If FFXIV is a theme park MMO, what other types of MMOs are there?

[Velisra]

Trove might fit in to the "sandbox" MMO category. Minecraft-ish, but MMO.

[squidbunny]

Saying there are no sandbox games seems pretty silly; it's not some kind of unattainable Platonic ideal. On the Sandbox <----------> Theme Park continuum plenty of games have fallen far closer to Sandbox. UO, once upon a time, EVE Online, Darkfall (before they uh, "fixed" it), Mortal Online, Entropia, Elite: Dangerous. There's a billionty. They're not all excellent but they're out there.

[Marxam]

[KisaiTenshi]

Saying there are no sandbox games seems pretty silly; it's not some kind of unattainable Platonic ideal. On the Sandbox <----------> Theme Park continuum plenty of games have fallen far closer to Sandbox. UO, once upon a time, EVE Online, Darkfall (before they uh, "fixed" it), Mortal Online, Entropia, Elite: Dangerous. There's a billionty. They're not all excellent but they're out there.

The problem is that "sandbox" is just a keyword used in marketing and has absolutely no bearing on the "sandbox-worthiness" of the game.

For a game to be a true sandbox, it has to be a persistent world that functions regardless if the player is in it or not. UO originally started that way. But sharding and spamability of monsters demotes it to Themepark.

A true Sandbox MMO:
1) Is "ONE" world, not a dozen copies of one, and does not instance out of "fairness" but for local capacity.
2) Is not indelible, the world must be changable by the players without the server needing to be patched to change the content
3) Has an entity-driven market, whereby you can't simply harvest infinite materials and dump them on the market for infinite money.
4) Has an entity-driven combat, whereby you can't simply kill everyone and everything and not have players and "autonomous" entities attempt to capture or kill you.
5) Has an entity-driven "enmity" rumor mill. Hence, if you go around drowning cats and kicking dogs, and someone (player or entity) notices it, it will make them hostile to you until they forget about it. If you want to go roam around with a pack of wolves and help them kill cows, the wolves will befriend you but the cows will want to kill you.
6) Has a realistic physics environment. If you cut the foundation out from under a building, the building is going to collapse. If someone builds a catapult, you should be able to use it defensively, aggressively, or even launch yourself from it, and die if you hit a solid wall.
7) The rules of the Sandbox is dictated by those who play in it. The server only assists in enforcement of such rules, marking rule breakers and rule enforcers, but letting players decide how to deal with it.

Like the entire idea of a sandbox MMO runs counter to the rule of fun. Hence why none exist, and those that call themselves a sandbox are nothing but a themepark with a few sandbox ideas used to expand the amount of time-sinks. A crafting system alone does not make a game a sandbox, but that is what Marketers seem to think it means. Placable housing seems to be another element often touted as sandbox'ish. Games that wish they were sandbox games are often also primarily PvP games because that's the only way to add fun to an otherwise bloodlust competition.

A MMO is a Themepark if ANY of below are true:
1. Monsters (and NPC's) respawn on a schedule, and do NOT spawn based on environmental conditions.
2. Quests can be repeated for the same reward.
3. NPC's stand in the same spot regardless of environmental conditions.
4. NPC's will buy all items and junk, regardless of quality, and have infinite money
5. Any Immortal NPC's

[Bishop81]

Long story short, a sandbox MMO is player-driven.

What happens in the game world is primarily due to player action. A castle has a new king? It's because a bunch of players grouped up to make it so.

Theme park MMOs are developer-driven.

Generally anything significant that happens is because the developers willed it so. A castle has a new king? It's because the story line said so.

In theme park MMOs, players are more or less "just along for the ride". While in sandbox MMOs, players (as a collective) have control over the state of the game world.

Eve Online is a good example of a sandbox MMO. The story is "written" by the players and their corporations. The developers pretty much just "record" it.

[Meya]

They are just marketing words or buzzwords. I personally hate sandbox games because they are so damn boring, no direction and no purpose. and Eve isn't a good example of a sandbox since it still has you going from point a to point b. Second Life might be the closest thing to a true Sandbox mmo with world being created by it's players and no one else.

[Bishop81]

They are just marketing words or buzzwords. I personally hate sandbox games because they are so damn boring, no direction and no purpose. and Eve isn't a good example of a sandbox since it still has you going from point a to point b. Second Life might be the closest thing to a true Sandbox mmo with world being created by it's players and no one else.

There are differing levels of "sandbox-ness".

Second Life is the extreme case of it.

Even FFXIV has sandbox elements, namely the Market Board - it is still indirectly regulated via drop rates and availability on vendors but is mostly player driven. However most of FFXIV is themepark and developer driven - an easy way to tell is to just observe what happens when the developer pauses the game updates, if players "have nothing to do" than it's primarily themepark.

[Meya]

There are differing levels of "sandbox-ness".

Second Life is the extreme case of it.

Even FFXIV has sandbox elements, namely the Market Board - it is still indirectly regulated via drop rates and availability on vendors but is mostly player driven. However most of FFXIV is themepark and developer driven - an easy way to tell is to just observe what happens when the developer pauses the game updates, if players "have nothing to do" than it's primarily themepark.

So basically we as players can ignore the term.

[Bishop81]

So basically we as players can ignore the term.

I feel that is the lazy way out and just dismissing the entire topic.

While there are various degrees of sandbox-ness, MMOs still can be grouped into separate themepark and sandbox categories by their ratio of themepark v.s. sandbox content.

[KisaiTenshi]

They are just marketing words or buzzwords. I personally hate sandbox games because they are so damn boring, no direction and no purpose. and Eve isn't a good example of a sandbox since it still has you going from point a to point b. Second Life might be the closest thing to a true Sandbox mmo with world being created by it's players and no one else.

Secondlife breaks the "no sharding" rule. Connecting to SL might be "one world" but it's a series of independent instances, wherein NOTHING you do in one counts for anything in another.

The importance of "no sharding" is that allows two players to have equal opportunity to do X activity. If you create two copies of the world. That player now has to exist in both shards to do the same X activity(doubling time-sinkness,) or they have to forgo one of the shards, resulting in different competitive environments for other players.

It is "not fun" to join the lower-populated server, but it's also not-fun to have to compete with people who have spent a lot more time on that server as well. In a Sandbox environment, there is no such thing as a "I spent a lot of time perfecting my rotations to fight (whatever)" because the environment adapts to being spammed. An inexperienced player has a slight upper hand, because entities do not know how they will fight them. So all new players have that opportunity. The entities don't learn "the best rotation" from the first player and then use it to pummel everyone who comes after them.