overtyped wrote:For some time now, Bob Dole has been pondering the absence of developers attempting class-based sandbox games, complete with the rigid combat triangle of DPS, healer, and tank roles. It's worth noting that his curiosity on this matter isn't related to Haven, he simply wonders why no one has tried this before.
Do you think it's because developers who make sandboxes feel that the sandbox aesthetic must lean towards full freedom, and this is why it's never been tried?
Darkfall: Unholy Wars launched in 2012 as a self-billed sandbox game with a Warrior, Skirmisher (ranged bow based dps), Mage (ranged magical DPS), and Healer, the name of which I forgot. They also eventually added some melee DPS class. I say self-billed, because it was "sandbox" sort of like Ultima Online, not really a true sandbox, like Haven and Hearth.
It ended up eliminating the class system entirely and letting players just mix and match the abilities from the previous classes, to great reception from the small playerbase. I think that it's just fun theorycrafting builds, especially when there's sandbox PVP involved. It's also arguably easier to balance when you don't need to try to give parity in 1v1, small scale, and large fights, to different classes in PvP situations - It's a lot easier to balance "Classes" in PvE games.
Alternatively, you could argue that Albion Online ran from 2016-2022 with a heavy focus on 5v5 Combat with 1 tank, 3 dps, 1 healer, in competitive "sandbox" PvP (although there were metas that often had 1 tank, 2 dps, 2 healer, or 3 dps, 2 healer) - But there are so many asterisks there that I don't really want to get into it, and I don't think it actually counts.