This is exactly my point.. now you are putting restrictions on your free of all restrictions idea now. You just want certain restrictions removed... not all. Or a choice for some.. not all? There has to be a line drawn somewhere. You cannot please all the people all the time.
Creating a toggle switch and and adjustment ratios for each and every rule in the game? That's unreasonable. Maybe somebody wants peeps to breathe air? Maybe somebody doesn't want peeps walking on paths? Maybe somebody wants an infinity sized park?
Oh come on, you can't be serious here. Peeps breathing air? You are pulling a straw man. The restrictions we are talking about here are of course artificially put in place limits to the game, primarily for career and challenge mode. Like restricting how we can shape the track of a coaster, based on its type. Or restricting us from disable-ling certain management features. One could say they make the game feel more finished or polished. I agree with that. However, we want to have the
option to remove these restrictions because they do limit the freedom the game gives at the moment.
So now we are deciding what restrictions should be taken off and what restrictions should remain. Which restrictions can be player altered? A toggle switch for each and every restriction would be tons of code. You want rollercoasters with freedom to do whatever you want? That sort of thing requires a complete rebuild of the mechanics and UGI.
If we continue taking the coaster restrictions as an example, it does not at all need an entire rebuild of the mechanics. Why do you think it does? Without track restrictions we can simply create any shape we want. It would literally change nothing to already built coasters, or how coasters work in general. Again, all the restrictions we have for the coasters are artificially put in place. For career-mode, I get why they are there. it gives each coaster a unique function. But for Sandbox mode it only gets in the way of our freedom. Also, some coaster restrictions make no sense at all, even from a realism stand point.
Being able to turn off certain management features would require some rework of certain systems, but I guess nothing too crazy. At the end of the day many of the restrictions the game currently forces upon us are merely some boolean checks that a simple checkbox in the game settings menu could change. This wouldn't require any rework, just a little work in putting some more check-box elements pointing to said variables. They payoff would be huge. The ability to disable these restrictions would be welcomed by everyone who plays this game for the creative aspect and believe me when I say that is the largest part of the community by far. So it wouldn't be a waste of development time at all in that regard.
Sandbox already works great for creativity and for making your dream park and as Vanessa said, its a great learning tool for all sorts of things shops and salaries included.. Maybe you can't make a mine train coaster that will invert but there are plenty of other trains in the game that will. There are logical reasons for why the developers have used restrictions for specific game mechanics and ride features. There have to be rules or the game stops being a game anymore.
Nobody is saying Sandbox doesn't work. It just could be so much better without all the restrictions and annoyances it currently has. Why should I be concerned about my employees being happy? I am playing Sandbox, I just want to build stuff. Planet Coaster is a management game, but by far the biggest focus lies on the creative side. Without restrictions, the creative side of the game would be better, thus making it actually a
better game. And since you can still play with restrictions, because all we want is the option to disable, not remove in its entirely, there would also be
more game. Also because the restrictions do make the management side of the game indeed more fun to play.
So to summery all of this:
- Adding the option to remove restrictions will greatly improve the creative side, which is the biggest part of the game already. As prove, just look at the awesome ideas people come up with since we got the ability to disable collision. Just being able to disable this one restriction added so much new content. People use coaster track to create supports, people use the river rapids ride to make actual moving rivers, not to mention the ability to theme flat rides. So this is definitely a great improvement to the game. +
- The restriction that would take the most work by far is collision. Luckily, a big part of this has already been implemented! Many other restrictions simply need an option that enables us to turn them off, like the track restrictions on coasters for instance. Again, when we can turn these off it would open up the game to a whole new level, creating large amounts of new content, for a relatively low amount of work. Definitely a plus. +
- Many restrictions are annoying. Nothing breaks motivation to play a creative game faster than having an idea in your head, but then the game tells you NO because of an artificially put in place restriction that doesn't make sense in the first place. Also, when building you don't want to bother about staff being happy. Especially since many of the management mechanics are not meant to be compatible with large scale building and custom build elements and park stories. They are there to offer a fun challenge in career mode, but have no place in the creative part of the game. So being able to turn them off would be a great addition to the game in that regard! +
- Since for most people the ability to disable restrictions would do nothing but enhance the game (have you noticed how 99% of the content on YouTube for example is people just building stuff), it would be a great move for Frontier as well to spend some time to actually make this happen. So not only would it benefit the player, it would benefit Frontier as well. +
So there are really no negatives to have the option to disable restrictions.
You may have noticed I am only talking about the creative part of the game here. That is, just in case you missed it, because that's where the restrictions don't add anything but frustration to the game play. Where these restrictions shine is in the career mode, and that is where they should be, where they only should be.
This is also wrong. Sandbox is a way to have an open game mode. To be able to explore all that Planet Coaster has to offer. That Includes learning game mechanics and specific restrictions. You cannot tell another player how they want to play sandbox or what they can or cannot do in Sandbox. Its perfectly legitimate that somebody wants to figure out weather or not the strip mall they built in sandbox will operate successfully before uploading it to blueprint.
I don't tell what people can or cannot do in Sandbox, only these pesky restrictions do [wink]. I was only stating what the Sandbox mode is intended for. It is intended as a tool to let our creativity flow free, not as a learning tool for the career mode, as that clearly isn't the focus of the game anyway.
Sandbox is not designed to break all the rules and create without limits. there have to be limits or you cannot have blueprints. The entire blueprint thing would go up in smoke if players could start messing with ride limits. Nobody would be able to mimic the user generated restrictions you've established for your blueprint.
Could you elaborate this? I don't really understand why you would think this. How would the blueprint system go up in smoke? Nothing happened when the we could disable collision.. Well, except for people making way cooler blueprints than before. Users mimicking the same settings I used for my blueprints wouldn't be a problem I guess? If I make a coaster right now with collision disabled, and make it intersect with itself and put it on the workshop, what would happen if someone were to download that coaster and tries to put it in a park with collision enabled, what would happen? I actually haven't tried this so I don't know. I guess it would just let you place it, since it has already been built so it doesn't check for collision anymore. This could be a potential problem when having more options for restrictions. Although this could easily be fixed by just having the options uploaded in the blueprint itself, or have it so blueprints are free of restrictions anyway, since everything in a blueprint has already been placed (probably how it works currently).
Right now sandbox offers everything that career and challenge mode offers along with monetary freedom. It works great. A few toggle switches which are completely unnecessary, aren't going to make it better not to mention, its way too much work when there is so many other cool things the developers could be involved in.
You seem to be alone here with this opinion. For most players it wouldn't be unnecessary at all. In fact, it would make the game so much better.