What I want to see in a survival game

[WhatMightHaveBeen]

@RustyLH

That is a failing of most survival games. Time equals advantage. Not good.

IT should be some advantage, but not at the extent it is on CE. The game is really a time investment x clan number game, not a true barbaric exiled land of feuding. And hence, many of the players who only have fractions of the time some have to play stay away from the game.

[Barnes]

You from Ohio or just a fan? We had cornfield kickball back in the day, and my best friend Rick was so strong a kicker he’d line-drive that sucker right above the turf so that the fielder could only trap it on the ground. That isn’t a catch, Rick rarely flew out. A trap isn’t an out, those are the rules.

I had a medical issue with my vision right as PvP was finally heating up on my happy little official server. Took the medical stuff seriously, stepped away from playing 6 hours a day – 6 p.m. to midnight – and accepted the L. Lost 7 months of time and enjoyment. Those are the rules. Exiles don’t get a break.

If it weren’t something that risked my vision, I’d be back in it. Unfortunately, conspiring against me is the fact that other than no-ping servers, there are no officials that meet my early screentime requirements. What I’m saying is the players with 5-6,000 hours continue to come back, and rebuild, often from 0 on a new server. I think that gamestyle might be altered, to the game’s detriment, if the loss dynamic were changed. We exiles risk a ton.

[RustyLH]

Less people want that than you think. First, at least half the community plays on PvE servers. Second, a fair amount play on private servers where they have rules, and moderator enforcement. Third, when Atlas was to enter it’s second season, they offered a choice. 24/7/365 raiding, called “Empires,” and one where you were only able to raid during set hours, called “Colonies.” About 10 people chose to play on Empires, so they shut that down. Fourth, one of the largest and most active private Atlas servers, which had three modes, PvP, SvS, and PvE, designated by grid…they decided to go to one mode, and took a poll. SvS (Ship vs Ship) won in overwhelming fashion. The people were spread evenly across all three types, prior to that.

This IMHO, proves that the majority do not want a game with full wipes, and I think full wiping is why people tend to leave the games fairly quickly. They like the idea of PvP, but full wipes end up driving them from the game. There’s an old saying that “you can only kick a dog so many times before it bites back,” but in this case, before it finds a new home.

Everyone is raving about Last Oasis. Guess what that doesn’t have? Offline raiding, or full wiping. You only risk what you take into battle. Your crafting base can literally be packed up in a second, and put into your walker. There is constant PvP, and it’s the only thing to do in the game, other than build walkers. There are no dungeons. I suspect that they will have to add some later, however.

It’s not that they have to do away with full PvP, but I quit PvP because I don’t have the time, to put into competing with those who do. I do not want to play a game that overly rewards time. I want skill to be a factor…the main factor. But, I also don’t want to lose everything because I lose a fight. Most people do not want to lose everything. It takes too long to gather everything in order to compete. You can get caught in a cycle of trying to build up, and being wiped before you can get there, over and over.

How many times do you have to farm the Champion dungeon to get enough scraps just for one person to have the armor pieces you want? Well, just one play through of that dungeon can take up an entire day’s playing time for many people, and most people can’t get on every single day. Games are supposed to be about fun. They aren’t supposed to be a second job. When you have to be on every single day, for 5 or 6 hours per day, minimum…it’s a job.

Survival games that get this right, are going to retain their player base. People are getting tired of the games that reward time more to the point that it’s the deciding factor in PvP. Funcom would do well to explore ways to make a PvP mode that allows safe bases that simply can’t be attacked, but still find things that you will want to fight over. Things that still involve building, and things that go boom. That’s what made Ship vs Ship in Atlas so fun. You knew that every time you left port, you might get sunk…and people would try to sink you. Why build ships with cannons, if you aren’t going to do battle with them.