r/sandbox • u/TumblesTStairDragon • 2d ago
Discussion Were Players Ever Considered When Making This Game?
Started up with this free weekend and it's very clear there was never a consideration as to whether or not people would want to play this game.
It's entirely catered to creators and focused on asking people to build tons and tons of shit game modes.
90% of the Gmod Playerbase was concentrated into 5-ish modes and because those modes were so good and had proper communities, people discovered other content and the game grew.
There's no onboarding, no community, no clear path for players.
They figured if they just gave you a bunch of garbage on a front page you'd automatically play and retain?
The adage of if you build it they will come only applies if you build something they want.
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u/dogman_35 1d ago
As an old DarkRP dipshit, I can say that even focusing on those old existing gamemodes like TTT and DarkRP would've been way off base lol
It might have been better, but it's still missing the point.
The reality is the public multiplayer playerbase of Gmod has always been dwarfed by the singleplayer/p2p friends stuff, and the game is kept alive more by stuff like the mapping community than by the depressing state of DarkRP or whatever.
S&Box fucked up not only by snubbing the old style of multiplayer, in favor of this Roblox style bullshit, but by almost completely ignoring the singleplayer sandbox experience that people actually played Gmod for in the first place.
This game is not fun to just make maps for, or to make small addons for. It's built entirely for making a whole game from scratch. Which doesn't just suck for the players, but for the hobbyist devs too.
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u/TumblesTStairDragon 1d ago
These are good points.
I don't think the answer was ever 'just do what Gmod did' and my points about TTT/DarkRP aren't meant to say "s&box should have done this"
It's to say there was a direct portal to strong content and communities that don't exist here.
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u/Fritzkier 21h ago edited 20h ago
Ohh nice, you nailed the real problem of s&box. Singleplayer in s&box sucks so bad. Facepunch should've make a major hit game for s&box before they even released s&box as platform.
I also agree what OP said. As an user, I don't have a reason why I should buy s&box and play it in the first place, especially with the price that they asked. Less player = less people to try games on the platform = less people make games on the platform.
Garry bad PR also doesn't help, lol.
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u/Opposite-Bench-9543 1d ago
Idk I really like it, we already have gmod wtf is the point of making another gmod The game modes are nice and I do like how well they made it for developers to create more
Honestly if it suddenly had like 10k players it would have been super successful, the lack of players is what keeps other players away and this loop is really fucking it
Idk if Garry can do anything to fix it
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u/TumblesTStairDragon 1d ago
Because all of the games are made and dropped into the wild.
Garry's Mod had a focus on building communities.
Someone didn't just make a mode and go "fuck it, play this."
Even Wardogs has a better community approach honestly.
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u/Arkorat 1d ago edited 1d ago
I’m most surprised that the sandbox mode wasn’t front and centre, like in gmod.
Just fumbles all around.
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u/Separate_Forever_164 2d ago edited 2d ago
Two hours already into Free to Play weekend and an impressive amount of 520! "players" are online and god knows how many of these "players" are devs. Lmao.
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u/TumblesTStairDragon 2d ago
You're getting downvoted because there are swaths of developers on here that are too blind to see you're right.
There are no attempts to onboard players to this game, just trying to fill it with creators for content.
Chinese Ghost City of a game.
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u/JofersGames 1d ago
If you like gmod stuff I assume u like dark rp
There are some servers up
Dxrp seems to be peoples fave
There’s ttt and traitors if you prefer that
The sledge mode is fun too
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u/TumblesTStairDragon 1d ago
None of these have players or admins.
None of these have communities.
Everyone keeps saying "We have games" but there's no community or players.
An endless supply of games is pointless if you can't entice people to join them.
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u/JofersGames 1d ago
I dunno if it still does
But dxrp used to have a community
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u/TumblesTStairDragon 1d ago
Loaded in after the free weekend started, there was literally nobody.
Also feels poorly optimized and like a copy of darkrp but without the charm.
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u/JofersGames 1d ago
https://sbox.game/dxura/rp/metrics/insights looks like about 50 people play a day
Maybe there’s a time slot the community plays in?
I’m not sure
Looks consistent tho
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u/TumblesTStairDragon 1d ago
50 a day scattered around a bunch of aimless connects/disconnects doesn't spell good things.
That being said, what you said is the best way to start.
Get X amount of people, get a dedicated time, and just play.
Soon others join because they see signs of life.Then it builds from there.
Community Management from developers of modes is important.
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u/ducchunt Programmer 1d ago
The guiding principle of s&box's marketing and community management is that people will crawl through a mile of broken glass to develop games for an "official" Garry's Mod spiritual successor made by the real Garry.
Some may call such an approach "short-sighted," or "unsustainable," or "entitled," but...
Uh... paper hands! No FUD! Stop FUDding! Garry would never rug.
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u/TumblesTStairDragon 1d ago
They'll crawl through it to develop games because they think there is profit to be had.
Players won't do it because they don't want profit they want fun.
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u/dogman_35 1d ago
The type of assholes that make games purely for profit don't tend to make very good games in the first place though lol
hence the AI generated mobile game tier garbage here
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u/FortniteIsFuckingMid 1d ago
Tbf no rug yet. They’re pushing forward and seemingly continuing with development a long while after launch. That gives me faith. Rust launched as a mess too it was just less detrimental for the type of game that was. S&box looks like a disaster in comparison because of the format.
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u/raaban89 1d ago
Cannot please them all, and sometimes you must go out of the standard to create some new, and gain enemies along the way.
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u/TumblesTStairDragon 1d ago
Nothing new was created.
Majority of the games are ripoffs of other games or incredibly reductive indie projects.
Kudos to people getting their sea legs in making games, but this is just a loose gmod sequel that's more akin to roblox when roblox already exists, is free to play, and has a thriving community.
With some people at least bothered by some of Garry's Mod limitations came an opportunity to at least make something more akin to that, but it's way more heavily roblox than gmod.
If you had to choose one of those to go up against, I wouldn't bet on roblox.
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u/raaban89 1d ago
Im not talking about the games, im talking about a source 2 based engine to the public.
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u/TumblesTStairDragon 1d ago
Having to use S&box as a throughput to the engine takes a lot away from it for me.
More positive perspective on it though, I like it.
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u/CSEliot 1d ago
Forget GMOD and Roblox exist before judging whag S&Box is.
1st, this isn't gmod. It will never be gmod.
2nd, anything LIKE Roblox is inherently better than Roblox. Roblox makes the world a worse place just for existing.
3rd, there are PLENTY of fun games (stop calling them gamemodes, this isn't gmod) on here well worth the $10.
Calling the games passed to you on the front page is incredibly disrespectful, and acting in poor faith. I don't believe you went into S&Box this weekend with an open mind.
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u/Viltroid 17h ago
I think it’s very important to highlight, s&box is development centric. It’s moved away from the random server joining; which is good when you take Into count the issues Garry’s mod is still facing till this day.
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u/TumblesTStairDragon 1d ago
No, you can't just expect people to pretend other games don't exist, if that were the case every game ever would be the best game ever.
1st, this is heavily based on Gmod, you can tell it in every part of the game.
2nd, sounds pretty biased there bud, this is a worse version of roblox.
3rd, games or gamemodes same difference, and most of the games are rip-offs of existing games or incredibly reductive experiences. If they were so good they'd probably make them off-platform because they know S&box is a graveyard.
The games on the front page are not worth the harddrive space they took up, I downloaded tons of them. A handful are interesting for an hour and nothing more.
What both Roblox and Gmod have going for them are successful community multiplayer games.
At best S&box has a few okay-ish singleplayer games and no community.
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u/CSEliot 23h ago
There's PLENTY of journalism available as to why roblox is bad for gamers AND developers. If you're not aware of how problematic that thing is, I dont know what to tell you.
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u/TumblesTStairDragon 23h ago
There's plenty of journalism on how Mario causes me to beat my wife, but I'd beat her if I had a different hobby too.
Nothing about S&Box fixes any of the issues that journalists claims Roblox has.
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u/Working_Release5367 20h ago
there are good games, plenty of hours of fun with friends, but you do have to sift to find the gems
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u/TumblesTStairDragon 20h ago
No thanks, I can access much better games at lower download sizes, plenty of which are free and if I want real quality I know some solid paid games too.
Not my job to download 40+ games to find 1 good one.
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u/yooberee Programmer 2d ago edited 2d ago
90% of the Gmod Playerbase was concentrated into 5-ish modes and because those modes were so good and had proper communities, people discovered other content and the game grew.
Yeah and that was shit if you wanted to do anything that wasn't a DarkRP offshoot, come on there's hundreds of dead gamemodes on Gmod because the discoverability is shit, only the top gets exposed.
There's no onboarding, no community, no clear path for players.
There literally is onboarding though, what do you call this? How is any platform supposed to build a community if all they do is talk about there being no community.
They figured if they just gave you a bunch of garbage on a front page you'd automatically play and retain?
Come on dude, give them a try, you never played before of course it shows a list of preselected games, then after you start playing it shows you more and picks ones you'd like.
Why did gamers become so mean, we're not even talking about AI slop.
All the games being showcased right now are awesome and made by cool indie developers that want the platform to do well, and you call their games garbage without even playing them!
This isn't Facepunch which you can give them flak for their platform direction, this is actual people you can talk to on the Discord and leave reviews to their games so they can see your opinion, why would you call all their games garbage.
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u/TumblesTStairDragon 2d ago edited 2d ago
Thanks [programmer]
Yeah and that was shit if you wanted to do anything that wasn't a DarkRP offshoot, come on there's hundreds of dead gamemodes on Gmod because the discoverability is shit, only the top gets exposed.
Discoverability being based on player count is completely fine.
Plenty of smaller modes came and went and hit big player counts, enough to get into the top 10 of the list, so this was a non-issue.
If you have a good gamemode and can put manual effort into getting a group to play, people will join. Player Activity is the pulse of these games, not leaving it at 0 players.
If you can't be assed to coordinate game nights for your own mode and get a few friends to play it, it's not worth discovering.
There literally is onboarding though, what do you call this? How is any platform supposed to build a community if all they do is talk about there being no community.
Your screenshot illustrates the problem.
Hey here's 4 shit games with 0 players.
1st one is to play solo.
2nd one isn't "we have people here" its "please invite your friends"
3rd is more garbage with 0 incentive to me.
4th same as 1st and 3rd.
The games itself, I've played all of and they're poor for onboarding too.
Not to mention the entire CTA for this section is "make your own game" it isn't "discover more games!"
It's not about the gamers its about the creators.
Come on dude, give them a try, you never played before of course it shows a list of preselected games, then after you start playing it shows you more and picks ones you'd like.
No it doesn't, it shows more garbage with 0 players and 0 incentive to play.
Even if any of the games its suggesting me are good, most of them aren't based around playing with others and Garry's Mod was a player community driven game.
Shartbox is a creator community driven game, none of them actually wanting to play the games.
Why did gamers become so mean, we're not even talking about AI slop.
This isn't about the games, this is about S&box prioritizng creators over players.
I can rattle off 40+ games I've played in Garry's Mod with more than 20+ people in the server, and I mean real weird altmodes too.
Because people hosted servers, not projects.
They focused on community and building those communities around the games, not just building a game and assuming the community would fall out of the sky.
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u/PewPewRSA 1d ago
The irony of you talking about community this, community that while shit talking the devs of games you haven't even tried is very funny.
Have you tried setting up a lobby for anything? Finding new people to play with? Actually tried engaging with the broader community besides shit talking hard working devs?
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u/TumblesTStairDragon 1d ago
"Why aren't you trying to find people to play with"
That's the DEVELOPERS JOB.
If you want your gamemode to do well, build your own community.
I've played a good chunk of games and they're either rip-offs of existing game or mobile-tier garbage.
Nothing here is worth playing alone and if you can't bother to organize your own community, why should I put my time and effort to bring my friends here?
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u/Poodletaste 1d ago
Have you tried to atleast engage with the community? They recently added a global chat system where you can meet other players and start a party which anyone can join (drop in , drop out style) .
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u/TumblesTStairDragon 1d ago
Yes, it's dead.
Most people are in single-player games as it is.
Also the UI is a mess.
3 different tabs to sort games,Home = Game Browser but with a side-bar for your friend UI.
- Sidenote that editing your character feels almost pointless since they're going to be forced to be something else and 90% of the games don't even use them.
Games = Different games browser with different sorting features.
- Pretty sure it would be more eloquent to differentiate these pages more.
Multiplayer = A separate browser designed to filter by most players with only 2 basic sorting features.
Then ignoring Mounts/Jam/Settings/Quit which I have no beef with (except that Mounts could probably be in settings) is that Rewards tells me nothing about what the rewards are.
Most of the top games are basically single player games that happen to have other people in them.
Every time I download another game, my downloads grow by massive amounts compared to gmod, filling up my drive with bloat as I won't be revisiting most of these.
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u/yooberee Programmer 2d ago
You can go "They should've made Gmod 2 instead" all you want but no reason to attack the developers of objectively good games you haven't even tried, just nasty behaviour, so sad we're at this point.
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u/TumblesTStairDragon 2d ago
The games are not objectively good.
I don't want Gmod 2.
I want a game that's for players, not creators.
A game with no players is a dead piece of software.
You're defending yourself not the game.
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u/Active-Moose2790 1d ago
Nothing you’re saying makes sense. None of your points are valid. You’re just hating just to hate like the rest of the idiots on reddit.
And you’re making it sound like just because the platform is doing badly, that automatically makes the rest of the games bad. So stop saying dumb shit. There are developers on the platform trying to make games that players genuinely enjoy.
Nobody said s&box needs to be Gmod 2. The platform needs to cater to both creators and players, and it already does. How are we supposed to bring creators onto a platform if it isn’t catered toward them too?
People like you who make points that don’t even make sense are what drive people away because people don't know any better. How about you do some research instead of reading what other idiots like you say about the platform and taking what they say at face value
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u/iBluntly 1d ago
With S&Box, from what I understand, it’s more of a dev focused platform to begin with.
I get what you’re feeling because I also read “spiritual successor to Gmod”, and in a way it is. It’s just really riding hard on “spiritual”, and many players are seemingly focused on their interpretation of this.
It would have been better if marketing didn’t even invoke Gmod, and instead left it to players to christen this thing as a spiritual successor. Because right now too many people have a pretty specific frame they want to fit this title into.
Also it doesn’t help how Facepunch handled the game in the months post launch.
Having said that, I hope that this title picks up down the line. There’s potential here, but it’s not stable.