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A true sandbox game -- Ryzom
Ryzom is a true sandbox.
I know there's a ton of threads about what a sandbox is, whether some games are sandboxes, etc. So here's +1 more 
No Classes
There are no classes in Ryzom, just skills to be learned. Everyone can use all skills, at any time. The only limit is what the player has leveled that skill to, and what actions the player has created for that skill
No Pre-made Actions
There are no pre-made actions in Ryzom, no Fireball+1 spells, etc. Every action the player makes, whether prospecting, harvesting, crafting, fighting, casting, or healing, has to be created by the user. For example, you want to hit an enemy with your sword. You have to create an action to do this, made out of components of sword damage, speed, endurance costs, aim, etc. Maybe you want a faster hit rate? You can trade off for more stamina cost, less accuracy, less damage, etc.
The point here, is that everything the player does, has to be created by the player. Except walking and running, I guess
No Quests
There are no quests, except very simple ones to earn a bit of money, or build faction. No quest hubs, no storylines to follow, nobody with a ? over their heads, no progression of one zone to the next.
No Instances
There are no instances, except for housing. The world is wide open, with no zones (except a few between major lands). You can play from 1-250 and never change a zone.
Everything is Player Made
The only drops are materials, "mats", used to craft things. Armor, weapons, etc, never drop from mobs. There are also no weapons, armor, etc, on the vendors; well, there are, but they only carry low level generic items. Any decent piece of armor, weapon, etc, is player made.
There are also no pre-made recipes, players have to learn what mats are best to make what kind of item. There are basic outlines only; for example: to make range ammo, you need three types of item: something sharp, some kind of shaft, and some kind of weight. The sharp thing could be a tooth from a mob, or a seashell, etc. There are multiple types of each item, and multiple grades. Learning your own secret recipe to make something is a guarded secret, especially for magic items.
A Virtual World
Ryzom is a true virtual world. There are seasons, where the plants change, snow falls, the mobs migrate in herds to a new area. Predators will attack prey, and then go sleep in their dens. Rain falls, and some mats can only be dug up when it is wet, and in the fall, and at night, for example.
A True Sandbox
Probably the first question people ask when they land in the game, is "What am I supposed to do now?" And the answer is, whatever you want to do. It is confusing, there is no NPC there with a ? over their head to get you started, no task to complete, no place to visit.
So what is there to do, really? There are some Outposts that produce special mats, people PvP over the ownership of these. Other than that, you can level your skills, and make stuff, that is about it. You can group up to kill stuff, or gather mats, or go after boss level creatures. But there are no dungeons to conquer, no fancy armor to win, no magic weapon to take from a boss, no quests to gain access to a special area.
It is this lack of direction that is the reason many people don't like sandboxes. If you want to live in a virtual world, creating everything of value in the game, including your own actions, then a sandbox is for you.
But if you want entertainment, like going to a movie, or seeing how a neat story unfolds, then you probably don't like sandboxes very much.
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2024: 47 years on the Net.
Comments
I tried the game and altough I commend them for creating a sandbox MMO, the game felt way too boring with very few players around which more or less forced you to craft, and I dont much like crafting, so I quit.
Also the races were weird, couldnt identify with any of them.
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Ryzon falls short in one very key area for a sandbox (at least for me), lack of signicant territory control and land holding mechanics. I need a reason to play, and I just couldn't find one when I logged into Ryzom.
Well, that and the fact it was a virtual ghostown when I tried it (was during one of its limbo phases)
Always seems to be a mistake to say to people, you are free to do what ever you want to do. Better to tell them why they'd want to do anything, or at the end of the day they'll do nothing and go play another game.
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Ryzom was/is a excellent sandpark MMO hardly a sandbox, good game though when it was new.
Some innovating Ideas like animal migration and animals hunted on another, the world felt more organic.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
I wasnt big on the primative sandbox system of making you do everything.
I wanted better melee i had to skill on magic and crafting...there was no way to avoid it. I had to be everything.
A lot of that games systems were really over rated too. Skill creation was nice, but there wasnt any variety in it...all the weapons had a set effect ect.
The life of the world was another huge draw, but its just scriped mobs that move from point A to point B and if they get close enough to predators the predators attack the herd mobs. Ok it was a nice thing back in 2003 or whatever i guess.
IMO theres good reason the games been dead the entierty of its life...its a very basic and primative sandbox. I commend the effort and the fact that its out there however.
It really misses the all important meta game...a sandbox with no meta game is a themepark with no raids and battlegrounds. A sandbox with a simple and one track metagame, such as just territory control, is like a themepark with 3 raids and 3 battlegrounds. Basic.
Modern sandboxes need to move away from the "lol yaya we have pvp people" as the focus, and add some real meta games. Dont take the pvp out..but FFS give people something to do while they are not at war.
I played around with the game. And in some ways I was very intrgued with it. Ryzom has a hard learning curve along with the mobs hit very hard. Dont get me wrong I love hard, and that makes grouping important, its just that the game is very old.
Now if they ever came out with Ryzom 2 with the same mechanics and hard just made better, I would be playing it !
ITS NOT A SANDBOX
if you cant build building if you cant create perment fixture if you cant make changes to the world its not a sand box
it is nothing more then a game with no content useing snad box as a excuse for lazy programing im tired of people promoteing these kind of games as sandboxs
F2P may be the way of the future, but ya know they dont make them like they used to
Proper Grammer & spelling are extra, corrections will be LOL at.
I tried it briefly, and although the mechanics were interesting, I quickly got caught in a leveling trap where I was no longer getting significant experience from the things I could do, but couldn't survive doing the things that would get me experience.
I was hoping to get comments on what makes a sandbox, I doubt many people will play Ryzom, especially since it is close to 10 years old now.
So you maintain that to be a real sandbox, players have to be able to build structures and change the world? Take a game like WoW, and add some areas where players can build things, does that make it a sandbox?
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2024: 47 years on the Net.
yes and no, it would depend on the extent to which you could do it, i doubt WoW would allow players to build and make perment changes to thier world where ever they wanted, heck they wouldnt evenb e able to set up areas to build in cause it would fill to fast, instead a instanced building area would need to be done instead.
a good example of a true sand box would be SWG, even if it was ruined by freaking patchs.
a true sand box needs for basics
open world
world can have changes made to it
perment structures can be built or destroyed
ecconmy based on players
creatable content via player interaction
basicly a sandbox isnt a sand box if you cant build or destroy in it, just makeing a open world with a crafting system and no content isnt a sand box i can do the in WoW via just skipping all the cntent and pretending it dousnt exist
F2P may be the way of the future, but ya know they dont make them like they used to
Proper Grammer & spelling are extra, corrections will be LOL at.
I thought about putting this thread in the Ryzom discussion, but really, I wanted it to be more about what makes a real sandbox.
So far, the biggest differences are:
- no player created structures, no player "towns", and
- no territory control, aside from owning an Outpost.
If a game had these two things: player created structures, and player controlled territory, would it be considered a sandbox? What if it had fixed skill trees, fixed levels, and classes? Still a sandbox?
What if you had to do quests from quest givers at quest hubs, in order to gain player controlled territory and be able to build your own structures? A sandbox?
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2024: 47 years on the Net.
Not specifically about those things, its about being able to impact the world. Territory control and player created structures are just two common ways that achieve that goal.
Classes alone don't make a sandbox, Istaria has classes but it lets you learn every class. Quests have nothing to do with sandbox. A sandbox can have as many quests as wow does.
It's about how much freedeom you have and the impact you can have on the world. The more freedom, the more impact, the more sandboxy it is, but there is never a snigle line where when you cross it it now becomes a sandbox.
Wows skill tree gives more options in making your class than EQ's class system did, therefore WoW in that aspect is more sandboxy. However EQ was open open world that WoW isgiving you more freedom to travel so EQ is more sandboxy than wow in that aspect.
edit - actually it is about player created content, but unless you have the code you really can't create the content, then it is about the developers giving tools to use the content in ways that generate content structures and territory are simple ways of doing that, as is making your own character.
Based on some of the definitions of 'sandbox' on here, about the only sandbox game I can think of would be Minecraft. Nothing else allows players to build and destroy anything, and change the world in lasting ways. I've played a ton of games, from text MUDs on through the rise of modern MMO's, and I can't think of anything that really satisfies the 'change anything' requirements. I'd also argue that having in game mechanics that allow territory control interferes with the sandbox thing. I mean... isn't the idea that the players get to decide how the game plays? What if I don't like the way territory control works, and I think if I can spawn-camp you, and keep you at bay, that makes it my territory.
To me, the term sandbox just means it doesn't tell you where to go and what to do all the time. There are many examples, including Ryzom, EVE, and Fallen Earth. All have some created content, but also allow you to do your own thing. Even with it's Concord controlled areas, I'd say EVE takes the cake for player-driven gameplay, although the learning curve is beyond steed for new players.
GTA, and Morrowind aren't sandboxes??? It sounds more like you're defining a sandbox as a game I like.
Also Ryzom does have territory control, it's where catalyzers come from(exp boosters) along with a few other ingrediants. They've even made a recent update to where the catalyzers can be gathered a bit less often so they aren't free distributed(IE force more PvP).
I will say Ryzom is a sandbox, but at the same time it's a lot more directed than most other MMOs I'd call sandboxes. It also refused to drop some of the level/power tier drudge that it inherited from MMOs 10 years ago(But lets be honest not even EvE or Darkfall have done the same).
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Good post except this out of place comment at the end
Are you trying to tell me if I don't like Ryzom in particular then i don't like sandboxes at all? Because that would just be rediculous
Movies are plot-based, they tell a story. I am saying that this is a different kind of activity than playing a sandbox, where there is little or no pre-made story, no ending. If you play games for their story, then a sandbox is probably not for you.
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2024: 47 years on the Net.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
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What else is there to do in a sandbox besides crafting? And building things?
In a standard theme-park, you take a "ride" in a dungeon, and when you emerge victorius, you normally have some kind of loot, or badge. But in a sandbox without dungeons and "loot", what else is there to do?
You can go fight boss monsters, but all they will drop is mats that you can use to craft special stuff.
The only other option I can think of is territory control, you can PvP.
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2024: 47 years on the Net.
You have an extremely narrow view on what a sandbox can be and what rewards are possible. You do know that dungeons are just as valid content in a sandbox as they are in themeparks? Just like normal adventuring works for both. It's all in how it is presented and how much hand holding is going on. The main point is to not be railroaded down a singular path whether it's the flow of content or the style of play or stifling the reward system to a singular play style ( crafting).
Ryzom has the most organic open world, a complex crafting system, dynamic lore (did you know many players can speak fyrosian in game) , open skill system, the best gathering of raw materials mechanic of any MMO to date.
The players attention span time requirement is a bit higher to your regular mainstream player of today, that spared Ryzom from gaining a bad playerbase too.
But if you a clever player not minding the lack of cheap sensualism of todays "MMORPG's" you will like it.
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