a proper made game doesn’t need to focus everything on an endgame, i know for many games that is really the case, but there are also some that focus on the leveling as an experience rather than it being a means to get to the endgame, gw2 is a good example.
by pvp im assuming you mean “mc style you can kill everyone everywhere” that wont be, in general we talked about pvp and pve specific worlds on the server, but the devs went out and said that “it would be hard to balance it around PvP so we wont” they talked about a potential idea of PvP was “fun” pvp as in competitive games or stuff rather than just go stab things to death.
you keep mentioning trove, this ISNT Trove, just because they are voxel RPGS both of them. Trove was a mediocre RPG with non interesting progress very boring worlds that all looked the same and the entire point was just “go to dungeon, destroy it, go to next dungeon, destroy it, go up to next world” As you said so yourself it isnt about combat entirely, its also about guilds, building, crafting and progress. Progress being the biggest difference. You seem to compare it to Trove and Minecraft, but when i hear Sandbox mmorpg i think SWG or The repopulation. The tiers as they were. should be for those who WANT to do combat, that is why i think its fair that you have up to say 10 tiers and say “this is for the casuals” and then the + and ++ for the hardcore fighters. The tiers shouldn’t in my eyes affect your progress otherwise, you COULD explore tier 1 worlds, master crafting without leaving tier 1 worlds etc etc. that is something i think would be important. I’m definitely against a sort of “you cant go above 120 in swordmaking unless you have unlocked tier 5” but the upper tiers should mean stronger enemies. i dont believe that boundless will have levels but instead be more open ended, which is why i think progress should be tied to somethign ELSE. even though that is also kinda weird atm, i recommend you read this.
They havent been too direct atm on how progress will work, but given that they planned for tiers i think its safe to assume that there has to be SOME sort of combat progress, because if there wasn’t then there would be no point, there would be nothing to strive for.
If you want to go explore and build you should always be able to, but i still believe that the idea of having to kill a titan is a good idea, because if you cant kill the titan of the previous tier i would assume that you would just get destroyed on the next tier. you should earn your way up, not just be handfed everything.
You keep saying “mmo combat” what is that? is that just anything which isn’t minecraft “hold left click to win”? because mmo combat really isnt a very well defined term… Trove had minimal skills and combat which made it boring in my eyes.