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Haemish:
Not to mention the fact that sandbox games often become very time-intensive games, by the very nature of being a world instead of easily digestible chunks of entertainment. Most people just don't have the time to devote, or don't want to spend the time to devote to a game like that. That's why I claim sandbox and PVP-heavy world games will always be niche products.

As has been said a billion times over in a billion galaxies far far away, Star Wars fans didn't want to a moisture farmer, they wanted to be a Stormtrooper going PEW PEW with blasters, or they wanted to a Jedi with a ZEOW ZEOW or a starpilot with a VOOM VOOM. All that other shit was fine (or would have been if not wrapped in a shitburger bun of bugginess), but it wasn't mass market and never will be.

That quote summarizes effectively the common complains against "sandbox" games. This isn't intended as another attack to Raph, but just a digression on some ideas I have about these sandboxes that seem to have the innate flaw of being filled with damn boring activities that noone wants to deal with or has time to.

All those complaints are true. We can take a semi-successful game like Eve-Online, the best sandbox and PvP game out there at the moment, and the very first complaint we'll hear is that it is boring. In fact it HAS boring activities. Grinding missions is boring, travel is boring, hauling stuff and trade is boring, mining is boring. And so on. All these are boring activities that we suffer in this game because there's something in the background that starts to "emerge". The control of territories, the tensions between the alliances and all the other forms of emergent gameplay that make this game unique compared to more directed and caged games where the players have very little control over what they can do and the direction that the game can take. It's like saying that the qualities of a sandbox come with a price.

It seems as if, to achieve the latter (the emergence) you are obliged to make the game boring and force the players to invest incredible amounts of time in their "alternative life". So we have comments like, "I already have a work, I don't need another".

Okay. If you ask Raph about these problems he will say that the "embedded mini-games" that are part of a sandbox should be all equally fun. Crafting, harvesting resources, dancing... All these activities shouldn't be sidelines, but fun games on their own. Equally significant possibilities that need to be reiterated and polished till they are all fun and entertaining. He'll explain this better, of course. But this is pretty much the juice of what he says.

My idea on these problems is rather simple and straightforward and something I already explained here and there writing about my dream mmorpg. If you go see the tripartite model on which the game is based, you'll notice that the first level is dedicated to the sandbox, the PvP/conquest game where the players fight each other, conquer and manage territories. There isn't just the combat, but the full simulation of a world, in as many "realistic" aspects as possible. The war is just the context that motivates the rest. Alike to Eve-Online there are also a bunch of boring activities included with the package. As an example there is no "mail" system. Objects (some of them) cannot be teleported around at will. The conquest game relies on a resources system that is used to pay the upkeep costs if you want to maintain the control over a zone and manage it. To gather and use these resources you'll have to harvest and collect them and then haul them to different zones, opening up the level of the commerce since not all the resources will be available everywhere.

This description is similar to what happens in Eve-Online. To conquer territories and build player-controlled stations the players need to engage in a bunch of boring and semi-boring activities that can go from mining asteroids, haul the mineral and goods around the universe, patrol zones, escort important cargos and so on. Again, the whole game is in the hands of the players, so are the players to manage and use every element at their will. They could try to avoid what they don't find entertaining, but it's just not possible if you want to participate in the game since all those parts have a strong importance and cannot be easily dismissed and forgotten.

My idea revolves around the role of NPCs. These NPCs would serve two purpose in a player-driven world:
1- Defend the territories when the players aren't around
2- Automate the boring activites

If there's something boring in the game but that still needs to be done to make the game "work", why not pass the burden on the NPCs and automate the process while the players can engage in something more fun? Crafting, gathering resources, patrol zones, transport goods etc... All these activities could be easily unloaded on the NPCs. The players colud still do everything by themselves. They could still organize a convoy to transport some resources to a different zone, go patrol a territory on their own. But only if they choose so.

Conquering and "managing" a territory would mean being able to spawn NPCs. Like in a RTS where you create "peons" units and send them to mine gold or cut down trees for the wood.

The paradigm is capsized: not anymore the players are working for the NPCs, but are the NPCs to work for the player. The kings in this world won't be static NPCs sitting in the throne room, but the players who lead the armies and control the territories. The players becoming the pivot of the game.

So you would have the possibility and the duty to spawn NPC units by using the resources available, equip them, keep them well fed and give them simple tasks they will perform. Again likely to what happens in a RTS.

Of course there's always a risk. Let's take an example scenario:
You need to transport a batch of important goods to another region. These goods are heavy and you'll need about three carts to be able to transfer them all at once. The region where they need to be delivered is distant but the route looks relatively safe. Now you have a choice. The carts are very slow and they only move on roads. You can decide to escort the caravan personally, maybe with the help of some of your friends to be able to fight back if the caravan is spotted by a group of enemy players that is camping a bridge or a crossroad. Or you can just assign a number of NPC guards to the caravan and hope that they will be enough to safely escort it to destination. During the travel three "odds" could happen, the first is that the caravan is attacked by a roaming group of creatures, the second is that it is attacked by enemy players and the third is that a cart breaks and needs to be repaired (so a time loss).

Looking better at the route you see that only the last trait is actually risky so you decide to send the convoy on its own and then go meet it later to escort it only for the last trait. While plotting the route you'll get precise approximation about when the convoy will reach a specific point. Let's say that you want to meet the convoy before it reaches the last bridge, that you believe may be camped by enemy players. The travel till that point is estimated to last three hours. Tomorrow you'll be online at 10PM and you should be able to organize a group with your guild to escort personally the convoy, so you schedule the convy to start at 8PM, thinking that you'll be able to reach it at the meeting point with your group around 11PM or before.

There's still the risk. The convoy could be assaulted by a group of enemy players infiltrated in your territory or get slowed down by problems (the carts breaking and requiring time to repair) or attacked by roaming creatures. This last possibility is the less worrying since you know the territory and know how many guards you need to assign to the caravan for it to be safe. But to reduce the risks you could always ask a friend to go meet the convoy at a point to check if everything is okay, if it is on time and if the guards are still all alive. If they aren't your friend could spawn some more to reassign them. Or maybe stop the convy at the nearby village or replot the route because a battle started not far away, on the road that the convoy is supposed to follow.

Once a convoy (or any other NPC under your direct control) is out of sight, you don't receive anymore informations from it, if not after a one-hour delay. If some of them die you'll only know an hour later. Plus, you don't have detailed informations about their positions, to find them you would need to use another system that will be pricey, so not always convenient. This opens up to the possibilities of the enemy players.

Enemy players can attack convoys for many reasons, they can damage the carts and slow down the convoy, or even steal the goods and capture your NPCs (which will swap faction after a set amount of time after being captured). Plus they can decapitate the dead NPCs and impale their heads to leave "landmarks" in the location of the battle. As a sign and dare to the enemy realm, a sort of gruesome "we were here". Why this? Because while you can know if an NPC dies through the UI, you still cannot know how it died or where. If the convoy is attacked by creatures it is possible that the cart is sitting there with most of the goods intact, so recoverable. It makes a sense for the players to try to find out what happened and for the enemy players the choice to "clean" the area to not leave any trace or decide leave a sign of their passage as a "challenge".

This was just an example but it works to explain how different elements can add to the gameplay. The possibility to take the NPCs as prisoners instead of killing them, impale their heads, destroy the convoy completely or steal the goods (in the case they also have something to transport them, of course). These aren't just combat mechanics, but a richer context that creates a "world" under the full control of the players. With the possibility to automate (at a risk) all the tasks that are felt too boring or repetitive. The game doesn't force anymore the players toward something they don't like. We have the NPCs and it make sense to leave the boring work to them.

Then you can even continue to add depth, like adding an experience system for the NPCs so that they "level up" and increase their powers. They would become like secondary characters, maybe developing situational skills and competencies (think to the specialization system of the units used in Civ 4). The point is that there is no real "grind". You just schedule the NPCs to do their work and continue to play what you consider fun while automating what you consider boring. Hey, there may be even players that like to harvest, craft, patrol and escort instead of going to fight the battles. And they would have the possibility to do so without using the "bots" and with the advantage of being able to perform those activities with an increased efficency. The system gives you a choice. The choice to choose that part of the gameplay you find interesting, focusing on it completely or do a bit of everything in the measure you choose. Without FORCING obligatory chores on you.

In Eve-Online all these ideas could easily fit. You could have the possibility to set up NPCs miners, equip them and give them simple schedules so that they could go mining for you while you are involved into something you consider more fun or even while offline. The same for transporting commodities to another part of the galaxy. With again the risk that the convoys could be attacked by enemy corporations.

Automating tasks doesn't mean that these tasks happen out of the game, of course. This idea wouldn't work on an instanced game space or one exclusively PvE where everything is protected and predictable. But it becomes valuable on a full, persistent world. Where the automated NPCs are "real" entities that perform the tasks in the same way a player would, while remaining vulnerable. Perfect for the "sandbox".

There isn't anymore the need to struggle to make boring activities fun even when they obviously cannot become so, no matter how hard you try. A level of realism is needed so that the game has a decent scope, or we would have just a big, superficial arcade that isn't going to suggest anything interesting (no dynamism, no emergent gameplay, no choices. Just the same treadmill). So we are back at the original quote up there. These sandboxes aren't doomed to have boring, unavoidable parts. We don't even need to transform every little chore that is needed to support the emergent level into something fun. Because there's always the possibility to automate those activities that the players don't want to deal with.

With again two obligatory premises that already exist in EvE and in my original idea:
1) The world must be persistent
2) The world must support full PvP

This is the sandbox: the players as the center of the world, with the NPCs at their service.

(follow-up)