As a Garry's Mod veteran, S&Box looks like something entirely different. Although Garry says it's a kind of sequel, it doesn't look like it is. It's more like a meta game engine. Or metaverse (god I hate that word.) I don't expect it to be a hit sadly.
You took the words right out of my mouth. I think Garry overcorrected and became a perfectionist concerned more with the code and engine than making something that people will want to play.
Garry's Mod was fun because it was silly. It was far from perfect but we were happy putting thrusters and balloons on jeeps and flying around. He's lost sight of that it seems. He wants to build something perfect and I fear that's going to make it a sterile experience.
after GMod was launched on Steam with much better support for Lua scripting, what we call Garry's Mod grew into just one game mode (the sandbox gamemode). with S&Box, I think Garry's idea is that the GMod sequel is just one of the game modes. he/they are focusing on the developer platform first and foremost.
I think there will be a GMod 2 gamemode that resembles what we remember (balloons, thrusters, etc)
