Being a sandbox game doesn’t mean that it has to confine itself to one particular type of sandbox. Basically, it’s about giving players greater freedom, more room for creativity, and a larger possibility space -frequently with player defined goals. For example, all the following games are considered to be sandboxes:
- life simulation - the Sims
- City Builder - Simcity
- physics simulator - Universe Sandbox
- FPS - Grand Theft Auto
- ARPG - Fable
- Persistent World PvP - Eve Online
The presence of PvP in Eve doesn’t stop it from being a sandbox, as players still have plenty of freedom and, and still set their own goals. Sure, some strats and tactics can result in suboptimal results, but the same thing holds true for games like Grand Theft Auto and Fable. You can’t make terrible choices and still “win” or find success in those games either. The only difference is that in those games, all challenge and adversity is provided by the environment, while in Eve, challenge and adversity comes from both, the environment, and other players.
Sandboxes give you freedom to do what you want. They do not, however, promise you that you can do whatever you want and not suffer any negative consequences.
And not for nothing, but eve’s particular blend of herbs and spices is pretty damn amazing. You can make friends with other players, sell to them, provide them services, join them, scam them, fight them, destroy their organizations from the inside, ally with them, recruit them to your cause, ignore them -whatever. The freedom of how you can interact with other players is absolutely amazing.
It’s not the PvE that makes Eve special. No one is raving about its minute to minute game play, like they do for Warframe. Eve’s PvE is serviceable at best. Instead, t’s the interactions with other players that truly make this game special. Eve’s PvP provides infinite content, while Eve’s sandbox nature makes that content extremely varied and unpredictable -it’s amazing.
Naturally, I am… somewhat befuddled by the people who want to start putting up walls and closing off possibilities. Of course, some people just don’t want the challenge and unpredictability provided by the game. However, there is also a remarkable number of players in this game who have stories about, “when the game clicked for them.” And, I think this is significant because the presence of so many players having “aha moments” with Eve, implies that there are many players out there that just don’t get it. They do not understand what it is about Eve that truly makes it special.
I hope Eve clicks for you.