Jarl has an idea again: Sandbox gameplay

[Elwro]

I've always wondered why no-one has ever made a sandbox rpg that entirely takes place in one city.

Wasn't Legends of Valour something like this?

 

[Castanova]

The problem with this is that the core gameplay of a sandbox RPG boils down to combat... and the combat in most RPGs just isn't any fun. Their fun derives from character advancement/skills/stats, loot, story, well-crafted quests, exploration, C&C, etc.

What does a complicated sandbox world bring to the table in terms of fun? Pretty much every item on that list can be done in a non-sandbox game and most likely in a better way, too. C&C is the only one that would be more dynamic in a sandbox world since you don't have any main plotline holding you back. But, at the same time, your relationship to the NPCs in the world is far thinner since they have randomly generated (read: generic) personalities and purposes. Maybe because of you, some NPCs die... but who cares? Maybe one Empire conquers another thanks to your valor in battle... but all that means is all the random people walking around wear red uniforms instead of blue.

 

[JarlFrank]

Actually, exploration and shaping a personal story is more important for a sandbox than combat. There are sandbox city builder games. They don't have combat either. The "goal" of a sandbox is to set your own goals and see how well you can succeed. If you fail, try again. If you succeed, great, let's play again and try something else this time!

That's why sandboxes are more fun the more possibilities you, as a player, have.

 

[Squeek]

The problem with this is that the core gameplay of a sandbox RPG boils down to combat... and the combat in most RPGs just isn't any fun.

If you inserted the words "arcade game" in there, somewhere, I think I would agree. But computers have more potential than that. Stories don't need to be told or depicted that way. It's a matter of interpretation.

 

[shihonage]

C&C is the only one that would be more dynamic in a sandbox world since you don't have any main plotline holding you back. But, at the same time, your relationship to the NPCs in the world is far thinner since they have randomly generated (read: generic) personalities and purposes.

It doesn't have to be this way. It is possible to combine both:

a) human-written story
b) said story being completely dependent on player's actions. Not just illusion of freeform, but true freeform with no artificial walls, where every NPC reacts as you'd expect them to, and their fates are shaped dynamically.

 

[JarlFrank]

C&C is the only one that would be more dynamic in a sandbox world since you don't have any main plotline holding you back. But, at the same time, your relationship to the NPCs in the world is far thinner since they have randomly generated (read: generic) personalities and purposes.

It doesn't have to be this way. It is possible to combine both:

a) human-written story
b) said story being completely dependent on player's actions. Not just illusion of freeform, but true freeform with no artificial walls, where every NPC reacts as you'd expect them to, and their fates are shaped dynamically.

The only problem is: it would take a lot of time and effort to create something like this. Would be worth it, but probably wouldn't become a commercial success because of the high investment and development time.

 

[shihonage]

The only problem is: it would take a lot of time and effort to create something like this. Would be worth it, but probably wouldn't become a commercial success because of the high investment and development time.

It would take a lot of effort if you use traditional framework, which was never suited for managing industrial-strength C&C. With even mild C&C, it starts to crack at the seams. Fallout2 probably set the farthest marker to which such outdated framework could be stretched before completely imploding on itself.

Maybe I'll be the first to show how it should be done. My giant ego will be pleased by this turn of events.

 

[Thrasher]

Animated Notepad or something.

 

[rpgcodexusername]

Im not posting anymore you fuckers ignore my threads:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23497

 

[St. Toxic]

Sandboxes are for kiddies. Don't get me wrong; the highly acclaimed "do as you will" reality simulator rpg setup is an impressive aim even for me, at least in theory. Still, I'd rather see passage of time well implented as a meaningful factor in a primarily linear setting first, before moving on to that bit. And, as previously mentioned, SR2 & DF and all that jazz etc etc.

 

[Kaiserin]

What's this stereotype that goes something like 'giver a german a shovel while he's on the beach and he'll start digging'' all about? I would like to hear more about these racist european arbitrations...

 

[Castanova]

I don't think you guys are being realistic. You're basically asking for about 10 different simulation games all rolled into one with an RPG sandbox game thrown in on top of that.

 

[Data4]

I don't think you guys are being realistic. You're basically asking for about 10 different simulation games all rolled into one with an RPG sandbox game thrown in on top of that.

Didn't Derek Smart try something like that which failed miserably? It's great to fantasize over, but doing something that complex and doing it well are risks you'll never see anyone take.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

I don't think you guys are being realistic. You're basically asking for about 10 different simulation games all rolled into one with an RPG sandbox game thrown in on top of that.

and that game will never be made, not because it's impossible, but because game companies only want to make money.

 

[Disconnected]

Face it guys, you can't make interesting gameplay from being a blacksmith or a farmer.
Maybe if the whole game is constructed around the idea of being one of those, but you can't make both possible and interesting in the same game.

You say you can just implement it in an interesting way, which is pretty much handwaving the biggest problem you have with this here.

The point isn't really whether it's interesting to take up a career as a farmer. Rather, the point is to create a gameworld that doesn't consist of a hundred, utterly isolated parts.

Take the farmer. In, say, Morrowind, there's a whole bunch of farmers. They have no income. They produce nothing. They never work. They never buy tools or seed. They never age, sleep, have kids, eat, drink beer... They exist as a snapshot called "Farmer", nothing more.

At the very least, if you go through the trouble of creating sandbox game, then the minimum ought to be to integrate whatever professions you dump in the gameworld into the economy of the game. Ideally you should go much, much further, but that's icing.

The reason is to facilitate sandbox gameplay. An NPC should be more consequential to both the world and the player than a roadsign. Otherwise the world not only feels dead, it feels like it's presenting you with gameplay opportunities that aren't actually there. You can't, for example, crash a local market by preying on caravans.

Especially sandbox cRPGs become dysfunctional when the elements of the game aren't integrated. Your level gazillion party suddenly has to fight random level gazillion dragon spawns in the middle of some random NPC's cornfield, because although there's a backdrop suitable for challenging gameplay, the backdrop isn't playable. You can't become the local robber baron instead of the local robber baron, because there's no game mechanics supporting the robber baron, it's just a title.

Sandbox without simulation becomes nerfbox. Oblivion is the really obvious example here. Apart from the voice acting, almost everything that's wrong with the game springs from the issue that the gameworld isn't actually playable. It's just a fancy backdrop for killing spawns. Like Dungeon Crawl, but prettier.

 

[Castanova]

and that game will never be made, not because it's impossible, but because game companies only want to make money.

Many, many things are possible. Do you actually have a point or did you just want to get some malaise off your chest? Are you hoping for Bill Gates or someone to donate a billion dollars to the Super Duper Sandbox Game Fund? Sorry, but if you're going to renounce capitalism then I'm sure you can live without this "game" and let that money go to something that actually benefits humanity.

@ Disconnected

It's not quite so easy to model a proper economy into a game. Sure, if you sit there and watch it run as an outsider, the economy would work without a hitch. However, it would also be so ridiculously easy to destabilize that economy that you might as well not have the model at all. What's the choice without a semi-realistic consequence?

 

[St. Toxic]

if advertised properly this game could r0ck and make loads of cash as well. it could be hyped as an aweshum life-sim for the casuals, and an sandbox obliv-like for the console kiddies, and there ya have it, at least 1 mil sales.

Or why not just re-release Morrowind with improved graphics?

 

[shihonage]

I don't care about economy or being a blacksmith. I think that's missing the mark and spending CPU cycles on something that does not majorly contribute to emergent gameplay.

A game should be interesting. I am perfectly content with having farmers just stand there staring at the field all day and occasionally doing "fiddle" animation.

However the world would be served well to be populated by characters that can actually play interesting roles, such as roaming mercenaries, gangs, vigilantes, party NPCs gone rogue, and yes, caravans.

The point isn't really whether it's interesting to take up a career as a farmer. Rather, the point is to create a gameworld that doesn't consist of a hundred, utterly isolated parts.

How about a world with, oh, I don't know, 1400, give or take, people and critters traversing through it simultaneously in realtime, giving up to one another, , robbing each other, killing each other (if their factions are hostile), and then you stumbling upon their fights-in-progress and dead bodies.

That'd be a start, yes ?

You're standing in a town, trading, then some mutated animals come to the entrance and the guards fight them off. They're there simply because they wandered there, and the guards fight them because the animals faction is hostile to every other faction, and because, well, the guards are supposed to protect factions that are friendly to them.

 

[inwoker]

What about rpg of decline of the codex?
Situations could be -

Volourn joined - he tries to establish his bio-fanboyizm as likable trait

kingcomrade joined - he established half-witty one-liners as new trend, but contributed a lot like "Piracy is not wrong" etc.

Vince writes Oblivion great review and forum is flamed by forum trolls and beth fanboys.

Vince left - Dark Underlord takes over and begins new regime.

andhaira joined, andhaira banned but made unrecoverable decline.

Cloacked figure joins and tries to be new kc or something, but fails constantly.

The end of this game would be Pete Hines becoming a regular member.

Each situation could provide new ground for the decline. The story of the game would be how inteligent internet board with quality discussions becomes clusterfuck.

 

[Disconnected]

How about a world with, oh, I don't know, 1400, give or take, people and critters traversing through it simultaneously in realtime, giving up to one another, , robbing each other, killing each other (if their factions are hostile), and then you stumbling upon their fights-in-progress and dead bodies.

You already have that with TES.

That'd be a start, yes ?

Yes, but it's not enough. Without the simulation element, the sandbox ends up being a backdrop instead of a sandbox. I'd much, much rather have a functioning economy than clutter with physics. Because the physics doesn't mean a whole lot in terms of gameplay, but a functioning economy makes it possible for NPCs to play the game, and for the PC to play with everything in the game.

Whether you're killing rats in a basement because it's traditional or because there's an ecology, rats are plague carriers and the owner of the basement fancies his good health, may not make a whole lot of difference initially. But if it's for the sake of tradition, then nothing further happens. If it's because they're plague carriers, then not sorting out the problem right away may increase the reward, deprive you of the opportunity, kill the basement's owner, free some housing and cause the absence of of a trade good, or perhaps cause a plague to decimate the NPC population.

What you describe isn't really any different from Dungeon Master. The backdrop is far more elaborate, of course, but it's the same game. You walk around, kill spawns & snag loot. Whether you have a city realised in 3d with guards capable of killing stray spawns or a narrow corridor, is a difference in ambience only. The gameplay is exactly the same.

It's what I initially hated about Oblivion. Everyone and their fucking dog explained at length that here at last was a real sandbox cRPG. I installed it, played a bit and found nothing but a fucking huge and really pretty crawler. I'm a sucker for those things, so I actually rather liked Oblivion when I started playing it for what it is, instead of fuming over what I bought it as. But that's besides the point.

a fully functioning economy that rises and declines based on events, and political decisions would be pretty fucking amazing, but that'd take too much time for such an unnoticeable thing.

It would make a fucking huge difference in terms of actual gameplay. If you take a grape harvest from the Surilie brothers in Oblivion, nothing happens. If Oblivion had an economy, doing the same could enable you to take over their business.

Basically, adding an economy that ties everything together (regardless of how much or little that everything is), transforms the world from a static backdrop to something you can play with (or even better; something that can mess with you).


Would something like that result in a game that's frequently unfair, and sometimes can't be won? Sure. Almost certainly. But the attraction of sandbox gameplay isn't winning, it's having a cool sandbox to play in.

 

[St. Toxic]

cos TES lore sucks biblical donkey balls?

I think you misunderstood me. I mean't to say: "Why put effort into your games, when you can just shovel out old shit covered with bloom and normal maps and still get a sack of money for it?"

 

[shihonage]

Yes, but it's not enough. Without the simulation element, the sandbox ends up being a backdrop instead of a sandbox. I'd much, much rather have a functioning economy than clutter with physics. Because the physics doesn't mean a whole lot in terms of gameplay, but a functioning economy makes it possible for NPCs to play the game, and for the PC to play with everything in the game.

Simulation > economy. Economy is merely a subset of the infinite amount of things that could be simulated.

A game's goal is to establish the mechanics of the world which interact with each other. Those mechanics may be "economy", or something else entirely, like need/emotion management. They're what makes the world become emergent and alive.

What you describe isn't really any different from Dungeon Master. The backdrop is far more elaborate, of course, but it's the same game. You walk around, kill spawns & snag loot. Whether you have a city realised in 3d with guards capable of killing stray spawns or a narrow corridor, is a difference in ambience only. The gameplay is exactly the same.

Having JUST guards killing straw spawns doesn't make the game more complex than WoW. But it depends on how it is implemented, and whether it is a part of larger mechanics.

I made an example of that above the part where I quoted your previous post. Aggro management is everywhere, but if you give people roles, you start to introduce mechanics. Thieves steal, mercenaries hunt thieves. Murderers kill witnesses but leave clues. People remembering when they last saw someone of interest. Quest givers running out of patience and going after quests themselves. People's quests changing dynamically. If a guy cuts himself shaving and then his house burns down, he won't be standing there asking you for a band-aid.

A large roaming world and proper aggro management are a start. A required base for other mechanics that can be built upon it.

 

[hakuroshi]

A good sandbox game should provide a not-too-easily dispellable illusion of life going on around the player, not nessesary simulate it actually. While realisation of ecology/economic as a core element of a game could be a great foundation for sandbox, I think that efforts required could be better applied elswhere. Majority of players who enjoy sandbox games would not spend times tracing crop circulation or following random NPC to verify that he actually doing something meaningful.

 

[Disconnected]

Simulation > economy. Economy is merely a subset of the infinite amount of things that could be simulated.

A game's goal is to establish the mechanics of the world which interact with each other. Those mechanics may be "economy", or something else entirely, like need/emotion management. They're what makes the world become emergent and alive.
<Snip>
A large roaming world and proper aggro management are a start. A required base for other mechanics that can be built upon it.

It's what I was talking about back on p.1, sorry I got sidetracked with economic simulation. What I was saying is that faction management is just another kind of economic sim, because just like the economic sim, actor interaction is based on transactions.

Monsters eat people because they operate with a different sort of economy than people do. To people, people aren't a natural resource. To monsters, they are.
Guards fight monsters because to them, monsters are a resource. Guards are paid to fight them.

The cool part of basing it on simulated transactions, is that it enables actors to reconsider the value of whatever they're up to, on the fly. If an overlord doesn't pay the guards well enough, guards might just run away & take up banditry instead of fighting slavering beasts for pennies. Or the monsters might reconsider attacking armed guards. Or go fetch some friends and eat everyone in the city. Or if the protection offered by the guards is worth the protection money the citizens pay the overlord, something else might happen.

The same goes for actor emotions. It's just another kind of transaction. Work, kids and a nagging wife might deplete a resource only offered by bars. Bars require money. Money requires work, and eventually children, which requires at least one husband or wife, and so on...
Throw in a few fixed aptitudes & attitudes, and you suddenly have a hugely dynamic sandbox where both NPCs, monsters and factions will fuck with you, themselves and each other, and where all of it is wide open to manipulation by the player.

It quickly becomes unmanageable, but it doesn't have to be taken to the extreme. Just have enough simulations to account for what's actually in the game. If there's a bar, guard, farmer, overlord or monster, justify their existence within the context of the other crap in the game. I'm not saying there has to be lumber mills if there's trees in the game, but if there's lumber mills, there better be people cutting up trees and generating wealth. Whether it's simply hauling off lumber to the harbour and selling it to a nebulous elsewhere doesn't matter, what matters is whether and to what extent the NPCs and business involved can mess with/be messed with the player and the rest of the stuff in the game.

A good sandbox game should provide a not-too-easily dispellable illusion of life going on around the player, not nessesary simulate it actually. While realisation of ecology/economic as a core element of a game could be a great foundation for sandbox, I think that efforts required could be better applied elswhere. Majority of players who enjoy sandbox games would not spend times tracing crop circulation or following random NPC to verify that he actually doing something meaningful.

The depth of the illusion doesn't matter, what matters is whether it's playable. A game doesn't become a sandbox game because it, like Oblivion, offers the illusion of being more than a corridor with random spawns. It becomes a sandbox game when the gameplay incorporates whatever's in the sandbox.
Whether you want to tail random farmers is really besides the point. The point is that the farmer has dependants and dependencies, properties that can be manipulated by the player (and actors in the game) and have consequences in the gameworld. That you can tail a farmer to see what he does if the game's realised in that much detail, is just added benefit for the weird.

 

[hakuroshi]

The depth of the illusion doesn't matter, what matters is whether it's playable. A game doesn't become a sandbox game because it, like Oblivion, offers the illusion of being more than a corridor with random spawns. It becomes a sandbox game when the gameplay incorporates whatever's in the sandbox.
Whether you want to tail random farmers is really besides the point. The point is that the farmer has dependants and dependencies, properties that can be manipulated by the player (and actors in the game) and have consequences in the gameworld. That you can tail a farmer to see what he does if the game's realised in that much detail, is just added benefit for the weird.

Depth of illusion does matter. Because Oblivion does not provide any believable illusion at all. But you are right about playability. Again taking TES as example, Morrowind provide seemingly good illusion of the world with history but it is not playable. On the other hand Daggerfall while shallower and more generic had done both believable (if not pressed too hard) and playable illusion of life.
In fact, what you've said earlier would provide nicely playable illusion if done right. What I am trying to say, is that such an illusion what really matters. How it is achieved is secondary. That is, if we talking about potential game that could be actually made and not some ideal sandbox CRPG which could be great in theory, but never come to be.