they could even made sandboxlike. The same is more or less true for anything else.
My point is, that you have to deliver a full fleshed out world for a AAA mmorpg. With nations, history and story, sandbox or themepark.. and it doesnt have to do with it.
See it as that. Think about a full world. Where everything would work and evolve even without player(simulation). Nations would wage war. Merchants would trade. Craftsmen would produce stuff and so on. Now make it sandbox. With other words that all elements, or almost all elements are creatable, modifyable, interactable and destroyable. And then let the players in. And the player can now change the world, take the position of any npc, can create a new nation, destroy the old one or what ever they want to do.
Is that a sandbox or not? Of course, it is.
But, for being a game, and not just a sandbox it is better to have a very detailed world. This will the sandbox not stop to be a sandbox, as long as you can change everything in it. But it will become a better game.
And after all, we are talking about sandbox mmorpgs.. with other words sandbox games, and not about Second Life.
The idea about features solely useable for themeparks and sandboxes is ridiculous. Because it is not so much the features which defines something, it is much more how you implement said feature in the world. If this feature can exist in a sandbox world(with other words with changable content) it will fit in very well.
As i said somewhere else, what for me defines a sandbox is
If you can create, modify, interact and destroy persistent objects in a persistent world. And ideally every object would behave like that. But that is of course not possible, or at least rather hard to do. No only the amount of it.
Back to Quests. As example. In some country/city a lot of trees got over the last weeks/month harvested and the landscape becomes to get barren. The npc major(could be a player too) then handles out the Quest, to plant trees and recultivate the landscape. If there are enough trees again around, the quest will disappear.
Or
A wandering ork tribe gets bigger and bigger and attacks different nearby towns. Would it not be rather logically that the lord of the land would hand out a Quest to hund down those orks and protect the nearby towns? After the ork tribe is vanished or banished the quest will disappear.
And so on... there is a lot of things possible in a sandbox mmorpg. And its not about a feature called Quest, it is about how you will implement it. At the same time could be those Quests be created by players for some requests they have to handle. The Quests in itself could be able to be created, modified, interacted and destroyed, to come back to my sandbox definition.
It is rather simple to deliver a empty world, deliver a few sandbox tools, and say the player.. come on, play with it. But that does not make necessarily a good game.
I tend to agree that this is a core concept and it's what often divides the philosophical approach to MMO design: Do you want to give everyone an opportunity to experience all of your content in an egalitarian fashion or is it a first-come-first-served world?
If you can change the world, those coming after you will never see the world as you saw it, they'll see your leftovers. If you kill Harry the ultimate troll boss who wields The Club of Tremendous Smashing, he'll saty dead, you'll get the club and no one else will be able to meet Harry or take his club.
I sort of think I want to play in that world and take my chances but I'm in a minority I think. The more changeable a world is the more it tends to become an elite club for early adopters...noobs need not apply 3 months after the game is released...
Unless there is a comitment on the part of the devs to continue developing new content just as fast as we consume the old content so that the next guy can meet Harry's other brother Harry who has The Club of Horrible Maiming and this will be every bit as rewarding as what you saw...but in a way, that is just a small distinction from having the original Harry reset for the next player.
Same thing with the concept of building a kingdom and becoming the king. I think we all want avoid seeing the world "reset" for the next guy...it does ruin the credibility of the world. But I also think we all want to be the king who eats the main course and not the serf who gets the leftovers.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
They certainly have more of a chance, starting small and quiet, than major titles (from any publisher) are ever given.
Perhaps it's because the expectations aren't quite as massive..
On the other hand, I listen to sandbox players arguing over minutae and sometimes conclude there is no difference. Any new title, any pubisher, we'll rip them all apart just as a matter of course.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I don't think you have played sandboxes, the content is not quests to kill Harry, the content is interactions between the players, killing a troll is just a task to earn cash or gain resource to fund those interactions.
Kingdoms rise and fall, the newer players become part of keeping the kingdom intact or toppling it with their own.