I am ALWAYS on the promise that if a game is designed really well that it doesn't matter what the genre is labelled. The problem i have seen is that now in every genre it is VERY easy to predict exactly what we will see.So nobody is being creative or putting in much effort.
Most of what we see in all genres,is art assets and a generated world.Then we login in our players and that is about it. What we should be seeing is CONTENT,no not linear of hand holding quests with markers,i mean stuff that makes the world look real and exciting to play.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I think the OP using Fallout 76 as a bad "survival game". FO76 is a poorly implemented survival at best. Food and drink is totally unrealistic to any degree. You get hungry and thristy way too fast. You can get by without RadX but not Radaway. You really don't need to use any of the "buffing" drugs or foods. What you do end up doing A LOT is managing inventory. So much so that it became more of an inventory management game instead of a survival game. Even with the increased inventory they just added, you still have to overly manage your inventory. Anyway, I like FO76 but I don't see it as a survival game.
Categorizing F76 as survival or not is a moot point.
What F76 clearly shows as you pointed out is mechanics that make the gameplay bad - overly fast hunger/thirst timers, spending more managing inventory than actually playing....spending more time walking and picking up resources than just enjoying the game.
These very same things are the same pitfalls in many survival games
Exactly my point. Last evening I started out having to tediously gather and craft 20 boiled waters. Ar least twice my avatar got down to "thirsty" and I would have to drink 3 to 5 to replenish.
Food was less of an issue, but still most of mine spoiled but fortunately my "cannibal" perk covered for me.
Except now I am radiated and have a rad away shortage, so I visited 3 vendors only to find one available to purchase.
Oh yeah, I got to spend an hour or so actually exploring but I did have to scrap junk and extra gear a half dozen times in just a few hours.
People call FO76 a "light" survival game, if so a heavy one seems like it would be a horror to play, at least here I'm not punching bushes, but it still has me spending far too much time on activities I really don't enjoy.
I am not a fan of crafting or building; I view them as evil necessities which I normally do only if I absolutely can't find more efficient ways to progress my character.
Perhaps those who enjoy crafting find these sorts of activities more entertaining but for me they will be annoyances until I take enough Perks to negate most of their ill effects.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Miscreated was a little over hyped (by the 20 people who played it) but watching those guys play it now that its released and its a TRUE 'survival' game. There are about a half dozen things that effect you and your survival. Radiation, weather, body temp, food, water, diseases and something else or maybe more.
I have never played it and when I was watching guys stream it early on (more than likely getting paid) it looked like a shitshow. But it is in release now, still has issues (combat is horrible and clunky looking with bad hit boxes) buy as a 'survival' game its pretty decent. Of course it has mutants (not zombies so a huge difference there). Spiders, insects animals and all sorts of stuff, and other players.
I havent watched a ton of stuff just Moon and Coolidge running around doing semi RP stuff (no building or even actual PvP) But they died more than a few times (and not from PKs).
The hardest of hard core (from what little I saw of it)( was Fear the Night) that game is so hard I imagine more than half the people refunded it. I can imagine what the Steam reviews look like for that one. Hopefully they dont change anything.
By far Everquest isn't a survival game but when I first played it, it sure felt like one.
I have mentioned and wrote about at length about my first experiences in Everquest and I think they were remarkably like the experiences of many other people who played that game as their first ever MMORPG. For those of you who have read about them I do apologize for waxing poetic and forcing you to read about them yet again. I hope I prove entertaining enough for you not to jump to the next post.
I had never even properly used a computer before playing Everquest and I loaded the game and logged in and had absolutely no idea what to expect when I decided to create a Ranger and started in Surefall Glade. As some of you who have played this game will know there is only one way out of this place and if you happen to be a Human or an Half elf you get to start in Surefall Glade and I think the Half Elf gets to start in Kelethin or Surefall. Considering the scenic places you can accidentally throw yourself off easily by taking one step too far, Surefall was safer for me.
However I created a Human I know why Human, well it looked all rounded and I did not know what a curse not having night vision would have for me in the ensuing hours. I tired to find the way out and they gave you like 5 food and 5 water. You know those pieces of food that looked like scones and some little flasks that looked like something you would pour liquor in and kept in your jacket.
I found the tunnel relatively quickly but I could not get out since I kept getting turned around as I could not see anything at all. There was a torch in my inventory but I had no idea it was there nor how to equip it at that time. As the clock kept ticking my food and water kept diminishing until the messages about me getting hungry and thirsty kept popping up. Finally I found the way to chat and someone showed me how to equip the torch and led me out.
My goodness upon exiting "loading please wait" sweetest phrase for someone stuck in a tunnel for for hours I was assaulted by the green hills and snakes, beetles, bats and the occasional grey wolf who promptly made quick work of me. I was however still thirsty and strangely not hungry,I figured out later I had gobbled up the eggs from the snakes I had killed. I died a few times of course and the guard must have gotten really tired of killing everything I kindly trailed in my wake.
I found I was still thirsty and now I was also unable to pick up any other loot which other people left as well because I had no space left. I went back into Surefall Glade with my loot and tried to buy some rations. They only had iron rations which I could not afford. I could barely afford anything. The game felt so much like real life and that was how I fell in love with Everquest.
I like survival elements as part of a thoughtful design, especially when you're forced to make strategic choices.
For example, if carrying food/wood into a dungeon is used as a mechanic to limit time spent there - such that it feels like an expedition into a strange and alien place, to me, that can be a great deal of fun. Running out of food there - or torches - adds to the PvE element.
But often the food because a mechanic that is annoying. For example, starving to death with a backpack full of food in your own home is silly. Running through a bustling town and starving to death in the city center is goofy - but you were running and that burns through your food meter - with that it just becomes a chore.
I've been waiting for some kind of PvE sandbox MMO combined with a survival-lite features. Something that would make sense even in a fantasy world. Mobs wouldn't drop anything else than what they are carrying, player characters needed to eat and drink, i could make money by being a baker, etc.
That being said, as it is now a survival game is only a fancy name for FFA PVP MMO with a gimmick (hostile environment). PvP'ers often find the gimmick rather annoying and PvE'ers (the real survivors) can't take the constant ganking - it's hard enough to stay alive even without it. I, too, have wondered for whom these games are targeted.
But, having to eat and drink, having to craft your tools and weapons etc. combined with a vanilla WoW-like adventure game with dungeons and raid bosses; that would be the game i'd want to play.
I found the tunnel relatively quickly but I could not get out since I kept getting turned around as I could not see anything at all. There was a torch in my inventory but I had no idea it was there nor how to equip it at that time.
.
Great story, and it managed to jog a memory loose which I had completely forgotten for almost 18 years.
My first MMORPG was EQ1, Gamestop had two trial disks on their counter, so I picked it up along with Lineage 1.
I didn't get very far as I had a fairly slow graphics card so the game was staggering and lagging fairly severely and I've long thought this was the sole reason I logged off and played L1 for the next 6 months.
But your story reminded me I too was lost in a maze like tunnel, in the dark, so along with the poor video performance it was a signicant reason I didn't try to upgrade my video card until later when I eventually left L1 to play DAOC.
Butterfly effect, this one design challenge perhaps changed my entire MMORPG history as L1 lead me to greatly favor MMORPGs with territory control including Shadowbane, Lineage 2, DAOC for many years, (going back next month in fact to play on a new freeshard) and of course, my all time favorite, EVE Online.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The best survival game is Breath of the Wild, which is an adventure first and a survival game second. There are no hunger/thirst/sleep/disease/injury/horniness bars to maintain and exasperate the player. You simply use food and potions to heal, get strategic buffs, and prevent damage from environmental effects like cold.
That's the way survival games SHOULD work. Death to all hunger/thirst bars!
That's the way survival games SHOULD work. Death to all hunger/thirst bars!
My sentiments exactly. I say we should all get into a survival game then go on hunger strike en masse to end this tyranny!!
Constantine, The Console Poster
"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves." - Carl Jung
The best survival game is Breath of the Wild, which is an adventure first and a survival game second. There are no hunger/thirst/sleep/disease/injury/horniness bars to maintain and exasperate the player. You simply use food and potions to heal, get strategic buffs, and prevent damage from environmental effects like cold.
That's the way survival games SHOULD work. Death to all hunger/thirst bars!
Its the lazy way of doing a 'survival' game. Like Ark, Ark isnt a survival game its a small server game with decay.
But a survival type game needs some sort of physical degeneration. Most over do it. I dont play too many of them but I am sure there are some that are fairly accurate in terms of how they coordinate in game day cycles and 'need' for food and water.
If youre out in the desert or in the sun for that matter and doing work you SHOULD need water. And the more work the more water. Food maybe not so much, but a little bit.
And while 'survival' shouldnt be misrepresented as 'real life sim' it should follow the basics.
Weather should also definitely effect you, as should terrain. Not sure how many do it, I remember one or two where running up hill was harder and down hill was easier. You should also be able to get 'small' injuries, that actually take time to heal up. Sprained ankle, broken bone, twisted neck, blisters. I dont know of any game that has been able to do that (at least effectively) something like that could be considered genre changing IMO.
"survival games'' should be the way MMOs go but they have to be done right. There just hasnt been one done really well yet. Ironically Conan was the best I had played with some interesting mechanics but it failed to stay relevant.
The best survival game is Breath of the Wild, which is an adventure first and a survival game second. There are no hunger/thirst/sleep/disease/injury/horniness bars to maintain and exasperate the player. You simply use food and potions to heal, get strategic buffs, and prevent damage from environmental effects like cold.
That's the way survival games SHOULD work. Death to all hunger/thirst bars!
Its the lazy way of doing a 'survival' game. Like Ark, Ark isnt a survival game its a small server game with decay.
But a survival type game needs some sort of physical degeneration. Most over do it. I dont play too many of them but I am sure there are some that are fairly accurate in terms of how they coordinate in game day cycles and 'need' for food and water.
If youre out in the desert or in the sun for that matter and doing work you SHOULD need water. And the more work the more water. Food maybe not so much, but a little bit.
And while 'survival' shouldnt be misrepresented as 'real life sim' it should follow the basics.
Weather should also definitely effect you, as should terrain. Not sure how many do it, I remember one or two where running up hill was harder and down hill was easier. You should also be able to get 'small' injuries, that actually take time to heal up. Sprained ankle, broken bone, twisted neck, blisters. I dont know of any game that has been able to do that (at least effectively) something like that could be considered genre changing IMO.
"survival games'' should be the way MMOs go but they have to be done right. There just hasnt been one done really well yet. Ironically Conan was the best I had played with some interesting mechanics but it failed to stay relevant.
It's quite literally the opposite. Nothing takes less effort/is lazier than plastering a few babysitting bars on the screen and telling the player their job is to maintain them.
It takes actual effort to naturally integrate varying food buffs and weather effects into an already quality baseline game as Breath of the Wild has done.
Also, the game you've described sounds, essentially, like the least fun concept in existence. I would rather play at least 3 Holocaust survival simulators while simultaneously stabbing myself in the dick with a thumb tack, because that would be less physically and emotionally painful than what you have described. Put simply, no thank you.
I've actually been excited to get hungry in Haven and Hearth. Though that's because food would let you level characteristics like strength, and food production is able to be pretty epic if you min/max it (so you get to see your hard work pay off).
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Though most survival games, food is just a distraction so it takes longer to see how little game there is. A wasted design space, that's thoughtlessly plagiarized at at best, or a terrible antiplayer live service style design thoughtset at worst.
So in most cases chuck it out, it's pointless. Though there are some games where it's awesome.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
The best survival game is Breath of the Wild, which is an adventure first and a survival game second. There are no hunger/thirst/sleep/disease/injury/horniness bars to maintain and exasperate the player. You simply use food and potions to heal, get strategic buffs, and prevent damage from environmental effects like cold.
That's the way survival games SHOULD work. Death to all hunger/thirst bars!
I recently picked up Elex at a discount and it plays the same. Food and potions are used to heal and there's so much all over the place it's never a bother. Sleep is used to heal or get to quests only available at night or a certain time during the day. Tons of character dialogue, exploring can get you killed in one or two hits until you learn how to fight better or run faster.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Survival, aka "micromanagement" is not fun for me. The sims are no survival games, but massive micromanagement games where the chores you have to do to survive take longer than the game gives you.
I'm with @cheyane, finding EQ 1 a nice balance for me. I didn't have to stop my activities and cook my meals, but having food and drink in my backpack was enough "reality" for me. Cooking was a craft and if I wanted to, I could take that route, but did not have to.
Fallout: New Vegas had a "survival mode" that I avoided, but appreciated seeing the "You take a drink from your flask" messages in "regular mode" every now and then.
One thing I dislike about video games is their inventory. I have yet to find an acceptable system to me. Forcing me to stop what I'm doing to open my inventory, cook food, eat, and lose hours of gametime (because everyone knows that in real life it takes 2-4 hours to cook a meal) is not my idea of fun.
I appreciate that other players enjoy survival mode and more power to them. But I'm not going to play an MMO with "survival elements" in it.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
I wanted to say that there are some aspects of "survival mode" I enjoy, mostly all of it around a deeper crafting experience. It's the constant micromanagement that gets so tedious for me.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
I am not a fan of crafting or building; I view them as evil necessities which I normally do only if I absolutely can't find more efficient ways to progress my character.
Perhaps those who enjoy crafting find these sorts of activities more entertaining but for me they will be annoyances until I take enough Perks to negate most of their ill effects.
Interesting. I find the crafting and building part to the only interesting part of survival games.
Hell, in Fallout 4, which I know isn't survival, I easily spent 80% of my 300 hours building settlements, positioning guns, building houses, bars, and other things. It was really the only part I enjoyed about FO4 since I thought the main story was boring and derivative and side quests weren't all that engaging and the element of humor was mostly absent.
If you have too many survival elements then Conan, Fallout and so on all become like the Sims. Too much micromanagement to keep an avatar alive, does Conan have to find a space in the woods free from bears to go on the can? Not yet.
There is an overlap between survival and sandbox, but sandbox leans more to Minecraft and survival leans more to the Sims.
Real threats to keeping you alive like an encounter with those bears who are fed up of you using their forest as a toilet are actual what survival should be about. And in many games setting up traps, making weapons, some sort of preparation for the enemy is solid gameplay.
There is a balance that can be reached to make a survival game more interesting than "did I pick enough berries to eat"?
I am not a fan of crafting or building; I view them as evil necessities which I normally do only if I absolutely can't find more efficient ways to progress my character.
Perhaps those who enjoy crafting find these sorts of activities more entertaining but for me they will be annoyances until I take enough Perks to negate most of their ill effects.
Interesting. I find the crafting and building part to the only interesting part of survival games.
Hell, in Fallout 4, which I know isn't survival, I easily spent 80% of my 300 hours building settlements, positioning guns, building houses, bars, and other things. It was really the only part I enjoyed about FO4 since I thought the main story was boring and derivative and side quests weren't all that engaging and the element of humor was mostly absent.
I pretty much avoided the settlement building side of the game in my first playthrough, doing the bare minimum to support the story.
On my third game I decided to go with the "most interesting man in the world" build (high charisma) and was able to use the Godsend local leader perk from the start.
I never even knew about it until middle of my 2nd walk through. (In prior Fallout games Charisma is a stat I never put anything into, don't agree with me, I'm going medieval on you.)
In that 3rd game I literally built settlements in every possible location, and became a mega farmer and trader of mutfruit.
I quickly got strong back to where I could teleport while overloaded and before I knew I was infinitely rich, literally not having anything to buy after I got my combat skills caught up in the late game.
The downside? logging in daily to manually "harvest" literally thousands of Mutfruit. (Would have loved for an auto harvesting mod)
I eventually quit playing that iteration up in the 60s without finishing the story as I had tired of the grind.
Fallout 4 is really the only game I've enjoyed building things in. In FO76 so far it's been pretty much unexplored, probably because even at level 21 I'm still spending far too much time manually gathering, boiling, drinking water to do otherwise.
Fortunately things are getting better for food now that I have two levels of cannibal and radiation removal is far less of an issue with three levels of lead belly.
Gathered food still spoils stupidly fast so I'm going to have to take a level or two of Salt to slow it down. I already have a single perk for slowing down my metabolism, will probably need at least one more so I can get these bodily function "monkeys" off my back.
Forget chem addiction, hasn't happened to me yet, but daily I'm getting the damn "thirsty" indicator, and this is in 2-3 hour play sessions.
There really are some very cool areas to explore in the game, I went down to the bottom of the belching Betty mine last night.
It didn't end so well, but it was a terrific experience, I really felt like I was walking down into the entrance of hell itself.
I definitely ran into some of the major "demons" while I was there.
Don't look it up in a guide before going, will spoil the surprise.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I find it pretty hateful that I’m always dying of thirst, starving, trying to find enough rad away to clear my radiation poisoning, etc, surprised I don’t have to find the time to receive myself every hour.....just like in real life.... (getting old sucks).
Get the Pharma Farma perk in the luck tree and you'll be overflowing with stimpacks and radaway so surviving becomes pretty easy. Set up a base with some plants and purifiers and you should be golden on food/water front. Take over every workshop you pass for quick and easy stimpacks/water then just leave them and move on.
The only hard thing about 76 is the fact it becomes an inventory management game at higher levels which is no fun either.
I find it pretty hateful that I’m always dying of thirst, starving, trying to find enough rad away to clear my radiation poisoning, etc, surprised I don’t have to find the time to receive myself every hour.....just like in real life.... (getting old sucks).
Get the Pharma Farma perk in the luck tree and you'll be overflowing with stimpacks and radaway so surviving becomes pretty easy. Set up a base with some plants and purifiers and you should be golden on food/water front. Take over every workshop you pass for quick and easy stimpacks/water then just leave them and move on.
The only hard thing about 76 is the fact it becomes an inventory management game at higher levels which is no fun either.
Thanks for the tips, I don't think I'm able to build water purifiers due to poor crafting skills or something, but I'll double check.
The stash cap/management is really the most hateful part of the game and I have to confess, if their evil master plan is to someday sell additional space in the cash shop, they've won, I'll gladly pay for more just to relieve having to struggle so hard to manage it.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Comments
The problem i have seen is that now in every genre it is VERY easy to predict exactly what we will see.So nobody is being creative or putting in much effort.
Most of what we see in all genres,is art assets and a generated world.Then we login in our players and that is about it.
What we should be seeing is CONTENT,no not linear of hand holding quests with markers,i mean stuff that makes the world look real and exciting to play.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Food was less of an issue, but still most of mine spoiled but fortunately my "cannibal" perk covered for me.
Except now I am radiated and have a rad away shortage, so I visited 3 vendors only to find one available to purchase.
Oh yeah, I got to spend an hour or so actually exploring but I did have to scrap junk and extra gear a half dozen times in just a few hours.
People call FO76 a "light" survival game, if so a heavy one seems like it would be a horror to play, at least here I'm not punching bushes, but it still has me spending far too much time on activities I really don't enjoy.
I am not a fan of crafting or building; I view them as evil necessities which I normally do only if I absolutely can't find more efficient ways to progress my character.
Perhaps those who enjoy crafting find these sorts of activities more entertaining but for me they will be annoyances until I take enough Perks to negate most of their ill effects.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I have never played it and when I was watching guys stream it early on (more than likely getting paid) it looked like a shitshow. But it is in release now, still has issues (combat is horrible and clunky looking with bad hit boxes) buy as a 'survival' game its pretty decent. Of course it has mutants (not zombies so a huge difference there). Spiders, insects animals and all sorts of stuff, and other players.
I havent watched a ton of stuff just Moon and Coolidge running around doing semi RP stuff (no building or even actual PvP) But they died more than a few times (and not from PKs).
The hardest of hard core (from what little I saw of it)( was Fear the Night) that game is so hard I imagine more than half the people refunded it. I can imagine what the Steam reviews look like for that one. Hopefully they dont change anything.
I have mentioned and wrote about at length about my first experiences in Everquest and I think they were remarkably like the experiences of many other people who played that game as their first ever MMORPG. For those of you who have read about them I do apologize for waxing poetic and forcing you to read about them yet again. I hope I prove entertaining enough for you not to jump to the next post.
I had never even properly used a computer before playing Everquest and I loaded the game and logged in and had absolutely no idea what to expect when I decided to create a Ranger and started in Surefall Glade. As some of you who have played this game will know there is only one way out of this place and if you happen to be a Human or an Half elf you get to start in Surefall Glade and I think the Half Elf gets to start in Kelethin or Surefall. Considering the scenic places you can accidentally throw yourself off easily by taking one step too far, Surefall was safer for me.
However I created a Human I know why Human, well it looked all rounded and I did not know what a curse not having night vision would have for me in the ensuing hours. I tired to find the way out and they gave you like 5 food and 5 water. You know those pieces of food that looked like scones and some little flasks that looked like something you would pour liquor in and kept in your jacket.
I found the tunnel relatively quickly but I could not get out since I kept getting turned around as I could not see anything at all. There was a torch in my inventory but I had no idea it was there nor how to equip it at that time. As the clock kept ticking my food and water kept diminishing until the messages about me getting hungry and thirsty kept popping up. Finally I found the way to chat and someone showed me how to equip the torch and led me out.
My goodness upon exiting "loading please wait" sweetest phrase for someone stuck in a tunnel for for hours I was assaulted by the green hills and snakes, beetles, bats and the occasional grey wolf who promptly made quick work of me. I was however still thirsty and strangely not hungry,I figured out later I had gobbled up the eggs from the snakes I had killed. I died a few times of course and the guard must have gotten really tired of killing everything I kindly trailed in my wake.
I found I was still thirsty and now I was also unable to pick up any other loot which other people left as well because I had no space left. I went back into Surefall Glade with my loot and tried to buy some rations. They only had iron rations which I could not afford. I could barely afford anything. The game felt so much like real life and that was how I fell in love with Everquest.
For example, if carrying food/wood into a dungeon is used as a mechanic to limit time spent there - such that it feels like an expedition into a strange and alien place, to me, that can be a great deal of fun. Running out of food there - or torches - adds to the PvE element.
But often the food because a mechanic that is annoying. For example, starving to death with a backpack full of food in your own home is silly. Running through a bustling town and starving to death in the city center is goofy - but you were running and that burns through your food meter - with that it just becomes a chore.
That being said, as it is now a survival game is only a fancy name for FFA PVP MMO with a gimmick (hostile environment). PvP'ers often find the gimmick rather annoying and PvE'ers (the real survivors) can't take the constant ganking - it's hard enough to stay alive even without it. I, too, have wondered for whom these games are targeted.
But, having to eat and drink, having to craft your tools and weapons etc. combined with a vanilla WoW-like adventure game with dungeons and raid bosses; that would be the game i'd want to play.
My first MMORPG was EQ1, Gamestop had two trial disks on their counter, so I picked it up along with Lineage 1.
I didn't get very far as I had a fairly slow graphics card so the game was staggering and lagging fairly severely and I've long thought this was the sole reason I logged off and played L1 for the next 6 months.
But your story reminded me I too was lost in a maze like tunnel, in the dark, so along with the poor video performance it was a signicant reason I didn't try to upgrade my video card until later when I eventually left L1 to play DAOC.
Butterfly effect, this one design challenge perhaps changed my entire MMORPG history as L1 lead me to greatly favor MMORPGs with territory control including Shadowbane, Lineage 2, DAOC for many years, (going back next month in fact to play on a new freeshard) and of course, my all time favorite, EVE Online.
Thanks for the memory.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
That's the way survival games SHOULD work. Death to all hunger/thirst bars!
But a survival type game needs some sort of physical degeneration. Most over do it. I dont play too many of them but I am sure there are some that are fairly accurate in terms of how they coordinate in game day cycles and 'need' for food and water.
If youre out in the desert or in the sun for that matter and doing work you SHOULD need water. And the more work the more water. Food maybe not so much, but a little bit.
And while 'survival' shouldnt be misrepresented as 'real life sim' it should follow the basics.
Weather should also definitely effect you, as should terrain. Not sure how many do it, I remember one or two where running up hill was harder and down hill was easier. You should also be able to get 'small' injuries, that actually take time to heal up. Sprained ankle, broken bone, twisted neck, blisters. I dont know of any game that has been able to do that (at least effectively) something like that could be considered genre changing IMO.
"survival games'' should be the way MMOs go but they have to be done right. There just hasnt been one done really well yet. Ironically Conan was the best I had played with some interesting mechanics but it failed to stay relevant.
It takes actual effort to naturally integrate varying food buffs and weather effects into an already quality baseline game as Breath of the Wild has done.
Also, the game you've described sounds, essentially, like the least fun concept in existence. I would rather play at least 3 Holocaust survival simulators while simultaneously stabbing myself in the dick with a thumb tack, because that would be less physically and emotionally painful than what you have described. Put simply, no thank you.
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Though most survival games, food is just a distraction so it takes longer to see how little game there is. A wasted design space, that's thoughtlessly plagiarized at at best, or a terrible antiplayer live service style design thoughtset at worst.
So in most cases chuck it out, it's pointless. Though there are some games where it's awesome.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I'm with @cheyane, finding EQ 1 a nice balance for me. I didn't have to stop my activities and cook my meals, but having food and drink in my backpack was enough "reality" for me. Cooking was a craft and if I wanted to, I could take that route, but did not have to.
Fallout: New Vegas had a "survival mode" that I avoided, but appreciated seeing the "You take a drink from your flask" messages in "regular mode" every now and then.
One thing I dislike about video games is their inventory. I have yet to find an acceptable system to me. Forcing me to stop what I'm doing to open my inventory, cook food, eat, and lose hours of gametime (because everyone knows that in real life it takes 2-4 hours to cook a meal) is not my idea of fun.
I appreciate that other players enjoy survival mode and more power to them. But I'm not going to play an MMO with "survival elements" in it.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
That being said, I don't mind some minor form of survival elements. Just don't make me chuck meat at a campfire every time I play.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Hell, in Fallout 4, which I know isn't survival, I easily spent 80% of my 300 hours building settlements, positioning guns, building houses, bars, and other things. It was really the only part I enjoyed about FO4 since I thought the main story was boring and derivative and side quests weren't all that engaging and the element of humor was mostly absent.
There is an overlap between survival and sandbox, but sandbox leans more to Minecraft and survival leans more to the Sims.
Real threats to keeping you alive like an encounter with those bears who are fed up of you using their forest as a toilet are actual what survival should be about. And in many games setting up traps, making weapons, some sort of preparation for the enemy is solid gameplay.
There is a balance that can be reached to make a survival game more interesting than "did I pick enough berries to eat"?
On my third game I decided to go with the "most interesting man in the world" build (high charisma) and was able to use the Godsend local leader perk from the start.
I never even knew about it until middle of my 2nd walk through. (In prior Fallout games Charisma is a stat I never put anything into, don't agree with me, I'm going medieval on you.)
In that 3rd game I literally built settlements in every possible location, and became a mega farmer and trader of mutfruit.
I quickly got strong back to where I could teleport while overloaded and before I knew I was infinitely rich, literally not having anything to buy after I got my combat skills caught up in the late game.
The downside? logging in daily to manually "harvest" literally thousands of Mutfruit. (Would have loved for an auto harvesting mod)
I eventually quit playing that iteration up in the 60s without finishing the story as I had tired of the grind.
Fallout 4 is really the only game I've enjoyed building things in. In FO76 so far it's been pretty much unexplored, probably because even at level 21 I'm still spending far too much time manually gathering, boiling, drinking water to do otherwise.
Fortunately things are getting better for food now that I have two levels of cannibal and radiation removal is far less of an issue with three levels of lead belly.
Gathered food still spoils stupidly fast so I'm going to have to take a level or two of Salt to slow it down. I already have a single perk for slowing down my metabolism, will probably need at least one more so I can get these bodily function "monkeys" off my back.
Forget chem addiction, hasn't happened to me yet, but daily I'm getting the damn "thirsty" indicator, and this is in 2-3 hour play sessions.
There really are some very cool areas to explore in the game, I went down to the bottom of the belching Betty mine last night.
It didn't end so well, but it was a terrific experience, I really felt like I was walking down into the entrance of hell itself.
I definitely ran into some of the major "demons" while I was there.
Don't look it up in a guide before going, will spoil the surprise.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon