What I want to see in a survival game

  1. Three game modes. (Hats off to Funcom, for trying this.) I want PvP, PvE, and PvE-C. The latter is going to be the hardest to get right, but if they can, it will be the most popular. To get it right, certain elements need to be there. First, a safe zone to build in, to protect your stuff. Most of us cannot make the game a 2nd job. But, we need something to fight over outside of those safe bubbles that cover our base. That is the hard part…and will require “outside-the-box thinking.”
  2. More emphasis on PvE. This simply means more attention to building parts, and animations for thralls. Most PvE players like to build very elaborate bases, and post their thralls around the base for effect. Allowing thralls to act as a worker, engage in conversations like the NPCs, or look like the are standing guard, etc… In addition, more attention to decor, and more building parts, to allow more elaborate bases. Pillars on the corners, right triangles, ramps that aren’t 45 degrees, etc…
  3. More emphasis on polishing game mechanics and eliminating bugs. More content is great, but as we have seen, that doesn’t actually bring people back to the game. I think people leave because of bugs, and mechanics that just aren’t very good.
  4. Thralls that are unkillable in PvE. Thralls that return home when abandoned. Thralls that follow orders. In short, better thrall functionality.
  5. If space is limited on a server, put in offline raid protection. This is not hard. People have been playing with this on ARK for many years. It works best with a 1 hour timer. Don’t log in unless you are willing to be raided. Don’t log in with just one guy trying to get things done. This turns off your off-line raid protection, and it remains off for 1 hour after you log off. If who’s online can be kept secret, people won’t know if you logged off. While this may not be perfect…people are getting tired of logging into destroyed bases…or the enemy in your base, waiting to kill you as you spawn.
  6. Scaled dungeons, and world bosses. It makes no sense for these to be the same difficulty for one person, as it is for ten. It tends to be unbalanced, one way or the other. It may be just right for 4 to 6 players, making it too difficult for 1 player, and too easy for 10, or it is just unbalanced to one side or the other. In Conan’s case, it seems to be unbalanced in favor of solo players, making dungeons really easy for a party of ten quality players.
  7. In PvE, just make stuff disappear when it decays. PvE is PvE. No need to allow raiding of decayed bases, or thralls. 2 Weeks is plenty of time. Make it 16 days and nobody would have an excuse, even if they went on a 2 week vacation.
  8. Decay of building items, over time, requiring upkeep. This will require an area of effect repair hammers, because people often have buried structure pieces that cannot be hit with a hammer. Atlas actually has a mini-game for the repair hammer, when on a ship. Maybe something like this could be added, along with a small cool down, to account for the area of affect. This system would add a penalty for those who only log in once a week to reset timers. This system should be balanced to allow for an occasional break from the server, but you should not be able to constantly just log in once a week to reset the timer. If you aren’t going to play, just let it decay, and start over when you truly want to play.
  9. Trophy displays. Not just for heads, but for weapons too. Have the name of the weapon show up on the display, so that people can see what weapon you are displaying.
  10. Give better abilities to hide things in PvP. I was not happy to see that I could not hide high value items by hiding a small chest someplace, like I could in other games. This made it impossible to mitigate the affects of being raided.
  11. Get rid of fast travel. While it may seem convenient, it makes it too easy for the Alpha tribes to raid all over the map. Ideally, there would be more than one Alpha. Each region should have an Alpha, and they should make alliances with smaller clans in their region. IMHO, Atlas does this better than any other survival game.
  12. No-build zones where rare resources spawn. While this may not stop people from trying to block them, it makes it a whole lot harder. Make it a TOS to do so in PvE where structures are indestructible. Do the same for story-quest areas. World Bosses should not be blocked by building on their spawn location.
  13. The Purge is a great concept, but they are too weak. And, you can avoid them by not playing, and just logging in once per week. That needs to be fixed. They should come whether you play or not. When you log in to reset the timer, that should trigger the purge, if you are overdue. Give us better tools to capture the T4 thralls, to account for the more difficult purges. Maybe make the T4’s more rare…more random, but allow us to give the guards both weapons, and truncheons, and allow them to switch to truncheons if a T4 is very close.
  14. Allow for a mailbox system. Most games just allow us to lock a container, and put a pin on it. If somebody wants to trade, we put a box down, and put a pin on it. This allows them to drop things off, or pick things up when you aren’t there. Boxes to trade with, also prevents the occasional glitch when tossing items on the ground. We always traded with unlocked boxes, or pinned boxes, in ARK and Atlas.
  15. More Pets to ride. With horses, I had hoped that other pets would become rider enabled. Especially Elephants. They should be fast in short bursts, but very tanky, and allow a platform that an archer can stand on…even a thrall archer. Speaking of pets…I love the way Conan does the taming. Far far superior to Atlas or ARK, in my humble opinion. Makes more sense to have to raise them from babies, to have a loyal adult animal. Atlas is the worst. Nearly kill an animal repeatedly, then feed it while it’s laying there nearly dead. Hated that system. But, I would like to see Conan adopt the imprinting method, however. A slower maturing, and a need to interact with the adolescent over time, to get the best pet you can…that would be great, in my opinion. I do really like the breeding in ARK and Atlas…Atlas more so, as it isn’t as long.
  16. Will add more as I think of them. Check back for updates.

BTW, this is meant as a discussion topic in General, as I am really talking about a new survival game, not necessarily Conan…as I don’t see most of these suggestions making it into Conan…ever…and maybe no survival game, to be honest. But, it’s a fun to hope somebody will do this one day.

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I cannot say that i am exited :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:, with the pvp suggestions, because i do not care so much about it. Though i play pvp i always prefer private servers and i am always neutral, so what i say is that your suggestions are cool, but i don’t really care. Now about pve suggestions, i loved them all and i tottaly agree to all, especially to the purge punishment suggestion. Still yesterday i was watching a video of @Wak4863 about the lemurian mod. All i can say to you is, on consoles the game is really low. The mods on pc have anything we dreamed of and more. What i am trying to say here is that they know. They know what we need before we even ask it or dream it if you want, they can do miracles on this game but still it needs more popularity and more sales for this miracles to happen. It is simple economy, not a science, but believe me if they had half of the popularity that fortnite has, the game we speak now will be 100 lvls up :wink:. Nice to talk to you mine, nice topic :+1:

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I have never played Fortnite, but a friend told me that what it proves to him is that people care more about a game working correctly, than they do about it’s content, because in his opinion, Fortnite is a pretty simplistic game, but it works very well.

People are getting tired of the Early Access cycle.

  1. Game comes out on Early Access.
  2. Game looks good in the trailer
  3. People rush to buy it, because there is a perceived benefit to being the early bird.
  4. Game is buggy.
  5. People complain
  6. People are reminded that it is an Alpha, or EA.
  7. People go back to playing a game not quite ready for prime time, with the promise that it will get there one day.
  8. People get frustrated.
  9. People begin to leave the game.
  10. New DLCs are announced.
  11. Players hope that the new content will fix the majority of the bugs, balance issues, and game mechanics issues.
  12. Most of the bugs, balance issues, and game mechanics issues persist, so people get frustrated, and leave again.
  13. Eventually, the game is basically dead, with only the most hardcore fans remaining…and many of the issues are never solved. The game never reaches a truly polished state.
  14. Players have long since moved on to the next Early Access game, and the cycle continues.

People are getting tired of that carousel ride.

IMHO, listening to friends talk about Fortnite, it is the fact that what is there, is pretty well polished, that makes them keep coming back to it. I don’t know for sure, because I never played it. I have seen a lot of videos, and it does seem to be pretty well polished.

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While I’m not wild about your suggestion to have no fast-travel (I’m a PvE player), most of the other suggestions I could get behind. Nice list overall!

Maybe while we’re at it, want to try spitballing ideas for a different PvP paradigm than what we have right now?

One type that might entice me to give it a try would be a system where the PvP is more akin to a game of Risk. In such a setup, I’d envision the map being subdivided into geographical regions with a new clan being able to claim one as their HQ by placing a throne there and duking it out to annex adjacent areas (by placing flags) for automatic access to whatever tribute that region offers.

For instance, the tribute for an area with a particular camp might be XP accrual for race-specific crafters of that race (i.e. eventually leveling a T1 crafter upto T4 status), while one with lots of raw materials might decrease the materials that need to be farmed to keep a clan’s decay/maintenance meter topped-off. Still others might net zeal for summoning gods, etc.

The key here would be that other clans could try to farm resources from those same zones and in so doing they would deprive the owning clan from their full tribute. Were an attacking clan to destroy the defender’s flag, they could then attempt to place their own, provided they already control an adjacent zone. To keep things from being too swingy, perhaps a given region can only change hands once a day, and only during raid time.

Anyway, just a rough idea to maybe spur others to either come up with some ideas of their own or further develop it. Be nice to see something a bit different that what we have now, I think.

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I very much dislike the idea of mini-games on basic activities. Imagine having a standard base and having to play that bloody mini-game over and over again.

I don’t really care about pvp so I will not comment on these points.

What I liked in Atlas was that you had to travel to various areas to get resources and they were all important. Here half of the resources are useless. Same for bosses.

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I am cool with no mini-game. What would be good is if we can see damaged structures that are buried. Just like you can now, actually. So, if you want to repair more than one structure…and area affect repair, to reach those damaged structures, you would have to charge up the hammer. This could be done by simply holding shift while swinging the hammer. This starts a cool down, to account for the larger repair area. This would be needed if we are to have decay over time.

I agree. Atlas is a lot of fun if you can find a server that has ship vs ship fighting only. Everything can be killed, and ship structures when not green anchored can be destroyed, but land structures are always immune.

IMHO, this how Atlas should have always been. And, they should go back to those land claim flags, but only give you one big land claim, maybe the size of the original sea claim, or maybe just a bit bigger, and then give you a very small handful of those small land claims. You could put them all together, or use the smaller ones for outposts on other islands. Maybe give you one flag for each island in the grid…one large, and the rest small.

That looks interesting. I have been trying to think of something that people could fight over, outside of safe base zones. I have a lot of ideas, but making them actually work is the key. It can’t be too complicated. I will read what you wrote, more in depth, and then respond again.

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I was actually very surprised that there was no option to at least pin code a box.

It’s most a PvP problem. Fast travel makes the map too small, and a small map for PvP is not really a good thing. Makes it too easy for the Alpha Clans to dominate the entire server.

I think Conan would have worked better on a bigger map, with zones, and inside of each zone, you can’t attack your neighbors. In short, you are all allies, in that zone. So, this makes it such that each zone would have an Alpha Clan, and every Alpha Clan would have a vested interest in helping out the smaller clans around them.

Even though I like the idea, it would be hard, almost impossible in Conan. The dungeons are not instanced per load in, meaning the dungeon itself is part of the “living” world. So if you port in, then you run into others. To do this, the dungeons would have to be “Stored” in separate instances from the game world, quite possibly on other servers.

For PVE, i understand, but for PVP it does minize strategy, as i can port straight from base close to my enemy.

If you truly want a risk style idea (which I like BTW) then fast travel would definitely have to be off on PVP. Armies should march not worm hole jump.

Again, for PVE, at this point i could care less, but for PVP it makes raiding significantly easier, as well as helps the clans that exploit building in under mesh/outside green screen. Imaging if a clan couldn’t teleport from thier base? The only way out is the way in…thus one would have to pop up out of the under-mesh or travel the way back in from green screen.

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That sounds like Last Oasis.

I thought so, too. I was proved wrong for speaking up for alpha clans, optimistically. I guess that change is your implied point.

Yeah a larger world, even if we had to zone to different areas like in Witcher 3 would have been a-ok by me. I’m always left feeling that each biome should be nearly the size of the entire world we have now. Damned technical constraints!

Also, making each zone PvE within itself sounds intriguing. Would you envision that a given clan would have to pick one such zone to be their main stronghold and others could support only small outposts, or would it still be possible for one clan to have large bases in each zone? (If the latter, how might that work for raiding?)

@WhatMightHaveBeen Yeah I can see how that would lessen the strategic aspect of PvP as you guys play it now. For PvE, it’s mainly a necessity when cooperative clans want to aid one another in Purge defense, which [I’m guessing] wouldn’t even be a thing in PvP save perhaps to use a purge you’ve scouted out as a distraction for an offensive.

As for the Risk type setup, I could see it going either way. Perhaps you can choose which controlled region to spawn in at, but cannot fast travel to one that is under attack. If it were a whole new map with mounts in from the get-go and mount-friendlier clutter on the terrain, perhaps traditional fast travel wouldn’t be missed…

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In ARK, this true also. The dungeons are not instanced, but I do know that on Ragnarok, the Ice Queen dungeon does count the number of players, and literally says that is calculating the number in your party, as you enter the dungeon. It also tells you if the Boss is available…meaning is it on cool down, or not.

You ever played RUST @RUSTylh?
Only three of the things of your list that already exist in it:

They call it Shopfront. It has double-check-security.

They call it Small Stashes. You can bury them. Small inventory.

They call it THE Tool Cupboard. Fill it with resources to prevent the decay of building pieces in it´s vicinity / circle of influence / claim.

I still do hope a little that the invention of obelisks
(or the now redundant workaround that they are) does not resemble taxes:
“Once established, they might never be removed again”.

Neither do chests that you can’t open by any means, and have to blow up, to get to what’s inside.

My biggest problem with survival games is that getting raided means losing everything you had, including what the others didn’t even want.

Why not make it such that the explosive destroys the lock, and then you can see what’s inside. But also include a mechanic that only allows them to put a set amount in their inventory, from your boxes, in a 24 hour period. Thus raids become raids, and not pseudo wipes. I don’t have the time to put into these games that kids do, so I am tired of losing everything, just because of that fact. I am steering clear of survival games at the moment.

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Thanks! It just makes sense to me. Getting wiped, especially when it happens over and over, simply drives people away from the game.

I am hearing a lot of praise from my friends for Last Oasis, and the thing they like most about it is that it is PvP focused, but you can completely protect your stuff by going into the Wasteland, and despawning. Everything is on the Walkers. You have a crafting base you can put down, but you can pick it right back up when done, and store it in the Walker. So, there is NO offline raiding. Also, it appears that it is not like most other survival games that have a heavy RPG element, where you gain so much over time, that new people, even semi-new people, have no chance against you. That is a failing of most survival games. Time equals advantage. Not good.

But at least a change like I am suggesting, would make it harder to wipe somebody. You can wipe them, but you won’t get much from them, because you could only take a set amount from them in that short period.

There is a mod that gives you thieves tools and a crowbar to break locks on doors and chests.

That sounds fun, but I was thinking more along the lines of making it such that the game is slowed down a bit. These games are all about the wipe, which sounds fun, but ends up pushing most people away from the game. Most people are going to get frustrated with it because you end up feeling like you are spinning your wheels.

Start game on active server…build up…start feeling like you are getting somewhere…get raided/wiped…start over…build up…start feeling like you are getting somewhere…get raided/wiped…rinse and repeat.

Most people won’t stick with a game when this happens, and it happens to most people playing survival games.

So I was thinking along the lines of something to stop wipes.