IGN's first 1/10 in a decade! I've been keeping track of this story and it's kinda hilarious, for those who never bought or were even mildly aware of the game. I was sent the trailer a couple of...
IGN's first 1/10 in a decade!
I've been keeping track of this story and it's kinda hilarious, for those who never bought or were even mildly aware of the game. I was sent the trailer a couple of months ago from a friend, and it definitely looked interesting, though I never bought it.
I'm out of the loop, having never heard of this game before, but I find myself asking: what's the big deal? There's plenty of shitty games being released that don't garner nearly the same level of...
I'm out of the loop, having never heard of this game before, but I find myself asking: what's the big deal?
There's plenty of shitty games being released that don't garner nearly the same level of "outrage" as this did. And, as far as I can tell, these devs didn't get any money before releasing. No Kickstarter, no Early Access, no preorders. So, why did this rustle everybody's jimmies? Am I missing any context?
The game was the #1 wishlisted game on Steam, at least for a time, so that alone makes it noteworthy to an extent. But also the devs engaged in some sus practices around their marketing. They'd...
The game was the #1 wishlisted game on Steam, at least for a time, so that alone makes it noteworthy to an extent. But also the devs engaged in some sus practices around their marketing. They'd hint at a big announcement about The Day Before and then drop a completely unrelated game or app hoping to get purchases off the publicity. I recommend looking up Kira's videos on YouTube, he's covered the whole saga in pretty excruciating detail.
Kira Review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yYqhBYOlmc Kira project overview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lWpfOeTbMQ There are additional videos if you want more on his channel.
I personally don't see the appeal but it promised to be an MMO which is a place where you don't usually get graphics like even a budget Last of Us. But yeah it was also a pretty obvious scam...
I personally don't see the appeal but it promised to be an MMO which is a place where you don't usually get graphics like even a budget Last of Us. But yeah it was also a pretty obvious scam relatively early on imo so idk really.
The game was controversial long before launch. There was a trademark dispute, they were caught lying multiple times, they changed the scope of the game multiple times and now release in Early...
The game was controversial long before launch. There was a trademark dispute, they were caught lying multiple times, they changed the scope of the game multiple times and now release in Early Access in an absolutely abhorrent state.
There are lots of shitty games out there, but this one was exceptionally shitty.
sounds like your average AAA game. Although, this is exactly why AAA studios don't reveal the sausage to the customer too early, or too raw. This assumedly isn't a AAA studio so they were clearly...
sounds like your average AAA game. Although, this is exactly why AAA studios don't reveal the sausage to the customer too early, or too raw.
This assumedly isn't a AAA studio so they were clearly way in over their head with some nice POCs and clearly couldn't scale it up to a full game. A common mistake when viewing those beautiful tech demos on twitter and wondering "you should make a full game out of this!"
Now even with al that said: I still don't really see how this was "top wishlist on Steam" material. From my understanding both survival horror and zombie shooters were way oversaturated. It's one of the reasons people say Days Gone didn't pop off the way other Sony games did. What made so many people attracted to this one specifically? Seeing the early "gameplay" trailers doesn't really show me that hook that resonated to others.
Same. Everything ive heard about this game suggests that it was either a case of low-effort asset flip which did not pan out, or a case of a small dev team getting in over their heads and making a...
Same. Everything ive heard about this game suggests that it was either a case of low-effort asset flip which did not pan out, or a case of a small dev team getting in over their heads and making a mess of it. Neither case is very unique.
So i cannot understand why people wishlisted this so much on Steam ? I suppose it is an effect of people being curious whether it is real or not and then wishlisting it as a means of tracking its progress. I have done that myself for a few other games.
looking through their review scoring guide, the latest one on that list seems to be Self Defense Training Camp in 2011. Edit: Digging a bit deeper, they did have a 1.5/10 back in 2015, but still...
It does kinda seem like anything below 5 is already a big "DO NOT PLAY THIS" label, so I'm not sure how much more charitable it could be lol. Bad and Awful seem like they're basically the same...
It does kinda seem like anything below 5 is already a big "DO NOT PLAY THIS" label, so I'm not sure how much more charitable it could be lol. Bad and Awful seem like they're basically the same thing, and Painful and Unbearable probably could be the same too.
Let's be honest IGN is scared of giving a 1/10 to games with a big IP behind them, Gollum is in no way a 4/10 and if it wasn't set in the LotR universe it probably would have been a 1/10.
Let's be honest IGN is scared of giving a 1/10 to games with a big IP behind them, Gollum is in no way a 4/10 and if it wasn't set in the LotR universe it probably would have been a 1/10.
I'm not sure that's it. Gollum at least was playable, from start to finish, it was just not good. I think I read a comment somewhere that if you can get to the ending of the game it's already a...
I'm not sure that's it. Gollum at least was playable, from start to finish, it was just not good. I think I read a comment somewhere that if you can get to the ending of the game it's already a 3/10 according to IGN. It's just that it's a bad game. I never played Gollum though so :shrug:
I remember coming across this game in one of my Steam Discovery Queues earlier this year. I didn't wishlist it, but I remember wanting to tell me friend that I saw this cool-looking survival MMO...
I remember coming across this game in one of my Steam Discovery Queues earlier this year. I didn't wishlist it, but I remember wanting to tell me friend that I saw this cool-looking survival MMO game that he might be interested in. While I'm not typically into survival games, he LOVES them. And we (and our group) have played collectively thousands of hours of another failed survival MMO: Last Oasis. Anyway, I ended up forgetting the name of the game.
Imagine my surprise when months later, I come across this game on reddit and it's being torn to shreds. And rightfully so. Guess we won't be playing this anytime soon.
This is beside the point, but after Last Oasis, that friend and I discussed to death the idea of survival MMOs. Aside from LO's game devs being crap, why were there so many issues? Why did so many people often leave the game so quickly (only to come back the next "season")? And we (or at least I) have come to the conclusion that, even though there's clearly demand for survival MMOs, the concepts of survival and MMO are mutually exclusive. You can't have a "survival PVP MMO." It just doesn't work. Survival games by their nature are short, often featuring periodic wipes, sometimes as quick as every couple days. MMOs, on the other hand, are persistent for years, these days even decades, down the road. A wipe could wipe out years of a player's progress. That could be hundreds or thousands of hours. In survival games, you can wipe out other players in the the blink of an eye, via raids or PVP (assuming full gear drop on death). But it's OK, it's just a few hours, days, or a week of progress. Again, that can't be done in an MMO; not when I've invested so much time grinding dungeons over the last 6mo.
Plus the audiences are two different crowds: modern MMOs tend to be PVE-focused, with controlled, gated PVP areas (even Eve Online has this to an extent). Survival games are all about open world, full bareback PVP, with little to no safe zones. So the PVErs run away (ie stop playing) after the mean PVPers kill and loot them for everything they've got, and then the PVPers no longer have people to hunt, further killing the game.
Idk. I'm just rambling now, but I feel like gamers want "survival MMOs" without understanding what that actually means. That it's unlikely to actually be that fun. But maybe some company will eventually pull it off, miraculously. But it won't be Fntastic, thank god.
I strongly disagree that survival games and MMOs are mutually exclusive, unless you have a very narrow definition of what an MMO is. It sounds like you're speaking specifically about the...
I strongly disagree that survival games and MMOs are mutually exclusive, unless you have a very narrow definition of what an MMO is. It sounds like you're speaking specifically about the qualities/mechanics typically found in traditional, persistent MMORPGs, and I would agree that MMORPGs and Survival games are probably incompatible for all the reasons you mentioned... although The Division and Fallout 76 came close to being able to successfully marry the two genres.
But there have been a number of Survival MMOs (minus the persistent RPG part) that were quite good; Rust, Conan Exiles, ARK, DayZ, and more recently, V Rising. And even Minecraft could be considered one as well. However, the major caveat to them all is that you absolutely need to play on a private server, or a public server with strict rules and good+active admins in order to enjoy them... unless you like being called the n-word repeatedly while getting griefed non-stop, since the genre does tend to attract the absolute worst of the worst types of toxic gamers.
p.s. I also have a friend who is obsessed with the survival / crafting genre, so I have played most of them at this point too, even those not on the "massively" side of the multiplayer scale, like 7 Days to Die, Valheim, Grounded, The Forest, Raft, My time at Portia, Astroneer, etc. ;)
I had this whole thing typed out, but then I see in your edits you added the word "persistent." And that's exactly what I was going to talk about, haha. Especially in the additional context of a...
I had this whole thing typed out, but then I see in your edits you added the word "persistent." And that's exactly what I was going to talk about, haha. Especially in the additional context of a fully-open, fully-lootable PVP element. That's the big differentiator to me. Permanent persistence makes all the difference.
With merging the two genres, it really comes down to a timescale disconnect that leads to a mismatch in the risk vs reward ratios. Grinding on the persistent MMO timescale while losing it on the PVP survival timescale is a recipe for disaster. Me, my friends/clan, just everyone who played Last Oasis, experienced that so many times. Grind for a week, 40hrs like it's job (aka an MMO), then it all goes "poof" in a 30min skirmish. And then we have to do it all over again. It was miserable. Unless we did it to someone else, then it was great! Like you said, super toxic, which I why I rarely play survival games. Because I would typically be on the receiving end of that =(
There are some additional issues with power imbalances that creep up the longer a survival world goes. Basically, the rich get richer thing, while the poor get poorer kinda thing. Which is why server wipes are common in survival games. Which then of course breaks the persistence.
Honestly, I've only played Rust and Valheim. With Valheim, it was only PVE with friends, so I don't know the PVP side of it. And with Rust...I'll just say a friend and I spent like two hours as nakeds trying to get off the beach, because we got killed over and over and over again. We did eventually get off the beach, but we still died a few more times. So yeah, not the biggest fan of Rust. Most of my survival games knowledge comes from my friend who's obsessed with them. The number of nights he's talked my ear off about them into the wee hours of the night...Oof.
I do disagree that any of the games you mentioned are massive -- I've been in an Eve battle that was like 5000vs5000 -- but "massive" isn't well-defined. So I'll let it slide, lol...
Yeah, unless you really enjoy the core mechanics of gathering materials and building, as well as the combat, getting your base destroyed after dozens of hours of collective work can be incredibly...
Yeah, unless you really enjoy the core mechanics of gathering materials and building, as well as the combat, getting your base destroyed after dozens of hours of collective work can be incredibly frustrating. But I think there is also something to be said for the slow buildup of resources increasing the tension and stakes precisely because you can lose everything in an instant.
IMO there is nothing else like the adrenaline surge you can get from having to defend yourself and your base when someone finally shows up to kill/raid you after spending that many hours collecting mats, crafting gear, and building everything up. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, I also find the gathering can be pretty relaxing, and almost meditative too.
But hey, different strokes for different folks, and MMO Survival games are not for everyone.
I do disagree that any of the games you mentioned are massive
MMORPGs are kinda like punk rock, film noir, or westerns. Not as many people appreciate their pure forms anymore, but they have a strong presence in the entirety of their mediums.
MMORPGs are kinda like punk rock, film noir, or westerns. Not as many people appreciate their pure forms anymore, but they have a strong presence in the entirety of their mediums.
This isn't specifically about survival MMOs, but a persistent world where your progress gets wiped does work. Hardcore WoW has been incredibly successful. But Hardcore WoW is not PvP, which I...
This isn't specifically about survival MMOs, but a persistent world where your progress gets wiped does work. Hardcore WoW has been incredibly successful. But Hardcore WoW is not PvP, which I think is the crucial difference. If you're not an idiot and don't see any bugs, you should be able to make it to max level. The game is predictable. The classes are known, the enemies are known, the areas are known.
But when you combine persistence, unpredictability, and wiped progress? Yeah, I don't see how you sustain a population.
You have an interesting point, but I also think it can be mitigated with the right framing. Say, you have a theme of reincarnation in a rouge-lite esque system. You keep redoing some stuff but you...
And we (or at least I) have come to the conclusion that, even though there's clearly demand for survival MMOs, the concepts of survival and MMO are mutually exclusive. You can't have a "survival PVP MMO."
You have an interesting point, but I also think it can be mitigated with the right framing. Say, you have a theme of reincarnation in a rouge-lite esque system. You keep redoing some stuff but you gain some core stats and skills even on revival. So you "grow" but still have consequences for dying.
But, even with such framing I'm not sure if the audience is there. So you have a point. MMO's have more or less receded to FF14 and WOW for a reason. Crazy expensive to make, more expensive to maintain since you're on a brutal update schedule to retain players, and to be frank: I feel the attention span of many players are simply not there anymore. There's so much to play and experience that trying to capture that MMO crowd outside of the diehard fans is nearly impossible. The amount of content needed to try is simply infeasible.
The F2P models were more or less the death throe for the traditional MMO. why pay $5 or $10 to try something out for a month if you have deluges of other "free" games to jump into. It's a relic of a bygone era, in my eyes. Rust and several other games are the closest to "survival MMO" we'll get now.
IGN's first 1/10 in a decade!
I've been keeping track of this story and it's kinda hilarious, for those who never bought or were even mildly aware of the game. I was sent the trailer a couple of months ago from a friend, and it definitely looked interesting, though I never bought it.
It released 4 days ago, and since has been delisted, the studio closed, and Steam seems to be refunding with no questions asked
I'm out of the loop, having never heard of this game before, but I find myself asking: what's the big deal?
There's plenty of shitty games being released that don't garner nearly the same level of "outrage" as this did. And, as far as I can tell, these devs didn't get any money before releasing. No Kickstarter, no Early Access, no preorders. So, why did this rustle everybody's jimmies? Am I missing any context?
The game was the #1 wishlisted game on Steam, at least for a time, so that alone makes it noteworthy to an extent. But also the devs engaged in some sus practices around their marketing. They'd hint at a big announcement about The Day Before and then drop a completely unrelated game or app hoping to get purchases off the publicity. I recommend looking up Kira's videos on YouTube, he's covered the whole saga in pretty excruciating detail.
Kira Review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yYqhBYOlmc
Kira project overview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lWpfOeTbMQ
There are additional videos if you want more on his channel.
I admit that I am completely out of the loop here, but why the hell were people hyped? It looked like budget Last of Us.
I personally don't see the appeal but it promised to be an MMO which is a place where you don't usually get graphics like even a budget Last of Us. But yeah it was also a pretty obvious scam relatively early on imo so idk really.
The game was controversial long before launch. There was a trademark dispute, they were caught lying multiple times, they changed the scope of the game multiple times and now release in Early Access in an absolutely abhorrent state.
There are lots of shitty games out there, but this one was exceptionally shitty.
sounds like your average AAA game. Although, this is exactly why AAA studios don't reveal the sausage to the customer too early, or too raw.
This assumedly isn't a AAA studio so they were clearly way in over their head with some nice POCs and clearly couldn't scale it up to a full game. A common mistake when viewing those beautiful tech demos on twitter and wondering "you should make a full game out of this!"
Now even with al that said: I still don't really see how this was "top wishlist on Steam" material. From my understanding both survival horror and zombie shooters were way oversaturated. It's one of the reasons people say Days Gone didn't pop off the way other Sony games did. What made so many people attracted to this one specifically? Seeing the early "gameplay" trailers doesn't really show me that hook that resonated to others.
Same. Everything ive heard about this game suggests that it was either a case of low-effort asset flip which did not pan out, or a case of a small dev team getting in over their heads and making a mess of it. Neither case is very unique.
So i cannot understand why people wishlisted this so much on Steam ? I suppose it is an effect of people being curious whether it is real or not and then wishlisting it as a means of tracking its progress. I have done that myself for a few other games.
Now that has my curiosity piqued. What was their last 1/10?
looking through their review scoring guide, the latest one on that list seems to be Self Defense Training Camp in 2011. Edit: Digging a bit deeper, they did have a 1.5/10 back in 2015, but still the 1/10 thing holds true!
Source: https://www.ign.com/reviews/games sort by score and filter for 1.0-1.9
For reference, the Gollum game this year got a 4/10 and the Kong game got a 3/10
Wow, Gollum and Kong were...charitably handled, that's all I can say there.
It does kinda seem like anything below 5 is already a big "DO NOT PLAY THIS" label, so I'm not sure how much more charitable it could be lol. Bad and Awful seem like they're basically the same thing, and Painful and Unbearable probably could be the same too.
Let's be honest IGN is scared of giving a 1/10 to games with a big IP behind them, Gollum is in no way a 4/10 and if it wasn't set in the LotR universe it probably would have been a 1/10.
I'm not sure that's it. Gollum at least was playable, from start to finish, it was just not good. I think I read a comment somewhere that if you can get to the ending of the game it's already a 3/10 according to IGN. It's just that it's a bad game. I never played Gollum though so :shrug:
If you don't run into one of the many game breaking bugs which usually require a restart.
Weird, thought Ride to Hell Retribution would have been it which was in 2013. Can't believe there was a redeeming quality.
I remember coming across this game in one of my Steam Discovery Queues earlier this year. I didn't wishlist it, but I remember wanting to tell me friend that I saw this cool-looking survival MMO game that he might be interested in. While I'm not typically into survival games, he LOVES them. And we (and our group) have played collectively thousands of hours of another failed survival MMO: Last Oasis. Anyway, I ended up forgetting the name of the game.
Imagine my surprise when months later, I come across this game on reddit and it's being torn to shreds. And rightfully so. Guess we won't be playing this anytime soon.
This is beside the point, but after Last Oasis, that friend and I discussed to death the idea of survival MMOs. Aside from LO's game devs being crap, why were there so many issues? Why did so many people often leave the game so quickly (only to come back the next "season")? And we (or at least I) have come to the conclusion that, even though there's clearly demand for survival MMOs, the concepts of survival and MMO are mutually exclusive. You can't have a "survival PVP MMO." It just doesn't work. Survival games by their nature are short, often featuring periodic wipes, sometimes as quick as every couple days. MMOs, on the other hand, are persistent for years, these days even decades, down the road. A wipe could wipe out years of a player's progress. That could be hundreds or thousands of hours. In survival games, you can wipe out other players in the the blink of an eye, via raids or PVP (assuming full gear drop on death). But it's OK, it's just a few hours, days, or a week of progress. Again, that can't be done in an MMO; not when I've invested so much time grinding dungeons over the last 6mo.
Plus the audiences are two different crowds: modern MMOs tend to be PVE-focused, with controlled, gated PVP areas (even Eve Online has this to an extent). Survival games are all about open world, full bareback PVP, with little to no safe zones. So the PVErs run away (ie stop playing) after the mean PVPers kill and loot them for everything they've got, and then the PVPers no longer have people to hunt, further killing the game.
Idk. I'm just rambling now, but I feel like gamers want "survival MMOs" without understanding what that actually means. That it's unlikely to actually be that fun. But maybe some company will eventually pull it off, miraculously. But it won't be Fntastic, thank god.
I strongly disagree that survival games and MMOs are mutually exclusive, unless you have a very narrow definition of what an MMO is. It sounds like you're speaking specifically about the qualities/mechanics typically found in traditional, persistent MMORPGs, and I would agree that MMORPGs and Survival games are probably incompatible for all the reasons you mentioned... although The Division and Fallout 76 came close to being able to successfully marry the two genres.
But there have been a number of Survival MMOs (minus the persistent RPG part) that were quite good; Rust, Conan Exiles, ARK, DayZ, and more recently, V Rising. And even Minecraft could be considered one as well. However, the major caveat to them all is that you absolutely need to play on a private server, or a public server with strict rules and good+active admins in order to enjoy them... unless you like being called the n-word repeatedly while getting griefed non-stop, since the genre does tend to attract the absolute worst of the worst types of toxic gamers.
p.s. I also have a friend who is obsessed with the survival / crafting genre, so I have played most of them at this point too, even those not on the "massively" side of the multiplayer scale, like 7 Days to Die, Valheim, Grounded, The Forest, Raft, My time at Portia, Astroneer, etc. ;)
I had this whole thing typed out, but then I see in your edits you added the word "persistent." And that's exactly what I was going to talk about, haha. Especially in the additional context of a fully-open, fully-lootable PVP element. That's the big differentiator to me. Permanent persistence makes all the difference.
With merging the two genres, it really comes down to a timescale disconnect that leads to a mismatch in the risk vs reward ratios. Grinding on the persistent MMO timescale while losing it on the PVP survival timescale is a recipe for disaster. Me, my friends/clan, just everyone who played Last Oasis, experienced that so many times. Grind for a week, 40hrs like it's job (aka an MMO), then it all goes "poof" in a 30min skirmish. And then we have to do it all over again. It was miserable. Unless we did it to someone else, then it was great! Like you said, super toxic, which I why I rarely play survival games. Because I would typically be on the receiving end of that =(
There are some additional issues with power imbalances that creep up the longer a survival world goes. Basically, the rich get richer thing, while the poor get poorer kinda thing. Which is why server wipes are common in survival games. Which then of course breaks the persistence.
Honestly, I've only played Rust and Valheim. With Valheim, it was only PVE with friends, so I don't know the PVP side of it. And with Rust...I'll just say a friend and I spent like two hours as nakeds trying to get off the beach, because we got killed over and over and over again. We did eventually get off the beach, but we still died a few more times. So yeah, not the biggest fan of Rust. Most of my survival games knowledge comes from my friend who's obsessed with them. The number of nights he's talked my ear off about them into the wee hours of the night...Oof.
I do disagree that any of the games you mentioned are massive -- I've been in an Eve battle that was like 5000vs5000 -- but "massive" isn't well-defined. So I'll let it slide, lol...
Yeah, unless you really enjoy the core mechanics of gathering materials and building, as well as the combat, getting your base destroyed after dozens of hours of collective work can be incredibly frustrating. But I think there is also something to be said for the slow buildup of resources increasing the tension and stakes precisely because you can lose everything in an instant.
IMO there is nothing else like the adrenaline surge you can get from having to defend yourself and your base when someone finally shows up to kill/raid you after spending that many hours collecting mats, crafting gear, and building everything up. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, I also find the gathering can be pretty relaxing, and almost meditative too.
But hey, different strokes for different folks, and MMO Survival games are not for everyone.
The Steam tags agree with me. ;)
Massively Multiplayer + Survival
MMORPGs are kinda like punk rock, film noir, or westerns. Not as many people appreciate their pure forms anymore, but they have a strong presence in the entirety of their mediums.
This isn't specifically about survival MMOs, but a persistent world where your progress gets wiped does work. Hardcore WoW has been incredibly successful. But Hardcore WoW is not PvP, which I think is the crucial difference. If you're not an idiot and don't see any bugs, you should be able to make it to max level. The game is predictable. The classes are known, the enemies are known, the areas are known.
But when you combine persistence, unpredictability, and wiped progress? Yeah, I don't see how you sustain a population.
You have an interesting point, but I also think it can be mitigated with the right framing. Say, you have a theme of reincarnation in a rouge-lite esque system. You keep redoing some stuff but you gain some core stats and skills even on revival. So you "grow" but still have consequences for dying.
But, even with such framing I'm not sure if the audience is there. So you have a point. MMO's have more or less receded to FF14 and WOW for a reason. Crazy expensive to make, more expensive to maintain since you're on a brutal update schedule to retain players, and to be frank: I feel the attention span of many players are simply not there anymore. There's so much to play and experience that trying to capture that MMO crowd outside of the diehard fans is nearly impossible. The amount of content needed to try is simply infeasible.
The F2P models were more or less the death throe for the traditional MMO. why pay $5 or $10 to try something out for a month if you have deluges of other "free" games to jump into. It's a relic of a bygone era, in my eyes. Rust and several other games are the closest to "survival MMO" we'll get now.
This is hilariously scathing. I gotta keep an eye to see if Seanbaby writes a review on it too, it's right up his alley.