The only reason why most people endured the tedious mechanics and ridiculous "punishments" of those old games is because back then, there was no choice if you wanted to play a MMORPG.
Nowadays, there's a lot of choice, and most people choose fun over tedium, which is logical, specially for a leisure activity you pay for.
Where's the tedium?
Is it in putting up risk to attempt reward? Or is it in "leisurely" going through the motions?
If you get only rewards with no risk, this is boring grind.
Just make the combat challenging. You don't need risk to have fun ... challenge is enough.
Where's the challenge? Try until you succeed, lose nothing while you do so. It's a win-win.
Is mashing buttons until you find the right order a challenge? A chimp can do that.
Chimps have every right to have fun as the rest of us.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Probably being able to drop anything on the ground.
Or mobs that invade settlements and move around.
No instancing is something I doubt we will ever see again. In 99 it was a good thing. There were not nearly as many people playing and the equipment available was far less powerful. Now however, There are millions of people playing MMOs most of which have the ability to box 6 characters on 1 machine. Personally if I really wanted to I can box 12 characters to take out raid targets by myself. What does that mean for every other player? It means whoever has more time on their hands (ie no job) will get the raid mobs.
People need to be able to schedule raids which instancing provides. If a game does not do instancing it will be a game that fails in this day and age. Even EQ has it now and I'm sure they will be adding it to the TLP as it's been the biggest controversy of all. 1 guild controlling every raid spawn since launch. Not wanting instancing means that you have no life and do nothing but play games. That's ok, wish I could do that. But it won't happen
The only reason why most people endured the tedious mechanics and ridiculous "punishments" of those old games is because back then, there was no choice if you wanted to play a MMORPG.
Nowadays, there's a lot of choice, and most people choose fun over tedium, which is logical, specially for a leisure activity you pay for.
Actually I enjoy those 'punishments'. Corpse runs and xp loss in EQ made the world dangerous. Playing wow ... I would seriously just pull trains all day long and not care because if you die then what? You have to run back. No biggie.
Personally, I will play every old game in existance before I ever go back to something like WoW.
Originally posted by TheeLord Simple Q, What is your most wanted feature in a sandbox MMO? What other games have you played and wish they had xyz feature?
Designers who aren't jerks.
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire: Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.
Most of us are normal people with normal life. We do not play MMO games to hide from some misery. We play games for fun - that means no grind, entertaining and challenging gameplay, competition and cooperation with other players. The risk to fail is funny, it makes the game entertaining. Challenges and competition are funny. Grind is boring. What will be football if both teams win? Absolutely idiotic game. Please keep your misery for yourself.
Right, and as normal people it's understood that things don't have to go out of their way to deliver punishment in order to have that contrast and variation.
Playing games for fun is at odds with playing games to experience excessive pain. A pursuit of fun is normal. A pursuit of pain is masochism.
We're not talking about removing failure: In Football, one team loses. That's where it ends. When you lose there is not some additional punishment where you lose 10% of your material assets to the other team.
So Football is a perfect example of a game having only as much penalty as is necessary, and no more. Anything more is masochism.
If you lose too many times you don't win your division, don't go to the playoffs and have no shot a championship until next year.
So let's try that in an MMORPG, if you can't beat a dungeon in as many tries as the average of your peers in a 3 month period, you get locked out of the dungeon until next year. Reading the forums of that game would be hilarious!
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
If you get only rewards with no risk, this is boring grind.
Just make the combat challenging. You don't need risk to have fun ... challenge is enough.
Where's the challenge? Try until you succeed, lose nothing while you do so. It's a win-win.
Is mashing buttons until you find the right order a challenge? A chimp can do that.
To complete the encounter? Lots of players have never kill a particular boss, or finish a particular dungeon, and not for the lack for trying.
It is simple to make it difficult enough so you will never succeed by just trying. Just try the greater rift 60 in D3 and you will know what i mean. There is zero risk, and you can try it as many times as you want, but only a handful of people in the world can do it.
That is challenge without risk. You only win if you are good.
Actually I enjoy those 'punishments'. Corpse runs and xp loss in EQ made the world dangerous. Playing wow ... I would seriously just pull trains all day long and not care because if you die then what? You have to run back. No biggie.
You do. Most players don't. That is where the market comes in .. and decide which preferences devs would cater to.
Corpse runs & xp loss did not make EQ world dangerous. You can make it dangerous by just having tons of hard to beat mobs. They make playing the game a chore.
Most of us are normal people with normal life. We do not play MMO games to hide from some misery. We play games for fun - that means no grind, entertaining and challenging gameplay, competition and cooperation with other players. The risk to fail is funny, it makes the game entertaining. Challenges and competition are funny. Grind is boring. What will be football if both teams win? Absolutely idiotic game. Please keep your misery for yourself.
Right, and as normal people it's understood that things don't have to go out of their way to deliver punishment in order to have that contrast and variation.
Playing games for fun is at odds with playing games to experience excessive pain. A pursuit of fun is normal. A pursuit of pain is masochism.
We're not talking about removing failure: In Football, one team loses. That's where it ends. When you lose there is not some additional punishment where you lose 10% of your material assets to the other team.
So Football is a perfect example of a game having only as much penalty as is necessary, and no more. Anything more is masochism.
If you lose too many times you don't win your division, don't go to the playoffs and have no shot a championship until next year.
So let's try that in an MMORPG, if you can't beat a dungeon in as many tries as the average of your peers in a 3 month period, you get locked out of the dungeon until next year. Reading the forums of that game would be hilarious!
That is actually a seperate feature built on top of the game of football that is utilized by a miniscule fraction of football players. I have played football since kindergarten and I never was part of a 'division' or competed for 'playoffs'. Most football games are pickup games with no serious consequences for losing.
Most of us are normal people with normal life. We do not play MMO games to hide from some misery. We play games for fun - that means no grind, entertaining and challenging gameplay, competition and cooperation with other players. The risk to fail is funny, it makes the game entertaining. Challenges and competition are funny. Grind is boring. What will be football if both teams win? Absolutely idiotic game. Please keep your misery for yourself.
Right, and as normal people it's understood that things don't have to go out of their way to deliver punishment in order to have that contrast and variation.
Playing games for fun is at odds with playing games to experience excessive pain. A pursuit of fun is normal. A pursuit of pain is masochism.
We're not talking about removing failure: In Football, one team loses. That's where it ends. When you lose there is not some additional punishment where you lose 10% of your material assets to the other team.
So Football is a perfect example of a game having only as much penalty as is necessary, and no more. Anything more is masochism.
If you lose too many times you don't win your division, don't go to the playoffs and have no shot a championship until next year.
So let's try that in an MMORPG, if you can't beat a dungeon in as many tries as the average of your peers in a 3 month period, you get locked out of the dungeon until next year. Reading the forums of that game would be hilarious!
I would love to see a total lockout of dungeons ,right across the board.The reason is i want it to feel realistic,in other words,if you KILLED the Boss why is he there again as soon as you enter again?I feel that is what made FFXI NM "notorious monsters" so amazing,it was because they did not respawn for at least 4 hours and some for many days/weeks.
I would also never make drops attached to needed quest mobs .Quests should be for favor and LORE not for rinse repeat looting.
My most wanted idea tires into all of it,i want an Eco system.I also want everything in open world,so if there happens to be two Named in the open,they might just fight and kill each other,or you might even get a whole slew of mobs in the game fighting each other.Re-spawns and spawns in general should be slower than we are used to seeing,and mob families should breed and age as well.It would make resource farming extremely valuable and create a lucrative market,instead of everyone just speed leveling.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I would love to see a total lockout of dungeons ,right across the board.The reason is i want it to feel realistic,in other words,if you KILLED the Boss why is he there again as soon as you enter again?
Because it is a game? I don't think a fantasy game setting, or even most game settings, can be called realistic.
I don't play games because they are realistic. I do so because they are fun & entertaining. Now may be that is just me, but i doubt that given lots of people love games like MOBAs, which has nothing realistic about them.
Not just one feature but I want everyhting that EVE online has which makes its pvp consnesual. I want local channels, D-scan, ingame map with player stats for last hour or day, player made intel channels and buddies to scout . If not exactly those things because the setting is fantasy then I want stuff that performs the same roles.
Actually I enjoy those 'punishments'. Corpse runs and xp loss in EQ made the world dangerous. Playing wow ... I would seriously just pull trains all day long and not care because if you die then what? You have to run back. No biggie.
You do. Most players don't. That is where the market comes in .. and decide which preferences devs would cater to.
Corpse runs & xp loss did not make EQ world dangerous. You can make it dangerous by just having tons of hard to beat mobs. They make playing the game a chore.
You are absolutely correct. A lot of people don't like it. That's why my type of gaming is more a niche. Granted the current EQ with no corpse runs yet still the xp loss is still ok with me. CR's did suck. A lot of times you needed help just to get it back and it made it pretty dam rough. But people who don't like the easy mode gaming of today (ala WoW) usually do like things like this because it does not cater to the casual crowd. Apart from popular belief a game doesn't need to have 2+ million subs to be profitable and successful.
PS my 13 year old son even prefers p99 to WoW. It's nothing to do with age or generation and everything to do with wanting difficulty. Same reason he plays Last of Us on Survivor mode
I tend to think that there needs to be penalties when you die. Otherwise, who cares about dying, or becoming more efficient at survival or anything else?
Those of us interested in the sandbox MMO experience want a world which is affected by our actions and where we can affect it just as much, I think that is where PVP in an MMO gains it's strengths. It is supposed to be grand in scale, mean something, the victor gains something, the loser loses something. If we wanted balanced arena style PVP with only gains possible and the only loss is that you don't advance (sorta the sport analogy used previously in this thread), we would play a well balanced FPS, MOBA, or RTS not an inherintly unbalanced Sandbox survival MMO.
I tend to think that there needs to be penalties when you die. Otherwise, who cares about dying, or becoming more efficient at survival or anything else?
Those who actually want to beat the dungeon.
If you keep dying and dying, you will never finish.
The fact you talk about punishments, pain and masochism in games shows a lot. Drop and loot in PvP is a simple risk-reward function. If you get only rewards with no risk, this is boring grind. You will get rewards for nothing, so they are pointless, their price is devaluated. Without competition, risk and chance to lose, the whole game is pointless. And you have no assets in game. It is just a game.
Well for starters, you're always risking something. If you fail a 10-minute boss fight at the 5 minute mark and everything resets immediately you've lost 5 minutes. A Football player isn't risking anything playing the game, but a loss is not a win and so the win is what he's lost and that's enough.
But more importantly the compulsion to play is deliberately centered around risk-light skill improvement. One of the most common forms of play (which even bears, dogs, and other animals do) is play-fighting where the players are improving their skill at fighting in a risk-free environment. It's the same core same compulsion exists in games (even when the skills involved - like pressing ability buttons in the right order - aren't as relevant to survival.) Read A Theory of Fun (Koster, 2003) for lots of details about this most common way players have fun.
If we want to discuss which things are pointless or not, losing abstract items inside a videogame are just as pointless as anything. Beating a challenge which requires a lot of skill means you are actually skilled. That skill exists. It's real, even if the items in the game are not because it's just a game.
So the least pointless thing in games is what I'm focused on (the challenges) not what you're focused on (the penalties.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I tend to think that there needs to be penalties when you die. Otherwise, who cares about dying, or becoming more efficient at survival or anything else?
Those who actually want to beat the dungeon.
If you keep dying and dying, you will never finish.
Sandboxes are not only about beating dungeons tho, its about competition for resources. If you dont have full loot then this is impossible and basically just grinding pixels for the sake of grinding.
The fact you talk about punishments, pain and masochism in games shows a lot. Drop and loot in PvP is a simple risk-reward function. If you get only rewards with no risk, this is boring grind. You will get rewards for nothing, so they are pointless, their price is devaluated. Without competition, risk and chance to lose, the whole game is pointless. And you have no assets in game. It is just a game.
Well for starters, you're always risking something. If you fail a 10-minute boss fight at the 5 minute mark and everything resets immediately you've lost 5 minutes. A Football player isn't risking anything playing the game, but a loss is not a win and so the win is what he's lost and that's enough.
But more importantly the compulsion to play is deliberately centered around risk-light skill improvement. One of the most common forms of play (which even bears, dogs, and other animals do) is play-fighting where the players are improving their skill at fighting in a risk-free environment. It's the same core same compulsion exists in games (even when the skills involved - like pressing ability buttons in the right order - aren't as relevant to survival.) Read A Theory of Fun (Koster, 2003) for lots of details about this most common way players have fun.
If we want to discuss which things are pointless or not, losing abstract items inside a videogame are just as pointless as anything. Beating a challenge which requires a lot of skill means you are actually skilled. That skill exists. It's real, even if the items in the game are not because it's just a game.
So the least pointless thing in games is what I'm focused on (the challenges) not what you're focused on (the penalties.)
Losing time is the baseline risk that could be said about anything, you risk losing time finding the right channel to watch TV, etc. But sandboxes are about competition for resources and this requires real risk vs reward. The type of games centered solely about combat dont need these type of risks, but sandboxes do, because they have lots of layers of gameplay attached to combat.
The challenge in sandboxes may be about denying resources to your enemies, but how could you do this with no risk? They would keep respawning and the game would basically be a giant deathmatch arena.
I tend to think that there needs to be penalties when you die. Otherwise, who cares about dying, or becoming more efficient at survival or anything else?
Those who actually want to beat the dungeon.
If you keep dying and dying, you will never finish.
Sandboxes are not only about beating dungeons tho, its about competition for resources. If you dont have full loot then this is impossible and basically just grinding pixels for the sake of grinding.
no grinding pixel for the sake of fun. But my point stands. You don't need penalties to have challenges.
I tend to think that there needs to be penalties when you die. Otherwise, who cares about dying, or becoming more efficient at survival or anything else?
Those who actually want to beat the dungeon.
If you keep dying and dying, you will never finish.
And you never lose either.
In the football analogy, it's like if you lose a game, you just play it again and never get a number in the loss column.
But sandboxes are about competition for resources and this requires real risk vs reward.
Hum, no they aren't. It can be part of the game, or not. It was never mandatory for a sandbox game to have any kind of competition with other players.
A sandbox MMORPG, just like a theme park one, can be either PvE, or PvP, or a mix of both.
UO trammel is a sandbox. Landmark is a sandbox. EvE is a sandbox. Yet PvP competition with other players in those games is completely optional.
Not a MMORPG, but Minecraft survival mode is a sandbox too.
A game doesn't have to have FFA PvP and mindless ganking to be a sandbox.
It does if you want it to have a fully functional economy, and for that you need constant demand. You cant have that if players arent losing resources/items, without open pvp they could just grind anything in complete safety and valuable resources would lose their value.
Also, EvE has optional pvp? wot? You can still die in high sec. Landmark is not a sandbox and Trammel killed UO, my point still stands.
I tend to think that there needs to be penalties when you die. Otherwise, who cares about dying, or becoming more efficient at survival or anything else?
Those of us interested in the sandbox MMO experience want a world which is affected by our actions and where we can affect it just as much, I think that is where PVP in an MMO gains it's strengths. It is supposed to be grand in scale, mean something, the victor gains something, the loser loses something. If we wanted balanced arena style PVP with only gains possible and the only loss is that you don't advance (sorta the sport analogy used previously in this thread), we would play a well balanced FPS, MOBA, or RTS not an inherintly unbalanced Sandbox survival MMO.
People do care about death and efficiency in games without significant death penalty (because there's always penalty: typically a failure to advance and a waste of your time are the most common penalties.)
But beyond that, why should they care?
It didn't require the looming threat of excessive punishment for us to enjoy Mario, Tetris, Zelda, Portal, TF2, Pokemon, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Civilization, etc, etc, etc, etc.
Just like nearly every other game ever, these games only involved the bare minimum punishment (player fails skill challenge -> they're reset to a previous location -> they immediately begin enjoying gameplay again.)
So when you put some thought into which games players have had fun in over the years, you realize that excessive punishment is entirely unnecessary. So it boils down to masochism.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I tend to think that there needs to be penalties when you die. Otherwise, who cares about dying, or becoming more efficient at survival or anything else?
Those of us interested in the sandbox MMO experience want a world which is affected by our actions and where we can affect it just as much, I think that is where PVP in an MMO gains it's strengths. It is supposed to be grand in scale, mean something, the victor gains something, the loser loses something. If we wanted balanced arena style PVP with only gains possible and the only loss is that you don't advance (sorta the sport analogy used previously in this thread), we would play a well balanced FPS, MOBA, or RTS not an inherintly unbalanced Sandbox survival MMO.
That's a nice sentiment for someone who either thinks he's going to be on top of that pile, or is disassociated completely like an inexperienced dev. The problem is, everyone seeking this system has grand visions of them standing over the pile of corpses that were their competitors. None of them dream about being one of the corpses. Unfortunately when that lack of balance starts meaning that most of them are the corpse and not the victor they jump ship. This is why you see balance, because experienced game designers have already traveled the path you think hasn't ever been traveled. They know your 'make 'em take 'em' style of game design lasts until there are clear winners and then it ends. The losers don't come back (they are off having dreams of being the victor again never learning the lesson of balance, or they do learn and they never revisit 'make 'em take 'em' style games again. The game you spent all that time designing ends up being an MMO of the few remaining winners with no one left to defeat.
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire: Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.
Comments
Just make the combat challenging. You don't need risk to have fun ... challenge is enough.
Where's the challenge? Try until you succeed, lose nothing while you do so. It's a win-win.
Is mashing buttons until you find the right order a challenge? A chimp can do that.
Once upon a time....
Where's the tedium?
Is it in putting up risk to attempt reward? Or is it in "leisurely" going through the motions?
Once upon a time....
Chimps have every right to have fun as the rest of us.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
No instancing is something I doubt we will ever see again. In 99 it was a good thing. There were not nearly as many people playing and the equipment available was far less powerful. Now however, There are millions of people playing MMOs most of which have the ability to box 6 characters on 1 machine. Personally if I really wanted to I can box 12 characters to take out raid targets by myself. What does that mean for every other player? It means whoever has more time on their hands (ie no job) will get the raid mobs.
People need to be able to schedule raids which instancing provides. If a game does not do instancing it will be a game that fails in this day and age. Even EQ has it now and I'm sure they will be adding it to the TLP as it's been the biggest controversy of all. 1 guild controlling every raid spawn since launch. Not wanting instancing means that you have no life and do nothing but play games. That's ok, wish I could do that. But it won't happen
Actually I enjoy those 'punishments'. Corpse runs and xp loss in EQ made the world dangerous. Playing wow ... I would seriously just pull trains all day long and not care because if you die then what? You have to run back. No biggie.
Personally, I will play every old game in existance before I ever go back to something like WoW.
Designers who aren't jerks.
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire:
Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.
If you lose too many times you don't win your division, don't go to the playoffs and have no shot a championship until next year.
So let's try that in an MMORPG, if you can't beat a dungeon in as many tries as the average of your peers in a 3 month period, you get locked out of the dungeon until next year. Reading the forums of that game would be hilarious!
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
To complete the encounter? Lots of players have never kill a particular boss, or finish a particular dungeon, and not for the lack for trying.
It is simple to make it difficult enough so you will never succeed by just trying. Just try the greater rift 60 in D3 and you will know what i mean. There is zero risk, and you can try it as many times as you want, but only a handful of people in the world can do it.
That is challenge without risk. You only win if you are good.
You do. Most players don't. That is where the market comes in .. and decide which preferences devs would cater to.
Corpse runs & xp loss did not make EQ world dangerous. You can make it dangerous by just having tons of hard to beat mobs. They make playing the game a chore.
That is actually a seperate feature built on top of the game of football that is utilized by a miniscule fraction of football players. I have played football since kindergarten and I never was part of a 'division' or competed for 'playoffs'. Most football games are pickup games with no serious consequences for losing.
I would love to see a total lockout of dungeons ,right across the board.The reason is i want it to feel realistic,in other words,if you KILLED the Boss why is he there again as soon as you enter again?I feel that is what made FFXI NM "notorious monsters" so amazing,it was because they did not respawn for at least 4 hours and some for many days/weeks.
I would also never make drops attached to needed quest mobs .Quests should be for favor and LORE not for rinse repeat looting.
My most wanted idea tires into all of it,i want an Eco system.I also want everything in open world,so if there happens to be two Named in the open,they might just fight and kill each other,or you might even get a whole slew of mobs in the game fighting each other.Re-spawns and spawns in general should be slower than we are used to seeing,and mob families should breed and age as well.It would make resource farming extremely valuable and create a lucrative market,instead of everyone just speed leveling.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Because it is a game? I don't think a fantasy game setting, or even most game settings, can be called realistic.
I don't play games because they are realistic. I do so because they are fun & entertaining. Now may be that is just me, but i doubt that given lots of people love games like MOBAs, which has nothing realistic about them.
You are absolutely correct. A lot of people don't like it. That's why my type of gaming is more a niche. Granted the current EQ with no corpse runs yet still the xp loss is still ok with me. CR's did suck. A lot of times you needed help just to get it back and it made it pretty dam rough. But people who don't like the easy mode gaming of today (ala WoW) usually do like things like this because it does not cater to the casual crowd. Apart from popular belief a game doesn't need to have 2+ million subs to be profitable and successful.
PS my 13 year old son even prefers p99 to WoW. It's nothing to do with age or generation and everything to do with wanting difficulty. Same reason he plays Last of Us on Survivor mode
I tend to think that there needs to be penalties when you die. Otherwise, who cares about dying, or becoming more efficient at survival or anything else?
Those of us interested in the sandbox MMO experience want a world which is affected by our actions and where we can affect it just as much, I think that is where PVP in an MMO gains it's strengths. It is supposed to be grand in scale, mean something, the victor gains something, the loser loses something. If we wanted balanced arena style PVP with only gains possible and the only loss is that you don't advance (sorta the sport analogy used previously in this thread), we would play a well balanced FPS, MOBA, or RTS not an inherintly unbalanced Sandbox survival MMO.
Founder and Lead developer of Factions. The complete fantasy sandbox survival MMO.
Factions indiedb Page (most up to date info) | Factions Website
Those who actually want to beat the dungeon.
If you keep dying and dying, you will never finish.
Well for starters, you're always risking something. If you fail a 10-minute boss fight at the 5 minute mark and everything resets immediately you've lost 5 minutes. A Football player isn't risking anything playing the game, but a loss is not a win and so the win is what he's lost and that's enough.
But more importantly the compulsion to play is deliberately centered around risk-light skill improvement. One of the most common forms of play (which even bears, dogs, and other animals do) is play-fighting where the players are improving their skill at fighting in a risk-free environment. It's the same core same compulsion exists in games (even when the skills involved - like pressing ability buttons in the right order - aren't as relevant to survival.) Read A Theory of Fun (Koster, 2003) for lots of details about this most common way players have fun.
If we want to discuss which things are pointless or not, losing abstract items inside a videogame are just as pointless as anything. Beating a challenge which requires a lot of skill means you are actually skilled. That skill exists. It's real, even if the items in the game are not because it's just a game.
So the least pointless thing in games is what I'm focused on (the challenges) not what you're focused on (the penalties.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Sandboxes are not only about beating dungeons tho, its about competition for resources. If you dont have full loot then this is impossible and basically just grinding pixels for the sake of grinding.
Losing time is the baseline risk that could be said about anything, you risk losing time finding the right channel to watch TV, etc. But sandboxes are about competition for resources and this requires real risk vs reward. The type of games centered solely about combat dont need these type of risks, but sandboxes do, because they have lots of layers of gameplay attached to combat.
The challenge in sandboxes may be about denying resources to your enemies, but how could you do this with no risk? They would keep respawning and the game would basically be a giant deathmatch arena.
no grinding pixel for the sake of fun. But my point stands. You don't need penalties to have challenges.
And you never lose either.
In the football analogy, it's like if you lose a game, you just play it again and never get a number in the loss column.
Once upon a time....
It does if you want it to have a fully functional economy, and for that you need constant demand. You cant have that if players arent losing resources/items, without open pvp they could just grind anything in complete safety and valuable resources would lose their value.
Also, EvE has optional pvp? wot? You can still die in high sec. Landmark is not a sandbox and Trammel killed UO, my point still stands.
People do care about death and efficiency in games without significant death penalty (because there's always penalty: typically a failure to advance and a waste of your time are the most common penalties.)
But beyond that, why should they care?
It didn't require the looming threat of excessive punishment for us to enjoy Mario, Tetris, Zelda, Portal, TF2, Pokemon, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Civilization, etc, etc, etc, etc.
Just like nearly every other game ever, these games only involved the bare minimum punishment (player fails skill challenge -> they're reset to a previous location -> they immediately begin enjoying gameplay again.)
So when you put some thought into which games players have had fun in over the years, you realize that excessive punishment is entirely unnecessary. So it boils down to masochism.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
That's a nice sentiment for someone who either thinks he's going to be on top of that pile, or is disassociated completely like an inexperienced dev. The problem is, everyone seeking this system has grand visions of them standing over the pile of corpses that were their competitors. None of them dream about being one of the corpses. Unfortunately when that lack of balance starts meaning that most of them are the corpse and not the victor they jump ship. This is why you see balance, because experienced game designers have already traveled the path you think hasn't ever been traveled. They know your 'make 'em take 'em' style of game design lasts until there are clear winners and then it ends. The losers don't come back (they are off having dreams of being the victor again never learning the lesson of balance, or they do learn and they never revisit 'make 'em take 'em' style games again. The game you spent all that time designing ends up being an MMO of the few remaining winners with no one left to defeat.
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire:
Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.