Your thoughts on the survival games

d_20

Right now, I've got Citadel, Dark and Light, and Conan Exiles. I don't have ARK. Any other big ones I'm missing in the genre?

I've played about an hour or two of each that I have. I still haven't gotten fully into one of them yet, but Conan will probably be the one I like the overall feel of in terms of feeling connected to my avatar. I like the mood and world. I feel like this game can have a lot of potential.

What are your thoughts on the current crop of survival games? How would you compare them?

Flem

Plenty out there, Ark is good as is State of Decay.

Joseph_Kerr

I'm looking forward to State of Decay II, the rest are all pretty much copy & paste imo and pretty boring across the board because of that. How many skins can DayZ have? I have ARK and and Citadel but the repetition drives me away from both of them, I had D&L but returned it because I already have too many renditions of it already. I haven't played Conan yet so I can't comment on it.

Wizardry

Every last one of them are cheap low budget games not worth supporting.The effort that goes into these even after they get a surge cash influx is still pathetic.
The whole gimmick of early access gaming is very lame,they can whip out a blank boring world with a few assets in a mere few months with a very small team and little money spent.
These devs then start asking for ridiculous prices for these games that are not worth a single dime..yet.

You can't sell someone half a car or half a hockey stick or half an ice cream bar and ask for full prices and in MANY cases way more than even the finished product would be worth.
Bottom line,don't waste your time or money,they are not quality games,not even remotely close to being worth your time and effort.
When the devs stop getting money they will be forced to start making more robust complete games and with no early access forced to finish it or see massive refunds.Consumers need to start forcing all these cheap developers to get off their ass.

moosecatlol

Low effort content, with high returns.

Kyleran

I've been holding off trying them until one rises from the pack, but so far none have.

All seem to be low quality,  incomplete games stuck in never ending early access states which struggle if 100 people are in the same world. 

Toss in the usual player asshatery when presented the opportunity to do so means I've got little interest in buying. 

d_20

As to them being early access, I agree I would like to see the games working better than they are (too many disconnects already in Conan). I see a lot of potential, especially for Conan. But I don't know if Funcom will fulfill it.

I bought them all in a moment of weakness, not feeling I had any new worlds to explore, which is what I really love. Like a new Elder Scrolls rpg. But since I don't have that, I've been looking at these survival games.

Azaron_Nightblade

7 Days to Die!

pantaro

i'd rather play most survival games over most themepark mmo's but that's just me. I've been a Conan fan since i was a kid so im extremely biased towards that game,so it's my personal favorite one. 

ARK has the worst optimization out of all of them, also asking people on this website your most likely gonna get mostly responses like @Wizardry. but to a certain degree they are not wrong anything early access is gonna have plenty of issues,everyone seems to think early access is full release now tho.

I would say i play Conan exiles,7 days to die and Empyrion Galactic Survival the most

Mikeha

Best survival game out right here. 

dave6660

Survival games were a cool novelty for the first couple games but didn't have any long term appeal.

jeddakus

I like survival games but I'm way past the 'fed up' stage with everything now having to be some kind of 'survival' game so when I hear the word, I move on.

Octagon7711

The problem with a lot of them is they are slow to make improvements or respond to problems.  

Hefaistos

d_20 said:

Right now, I've got Citadel, Dark and Light, and Conan Exiles. I don't have ARK. Any other big ones I'm missing in the genre?

I've played about an hour or two of each that I have. I still haven't gotten fully into one of them yet, but Conan will probably be the one I like the overall feel of in terms of feeling connected to my avatar. I like the mood and world. I feel like this game can have a lot of potential.

What are your thoughts on the current crop of survival games? How would you compare them?

Survival games along with mmorpgs are the biggest time sink games. The only thing that survival are different is that in one hour you can lose your 1-2-3-4-5-6months progression if you are afk/semi afk/wiped, etc. 

Ive erased moba/survival games after 2k H in ARK.

Talonsin

One of my issues with the current crop of survival games is that by mid-game you are no longer concerned with survival.  In Ark, once you get some metal you dont worry about much of anything.  Sadly most of the end up being "race to get enough resources to rule the world" kind of games.

d_20

Mikeha said:

Best survival game out right here. 

Yes, the reviews are good on this one. It's on my wish list. I may give it another look. Thanks for linking the video.

someforumguy

Not all of them focus on survival. I prefer to see them as small scale multiplayer worlds. maybe S(mall)MO instead of MMO

Anyway, some of those dev teams come up with fun ideas. Atm I am keeping track of Kingdoms (mix of survival and the sims) and Empyrion: Galactic Survival (mix of Space Engineers and NMS).

I just can't stand the zombie survival games. For some reason they all end up becoming hunger games, because zombies turn out to be boring for PVE (7 days to die as exception).

There will be plenty of crap games between them, but I hope some of them will become great. Kind of like Ark, but then better optimised and less buggy

Golelorn

I am enjoying Valnir Rok, right now.

freedomania

for me i feel bored after played 25-30 hours,i don't know why

RexKushman

d_20 said:

Right now, I've got Citadel, Dark and Light, and Conan Exiles. I don't have ARK. Any other big ones I'm missing in the genre?

I've played about an hour or two of each that I have. I still haven't gotten fully into one of them yet, but Conan will probably be the one I like the overall feel of in terms of feeling connected to my avatar. I like the mood and world. I feel like this game can have a lot of potential.

What are your thoughts on the current crop of survival games? How would you compare them?

I would recommend Ark and Rust. Two of the best games I've ever played and the two highest "hours played" on my steam account with 2500+ in Rust and nearly 1000 in Ark. 

Neither are AAA games so don't go in expecting AAA polish, it just isn't there. Frame rates can be bad at times in both and performance overall is spotty and usually relies on the owner of the server you are playing on to be using really good hardware. 

Rust is a pvp centered game and unless you join one of the popular RP servers you can expect every person you run into to try to bash your head in with a rock. I usually play on RP servers when i go back to the game, otherwise you need to be in a decent sized group to really stand a chance. This game has given me some of my most exhilarating experience in my gaming life, as well as some of my most depressing moments.

Ark is also pvp focused but can be enjoyed on a pve server if you want to just play and not worry about others ruining your fun. Currently me and a friend are playing on a pve server where we are building up to fight all of the bosses, of which there are 3 on The Island map. Each boss has 3 difficulty levels and requires different artifacts that you need to get from special caves to summon them. There is good base building, animal taming, breeding and all of the different dinos have different uses.  

There are real, legitimate complaints about both of these games but for the money I've spent vs the time/fun I've had playing there are no other games that has come close for me in my 30yrs playing games (except maybe Red Dead Redemption and GTAV but i played both of them single player).

Herase

Wizardry said:

Every last one of them are cheap low budget games not worth supporting.The effort that goes into these even after they get a surge cash influx is still pathetic.
The whole gimmick of early access gaming is very lame,they can whip out a blank boring world with a few assets in a mere few months with a very small team and little money spent.
These devs then start asking for ridiculous prices for these games that are not worth a single dime..yet.

You can't sell someone half a car or half a hockey stick or half an ice cream bar and ask for full prices and in MANY cases way more than even the finished product would be worth.
Bottom line,don't waste your time or money,they are not quality games,not even remotely close to being worth your time and effort.
When the devs stop getting money they will be forced to start making more robust complete games and with no early access forced to finish it or see massive refunds.Consumers need to start forcing all these cheap developers to get off their ass.

Tbh, I agree. I feel quite a few of these survival games are very bare bones and use the excuses of sandbox and early access to barley make any changes or constant updates to them. ARK is the only multiplayer survival game that came and has actual released and seems to be trying, that I know of.  

Sovrath

I've tried Dark and Light, Conan Exiles and that Viking one Valnir Rokh (or some such thing).

I enjoyed Dark and Light but it didn't hold me. Really liked Conan Exiles and still dabble with it. It gets very time consuming (in a good way) to work on things and I think I'd rather finish some other projects before I while away hours working on my Temple.

Valnir Rokh didn't grab me at all. I'll give it another try if it releases.

But "yeah" these games are closer to what I thought mmorpgs would be. I like the bare bones "drop you into the world and make of them what you can" type of game play.

I like the idea that the players make the world. If only they could be done in a more massive scale.

Jakdstripper

haven't found one that truly gets me immersed in the gameplay since the original Dayz mod.

they all feel cheap, easy, small, recycled, stale, repetitive, boring. a gathering simulator with different skins. 

i recently booted up the old Dayz, Arma 2, mod.... yea the one where the zombies run/chase you for miles....... i still get shivers hearing those zombies shreeking about, as i am forced to scavenge for meager resources. the setting too is just so perfect. you feel lost and alone just looking at the landscape. 

i just can't believe how horribly Bohemia  dropped the ball on the Dayz standalone. how can you screw up that bad on such a amazing, fully functioning model? 

d_20

Golelorn said:

I am enjoying Valnir Rok, right now.

I didn't know about this one. I've added it to my wishlist and I will keep an eye on it. It looks interesting. How is the questing?

AUNE2018

I would love to find a good survival game, but I find most of them to be mind-numbingly dull and tedious. I think too often, survival games are ONLY about surviving and not about anything else. They need to start with a great game, then ADD survival to it, not vice versa like is so often the case. 

SEANMCAD

AUNE2018 said:

I would love to find a good survival game, but I find most of them to be mind-numbingly dull and tedious. I think too often, survival games are ONLY about surviving and not about anything else. They need to start with a great game, then ADD survival to it, not vice versa like is so often the case. 

I have 1000 hours in 7 days to die. I know I know zombies..I felt the same way but its a friggin blast.