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One thing that make today's sandboxes less successful
Zadawn
Member UncommonPosts: 670
They charge too much for the quality they offer and for the state the game is in, plus the number of people working on them is low so it is not like they have to pay a huge developing team.
No i'm not cheap.This is the truth.
Comments
I think what makes todays snadboxes fail is that the dev team thinks sand is synonymous with empty. Too many times we have seen games that promise a great world but don't deliver anything but empty plains and half broken mechanics, and expect US to make the content just because its a sandbox game.
Eve is probably the closest thing to a sandbox that actually has content worth playing with. Mortal Online had great potential and promise, but thats all it ever amoounted to.
We need devs, likely indies, to step forward and make soemthing worth playing.
imo its lvling...makeing games that are soo durr durr derp easy to max out in a month and sit around looking for raids
get back to the grind of lvling and " working " on your char.
nowa days it seems that its always that 1 thing that they do to a game that just kills it for alot of people ..like darkfall..it was good but dam that 1st person view and among lil other things were horrible ..it turned alot of people away
and like rift ..it was great ..flash and fun..but your raiding in a week like that other game umm called W o ..you know the rest
eq2 ..totally changed their game to cater to wow players hopeing they could just get some of ther subs
the list can go on and on
IMO it's
1. FFA PVP - Sorry, I don't like losing the things I work for and that make the game fun. PVP should be about the battles not the gear/loot.
2. Lack of things to do. Don't be afraid to put a storyline in that is competely optional or make grinding skills be more interactive and less about grind.
that's all I have right now.
FFA is fine as long as there are REASONS to FFA and not FFA. For example, if the only motive to NOT kill everyone you see is because you might not have access to a handful of npc guarded towns throughout the world (ala Mortal Online) and some petty skill loss if you die, FFA becomes overbearing and bothersome because there is no reason for people NOT to kill.
FFA is a dangerous venture for a sandbox, but if there are good mechanics and systems in place to ensure that its not a mindless gank fest and people actually want to work together for the most part, OR there are security measures that prevent or at least make widespread ganking for no reason less likely/profitable (eve for example), then I'm willing to forego my preference to not be in a FFA world.
Now, as for first person over 3rd, I have to admit I love 3rd person views, and am not really fond of first person. However, first person gives the game the ability to make things feel real, it makes you feel like you are in the game a lot better than 3rd. For example, look at amnesia, or any of the other horror games out there, all FPV, and its for a reason.
The reason FPV doesnt work and isnt liked in MMO's is because typically they dont have anything in game that actually benefits from the view. EG: mind games, horror, etc, so the benefit, if you call it one, is simply the view itself, the feeling of looking out over your shield as you fight. That's a negligable one though in my opinion.
well, you may not like to hear it, but the one thing that make today's sandboxes less successful are too high expectations of players.
only to create a graphic good enough that players will not go "bah, graphics is crap, i will not play this" takes today MUCH more work then it used to when mmorpgs started. not to mention the content - do you seriously think that e.g. eve had a lot of content at the beginning?
One thing would be massive lack of interest from investors.
When you say FFA I guess you mean full-loot by the way you talk about losing stuff. Full loot is a very important feature for a sandbox since it feeds industry and it adds risk to the PvP.
In my opinion we have great examples of successful and popular sandboxes out there. The main problem with Sandboxes is that they're targeting a much smaller audience than themeparks. Also, they use to be delivered by indie and smaller studios and that's noticeable in the product offered. Sometimes it feels rushed, other times it suffers from design oversights.
But fear not, I see the sandbox peeps as a natural evolution from the themepark peeps. Bigger studios are focusing already in this growing market (like SOE and their planetside2).
The quality isnt there because the funding isnt there and not because its a sandbox but because all these games are FFA PVP and most Full Loot meaning the market is TINY. No one wants to fund a game for a TINY market. So its self funded and half finished when shipped due to the fact they have run out of money.
I have to agree. FFA PVP almost always dooms a game to failure. There will always be that small player base that enjoys it but it keeps a lot of other players away.
A sandbox game does NOT need FFA PvP to be a sandbox.
We have great examples of FFA Full Loot MMOs that are successfull? Really? Name one FFA Full Loot MMO that has come on in the last 7 years that has been a success. Ill wait here......
One thing that make today's sandboxes less successful
PVP in general, far to much focus on it while a sandbox game should have pvp as a option but not the way it is presented today.
A sandbox should be about the options presented for the players as a choice, we already have plenty of themepark games that forces players into things, sandbox should focus on the freedom of the players where one can be a uncle Owen or be that grand Hero and both should be meaningfull but each in their own way's.
Unfortunaly we have the majority of gamers today that feel that when they pay for something they should get everything the game has to offer, just look at when people want housing yet the majority see's no use in housing and for some reason seem to be forced because they payed for the game they should get a house even though they do not like housing, same with crafting where we see people that don't like crafting don't want it in their game. Yet a sandbox should have all these elements and then some but all as a choice.
Again I take my own experiance with Star Wars Galaxies, you could be whatever you felt like being in that game, you could have a house, you could ignore housing, you could pvp, you also could ignore pvp, you could play the game pure for it's pve, you could als ignore most of the pve, well you get my point as SWG was about you and what you wanted to do within the universe of Star Wars, unlike certain games that tell you what you can do and how to do it.
I concur, well...mostly.
What a lot of FFA players do not understand is...if they want high subscriber numbers, they must make certain sacrifices. One of them is doing away with FFA PvP. Most players, myself included, will browse a game on their website, and if I for once even get a slight clue that FFA PvP is in the game, I close the window and forget about the game.
I do not want to take the risk of my hard earned items, tradeskill resources or weapons getting stolen by a random ganker having a bad day. Call me a carebear, call me a wimp, whatever. I'll call it a game not getting my money, ever.
And that is how a lot of other gamers feel. If these FFA PvP Sandbox games would actually release a server that had an option for PvP as per a flagging system like SWG and then hyped it, I'm positive they would get a larger subscriber base.
Content-- Not every game has to hand hold you through the process of character progression. I actually don't liek it when they do. I like to decide what I want to do and then do it, I don't need some quest giver telling me to go kill 10 rats to know that I want to kill 300 of them for tradeskill items later down the road.
A lot of people touting that they want a sandbox experience need to do away with this idea, they are actually causing more damage to the sandbox game than they are aware of.
In Pre-CU/NGE SWG I took out my newbie marksman with a cheaply bought rifle and started "Sniping" the missions from the mission terminals. I made a game of trying to kill the mobs before they got to me, and I got rather good at it.
In Entropia "My current game" if you expect it to be easy starting out, you are sorely mistaken. There are a few quests, but nothign that rewards loot, just ability points.
These are both Sandbox games, Entropia moreso than SWG, and they both are a blast to play. Also you know what? Neither of them are FFA PvP, well Entropia does have PvP, but that's in space, and guess where I have no plans to go. The planets are huge and the graphics are amazing, nuff said.
Eve Online.
Personally, I think what is holding back many sandox MMO's is just lack of funds. There are many great ideas out there and some talented developers, but unfortunately the people with money are still trying to cash in on what WoW had. People are afraid to pump money into something that might be innovative, at least it seems that way to me in the MMO industry at the moment.
Just because you set up your time-frame to exclude Eve doesn't mean it can't work. Eve works. It's not the FFA full loot PvP that causes those other games to not work. It's the crappy way the developers implemented the mechanics along with the fact that aside from grinding mobs or PvPing, there's nothing to do. No reason to explore. No reason to enjoy the world. No reason to participate in some sort of economy. The games are just crap and not because they are full loot pvp games.
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"Chemistry: 'We do stuff in lab that would be a felony in your garage.'"
The most awesomest after school special T-shirt:
Front: UNO Chemistry Club
Back: /\OH --> Bad Decisions
You have a point, but I think the point has more too it. What I mean is that these investors are trying to cash in on the success that WoW had, yes, but they are trying to do it by utilizing well known IP's. Without a well known IP any MMO, even a more casual game that is designed like WoW will not be able to get the kinds of investments to release a fully developed and polished MMO.
The other issue is that many things like FFA PvP chase off casual player, without the ability to bring in casual players an MMO is going to be nothing more than a niche success and like I said above fail to attrack the kind of investment that will make for a fully fleshed out game.
If Eve were to launch today the way it did in 2003 it might not even have survived 6 month, and certainly wouldn't have the kind of subscribership it has today.
The sandboxes that come out arent polished... this will kill any MMO themepark or sandbox alike.
Remember Old School Ultima Online
I have been playing EVE Online for about two years total and not once have I been attacked in hi sec space. That don't seem to FFA to me.
I guess it depends on how you interpret FFA PVP.
I feel the second part of your post is spot on. Without money it's hard to put out a quality game let alone support it.
Yes, it doesnt matter the genre or even the medium, if its an unfinished product it will fail unless you have one hell of a jingle to go along with it.
The latest sandbox have been P2P, it's too expensive, they fail right out of the gate.
But really that's not a cause as much as it is a symptom. Do you really think designers want to ship unfinished games to the market? No, they really don't. They just don't have the money to keep working on them, and the investors they do have, usually run out of patients quickly.
Yet you could be attacked in hi-sec, while it hasn't happened to you means you are either smart or lucky but ask a lot of Hulk and Golem pilots about the joys of getting suicide ganked (and don't forget wardecs)
But I'll agree, EVE's success lies in the fact it let's the player more or less control the amount of risk/loss they take and if you fly smart you're pretty much never going to die when you weren't expecting to.
Most modern sandboxes have been underfunded indie attempts with poor quality, lack of feature, uncontrolled PVP (no consequences for ganking) and no way for the average player to control his risk/loss.
EVE is more of a sandpark than typical sandbox, but its not the only way to go.
FFA/full loot is not necessary for a good sandbox, a quite passible game can be created such as Lineage 2 which had some drops in it but certainly not full loot. Shadowbane was another good example of how to do it, let players keep their equipped gear, but anything in the backpack dropped.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I kind of agree, but nobody is going to like the idea of a price hike in the future. My thoughts are that developers could offer their game at a reduced price at the start and just reduce the reduction as the game progresses.
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The problem with most sandboxes is developers think that sandbox means no limit, and they make a lot of their game mechanics without limits and that makes just about everything meaningless in the game. As others have stated FFA-PvP is constantly built incorrectly by development teams. FFA-PvP doesn't mean that players can attack each other without consequence, but should just enable players the ability to fight where ever they please.
Every PvP encouter should come with some sort of econcomical, political, or social risk.
Honstley, as of late ive been thinking a lot of these companies are just aiming for a 'shippable product' and not necessarily something with any longevity and its quite sad. MMO's are turning in to a get rich quick scheme and with all the cash shops being brought into play its becoming painfully obvious on just about every level of shame, for the most part.
The MAIN reason why they aint successful is because of WoW...ppl get soo brainwashed by this game that they all think every MMO shoudl be exactly like it and if it is exactly like it they must bash it and not play it, When they get intoa game taht requires skill and some grinding they all bitch and whinne about it....take Darkfall for example...ppl bitch n whine over it because its sooo difficult and get PKed....
WoW is the problem and needs to be perma banned from the RL World to make way fopr actuall skill required mmos with out the pop of pre teens in there underwear.
I think it could be psychological bias eg "Going shopping in the food market on an empty stomache you will tend to overspend/overbuy" ie in games looking for a good game, players will tend to choose flashy graphics first in a similar decision-bias making capacity?...
eg Case Study: Outer Empires, I recently got back into after initially being put off over 11 months ago by the cheap feel of the 2D graphics... since come back and for whatever reason *full stomache?!* this time I'm loving the sandbox. It's free for the moment and comes with a something like $3.75 per month sub and various options of subbing... cheap as chips.
I think EvE works because it's had time to develop and a community that is very established and "worked" towards a certain complexity? I've got to test this baby in a month or 2 when I get the time...
I think open-pvp in some situations is a MUST eg for cooperation there is the flip of competition to be a truly open experience. You will have players who want to help and protect like the good shepherd and pirates that look at other players like a wolf looks at that shepherd's flock of sheep and salivates... : D
Eg here's an exerpt from my current case study: Outer Empires: A Faction in this mmo sandbox (see sig) description:
eg even FFA can cause a reaction to this action that benefits the game!
I think this is the biggest hurdle from my current research into sandbox mmos. It's much easier going from
Bad Graphics => Good Graphics than visa-versa
,coming back to the graphics in sandbox mmos which (lower investment/indy/alternative/more abstract etc) tend to have lower graphics standards, imo is a BIG FACTOR which then leads to the snowball of smaller communities and if you apply an extinction drift model to small populations this exacerbates the challenge for these games getting off the ground.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem