Know what makes a sandbox great?

[Vasea Azure]

Elite Dangerous is not a sandbox, try to find this "sand" outside the populated space during long "exploration trip" - if you expect sandbox experience it will make you quit the game for 90% or partially loose faith in developer.

 

[amigacooke]

Is it sand?

 

[babelfisch]

My understanding is that they did. NMS has a larger player base than ED and there are some people that play both. But it's honestly surreal to pretend they aren't in competition. It's funny how the 'they aren't the same' or 'they aren't competitors' rhetoric only started when NMS Next started receiving rave reviews. I wonder why that may be?

I see that you completely avoided my argument.

 

[Capt. Hook]

I think that this thread is influenced by the Cmdrs who are currently, on holidays at the seaside.

The sand, the shovel and the leaking bucket, the sandcastles, the salt ...

How did you know I've been in Kerry the last two weeks making sandcastles with Hook Jnr??

 

[Eriseley]

I dunno where this thread went, didn't read all of it, but just wanted to say, toys or not, what made sandboxes great is just friends. Hook people up with friends fast and easy, that's what the game needs.

 

[babelfisch]

Read the first line of my response. I think ED nunbers did go down as NMS went up. I don't think it was like for like (ie ED went down less than NMS went up). There is a negative correlation, albeit it may not be -1 exactly. Tbh mate, it should have been easy to see that i addressed your argument directly, unless you perhaps didn't explain it very clearly?

Judging by steam charts (which admittedly isn't very accurate but still better than speculation) ED numbers didn't go down.

 

[drama]

What makes a sandbox great? Beating up the other kids...

 

[Leadfoot]

What makes a sandbox great? Beating up the other kids...

Not one, not two, but THREE boxes of little green army men.
Along with the full size replicas of the five lions from Voltron.
And four movable dinosaurs, battery operated, with eyes that light up.

 

[Patrick_68000]

How did you know I've been in Kerry the last two weeks making sandcastles with Hook Jnr??

The intuition, no doubt

 

[Rob At Work]

Professionally this is called "scope creep", and it's something I've battled for years. If you didn't know, I work in IT, and it's nearly impossible to avoid. Take on a project ......

WOW! I work in construction. We experience the same phenomenon in our industry but it's called "the plumbers wince"

 

[Sole Hunter]

yea except there's no sand in the sandbox, elite is not even close to a decent sandbox game. It's a theme park game with different non player driven activity at this point.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

yea except there's no sand in the sandbox, elite is not even close to a decent sandbox game. It's a theme park game with different non player driven activity at this point.

Nope.

 

[Mengy]

yea except there's no sand in the sandbox, elite is not even close to a decent sandbox game. It's a theme park game with different non player driven activity at this point.

True, Elite isn't a sandbox at all really. Games like Minecraft or Space Engineers are sandbox games. Elite is an open world simulator.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

True, Elite isn't a sandbox at all really. Games like Minecraft or Space Engineers are sandbox games. Elite is an open world simulator.

Why is it that people always think that sandbox mean building crap. When the word sandbox was first used for computer games it was for openworld do what you like games. Basically all the activities you can do are the sand how you use them is up to you within the game lore and rules which is exactly what ED has.

Now we have newish building games like minecraft which are also considered sandbox games, not because you can build stuff but because you have a set of features/activities and you can use them as you wish with the rules of the game.

That is what makes it a sandbox game. Is ED a sandbox, 100% it is, just a different type of sandbox game to minecraft or space engineers.

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

nah it is the sand, the sand makes land, houses and all the funny stuff formed by your hands, and maybe some tools, we have very much solid concrete and no sand to shape.

Why is it that people always think that sandbox mean building crap. When the word sandbox was first used for computer games it was for openworld do what you like games. Basically all the activities you can do are the sand how you use them is up to you within the game lore and rules which is exactly what ED has.

Now we have newish building games like minecraft which are also considered sandbox games, not because you can build stuff but because you have a set of features/activities and you can use them as you wish with the rules of the game.

That is what makes it a sandbox game. Is ED a sandbox, 100% it is, just a different type of sandbox game to minecraft or space engineers.

we can hardly use anything as we wish, we can kill all NPCs and never run out of them, we cannot destroy bases, nor extinct any mobs. ED is a concrete box, which gives us an open world, but not any sandbox at all. A Sandbox is where your actions shape and change things even if it just the existence of NPC's or not. but none of this is what exists in ED.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

we can hardly use anything as we wish, we can kill all NPCs and never run out of them, we cannot destroy bases, nor extinct any mobs. ED is a concrete box, which gives us an open world, but not any sandbox at all. A Sandbox is where your actions shape and change things even if it just the existence of NPC's or not. but none of this is what exists in ED.

Yes you can but within the lore and laws of the game world. As to your actions changing things within the game world, well they do. You go to a small populated system on your own, you can have great fun changing things around in that system. Of course you can change stuff. Whenever you do a mission, hand in bounties, hand in combat bonds you make a change. It may not be visible, but you still make a change. I would like to see some of the changes more visible though to be honest. The BGS is pretty good, but is lacking with it's visual representations of its different states.

 

[Mengy]

Yes you can but within the lore and laws of the game world. As to your actions changing things within the game world, well they do. You go to a small populated system on your own, you can have great fun changing things around in that system. Of course you can change stuff. Whenever you do a mission, hand in bounties, hand in combat bonds you make a change. It may not be visible, but you still make a change. I would like to see some of the changes more visible though to be honest. The BGS is pretty good, but is lacking with it's visual representations of its different states.

BGS manipulation? That is an extremely weak interpretation of the term "sandbox game". We just don't have enough ways to change or mold the game world around us, through playing we mostly only interact with it in very specified places and methods. To be a true sandbox there needs to be more dynamic and creative ways to physically and meaningfully change the game world, and Elite just doesn't have content like that.

Elite is more of an open world theme park style game than it is a sandbox.

 

[Enderby]

It’s not really a sandbox.

It may mistakenly be referred to as a sandbox sometimes.

But it ain’t. And it’s obvious why.

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

Yes you can but within the lore and laws of the game world. As to your actions changing things within the game world, well they do. You go to a small populated system on your own, you can have great fun changing things around in that system. Of course you can change stuff. Whenever you do a mission, hand in bounties, hand in combat bonds you make a change. It may not be visible, but you still make a change. I would like to see some of the changes more visible though to be honest. The BGS is pretty good, but is lacking with it's visual representations of its different states.

but the changes are minor and irrelevant, as most of them just affect the prices tehcnically and the rest is untouched.

when you fly into a system, can you tell me which gouvernment they have? you only know ths if they might be anarchistic, otherwise there is no real difference at all. Its minor and negliable to the players. its juts various price tags and some labels for favtions that change. Sure we do have stuff like wars and things but they don't realyl change a lot at all. You never see stations being attacked, they are always isolated events that you can avoid. Youc na even bring like 5T of food/inhabitant to a starving System and they are still starving. because, well yeah basic logic of the programmed algorithm out of any proper immersive relation.

 

[Muetdhiver]

...
Elite is more of an open world theme park style game than it is a sandbox.

Ironically their theme park games are more sandboxy than ED in the sense that they offer more creative/construction opportunities than ED.

And in term of story telling ED pales compared to open world action games / rpg like Skyrim, far cry or the witcher.