Sandbox and bite sized content; do they work?

JohnP0100

One of the perceptions surrounding 'Sandbox / old school' MMOs is that they do not cater to people who can only play in small chunks. This thread is looking at 'sandbox' MMOs and seeing if there is something inherent in them that makes it impossible to play the content in small chunks; 15-20mins.

We already know that themeparks can. An instance run with LFG is 15-20mins, killing a raid boss with LFR is 15-20mins, taking care of a player's 'house' (garrison, guild ship, space ship w/e) is around 15-20mins and soloing a quest is 15-20mins (if that).

Sandbox? Well, I've played EVE before and no, 15-20mins of 'playing' doesn't work. Gate-camps? 1-3 hours,  Structure bashing op? 1-3 hours. Heaven forbid if you are crazy enough to get into 'logistics' cause that's 2 hours (plus 2 hours outside the game). The only 15-20mins activity are niche PVE stuff and PVE in EVE-O is literally the worst.

SWG - The infamous 1 hour and 40mins shuttle wait to go anywhere. If you owned a 'shop', you had to man the till for hours.  (I've never played SWG so I'm going off 2nd hand info here)

Archeage - Some basic activities is possible but most still requires 1 hour min. Not sure if it is still like this but in the beginning, my friends joked that 'you cannot have a full time job and play Archeage'.

 

So what is the reason for this? Why does it seem like 'bite sized' and 'sandbox' don't work?

Gdemami

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Originally posted by JohnP0100Why does it seem like 'bite sized' and 'sandbox' don't work?

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It does work. You just pick activities and game features that are time consuming - gate camping, siege warfare. Ignoring all other activies you can do - missions, exploration, incursions, FW or RvB etc. etc. or Arena fights in AA.

Open world PVP is and always be time consuming because you need time for 2 players to encounter each other. It has nothing to do with being "sandbox".

Loktofeit

Originally posted by JohnP0100

One of the perceptions surrounding 'Sandbox / old school' MMOs is that they do not cater to people who can only play in small chunks.

Since when? The examples you give aren't a problems with sandbox, they're problems with you choosing content that takes a long time.

It's funny, though, that you use group content in themepark games as your example of 'bite sized' because historically, that content was the longest, most time-consuming content in MMO gaming. It has over time been reduced down to where it is today. It's just weird to see you calling out SWG shuttle rides which were at a time when people would sit around an entire weekend waiting for a mob to pop in EQ. Got your J Boots, JohnP?

Stone_Fountain

FIrst off, if I only have 20 minutes I am likely NOT going to jump into an MMORPG unless it is LOTRO or SWTOR or something like this. Sandboxes have crafting and other things also so if you just set your character where it needs to be to log on and do what you need to do it can be done but I'm not sure that your posted topic makes much sense to even bring up. I can't even do a run through in Diablo in 20 minutes most times. or a dungeon crawl in Icewind Dale or even a witch hunt in Salem unless I die right away. 

Ludwik

Agree with Stone.

If I only have 15-20 minutes, I'm playing a game of Hearthstone.

If I have 30 minutes, I'm playing a game of Heroes of the Storm.

Sandbox MMOs shouldn't have to cater to everyone. Catering to everyone is what's gotten us to this place to begin with.

Axehilt

Originally posted by Robokapp

mining can be done in 15-20min.

This might launch into a discussion about whether hitting a button and waiting at a rock for 10 minutes qualifies as "content".

Axehilt

A good sandbox is going to offer varied gameplay.  In something like Terraria or Starbound or ATITD, you're going to jump in and probably already be on some giant project where you have to perform a variety of tasks to get things done.

It's true that many sandbox MMORPGs are offer poor variety and excessive timesinks (usually designed to sell subscription months.)  It's true that if you want good sandbox gameplay, currently you're much better off seeking it from non-MMORPGs.  (In part because other players tend to make it less sandy; parts of the sandbox by necessity have to be locked off to you in a shared sandbox game, just as your part is locked off from them.)

Axehilt

Originally posted by MisterZebub

And the surprising result of that discussion is how many players around here would not only agree that it does qualify as content, but also how many of them would prefer more of that in a sandbox instead of open world PVP being added.

Well certainly it'd be a debate over two of the three worst possible game mechanics in MMORPGs.

But hey, if you can run a business where you're selling time, and you can design the time-wasters in a way that's mind-bogglingly cheap to implement, and in a way where players will defend the time-wasters' design, then that's very impressive! 

waynejr2

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by JohnP0100

One of the perceptions surrounding 'Sandbox / old school' MMOs is that they do not cater to people who can only play in small chunks.

Since when? The examples you give aren't a problems with sandbox, they're problems with you choosing content that takes a long time.

It's funny, though, that you use group content in themepark games as your example of 'bite sized' because historically, that content was the longest, most time-consuming content in MMO gaming. It has over time been reduced down to where it is today. It's just weird to see you calling out SWG shuttle rides which were at a time when people would sit around an entire weekend waiting for a mob to pop in EQ. Got your J Boots, JohnP?

Good point.  IIRC, EQ2 you could get those JBoots with a preorder!  Games did reduce time!

vadio123

Have 2 two groups player

 

Istant gratification

and

Hard work long term goals

 

Both type player can play themepark or sandbox

On Eve to make Siege take moths and insane ammount grind but ask to any player whats feel?

On GW2 have sieges and castle have no value how you feel?

Now In Lineage 2 middle term between both how you feel? 

Answer this questions and you know why somes "ginds" are more funny others

and why sandbox cant live without this grinds and time waster mechanics  if you want feel realism you need work hard to archive something and nice feel after you done task each step one solid victory you can remember for days/moth in other side in games with istant gratification you need refil this feel over and over because since much easy to do you feeling void 

Bladestrom

As poster above suggests, this is about fast gratification in a bite (wow and co) and no need to fast gratify but can still play in small bites, eve, eso, Lotr, gw1 - probably others.

You should ask yourself why you ae not satisfied with small bites in these other games - that's a more telling question that gets to the heart of it.

Axehilt

Originally posted by vadio123

Have 2 two groups player 

Istant gratification

and

Hard work long term goals 

Both type player can play themepark or sandbox

On Eve to make Siege take moths and insane ammount grind but ask to any player whats feel?

On GW2 have sieges and castle have no value how you feel?

Now In Lineage 2 middle term between both how you feel? 

Answer this questions and you know why somes "ginds" are more funny others

and why sandbox cant live without this grinds and time waster mechanics  if you want feel realism you need work hard to archive something and nice feel after you done task each step one solid victory you can remember for days/moth in other side in games with istant gratification you need refil this feel over and over because since much easy to do you feeling void 

Well players tend not to measure fun by the height of the peaks.  They tend to measure it based on the average over the longterm. Even if an EVE peak was twice as high, if the session-to-session gameplay is really dull between those peaks then the overall game isn't going to be fun for players.  The peaks will seem strikingly high by comparison of course, but people don't really measure their games that way.

I'm not sure focusing on the siege gameplay of games is really the most "sandbox" of gameplay, but sandbox MMORPGs are often not particularly sand-filled anyway.  ATITD and eventually EQ Landmark are probably the best examples of actual MMORPG sandbox play -- experience which really emphasize the sand (the player authorship)

For that matter, the games mentioned are all pretty casual dull PVP so none of them is really a beacon of strong gameplay.  For something more serious you'd need to turn to something like Planetside 2, where sessions are regularly composed of sieges and great combat, but sometimes composed of spectacular sieges. 

JohnP0100

I feel like there are 2 train of thought here.

1. The games cited EVE-Online / Archeage doesn't represent Sandboxes well. 

2. The activities within them are separate from the 'sandbox'.

 

I will admit my experience with 'sandbox' mmos is limited to Eve Online and some light Archeage but when one talks about 'sandbox MMOs', EVE online is probably the biggest kid on the block. Similar to how 'themeparks = WoW'.

 

Not sure on the 2nd point as I feel like the game design and the implementation of it goes hand in hand. This might be my 'project manager' side talking as design / implementation is pretty straight forward in projects I worked on.

Overall feeling is that what allows for bite sized content is the constant 'checkpoints' one gets in MMOs. Wonder if checkpoints would work in sandbox mmos?

Axehilt

Originally posted by JohnP0100

I feel like there are 2 train of thought here.

1. The games cited EVE-Online / Archeage doesn't represent Sandboxes well. 

2. The activities within them are separate from the 'sandbox'. 

I will admit my experience with 'sandbox' mmos is limited to Eve Online and some light Archeage but when one talks about 'sandbox MMOs', EVE online is probably the biggest kid on the block. Similar to how 'themeparks = WoW'. 

Not sure on the 2nd point as I feel like the game design and the implementation of it goes hand in hand. This might be my 'project manager' side talking as design / implementation is pretty straight forward in projects I worked on.

Overall feeling is that what allows for bite sized content is the constant 'checkpoints' one gets in MMOs. Wonder if checkpoints would work in sandbox mmos?

Well in most sandbox games the checkpoints are self-driven.  You're working on some freeform project all your own, and you can usually carve out a small enough chunk to feel like you've made meaningful progress in a 15 minute session, even if the overall project is much longer.

It's the session-to-session gameplay that kills it.  In any given 15 minutes you simply don't make any interesting decisions, which means there's no gameplay, which means there's no fun.  These games are generally built around long-term decisions, but adding short-term decisions wouldn't conflict with that at all (it would simply make the session-to-session gameplay more fun.)

Stone_Fountain

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by JohnP0100

I feel like there are 2 train of thought here.

1. The games cited EVE-Online / Archeage doesn't represent Sandboxes well. 

2. The activities within them are separate from the 'sandbox'. 

I will admit my experience with 'sandbox' mmos is limited to Eve Online and some light Archeage but when one talks about 'sandbox MMOs', EVE online is probably the biggest kid on the block. Similar to how 'themeparks = WoW'. 

Not sure on the 2nd point as I feel like the game design and the implementation of it goes hand in hand. This might be my 'project manager' side talking as design / implementation is pretty straight forward in projects I worked on.

Overall feeling is that what allows for bite sized content is the constant 'checkpoints' one gets in MMOs. Wonder if checkpoints would work in sandbox mmos?

Well in most sandbox games the checkpoints are self-driven.  You're working on some freeform project all your own, and you can usually carve out a small enough chunk to feel like you've made meaningful progress in a 15 minute session, even if the overall project is much longer.

It's the session-to-session gameplay that kills it.  In any given 15 minutes you simply don't make any interesting decisions, which means there's no gameplay, which means there's no fun.  These games are generally built around long-term decisions, but adding short-term decisions wouldn't conflict with that at all (it would simply make the session-to-session gameplay more fun.)

Bottom line though, 15-20 minutes is not enough time to make it worth a players while by any stretch. LOTRO online has TONS of quests you can do in 15-20 minutes but its not a Sandbox. AA is VERY limited in what you can do. You can put down plants or pick them up, feed livestock and possibly do a quest but in that timeframe, you can't really do both. Once you log back in, you'll have to revolve your crops and head out again only to have to repeat this again and again. If you only do PVP you could just station yourself in a PVP zone to farm tokens or get in some kills but on a free acount there isnt much else for you to do and most sandboxes are set up similarly. F2P is pretty streamlined as to what you can do in most MMORPGs by design and what you're really after is fun factor. I would have tons more fun playing a single-player game like Banished or even Civilization if I only had 20 minutes. Gamers traditionally just have more freetime than this. Either by our own doing or innately. Again not sure your question OP is even a valid one. 

Axehilt

Originally posted by Stone_Fountain

Bottom line though, 15-20 minutes is not enough time to make it worth a players while by any stretch. LOTRO online has TONS of quests you can do in 15-20 minutes but its not a Sandbox. AA is VERY limited in what you can do. You can put down plants or pick them up, feed livestock and possibly do a quest but in that timeframe, you can't really do both. Once you log back in, you'll have to revolve your crops and head out again only to have to repeat this again and again. If you only do PVP you could just station yourself in a PVP zone to farm tokens or get in some kills but on a free acount there isnt much else for you to do and most sandboxes are set up similarly. F2P is pretty streamlined as to what you can do in most MMORPGs by design and what you're really after is fun factor. I would have tons more fun playing a single-player game like Banished or even Civilization if I only had 20 minutes. Gamers traditionally just have more freetime than this. Either by our own doing or innately. Again not sure your question OP is even a valid one. 

What you're describing is only a problem with specific games.

• In Heroes of the Storm I can complete a full game and earn a reward in 15-30 minutes.  The session will be fun, and will work towards progress of longer-term goals (like the Master Skin for Abathur I unlocked a while back.)
• In sandboxes with good session gameplay like Terraria or ATITD, you can spend 15 minutes working toward a goal and make meaningful progress towards that goal while experiencing a good deal of gameplay variety.  If you need 1000 blocks of a given type and find 25 of them in a session, you've made 15 minutes worth of meaningful progress.

If we accept that LOTRO is automatically not fun in a 15 minute session (which seems flimsy, but I'm not hugely positive on LOTRO so I won't fight you on it :P), then we should at least be able to admit that that won't automatically be true of other games.

 

There's basically two factors implied: meaningful progress and fun.  And a sandbox certainly can provide both in 15 minutes.  Many don't, but they could if they were better designed.

 

 

Bladestrom

Here's the difference, in eve, eso, ge1 etc I can happily play 30 mins and have fun working towards a goal (last night for example I spent 30 mins wandering around a town looking for brown malt). In eve last time I played I logged on and do e done mining.

Ths issue is not small bites, the issue is people needing short term reward for that 20 minutes or they don't find it fun.

Bladestrom

A big part of that ^^ is game mechanics that punish you by not spending your time improving your dps/hps by allowing you to fall behind some form of gear curve. With that kind if pressure A lot of small activities become compromised through opportunity cost.

Axehilt

Originally posted by Bladestrom
Here's the difference, in eve, eso, ge1 etc I can happily play 30 mins and have fun working towards a goal (last night for example I spent 30 mins wandering around a town looking for brown malt). In eve last time I played I logged on and do e done mining.

Ths issue is not small bites, the issue is people needing short term reward for that 20 minutes or they don't find it fun.

It's not just reward.  It's gameplay.  Hitting a button and waiting 20 minutes for a reward is not as satisfying as playing a game for 20 minutes for a reward.

So the issue is not all of these games allow people to have fun in small bites, and that's a large factor in why they meet with such limited success.

MadFrenchie

Originally posted by Axehilt

So the issue is not all of these games allow people to have fun in small bites, and that's a large factor in why they meet with such limited success.

I agree with that statement.  Such is the case with a niche genre.  Which, let's be honest, is exactly what the MMORPG genre really is in North America.  Other than the outlier WoW, the genre has never enjoyed mainstream success.  In no small part due to the sentence quoted above.

 

MMORPGs aren't conducive to competing with singleplayer RPGs or smaller-scale PvP games because MMORPGs almost always require a more significant time investment to reach the most intricate and deeply satisfying gameplay experiences.  When you say "I can log in and LFR in 30 minutes," you're ignoring the time required to reach the point of raiding.  The extended "tutorial" that is the leveling process is quite the put off for many gamers these days.  Even in themeparks, this is true.  Has anyone ever considered the newbie zone in an MMO a richer experience than, say, the first 30 minutes of any of the Dead Space series?  The first round of the new CoD multiplayer?  The introduction sequence of The Last of Us?

 

I'll enjoy the shift in development back towards the inherent strengths of the genre.

Reklaw

For me it works. Know for a fact for the majority it doesn't.

Like Bladestorm I can have fun just checking up some crafts, explore abit, find resources/materials.

I just don't feel the time presure many seem to feel when playing games, what's not done today can be done tommorow, next week, next month, game isn't going anywhere and while I might get a little behind others eventually I will catch up since most games have a level cap.

So yeah for me it works, but I am sure I am a minority......

Pepeq

I thought the whole point of a sandbox was that you didn't finish things quickly... I mean we already have games that can be blown through in 2 weeks tops... if you're looking to consume everything in an instant, it might as well be a theme park.

Loktofeit

Originally posted by Pepeq
I thought the whole point of a sandbox was that you didn't finish things quickly... I mean we already have games that can be blown through in 2 weeks tops... if you're looking to consume everything in an instant, it might as well be a theme park.

You don't see a difference between the sum of a game's content and individual components of gameplay?

Pepeq

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Pepeq
I thought the whole point of a sandbox was that you didn't finish things quickly... I mean we already have games that can be blown through in 2 weeks tops... if you're looking to consume everything in an instant, it might as well be a theme park.

You don't see a difference between the sum of a game's content and individual components of gameplay?

If individual components are quick, then so is the sum of the games' content.  If individual components are not quick, then so is the sum of the games' content.  Individual components make up the sum... the pace at which you consume them is generally the same pace that you consume the rest of the game.  Is a meal cooked in a microwave better than one cooked slowly?  Are you more apt to savor the meal you slaved over than the one you know you could complete in less than a minute?  I say again, if you're looking to do something quickly, you might as well be in a theme park.  

Axehilt

Originally posted by Pepeq
I thought the whole point of a sandbox was that you didn't finish things quickly... I mean we already have games that can be blown through in 2 weeks tops... if you're looking to consume everything in an instant, it might as well be a theme park.

No, sandboxes are just about the sand (player control and authorship of the experience.)

That doesn't imply the game has to be nearly devoid of gameplay and decision-making.  In fact games are more sandbox-like if you're constantly changing things than if you make less frequent choices.

Conversely themeparks are just about the rides (developer authorship of the experience.)

Nothing about that implies things have to finish instantly. In fact rides explicitly take time to ride -- but they're deliberately paced and don't waste your time.

Good sandboxes should be the same way, with most of your time spent actually manipulating things within the game (the sand) and playing around as you see fit.  A good sandbox is a beach to play at -- you can create a sandcastle if you want, or just do whatever.   A bad sandbox is a beach that charges by the hour and makes you wait to get in (and when you begin waiting you realize it's not because there's a line in front of you or the beach is full or any actual need -- the guy running it just wants some extra money is all.)

Loktofeit

Originally posted by Pepeq

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Pepeq
I thought the whole point of a sandbox was that you didn't finish things quickly... I mean we already have games that can be blown through in 2 weeks tops... if you're looking to consume everything in an instant, it might as well be a theme park.

You don't see a difference between the sum of a game's content and individual components of gameplay?

If individual components are quick, then so is the sum of the games' content.  If individual components are not quick, then so is the sum of the games' content.  Individual components make up the sum... the pace at which you consume them is generally the same pace that you consume the rest of the game.  Is a meal cooked in a microwave better than one cooked slowly?  Are you more apt to savor the meal you slaved over than the one you know you could complete in less than a minute?  I say again, if you're looking to do something quickly, you might as well be in a theme park.  

I don't see the connection. I can log into UO, do some logging, make a few bows, and throw them on a vendor (with descriptions and my chosen placement because UO will ALWAYS be that far ahead of most MMOs) inside of a few minutes. Maybe recall to Yew to BS with a few people at the Abbey and then log out. 15-20 minutes of bite-sized content, none of it remotely relevant to the "length" of the game's content.

Can you give examples of some of the sandbox style MMOs you've played. I'm curious what games gave you this impression.