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Klaa

Designing Survival games

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I think the main 'issue' with the current influx of survival games is that they tend to mostly focus on online play.


 


Having a game be online in a persistent world, playing 'against' other players brings a whole host of problems that there is no real way to fix that doesn't also ruin the gameplay. (Or be abuse-able to gain advantages etc) MMO style survival games just don't work.


 


Sticking with offline/single player games, you can create a much more rich environment for sure.


 


Too many games confuse 'survival' with 'don't starve to death'. Sure, gathering food/water is a part of the game, but a lot of games focus on it too heavily or require you to spend too much time gathering food and water. Even into the late game you're still walking around looking for bottles of water as loot rather than finding a clean stream to live beside and drink from etc which would give actual survival problems...stream dries up in summer / freezes in winter / becomes contaminated...then what do you do? That would make for some interesting gameplay, where you've been living someone and are all set up when your water runs out. That would be an actual survival scenario you are placed in and having to make decisions about where you should move to, what should you bring, why didn't you store water in case of an emergency like this etc?


 


Maybe it's too hard to code. I don't know. But something like the above would capture the 'survival' aspect we have been missing in games.


Edited by Outlaw

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Yes, this late-game problem with resources and the fact that everything becomes too easy to do/obtain has taken away my interest to log in in last months. When i found Wurm about 3 years ago, it got so much potential and things to do that i thought i wont lose interest but, it seem every game do lose it in some point sooner or later.


 


Tho, Wurm wont be the real game to me in first place cause i look for one so-called 'hardcore survival simulation with mmo chance' and that means lot more complicated system to keep my character alive like, food/water, shelter against natural things like temperature extremes and wildlife ect. Also i could like to do it with multiplay so something like villages could exist. Small note for the Wurm, i dont like the 'deed' system cause it makes maintaining settlements too easy, also raids for the upkeep (from tokens) in pvp is bit dumb. Take off tokens and deeds and what you have then? Well, a settlement/village with people who want to work together to secure and maintain their houses and stuff themselves. I know this is total 'no-no' in this game cause deeds produce lot of money for the dev's but, this is my dream for the game.   


 


Most of current *survival mmo's* are just brainless pvp shooters with npc nuisance like zombies but, those wont really have real danger to anyone else than noobs if even them and main thing is just run for loot and shoot or get shot by someone. 


 


When some soul realize the fact and have resources/skill to do something i search for i would be happy as a whale but, for so long i just continue my search for perfect survival game. 

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I think the main 'issue' with the current influx of survival games is that they tend to mostly focus on online play.

 

Having a game be online in a persistent world, playing 'against' other players brings a whole host of problems that there is no real way to fix that doesn't also ruin the gameplay. (Or be abuse-able to gain advantages etc) MMO style survival games just don't work.

 

Sticking with offline/single player games, you can create a much more rich environment for sure.

 

Too many games confuse 'survival' with 'don't starve to death'. Sure, gathering food/water is a part of the game, but a lot of games focus on it too heavily or require you to spend too much time gathering food and water. Even into the late game you're still walking around looking for bottles of water as loot rather than finding a clean stream to live beside and drink from etc which would give actual survival problems...stream dries up in summer / freezes in winter / becomes contaminated...then what do you do? That would make for some interesting gameplay, where you've been living someone and are all set up when your water runs out. That would be an actual survival scenario you are placed in and having to make decisions about where you should move to, what should you bring, why didn't you store water in case of an emergency like this etc?

 

Maybe it's too hard to code. I don't know. But something like the above would capture the 'survival' aspect we have been missing in games.

its not that hard to code in a sense compared to other things after all water could be made to be free flowing instead of a block or a static model that flows from a source to a point and slowly dissipates as it travels further and said source could be a lake or a mountain side or whatever and then you could code said source's to shrink in quantity output or increase(flooding)

imagine playing a survival game where you got seasons and your living in what you think is a valley that you found during summer where the soil is rich and you decide to build up everything you even dam of part of the river to make it flow towards your farm then winter comes and it shrinks more and more and freezes over and then spring comes and oh boy do you suddenly realize that your "valley" was actually a flood lake imagine waking up after sleeping through the night in that game and your entire place is flooded and everything starts rotting away and within a few hours your house is underwater and by the time the flood lake dissipates its completely destroyed and all that hard work for 3 seasons is all gone to waste

 

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For me, after so many years Stranded 2 is still a very good example of perfectly designed survival game - early game is hard, in a later stage it is still hard as well, but with different challenges (at some point getting food and water is not that hard, but you must defend against local fauna, disasters and depletion of natural resources).

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its not that hard to code in a sense compared to other things after all water could be made to be free flowing instead of a block or a static model that flows from a source to a point and slowly dissipates as it travels further and said source could be a lake or a mountain side or whatever and then you could code said source's to shrink in quantity output or increase(flooding)

imagine playing a survival game where you got seasons and your living in what you think is a valley that you found during summer where the soil is rich and you decide to build up everything you even dam of part of the river to make it flow towards your farm then winter comes and it shrinks more and more and freezes over and then spring comes and oh boy do you suddenly realize that your "valley" was actually a flood lake imagine waking up after sleeping through the night in that game and your entire place is flooded and everything starts rotting away and within a few hours your house is underwater and by the time the flood lake dissipates its completely destroyed and all that hard work for 3 seasons is all gone to waste

 

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STALKER is full of subtractive hazards, like anomolies and roving bands of bandits, that you learn to navigate. More mainstream "survival" games a la The Forest or even Wurm focus heavily, as people have said, on additive mechanics like raising high ql pumpkins, grinding up HFC, building shelters, etc., to make survival easier and more successful.


 


STALKER's world design was sooo much better than 99% of its contemporaries, but it's not a game centered on creative enterprise like these others ... and part of the basic contract in these games is that as you build and develop, your work persists and stuff gets easier/better/different.


 


I'd love to see more adaptive world design. The hangup for many developers I think is the onus they feel to create good content and then make sure it's available somehow for the player to enjoy, and this all results in worlds that are floridly detailed (hi Bethesda) but frozen stiff.


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