Does Open world sandbox games are the Hardest to make?

No. MMOs are.

Question does aren't make sense O.o

^Really? let me translate for you

Are Open world sandbox games the Hardest to make?



Yep, that's why there aren't any good ones.

I can imagine they are amongst the hardest games to make. Put it this way - I wouldn't like to try making one.

?

MMO's are fairly linear/straightforward questlines. Having more people playing the game at once doesn't make it "harder", it just means there is more work involved.

An open world where the player can do anything is much more difficult to program than an MMO.

Not necessarily. A linear game requires an engaging story, whereas an open world can get away with less, for example. And while the graphics for Skyrim are more than fit for purpose, a high profile linear game would definitely demand better. The main problem with a large world is of course bugs, they are almost inevitable as it is impossible to test every situation if you actually want the game released ever.

Like posted before, I would imagine it's a toss-up between open-world RPGs and MMOs. Both require a certain amount of player choice and by definition feature emergent gameplay; the more sandbox-like the elements, the more difficult it is for a developer to control the variables. Every player will have a different experience and coupled with he infinite combinations of rigs, and it starts to get messy.

Chaos Theory says that the more complex a system is, the more inevitable it is to collapse. Games are no different, and MMOs and open-world RPGs are some of the most complex games out there.

MMOs are frequently open world sandbox games.

reviewing

Re-opened. Don't play grammar cop and kindly do not randomly accuse other members of being a troll, regardless of their avatar or whatever. :stare:

MMO's might not have the greatest writing in the world, but they are some of the hardest games to properly balance, especially in the most heavily pvp oriented titles. Screwing up even minor aspects of the game mechanics can lead to a massive power imbalance in favor of certain classes, older players, or an undue importance on certain crafts/specialties.

Every genre is difficult to make but the reasons are different in each case... Not simple puzzle games obviously, but complex games are complex. In open world games there is loads of AI programming to get all the mobs working in a stable system that still has a lot of variety in possible behavior. It is like a colony with different types of ants (worker, warrior, etc.) and you are like a big beetle that comes in and causes chaos. You also have to have good vehicle and combat mechanics. GTA IV has a nice car physics engine, and pretty visceral combat. But the staff for GTA IV was enormous.

Depends on how you make it. I'd say they can be among the easiest to make -- if you look at Oblivion, for example, you have a bunch of linear questlines (which many games have) and the rest is more or less randomized or otherwise "detached" content. One'd think it wouldn't be too hard to fill up a map with random stuff that bears no real significance to anything really. Then again, looking at New Vegas, and we're on a completely different level of complexity.

Depends on how polished you want your game to be. Sandbox means that the devs can't easily lead you through it, which is the most assured way to keep up logical integrity and progression.

I agree , lets look at the easy example of WoW. Now go on the WoW forums, that would be a general way to show how hard it is to make for the players. And plus think of balance and how each class will work out with another class in pve and pvp. Hell look at deathknight tanking in WoW , ragnoros in firelands was given nerfs because the mass of blood dk's couldn't tank rag. Sure that is many years after the game is released but keeping so many variables "balanced" at start is difficult. I wouldn't want to make of MMO for many reasons besides it's long development time and not counting the community which maybe divided in many different sections.

I would say yes and no depending upon what you are trying to do in the game. If you are talking about a single player game with no online interaction then they are moderately harder however not as hard as Online/MMO games. When dealing with MMO games they can be incredibly difficult to deal with due in part to their coding, areas, and massive content.

Using Star Wars Galaxies as a reference this game is probably extremely difficult to maintain which is why it is probably being taken offline in December. In the beginning before the Combat Upgrade Revamp Balance implementation there were several things to take care of. First thing was how a player progresses in each of their tiers and making sure one combination isn't more powerful than another. There were 24 classes out there and players could have 2 professions with a possibly 6 to 8 points left over *not sure about the left over points* which made for a ton of combinations. This created big problems in how to maintain balance as some classes were extremely powerful.

Another problem was maintaining code for player created cities, crafted items, upgrading existing code for new items, etc... . Read somewhere or had someone tell me that players were creating items that were more powerful than developers intended which is why we ended up with the CURB as well as the NGE. As a Bioengineer I definitely had my fair share of creations one in particular being a glitch in the coding which allowed a rather powerful pet to be created. It wasn't normal and players would pay tons of credits in order to get these pets since they didn't have to be rangers/creature handlers to use the things.


Pretty much we'll rarely if ever see mainstream sandbox MMOs due to their difficulty to maintain. Biggest problem is in this market a vast majority of players just don't seem to care about that anymore wanting linear game play to satisfy their need to kill. This truly svcks since MMOs get dragged down with players wanting them to be console games they can pick up, put down, and play at their leisure.