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MMOs vs Survival Games?
flguy147
Member UncommonPosts: 507
Hey, i was wondering what is the big differences between Survival Games and MMOs? I have never played a survival game ever but with the info of Conan Exiles it has me super intrigued but i literally know nothing about Survival games. So if anybody could give a little info on the differences between MMOs and Survival games it would be appreciated. Thanks
Comments
There are MMOs that are also survival games. A survival game just means (normally) that you play a character battling the elements, seeking out the necessities to survive.
Survival games focus on crafting, player killing, eating, drinking, finding food, building shelter/forts, stockpiling ammo/weapons. Usually more open-world. (H1z1, Ark, 7 Days to Die, Rust, DayZ)
MMORPGs (MMOs for short) focus on quests/story progression, player levels and leveling, acquiring gear through means of running Instanced dungeons (scripted, player vs monster, AI events). These games usually include different races, classes, builds, etc. Instanced Player vs Player scenarios and a SciFi or Fantasy Universe. (WoW, Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls Online, Final Fantasy XIV, Rift, Star Wars: TOR)
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Survival games are brand new genre. Most of them , actually all of them are in early access. This is why many of them didnt quite figured "endgame" yet.
Also since its not a static world like in MMO, every new game is completely new experience.
So some servers decide to reset every few months, reshuffle the power balance. Because some groups get so powerful they are not challenged by anything anymore.
So you are basically asking: Whats the difference between a game with thousands of players playing together in one shared experience vs a survival game?
Really, quite an odd question.
MMO is not short for MMORPG.
MMO's have nothing to do with dungeons, AI, classes, instances, open world or any of that. All it has to do with is how many people are playing together. You could have an MMO game of dodgeball.... no dungeons, instances, scripted anything.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
You can almost always build some cheap log cabin/fort with square walls and a small set of crafting recipes,like food/drink ammo etc etc.
The good news is you won't or are not likely to see any yellow markers over npc heads like you do in mmorpg's.However give Blizzard some time,i am sure they could ruin or set back another genre about 20 years.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Even if you start "new game" as new character , the old character "dead" end still here .
Also , what point to survival if you don't "dead" ?
Lotro in fact was one of the first to allow massive numbers of people in the same area. Ettenmoors fights used ot have upwards of 3 to 4 hundred people in one area of the instance, thats why it crashed and lagged so bad. So even though many people thought "its only a few hundred people' it was a massive number. Even Warhammer couldnt handle that many. Yes there were a lot of people in those lower tier battles but how many of them didnt crash the server?
These games just got realistic with the amout of people that could actually be supported and not crash. Yeah its 10 years later there should be the tech to allow for a few thousand people in an area, but apparently there isnt. Or if there is it is probably too expensive to utilize.
Most of them have around a 64 person limit. Which seems very small, but when each person is allowed to transform the world in their own way 64 might be too many. Take a game like LiF you can literally (used correctly) reshape the whole game world. While ARK allows building of massive compounds and bases and has dinosaurs LiF takes the compound and base building and adds the ability to reshape where you are not rely on mods that ignore collision points to put things where you want.
These guys really did themselves a disservice by labeling themselves as 'survival' they should have found a new word. Because there really is no fear of survival beyond a little bit of decay of a hunger or thirst bar and from the typical attacks one wil face in any online game with dangerous players or NPCs.
Theyre basically the same game as every other game excepts stuff you own and a players health decays over time.
Wasn't UO not about that at all?
If anything I'd think the precursor to survival games was Nethack (and MUDs/UO generally weren't very similar to Nethack.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Even the original Fallout had elements of a survival game (managing your character's drug addiction) if not enough to be slapped with that label.
There are probably earlier examples, as well.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
Themepark MMOs are a linear experience for the most part. The developers direct you along a very specific path in which you can't deviate from to much. You are also told exactly how to do everything via tutorials. A lot of RPGs are like this now. There are some linear old RPGs, but they didn't have the tutorials explaining everything.