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[Preview] General: Nether: A Survival Game & Much More
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Nether is a game that, according to Blake Morse, defies description. On one hand, it is a survival game. On the other, it embodies world building, community and social interaction and much more. Check out our exclusive preview of Nether and then let us know what you think in the comments.
Nether takes place in a post-apocalyptic world that about 10 years ago experienced an event called “The Cull”, and thankfully, for once, it has no zombies! Yup. You heard that right. Not a single, god-damned undead anywhere to be found. There are however a plethora of mutants known as “Nethers” that appeared after the cull and roam the land making quick work of survivors they come across. Nethers come in a few variations: hunters that can teleport, shriekers who will make your presence in their territory to other nearby Nethers, and brutes that will more than likely kill you if you run into one alone. The team at Phosphor Studios really want these ghouls to provide an actual challenge. They want the AI to do more than get kited around as players walk in a circle around them hacking or shooting them to death. And just like any other survivor game, players will find themselves facing off against other survivors for their lives.
Read more of Blake Morse's Nether: A Survival Game & So Much More.
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Comments
Completely agree with marz.at.play. I was hopeful for this game till I saw "And just like any other survivor game, players will find themselves facing off against other survivors for their lives." Why does every survival game have to turn into a pvp grief-fest with a monster backdrop that no one pays attention to?
Sounds like a cool concept. Too bad it's going to be OWPVP and FPS. Two things I despise in games.
Going to have to pass.
I'm not here to complete my forum PVP dailies.
>"If you were to ask me exactly what Nether is at this point..."
Sounds like it's Neither one thing nor the other?
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
I thought the war z was pretty fun until everyone started getting automatic weapons. Getting into a melee fight with someone was pretty intense. You had to always watch your back to make sure no one was coming up to barsh your brains in. If someone did have a shotgun or pistol you had to haul ass outta there. After everyone started getting farmed/duped snipers and assault rifles the game turned into who camped more or who saw who first and there isn't really any fun to be had there.
As far as the topic of the article, I'm pretty skeptical about this title myself. To go from a hands-off demo to early access in a few months is a little suspect. If the "select gamers" they're talking about for early access are the ones that open their wallet then I'll definitely be waiting until release to see some real reviews of the game.
yey another survival pvp game... zzzzzzzzzz
why even include mobs? whats the point?
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If the disparity between players and mobs are is big as they were in War Z regarding danger ... then there is no point my friend
When are these developers going to realize that the zombie theme has been beat to death and then beat some more.
First off in a survivalist climate the biggest threat would be feral humans, not zombies.
If the developers were smart they would find another game to develop, this one will do nothing but bankrupt them.
After reading the article and several others on the net where did you get the "much more". I see no difference in this game from all the other zombie games out there?
We need these games to have faction. In the pvp grief fests it is almost impossible to make social contact that does not involve getting your ass shot off. If they had a faction you could join from the get go, then have some sense of the cooperative aspect of survival, it could be fun.
But getting your ass shot off for a flashlight from someone you never see gets old in a hurry.
there are no zombies, it's mutants now! Gosh. :P
Half Life set a high standard for these games to follow,anything less is a struggle to enjoy.
Don't like the idea of losing Zombies but replacing them with mutants that can warp,that is a real far stretch to handle.
What most of these games lack is usable environment,all the objects are usually static,they don't even move which is very unrealistic.
One thing about Ai is it usually carries Human characteristics which is again unrealistic.If these are Zombies or Ghouls they should have different Ai,such as inability to see or hear or both.Perhaps something like they can only come out at night,then of course the game needs a day/night cycle.
Simply running through static 2d meshes looking to pickup a resource and killing Ghouls is way to shallow a game ,we have seen a ton of these.We need to see something a lot different with unique ideas,something more like Half Life since that was done many years ago,developers should be able to at least equal it by now with physics and the works.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
My advice, Make one set of servers open all out pvp gank fest. We all know if the players can kill each other it will happen. There will always be the single or group of douche bags that will kill anyone walking even if they are not a threat.
Second make a group of servers for pve. No palyer killing, just make the zombies.........of wait "mutants" 5x harder! Magic!
when you are struggling patch the servers with new updates every week to beat the hackers with the aimbots, walkthrough walls, flying, and whatever else you will still have a community playing on the PVE servers and have a little income.
I dont mind the getting shot in the back from someone who said "friendly, lets work together" then 10 min later they kill you cause you found something they want. The hacking is the part that frustrates me the most.
Matter of fact, I think sneaking around scavenging knowing there are player out there looking to shoot the first thing that moves makes the game even more suspensful and fun. It is no fun when someone is under the map killing, or flying in the air killing you, or walking through walls killing you.
Help support an artist and gamer who has lost his tools to create and play: http://www.gofundme.com/u63nzcgk
If developers insist on making these survival games as MMO or multiplayer..which I'm not necessarily against..then just set them in a world where we fucked our own shit up and leave the monsters out of it. Open world PvP fps style just really doesn't work in these types of games without the PvE element suffering.
Though Defiance is not the most popular game its enjoyable to me because it is mostly co-op. You can PvP by joining a queue but the cool thing is it still seems like your on the world map instead of a separate arena or area of the world you can't otherwise see..e.g like you encounter with Arathi Basin ,Alterac Valley in WOW or any other MMO with simulated battleground areas that are set apart from everything else.
In my mind..something like Road Warrior Online would be cool..with APB style customization on all levels and with a very valuable scarce resource that all can fight over as well as basic necessities or once taken for granted luxuries. Food of course would be important..Gasoline (for a road warrior type world or for motors as power supplies..etc. Or even like the movie The Road in atmosphere only ..without the "all the plants and animals are dying" thing.(though that really was the reason for the state of the human race). Whatever...just no monsters. Unless you stick with one that players can eventually play..like maybe a Stake Land style MMO with an post-apocalyptic theme where there is a small chance a player can become a intelligent vampire as opposed to the mindless ones that are predominant in that film.
Sorry for the rant..lol
Another shoot on sight game.
Not interested.
Factions could work really well in a survival game like this. Maybe one day..
Most of the time nobody needs to pay attention to the monsters as much since they aren't very challenging when players figure out their A.I. limitations.
Not to mention games do not give incentives for being friendly to players. Yet there is ALWAYS incentive to kill players because they have loot you may want.
To change that they need to find a way, like specialized skills maybe, to incentivize players not to kill you all the dang time. So if you specialize as say a doctor and the only way to heal a member is with that characters help, then you can incentivize other players not to just shoot and loot.
I'd also contend that developers should create a cooldown truce system that takes the previous idea further where by you have to be in a truce with someone to help them and their team. And the system would not even allow you to be killed as a result.
So you come across other players, you enter a truce before shooting, you realize they can help, and maybe a guy decides he's gonna be fun and shoot you anyway well he does shoot you but because you're in the truce the bullet does no damage and he loses the bullet. Thus incentivizing people not to waste ammo on stupid stuff, and doesn't allow them to get help and immediately kill you.
Course that is just my idea of how it COULD be, and SHOULD be done but I could also be wrong.
Like I've posted before, I agree the total pvp gank fest isn't as fun but developers need to design the game to incentivize people NOT to just shoot and loot. Otherwise that is exactly what the game becomes. Also if you use zombies the A.I. needs to be pretty friggin tight so they aren't glitching through walls and breaking your leg one swipe.
But all these things just need development that diversifies gameplay. That is the future of this in my opinion. Diversity of Gameplay.
I do like this games setting of a cityscape but it needs much much more interaction with items and environment etc. Again diversity of gameplay. hide in a car, check the glovebox, jump behind a bench, grab a pipe and start swinging, jump into a manhole, duck behind department store countertops.
The devil is in the details. Forget about just being big, big can be very small. think about it....