Hey Sup Forums, what happened to sandbox MMOs...

Hey Sup Forums, what happened to sandbox MMOs? And I don't mean those that are ONLY focused on building shit like Wurm Online, I mean proper "virtual world" MMOs where you can do anything and they're accepting of various playstyles (PvP, raiding, socializing, exploring, crafting, economy, politics etc.) and you can focus on yours but still do a little bit of others too.

From what I've gathered in the past few years, ti seems that sandbox MMOs have devolved into two things: P2W cash shop games where you literally have to buy things for your house/city/whatever in the shop, and small server-size survival multiplayer games where you generally build defenses against zombies and such and get fucked up by Russian hackers and nothing is very persistent.

Anyway, discuss!

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You're just begging this to be shilled aren't you?

Mortal online

People realized match making was what they wanted all along.

If you mean gankbox MMOs, people realized they're flawed shit and can never really succeed.

Well, it's not like it exists, apparently it's still in KS stage, so who gives a shit. They already got their free money so they don't even have to make a decent game now.

That game will be a major disappointment.

I always wanted to like that conceptually, but its just broken on a fundamental level for what it's trying to achieve. You can't have a justice system where the nature of a player's crime is determined by a built in alignment/guilt system. If a player decides to aggress against another there's no ultimate way to flag who was really 'in the right' based on a convoluted system of statuses and cool-downs that people are going to game.

People like this is why they are dead.

>1 million dollars raised
>You can do anything!
Quality scam, but Star Citizen is still the con king.

I actually backed it, based on the principal that if anyone is ever going to do something like this and make it not shit, this is the last semi-realistic chance at anything coming about. There's a fair chance I've wasted my money the player interaction and incentives in this seem to have been actually thought out in a non half-assed way and I'd rather go down trying while knowing the risk rather than never supporting it at all.

>let's kill everyone in the game until they quit
>wow nobody plays this shit anymore

I just want game that lets me be blacksmith or something like in Puzzle Pirates

>I hate meaningful competition

Protip: when you give someone free money before they do the job, they tend to do a half-assed bare-minimum-not-to-be-sued job.

>meaningful
>literally who has the largest group wins

Does this count? Used to be addicted to it, although it did generally involve spending money.

So? You gather a group of your own and return to take your place back. That was fun. This sanitized and safe bullshit is boring.

Or even sometimes, accept the loss and move on somewhere else.

But ofc people need to win every time.

That game would be gold if people didn't hack every fucking puzzle.

Sure, invite Goons and make it even more fun.

>I'm too autistic to play with other people because it resembles a social situtation

Goons just got btfo by plebbit scrubs in eve who are now skirmishing among themselves and having a pretty fun time

The normalfags won. Instead of living an alternate life in a virtual gameworld, you have people who just want to shoot the shit with their already existing real life buddies while watching numbers go up.

>Or even sometimes, accept the loss and move on somewhere else
But that's literally what happens when people quit the game. It's no fun to get stomped repeatedly because you don't have as high numbers, and no one will stick to a game that isn't fun to them. Then they quit and people bitch that there's no longer anyone playing.

itt fotm shitter trying to obscurely shitpost about black desert because he's moved onto next fotm game like the little shitter pleb he is

>I'm not good at it, and don't like losing:the post

Never even played Black Desert, but it amuses me that you chose to read it that way.

>numbers = being good
Or are you implying that numbers don't make the entire difference in these games?

>half-assed bare-minimum-not-to-be-sued job

That's kind of why I backed it, because even if most of it sucks, which I actively expect to be the case, it will still be better than most MMOs because the basic, minimalist design should encourage higher quality player interaction than anything else on the market, and that should be enough. If the combat is shit and just about poking sticks at the other man, and you bet it will be, that's enough. I don't expect them to deliver on the whole super dungeon creation thing either, but just basic shit like housing, contracts, death and such are just basically decent enough that I'll consider them me only hope of having a proper MMO that isn't Eve: Spreadsheet simulator.

That's the core of why I've given money to them and not Darkfall or Mortal Online, neither of which I trust to ever deliver the shit I care about.

Not really fun to constantly have to compete with faggots who WILL kill you.

>shitter pleb still trying to lie

If all the people who quit because they got their shit pushed in formed a group instead of crying then they could have probably retaken this hypothetical thing back. What's not fun about that? You get ganked, an enemy force has taken some of your land, so you go and gather allies to win it back, or you go take something of theirs to compensate.

That is what MMO's should be like.

>implying there is any sort of meaningful socialization in those situations

You get a huge circlejerk with an inner group of egocentric retards leading a wider group of cocksuckers that hope to be noticed someday.

Strategy and skill are also determining factors, at least in the MMO's I've played. Some are better than others, maybe you should find the right one.

Depends on balance.
Eve got shit because CCP succumbed to goons refusing to adapt to people with big toys. Tracking titans weren't actually that OP, they only thing they murdered was MWD sig bloom drakes, and so goons only flew those against tracking titans instead of something like AHACs which were shown to counter them a few times.

Fozziesov is a meta change that was long overdue and exposed goons for the terrible group of players they are.

Except you can't always form a group the size of people who organize things from a huge forum completely outside the game.

i feel like the only reason this managed to get funded over stuff like trials of ascension is because these devs understood the value of having something to show first before asking for money for a semi-permadeath game

Out of all the MMOs I played, I feel like Mabinogi was the only one that did it in a way that was the closest to being fun.

While personally I feel like they failed to execute a lot of their ideas well, I appreciate the fact that you could do so much without having to swing a sword.

Mortal Online and Darkfall Online should still be alive.

Eve newbies who are involved in pvp in their first month are 80% more likely to remain subbed.

EVE died because it became P2W when they officially allowed RMT.

>pretending he can read minds and projecting his inner retard on other people

Plex isn't p2w, skill injectors aren't even that bad desu

Eve died because the meta was stagnant for too long and the PVE is absolutely awful with no roadmap for change.

>why do people stop playing games that aren't fun to play?

>Plex isn't p2w
How is being able to pay for unlimited replacement ships and buy anything that exists in the game with real money not P2W?

darkfall online has 2 dev groups trying to make their own revive projects. one is in paid beta now.

Rise of Agon and New Dawn.

Not sure which will be the better one yet though

>Hey Sup Forums, what happened to sandbox MMOs?

Everyone else realized that SANDBOX > THEMEPARK was CCP's advertising department doing work back when EVE was still in full Guerilla marketing mode, and so went back to making whatever the fuck they wanted instead of trying to ride the imaginary hype train of Sandbox bullshit.

The problem is that 99% of "sandbox" mmo's are too afraid to take the final step to allow players to be in charge of everything.

EVERYTHING should be player driven. People come together to become guilds, the guilds build cities, the leaders become "kings", death is not necessarily permanent but something to be feared to the point that you'll avoid it by any costs necessary, economies are decided by players, people can be merchants, warriors, bards blah blah. Not because of any skill or class that says that's what they are, but because that's what they fuckin' do.

No one has the balls to go that far, so you always get some pseudo-sandbox that just ends up essentially a themepark with no fucking content.

EVE is one of the few examples where the players can really decide things, but it's still not enough.

Wasn't one of them already closed indefinitely?

Not that i know of. They've barely even started

They could be, but Darkfall turned into the complete gankfest focused community it did ages ago and couldn't give a shit about the politics it was originally supposed to support. Mortal Online is just a bunch of shit slapped together without real vision that I cant ever see turning into something great.

>s-s-socializing triggers m-my autism!

>Hey Sup Forums, what happened to sandbox MMOs?
pasta inc

Older MMOs tended to have both sheep and wolves playing the same games, since they were the only games around. Now, the sheep play games where they cannot be hunted, and the wolves keep starving in search of prey.

For a sandbox to be successful, it needs both sheep and wolves. But if a sheep can choose a completely safe fold, rather than the fold where the wolves can come in, why would they choose the latter?

I don't think that this (You) was meant for me.

>>No one has the balls to go that far, so you always get some pseudo-sandbox that just ends up essentially a themepark with no fucking content.

That's because 99% of the players are retards and game systems are easily exploitable.

For example, if you let players build a city entirely from scratch, it's going to be a borg cube instead of an actual medieval-looking city. And that applies to any other gameplay system.

The problem with that idea is that you will get some three months of a good game, and then someone wins, becomes the hegemonic group reaping all benefits from it and it's virtually impossible to overthrow them, and then the game dies. It's happened a hundred times before. The only way to avoid this happening is to make the game huge enough.

I don't disagree, I'm just point out exactly why we don't have such things. I don't think it's impossible to have a truly player driven game, but the time and investment would probably not be worth the pay off.

Nothing better than building your own settlement that is then destroyed by group of angry Russians that have too much time at hand. Pure joy.

Hence, why I'm supporting Elyria, it's the only thing I can see that actually has the balls to do this whole-assed and realizes what a mistake it would be to try to fall back on 'safe' features that only end up as things players would exploit because other players cant decide to take things into their own hands and intervene.

Server-based wurm is pretty comfy

It's perfectly possible to have a sandbox game that's just as player driven without bullshit like that happening though, as long as you define roles that make sense in the gameworld, and encourage the "spirit of the game" through the game mechanics. It just requires developers who actually want to make a good game, not just put something out and not give a shit about what's happening in it.

I can give you a few examples from SWG if you don't think it would be too boring.

Eh, I have bad news for you, CoE is exactly like that too. People apparently read a few lines about the game and believe the game is specifically how they want it to be. The developers have already stared several times that the game will be merciless with people who commit crimes, NPCs won't have deals with you, and whatnot. The game has set in stone systems and you can only really do what has been programmed by devs.

>That's because 99% of the players are retards and game systems are easily exploitable.

And that's exactly why you want thing to be as player driven as possible, because exploits arise when players only sort of have control, but there are also system enforced things that players can't do shit to. If you have safe zones, gankers will use those safe zones to protect shit. If you have an automatic justice system, people will find edge cases. If you don't have these things, then there is nothing to completely hide you from the wrath of other players, who may well exile you.

Pretty much this, I used to love the idea of sandbox MMO's till I realized they die very quickly as they are lawless shit holes full of man children.

i want to get into wurm but never have really. is there a significant difference browser wurm and unlimited?

Because paying for unlimited replacement ships isn't winning. It doesn't fulfill a victory condition.

I'm guessing you haven't played eve much

>lawless
balance the incentives to hunt down murderers

>Because paying for unlimited replacement ships isn't winning. It doesn't fulfill a victory condition.
Fuck off autistic retard.

>We're on kickstarter
It will be shit.

>Just form another group! Surely everyone has a horde of autistic manchildren dedicated to roaming around fucking shit up exactly like me and my friends!

Nah nigga, I play alone cause its my hobby, my other friends are grown up with kids so they don't play this shit.

I guess that the problems are:

A) It's hard to make a game that will work like that

B) It's hard to get a game like that and still be balanced, without just making the first guy in power the king of everything forever.

C) It means that hackers and gold farmers will have an even more adverse effect on the game.

D) Everyone will just look up the same 4 guides on how to optimize their character to be as OP as possible, might as well have classes to at least force people to co-operate. Plus, with so much focus on player driven gameplay no one will dare risk making a gimmick or fun build in case they gimp themselves and are never able to compete. Everyone will just play it safe.

E) It relies too much on people playing the game because they enjoy it and not setting out to dick everyone else over. Or continuing to play the game instead of just stopping and screwing with the game's economy/politics through their absence.

G) It would intimidate potential players. What would motivate them to play an MMO that's a year old and run by an established old boy's club leadership?

Nothing better than ganking the shit out of people who try to p2w in eve and get salty about it.

That's already the devs intervening into the "player-defined" world though. The truth is that you will never get a beautiful setting with realistic law system in a game full of internet retards that play just to destroy everything others want to build.

This discussion about sandbox MMO's remided me about those play-by-post games. They are basically forum based free form roleplaying.

I did some reading and there are not only a few role play threads in game forums with deep lore, but there are entire forums dedicated to that thing.

Perhaps I should join one of them. I don't know which though.

Tell me how do you "gank" someone who can buy the best possible character with all skills for the best possible ship and repeat this ad infinitum?

Is the Sup Forums Wurm thing still going on? I was playing towards the end of April but the server stopped appearing in my browser so I haven't played it since then. Was a shame too because I was making my house in Browaii.

As far as I can tell, just the absence of a monthly fee and the restrictions on skills and shit that came with not being premium. I think some of the items behave differently, but I can't be sure because the wiki for Wurm is exclusively for the MMO Version.

>playing MMO's alone

>give incentives
Dev interference and thus not sandbox
>hunt down murderers

You see the problem with the entire sandbox mmo thing is that it has real world freedom without real world consequence. We don't rob, rape, loot, and sack because we cant just log out and be safe. When people can kill, gank, and then just log out till the heat dies down, it makes the entire sandbox system moot and pointless, its a chaos riddled shit hole..

WHen they CANT, then its just a system of waiting till the kids go to bed then killing them while they sleep...which is equally bullshit.

>playing MMO's period

>Dev interference and thus not sandbox
You don't understand the definition of sandbox if that's what you think. The entire game itself is "dev interference".

I always played MMOs alone, sandbox ones even, and always had great fun doing it.

For example, playing a bounty hunter or a smuggler in SWG was great even with no guild or anyone backing you. You could also have a steady supply of money as a crafter who crafted only basic things - for example having a little swoop shop where you sold swoop bikes and vehicle customization kits.

Yeah, that guy is getting into some really weird territory.

I miss SWG. Why do nice things have to get ruined?

Because WoW

Ok, I find fun in getting good and beating the people who beat me eventually; I guess this isn't for everyone.

Also game devs need to balance around skill rather than items or you can never "catch up"

Also people must drop some of their bag/armour when then die.

Thing about sandbox MMOs is that the Russians/Chinese always win. They are a swarm. They do not sleep. Games like Rust or Reign of Kings aren't fun when chinks or ruskis are in a group playing 24/7 raiding people during unsociable hours.

Appeals to a niche crowd though, definitely. Hear stories of people who play EVE in the bigger corps and they get text messages from their leaders during the day to tell them to get on and take part in a big fight.

Some chinese prisons force their prisoners to farm wow gold for westerners to buy.

>A) It's hard to make a game that will work like that

Yep, it'd be a ballsy undertaking for sure.

>B) It's hard to get a game like that and still be balanced, without just making the first guy in power the king of everything forever.

In a player-driven game, a "king" only has the power the players give him.

>D) Everyone will just look up the same 4 guides on how to optimize their character to be as OP as possible, might as well have classes to at least force people to co-operate. Plus, with so much focus on player driven gameplay no one will dare risk making a gimmick or fun build in case they gimp themselves and are never able to compete. Everyone will just play it safe.

It's not truly sandbox and player-driven if there are classes or skills. These are things that tell you what you are. The player should be the one telling the game what they are with their own skills and abilities to play the game. Wanna be a merchant? Make smart trades and understand market flow. Wanna be a warrior? git gud. Wanna be a cook? Learn the recipes and cook the shit. I do think stats to some degree are important, for example if you "train" often you'll be stronger

>E) It relies too much on people playing the game because they enjoy it and not setting out to dick everyone else over. Or continuing to play the game instead of just stopping and screwing with the game's economy/politics through their absence.

A truly sandbox game would mimic real life. People set out to do things that are in their own best interests and you determine if those interests line up with yours or they're just bullshitting you to back stab you.

>G) It would intimidate potential players. What would motivate them to play an MMO that's a year old and run by an established old boy's club leadership?

I don't understand why it would intimidate new players. I mean shit, you could always find something to do even if it's bringing lots of smaller guilds together to challenge the "king" or something.

Would be cool if dickass thieves have black market area for their own dickery dealing

sandboxes are about winning AND losing

problem is that most of the people wont stay in the game after they lose once. I have been playing Mortal Online for years now and while its a complete turd, theres not much to choose from. It was the real Darkfall that had its servers shutdown last week. So theres now 2 fanprojects left but not the "real" one.

I started MO in a small guild but we quickly realised that a small guild would have unnecessary hard times between the massive alliances. So we formed our own zerg and we ruled for a while but then inactivity hit and we got annihilated. I stayed and played with a smaller group. We got bullied by big alliances and guilds daily and in the end our entire city was leveled down just becouse. We relocated and started gathering new allies and friends. In just over a year, we were part of one of the strongest growing alliances in the game. Our old enemies made few major mistakes that allowed us to go into open war with them. We won the war and destroyed those that had bullied us. We ruled as one of the biggest alliance for years, but as all ruling factions, we would not rule for ever and in the end inactivity hit our alliance again and we got destroyed by new and old enemies. Now Im living in a small guild again.

Its constant forward and backward walking and I love it. One major problem that I see tho, is the fact that theres no survival aspect in the game. So when theres not struggle of survival, theres no proper economy. When the economy is stagnant, it doesnt encourage people to backstab their friends. When you dont have a single reason to backstab anyone, it turns the game into very few "factions". That consist of people who have played together for years. These factions that take turns as the leading alliance and the politics are deadly boring and unsurprising.

If only one of these upcoming sandboxes like Life is Feudal MMO or Chronicles of elyria, would realise that a proper economy is a source of unlimited content.

The programmer has a salt lamp for EMF.

Yay, programmers aware of their ultimate creativity kill.

This game could do good on that alone.

I feel like Rust does Sandboxes pretty well. The key to a good sandbox MMO or anything is that you have to make the players really feel like they're earning everything through hard work. Then they attribute value to their digital progress and won't act like wonton retards.

>play rust
>build a base next to a few neighbours
>at first we are hostile
>constant back and forth battling
>we finally get sick of losing all our shit to each other and to other invaders
>sign a peace treaty
>soon we develop into a town
>then a village when more people join
>chaos turned into order out of the sheer desire not to lose our hard work

That's the key, Of course we raped and pillaged other stragglers and clans forming that posed a threat. But that's for them to deal with..

>the leaders become "kings"
HOL UP

>have mental issues that make social interaction difficult
>play a game involving social interaction
Exactly what degree of autismo is necessary for this?

The kind that kills MMORPGs.

I was full hype for this game, even 250 for baron title, then, as i was explaining the game to a bro, as i was listening to myself practically shill the game, i realized i had 0 proof of concept. Everything was the proverbial communist "everything will be amazing i swear"

my hype has died down because of this, but im still optimistic for it

As for the OP, the best you can do, apart from indie servers for SW:G and wurm online, is MAYBE Albion online, very guild/company meta, but very build your own characters identity

WoW challenged everyone and SOE tried to compensate by nuking the sandbox system and turning it similar to WoW

turns out you can't have an autistic hybrid game with half-assed gameplay/sandbox mechanics, but it was star wars so it kinda stayed for a few years

I actually managed my gf to play this game with me. FINALLY after 3 years i found her gateway drug.