I had stayed away from the game for fear of being hooked up, but decided to give it a try when I was confined home, so I downloaded the demo.
I really wanted to like it, but I gave up after an hour or so, because I felt that the game devs want me to be frustrated.
Now, of course nobody likes frustration, but I hate very much everybody who wants me to feel bad.
First of all, I was expecting a sandbox game, and instead I got objectives, and a stupid popup telling me what I am supposed to do.
Secondly, one of the first non trivial objectives is to reach a certain production speed, which, at least in the early stages of the game means hustle (I haven't bothered to check if it changes later on).
The game promises hustle from the beginning: you have to feed coal to a machine that extracts coal; you can use robot arms to feed the coal extracting machine with coal, but you have to feed coal to the robotic arm. WTF?
Finally, I'm really done with games where you have to do your thing but also fight monsters. Compare that to, say, Minecraft: you craft a bed, spam lights everywhere and never, ever have to fight a single monster if you don't want to, while you're still free to go and fight monsters with your bare hands if that's what you like.
Is there a sandbox game that is not hustle for the sake of hustle, that doesn't tell you what to do and in which you can do your thing without being too much bothered by monsters?
You can just turn biters off or put them on peaceful mode. Then do what you want. Also, I'd advise you ignore the popup if it bothers you. It comes up only once per game.
Everything in that game can be automated to minimize hustle, if you'd like it to be. Something I found fun was learing to figure out how to automate everything. For example, a drill outputs coal in a direction. The coal can go directly onto a belt, into a chest, into a smelter, or into another machine. Knowing that, you can figure out how to keep the coal drills operating continuously, without using inserters.
BTW, coal inserters will feed themselves coal if they are pulling coal off of a coal belt. So it's useful for feeding coal into your boilers for generating electricity, but not much else.
Finally, do you have evidence the game devs want you to feel bad? I think they want to produce something that challenges their users who enjoy challenges. You are free to respond to a challenge with frustration. But casting blame on the devs for your negative emotional response to their creation is unfounded.
Anno 1800 might float your boat? Or any of the previous games in the Anno series for that matter. The campaign does very much have a story and specific objectives, but the interesting bit is the regular sandbox game:
Turn off pirates and competitors, and either turn off or ignore NPC quests. (There's no penalty to ignoring them, but they sometimes can be useful if you need money.) You'll still have incidents like fires, industrial explosions, disease, and riots, but those are influenced by factors you control, and with well-placed fire stations, hospitals, and police stations you can very much contain them so they're a non-issue.
When did you try it? They added a new version of the tutorial in 0.17 (the one that has the little robot that talks to you), but decided to get rid of it as it's too much hand holding and doesn't really reflect the actual game.
If you want a sandbox game with no fighting, play the freeform game mode instead of the tutorial/campaign (which is how factorio is mostly played) and turn on peaceful mode?
First of all, I was expecting a sandbox game, and instead I got objectives, and a stupid popup telling me what I am supposed to do.
Secondly, one of the first non trivial objectives is to reach a certain production speed, which, at least in the early stages of the game means hustle (I haven't bothered to check if it changes later on). The game promises hustle from the beginning: you have to feed coal to a machine that extracts coal; you can use robot arms to feed the coal extracting machine with coal, but you have to feed coal to the robotic arm. WTF?
Finally, I'm really done with games where you have to do your thing but also fight monsters. Compare that to, say, Minecraft: you craft a bed, spam lights everywhere and never, ever have to fight a single monster if you don't want to, while you're still free to go and fight monsters with your bare hands if that's what you like.
Is there a sandbox game that is not hustle for the sake of hustle, that doesn't tell you what to do and in which you can do your thing without being too much bothered by monsters?