Long ago and far way, I played what I believe was one of the earlier survival MMO’s, was called Xyson, which was recommended to me by someone here.
I recall when playing being annoyed by the game play which consisted of me being dropped in the world naked and afraid, and having to craft literally everything from the ground up like some sort of prehistoric man, though there were the ashes of civilization to use for parts.
I did not like the game, I found myself spending all of my time trying to hunt food, make containers to store water in, create weapons and clothing, and dodge people ganking me.
Fast forward to the present day, and I play my first “survival” game since then, Fallout 76. Yes, I know people said it was “survival” lights, but that was one big appeal, I’m not interested in rebuilding civilization from the ground up as in Xyson, so I thought I’d be good.
So while it’s great I can pretty easily find serviceable weapons/armor everywhere, it still has one big “flaw” IMO, I spend much of my time gathering/hunting foods, cleaning and storing water, and curing myself of various ailments and afflictions.
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).
I’m only level 17, I haven’t learned whatever secrets others have which have them already like level 126 or more. I have had to devote fare more perk choices (6 or 7 at least) than I care to at this point to get a couple ranks of lead belly, cannibal, and slow metabolism etc just to try and reduce the time spent on “bodily functions” rather than exploring the world and killing stuff.
Fallout 4 was nothing like this, I never had to eat or drink anything, chems were purely optional and I rarely took them as I “don’t do drugs”.
So, I have to ask, who really finds this part of survival games “fun?” People have said they often thought survival games were what MMORPGS should have become, but I have to disagree.
It reminds me of playing the early RPG’s, one reason I did not care for the early Ultima series vs Might and Magic or some others is you always had to “feed” your characters, at an annoying rate IMO.
So time for a poll, who really enjoys this mechanic, or are you more like me and could do without even the level Fallout 76 uses?
"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™
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"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 don't mind them in very specific circumstances. I enjoyed them, generally, in Kingdom Come: Deliverance, because it took a lot of ignoring them to suffer from detrimental effects, and merely putting a small bit of effort into meeting your needs for sleep, food, water, and cleanliness often yielded buffs.
Some found it to be so "survival-lite" as to be worthless, but I really enjoyed how they added it in a way that complimented the core experience instead of usurping it.
Maybe we'll resurrect it on the new shard next month.
"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
Thought I have played Conan Exiles and No Man's Sky, the survival part fades out pretty quickly in both games. NMS on normal mode anyway. They start off pretty harsh, then it just becomes a trivial annoyance, so it might as well just be automated at that point. Maybe if the consumption part was automatic it would be better. It's hard to make a survival game that has combat unless none of the things you are fighting are in any way edible. I think survival mechanics could be feasible, but just like so many other parts of games, it's just down to bad design.
"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
Still free on Epic Games I think
I started Skyrim with all of that turned on and it is much more immersive. . less fun but more of an alternate experience world sim.
EDIT: The game also lets you chose to not have hunger and thirst.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
"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 still say "survival" isn't meant to be a standalone game style, it's supposed to be a feature of a bigger overarching offering.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
however games focused on survival can be very fun if played with that purpose in mind.
take Dayz (original mod) for example. i loved it as a pure survival game. all the food/water you desperately required was in towns, and so were the zombies. people were really far and few between, and most of the game was simply....staying alive as long as you could. that was the challenge: not die. since that was the intent of the game, it worked perfectly, but i never thought of it as an mmo. as a matter of fact, once the zombies were nerfed into the ground and you could just run around collecting everything and never worry about the slow zombies the game completely lost all appeal to me. the challenge was gone. it was too easy to stay alive and the whole point of the game got moot.
Nearly all of my friends are obsessed with these games currently. When I say friends, I mean my gaming buddies that I've been playing EVE, AoC and other games with for years.
It started with Conan Exiles, which I missed playing with them because I was moving across country and getting started in a new job. But by the time I had time to play games again, they had moved to RUST. So being a loyal gaming compatriot, I took the plunge.
At first, it wasn't so bad. I really didn't care for the naked and afraid premise, but thankfully because my friends are more hardcore gamers than me, I only had to run a short distance to have them hand me gear.
So then I spent every night, most of the night scavenging for scrap, recycling the scrap, sorting the scrap into the correct bins back at the base, and chasing down air drops for occasionally good loot. But that was it. Night after night after night of scavenging, recycling, sorting, and chasing.
They loved it. They're *still loving it six months later*, but I gave up after a month and went back to EVE for a while, and now I'm playing through every race in Warhammer Total War 2 while I wait for them to get bored. But it's not happening and I'm starting to think I'm gonna need new gaming buddies because these games just don't appeal to me.
I lost count of how many times I would be running somewhere to do something and my vision would start flashing. I'd look down and notice that I'm dying of thirst. I'd yell at one of my buddies to give me some water. One day one of them asked me "Why don't you ever have any water?" and I replied "Because frankly it's goddamn annoying and not how I want to spend my evening. Feeding a digital body digital water so that I don't digitally die is the least appealing aspect of this game!"
All of that being said, I do like some realism in my games. Some. If I shoot someone point blank in the head with a gun, I expect them to die or be incapacitated, no matter how big the bullet is. That's how bullets in brain matter work. They don't mix well.
But do I want to have a reminder every few hours of play that I haven't taken a shit in a while and that burrito I ate at the last diner wasn't cooked so well, so now I have diarrhea? No, not really. Not at all. I don't really want to have bodily functions and gaming mix at all unless it's something like poisoning from a poisoned weapon that's forcing me to stop and vomit or something.
Outside of that, no no no, give me something more worthwhile to do with my gaming time than cooking shaved beef ass over and over so that I'll have something to eat while I'm actually doing the fun part of the game.
"My Fantasy is having two men at once...
One Cooking and One Cleaning!"
---------------------------
"A good man can make you feel sexy,
strong and able to take on the whole world...
oh sorry...that's wine...wine does that..."
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
Let's party like it is 1863!
I'm also going to take this opportunity to announce that I am adopting you as my virtual father. I understand it is quite an honor for you, but I'm sure you are worthy of this position!
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
It was in early access. I didn't like the eerie atmosphere of Zombies and the music, but I felt compelled to press on only because it was addictive.
Important:
Looking back I realize addictive and fun are two different things. I felt I had to play more because I simply had to for some reason.
I logged many hours building this impenetrable base to keep Zombies out. Once done and getting board because it was so well built, I built another one right next to it. When I completed the second one I asked myself.... What the hell compelled me to waist so many hours doing so !!!
Years later (last year) my work friends wanted to play as a threesome. It was way more tedious than years earlier and I hated every second of it.... I'll never do that again.
Sandbox ?
If this is the definition of a sandbox mmorpg, then I don't like sand boxes !!!!