Sandbox Vs VN

zger

Member
Sep 6, 2017
192
99
Ok so... I dont like vns and just ignoring them. Sometimes just checking render previews and moving along. But why there so many ppl that come into sandbox game threads and starting to complain about clicking or grinding or whatever? And then reviewing it 1 star coz its not VN? Its like i would just randomly start reviewing all vns that i dont like them and its just slideshow with text? idk guys this is rly stupid.
 
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Carpe Stultus

Engaged Member
Sep 30, 2018
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Its just as stupid as hating on VN's. :WeSmart:

Many sandboxes are only there to hide the fact that the game lacks content. They are often grindy as hell, without any pointers what to do next and so on and thats bad because most people come here to..well jerk off. I'm not a fan of most sandboxes either because if i want to grind i'll play a normal game where its enjoyable to grind, which it isn't in porn games when i have to grind for hours to get a handjob scene or something like that as reward.

Playing VN's is reading a story and having some, more or less, nice visuals on top of that and is way more practical for the people who come here just to fap or enjoy something without searching around or grinding.
 

zger

Member
Sep 6, 2017
192
99
just saying that ppl should respect other types of games and if they dont like to play grindy sandboxes no ones forcing them to. and rly all these complains about grinding/clicking in sandbox game threads should stop...
 

woody554

Well-Known Member
Jan 20, 2018
1,558
1,940
because they're the other half of two idiots, one of which can only read and the other can only write. so they're the ones who can't read tags.
 
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rk-47

Well-Known Member
Jun 27, 2020
1,004
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I hate it when VN's use sandbox elements which dont do anything, like you can access a map but going literally anywhere does nothing apart from the one are you are meant to go for the story to continue
 
Jul 5, 2019
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I don't play sandboxes because I've never felt a single one of them was worth the experience.

I don't get any enjoyment over repeating the same scenes over and over again to get enough reputation or stat or whatever just to get the next scene, or clicking around on little squares trying to find the person I'm supposed to talk to.

I'm here for the story, just tell me the story. That's why I play VNs.

I can't say I've never bitched about sandbox elements in a thread before, but I've never left a bad review for a game because of it.
 
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khumak

Engaged Member
Oct 2, 2017
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Both types have their merits. VNs tend to have a better story usually. Sandbox games almost always have greater replayability. VNs with enough meaningful branches to make replaying it fun are rare. Most of them you play once or twice and then you're done forever. Sandbox games frequently have little to no story and an excessive amount of grind.
 
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Carpe Stultus

Engaged Member
Sep 30, 2018
3,402
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just saying that ppl should respect other types of games and if they dont like to play grindy sandboxes no ones forcing them to. and rly all these complains about grinding/clicking in sandbox game threads should stop...
Oh yeah i agree that people should stop going into threads and complain because there are tags they dislike sandbox and everything else too, but sadly that won't happen like ever.
 

DawnCry

Well-Known Member
Nov 25, 2017
1,240
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To be fair there are many people that don't know to stick to their side of the line, meaning to respect what is on the other side and not bashing it everytime they see it.

But this isn't a problem of only VN vs sandbox but it's on a major scale related to fetishes and stuff like that, I'm a defender of "let creators do what they think is right" and that people that like what the creator is doing go play the game.
 

Beatrix Kiddo

Member
Donor
Aug 25, 2016
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I think it boils down to the fact that balancing a sandbox game is quite more challenging than a VN. With VNs it's just about the pacing, while sandbox you need to factor how much grind there is, what kind of grind it is (go and fetch quests, minigames, repeated actions...), how obvious or not should it be to the player what he needs to do, how easy is to get on with it (can you do the grind at any moment, or are there conditions like time of the day, day of the week, certain item or event needed...).

It's far easier to hit the sweet spot for many people when all you have to consider is the pacing. You only need to screw up one of the many sandbox factors to start getting complaints. And the thing is, there's an abundant record of not so well done sandbox games. I think that's the reason why sandbox games are more susceptible to bad reviews.
 
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Adabelitoo

Well-Known Member
Jun 24, 2018
1,950
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That kind of reviews are just stupid. It isn't only a thing about sandbox, but NTR, brothel, rape and others as well. I usually report them whenever I see one of those, sometimes it gets deleted, sometimes it doesn't and sometimes I never go back to check what happened.
 

khumak

Engaged Member
Oct 2, 2017
3,824
3,859
just saying that ppl should respect other types of games and if they dont like to play grindy sandboxes no ones forcing them to. and rly all these complains about grinding/clicking in sandbox game threads should stop...
I disagree. IMO devs should WANT to know why people don't like their game. If it's just a flame like "this game sucks" with no useful info then that's not helpful but if a big chunk of people think it's too grindy or too linear or "insert some other common gripe" then maybe I should look at improving that aspect of the game even if it doesn't bother everyone...

Positive feedback is just as useful, but again only if they say WHY they like the game. Maybe you have good dialog and visuals but everyone hates your minigames for instance... Maybe pull those out or make them skippable...
 

Hadley

Well-Known Member
Sep 18, 2017
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1,892
I really don't like Sandbox Games. Most of them are just terrible and you are just forced to click through Backgrounds until you find the next Scene.
 

DuniX

Well-Known Member
Dec 20, 2016
1,236
825
The only reason I like Sandbox Games is the scenes are much briefer.
With VNs I have to suffer through long ass cringe boring "story" scenes with characters I want murdered.
The "writers" here greatly overestimate their ability, so they might as well keep it brief and varied.
 

desmosome

Conversation Conqueror
Sep 5, 2018
6,344
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Maybe 1 out of 100 devs know how to make a sandbox. It's an integral game mechanic so we can review or bash it based on how well they execute it. I can count on one hand the games where the sandbox is done well.
 
D

Deleted member 3145675

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Guest
Hi,
Maybe 1 out of 100 devs know how to make a sandbox. It's an integral game mechanic so we can review or bash it based on how well they execute it. I can count on one hand the games where the sandbox is done well.
Perhaps they're coding and writing it with one hand only too? /jk

In my opinion, it's not really a matter of X Vs Y.
I have played (a few) sandboxes that were "enjoyable" and I have read VN that made me want to either kill myself due to bad writing or pointless scenes or simply stop reading them deleting the crap and forgetting about the very existence of such a waste of everything.

What counts is whether or not the subject of your attention is worth the time you spend on it. (so subjectivity intervenes)

So
Positive feedback is just as useful, but again only if they say WHY they like the game
or why they hate it.
So that they may help the game Dev to both improve his game and himself.
(yeah I know it's not "inclusive" but as a non native english-speaker I find the "pronouns" war just stupid.)

Have fun playing/reading/grinding/fapping - isn't it why most of us are here for?
;)
 

Carpe Stultus

Engaged Member
Sep 30, 2018
3,402
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I disagree. IMO devs should WANT to know why people don't like their game. If it's just a flame like "this game sucks" with no useful info then that's not helpful but if a big chunk of people think it's too grindy or too linear or "insert some other common gripe" then maybe I should look at improving that aspect of the game even if it doesn't bother everyone...

Positive feedback is just as useful, but again only if they say WHY they like the game. Maybe you have good dialog and visuals but everyone hates your minigames for instance... Maybe pull those out or make them skippable...
Feedback or constructive criticism are one thing but how often do you really see that? Most of the time people go into threads of games with tags they hate, in this case sandbox, just to write shit like "has tag X i won't play it!!" "wasted potential because tag X is in the game" and so on?
 

khumak

Engaged Member
Oct 2, 2017
3,824
3,859
Feedback or constructive criticism are one thing but how often do you really see that? Most of the time people go into threads of games with tags they hate, in this case sandbox, just to write shit like "has tag X i won't play it!!" "wasted potential because tag X is in the game" and so on?
I don't know if it's just me, but if I don't like a game at all I don't even bother commenting on it. I just delete it and move on. If I'm leaving a comment on it, I liked it well enough to actually care even if the comment was negative, and regardless whether I'm making a positive or negative comment I include details. Maybe the dev will decide to address some of it, maybe he won't. But I tried.

Not all of the feedback is going to be useful. You have to have a thick skin as a dev when you put your work out for public consumption. There will be some trolls and some flames that you just have to ignore. There will also be some people who want a different type of game than what you want to make. But you'll also get some useful comments letting you know which things people really liked and which ones they didn't.

To use my earlier example, maybe I really like minigames (I don't), so I packed the game full of them because I think they're fun. If a big chunk of my fans didn't like those then it makes sense to give them an option not to have to deal with them. Doesn't mean I have to pull them out entirely, but making them skip-able is a good compromise.

I think a dev should make what they personally like to play, but I also think they should try to give their fans what they want as long as it's still enjoyable for the dev. It's the same idea as the polls that devs sometimes do to find out what their fans want except in the case of comments, it's unsolicited.
 
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Staimh

Active Member
Dec 12, 2020
895
3,425
In the spirit of positivity and constructiveness
I like sandbox or open world style games

The VN extreme would be
> click = sex, click = more sex, click = more sex (repeat until exhausted)
The sandbox extreme would be
> play game, grind, fight, puzzle solve to eventually defeat major boss - reward is a short porn clip

Neither is what I want - I want:
grind a bit = porn reward; fight a bit = porn reward; puzzle a bit = porn reward;
And when I find it I try to leave a good (and informative) review;
 
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macadam

Chicken Bubble Butt
Game Developer
Aug 5, 2016
7,017
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my little advertising moment :p

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But anyway...

people who like VN don't like sandbox because they like to follow a story and just clic to read or fast jump to sex scenes. They don't like to think about going all around to find the char that will have stuff in and all...
The reason behind that is the crap sandbox games that came out way too much in theses last years.. With many places empty, barely any content, and the necessity to combine perfectly the correct skill amount + the correct time of the day (sometime cut in 20 -_-) + the correct room/place and hoping that the RNG is nice with you to actually randomly spawn the character you want.
obviously, this is boring and annoying for people who just want a nice story to read and follow. It break any kind of immersion and pleasure , in profit of fake gameplay time wasting hours to expect to have the good thing at good time at good place.
And it goes even worse when some dev put the fact that you cana ctually "miss" the event completly if you didn't do it at the perfect time.
And... what's the worse imho...the fact you live a day taking a shower, eating 1 time, working for few hours and going back to sleep because you can't do anything anymore thank to stamina, hygiena and whatever bullshit "skill/stats" the game have inside.


but i disgress... sorry :/