Originally posted by Sojhin A sandbox without player conflict is a themepark or sandpark.
Simply wrong. There are PvE only sandbox games.
I would not call a PvE only game a sandbox.
A sandbox allows one person to take another's stuff. In this magical sandbox one can throw another into the sand and attempt to pile driver em when they are down. At the same time it has the option of bystanders deciding to pile on or avenge. Some can just ignore this conflict and hope it does not come at them while they go about making things with the sand but the threat is there all the same.
Remove the threat and you remove much of the creativity to have 'meaningful' play experiences. When you cannot influence another player what you have is really a game that is a player created sandpark but never a sandbox.
Originally posted by SojhinA sandbox without player conflict is a themepark or sandpark.
That's not even remotely true. It's as if you don't understand what theme park and sandbox actually mean.
Also there are pve only sandbox games. I believe "A Tale in the Desert" is one of them.
That isn't a PvE sandbox. There are no true PvE sandbox games yet, they simply do not exist. The first game to succeed in making one is going to be a huge hit.
The Repopulation was supposedly also going to add PvE servers only if the demand's high enough, and H1Z1 already has them IIRC.
More companies are realizing that PvP only Sandbox = niche game forever. Which in turn means limited profits, especially with everyone trying to fill this hole in the market these days. With an over-abundance of themepark MMOs on the market it's only natural that they look towards a genre where there is less competition, and where they aren't competing with WoW, SWTOR, FFXIV and ESO - all heavyweights with rich development studios behind them that no Indie can ever hope to match.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
Look up Dransik or Ashen Empires. It's a sandbox, with a PvP and a PvE server. The PvP server has 1/100th the population of the PvE server, because all people do on PvP server is gank noobs....the people have spoken. We want a sandbox game that isn't a gank-a-thon.
You will never see a pvp sandbox make it to the big times, it will always be a niche game for gankers. In the past, you could have open pvp and even full loot, but the players back then understood that if you killed someone unjustly, you would be hunted down by police guilds. Sadly nobody in this day and age wants to police.
It's hard to have a real sandbox economy in games without loss of gear, or expensive durability loss. There needs to be something that keeps crafters crafting, and give meaningful resources for guilds to fight over.
If you don't want loss of anything on death, sandpark games would be best for you like archeage. You can do your territory control but the economy will always be shallow.
It's really not that hard to implement item decay/destruction, lose everything on death in a themepark PvE game you know as they're not sandbox exclusive mechanics. Thus making the economy no less shallow than a PvP game.
I understand that PvE content is the most difficult and expensive to make. Why don't they just make fewer higher quality PvE content? We've all played games where thousands of NPC stand around waiting to be slaughtered for experience. Why not make some kind of NPC that takes a bit of exploring to find? Instead of killing bears by the dozen, make a bear encounter mean something...
Because FINDING the bear is not the fun part of the game to many?
Personally i would care less to find the bear ... killing it .. OTOH would be fun if the combat mechanics is done right.
Just because you don't want to hunt, doesn't mean other don't. Just because one guy doesn't want to craft, doesn't mean others don't.
Thats the exact point I'm making and its that opinion that has persuaded developers against fleshing out an MMO where you can actually do more. They claim games are virtual worlds, but they aren't. Unlike them, I don't use the world flippantly, I actually mean an intricate system where players with different goals and playstyles can actually enjoy the same world, doing very different things.
Thats why PvP cannot be the foundation. The world itself and the way players interact with it must be the foundation. "Content is king." Whether that means carving out an area for a player house, scouring dungeons, or claiming territory for a kingdom over which you intend to reside. It must be a place that players want to go with their free time for a variety of reasons, not just for one. If all paths lead to PvP, you've failed to create a virtual world.
Originally posted by zzax No PvP = no community = no longevity = game hoppers = ghost town in 3 months
Meanwhile EQ1 16 years later........
Different times are different. Try to repeat it in todays market.
You either keep community with PvP (territory control, politics, drama) or you pump millions dollars every 2-3 months in PvE game, like Blizzard does, to keep game hoppers occupied.
Theres no other way, no one will farm mobs for 16 years anymore.
ah, but....EQ1 is not the same game it was 16 years ago. In the beginning, there was total loss of equipment on death unless you recovered it. Also, the economy was dependent on players as there was no cash shop or venders selling the potions and food/drink necessary for survival.
My own opinion is that developers have gotten lazy in developing content for games. Games are not nearly as intricate and complex as they were. EQ1 had multiple races with their own benefits and drawbacks as well as having classes that could not do everything everyone else could. A cleric was a cleric and a rogue was a rogue. There was a certain interdependency that held the community together, and that community was policed by GMs.
New content was released regularly back then and the game grew. Now games are expected to run indefinitely without support or updates. There is more concentration on packaging and graphics than actual content.
Myself, I don't want to play a game that allows free for all killing any more than I want to live in a world like that. I wouldn't turn a young child out to play in a real sandbox without supervision either. Playgrounds, sandboxes, and games should have rules, and supervision, to make sure everyone plays nice. Jmho.
It must be the relatively low development cost of such a game. Developing pve content is more expensive than just creating a game where players just go after each other and that is the content.
Lower dev costs would mean the game has to earn less to recoup those costs and turn a profit, either through box or cash shop sales. These games always become "niche" so that's why I guess they are able to make their money back without having a lot of players for a long period of time.
Your much closer to the truth in this post.
Look at the current sandbox games available to the western players; darkfall unholy wars or mortal online, both of these games last year had "big update" and both of these updates included resource node reorganizing and minimal combat rebalancing, that's it. DFUW subscription based game and mortal online despite having f2p option they are subscriber heavy since f2p are gimped to a level while playing a cheap browser game is better than wasting time in mortal online, bust even after being so niche they are still running their server and keeping up with community. the answer is obvious : they let community believe that they are the ones deciding the fate of the game while not providing any kind of proper update as responsible developers and moronic community are barking at their own reflection on water. if it is so easy to fool people with this 'sandbox' carrot then why bother creating rich new content every year?
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
The problem with the implementation of PvP in today's sandbox games is lack of consequences, pure and simple. Humans as a race are complete, self centred, greedy tossers that will try to get away with anything if they think that they can. Sure there are exceptions but these are few and isolated. The other side of Humans though is equally as important. The ability and desire to come together in times of crisis. These two aspects are obvious in real life today. On the one hand you have the Islamic State showing what gank squads are like on a large scale. They have no morals and act out of pure greed and malice. All decent muslims are against them, as are the rest of the world. On the other hand you have those people that put their own lives on the line to help the Ebola victims in Africa, showing a capacity for complete self sacrifice and showing what has come to be called carebears are like on a grand scale.
In the first instance the consequences are obvious if, at the moment, badly implemented. The civilised world are coming together to fight them. Unfortunately this doesn't happen that often in MMO's. People gravitate towards their own niche group of associates and rarely come together with other niche groups to form a collective whole, which leaves the gankers, griefers and assorted arseholes pretty much untouched. In this case the game itself needs to have systems in place that will do the job that the players are unable or unwilling to do. No sandbox games at the moment have that. Even EvE with it's Concord system in High Sec areas is unfit for purpose as it is too easily bypassed. Want to gank corps full of noobs in High Sec without Concord interference? Sure, just deposit your cash here and Wardec them, simple.
The balance between PvP enthusiasts who PvP for actual goals within the game, Griefers who PvP for no reason other than they can & The carebears ( although that term is very overused and misunderstood) just isn't there, and will not be there until a game takes it seriously and delivers true consequences.
Ask yourselves what would real life be like if all law and order broke down overnight, and how quickly would the world fall into anarchy?
You either keep community with PvP (territory control, politics, drama)
And have a 100k players if you're fortunate. While WoW that invests all that money in PvE has millions.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
The problem with the implementation of PvP in today's sandbox games is lack of consequences, pure and simple. Humans as a race are complete, self centred, greedy tossers that will try to get away with anything if they think that they can. Sure there are exceptions but these are few and isolated. The other side of Humans though is equally as important. The ability and desire to come together in times of crisis. These two aspects are obvious in real life today. On the one hand you have the Islamic State showing what gank squads are like on a large scale. They have no morals and act out of pure greed and malice. All decent muslims are against them, as are the rest of the world. On the other hand you have those people that put their own lives on the line to help the Ebola victims in Africa, showing a capacity for complete self sacrifice and showing what has come to be called carebears are like on a grand scale.
In the first instance the consequences are obvious if, at the moment, badly implemented. The civilised world are coming together to fight them. Unfortunately this doesn't happen that often in MMO's. People gravitate towards their own niche group of associates and rarely come together with other niche groups to form a collective whole, which leaves the gankers, griefers and assorted arseholes pretty much untouched. In this case the game itself needs to have systems in place that will do the job that the players are unable or unwilling to do. No sandbox games at the moment have that. Even EvE with it's Concord system in High Sec areas is unfit for purpose as it is too easily bypassed. Want to gank corps full of noobs in High Sec without Concord interference? Sure, just deposit your cash here and Wardec them, simple.
The balance between PvP enthusiasts who PvP for actual goals within the game, Griefers who PvP for no reason other than they can & The carebears ( although that term is very overused and misunderstood) just isn't there, and will not be there until a game takes it seriously and delivers true consequences.
Ask yourselves what would real life be like if all law and order broke down overnight, and how quickly would the world fall into anarchy?
Thats a good assessment of the situation in mmorpgs. The problem is there is no reason for people to come together. Unless players have compelling reasons to help each other and band together, they won't. Unless the world itself is dangerous and offers compelling reasons to explore and overcome, theres little reason to inhabit said virtual world, let alone conquer it. Most likely the average player won't even play the game. If the world itself isn't a hard place with numerous team oriented objectives to overcome, you will end up with just a few tight knit groups who go from game to game dominating with their zerg and then a bunch of resistance fighters. Nothing but the raw pvpers who care nothing about the things outside of PvP.
An mmorpg needs something more to encourage more players and different kinds of players to play the game. They need to have a reason to come together, and numerous things to fight over, including content (pve), resources and territory. These things foster community and fill the world with a variety of players who play for different reasons (like real life). If theres one thing we can learn from the past, its that a virtual world isn't compelling to enough people when the only objective is conquest of other guilds and players.
Originally posted by d_20 It must be the relatively low development cost of such a game. Developing pve content is more expensive than just creating a game where players just go after each other and that is the content.
Minecraft...?
Your reasoning is utterly flawed. Manhours spent on development of PVE content cost the same as development of same amount of PVP content.
There are designs that are simply more budget friendly - for PVP and PVE games.
When it comes to MMOs tho, the traditional MMO with persistent worlds, no game can be very successful without sufficient content, being it PVP or PVE game.
Originally posted by Iselin Because when you give people total freedom, they fight... way to go, human race!
LOL That was my thought, too.
When players read "Sandbox", they seem to automatically think, "Freedom!" Then this freedom equates to killing other players thanks to anonymity. These are just pixels, after all, not other human beings.
That seems to be the majority, but there are some players that see "Freedom" and think, "Co-op! What can we build together?"
I think there is room for both, but many self proclaimed sandbox MMOs seem to think PvP is a must and full loot is often tacked on. Can you imagine a sandbox like this in real life? "Here, Jimmy. Go play in the sandbox over there." "But Mom! Those bigger kids are beating everyone up and stealing their toys!" "How about the swings, then?"
- 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
Originally posted by HabitualFrogStomp Because sandboxes are mostly about the community that you build around the game. The tools to build something with the world or do X Y Z are just tools and are meaningless without a context. The community provides that context.If there is no rivalry in a game or someone that wants to hinder you from doing something, you may as well create a themepark. Sandboxes should be about interaction and rivalry or strife is one of the base ways people interact with each other.There's a whole group that can't handle rivalry or will hold grudges over this stuff, they shouldn't play these kinds of games. They are for people that understand that the other player is my content, and I am his, if he does something to harm me or my progress I shouldn't take it personally because that's what makes the world go. So no, if you can't handle that, or don't have that level of maturity or understanding, don't even bother with it.
Apple and Micorsoft are rivals. Do they kill each other? I'm sure they sometimes would like to, but they do not
Rivalries take many forms, not just superior fighting power. Become the best crafter is a huge draw for rivalries. Have the "coolest home" is another one. Become the best cartographer or guide by exploring. Join a player city and help make it the best in the game. Help a guild to achieve "server firsts", like dungeon completions.
Fighting vs NPCs is fine. It can break weapons, wear out armor, and provide materials for crafting or even guard material gathering spots. There is no need for PvP except to fight other players. It provides nothing else besides that.
- 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
Originally posted by zzax WoW is anomaly, show me any other MMO (under the same model) that has not failed during last decade.
EVE Online, in other hand, is running strong since 2003. Community is what makes the games last, not PvE content.
yea but eve has like 40k users online at a time.
those are different goals.
EVE had about 500k subs last time I checked. Plus its P2P - every themepark crap, with exception of WoW, died under this model.
i talked about online users at the same time, not active subs.
right now, 20874 users are online.
as said, those are different goals, don't get me wrong, i love and play eve, but those publishers prefer 10 million paying users (to 500k)
ccp published their own game, that is a HUGE advantage for a developer - if they can do what they want, and not have to release a game with 1/3 of it's content as it happened in WAR for example. hello EA *waves*
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Originally posted by zzax WoW is anomaly, show me any other MMO (under the same model) that has not failed during last decade.
EVE Online, in other hand, is running strong since 2003. Community is what makes the games last, not PvE content.
yea but eve has like 40k users online at a time.
those are different goals.
EVE had about 500k subs last time I checked. Plus its P2P - every themepark crap, with exception of WoW, died under this model.
FFXIV is still P2P (and so is FFXII), it has over a million players last I've heard (1.7 or so), both ESO and SWTOR definitely aren't doing bad either when it comes to income - although I can't be sure about ESO, SWTOR's numbers over the last couple of years were very good. ESO's seem to be as well though.
All the major financial successes are themeparks. EVE operates on the level of Neverwinter, STO and a bunch of the other low budget themeparks. Mediocrity (in terms of income) is hardly what companies aim to achieve.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
It's hard to have a real sandbox economy in games without loss of gear, or expensive durability loss. There needs to be something that keeps crafters crafting, and give meaningful resources for guilds to fight over.
If you don't want loss of anything on death, sandpark games would be best for you like archeage. You can do your territory control but the economy will always be shallow.
Totally not true, but sounds like as good a justification as any.
Oh yes, and the cat ate your elaborate explanation as to why that is not true ... oh wait ...
Comments
I would not call a PvE only game a sandbox.
A sandbox allows one person to take another's stuff. In this magical sandbox one can throw another into the sand and attempt to pile driver em when they are down. At the same time it has the option of bystanders deciding to pile on or avenge. Some can just ignore this conflict and hope it does not come at them while they go about making things with the sand but the threat is there all the same.
Remove the threat and you remove much of the creativity to have 'meaningful' play experiences. When you cannot influence another player what you have is really a game that is a player created sandpark but never a sandbox.
The Repopulation was supposedly also going to add PvE servers only if the demand's high enough, and H1Z1 already has them IIRC.
More companies are realizing that PvP only Sandbox = niche game forever. Which in turn means limited profits, especially with everyone trying to fill this hole in the market these days. With an over-abundance of themepark MMOs on the market it's only natural that they look towards a genre where there is less competition, and where they aren't competing with WoW, SWTOR, FFXIV and ESO - all heavyweights with rich development studios behind them that no Indie can ever hope to match.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
Look up Dransik or Ashen Empires. It's a sandbox, with a PvP and a PvE server. The PvP server has 1/100th the population of the PvE server, because all people do on PvP server is gank noobs....the people have spoken. We want a sandbox game that isn't a gank-a-thon.
You will never see a pvp sandbox make it to the big times, it will always be a niche game for gankers. In the past, you could have open pvp and even full loot, but the players back then understood that if you killed someone unjustly, you would be hunted down by police guilds. Sadly nobody in this day and age wants to police.
A game must have PVP to be called sandbox?
Most stupid thing I have ever heard.
It's really not that hard to implement item decay/destruction, lose everything on death in a themepark PvE game you know as they're not sandbox exclusive mechanics. Thus making the economy no less shallow than a PvP game.
It's just not a sought-after mechanic for most.
Just because you don't want to hunt, doesn't mean other don't. Just because one guy doesn't want to craft, doesn't mean others don't.
Thats the exact point I'm making and its that opinion that has persuaded developers against fleshing out an MMO where you can actually do more. They claim games are virtual worlds, but they aren't. Unlike them, I don't use the world flippantly, I actually mean an intricate system where players with different goals and playstyles can actually enjoy the same world, doing very different things.
Thats why PvP cannot be the foundation. The world itself and the way players interact with it must be the foundation. "Content is king." Whether that means carving out an area for a player house, scouring dungeons, or claiming territory for a kingdom over which you intend to reside. It must be a place that players want to go with their free time for a variety of reasons, not just for one. If all paths lead to PvP, you've failed to create a virtual world.
Different times are different. Try to repeat it in todays market.
You either keep community with PvP (territory control, politics, drama) or you pump millions dollars every 2-3 months in PvE game, like Blizzard does, to keep game hoppers occupied.
Theres no other way, no one will farm mobs for 16 years anymore.
ah, but....EQ1 is not the same game it was 16 years ago. In the beginning, there was total loss of equipment on death unless you recovered it. Also, the economy was dependent on players as there was no cash shop or venders selling the potions and food/drink necessary for survival.
My own opinion is that developers have gotten lazy in developing content for games. Games are not nearly as intricate and complex as they were. EQ1 had multiple races with their own benefits and drawbacks as well as having classes that could not do everything everyone else could. A cleric was a cleric and a rogue was a rogue. There was a certain interdependency that held the community together, and that community was policed by GMs.
New content was released regularly back then and the game grew. Now games are expected to run indefinitely without support or updates. There is more concentration on packaging and graphics than actual content.
Myself, I don't want to play a game that allows free for all killing any more than I want to live in a world like that. I wouldn't turn a young child out to play in a real sandbox without supervision either. Playgrounds, sandboxes, and games should have rules, and supervision, to make sure everyone plays nice. Jmho.
Look at the current sandbox games available to the western players; darkfall unholy wars or mortal online, both of these games last year had "big update" and both of these updates included resource node reorganizing and minimal combat rebalancing, that's it. DFUW subscription based game and mortal online despite having f2p option they are subscriber heavy since f2p are gimped to a level while playing a cheap browser game is better than wasting time in mortal online, bust even after being so niche they are still running their server and keeping up with community. the answer is obvious : they let community believe that they are the ones deciding the fate of the game while not providing any kind of proper update as responsible developers and moronic community are barking at their own reflection on water. if it is so easy to fool people with this 'sandbox' carrot then why bother creating rich new content every year?
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
The problem with the implementation of PvP in today's sandbox games is lack of consequences, pure and simple. Humans as a race are complete, self centred, greedy tossers that will try to get away with anything if they think that they can. Sure there are exceptions but these are few and isolated. The other side of Humans though is equally as important. The ability and desire to come together in times of crisis. These two aspects are obvious in real life today. On the one hand you have the Islamic State showing what gank squads are like on a large scale. They have no morals and act out of pure greed and malice. All decent muslims are against them, as are the rest of the world. On the other hand you have those people that put their own lives on the line to help the Ebola victims in Africa, showing a capacity for complete self sacrifice and showing what has come to be called carebears are like on a grand scale.
In the first instance the consequences are obvious if, at the moment, badly implemented. The civilised world are coming together to fight them. Unfortunately this doesn't happen that often in MMO's. People gravitate towards their own niche group of associates and rarely come together with other niche groups to form a collective whole, which leaves the gankers, griefers and assorted arseholes pretty much untouched. In this case the game itself needs to have systems in place that will do the job that the players are unable or unwilling to do. No sandbox games at the moment have that. Even EvE with it's Concord system in High Sec areas is unfit for purpose as it is too easily bypassed. Want to gank corps full of noobs in High Sec without Concord interference? Sure, just deposit your cash here and Wardec them, simple.
The balance between PvP enthusiasts who PvP for actual goals within the game, Griefers who PvP for no reason other than they can & The carebears ( although that term is very overused and misunderstood) just isn't there, and will not be there until a game takes it seriously and delivers true consequences.
Ask yourselves what would real life be like if all law and order broke down overnight, and how quickly would the world fall into anarchy?
And have a 100k players if you're fortunate. While WoW that invests all that money in PvE has millions.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
Thats a good assessment of the situation in mmorpgs. The problem is there is no reason for people to come together. Unless players have compelling reasons to help each other and band together, they won't. Unless the world itself is dangerous and offers compelling reasons to explore and overcome, theres little reason to inhabit said virtual world, let alone conquer it. Most likely the average player won't even play the game. If the world itself isn't a hard place with numerous team oriented objectives to overcome, you will end up with just a few tight knit groups who go from game to game dominating with their zerg and then a bunch of resistance fighters. Nothing but the raw pvpers who care nothing about the things outside of PvP.
An mmorpg needs something more to encourage more players and different kinds of players to play the game. They need to have a reason to come together, and numerous things to fight over, including content (pve), resources and territory. These things foster community and fill the world with a variety of players who play for different reasons (like real life). If theres one thing we can learn from the past, its that a virtual world isn't compelling to enough people when the only objective is conquest of other guilds and players.
Minecraft...?
Your reasoning is utterly flawed. Manhours spent on development of PVE content cost the same as development of same amount of PVP content.
There are designs that are simply more budget friendly - for PVP and PVE games.
When it comes to MMOs tho, the traditional MMO with persistent worlds, no game can be very successful without sufficient content, being it PVP or PVE game.
You made it up, you tell us...
WoW is anomaly, show me any other MMO (under the same model) that has not failed during last decade.
EVE Online, in other hand, is running strong since 2003. Community is what makes the games last, not PvE content.
yea but eve has like 40k users online at a time.
those are different goals.
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
EVE had about 500k subs last time I checked. Plus its P2P - every themepark crap, with exception of WoW, died under this model.
When players read "Sandbox", they seem to automatically think, "Freedom!" Then this freedom equates to killing other players thanks to anonymity. These are just pixels, after all, not other human beings.
That seems to be the majority, but there are some players that see "Freedom" and think, "Co-op! What can we build together?"
I think there is room for both, but many self proclaimed sandbox MMOs seem to think PvP is a must and full loot is often tacked on. Can you imagine a sandbox like this in real life?
"Here, Jimmy. Go play in the sandbox over there."
"But Mom! Those bigger kids are beating everyone up and stealing their toys!"
"How about the swings, then?"
- 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
Rivalries take many forms, not just superior fighting power. Become the best crafter is a huge draw for rivalries. Have the "coolest home" is another one. Become the best cartographer or guide by exploring. Join a player city and help make it the best in the game. Help a guild to achieve "server firsts", like dungeon completions.
Fighting vs NPCs is fine. It can break weapons, wear out armor, and provide materials for crafting or even guard material gathering spots. There is no need for PvP except to fight other players. It provides nothing else besides that.
- 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 talked about online users at the same time, not active subs.
right now, 20874 users are online.
as said, those are different goals, don't get me wrong, i love and play eve, but those publishers prefer 10 million paying users (to 500k)
ccp published their own game, that is a HUGE advantage for a developer - if they can do what they want, and not have to release a game with 1/3 of it's content as it happened in WAR for example. hello EA *waves*
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
FFXIV is still P2P (and so is FFXII), it has over a million players last I've heard (1.7 or so), both ESO and SWTOR definitely aren't doing bad either when it comes to income - although I can't be sure about ESO, SWTOR's numbers over the last couple of years were very good. ESO's seem to be as well though.
All the major financial successes are themeparks. EVE operates on the level of Neverwinter, STO and a bunch of the other low budget themeparks. Mediocrity (in terms of income) is hardly what companies aim to achieve.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
Two of the most loved sandbox games of all time - UO and SWG-
Both had fully consensual PvP.
(Yes, UO got it after a couple of years, but the game's population and popularity exploded after the Trammel/Felucca split.)
The other major sandbox player - EVE Online - 0.6 - 1.0 space has very low PvP risk outside of Faction Warfare.
The PvP only sandbox games - Darkfall, Mortal Online, etc. -
About as popular as genital worts and about as populated as Antarctica.
Oh yes, and the cat ate your elaborate explanation as to why that is not true ... oh wait ...