My Honest Thoughts Are....Not Good.

[Mocchi]

Alot of Cracks are Already Starting to Form

As someone who has been waiting for this game for years and have seen it go through several engine and concept changes, I can tell that this game is going to be dead on arrival. While that sounds harsh, with the way Garry is pushing this game, its going to be horrendous at launch.

Gameplay

As for the game-play, opening a map just puts you in a mode where you cannot interact with anything. there are no physics objects, no way to interact, you're essentially just stuck in a model viewer where you can't even interact with the model. While it isn't *supposed* to be Gmod 2, when you put out a product almost 20 years ago that is superior in movement and interactivity, questions will be raised on what the last 4 years have been wasted on when we already had an amazing baseline to build from. If your game literally called "Sandbox" cant even have a good sandbox mode, then what's the point?
The movement is generally pretty slow in official gamemodes and it feels stiff compared to what many people are used too with source 1.

Performance

If you're in a mode that allows the spawning of physics objects, good luck doing literally anything because everything is downloaded in on the spot. No more pre-cached downloads or workshop to download things in advance from what I can tell. So, if you have sh*tty internet, then good luck doing anything or loading anything. While I get that this is a preview and still being worked on, this "streamed asset's" crap should be a thing of the past. We had a solution for this years ago and it's called sharing a collection with your friends. Nobody wants to wait 3 whole minutes for a map to download. As well as this, the game really starts to chug when you have anymore than 10 objects spawned in.
Also for context, I'm running an i9 10th gen and an RTX 3080, so I know it's not my PC.

Content and Monetization

This is where my biggest gripe with the game comes in, and that is the fact that Garry want's this game to be another "Meta-verse" cash cow. And like the rest of them, it's going to fail miserably. He plans to have monetization in place driven by player engagement, and if this goes through then say goodbye to any kind of goodwill or creativity that this game could have had. If you have played Fortnite Creative or Roblox, which both have very similar monetization practices, the content designed for these are soulless tycoons and clicker games with AI assets made solely to farm engagement out of the players. And if you go to the world search, you can already see these types of games taking up a majority of the uploaded content, ruining all creativity.

Garry, if you read this, I want the best for this game. And I want you to know that this Metaverse pipedream you have is ruining your product. You do not need to pay players to make content for your game as long as the game you are making is good. This will kill your game within months and you will not only have wasted all of our time, but yours and your team's as well.

Conclusion

Overall, I see the dream here. Bringing source 2 to us to use is an amazing feat but I can't help but feel like given the baseline of quality that GMOD has, what is the point of this game/engine? As of now, there is nothing separating this from just using Unity to create a game. Both are free (as of now) and atleast with Unity you don't have to worry about updates breaking what you make and limiting your asset usage immensely. Also, I do stand by what I said about the monetization, the game will suffer and be an AI fueled slop machine if this is fully implemented. I really hope changes are made because my hopes were really high. I'm not asking for GMOD 2, just a product that reflects it's quality.

[Mocchi]

Some things I forgot to mention

I wanted to add that since unlike Gmod, where everyone was building off of pre-made assets from valve (Guns, Playermodels, Etc.) making content for this game is going to be alot harder and nowhere near as accessible. And without these shared assets to build from, it will be a lot more difficult for a "community" to take root when we are all working with different tools.

The avatar system is horrible. Like, in it's own game these would probably be fine, but in a game where you should be able to do or be anything, limiting us to these Fanboy and ChumChum ripoffs is just a shot in the foot. Let us have universal unique character models to let us express ourselves the way we want too. This is barely a QOL aspect and more of a requirement. This is just bad.

The game is pretty though, but again, like in my original post, there are so many foundational issues that no amount of patches can fix it. The way content is loaded in NEEDS a workshop, the character models NEED an overhaul. The way gamemodes are accessed NEEDS an overhaul, the monetization WILL kill the game's community.

I think that's everything I have a gripe with. The game could be so much more than....this.

[Braxen 🐟]

you do realise this is a game engine right and each game chooses what mechanics, what cloud support, and what movement feel they want, right?

[[They/Them] ChesseTheWasp]

Originally posted by Braxen 🐟:

you do realise this is a game engine right and each game chooses what mechanics, what cloud support, and what movement feel they want, right?

roblox is a game engine and game and has actual controls that feel good to use by default

[Mocchi]

Originally posted by Braxen 🐟:

you do realise this is a game engine right and each game chooses what mechanics, what cloud support, and what movement feel they want, right?

I dont think that giving map makers the option to tweak settings is an excuse to have the default experience be so sub-par. Fortnite, Roblox, and even Gmod do this concept without sacrificing enjoyable default controls.

[Braxen 🐟]

Originally posted by Mocchi:

Originally posted by Braxen 🐟:

you do realise this is a game engine right and each game chooses what mechanics, what cloud support, and what movement feel they want, right?

I dont think that giving map makers the option to tweak settings is an excuse to have the default experience be so sub-par. Fortnite, Roblox, and even Gmod do this concept without sacrificing enjoyable default controls.

map makers? what are you talking about?
and if s&box had a default movement system (which it really doesn't) it would make more sense.

[Mocchi]

Originally posted by Braxen 🐟:

Originally posted by Mocchi:

I dont think that giving map makers the option to tweak settings is an excuse to have the default experience be so sub-par. Fortnite, Roblox, and even Gmod do this concept without sacrificing enjoyable default controls.

map makers? what are you talking about?
and if s&box had a default movement system (which it really doesn't) it would make more sense.

I think that's the big problem with this "game/engine" concept.

There is no true default anything, nothing to build from, no default gamemodes. Why would someone go through all the work jumping through janky source 2 hoops for a project they couldve made on Unity with way more creative freedom?

If the Source 2 SDK is released, does that just maked S&Box pointless since it has no default "game" to offer?

[Gordon Freeman]

Originally posted by Mocchi:

Originally posted by Braxen 🐟:

map makers? what are you talking about?
and if s&box had a default movement system (which it really doesn't) it would make more sense.

I think that's the big problem with this "game/engine" concept.

There is no true default anything, nothing to build from, no default gamemodes. Why would someone go through all the work jumping through janky source 2 hoops for a project they couldve made on Unity with way more creative freedom?

If the Source 2 SDK is released, does that just maked S&Box pointless since it has no default "game" to offer?

I was honestly about to say the same thing. This isn't a game engine, arguably it's just a custom-built Source 2 SDK. If Valve ever releases an official full SDK (possibly even including Half-Life franchise assets, like the original Source SDK did), then what does this janky sausage game have to offer over the real deal?

[Mocchi]

Originally posted by Gordon Freeman:

Originally posted by Mocchi:

I think that's the big problem with this "game/engine" concept.

There is no true default anything, nothing to build from, no default gamemodes. Why would someone go through all the work jumping through janky source 2 hoops for a project they couldve made on Unity with way more creative freedom?

If the Source 2 SDK is released, does that just maked S&Box pointless since it has no default "game" to offer?

I was honestly about to say the same thing. This isn't a game engine, arguably it's just a custom-built Source 2 SDK. If Valve ever releases an official full SDK (possibly even including Half-Life franchise assets, like the original Source SDK did), then what does this janky sausage game have to offer over the real deal?

Exactly, its also going to be insanely hard to get people to learn the ins and outs of an entire game engine just for one platform without an established online community/tutorials. And not to insult source 2, its amazing, but its just a year out from being a decade old now. I can't imagine Valve going more than 3-4 years from now without dropping the SDK and moving on to something new.

[Del Tremblay]

Originally posted by Mocchi:

Originally posted by Gordon Freeman:

I was honestly about to say the same thing. This isn't a game engine, arguably it's just a custom-built Source 2 SDK. If Valve ever releases an official full SDK (possibly even including Half-Life franchise assets, like the original Source SDK did), then what does this janky sausage game have to offer over the real deal?

Exactly, its also going to be insanely hard to get people to learn the ins and outs of an entire game engine just for one platform without an established online community/tutorials. And not to insult source 2, its amazing, but its just a year out from being a decade old now. I can't imagine Valve going more than 3-4 years from now without dropping the SDK and moving on to something new.

"learn the ins and outs of an entire game engine just for one platform"
S&box is the game engine. It's based on Source 2 but it's really its own thing at this point. You need to see S&box just has Facepunch alternative to Unity and Godot.

[[They/Them] ChesseTheWasp]

Originally posted by Mocchi:

Originally posted by Braxen 🐟:

map makers? what are you talking about?
and if s&box had a default movement system (which it really doesn't) it would make more sense.

I think that's the big problem with this "game/engine" concept.

There is no true default anything, nothing to build from, no default gamemodes. Why would someone go through all the work jumping through janky source 2 hoops for a project they couldve made on Unity with way more creative freedom?

If the Source 2 SDK is released, does that just maked S&Box pointless since it has no default "game" to offer?

Roblox and fortnite are so easy; you open a template place and you get a baseplate and a spawn point that creates characters that already have predefined movement and controls you don't have to worry about implementing.

Meanwhile in sandbox You don't even start with a spawnpoint in the default template; you just have a camera facing a small baseplate with 3 purple cubes on top of it.

[xCeezyx]

Originally posted by Del Tremblay:

Originally posted by Mocchi:

Exactly, its also going to be insanely hard to get people to learn the ins and outs of an entire game engine just for one platform without an established online community/tutorials. And not to insult source 2, its amazing, but its just a year out from being a decade old now. I can't imagine Valve going more than 3-4 years from now without dropping the SDK and moving on to something new.

"learn the ins and outs of an entire game engine just for one platform"
S&box is the game engine. It's based on Source 2 but it's really its own thing at this point. You need to see S&box just has a engine like Unity & Unreal.

Ok if I see it as an engine then tell me why I would want to choose s&box over unity, unreal engine, and hell maybe even godot which have far much more documentation and features, oh yeah not to mention that s&box constantly likes to change the game foundation forcing devs to have to remake large portions of their game like how do I know thats not gonna happen AGAIN

[Frinky]

OP has some decent points about the meta-verse/monetisation stuff, but the rest of this comment section is beyond braindead

really ingest the fact that this is a dev-preview, it is not here for yall, and the fact that s&box is closer to a game engine is not a negative!

[DrakeFruit]

Originally posted by xCeezyx:

Originally posted by Del Tremblay:

"learn the ins and outs of an entire game engine just for one platform"
S&box is the game engine. It's based on Source 2 but it's really its own thing at this point. You need to see S&box just has a engine like Unity & Unreal.

Ok if I see it as an engine then tell me why I would want to choose s&box over unity, unreal engine, and hell maybe even godot which have far much more documentation and features, oh yeah not to mention that s&box constantly likes to change the game foundation forcing devs to have to remake large portions of their game like how do I know thats not gonna happen AGAIN

Garry has specifically stated they will bend over backwards to avoid breaking games from now on and uh, s&box is barely available to the public so obviously you wouldn't use it over Unity. It's not even close to competetive because it's been in development for such a short time

[ducc]

S&box is a game engine. Access was opened up so that developers can make games using the engine. You are not expected to have fun with S&box unless you are a coder or artist.

Try opening the S&box editor and see if making games or maps is fun for you. If you'd rather just play games, then maybe you should wait a few months or years for a game to be made in S&box that strikes your fancy.

Right now I think the best game in S&box is Idaho RP, but I might be a little biased ;)

[[They/Them] ChesseTheWasp]

Originally posted by ducc:

S&box is a game engine. Access was opened up so that developers can make games using the engine. You are not expected to have fun with S&box unless you are a coder or artist.

there is no reason to use sandbox over something more finished like Roblox, fortnite, or even Core. They don't even have a built in character controller; the default template is just a camera looking at 3 boxes on the ground