Sandboxes...............

Sandbox gameplay: Games that allow you go where ever you want and do whatever you want and off absolutely no direction on how to advance the story because there is none or if there is its insignificant. Events or mini-stories get triggered by different things like talking to people or finding an item but once you finish whatever it is that got triggered your back to having no goals. examples: Saga games, Steambot Chronicles, and Monster Hunter.

These games usually suck. With no goals and nothing to do you quickly get bored out of your mind. You can get stronger and obtain more powerful items but what tests are there to throw your improved guy against or things to crush with your new gear. Usually NADA. Collect xp, collect items, collect money and nothing to spend any of it on. Most other games that atleast had a story end up like this also.Some story drive examplesGTA, Gun,Mercenaries.

Some games sound extremely fun to play where your goal is to just play and not do anything. They sparked interest in me very deeply. The thought of getting to hunt dinosaurs and stuff and make armor and weapons out of their body parts was awesome like monster hunter. Getting to exist in the old west with pistols and rifles and hunt animals and fight bandits sounded awesome in Gun.Unfortunately they didnt deliver.

What is needed in sandbox and free-roam games both are random mission generators. Whether from the start with sandbox style games or after you beat them with free-roam style games they desperately need just a simple engine to create random missions/things to do. Whether its "kill x amount of such and such" or "so and so has ripped me off, go and kill him". Those would freaking give you a reason to keep playing.Next you need ways to let players spend their money. You should have to pay rent on a house and buy things for it or be able to use it to cause things to happen like strip shows or maybe a village celebration of your greatness or on temporary things like being able to customize your outfit and its color palette. Your imagination is the limit on things that could be included.

I think there is one more element that needs to be resolved. Static. Once you max out your level, get the best equipment the game is over and you have no reason to keep playing. If you could spend money to unlock questions or buy items that would allow you to conitnually improve your character and items beyond their limits that would be huge. Part of Static is the opposition you face. This is a tough issue to deal with, some players like to be challenged and others like to crush stuff. Thats where difficulty rating come in.When you goto a random mission generator it should either randomly give you a difficulty level or you should be allowed to pick.Easy or Hard. Easy would make the opposition the same level they were when you beat the game. Hard would make your opponents match your level/stats/equipment.

Now you have things to do, you have things to reward yourself with, and you always have things to work towards and challenge yourself.

Gun was the latest game that inspired me and then let me down. I was hoping you could hunt animals and criminals for money, use the money to buy supplys like whiskey and bullets, not to mention outfits, weapons and horses, and get rewards like a house, a girlfriend,goto a whorehouse and stuff like that. But no. Once you hunt down all the bounties you dont ever get to hunt anybody down again, Once you do all the other missions you never get to do another one.

Monster Hunter was a let down because your character doesnt get stronger you just make better equipment and once you make the last tier stuff its over. There is no way to get stronger. I wanted to kill like 10 velocaraptors and find teeth or claws and when you got enough you could like pay a guy to improve the damage of a weapon by 1. if you killed like 5 stegasaurs and found 5 hides you could trade those to improve your armor. Collect x amount of something and you get a +1 or more to something else.

If developers wanna take things to the next level they are gonna have to work on sandbox play. Because whether the whole game revolves around it from the beginning or only after the story ends its a very important part and almost entirely neglected element of most games.

SoTChot114

What is needed in sandbox and free-roam games both are random mission generators._AbBaNdOn

That's still one of the things that makes Daggerfall more fun that Morrowind and Oblivion. In Daggerfall the guilds you join will give you randomized quests all around the world to do work for the guild. But in Morrowind and Oblivion all you get are pre-built storylines from each guild and then you're done. It doesn't even feel like you are working for the guild.

Daggerfall's guilds were great because (taking the Fighter's Guild as an example) you were just another guy with a sword who joined up. Everytime I got a random quest to go "take care of the tiger/bear/spiders that got into the weapons shop four/two/seven towns over" it felt like that had actually happened. I could imagine the weapon shop owner running to the nearest guild in a panic and paying them to find someone to take care of his problem.

I love sandbox games, if they're done right. I've played Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion, all of which are fun games if you think of them separately, and not as a series. GTA:SA is another favorite sandbox game of mine. Sure, there aren't many 'randomized' missions, but with all the different jobs you can have, and all the people you can work for, it could still last you a long time. Other than those though, I can't really think of many sandbox games I've played.

well, i would like to have an aim in games. even its a hack&slash like DW i still have an aim to finish the story or get stronger but when its over, its over. same for GTA, when i complete the story its over for me.

what you say is nice, it will give a goal always, its not impossible or even its easy to add. but the problem is, it will be repetitive. for example if you make a random mission generator after, lets say 100 missions, what can that random generator do ? it will give same missions with harder monsters for example. while your mission was to kill 1 t-rex, if your level is high enough it will tell you to kill 2-rex or other early missions with different numbers. you can make this forever with a simple loop. but will players be satisfied ?

(actually Disgaea really presents a game that never ends, its truly amazing.)

If they can do this without random mission generator, it would be better. how ? online updates. for example, on ps3 you can download new tracks for motorstorm. instead of this, game developers can upload 1-2 hard missions to keep players busy once in a week. also making the game online and letting people to enter with their own customized characters would be better.

but in the end, it will probably suffer of being repetitive. look at WoW, it had millions of quests and the biggest game map but now people started to be bored. even the expansion pack is released, everybody says its all about grinding now. but it was all about grinding from the very beginning.

you cant make majority happy and if majority is not happy that means its your fall. instead of adding new missions there should be additional things. instead of giving a complete game, you should add things one by one with time. you can add mini games later and try to keep people attracted but thats not something easy too.

your idea is good, i'll give you that but you, 1 person, and all other people are not the same. without enough support noone can handle this kind of thing. maybe koreans, since they make many free games and let you play freely on the net.

I love sandbox gameplay, and it is only going to get better, although programming and designing such a game is ultimately the big challenge, and one that no programmer has gotten right so far.

The problem is, in a given environment there end up being limits on what you can do, as you have to program every possible scenerio into the game, or an engine that can react and grow based on what your avatar is doing. Its easy to see where things get impossible in such a game, because when the player is told "here is your immersive world where you can do anything you can think of" the player instantly starts testing the limits and seeing what they can and cant do. And even when a system allows for an event, it doesnt always take place the way things logically should or would in a real life setting.

For instance dating... from a very early age I always wanted my little characters to be able to have a girlfriend or boyfriend, and many games have tried to incorporate relationships into games ...harvest moon was one of the first games I played where I could actually get married which blew me away at the time... gta:sa, fable, steambot, the sims, bully and quite a few other games allow some sort of engine for dating, but ultimately it is very awkward and strange. The characters and thier interactions with thier affectionate other dont seem genuine, the relationships themselves feel like what they are, which is just tacked on minigames.

This can basically relate to almost any other thing that you may wish to do, from construction todemolition of buildings,banking and investing, taking care of pets and hunting, sports and racing events, growing and harvesting plants, mining, swimming, fighting, playing musical instruments, cooking, crafting, or just relaxing and having an intelligent conversation with another character or player. And many more scenerios as well. Of course most of the ones ive mentioned are ones that game designers have been trying to squeeze into thier games for ages, some with success and some with failure, but most of that success isnt in making these activities feel genuine, itis more in making them into a minigame which is not broken and is even kind of fun.

Part of the problem is that in the real world every person, animal and object has a history, a place it was conceived or put together, and a process for doing that, and in games thus far many objects just appear without having been thru all of those processes. And so far no game has been able to really do something like that.

Not to mention an environment where such detail can exist and can allow for fast fun action ANDdetailed life simulation at the same time.