I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this threadnaught. As much as I have enjoyed FFA PvP games in the past, I just can't see SOE spending tens of millions of dollars for a FFA PvP game. The reality is people will not stick around to play FFA PvP games. It's like choosing to live in Somalia. Like Somalia, FFA PvP games have roving Death Squads whose sole purpose is to kill anything in their LoS. Like Somalia, FFA PvP games are a sparsely populated desert. Anarchy may sound cool but for those interested in building civilizations, it's the least desirable situation possible.
As for other comparisons, EvE is a wonderful game to talk about. I truly enjoy talking about my EvE experiences. With that said, I am currently not subbed. The game has the worst PvE of any MMO I know on the market by a country mile. The PvP is amazing...when you can find it. Also, for anyone who has ever participated in a gate camp, my hats off to you. I used to hate doing that though it was fun to laugh at any poor sap who happened to jump into ours. Boring as all hell. As far as subs go, I always hear the argument of EvE's sub numbers constantly going up but what most don't realize is well over 50% of the playerbase has at least 2 accounts. It's almost a necessity to get anywhere in the game readily if your in a smaller corp.
I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this threadnaught. As much as I have enjoyed FFA PvP games in the past, I just can't see SOE spending tens of millions of dollars for a FFA PvP game. The reality is people will not stick around to play FFA PvP games. It's like choosing to live in Somalia. Like Somalia, FFA PvP games have roving Death Squads whose sole purpose is to kill anything in their LoS. Like Somalia, FFA PvP games are a sparsely populated desert. Anarchy may sound cool but for those interested in building civilizations, it's the least desirable situation possible.
As for other comparisons, EvE is a wonderful game to talk about. I truly enjoy talking about my EvE experiences. With that said, I am currently not subbed. The game has the worst PvE of any MMO I know on the market by a country mile. The PvP is amazing...when you can find it. Also, for anyone who has ever participated in a gate camp, my hats off to you. I used to hate doing that though it was fun to laugh at any poor sap who happened to jump into ours. Boring as all hell. As far as subs go, I always hear the argument of EvE's sub numbers constantly going up but what most don't realize is well over 50% of the playerbase has at least 2 accounts. It's almost a necessity to get anywhere in the game readily if your in a smaller corp.
slightly off topic to a degree but the one thing that would make Eve explode would be to simply remove gates and make the transition area huge when you warp in - too large to lock down. People would flood zero and subs would skyrocket. Corps would actually have to "patrol" their holdings instead of afk picking their nose waiting on victims at a chokepoint.
Originally posted by JeremyBowyerThis is a good point and I agree 100% but I would also point out that the idea of a sandbox is that it in general removes restrictions. An invisible force field around your person which makes him invulnerable to other players' attacks is definitely an example of an artificial restriction.
There are a few problems here. One is that the "general idea" behind sandboxes isn't removing restrictions. It's a bit more complex than that. SWG had PvP restrictions and UO Trammel had PvP restrictions, yet they are both considered sandboxes. You've arbitrarily decided that the PvP player's "rights" are more important than the PvE player's "rights". The decision about whether players can flag or not is made by the developer, depending on the audience they want to attract to their game among other things. You're making it seem as if there is some sort of ideal that must be aspired to, and in order to get there all players must participate in PvP in a sandbox game. This isn't true. In talking about artificial restrictions, video games are just layers of artificial restrictions anyway. Restrictions and permissions are made to make game play. For instance, anyone hit by a two pound sledge hammer in the head is not going to stand back up. It certainly isn't going to require several hits to take them down. Yet most games allow this sort of thing for the sake of game play. The decisions made about PvP and PvE fall into the same category. Some things are allowed and some things aren't to make way for game play.
I know it's more complex than just removing restrictions, that's why I said the "general idea." And that's true. Sandbox elements are elements that tend to have less boundaries and invisible walls than other games.
As for your points about SWG and post-trammel UO, yes they are sandboxes compared to games that are less sandboxy. There are no true sandbox games, only a sliding scale from themepark to sandbox. UO was a sandbox, but the addition of Trammel made it LESS of a sandbox.
I'm not arbitrarily saying anything about what game developer's can or can't do. If game developers want to make a game that is less sandboxy, they can do that. I'm not sure why you think otherwise. But when it comes to what features are more sandbox than others, that's not arbitrary. If the goal is to make a sandbox, as a general rule you want to be eliminating invisible walls, not putting them up. That doesn't mean it's impossible to have a game that has sandbox elements without pvp, but it does mean that ffa pvp is a sandbox element.
And please, you can spare me the "games all have artificial restrictions" speech. I know this. That doesn't change any of my points.
How did the addition of Trammel make UO less of a sandbox, since the first FFA PvP world still existed? The PvP rules weren't thrown out, a new world was added with a different set of rules.
Having pvp "zones" is less of a sandbox feature than having ffa pvp. Sandbox is about people making decisions, rather than the developer making the decisions. The developer saying "you cannot do this" is precisely the anti-sandbox ideal. Arbitrary restrictions to GUIDE the playerbase down a certain path. Do you agree that this is what sandbox means? Because if you don't, it's kind of pointless to even discuss it further.
When a person brings forward a feature, saying it's a defining feature of something, with nothing to support it other than their point of view, it's arbitrary. If PvP were a defining feature of sandboxes, then WoW's, Rift's or SWToR's PvP servers would have some noticeable sandbox nature to them. They do not. I will award you a cookie if you say they do though, in order to support your point of view. If the PvP was removed from Eve, the game would not become more theme park. It would certainly become more boring, but it wouldn't become more of a theme park game.
I honestly don't even know what you're trying to say in the first half of this paragraph. You're saying since PvP is a sandbox feature, that would mean that the PvP servers of WoW et al would be more sandboxy? They are. They're THAT much more sandboxy. However many sandbox units non-loot horde vs. alliance pvp awards you. Overall even the pvp servers of WoW are not particularly sandboxy compared to most games, but that one feature is more sandboxy than NOT having it. Is this what you mean?
As for the eve part, taking out the pvp wouldn't make it more themepark except you'd have to fill in the gap with something else. If you just took out a part of a sandbox it doesn't make it more of a themepark but it DOES make it less sandbox. Indeed.
If PvP were a defining feature of sandboxes, removing the PvP from Minecraft or not allowing combat and PvP mods in Garry's Mod would remove a significant sandbox element from Minecraft and Garry's Mod. Yet this doesn't happen. Minecraft's creative servers are sandbox experiences, one and all.
Yes but they're not perfect sandbox games because perfect sandbox games don't exist, until we have a perfect virtual reality game of real life. But adding pvp elements to minecraft creative would make it that much MORE of a sandbox. By the way, minecraft creative really isn't much of a sandbox game. It's minecraft (which is a pretty good sandbox) with most of the sandbox stuff taken out.
Single player sandbox games could not exist if PvP were a defining sandbox feature. Single player sandbox games exist.
Well now you're just putting words in my mouth. I never said pvp is a defining sandbox feature. But it IS 1 sandbox feature of many. Specifically pvp with consequences. PvP without consequences isn't as sandboxy.
A Tale In The Desert is a sandbox game. A small sandbox game, but a sandbox game none the less. It doesn't even have combat. Adding PvP would not increase the sandbox nature of ATitD because the overall goals of the game would not change.
Well ok, I don't know anything about that game so who knows? I wouldn't be surprised if you were wrong about this though, considering how wrong you've been throughout this post.
Combat and PvP are features, but they are not sandbox or theme park features. They are game features. Combat and PvP can be added and removed from games without changing the sandbox or theme park nature of the games. Combat and PvP aren't even part of the spectrum between sandbox and theme park games. If that were true, then removing PvP from Eve would make it more of a theme park game, and that's not the case.
Like I said above, removing pvp from eve wouldn't necessarily make it more of a themepark but it ABSOLUTELY makes it less of a sandbox. You're kind of nuts if you don't agree with that much.
I'm not trying to change your points, I'm just highlighting the flaws in your reasoning.
The fact is you have no idea how much anything costs when developing a game. It's also the upkeep of the game. What are they going to put effort into? All I'm claiming is that if you spend money on one thing, you're not spending it on another. So a game that has to develop parallel systems has more work to do than just developing one.
What you are, well I can't even call it debating because you aren't debating anything you're randomly saying things, talking about has nothing at all to do with money.
What? You know you pay people to come up with ideas and you pay people to program those ides into your game? And you pay people to fix things as needed?
The fact remains, and it is a fact you haven't come even the tiniest bit close to disproving as you can't come up with a single example, is that any rule that doesn't involve harm to other players can be developed equally in either a PvP or PvE setting. This means the exact same game that could be developed a stand alone PvP game could instead be developed as a PvE game with open world FFA PvP servers at little additional cost and resources. The game would be identical yet would reach an audience of likely 10000x or more of the size it would reach if it had launched as only an open world FFA PvP game.
Whoa whoa whoa. First of all, why does it have to be a rule that doesn't involve harming another player? We're talking about pvp games here. Why would you be asking about rulesets that don't involve harming people?
Also, what about the examples we've given you? In Darkfall Unholy Wars the vast majority of the "content" is city building, raiding and sieging. Literally none of those things can be done without pvp. You mention some vague crap about using a quest system to exchange cities or whatever? There are no quests in the game! They'd have to develop quests, and develop a coherent system that would tie into how city sieging and raiding currently works. Also, city raiding just straight up NOT EXIST AT ALL because it's literally just going into somebody's city and KILLING THEM. That's a mechanic that cannot exist without pvp. So please tell me how DFUW is supposed to work if you turn off pvp?
Because of that fact, that fact that all major companies know, you will NOT see a major company release a FFA MMORPG because they'd be putting in all the same work as if they were to release a PvE with a PvP server and bringing in 1% of the revenue.
No, they won't do it not because it's a bad idea, but because themepark cash cows are a BETTER and SAFER idea. That's how large game developers currently work. They see the success of WoW and know that they will be able to make a knock off with a couple special additions and make a quick buck. Sandbox games are much trickier because the games are more complex and it's a lot hard to create a world where people create the content than it is to just pay some people to write quests for you.
So if you want to focus on money, since you keep shouting it out with no correlation to anything in the actual discussion, it is because of money that major companies WILL NEVER DO what you want them to do. Because the cost of development is the same, yet the revenue is a tiny fraction of what it could be.
How exactly are you claiming such a stupid thing? Please tell me how you get employees to do things for you for free? Obviously it's not economically viable otherwise people would be doing it. Right? Seriously, if you think it doesn't cost extra money, why don't they do it?
Well now I know you have a reading problem. Give me an example of a system that doesn't involve harming another player THAT CAN'T BE INTRODUCED INTO A PvE AND PvP GAME. One of your only points have been that PvP and PvE needs fully different rulesets. That is false. Outside of the rules which allow player harm to another player PvE and PvP can have identical rulesets because all other rules work in both systems equally well. You're only example is land control which I've mentioned how easy it is to factor into a PvE system and your only response to that is DF doesn't have quests. Yeah DF is a terrible game which is why almost no one on Earth plays it. Most games, even ones with a lot of focus on PvP, will have quests. If the game is determined to not have any quests (and lose a massive amount of players by doing so) PvE based collection/resource turn-ins would work just as easily (and I've already mentioned those as options but naturally you ignored it as it refuted your only argument back) as quests.
Another thing that you 100% misread, which is impressive btw, is that TO MAKE A FFA PvP GAME OR TO MAKE A PvE GAME WITH PvP SERVERS COSTS THE SAME. However, 99% of the MMORPG playerbase will NEVER play a game that has only FFA PvP servers. So since the cost to create is the same, no major company will make an open world FFA PvP only game because they can create a PvE game with servers for open world FFA PvP and attract the other 99% of the market. It is a terrible business decision at this point to create an open world FFA PvP only game, the returns don't exist to justify that crazy of a decision of blocking out the massive audience who dislikes that play style.
Another point is that sandbox in no way = PvP and open world FFA PvP in no way = sandbox. They are completely independant features that can exist with or without each other. So don't interchange them. You began saying why companies don't want to create sandbox games and that is not at all what we're talking about.
Since you don't have an understanding of how the MMO creation process works I'll also let you in on a little tip. One of the lengthiest and most expensive ongoing aspect of MMORPGs is content creation. You try to say how cheap and easy it is to have "just have people write quests for you" (that statement alone has a big misunderstanding of how it works to make something in a game). Unless you're talking of kill tasks, content takes a long time and a lot of manpower to create which is a big reason expasions packs take so long to be put together. It involves dungeon designers, artists, statters, testing, regression, testing, polish. It is actually far cheaper in the long run to have players implement content for free. The problem is finding a good system that allows for players to make quality content that can't be exploited (making a hit a button get a level type of quest) but has enough freedom to be interesting. But I digress because none of this is about sandbox, it is about PvP which literally has no direct relation to sandbox design, it is simply an option for any game design.
There are so many posts in this thread I could respond to, but I decided to just make my own comment on another PvP sandbox game. Just because a lot of games coming out are marketed as falling into to this category, the question is will they be any good.
I am a true believer in the sandbox concept because of all the games I have played my experience in UO was by far the best. There were actually communities and we knew people by reputation. This included crafters and player killers. Belonging to a Guild was very important to a players ability to get the most out of a game and provided hours of fun times communicating in RogerWIlco or Ventrilo. Players continued to comeback to different towns and settings over and over again because there was no such thing as a leveled zone. I was in UO from 1998 until 2008, but I beta tested and tried just about every MMORPG out there, other then better graphics nothing held me quite like UO.
My first day in UO, I was killed well over 100 times in the first few hours. In stead of rage quitng, I became more determined then ever to notbe defeated by the game or some of the players in it. In that short period of time I knew I needed to make friends quickly, so I met two other new people at the healers and we decided to venture out together to chop wood. Being new we discovered that by staying close enough to the town limits we stood a better chance of living as we could summon guards. As a small group we logged on at the same time to train our skills together. The stronger we got the further we ventured out and the safer we felt.
The biggest thing with working up skills and spending so much time together is we developed the ability to work as a team. So we became effective cross healers and did a good job of keeping each other alive and even killing the person who attacked us. The ability for people to work together is lost in most games now,except for raiding. But the problem with Raiding is this becomes predictable. Once you know how to form a team for a Raid and you know how the Boss will respond that encounter gets old. To me the fun teamwork is knowing that my team and I can handle anything thrown at you. That is what I love about open world sandbox PvP. You need to make very quick decisions to live or you will die.
Another experience that I remember back in the day was exploring a dungeon with my two friends farming gold and getting rolled by a group of ten PKers. A min later a group of players all in the same guild came through and destroyed the PKers. They rezzed my friends and me. They also gave us back all of our stuff and said we can take whatever we wanted off the guys that killed us. That showed me the power of a guild. That night we joined that guild and had the best 8 years of gaming ever. If someone was being griefed anall call would go out and we would arrive in numbers. Tons of fun.
One of the biggest concerns I have read is people do not want to be killed at will when they are out adventuring, farming resources, or crafting. My worse experiences with griefers was actually in PVE centered games. No one here has ever experience people ninja killing things in PvE or been trained ( have someone with 100 mobs on them run at you so when they run out of range the mobs go onto you).Have that happen repeatedly so that you rage quit and they can farm the area. See for me in PvE centered games these people can go it with little to no consequences. In a PvP sandbox game, I would either attack them myself or have guildmates come help run them off.
Originally posted by JeremyBowyerThis is a good point and I agree 100% but I would also point out that the idea of a sandbox is that it in general removes restrictions. An invisible force field around your person which makes him invulnerable to other players' attacks is definitely an example of an artificial restriction.There are a few problems here. One is that the "general idea" behind sandboxes isn't removing restrictions. It's a bit more complex than that. SWG had PvP restrictions and UO Trammel had PvP restrictions, yet they are both considered sandboxes. You've arbitrarily decided that the PvP player's "rights" are more important than the PvE player's "rights". The decision about whether players can flag or not is made by the developer, depending on the audience they want to attract to their game among other things. You're making it seem as if there is some sort of ideal that must be aspired to, and in order to get there all players must participate in PvP in a sandbox game. This isn't true. In talking about artificial restrictions, video games are just layers of artificial restrictions anyway. Restrictions and permissions are made to make game play. For instance, anyone hit by a two pound sledge hammer in the head is not going to stand back up. It certainly isn't going to require several hits to take them down. Yet most games allow this sort of thing for the sake of game play. The decisions made about PvP and PvE fall into the same category. Some things are allowed and some things aren't to make way for game play. I know it's more complex than just removing restrictions, that's why I said the "general idea." And that's true. Sandbox elements are elements that tend to have less boundaries and invisible walls than other games.As for your points about SWG and post-trammel UO, yes they are sandboxes compared to games that are less sandboxy. There are no true sandbox games, only a sliding scale from themepark to sandbox. UO was a sandbox, but the addition of Trammel made it LESS of a sandbox.I'm not arbitrarily saying anything about what game developer's can or can't do. If game developers want to make a game that is less sandboxy, they can do that. I'm not sure why you think otherwise. But when it comes to what features are more sandbox than others, that's not arbitrary. If the goal is to make a sandbox, as a general rule you want to be eliminating invisible walls, not putting them up. That doesn't mean it's impossible to have a game that has sandbox elements without pvp, but it does mean that ffa pvp is a sandbox element.And please, you can spare me the "games all have artificial restrictions" speech. I know this. That doesn't change any of my points.How did the addition of Trammel make UO less of a sandbox, since the first FFA PvP world still existed? The PvP rules weren't thrown out, a new world was added with a different set of rules.
Having pvp "zones" is less of a sandbox feature than having ffa pvp. Sandbox is about people making decisions, rather than the developer making the decisions. The developer saying "you cannot do this" is precisely the anti-sandbox ideal. Arbitrary restrictions to GUIDE the playerbase down a certain path. Do you agree that this is what sandbox means? Because if you don't, it's kind of pointless to even discuss it further.
When a person brings forward a feature, saying it's a defining feature of something, with nothing to support it other than their point of view, it's arbitrary. If PvP were a defining feature of sandboxes, then WoW's, Rift's or SWToR's PvP servers would have some noticeable sandbox nature to them. They do not. I will award you a cookie if you say they do though, in order to support your point of view. If the PvP was removed from Eve, the game would not become more theme park. It would certainly become more boring, but it wouldn't become more of a theme park game.
I honestly don't even know what you're trying to say in the first half of this paragraph. You're saying since PvP is a sandbox feature, that would mean that the PvP servers of WoW et al would be more sandboxy? They are. They're THAT much more sandboxy. However many sandbox units non-loot horde vs. alliance pvp awards you. Overall even the pvp servers of WoW are not particularly sandboxy compared to most games, but that one feature is more sandboxy than NOT having it. Is this what you mean?
As for the eve part, taking out the pvp wouldn't make it more themepark except you'd have to fill in the gap with something else. If you just took out a part of a sandbox it doesn't make it more of a themepark but it DOES make it less sandbox. Indeed.
If PvP were a defining feature of sandboxes, removing the PvP from Minecraft or not allowing combat and PvP mods in Garry's Mod would remove a significant sandbox element from Minecraft and Garry's Mod. Yet this doesn't happen. Minecraft's creative servers are sandbox experiences, one and all.
Yes but they're not perfect sandbox games because perfect sandbox games don't exist, until we have a perfect virtual reality game of real life. But adding pvp elements to minecraft creative would make it that much MORE of a sandbox. By the way, minecraft creative really isn't much of a sandbox game. It's minecraft (which is a pretty good sandbox) with most of the sandbox stuff taken out.
Single player sandbox games could not exist if PvP were a defining sandbox feature. Single player sandbox games exist.
Well now you're just putting words in my mouth. I never said pvp is a defining sandbox feature. But it IS 1 sandbox feature of many. Specifically pvp with consequences. PvP without consequences isn't as sandboxy.
A Tale In The Desert is a sandbox game. A small sandbox game, but a sandbox game none the less. It doesn't even have combat. Adding PvP would not increase the sandbox nature of ATitD because the overall goals of the game would not change.
Well ok, I don't know anything about that game so who knows? I wouldn't be surprised if you were wrong about this though, considering how wrong you've been throughout this post.
Combat and PvP are features, but they are not sandbox or theme park features. They are game features. Combat and PvP can be added and removed from games without changing the sandbox or theme park nature of the games. Combat and PvP aren't even part of the spectrum between sandbox and theme park games. If that were true, then removing PvP from Eve would make it more of a theme park game, and that's not the case.
Like I said above, removing pvp from eve wouldn't necessarily make it more of a themepark but it ABSOLUTELY makes it less of a sandbox. You're kind of nuts if you don't agree with that much.
I'm not trying to change your points, I'm just highlighting the flaws in your reasoning.
Thanks for the help.
Bone up on your MMORPG history. Trammel wasn't a PvE zone, it was a PvE server. It was added in May of 2000. Players could either play on the original server, Trammel, or I assume they could start characters on both servers if they wanted.
If features of a game move it along the spectrum between sandbox and theme park, and PvP is a sandbox feature, then adding or removing PvP should move a game closer to or further away from the sandbox side of things. If this is true, then removing PvP from Eve must make it more of a theme park game. Eve can't just be less of a sandbox. If it's less of a sandbox, it has to be more of something else. At least follow your own reasoning consistently.
You'll have to lookup ATitD yourself. It's a sandbox game with no combat. It is fully a sandbox game with no combat, though it could be argued that it has economic PvP, but non-combat PvP isn't what we're discussing here, is it?
You are not defining what you are talking about very well. You just keep saying that things are the way you say they are, but you're not supporting your points.
PvP is not a sandbox feature. Why? If it were a sandbox feature, then adding or removing PvP would make any game it was added or removed from more or less of a sandox. WoW's PvP servers do not appear to be any more of a sandbox experience than WoW's PvE servers. Adding PvP didn't make the game more sandbox, so what's missing? It's that the players' choice to engage in PvP doesn't have any impact on the world. Nothing is gained or lost when the players engage in PvP, even when the PvP is on a large scale. If we add in Territory control, then WoW's servers would be more of a sandbox experience, because then the players' choices have meaning. It doesn't matter if the territory changes hands via PvP, or through PvE raids. The addition of PvP at this point is simply a preference, not a requirement while adding some risk and reward through territory control has added a noticeable shift on the spectrum towards the sandbox side of things.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Griefing to me is anything another player does to ruin the gaming experience of another player. The only way you can eliminate that truely is to have instances. In any sandbox or openworld area of any game some form of griefing is going on. I was just playing RIFT and as I was going a quest to pick up items as I was killing stuff a dude was running around collecting the items and I needed to wait for them to respond. That is a ninja tactic and it affected my gameplay by having me take longer to complete my quest. If I could of killed him, he might of stopped doing it or at the least I would of been able to get my stuff done.
Griefing even happens on message boards when people purposefully post to annoy or disrupt a good constructive conversation. I prefer to have the option to defend myself.
I probably did not win the majority of fights I had with griefs but I had the option to do something instead of rage quiting or going to another area.
The fact is you have no idea how much anything costs when developing a game. It's also the upkeep of the game. What are they going to put effort into? All I'm claiming is that if you spend money on one thing, you're not spending it on another. So a game that has to develop parallel systems has more work to do than just developing one.
What you are, well I can't even call it debating because you aren't debating anything you're randomly saying things, talking about has nothing at all to do with money.
What? You know you pay people to come up with ideas and you pay people to program those ides into your game? And you pay people to fix things as needed?
The fact remains, and it is a fact you haven't come even the tiniest bit close to disproving as you can't come up with a single example, is that any rule that doesn't involve harm to other players can be developed equally in either a PvP or PvE setting. This means the exact same game that could be developed a stand alone PvP game could instead be developed as a PvE game with open world FFA PvP servers at little additional cost and resources. The game would be identical yet would reach an audience of likely 10000x or more of the size it would reach if it had launched as only an open world FFA PvP game.
Whoa whoa whoa. First of all, why does it have to be a rule that doesn't involve harming another player? We're talking about pvp games here. Why would you be asking about rulesets that don't involve harming people?
Also, what about the examples we've given you? In Darkfall Unholy Wars the vast majority of the "content" is city building, raiding and sieging. Literally none of those things can be done without pvp. You mention some vague crap about using a quest system to exchange cities or whatever? There are no quests in the game! They'd have to develop quests, and develop a coherent system that would tie into how city sieging and raiding currently works. Also, city raiding just straight up NOT EXIST AT ALL because it's literally just going into somebody's city and KILLING THEM. That's a mechanic that cannot exist without pvp. So please tell me how DFUW is supposed to work if you turn off pvp?
Because of that fact, that fact that all major companies know, you will NOT see a major company release a FFA MMORPG because they'd be putting in all the same work as if they were to release a PvE with a PvP server and bringing in 1% of the revenue.
No, they won't do it not because it's a bad idea, but because themepark cash cows are a BETTER and SAFER idea. That's how large game developers currently work. They see the success of WoW and know that they will be able to make a knock off with a couple special additions and make a quick buck. Sandbox games are much trickier because the games are more complex and it's a lot hard to create a world where people create the content than it is to just pay some people to write quests for you.
So if you want to focus on money, since you keep shouting it out with no correlation to anything in the actual discussion, it is because of money that major companies WILL NEVER DO what you want them to do. Because the cost of development is the same, yet the revenue is a tiny fraction of what it could be.
How exactly are you claiming such a stupid thing? Please tell me how you get employees to do things for you for free? Obviously it's not economically viable otherwise people would be doing it. Right? Seriously, if you think it doesn't cost extra money, why don't they do it?
Well now I know you have a reading problem. Give me an example of a system that doesn't involve harming another player THAT CAN'T BE INTRODUCED INTO A PvE AND PvP GAME. One of your only points have been that PvP and PvE needs fully different rulesets. That is false. Outside of the rules which allow player harm to another player PvE and PvP can have identical rulesets because all other rules work in both systems equally well. You're only example is land control which I've mentioned how easy it is to factor into a PvE system and your only response to that is DF doesn't have quests. Yeah DF is a terrible game which is why almost no one on Earth plays it. Most games, even ones with a lot of focus on PvP, will have quests. If the game is determined to not have any quests (and lose a massive amount of players by doing so) PvE based collection/resource turn-ins would work just as easily (and I've already mentioned those as options but naturally you ignored it as it refuted your only argument back) as quests.
So your response to me giving you an example of a game that couldn't exist without pvp is that the game is bad? I happen to like the game. But in your world, that game wouldn't exist. Right? Please tell me how "collection/resource turn-ins" would be a suitable replacement for raiding a city and destroying walls/buildings.
LOL at you for insinuating that the only games worth a damn have quests. You're the worst kind of carebear.
Another thing that you 100% misread, which is impressive btw, is that TO MAKE A FFA PvP GAME OR TO MAKE A PvE GAME WITH PvP SERVERS COSTS THE SAME. However, 99% of the MMORPG playerbase will NEVER play a game that has only FFA PvP servers. So since the cost to create is the same, no major company will make an open world FFA PvP only game because they can create a PvE game with servers for open world FFA PvP and attract the other 99% of the market. It is a terrible business decision at this point to create an open world FFA PvP only game, the returns don't exist to justify that crazy of a decision of blocking out the massive audience who dislikes that play style.
I totally agree that people, in general, choose non-sandbox games and games without ffa pvp in the short term. That's why there are so many that rise and fall. But considering EvE's success, you're wrong in assuming that no ffa pvp game can be successful. However, this terrible age of boring themepark games is quickly coming to a close.... thank goodness.
Another point is that sandbox in no way = PvP and open world FFA PvP in no way = sandbox. They are completely independant features that can exist with or without each other. So don't interchange them. You began saying why companies don't want to create sandbox games and that is not at all what we're talking about.
No, they're not unrelated. PvP is a sandbox feature, ffa pvp is even more of a sandbox feature. It doesn't mean that all sandbox games have to have pvp, but it is in general a sandbox feature. Sandbox means less restrictions set by the developers. Restricting people from killing other people is anti-sandbox. You quite plainly just do not understand the term.
Since you don't have an understanding of how the MMO creation process works I'll also let you in on a little tip. One of the lengthiest and most expensive ongoing aspect of MMORPGs is content creation. You try to say how cheap and easy it is to have "just have people write quests for you" (that statement alone has a big misunderstanding of how it works to make something in a game). Unless you're talking of kill tasks, content takes a long time and a lot of manpower to create which is a big reason expasions packs take so long to be put together. It involves dungeon designers, artists, statters, testing, regression, testing, polish. It is actually far cheaper in the long run to have players implement content for free. The problem is finding a good system that allows for players to make quality content that can't be exploited (making a hit a button get a level type of quest) but has enough freedom to be interesting. But I digress because none of this is about sandbox, it is about PvP which literally has no direct relation to sandbox design, it is simply an option for any game design.
Oh my good sweet lord the irony in this paragraph is absolutely priceless. First of all, that's not what I meant when I said "just have people write quests for you." What I mean is it's not a risky thing to do. It's been done before and doesn't take any creative courage.
But I'm seriously laughing my ass off over here at the fact that you're trying to convince me how much it costs to create content in the game when just a short while ago you're telling me about how cheap it would be to convert a city building/sieging/raiding system like DF's into one that's based off of quests. Seriously classic.
Seriously dude.... just quit it. You have shown yourself to be an UTTER FOOL and you're continued flailing in this discussion is really quite pathetic. You accuse me of ignoring stuff you say, while you ignore damning points of mine. It's ad.
Originally posted by Jschoice Griefing to me is anything another player does to ruin the gaming experience of another player. The only way you can eliminate that truely is to have instances. In any sandbox or openworld area of any game some form of griefing is going on. I was just playing RIFT and as I was going a quest to pick up items as I was killing stuff a dude was running around collecting the items and I needed to wait for them to respond. That is a ninja tactic and it affected my gameplay by having me take longer to complete my quest. If I could of killed him, he might of stopped doing it or at the least I would of been able to get my stuff done.
I agree that if your ultimate goal is solely to reduce griefing, the best way to do that is to have instances. But in that case, why not just play an offline game or a coop game? Why not just stop playing games altogether? Obviously there are tradeoffs for everything and griefing is going to be present anytime it's even close to possible.
The funny thing is in a sandbox game with pvp you can kill griefers instead of the situation you outlined where you have to just sit there and take it, as you pointed out. So I think it's interesting that sometimes the system that allegedly produces griefers, actually deals with them quite well.
Originally posted by Jschoice Griefing to me is anything another player does to ruin the gaming experience of another player. The only way you can eliminate that truely is to have instances. In any sandbox or openworld area of any game some form of griefing is going on. I was just playing RIFT and as I was going a quest to pick up items as I was killing stuff a dude was running around collecting the items and I needed to wait for them to respond. That is a ninja tactic and it affected my gameplay by having me take longer to complete my quest. If I could of killed him, he might of stopped doing it or at the least I would of been able to get my stuff done.
I agree that if your ultimate goal is solely to reduce griefing, the best way to do that is to have instances. But in that case, why not just play an offline game or a coop game? Why not just stop playing games altogether? Obviously there are tradeoffs for everything and griefing is going to be present anytime it's even close to possible.
The funny thing is in a sandbox game with pvp you can kill griefers instead of the situation you outlined where you have to just sit there and take it, as you pointed out. So I think it's interesting that sometimes the system that allegedly produces griefers, actually deals with them quite well.
I might not of stated my point, clearly in that reply,but my point is exactly in line with yours. I would take the ability for me to deal with a griefer myself then live in a world that my only hope is to contact a GM who may or may not do anything 24/48 hours after the event.
In PvE the griefing in various forms can be dealt with to reasonable levels by changes to the game. In the PvP that many people seem to want it can not be dealt with so easily.
@sketocafe lol the "memo market"? If they build an MMO with open-world PVP as a pillar of the game, everyone will know about it and players will come in droves.
Originally posted by JeremyBowyer Do you guys even play any "pvp" games? Threes a lot of pve and harvesting/crafting.Even in darkfall there are people in my clan who have maxed out characters solely from fishing and crafting.
I don't, unless the PvP is separated from the PvE. I really like the look of Arch Age. Not gong to touch it because of its PvP. I played EverQuest for a few years, City of Heroes for a few years, World of Warcraft for a few years. All of them had PvP. All of them had it separated from PvE.
What does it matter if there is great crafting and what have you in an MMO if *my* hard work is stolen from me or made more difficult? Why build a house that any bored idiot can demolish at their whim? Why even try? I'll play an MMO much better suited to my preferences, thank you.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
I agree that if your ultimate goal is solely to reduce griefing, the best way to do that is to have instances. But in that case, why not just play an offline game or a coop game? Why not just stop playing games altogether? Obviously there are tradeoffs for everything and griefing is going to be present anytime it's even close to possible.
Isn't that the solution many MMO is using? LFD co-op dungeon instances. That seems like a "trade-off" many likes. Obviously stop playing games is going too far.
I think new mmos need both a PvE system and PvP system.
What developers needs to do, is beeing able to seperate PvP and PvE both gear and skillwise.
In to many mmos, one or the other gets affected to much. For example one skill beeing imbalanced in raiding which leads to a nerf of that skill, or some class beeing to powerful in PvP, which leads to a nerf of that class.
Im a PvPers myself since DaoC days and cant really see myself play a game without any PvP system.
I don't think new MMO needs anything. The market decides.
If you don't see yourself play a game without pvp .. well .. there are tons of pvp only games like WoT, or PS2.
We don't need any more pvp mmo's cause there's only a few pve mmo's... my butthole; there's not ENOUGH good pvp games. If I want pvp, sadly, I have to fking play league of legends, with no open world experience to go along with it. Tired of shit like WoW, tired of clunky crap like darkfall etc.
I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this threadnaught. As much as I have enjoyed FFA PvP games in the past, I just can't see SOE spending tens of millions of dollars for a FFA PvP game. The reality is people will not stick around to play FFA PvP games. It's like choosing to live in Somalia. Like Somalia, FFA PvP games have roving Death Squads whose sole purpose is to kill anything in their LoS. Like Somalia, FFA PvP games are a sparsely populated desert. Anarchy may sound cool but for those interested in building civilizations, it's the least desirable situation possible.
As for other comparisons, EvE is a wonderful game to talk about. I truly enjoy talking about my EvE experiences. With that said, I am currently not subbed. The game has the worst PvE of any MMO I know on the market by a country mile. The PvP is amazing...when you can find it. Also, for anyone who has ever participated in a gate camp, my hats off to you. I used to hate doing that though it was fun to laugh at any poor sap who happened to jump into ours. Boring as all hell. As far as subs go, I always hear the argument of EvE's sub numbers constantly going up but what most don't realize is well over 50% of the playerbase has at least 2 accounts. It's almost a necessity to get anywhere in the game readily if your in a smaller corp.
slightly off topic to a degree but the one thing that would make Eve explode would be to simply remove gates and make the transition area huge when you warp in - too large to lock down. People would flood zero and subs would skyrocket. Corps would actually have to "patrol" their holdings instead of afk picking their nose waiting on victims at a chokepoint.
This would be awesome but it would also kill the game outright XD not sub wise but tech wise... how the seven hells do you have seamless transition between thousands of solar systems within a single galaxy? I mean EVE's galaxy is small but to have seamless transitions you'd need to render allot of space...allot... last I checked the galaxy itself was irregular as well so it wouldn't be a flat disk to render either, more akin to a rather flat cone stump but... to put this in perspective: you'd need to render every bit of the volume of that cone stump to have seamless transitions which is pretty much impossible for an MMO.
Anarchy Online has land control for resources in the open world via PvP, yet doesn't have FFA PvP but a flagging system.
Some people need to stop limiting what's possible to the limits of their own imagination and/or knowledge.
True and most PVEers would rage at that model as well because they "deserve" to see everything in safety ( that would include pvp zones with autoflagging).
Originally posted by Adalwulff Funny, I was just reading that thread.
We desperately need more PvP games, but they need to be more like DF:UW or EVE.
Doesn't mean we cant have good PvE, but there is no substitute for playing against another person. Playing against the computer in Raids or other grind fests, gets old real fast.
You need more PvP games like EVE or DF?
Wait why aren't you playing DF or EVE then? Why do you need a third one?
Lets see, you recently got TERA, SWTOR, GW2, TSW and probably more.
And what did we get?? What PvP game did we get, that is like EVE or DF:UW????
First, none of the 4 games you mentioned are "sandbox" MMOs. Please do not mix MMO types to suit your needs.
Second, why do you not play, or are not happy with EVE or DF:UO, *your* 2 MMOs held up as standards. ("they need to be more like DF:UW or EVE.")
Comments
I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this threadnaught. As much as I have enjoyed FFA PvP games in the past, I just can't see SOE spending tens of millions of dollars for a FFA PvP game. The reality is people will not stick around to play FFA PvP games. It's like choosing to live in Somalia. Like Somalia, FFA PvP games have roving Death Squads whose sole purpose is to kill anything in their LoS. Like Somalia, FFA PvP games are a sparsely populated desert. Anarchy may sound cool but for those interested in building civilizations, it's the least desirable situation possible.
As for other comparisons, EvE is a wonderful game to talk about. I truly enjoy talking about my EvE experiences. With that said, I am currently not subbed. The game has the worst PvE of any MMO I know on the market by a country mile. The PvP is amazing...when you can find it. Also, for anyone who has ever participated in a gate camp, my hats off to you. I used to hate doing that though it was fun to laugh at any poor sap who happened to jump into ours. Boring as all hell. As far as subs go, I always hear the argument of EvE's sub numbers constantly going up but what most don't realize is well over 50% of the playerbase has at least 2 accounts. It's almost a necessity to get anywhere in the game readily if your in a smaller corp.
slightly off topic to a degree but the one thing that would make Eve explode would be to simply remove gates and make the transition area huge when you warp in - too large to lock down. People would flood zero and subs would skyrocket. Corps would actually have to "patrol" their holdings instead of afk picking their nose waiting on victims at a chokepoint.
Life IS Feudal
Thanks for the help.
Well now I know you have a reading problem. Give me an example of a system that doesn't involve harming another player THAT CAN'T BE INTRODUCED INTO A PvE AND PvP GAME. One of your only points have been that PvP and PvE needs fully different rulesets. That is false. Outside of the rules which allow player harm to another player PvE and PvP can have identical rulesets because all other rules work in both systems equally well. You're only example is land control which I've mentioned how easy it is to factor into a PvE system and your only response to that is DF doesn't have quests. Yeah DF is a terrible game which is why almost no one on Earth plays it. Most games, even ones with a lot of focus on PvP, will have quests. If the game is determined to not have any quests (and lose a massive amount of players by doing so) PvE based collection/resource turn-ins would work just as easily (and I've already mentioned those as options but naturally you ignored it as it refuted your only argument back) as quests.
Another thing that you 100% misread, which is impressive btw, is that TO MAKE A FFA PvP GAME OR TO MAKE A PvE GAME WITH PvP SERVERS COSTS THE SAME. However, 99% of the MMORPG playerbase will NEVER play a game that has only FFA PvP servers. So since the cost to create is the same, no major company will make an open world FFA PvP only game because they can create a PvE game with servers for open world FFA PvP and attract the other 99% of the market. It is a terrible business decision at this point to create an open world FFA PvP only game, the returns don't exist to justify that crazy of a decision of blocking out the massive audience who dislikes that play style.
Another point is that sandbox in no way = PvP and open world FFA PvP in no way = sandbox. They are completely independant features that can exist with or without each other. So don't interchange them. You began saying why companies don't want to create sandbox games and that is not at all what we're talking about.
Since you don't have an understanding of how the MMO creation process works I'll also let you in on a little tip. One of the lengthiest and most expensive ongoing aspect of MMORPGs is content creation. You try to say how cheap and easy it is to have "just have people write quests for you" (that statement alone has a big misunderstanding of how it works to make something in a game). Unless you're talking of kill tasks, content takes a long time and a lot of manpower to create which is a big reason expasions packs take so long to be put together. It involves dungeon designers, artists, statters, testing, regression, testing, polish. It is actually far cheaper in the long run to have players implement content for free. The problem is finding a good system that allows for players to make quality content that can't be exploited (making a hit a button get a level type of quest) but has enough freedom to be interesting. But I digress because none of this is about sandbox, it is about PvP which literally has no direct relation to sandbox design, it is simply an option for any game design.
There are so many posts in this thread I could respond to, but I decided to just make my own comment on another PvP sandbox game. Just because a lot of games coming out are marketed as falling into to this category, the question is will they be any good.
I am a true believer in the sandbox concept because of all the games I have played my experience in UO was by far the best. There were actually communities and we knew people by reputation. This included crafters and player killers. Belonging to a Guild was very important to a players ability to get the most out of a game and provided hours of fun times communicating in RogerWIlco or Ventrilo. Players continued to comeback to different towns and settings over and over again because there was no such thing as a leveled zone. I was in UO from 1998 until 2008, but I beta tested and tried just about every MMORPG out there, other then better graphics nothing held me quite like UO.
My first day in UO, I was killed well over 100 times in the first few hours. In stead of rage quitng, I became more determined then ever to notbe defeated by the game or some of the players in it. In that short period of time I knew I needed to make friends quickly, so I met two other new people at the healers and we decided to venture out together to chop wood. Being new we discovered that by staying close enough to the town limits we stood a better chance of living as we could summon guards. As a small group we logged on at the same time to train our skills together. The stronger we got the further we ventured out and the safer we felt.
The biggest thing with working up skills and spending so much time together is we developed the ability to work as a team. So we became effective cross healers and did a good job of keeping each other alive and even killing the person who attacked us. The ability for people to work together is lost in most games now,except for raiding. But the problem with Raiding is this becomes predictable. Once you know how to form a team for a Raid and you know how the Boss will respond that encounter gets old. To me the fun teamwork is knowing that my team and I can handle anything thrown at you. That is what I love about open world sandbox PvP. You need to make very quick decisions to live or you will die.
Another experience that I remember back in the day was exploring a dungeon with my two friends farming gold and getting rolled by a group of ten PKers. A min later a group of players all in the same guild came through and destroyed the PKers. They rezzed my friends and me. They also gave us back all of our stuff and said we can take whatever we wanted off the guys that killed us. That showed me the power of a guild. That night we joined that guild and had the best 8 years of gaming ever. If someone was being griefed anall call would go out and we would arrive in numbers. Tons of fun.
One of the biggest concerns I have read is people do not want to be killed at will when they are out adventuring, farming resources, or crafting. My worse experiences with griefers was actually in PVE centered games. No one here has ever experience people ninja killing things in PvE or been trained ( have someone with 100 mobs on them run at you so when they run out of range the mobs go onto you).Have that happen repeatedly so that you rage quit and they can farm the area. See for me in PvE centered games these people can go it with little to no consequences. In a PvP sandbox game, I would either attack them myself or have guildmates come help run them off.
Bone up on your MMORPG history. Trammel wasn't a PvE zone, it was a PvE server. It was added in May of 2000. Players could either play on the original server, Trammel, or I assume they could start characters on both servers if they wanted.
If features of a game move it along the spectrum between sandbox and theme park, and PvP is a sandbox feature, then adding or removing PvP should move a game closer to or further away from the sandbox side of things. If this is true, then removing PvP from Eve must make it more of a theme park game. Eve can't just be less of a sandbox. If it's less of a sandbox, it has to be more of something else. At least follow your own reasoning consistently.
You'll have to lookup ATitD yourself. It's a sandbox game with no combat. It is fully a sandbox game with no combat, though it could be argued that it has economic PvP, but non-combat PvP isn't what we're discussing here, is it?
You are not defining what you are talking about very well. You just keep saying that things are the way you say they are, but you're not supporting your points.
PvP is not a sandbox feature. Why? If it were a sandbox feature, then adding or removing PvP would make any game it was added or removed from more or less of a sandox. WoW's PvP servers do not appear to be any more of a sandbox experience than WoW's PvE servers. Adding PvP didn't make the game more sandbox, so what's missing? It's that the players' choice to engage in PvP doesn't have any impact on the world. Nothing is gained or lost when the players engage in PvP, even when the PvP is on a large scale. If we add in Territory control, then WoW's servers would be more of a sandbox experience, because then the players' choices have meaning. It doesn't matter if the territory changes hands via PvP, or through PvE raids. The addition of PvP at this point is simply a preference, not a requirement while adding some risk and reward through territory control has added a noticeable shift on the spectrum towards the sandbox side of things.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Griefing to me is anything another player does to ruin the gaming experience of another player. The only way you can eliminate that truely is to have instances. In any sandbox or openworld area of any game some form of griefing is going on. I was just playing RIFT and as I was going a quest to pick up items as I was killing stuff a dude was running around collecting the items and I needed to wait for them to respond. That is a ninja tactic and it affected my gameplay by having me take longer to complete my quest. If I could of killed him, he might of stopped doing it or at the least I would of been able to get my stuff done.
Griefing even happens on message boards when people purposefully post to annoy or disrupt a good constructive conversation. I prefer to have the option to defend myself.
I probably did not win the majority of fights I had with griefs but I had the option to do something instead of rage quiting or going to another area.
So your response to me giving you an example of a game that couldn't exist without pvp is that the game is bad? I happen to like the game. But in your world, that game wouldn't exist. Right? Please tell me how "collection/resource turn-ins" would be a suitable replacement for raiding a city and destroying walls/buildings.
LOL at you for insinuating that the only games worth a damn have quests. You're the worst kind of carebear.
I totally agree that people, in general, choose non-sandbox games and games without ffa pvp in the short term. That's why there are so many that rise and fall. But considering EvE's success, you're wrong in assuming that no ffa pvp game can be successful. However, this terrible age of boring themepark games is quickly coming to a close.... thank goodness.
No, they're not unrelated. PvP is a sandbox feature, ffa pvp is even more of a sandbox feature. It doesn't mean that all sandbox games have to have pvp, but it is in general a sandbox feature. Sandbox means less restrictions set by the developers. Restricting people from killing other people is anti-sandbox. You quite plainly just do not understand the term.
Oh my good sweet lord the irony in this paragraph is absolutely priceless. First of all, that's not what I meant when I said "just have people write quests for you." What I mean is it's not a risky thing to do. It's been done before and doesn't take any creative courage.
But I'm seriously laughing my ass off over here at the fact that you're trying to convince me how much it costs to create content in the game when just a short while ago you're telling me about how cheap it would be to convert a city building/sieging/raiding system like DF's into one that's based off of quests. Seriously classic.
Seriously dude.... just quit it. You have shown yourself to be an UTTER FOOL and you're continued flailing in this discussion is really quite pathetic. You accuse me of ignoring stuff you say, while you ignore damning points of mine. It's ad.
I agree that if your ultimate goal is solely to reduce griefing, the best way to do that is to have instances. But in that case, why not just play an offline game or a coop game? Why not just stop playing games altogether? Obviously there are tradeoffs for everything and griefing is going to be present anytime it's even close to possible.
The funny thing is in a sandbox game with pvp you can kill griefers instead of the situation you outlined where you have to just sit there and take it, as you pointed out. So I think it's interesting that sometimes the system that allegedly produces griefers, actually deals with them quite well.
I might not of stated my point, clearly in that reply,but my point is exactly in line with yours. I would take the ability for me to deal with a griefer myself then live in a world that my only hope is to contact a GM who may or may not do anything 24/48 hours after the event.
What does it matter if there is great crafting and what have you in an MMO if *my* hard work is stolen from me or made more difficult? Why build a house that any bored idiot can demolish at their whim? Why even try? I'll play an MMO much better suited to my preferences, thank you.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Isn't that the solution many MMO is using? LFD co-op dungeon instances. That seems like a "trade-off" many likes. Obviously stop playing games is going too far.
I don't think new MMO needs anything. The market decides.
If you don't see yourself play a game without pvp .. well .. there are tons of pvp only games like WoT, or PS2.
We don't need any more pvp mmo's cause there's only a few pve mmo's... my butthole; there's not ENOUGH good pvp games. If I want pvp, sadly, I have to fking play league of legends, with no open world experience to go along with it. Tired of shit like WoW, tired of clunky crap like darkfall etc.
This would be awesome but it would also kill the game outright XD not sub wise but tech wise... how the seven hells do you have seamless transition between thousands of solar systems within a single galaxy? I mean EVE's galaxy is small but to have seamless transitions you'd need to render allot of space...allot... last I checked the galaxy itself was irregular as well so it wouldn't be a flat disk to render either, more akin to a rather flat cone stump but... to put this in perspective: you'd need to render every bit of the volume of that cone stump to have seamless transitions which is pretty much impossible for an MMO.
True and most PVEers would rage at that model as well because they "deserve" to see everything in safety ( that would include pvp zones with autoflagging).
How is it forced?
Did someone twist your arm to buy the game!!???
Wrong, we were talking about PvP.
Try and keep up