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Is sandbox dead?
dorfeater
Member Posts: 52
Well, what do you think?
Whatever happened to games that didn't have levels, and that you could have ranged and melee combat skills at the same time, mastering both..
UO... SWG pre-CU...
Will money dominate developers these days?
Why is every MMO company out there so afraid to take risks?
Comments
[Sighs] EvE online.
"Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god."
-- Jean Rostand
:shrugs:
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
I think we are actually beginning to see the re-emergence of the sandbox type game. Not necessarily with the '07 and '08 releases but with many of the games going into development now. If you look at some of the interviews a lot of these newer studios are putting out about what their game will be, they seem to be very "sandbox" oriented. I don't know that any of them are true sandboxes, in the classic sense of the term, but I think we may see games that combine the best parts of both types of game, which is a good thing.
unfortunately with the popularity of WoW i think sandbox games are dead.
thats why i always say WoW was the worst thing that happened to the genre. Now every game will be nearly a clone of WoWs system.
Pretty wrong this or id not be playing what i play now.
"Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god."
-- Jean Rostand
UO, EVE, and Second Life are all alive and kicking. It's not as if they shut down the UO servers the moment WoW was released. The only 'death" that can perhaps be attributed to WoW is pre NGE SWG, but I honestly think that owes more to a series of stupendous blunders by SOE than to anything else.
If any game "killed" sandboxes it was EQ. It came out right after UO and got something like 5x the subs. Not surprisingly, very few new games have followed the UO sandbox approach since then. AO, DAoC, Shadowbane, EQOA, FFXI, EQ II, CoH, MxO....none of these were developed as sandboxes and all were out or far into development before WoW launched. It's not as if before WoW came out there were a ton of developers cranking out sandboxes.
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
Yes, Yeebo... UO is still alive and kicking, but its not what it was so long ago, that games been perverted beyond belief.
I tried giving EVE a go, that game made me fall asleep.
I'm not saying death as in... extinct, I'm saying death as in nobody is making any new sandbox style games. I don't blame WoW either, EQ is to blame, but the developers are to blame for not making anything new.
I'm so sick, just like many, of all the cookie cutter clones out there, 90% of MMO's these days are just EQ shells with some different look and feel.
But thats a different topic
im omw to the store to preorder Two Worlds for xbox 360. there will be a PC version but i have feeling you'd need a monster to run it on a PC. so this game im getting on the xbox. Skill based, sandboxy, coop RPG. PC version not sure what they got planned but xbox version will be 8 players
will be good enough for me (hopefully).
another good coop RPG is Crackdown xbox360. shows the true awesomeness of a "Sandbox". can jump in vehicles and race your friends, etc. just do stuff for fun. skill based progression too.
only two real modern day sandboxes that appeal to me. Saga of Ryzom looks interesting too. but coop rpgs tend to not try and grind ya into the grind like the MMOs do. all MMOs do is take the progression and stretch it out.
Starport good too but it 2D and most not down for that. wish it got a 3d update would blow away these other fake sandboxes lol
I think a sandbox game can be more casual friendly.
Sandbox games tend to allow for an abundant amount of solo content that is fun and deep. You also tend to have a deep character customization system. The profession/crafting systems also tend to be highly sophisticated.
I love the sandbox game.
Boycott EA Games. RIP Sim City.
No.
I don't think sandbox is dead but is definately on hiatus. I think the problem is developers don't know how to make a sandbox game that appeals to casual and hardcore players.
In America I have bad teeth. If I lived in England my teeth would be perfect.
single player RPG market just now startiing to innovate one writer says. it took years for them to abandon the 'random mob spawn encounter' and finally switch to what FF12 / blue dragon has done. now you can pick your encounter
character rpogression is a lot more well done in single player RPGs I've notivced. well in FF12 I still have to gain levels but I get to customize any guy to be what I really want them to be. and you have the true trendsetters like elder scrolls oblivion which took sandboxes as totally took it to the next level.
this innovation should slowly trickle down into MMOsd
go checkout the colum/blog the Fallout 3 guy is writing up here for instance.
Sandbox games are becoming more plentiful in the single player realm, I can't see why they wouldn't make their way back to MMOs, especially since the demand for them are increasing in gaming as a whole.
Or so I have noticed anyway, I could be completely wrong, here is to hoping I'm right.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
One good reason why sandbox styled games have faltered or waned in the last half-decade is due primarily to the lack of diverse thought and theory in computer science. Yes, even code monkeys have to delve into the esoteric works of Turing, Neumann, and Wolfram (more mathematics, but his CA concepts are beginning to be looked at and commented (and used) by computer scientists). Basically, coders are slow to tout new ideas, even if they're proven in a different format (CA-like concepts are used in FFT for data (image/audio/etc) compression, encryption, and AI software for robots) or industry. Yet, that is changing. The ideas from the most practical fields of computer programming and even the more esoteric portions are becoming utilized more so in MMOs than ever before, but don't expect it like some "perfect storm" that happens over night. It will take probably better on a decade for these ideas to take root (I hope to speed it up by working on my own character progression, npc behavioral generation, and other gameplay engines (theory and actual code).). So don't fret, kiddos, it looks like some of us (as would-be developers and actual ones) are finally getting a say in the future of MMOs, even if the 1337 fracktards have theirs.
-- Brede
In GPU Gems 3 they will be presenting viable ways to dynamically light enviroments (full per pixel lighting) using view frustum partitioning methods. Crackdown xbox 360 used per pixel lighting to nice effect I thought. many engines traditionally have been static lit worlds so they honestly couldnt just let buildings get placed anywhere too easily. Darkfall recommended using dyanmic lighting for everything
That STALKER game I heard applied some advanced AI routines but havent gotten around to messing with that game. Wasnt sure if it was a learning AI or what.
Our AI programmer here been trying to convince him to switch to dynamic AI logic rather then make it 'cheat' and see the player is doing but he claims the 'cheating' sort of AI that does not use real logic to solve problems is 'more fun'.
pathfinding might be tricky in a true player built city
sincerely I can say sandbox games still present a lot of technical challenges to develoepors that the simplier game engines like WoW, CoX, etc avoid
The market really ahsnt been responding as well as they should to sandbox titles which do little to inspire developers to innovate. but I would think at least a PVE driven Sandbox MMO would try to look into evolving AI and using genetic algorithms
hmm..
And money did not dominate UO, EQ1, or any of the other games?
I don't see where money has any relationship to sandbox, except that some companies might be playing it safe with no risk.
But low risk = usually less return on your buck. EQ1 was a huge risk at the time, yet it has probably taken in more money than all other MMO's combined.
That might be part of it, but I think a bigger factor is the tendency to follow the "safe" formula. That is pretty much what LOTRO did, and while a commercial success, it will never win any awards for being original. It is far too linear.
Yet I wonder how many people really WANT sandbox games? The biggest sandbox out there is probably EQ1, yet it gets only a small percentage of the MMO population.
Maybe it's a deal of "make games for sheep, and the sheep will come".
I know this slightly off topic but anyone try Gary's mod for Half life 2? that one is a straight up sandbox and i hear they got some roleplaying servers up (well a thrid party runs it)
Well, first off... EQ1 is a very old game. You can't blame people, even those who want a Sandbox, for not wanting to play a dated game like EQ1.
I think there is definitely a market for Sandbox games. Look at NWN1 -- the actual campaign they shipped with the game sucked rocks. But, the game had a toolkit you could use to build your own modules. A massive, vibrant community of something like a million players eventually got into the game -- easily the equal of most MMORPGs other than WOW, and surpassing many. And it lasted for years, despite the official campaign only being a month or two worth of gameplay (max)... because people liked playing in the "sandbox."
Similarly, games like Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, The Movies, etc, all owe their continued vibrant communities to the Sandbox feature -- the campaigns of these games are long since over for most folks, and yet they are still doing cool things in Sandbox mode.
Sandboxes -- TRUE sandboxes, which I would argue that EQ1 really is not -- allow people to be creative and experiment and try things out. There are a lot of creative people out there who lack the talent to originate all their own art/material, but, if given some basic tools like you are given with The Movies or were with NWN2, can create some really amazing things. There is a large audience out there for real sandbox play, but the game has to truly support it. Most "sandbox" games, so-called, are really not very flexible, and the sandbox crowd gets frustrated at constraints, and quits very quickly.
C
anyways, yeah, I'm sick of cookie cutters,too and...I'm still waiting for the next big thing...twitch based combat sandbox MMO...that would be perfect
Check out the MUD I'm making!
Uh, isn't Stargate Worlds sandbox?
Darkfall is suppose to be a sandbox game, and there still tytles out there that are sandbox games or you can do withouth qeusting and play it like a sandbox game
In GPU Gems 3 they will be presenting viable ways to dynamically light enviroments (full per pixel lighting) using view frustum partitioning methods. Crackdown xbox 360 used per pixel lighting to nice effect I thought. many engines traditionally have been static lit worlds so they honestly couldnt just let buildings get placed anywhere too easily. Darkfall recommended using dyanmic lighting for everything
That STALKER game I heard applied some advanced AI routines but havent gotten around to messing with that game. Wasnt sure if it was a learning AI or what.
Our AI programmer here been trying to convince him to switch to dynamic AI logic rather then make it 'cheat' and see the player is doing but he claims the 'cheating' sort of AI that does not use real logic to solve problems is 'more fun'.
pathfinding might be tricky in a true player built city
sincerely I can say sandbox games still present a lot of technical challenges to develoepors that the simplier game engines like WoW, CoX, etc avoid
The market really ahsnt been responding as well as they should to sandbox titles which do little to inspire developers to innovate. but I would think at least a PVE driven Sandbox MMO would try to look into evolving AI and using genetic algorithms
My cat's breath smells like cat food.
Didn't Bioware recently purchase the rights to use the same AI software that the FBI/CIA use to try and predict world events.. Plugging in info on a group, country or specific peoples actions and letting the AI adjust the world according to those actions on the fly. If that is true would it be difficult to have the software treat player actions as that info allowing the software to adjust the world on the fly according to what the players are doing, and if that is the case wouldn't that be a huge step towards a more sandbox style of game.
Wish I could find that article that talked about it for the life of me I can't remember where I read it
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ok, I think I'm done here.