Originally Posted by
saberon
I'm not talking about an overarching story per se, but rather self-contained story-driven events. It could be anything from "Build a throne room made entirely of gold because the king is visiting" to "HOLY FUCKBALLS ITS DRAGONS!". Whilst I enjoy Minecraft, I'd prefer a more goal-oriented game. I mean, imagine a Minecraft game where you're given 24 hours to build defenses before a bazillion zombies/skeletons spawn. Or perhaps you have to build a transport system to move building materials from point A to B in preparation for next weeks "construction" scenario. You'd have to dig tunnels and build bridges for your trains to travel to their destination. It's still a Sandbox game, however you're pointed in a certain direction with certain challenges to overcome.
The benefit of such self-contained story-driven events is that they are essentially endless. This week its dragons. Next week you have to build a castle or a city. The week after that its about Mole people. Better yet, a game like that with a substantial playerbase would allow for a multitude of different events to run simultaneously. If you'd rather focus on building cities and wonders, you choose an event based around that. If you'd rather focus on building castles and keeps and fucking shit up, you choose an event that incorporates that.
Furthermore, each type of event could lead-in to other types. Say that one such event is to build a city. The following event could be to build defenses for such a city without destroying any of the existing structures. Instead of building keeps, you would be barricading roads, for example.
It's still an open-world sandbox, but by creating goals and constraints, you're creating an objective and goal-oriented story to motivate and guide players.