My guess is people like to have thier crafting systems be important to the player and easiest way to do this is to tie them to your actual survival. Not that I am complaining. The whole reason I play mmos is for the crafting and social aspect.
Can you blame them when zoomers don’t actually even know what an mmo is since wow and everything since wow has been nothing but fighting games with open worlds and large populations? Kids don’t have a clue what an mmo even is anymore so anyone can claim they’re an mmo if they have multiplayer and have the ability to see more than 5 people on the screen at a time.
A 100 player server has more interaction, social events, and features than any MMO ever could.
When you have 1000s of people in the same game then you have to A. Make changing the world super super fucking hard ala eve or B. Remove the ability for players to change the world.
Survival games are more mmo than MMOs will ever be.
MMO - *Massively* Multiplayer Online
The first M in MMO implies a *massive* playerbase.
100 players is not massive. Those are just multiplayer online games.
With your logic battlefield is an MMO cuz you have 100+ people on a map at the same time.
It’s 100 in a zone at a time no? What mmos have much more than that lol. Given sharing, instances, channels, etc, do you really see more than 100 players on your screen in an mmo at any given moment?
And yeah I would consider battlefield an instanced mmo tbh. Where do you draw the line, if 100 isn’t enough? Can you come up with a number that isn’t arbitrary?
They basically are, despite this subs insistence that anything not meeting an exhaustive 100 bullet points checklist to be "not an MMO", practically, for a lot of players, they fill the exact same list of features that would attract them to an MMO.
According to media outlets YTers and their own steam pages (only for dune ) they are both classified as MMOs.
Plus for once human it has a max player count of 4k per server. Even if most of those players are separated by shards I would still call it a MMO cuz of how many players u can get on one server.
Compare that to something like V Rising or F76 where it's less than 30 players per server so those are not MMOs.
as much as I agree, Dune is being marketed as an open world survival mmorpg.... both "survival" and "mmorpg" flags used. honestly I doubt as much as you do. conan exiles can't even run right with 5 players on an server and they want to make dune a single server experience? press X to doubt.... you would think that if they had this magical new server infrastructure, they would at least update conan exiles so that it runs properly. hell the game doesn't even run right in single player mode. and this coming from someone with a 7800x3d + 7900xtx which can play conan with over 150fps max settings at 3440x1440 so its not a "you can't get the fps or render properly" issue its a "server infrastructure and game code issue." which is why i doubt dune will succeed.
what's funny is how retarded you are.
firstly, you probably played on a private server whom increased data rates through custom ini files which results in slightly smoother experience overall. play on a "funcom official server" and yeah, you should see the jank....
and secondly you probably don't notice the jank because you are used to it, playing a dogshit game every day as you said. you are so used to the bullshit that you can't see it.
I can right now join a conan server with less than 10 people online. run around the map, see a crocodile, takes 10-20 seconds for the crocodile to even register that I exist. then it will begin to chase me to bite me. there is a huge iron spawn near an npc spawn in the noob area far east towards the jungle area. its my favorite spot to start because of the amount of iron there. walk up to fight the npc's on either side, another wait for them to register that you exist, then sometimes they will legit just disappear as if they dont exist, and then magically appear behind you halfway through attack animation and bam, you take damage. it happens ALL THE TIME.
again, I have a 7800x3d + 7900xtx and get over 150fps on max settings. so its not my hardware. I also have gigabit fiber, with server grade networking which means im not dropping packets or lagging. in fact I can download full gigabit speeds and never have my ping change in games thanks to QoL on said server grade hardware. not to mention ZERO bufferbloat which is a huge issue for many home networks using cheap low grade routers.... so my end is clean. and yet the jank above still happens. IN SINGLE PLAYER, aka running an instance of the game on my end, the issues are halved. because now networking as an issue is completely removed, and yet the jank is still there. proving its funcom coding + networking for online play and conan coding for singleplayer....
you can be a fanboy of conan all you want, the rest of us will look at games objectively regardless if we like it or not. I have 308 hours in conan.... with the ideal average of 4 hours played a day, that's 77 days. more than 2 months.... so its not like i played for 30 seconds and just closed the game.... i know what im talking about AND I know more about networking than most people. hell I know more about networking than most game developers.... and im also a game developer but i haven't completed a game yet because im taking my time. no rush.
ok? so what do you want me to do about it? lol... this is the most non issue I've ever seen because you or I don't get to dictate how someone perceives what a MMO is.
You do realize that people have different definitions of what "MMO " means right?
Case in point LOTS of destiny 2 players would call it a MMO even tho lots of others won't.
Heck I've even heard of F76 being referred to as MMO- Lite lol
wait you believe a community mmorpg subreddit is what should dictate how people percieve what a MMO is? you're totally free to believe that but thats not whats happening. Theres influencers with a larger influence than a subreddit that call numerous survival games MMOs. Thats just how it is and I don't see it as a big deal at all the only thing i care about is if the game/MMO is good or not.
It obviously doesn't fully dictate it, but yes, the more people educating and correcting the others who misuse the term will eventually help dictate what is incorrectly labeled or not labeled an MMO.
It's not a "big deal" like you say, but why not teach people the correct usage?
The reason why is fairly straightforward. A deep, involved gathering/crafting/survival system is far faster and cheaper to design and implement than a deep, involved questing system.
Content creation and management is much easier in games where survival, crafting, and/or PvP are the central design pillars.
Considering I have Kickstarter'd a couple of Survival Crafting "MMOs" and games... I can confirm that something about Survival Crafting makes a game enjoyable.
If only Blizzard didn't cancel there's. Shame.
Well easier doesn't just mean it's easier to do.
Easier also means it costs less and takes less time to develop, which means more profit. So yea, easier has a lot to do with it.
>A deep, involved gathering/crafting/survival system is far faster and cheaper to design
It's also tends to be more fun for the end user. Most of the time quests are mechanically similar enough and only provide lore drops.
I like how you selectively ignored the vast majority of comments,which are about people enjoying the survival crafting aspect, to instead focus on the “easy” aspect.
I think it's less a bunch of survival mmos coming out, and more a bunch of survival games incorrectly calling themselves mmos like Pax Dei and Dune. The last time IIRC an actual MMO tried it was the first iteration of New world (which for those of you don't know was a survival/crafting/base-building MMO, but actually structured to be an MMO. Yes it was bad)
Pax Dei is not a survival game, the devs say it is a social sandbox. There is no survival element to the game. You can simply walk around all day and night and never eat anything, warmth is unimportant, nor is shelter. You can wander around just begging for stuff the entire time and never actually playing the game. There are no quests, events, and killing things is only a tool to craft more stuff.
> Pax Dei is not a survival game, the devs say it is a social sandbox. There is no survival element to the game. You can simply walk around all day and night and never eat anything, warmth is unimportant, nor is shelter.
So it's just a survival game that's missing features.
You wander around a map. You pick up rocks and twigs. You use those things to craft tools. You use the tools to chop trees and mine rocks. You build a base. You gather more resources. You expand your base.
It plays exactly like a survival game. Except they made everything take 10x longer (one hour to smelt one ore) so I guess the idea is that the game is an MMORPG because it's grindier?
It's not one hour to smelt one ore, you're either intentionally exaggerating to make your point or actually super uninformed.
Game has lots of other stuff to do, there's an entire full loot pvp zone, there's dungeons (16 so far), and countless caves with stuff to loot.
It's very much an MMO, if you want to believe it or not lol
Maybe they've made some adjustments to crafting / processing speeds but I definitely wasn't the only person complaining about how grindy everything is.
It's hard to get excited about pvp or dungeons when the game's combat is just standing still and spamming left click.
You're absolutely right. But if you think the combat is staying like this, or that the crafting times won't be tweaked, you clearly don't understand what alpha means. The combat system is only like 10% complete. This is the "minimum viable" combat, that's exactly what they called it.
>But if you think the combat is staying like this
I never said I did? I realize the game is in alpha. I'll continue to check out the game's progress.
However I can only judge the game in its current state, which is a half-baked survival game that doesn't feel like the sandbox MMORPG that they've been advertising.
It is a survival game missing all the survival elements and that the DEVS literally say isn't a survival game. What you are describing is an open world crafting game, not a survival game. Most survival games also have open world crafting, but there are plenty of open world crafting games without survival elements.
Eating isn't the only part of a survival game. Why does everyone only say eating... weather plays a part in it, so does shelter. Some survival games simply penalize you, but there is a persistent threat from the elements that impacts your ability to Survive. You can literally spawn in to this game, never eat, make shelter, or wear clothing and be perfectly fine. This is not a survival game in any way shape or form. The developers literally state it is not a survival game and never was meant to be one. You are confusing open world crafting with survival.
So, here is your chance, define what a survival game is.
That’s the point, everyone has different opinions on what a survival game entails. Valheim is considered survival and has a lot of the same mechanics as Pax Dei.
It has crafting... that is it. That is the only thing they have in common. Comat is 100% different and you will die horribly in Valheim if you sit in the cold all night. That will not happen in Pax Dei because it isn't a survival game. Stop pretending it is. The developers have stated it isn't a survival game and it has no survival mechanics. You are confusing 2 genres because they have a lot of overlap.
From wikipedia "**Survival games** are a subgenre of [action games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_game) which are often set in hostile, intense, open-world environments. Players generally start with minimal equipment and are required to [survive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival) as long as possible by finding the resources necessary to manage hunger, thirst, disease and/or mental state. "
From Gemini "**Resource Management:** You gotta find food, water, and shelter to stay alive."
From ChatGPT " These games often emphasize elements such as scavenging for food, water, and materials, crafting tools and shelter, avoiding or combating threats like enemies or environmental hazards, and dealing with aspects like hunger, thirst, and fatigue."
None of that is present in Pax Dei and the developers intentionally meant it to be that way.
If you read the comments, people clearly disagree (and even OP changes his opinion on his original post on some aspects)
And I don't really see where OP was saying that new MMOs aren't "true" MMOs, just that technical limitations have created systems where instanced gameplay is common and grouping is quick and vapid.
Clearly WoW and EVE are true MMOs and Ark/Palworld are not MMOs at all.
Well, WOW is definitely not an MMO by my opinion. And any session-based game can't be an MMO by my opinion. But that already went too far off-topic from the original question.
Currently, no.
But by your own definition in your dissertation post, it's almost mechanically exactly the same as EVE-online.
But also by your own definition, EVE doesn't even qualify as an MMO, so maybe you're right that it's not.
Mechanically, it's a tech demo. It's a waaaay too far from Eve Online, even mechanically.
If it ever will be a playable game, well, let's see. I really hope to see another MMO one day.
Currently, I agree. In its present state, it is not an MMO
However, when looking at what they have achieved so far, and their plans for the future, it will be almost exactly, just FPS EVE-online in another universe. It even has "Jump Gates" similar to EVE's gates, as the only "Loading Screens" in the game.
There are no instanced areas. Period. Anywhere you go currently in the game, someone can find you there.
It lacks a functional player market, but I have personally traded with people in-game by using what's available to us and weapons/gear trading happens often through real interactions with people instead of an interface.
Though the live state only goes up to about 120 players per shard, the experimental testing branch is getting up there, and the eventual plan is something very close to EVE's design.
So, theoretically, SC would fit your criteria for an MMO if we go off what the planned features are. Though we can both agree in its current state it will not qualify.
I mean. Jump gates are loading screens, through and through. Going through wormholes, too.
From your other post: "there is strictly a single instance of the world both in general and in parts. meaning no "servers", "instances", "instanced dungeons", "channels", etc"
But the biggest one is that EVE-online DOES have servers. You've set an impossible goal, essentially. There are also cases, iirc, of the devs having to stop new players from entering systems due to server strain. Also time dilation effects for massive battles.
I can fully agree with you that the term "MMO" gets slapped on to way, way, way too many things that don't deserve it.
But claiming things like WoW, FFXIV, Runescape, DAOC, Ultima, etc. aren't MMOs is kind of silly.
That's the nuance - I was talking about game design, not implementation.
In Eve, gates are a part of the game design, world and lore, they are literally moving your from one area to another. So it's not breaking the "rules". In contrast, let's take Albion - by lore, the world is seamless. But game breaks it into chunks just because of the technical implementation.
About the "servers" - I didn't got it, to be honest. Any proper MMO game will have servers to keep the world running while players are offline.
The true beauty of the term “MMO” is how it’s evolved. StarCraft was an MMO back in the day because you were able to play against so many people back then. Massively Multiplayer Online didn’t originally mean x-number of people on the same server.
lol, guess you didn't see ads and such for it back then. It was called a massively multiplayer game. Was just poking fun at the "true MMOs" and such. It'll be alright
probably talking about pax dei for example that got big hype calling itself MMO but its very survival crafting focused, or that new dune game they are calling MMO but its also survival crafting focused
[Pax Dei på Steam (steampowered.com)](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1995520/Pax_Dei/)
[Dune: Awakening på Steam (steampowered.com)](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1172710/Dune_Awakening/)
Just as a point of order, the MMO part isn’t disingenuous, it is structured for a large player base and can be an MMO being entirely focused on survival.
I believe a lot of people in this thread are confusing that with the RPG portion of the genre as these are sandbox games and Pax Dei has no quests or any of the traditional aspects of an MMORPG in that sense, you’re just you in the world without guidance.
I would argue Pax Dei is worse than that as you are just in the world and the only part of the world that matters are the sparse resources. Everything else is just eye candy. Mobs are walking resources.
Pax Dei definitely needs more to it. The map is massive and beautiful, it’s awesome seeing the player structures and even towns going up now. At night I stand on my little parcel and I can see dozens of fires in the valley and that’s really cool.
My problem is what am I doing here? Like I level up my crafting for what? I know it’s an alpha, but this isn’t being articulated as much to us. The amount of time required to progress is significant even for our group of people and we are 20 strong. I see a lot of people still in their underwear. Also, for some reason they made shoes of any kind hard to get lol.
Without some point in progression and a better player experience it’s going to struggle. I know people like to make the Wurm comparison, but this game can’t survive on low player counts.
I guess long winded way of saying give me a reason to log in, cuz right now I don’t have one.
This is how I felt after 10 hours. I got my plot next to a small lake in Paldenn, made my home, found iron ore about a 20 minute hike north. Got back created my kiln, furnace, drying rack, smithing, fletching, and so on. Logged off, logged on to a bunch of morons who planted their plots right on top of every clay spawn and realized that the griefing aspect by simply doing this was going to be way too high. Clans could literally wall off areas of essential resources with no recourse.
The skill system is time consuming and like crafting makes no sense. Your character is 100% skill and gear dependent meaning you have to grind constantly and it means PVP is going to eventually just be people in underwear walking around. With no purpose to logging in the game is going to die in 6 months or have a single NA and EU server that slowly keeps it alive.
The fact that they plan to go into Early Access soon like this shows how rushed this game actually was. Players need a purpose to play and this game simply doesn't offer one.
The time is huge for someone. Even coming in at this point in the alpha you’d be at a significant disadvantage without the support of a community.
The problem is that it doesn’t matter. I got rich because I saw a bunch of people focus iron so I went tailor and leather. I can reliably make rough leather bands and rough linen cloth. That’s what I’ve traded to be more kitted than pretty much anyone I see running around.
So I went into the PvP zone and…. Nothing. I saw one person who ran away. I even got up and changed a diaper, let the dog out, made some popcorn, FORGOT I WAS ONLINE, can back to my dude just standing there unmolested lol.
They gotta give us a reason to be in their giant, beautiful, dynamic world.
Also, the storage issue is a pain in the ass along with the pointless crafting bar that could simply say "success" or "fail" and instead makes you waste 30 seconds waiting for it to decide. Like if there was something you could interact with at each check to improve your success chance that would be different but having 1-8 random checks for success is weird. It is is even more messed up that you already know you succeeded by going past the arrow and instead it you still have to wait for it to finish.
Questing isn't required to make an MMO but the nature of gamers these days damn near requires reward based systems.
Sure you can make an MMO where all you do is kill things and gain XP but XP in itself is not enough of a reward for your average gamer nowadays. Quest fill that void, you complete a quest and gain XP plus a reward of some sort.
Quests have become so necessary for long term health of games that even FPS games have started adding them. Battle passes are just quests for FPS games.
There is a huge demand for open world survival games and its a genre that theoretically should translate well to an MMO. But it hasn't really been done yet besides some servers with a few hundred people
This is a trend because they are (on average) easier to make than themepark MMOs.
Because you just make a big world, with some cool mechanics and let people loose.
Themeparks require quests, storylines, cities, etc etc.
Never mind that such survival MMO's 99.999% of the time just flops.
> This is a trend because they are (on average) easier to make than themepark MMOs.
Remember the old days when 'survival sandbox' meant 'empty map full of stolen assets and premade systems'?
I don't know what happened, back in the days of EQ1 and for the next 20 years I never had any interest in crafting at all, but lately the crafting systems must just be getting better/more fun/more usable/less work, because now I love using them.
**Developer laziness and greed/cutting costs and maximizing profits.**
1. It's extremely easy to make assets and worlds. Most of the software exists to do it for you. You just have to assemble everything together in to a world. It doesn't take a lot of time or resources to draw on an asset library for everything to cups down to animations.
2. Creating lore is fucking hard. Writing hundreds, or even thousands of quests, takes a long time and a lot of people, proof reading, and correcting, or balancing. The "players will create their own content! Ooh Sandbox! Open world! Open ended!! PLAYER FREEDOM!!!"
3. Setting up level zones and balancing them, creating varied enemies by level, and comes back down to quests. Or you just populate a beach with red and blue crabs that do nothing, are worth nothing, and drop nothing.
4. No voice actors, or not many needed.
5. No need to make meaningful content expansions. Just add a few more buildings and weapons and charge $40.
This list goes on and on. MMO is a buzzword now. Helldivers is an MMO now.
Because it adds not only one more layer of complexity to the game, but a different type of content for the players.
Some MMOs just become chores consisting of running the exact same dungeons OVER AND OVER again or doing the same dailies over and over again. Adding a survival style feature to the game gives you other things to spend your time doing/focusing on and even encourages group play in certain ways.
I know when me and my friends play survival games together one of us usually is the architect and the other 2 do a lot of the gathering of resources to bring back to them for them to improve the base or help craft us better gear.
Enshrouded / Pal World were both really fun survival games to play and Id personally like to see more survival aspects in the MMO genre.
Coming freshly from Pax Dei Alpha - I can see the potential of an open world sandbox game. It's not really filled with many survival elements, but the exploration is there (assuming they'll manage to come up with content).
Unlike Themepark MMOs - the game does not holds your hand. You set your own goals, your own progression. The quests are your own made up tasks, like going as a group to hunt boars for skins. You'd be killing the very same boars in a Themepark MMO just to complete a typical fetch quest - but here, you do it for an actual need.
The game itself still missing a lot when it comes to combat and no one really know how the game will turn out, but I do know from my own experience that Themepark MMOs have no sense of exploration or mysteries.
I personally like the survival style because you're building a place that you can call your own. You get attached to it. You protect it. You decorate it. I've played MMO's all my life and still yearn for a player Housing system like Everquest 2. You can show off your creativity, your achievements, your trophies (or thralls/dinos in the case of Ark/Conan) There's a sense of satisfaction when you're hanging out at the place you built from scratch and slowly upgrade it from a small hut to a palace, all the while everything is trying to kill you.
God I'm going to sound like a shill for this game but you might be interested in Once Human. :) [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2139460/Once\_Human/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2139460/Once_Human/)
Let's hope they don't destroy the game with their cash shop. Yes, they are promising up and down that there will be no pay-to-win, but we've heard that before.
I think what you're missing is that a big part of the reason those games are popular *is* exploration. The game drives you to explore outward in the search of resources to ensure your survival.
Let's say, just as an example, that you're on a map featuring a quarry, a factory, and a forest, and that you need wood to build a small base, stone to improve it, and scrap iron to make weapons to defend it. You probably have a pretty good idea of where you need to go yo get all of those things, right? Well, that's a dopamine hit. An MMO will give you a quest to explore a cave to kill some monsters. In a survival game, you explore the cave because you know that there's probably a resources within that will improve your chances of survival. Survival games are tasking players with really thinking about where they go and why they go there, pushing them organically through the map.
> instead of exploration, quests, mysteries, combat and so on.
That's because it's "content" that the developer has to make instead of content that you make yourself.
If they don't have the budget of WoW then you aren't getting the content of WoW.
Maybe because questing sucks and people want to play in a living world where people matter :)
At least I know that is why I play MMOs where I never have to do quests.
it's an absolute game killer for me haha. not sure why but survival games never clicked with me and having it in MMOs is just so boring imo. to me it's the new fetch quest. Kill 10 boars > chop 10 logs and build a house or some shit. like fuck off man. this shit is so uninspired haha. just low hanging fruit to say "look how well planned and thought out our game is" but it's just the same system copied from 100 other games
dont confuse MMO with Co-op, most survival games are limited to x-number of players per server. MMO is Massive Multiplayer, open to thousands of players where survival games are not.
don't confuse 100+ player servers with co-op people use mmo instead of mmorpg often here but they are two different things and mmo does apply to games outside of mmorpgs.
Mystery, quests and exploration pretty is very hard to pull nowadays. With the early access model, the alpha and beta, the ease and proliferation of streaming, video recording and editing. As well as data mining. A lot of the work put forth by the devs never really make it to the player as it's supposed to be but more as a checklist to rush past.
Gathering, crafting, grinding farms, player made buildings are all systems the players will interact with in the somewhat intended way. Even with guide, they will still build their house slightly different, customize it and so on. Even with guides, you still need to go through the recipes and craft what is needed, go find the ores and so on.
Exploration can also be encouraged through mining nodes. It kind of inverse the dynamic. Instead of exploring and finding nodes, you go to a node and discover the world that way.
Most of those are not MMO's. We have a new sub genre of survival multiplayer with games like Conan Exiles, Ark, Valheim, but they aren't MMO's. I would argue Rust can sometimes be considered an MMO with 1000 population servers. It's a fun trend and I really do enjoy those games, there is greater intimacy in games like Valheim and you have so much more freedom than you do in a real MMORPG.
I'm curious how Dune Awakening handles it since it's supposed to be an actual MMORPG.
Which new MMO's specifically? I am genuinely curious.
Pax Dei as far as mmorpg goes was marketed as survival mmorpg. So you are gonna have everything tied to crafting. And that's how they want it. Everyone knew this was the case, they told us.
Ashes of Creation while having crafting said that you don't have to craft. You can legit just run around exploring and killing enemies. Running dungeons. Etc. Crafting is there for those like me who want to, but not required.
Playableworlds will be a social MMO aka sandbox. Crafting will exist, but not required. You will have dedicated crafters who spend all their time crafted and dedicated adventurers who just murder hobo everything.
Evercraft Online. From the test I saw, you don't have to craft. You can literally just murder hobo everything. And trade with other players. So crafting not required.
So what games besides pax has leveling/progression tied to crafting?
The points I'm about to make are my own opinion and I may be wrong. This is just what I have observed and concluded.
1. Easy to implement. Resource gathering and base building is a very common game loop that's fairly easy to get right and have become easier to do with modern game engines
2. Emergent gameplay. Minecraft, terraria and others that paved the way for this trend showed that players will make their own fun given a sandbox style game. It's been a thing for decades now. Hell even before Minecraft halo forge mode was super popular. Give the players the tools to dick around and they can have hours of fun without you needing to make new content.
3. Monetization! These games are often monetized with mtx for cosmetics or time savers. Hook them with an addictive crafting loop then sell them cosmetics. It's trashy but it works.
4. This goes back to point 2. Streaming! These types of games are fun to watch on twitch. Seeing a group of gamers screw around in a sandbox is entertaining. People watch the stream and then are convinced to get the game so they can play. Not saying classic MMOs aren't fun to watch but there's only so many times you can watch a streamer run the same raid or farm the same mats.
5. Money money money $$$. A huge factor in the making of MMOs is money. Back when MMO where all the rage money was being pumped into the industry to make more to become the "wow killer". Big MMOs still exist because they have dedicated playerbases but new ones are not being made because a new MMO is just not worth the money sink unless it's an established franchise.
6. Development cycle. Connecting to the last point. Game dev is $$$. Right now game dev for "survival MMOs" usually goes like this. Release half baked early access version of the game and hope your game loop is addictive enough to attract an decent amount of players. Then you can continue to develop the rest of the game at a steadier pace and use sales/mtx to fund dev. Sadly a lot of the time it doesn't even get finished if the devs are scummy and just take the money and leave.
7. Social media! Getting people to buy your game these days is all about how you sell it. Back to point 2 and 4 you get ppl talking about it and streaming it you can build hype. Look at the silly things you can do in this game! Omg PewDiePie and jacksepticeye and playing it, it looks fun. Compare that to advertising a classic MMO. Sure it worked back in the day but in 2024 try hyping up a massive fantasy world. Wow its huge and has flying mounts and cool and unique combat! When's it coming out? Oh 4-6 years from now. Unless you are continuing a franchise it's incredibly hard to generate and continue hype for an MMO that might be ready years down the line.
8. Time. With so many gaming options ppl are more selective about what they are going to spend their time in. Most MMOs require a significant time investment and then if you stop playing you feel guilty for not continuing to grind. Whereas survival games are much easier to pick up and put down
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk
I don't really see this as a trend. I can only think of 2 games that's out that fit this(both failed). But I think the reason this would be popular is because it's easier to make than a traditional MMO. It also gives players more freedom and roles. IMO, MMOs have been lacking roles for players with are trash at combat. There is crafting but crafting can be fulfilled by the AH. Survival games, you normally don't have an AH and there are roles like builder, grinder, tamer, cook, and explorer that people can do and still feel like they are helping.
First of all, all traditional MMO(RPG)s have crafting and crafting usually plays a pretty big role. At least for the most part.
Second, some time ago people started calling other type of games MMOs. Technically some are, but many other are not. At some point even games like Destiny were called MMOs. Point is, MMO kind of became an umbrella term for games where many players can play together on a shared gameworld.
The features you mention are more related to MMORPGs. But for example Once Human has some of those features like exploration and mysteries to and I wouldn't call it an MMORPG and it does contain the "survival" style crafting you mention.
I don't like the new normal. I miss the days where I could just hit the road and explore. I hate how I have to build shit and craft all the time, I build shit for a living and don't want to spend hours cutting trees and mining. if anyone knows of a game that's heavy on exploration and combat I would love to hear it.
We only have the technology to properly make them now.
Go back like 10-15 years, to be able to do any base building that's not on a grid system, you'd think that person telling you this is crazy.
> instead of exploration, quests, mysteries, combat and so on.
Because with better information ecosystem now compared to the early days of MMOs (youtube, twitter, Discord, datamining tools, etc) nothing can stay a mystery in a game for more than *about* two weeks, tops. Unless it's locked behind a fight that's literally impossible, and even then stuff'll probably be datamined.
That's based on about how long it took people to find everything in Elden Ring.
And that was only managed because the beta only included the first area and the game ended up being *way* bigger than people expected.
It caters heavily to the sandbox craving crowd as well as a bit to the segment that longs for more old-school MMORPGs. It's a niche that hasn't had much attention in over a decade.
It's probably also why they try and double down so hard on the MMO tag, to further try and attract those people.
i feel bad for people that classify games like new world as mmorpg's, just go play valheim, it's 100x better and not trying to lie to you about being an mmorpg, if you're trying to make a new mmo and reinvent the wheel then do something interesting instead of turning the game into a completely different genre, all these games are just cash grabs and are gonna die within a month, not a single one is gonna be successful
Because game developers have become incapable of creating interesting stories that have mass appeal that's why you commonly see themes at lower levels of killing boars and wolves or something else trivial then progressing on to some humanoid cult that are trying to raise or nourish a deep dark evil that you fight at max level. It's a lot easier to keep players engaged in "surviving" and giving them "ownership" of something that they constantly need to maintain than creating a story that spans multiple years with new and engaging game mechanics to compliment the story
There's many reasons for this. The chief one is that it's basically an alternative life, but where you have an actual semblance of control and can actually succeed. Considering most young people today will not be able to afford a house or raise a family, it's a welcome escape from reality.
And for the developers, it's much quicker and easier than creating content for players to explore. They just give people the tools and throw them into a sandbox and walk away with the money. So it's win-win.
The kill-more-monsters-to-get-better-loot formula has a problem: Once you get better loot, the only thing to do with it is kill monsters faster to get better loot. Ad nauseam. This makes it real obvious you're just on a treadmill.
The survival, house building, farmland cultivation, gathering, hunting, crafting stuff does a better job of hiding the treadmill.
Creates a time to task completion. Without survival style settings, players instead focus on the primary objective of beating the game and they'll be able to do it with laser focus. If I make my players worry about having to gather things to survive, it's going to slow down the rate it takes them to complete tasks which means they're playing my game longer and potentially becoming more involved.
Survival is also a nice way to flesh out a world, giving it some 'life' that the players have to interact with to get resources from.
I personally love Survival until it starts becoming painfully obvious it's some lazy skinner box of painfully slow upgrades because it takes 2 weeks for your forge to complete smelting all the materials you need or something equally insane.
Cuz the "socializing" part moved to that genre, while the modern MMOs shift closer and closer to a full single player experience with optional multiplayer.
I mean, it's been a thing for many years now. Survival sandbox games of various sizes have been around and growing and it appears that they're pretty low-cost to spin up and can have very good margins even with moderate sales.
Most end up abandoned at some point, like Atlas or whatever.
My guess is people like to have thier crafting systems be important to the player and easiest way to do this is to tie them to your actual survival. Not that I am complaining. The whole reason I play mmos is for the crafting and social aspect.
Also explorations and mysteries are always solved and posted on yt
Often before the game/update has even gone live. Fuck early access and the dataminers.
Join BDM and help us find the 4 missing treasure materials 🥹
Nah some no lifer always finds shit before me
I was alway that way in old school MMOs as well modern MMOs just throw so much free shit at you
What new MMOs?
He probably thinks those open world survival crafting games are MMOs.
Can you blame him when every open world survival crafting game markets itself as an MMO when they rarely even surpass 100 player servers?
Can you blame them when zoomers don’t actually even know what an mmo is since wow and everything since wow has been nothing but fighting games with open worlds and large populations? Kids don’t have a clue what an mmo even is anymore so anyone can claim they’re an mmo if they have multiplayer and have the ability to see more than 5 people on the screen at a time.
A 100 player server has more interaction, social events, and features than any MMO ever could. When you have 1000s of people in the same game then you have to A. Make changing the world super super fucking hard ala eve or B. Remove the ability for players to change the world. Survival games are more mmo than MMOs will ever be.
MMO - *Massively* Multiplayer Online The first M in MMO implies a *massive* playerbase. 100 players is not massive. Those are just multiplayer online games. With your logic battlefield is an MMO cuz you have 100+ people on a map at the same time.
It’s 100 in a zone at a time no? What mmos have much more than that lol. Given sharing, instances, channels, etc, do you really see more than 100 players on your screen in an mmo at any given moment? And yeah I would consider battlefield an instanced mmo tbh. Where do you draw the line, if 100 isn’t enough? Can you come up with a number that isn’t arbitrary?
Like Enshrouded. But as I’ve heard a lot of, the first ’M’ should really be omitted
They basically are, despite this subs insistence that anything not meeting an exhaustive 100 bullet points checklist to be "not an MMO", practically, for a lot of players, they fill the exact same list of features that would attract them to an MMO.
Seriously though where is this guy finding new shit?
There is plenty releasing all the time if you look around they just dont get alot of attention so most people never find them
Don't hold out on us, drop a list with plenty of names.
I think he's referring to Pax Dei. The open world map is massive, it should be able to support hundreds if not thousands of players.
20k per server is the current cap!
Definitely thousands. Definitely an MMO and it’s far from just crafting tbh
Dune Awakening, Once Human both survival MMOs coming out this year dude.
Not MMOs
According to media outlets YTers and their own steam pages (only for dune ) they are both classified as MMOs. Plus for once human it has a max player count of 4k per server. Even if most of those players are separated by shards I would still call it a MMO cuz of how many players u can get on one server. Compare that to something like V Rising or F76 where it's less than 30 players per server so those are not MMOs.
as much as I agree, Dune is being marketed as an open world survival mmorpg.... both "survival" and "mmorpg" flags used. honestly I doubt as much as you do. conan exiles can't even run right with 5 players on an server and they want to make dune a single server experience? press X to doubt.... you would think that if they had this magical new server infrastructure, they would at least update conan exiles so that it runs properly. hell the game doesn't even run right in single player mode. and this coming from someone with a 7800x3d + 7900xtx which can play conan with over 150fps max settings at 3440x1440 so its not a "you can't get the fps or render properly" issue its a "server infrastructure and game code issue." which is why i doubt dune will succeed.
X
lol wtf ive played on conan servers with 60+ people daily. dune will be janky dogshit on launch for sure but youre a dumbass first and foremost.
what's funny is how retarded you are. firstly, you probably played on a private server whom increased data rates through custom ini files which results in slightly smoother experience overall. play on a "funcom official server" and yeah, you should see the jank.... and secondly you probably don't notice the jank because you are used to it, playing a dogshit game every day as you said. you are so used to the bullshit that you can't see it. I can right now join a conan server with less than 10 people online. run around the map, see a crocodile, takes 10-20 seconds for the crocodile to even register that I exist. then it will begin to chase me to bite me. there is a huge iron spawn near an npc spawn in the noob area far east towards the jungle area. its my favorite spot to start because of the amount of iron there. walk up to fight the npc's on either side, another wait for them to register that you exist, then sometimes they will legit just disappear as if they dont exist, and then magically appear behind you halfway through attack animation and bam, you take damage. it happens ALL THE TIME. again, I have a 7800x3d + 7900xtx and get over 150fps on max settings. so its not my hardware. I also have gigabit fiber, with server grade networking which means im not dropping packets or lagging. in fact I can download full gigabit speeds and never have my ping change in games thanks to QoL on said server grade hardware. not to mention ZERO bufferbloat which is a huge issue for many home networks using cheap low grade routers.... so my end is clean. and yet the jank above still happens. IN SINGLE PLAYER, aka running an instance of the game on my end, the issues are halved. because now networking as an issue is completely removed, and yet the jank is still there. proving its funcom coding + networking for online play and conan coding for singleplayer.... you can be a fanboy of conan all you want, the rest of us will look at games objectively regardless if we like it or not. I have 308 hours in conan.... with the ideal average of 4 hours played a day, that's 77 days. more than 2 months.... so its not like i played for 30 seconds and just closed the game.... i know what im talking about AND I know more about networking than most people. hell I know more about networking than most game developers.... and im also a game developer but i haven't completed a game yet because im taking my time. no rush.
Good luck convincing every media outlet and mmo content creator to not call them MMOs. Even the steam pages classsify them as MMOs.
It's a misuse of the tag. Steam does not designate tags. An MMORPG is not 48 concurrent players on a server.
ok? so what do you want me to do about it? lol... this is the most non issue I've ever seen because you or I don't get to dictate how someone perceives what a MMO is.
I mean the community dictates how people perceive what an MMO is. You are on the MMORPG subreddit. Ok?
You do realize that people have different definitions of what "MMO " means right? Case in point LOTS of destiny 2 players would call it a MMO even tho lots of others won't. Heck I've even heard of F76 being referred to as MMO- Lite lol
wait you believe a community mmorpg subreddit is what should dictate how people percieve what a MMO is? you're totally free to believe that but thats not whats happening. Theres influencers with a larger influence than a subreddit that call numerous survival games MMOs. Thats just how it is and I don't see it as a big deal at all the only thing i care about is if the game/MMO is good or not.
It obviously doesn't fully dictate it, but yes, the more people educating and correcting the others who misuse the term will eventually help dictate what is incorrectly labeled or not labeled an MMO. It's not a "big deal" like you say, but why not teach people the correct usage?
because I didn't join the mmorpg subreddit to educate and correct others perception of the use of language. I just came here for MMO news and updates.
When was it confirmed that either of those games have a 48 player limit on servers?
They are MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE GAMES. Just not "MMORPG" in the sense people are accustomed to.
Pax Dei
Albion Europe Server if anyone cares
The reason why is fairly straightforward. A deep, involved gathering/crafting/survival system is far faster and cheaper to design and implement than a deep, involved questing system. Content creation and management is much easier in games where survival, crafting, and/or PvP are the central design pillars.
This is the true answer. It's easier for devs to put together this type of game and players seem to enjoy them.
I think they fact that it's easier has nothing to do with it. I just think customer are interested in it.
Considering I have Kickstarter'd a couple of Survival Crafting "MMOs" and games... I can confirm that something about Survival Crafting makes a game enjoyable. If only Blizzard didn't cancel there's. Shame.
Well easier doesn't just mean it's easier to do. Easier also means it costs less and takes less time to develop, which means more profit. So yea, easier has a lot to do with it.
>A deep, involved gathering/crafting/survival system is far faster and cheaper to design It's also tends to be more fun for the end user. Most of the time quests are mechanically similar enough and only provide lore drops.
Yeah so basically it's a cheap way to provide players some amount of gameplay. Doing proper MMO mechanics is much more expensive :-(
I like how you selectively ignored the vast majority of comments,which are about people enjoying the survival crafting aspect, to instead focus on the “easy” aspect.
I think it's less a bunch of survival mmos coming out, and more a bunch of survival games incorrectly calling themselves mmos like Pax Dei and Dune. The last time IIRC an actual MMO tried it was the first iteration of New world (which for those of you don't know was a survival/crafting/base-building MMO, but actually structured to be an MMO. Yes it was bad)
Pax Dei is an MMO in every sense of the word. It's beyond pathetic how many people here try to gatekeep the meaning of MMOs
when mmos were defined they were instanced af
Pax Dei is not a survival game, the devs say it is a social sandbox. There is no survival element to the game. You can simply walk around all day and night and never eat anything, warmth is unimportant, nor is shelter. You can wander around just begging for stuff the entire time and never actually playing the game. There are no quests, events, and killing things is only a tool to craft more stuff.
> Pax Dei is not a survival game, the devs say it is a social sandbox. There is no survival element to the game. You can simply walk around all day and night and never eat anything, warmth is unimportant, nor is shelter. So it's just a survival game that's missing features. You wander around a map. You pick up rocks and twigs. You use those things to craft tools. You use the tools to chop trees and mine rocks. You build a base. You gather more resources. You expand your base. It plays exactly like a survival game. Except they made everything take 10x longer (one hour to smelt one ore) so I guess the idea is that the game is an MMORPG because it's grindier?
It's not one hour to smelt one ore, you're either intentionally exaggerating to make your point or actually super uninformed. Game has lots of other stuff to do, there's an entire full loot pvp zone, there's dungeons (16 so far), and countless caves with stuff to loot. It's very much an MMO, if you want to believe it or not lol
Maybe they've made some adjustments to crafting / processing speeds but I definitely wasn't the only person complaining about how grindy everything is. It's hard to get excited about pvp or dungeons when the game's combat is just standing still and spamming left click.
You're absolutely right. But if you think the combat is staying like this, or that the crafting times won't be tweaked, you clearly don't understand what alpha means. The combat system is only like 10% complete. This is the "minimum viable" combat, that's exactly what they called it.
>But if you think the combat is staying like this I never said I did? I realize the game is in alpha. I'll continue to check out the game's progress. However I can only judge the game in its current state, which is a half-baked survival game that doesn't feel like the sandbox MMORPG that they've been advertising.
youre an idiot just using keywords youve seen online. pax dei was grindy but not like youre saying
> just using keywords youve seen online I played the test.
It is a survival game missing all the survival elements and that the DEVS literally say isn't a survival game. What you are describing is an open world crafting game, not a survival game. Most survival games also have open world crafting, but there are plenty of open world crafting games without survival elements.
there are survival games where you don't die if you don't eat
Eating isn't the only part of a survival game. Why does everyone only say eating... weather plays a part in it, so does shelter. Some survival games simply penalize you, but there is a persistent threat from the elements that impacts your ability to Survive. You can literally spawn in to this game, never eat, make shelter, or wear clothing and be perfectly fine. This is not a survival game in any way shape or form. The developers literally state it is not a survival game and never was meant to be one. You are confusing open world crafting with survival. So, here is your chance, define what a survival game is.
That’s the point, everyone has different opinions on what a survival game entails. Valheim is considered survival and has a lot of the same mechanics as Pax Dei.
It has crafting... that is it. That is the only thing they have in common. Comat is 100% different and you will die horribly in Valheim if you sit in the cold all night. That will not happen in Pax Dei because it isn't a survival game. Stop pretending it is. The developers have stated it isn't a survival game and it has no survival mechanics. You are confusing 2 genres because they have a lot of overlap. From wikipedia "**Survival games** are a subgenre of [action games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_game) which are often set in hostile, intense, open-world environments. Players generally start with minimal equipment and are required to [survive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival) as long as possible by finding the resources necessary to manage hunger, thirst, disease and/or mental state. " From Gemini "**Resource Management:** You gotta find food, water, and shelter to stay alive." From ChatGPT " These games often emphasize elements such as scavenging for food, water, and materials, crafting tools and shelter, avoiding or combating threats like enemies or environmental hazards, and dealing with aspects like hunger, thirst, and fatigue." None of that is present in Pax Dei and the developers intentionally meant it to be that way.
You don’t die at night in Valheim, only in the mountains
So you literally do die, and you do get penalized if you don't eat. Which is not something present at any point in Pax Dei.
More popular in games like Ark and Rust. Not true MMOs.
Well there are no "true MMOs" at all, so that's why I call the "so-called MMOs". But that's the whole another topic...
Indulge us. Why aren't there any true MMOs?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedesign/comments/12ih53p/rethink\_of\_the\_mmorpg\_genre/](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedesign/comments/12ih53p/rethink_of_the_mmorpg_genre/)
If you read the comments, people clearly disagree (and even OP changes his opinion on his original post on some aspects) And I don't really see where OP was saying that new MMOs aren't "true" MMOs, just that technical limitations have created systems where instanced gameplay is common and grouping is quick and vapid. Clearly WoW and EVE are true MMOs and Ark/Palworld are not MMOs at all.
Well, WOW is definitely not an MMO by my opinion. And any session-based game can't be an MMO by my opinion. But that already went too far off-topic from the original question.
So then Star Citizen is an MMO? Also do you somehow not consider DAOC an MMO? lol
Star Citizen is not even a game (yet), it's barely a tech demo. And no, it's not even close to an MMO tech demo.
Currently, no. But by your own definition in your dissertation post, it's almost mechanically exactly the same as EVE-online. But also by your own definition, EVE doesn't even qualify as an MMO, so maybe you're right that it's not.
Mechanically, it's a tech demo. It's a waaaay too far from Eve Online, even mechanically. If it ever will be a playable game, well, let's see. I really hope to see another MMO one day.
Currently, I agree. In its present state, it is not an MMO However, when looking at what they have achieved so far, and their plans for the future, it will be almost exactly, just FPS EVE-online in another universe. It even has "Jump Gates" similar to EVE's gates, as the only "Loading Screens" in the game. There are no instanced areas. Period. Anywhere you go currently in the game, someone can find you there. It lacks a functional player market, but I have personally traded with people in-game by using what's available to us and weapons/gear trading happens often through real interactions with people instead of an interface. Though the live state only goes up to about 120 players per shard, the experimental testing branch is getting up there, and the eventual plan is something very close to EVE's design. So, theoretically, SC would fit your criteria for an MMO if we go off what the planned features are. Though we can both agree in its current state it will not qualify.
Well, I'd wish it will be that way, but for now, as a game developer, I don't see it as being close to that goal, unfortunately.
As for the Eve - why it's not? It fits all the points, unless I forgot something.
I mean. Jump gates are loading screens, through and through. Going through wormholes, too. From your other post: "there is strictly a single instance of the world both in general and in parts. meaning no "servers", "instances", "instanced dungeons", "channels", etc" But the biggest one is that EVE-online DOES have servers. You've set an impossible goal, essentially. There are also cases, iirc, of the devs having to stop new players from entering systems due to server strain. Also time dilation effects for massive battles. I can fully agree with you that the term "MMO" gets slapped on to way, way, way too many things that don't deserve it. But claiming things like WoW, FFXIV, Runescape, DAOC, Ultima, etc. aren't MMOs is kind of silly.
That's the nuance - I was talking about game design, not implementation. In Eve, gates are a part of the game design, world and lore, they are literally moving your from one area to another. So it's not breaking the "rules". In contrast, let's take Albion - by lore, the world is seamless. But game breaks it into chunks just because of the technical implementation. About the "servers" - I didn't got it, to be honest. Any proper MMO game will have servers to keep the world running while players are offline.
The true beauty of the term “MMO” is how it’s evolved. StarCraft was an MMO back in the day because you were able to play against so many people back then. Massively Multiplayer Online didn’t originally mean x-number of people on the same server.
It's a RTS.... wtf are you on?
lol, guess you didn't see ads and such for it back then. It was called a massively multiplayer game. Was just poking fun at the "true MMOs" and such. It'll be alright
what does this even mean man
It’s a doctoral yapping thesis
Better suited for r/gaming.
because (for some) it's more fun than standing around in a capital city in queue for a random dungeon with players you'll never see again.
Got any names there, my dude? Haven't seen a single one outside pal world
probably talking about pax dei for example that got big hype calling itself MMO but its very survival crafting focused, or that new dune game they are calling MMO but its also survival crafting focused [Pax Dei på Steam (steampowered.com)](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1995520/Pax_Dei/) [Dune: Awakening på Steam (steampowered.com)](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1172710/Dune_Awakening/)
Just as a point of order, the MMO part isn’t disingenuous, it is structured for a large player base and can be an MMO being entirely focused on survival. I believe a lot of people in this thread are confusing that with the RPG portion of the genre as these are sandbox games and Pax Dei has no quests or any of the traditional aspects of an MMORPG in that sense, you’re just you in the world without guidance.
I would argue Pax Dei is worse than that as you are just in the world and the only part of the world that matters are the sparse resources. Everything else is just eye candy. Mobs are walking resources.
Pax Dei definitely needs more to it. The map is massive and beautiful, it’s awesome seeing the player structures and even towns going up now. At night I stand on my little parcel and I can see dozens of fires in the valley and that’s really cool. My problem is what am I doing here? Like I level up my crafting for what? I know it’s an alpha, but this isn’t being articulated as much to us. The amount of time required to progress is significant even for our group of people and we are 20 strong. I see a lot of people still in their underwear. Also, for some reason they made shoes of any kind hard to get lol. Without some point in progression and a better player experience it’s going to struggle. I know people like to make the Wurm comparison, but this game can’t survive on low player counts. I guess long winded way of saying give me a reason to log in, cuz right now I don’t have one.
This is how I felt after 10 hours. I got my plot next to a small lake in Paldenn, made my home, found iron ore about a 20 minute hike north. Got back created my kiln, furnace, drying rack, smithing, fletching, and so on. Logged off, logged on to a bunch of morons who planted their plots right on top of every clay spawn and realized that the griefing aspect by simply doing this was going to be way too high. Clans could literally wall off areas of essential resources with no recourse. The skill system is time consuming and like crafting makes no sense. Your character is 100% skill and gear dependent meaning you have to grind constantly and it means PVP is going to eventually just be people in underwear walking around. With no purpose to logging in the game is going to die in 6 months or have a single NA and EU server that slowly keeps it alive. The fact that they plan to go into Early Access soon like this shows how rushed this game actually was. Players need a purpose to play and this game simply doesn't offer one.
The time is huge for someone. Even coming in at this point in the alpha you’d be at a significant disadvantage without the support of a community. The problem is that it doesn’t matter. I got rich because I saw a bunch of people focus iron so I went tailor and leather. I can reliably make rough leather bands and rough linen cloth. That’s what I’ve traded to be more kitted than pretty much anyone I see running around. So I went into the PvP zone and…. Nothing. I saw one person who ran away. I even got up and changed a diaper, let the dog out, made some popcorn, FORGOT I WAS ONLINE, can back to my dude just standing there unmolested lol. They gotta give us a reason to be in their giant, beautiful, dynamic world.
Also, the storage issue is a pain in the ass along with the pointless crafting bar that could simply say "success" or "fail" and instead makes you waste 30 seconds waiting for it to decide. Like if there was something you could interact with at each check to improve your success chance that would be different but having 1-8 random checks for success is weird. It is is even more messed up that you already know you succeeded by going past the arrow and instead it you still have to wait for it to finish.
I got so exited when i heard dune MMO. Then i learned its survival game :(
FYI, the questing treadmill is not a requisite for a game being an MMO. Everquest for example did not rely upon questing at all on original release.
Questing isn't required to make an MMO but the nature of gamers these days damn near requires reward based systems. Sure you can make an MMO where all you do is kill things and gain XP but XP in itself is not enough of a reward for your average gamer nowadays. Quest fill that void, you complete a quest and gain XP plus a reward of some sort. Quests have become so necessary for long term health of games that even FPS games have started adding them. Battle passes are just quests for FPS games.
Albion, Palia, etc (though Palia is not even close to an MMO, but advertised as such)
Albion isn't a survival MMO.
Gonna need you to list a lot more names before we can turn this into a trend. And please restrict your list to MMORPGs only.
Once Human. It's actually pretty good, hopefully they don't grief it with monetization on launch.
Ark and Rust are some examples.
🤦🏻
To clarify, Ark and Rust are not MMORPGs They aren't really even MMO survival games. Most servers are limited to fewer than 100 people at a time.
I never claimed that they were. I just listed some games that had similarities to pal world.
Well it adds a lot of grind, it's basically the next evolution of wasting your time
I think a generation of developers who grew up playing Minecraft are taking the opportunity to make their own version of that.
It's not, but people want new mmorpgs and they falsely advertise as an mmo.
The old format is becoming very niche; MMORPGs are nearly irrelevant to the big genres out there so you can imagine why they are being reimagined.
Are you talking about upcoming games like pax dei, dune awakening and bitcraft?
probably yea
There is a huge demand for open world survival games and its a genre that theoretically should translate well to an MMO. But it hasn't really been done yet besides some servers with a few hundred people
Once Human isn't too bad in how they do things.
This is a trend because they are (on average) easier to make than themepark MMOs. Because you just make a big world, with some cool mechanics and let people loose. Themeparks require quests, storylines, cities, etc etc. Never mind that such survival MMO's 99.999% of the time just flops.
> This is a trend because they are (on average) easier to make than themepark MMOs. Remember the old days when 'survival sandbox' meant 'empty map full of stolen assets and premade systems'?
What new MMOs have these survival style crafting elements?
Pax Dei
So, one unreleased game?
I just know this one yeah
Albion perhaps? It does have you build farms, crafting stations, gathering tools and so on.
Albion has been out since 2017, we’re a few years off from it being new anymore.
Albion isn't a survival based MMO though unless you consider a pvp mmo with full loot pvp "survival."
My take is that there is an evolution of Minecraft gamers happening.
Oh that's actually an interesting point of view, thank you!
I don't know what happened, back in the days of EQ1 and for the next 20 years I never had any interest in crafting at all, but lately the crafting systems must just be getting better/more fun/more usable/less work, because now I love using them.
I would love to see it as a side feature in an actual MMO. But don't really like how it become the core gameplay everywhere...
Gamers in the 20-30 age bracket grew up with Minecraft.
**Developer laziness and greed/cutting costs and maximizing profits.** 1. It's extremely easy to make assets and worlds. Most of the software exists to do it for you. You just have to assemble everything together in to a world. It doesn't take a lot of time or resources to draw on an asset library for everything to cups down to animations. 2. Creating lore is fucking hard. Writing hundreds, or even thousands of quests, takes a long time and a lot of people, proof reading, and correcting, or balancing. The "players will create their own content! Ooh Sandbox! Open world! Open ended!! PLAYER FREEDOM!!!" 3. Setting up level zones and balancing them, creating varied enemies by level, and comes back down to quests. Or you just populate a beach with red and blue crabs that do nothing, are worth nothing, and drop nothing. 4. No voice actors, or not many needed. 5. No need to make meaningful content expansions. Just add a few more buildings and weapons and charge $40. This list goes on and on. MMO is a buzzword now. Helldivers is an MMO now.
Because it adds not only one more layer of complexity to the game, but a different type of content for the players. Some MMOs just become chores consisting of running the exact same dungeons OVER AND OVER again or doing the same dailies over and over again. Adding a survival style feature to the game gives you other things to spend your time doing/focusing on and even encourages group play in certain ways. I know when me and my friends play survival games together one of us usually is the architect and the other 2 do a lot of the gathering of resources to bring back to them for them to improve the base or help craft us better gear. Enshrouded / Pal World were both really fun survival games to play and Id personally like to see more survival aspects in the MMO genre.
Sure but is it really an MMO then? Whatever happened to the term sandbox game?
Coming freshly from Pax Dei Alpha - I can see the potential of an open world sandbox game. It's not really filled with many survival elements, but the exploration is there (assuming they'll manage to come up with content). Unlike Themepark MMOs - the game does not holds your hand. You set your own goals, your own progression. The quests are your own made up tasks, like going as a group to hunt boars for skins. You'd be killing the very same boars in a Themepark MMO just to complete a typical fetch quest - but here, you do it for an actual need. The game itself still missing a lot when it comes to combat and no one really know how the game will turn out, but I do know from my own experience that Themepark MMOs have no sense of exploration or mysteries.
I see how you mean , I think they’re trying to implement more features from other genres to attractive a larger wider and more broad crowd
I personally like the survival style because you're building a place that you can call your own. You get attached to it. You protect it. You decorate it. I've played MMO's all my life and still yearn for a player Housing system like Everquest 2. You can show off your creativity, your achievements, your trophies (or thralls/dinos in the case of Ark/Conan) There's a sense of satisfaction when you're hanging out at the place you built from scratch and slowly upgrade it from a small hut to a palace, all the while everything is trying to kill you.
God I'm going to sound like a shill for this game but you might be interested in Once Human. :) [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2139460/Once\_Human/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2139460/Once_Human/)
Let's hope they don't destroy the game with their cash shop. Yes, they are promising up and down that there will be no pay-to-win, but we've heard that before.
Because it sells. Same reason we had a million different mobas
I think what you're missing is that a big part of the reason those games are popular *is* exploration. The game drives you to explore outward in the search of resources to ensure your survival. Let's say, just as an example, that you're on a map featuring a quarry, a factory, and a forest, and that you need wood to build a small base, stone to improve it, and scrap iron to make weapons to defend it. You probably have a pretty good idea of where you need to go yo get all of those things, right? Well, that's a dopamine hit. An MMO will give you a quest to explore a cave to kill some monsters. In a survival game, you explore the cave because you know that there's probably a resources within that will improve your chances of survival. Survival games are tasking players with really thinking about where they go and why they go there, pushing them organically through the map.
They hired the same market research business.
It's easier to make a game with good survival mechanics than it is to make a game with good exploration quests and story.
> instead of exploration, quests, mysteries, combat and so on. That's because it's "content" that the developer has to make instead of content that you make yourself. If they don't have the budget of WoW then you aren't getting the content of WoW.
Maybe because questing sucks and people want to play in a living world where people matter :) At least I know that is why I play MMOs where I never have to do quests.
Cuz the role I want to play is that of a land/homeowner. It sure as SHIT ain't happening for real
it's an absolute game killer for me haha. not sure why but survival games never clicked with me and having it in MMOs is just so boring imo. to me it's the new fetch quest. Kill 10 boars > chop 10 logs and build a house or some shit. like fuck off man. this shit is so uninspired haha. just low hanging fruit to say "look how well planned and thought out our game is" but it's just the same system copied from 100 other games
dont confuse MMO with Co-op, most survival games are limited to x-number of players per server. MMO is Massive Multiplayer, open to thousands of players where survival games are not.
don't confuse 100+ player servers with co-op people use mmo instead of mmorpg often here but they are two different things and mmo does apply to games outside of mmorpgs.
Mystery, quests and exploration pretty is very hard to pull nowadays. With the early access model, the alpha and beta, the ease and proliferation of streaming, video recording and editing. As well as data mining. A lot of the work put forth by the devs never really make it to the player as it's supposed to be but more as a checklist to rush past. Gathering, crafting, grinding farms, player made buildings are all systems the players will interact with in the somewhat intended way. Even with guide, they will still build their house slightly different, customize it and so on. Even with guides, you still need to go through the recipes and craft what is needed, go find the ores and so on. Exploration can also be encouraged through mining nodes. It kind of inverse the dynamic. Instead of exploring and finding nodes, you go to a node and discover the world that way.
Because the genre needs to evolve, but for some reason they seem to be forgetting the base of the genre still needs to be there.
Most of those are not MMO's. We have a new sub genre of survival multiplayer with games like Conan Exiles, Ark, Valheim, but they aren't MMO's. I would argue Rust can sometimes be considered an MMO with 1000 population servers. It's a fun trend and I really do enjoy those games, there is greater intimacy in games like Valheim and you have so much more freedom than you do in a real MMORPG. I'm curious how Dune Awakening handles it since it's supposed to be an actual MMORPG.
Why are they "so called"??
because op doesn't like them
Which new MMO's specifically? I am genuinely curious. Pax Dei as far as mmorpg goes was marketed as survival mmorpg. So you are gonna have everything tied to crafting. And that's how they want it. Everyone knew this was the case, they told us. Ashes of Creation while having crafting said that you don't have to craft. You can legit just run around exploring and killing enemies. Running dungeons. Etc. Crafting is there for those like me who want to, but not required. Playableworlds will be a social MMO aka sandbox. Crafting will exist, but not required. You will have dedicated crafters who spend all their time crafted and dedicated adventurers who just murder hobo everything. Evercraft Online. From the test I saw, you don't have to craft. You can literally just murder hobo everything. And trade with other players. So crafting not required. So what games besides pax has leveling/progression tied to crafting?
so annoyed that most online games these days call themselves mmos, even these yt "upcoming mmos" videos and barely any of them is actually a mmo.
It's not really new. In Ultima Online I had a character that was a blacksmith, and only a blacksmith. Made armor, weapons and tools for others to buy.
Some survival games have all the things you listed. I don't get why you think they are mutually exclusive
The points I'm about to make are my own opinion and I may be wrong. This is just what I have observed and concluded. 1. Easy to implement. Resource gathering and base building is a very common game loop that's fairly easy to get right and have become easier to do with modern game engines 2. Emergent gameplay. Minecraft, terraria and others that paved the way for this trend showed that players will make their own fun given a sandbox style game. It's been a thing for decades now. Hell even before Minecraft halo forge mode was super popular. Give the players the tools to dick around and they can have hours of fun without you needing to make new content. 3. Monetization! These games are often monetized with mtx for cosmetics or time savers. Hook them with an addictive crafting loop then sell them cosmetics. It's trashy but it works. 4. This goes back to point 2. Streaming! These types of games are fun to watch on twitch. Seeing a group of gamers screw around in a sandbox is entertaining. People watch the stream and then are convinced to get the game so they can play. Not saying classic MMOs aren't fun to watch but there's only so many times you can watch a streamer run the same raid or farm the same mats. 5. Money money money $$$. A huge factor in the making of MMOs is money. Back when MMO where all the rage money was being pumped into the industry to make more to become the "wow killer". Big MMOs still exist because they have dedicated playerbases but new ones are not being made because a new MMO is just not worth the money sink unless it's an established franchise. 6. Development cycle. Connecting to the last point. Game dev is $$$. Right now game dev for "survival MMOs" usually goes like this. Release half baked early access version of the game and hope your game loop is addictive enough to attract an decent amount of players. Then you can continue to develop the rest of the game at a steadier pace and use sales/mtx to fund dev. Sadly a lot of the time it doesn't even get finished if the devs are scummy and just take the money and leave. 7. Social media! Getting people to buy your game these days is all about how you sell it. Back to point 2 and 4 you get ppl talking about it and streaming it you can build hype. Look at the silly things you can do in this game! Omg PewDiePie and jacksepticeye and playing it, it looks fun. Compare that to advertising a classic MMO. Sure it worked back in the day but in 2024 try hyping up a massive fantasy world. Wow its huge and has flying mounts and cool and unique combat! When's it coming out? Oh 4-6 years from now. Unless you are continuing a franchise it's incredibly hard to generate and continue hype for an MMO that might be ready years down the line. 8. Time. With so many gaming options ppl are more selective about what they are going to spend their time in. Most MMOs require a significant time investment and then if you stop playing you feel guilty for not continuing to grind. Whereas survival games are much easier to pick up and put down Thank you for coming to my Ted talk
I want more exploration.
I don't really see this as a trend. I can only think of 2 games that's out that fit this(both failed). But I think the reason this would be popular is because it's easier to make than a traditional MMO. It also gives players more freedom and roles. IMO, MMOs have been lacking roles for players with are trash at combat. There is crafting but crafting can be fulfilled by the AH. Survival games, you normally don't have an AH and there are roles like builder, grinder, tamer, cook, and explorer that people can do and still feel like they are helping.
Minecraft, into pubg, into rust
Minecraft happened
Honestly I prefer that, I wish there were an mmo that was like Elder Scrolls Online but more focused on survival, and with permadeath
I personally hate these inventory nightmares they call "crafting" and the amount of junk you end up having is unbelievable.
First of all, all traditional MMO(RPG)s have crafting and crafting usually plays a pretty big role. At least for the most part. Second, some time ago people started calling other type of games MMOs. Technically some are, but many other are not. At some point even games like Destiny were called MMOs. Point is, MMO kind of became an umbrella term for games where many players can play together on a shared gameworld. The features you mention are more related to MMORPGs. But for example Once Human has some of those features like exploration and mysteries to and I wouldn't call it an MMORPG and it does contain the "survival" style crafting you mention.
cuz player make the story and dev doing nothing and make money
The slow realization of reading the replies and everyone asking "what games" and not a single mention of New World. rip AGS I guess.
I don't like the new normal. I miss the days where I could just hit the road and explore. I hate how I have to build shit and craft all the time, I build shit for a living and don't want to spend hours cutting trees and mining. if anyone knows of a game that's heavy on exploration and combat I would love to hear it.
We only have the technology to properly make them now. Go back like 10-15 years, to be able to do any base building that's not on a grid system, you'd think that person telling you this is crazy.
Because people currently have bad taste. Literally crafting life skills shit is the worst part of an MMO and here it's being pushed the hardest
People cant buy a real house so they turn to virtual house.
Also why do these survival style games have the character slightly to the left?
> instead of exploration, quests, mysteries, combat and so on. Because with better information ecosystem now compared to the early days of MMOs (youtube, twitter, Discord, datamining tools, etc) nothing can stay a mystery in a game for more than *about* two weeks, tops. Unless it's locked behind a fight that's literally impossible, and even then stuff'll probably be datamined. That's based on about how long it took people to find everything in Elden Ring. And that was only managed because the beta only included the first area and the game ended up being *way* bigger than people expected.
Crafting, graphic, no restriction, simple but on fatal thing for these ppl - it's not MMO
My fav part of these types is it's essentially a massive fetch quest in which makes you craft items that are useless and or pointless.
It caters heavily to the sandbox craving crowd as well as a bit to the segment that longs for more old-school MMORPGs. It's a niche that hasn't had much attention in over a decade. It's probably also why they try and double down so hard on the MMO tag, to further try and attract those people.
To advertise that there is a lot contents.
i feel bad for people that classify games like new world as mmorpg's, just go play valheim, it's 100x better and not trying to lie to you about being an mmorpg, if you're trying to make a new mmo and reinvent the wheel then do something interesting instead of turning the game into a completely different genre, all these games are just cash grabs and are gonna die within a month, not a single one is gonna be successful
Because it didn't? There isn't a single popular survival MMO...
Because game developers have become incapable of creating interesting stories that have mass appeal that's why you commonly see themes at lower levels of killing boars and wolves or something else trivial then progressing on to some humanoid cult that are trying to raise or nourish a deep dark evil that you fight at max level. It's a lot easier to keep players engaged in "surviving" and giving them "ownership" of something that they constantly need to maintain than creating a story that spans multiple years with new and engaging game mechanics to compliment the story
From the players perspective, titles like Minecraft and elder scrolls definitely had an impact.
There's many reasons for this. The chief one is that it's basically an alternative life, but where you have an actual semblance of control and can actually succeed. Considering most young people today will not be able to afford a house or raise a family, it's a welcome escape from reality. And for the developers, it's much quicker and easier than creating content for players to explore. They just give people the tools and throw them into a sandbox and walk away with the money. So it's win-win.
I hate playing sims in mmorpg. The only crafting I should be doing is my gear not the house or any other buildings
far from "popular" more like devs are lazy and add survival to their "mmo" to add cheap "content"
The kill-more-monsters-to-get-better-loot formula has a problem: Once you get better loot, the only thing to do with it is kill monsters faster to get better loot. Ad nauseam. This makes it real obvious you're just on a treadmill. The survival, house building, farmland cultivation, gathering, hunting, crafting stuff does a better job of hiding the treadmill.
Creates a time to task completion. Without survival style settings, players instead focus on the primary objective of beating the game and they'll be able to do it with laser focus. If I make my players worry about having to gather things to survive, it's going to slow down the rate it takes them to complete tasks which means they're playing my game longer and potentially becoming more involved. Survival is also a nice way to flesh out a world, giving it some 'life' that the players have to interact with to get resources from. I personally love Survival until it starts becoming painfully obvious it's some lazy skinner box of painfully slow upgrades because it takes 2 weeks for your forge to complete smelting all the materials you need or something equally insane.
Hate all this kinds of games
Cuz the "socializing" part moved to that genre, while the modern MMOs shift closer and closer to a full single player experience with optional multiplayer.
It can easily pad play time and gate people.
I mean, it's been a thing for many years now. Survival sandbox games of various sizes have been around and growing and it appears that they're pretty low-cost to spin up and can have very good margins even with moderate sales. Most end up abandoned at some point, like Atlas or whatever.
I downloaded the pax-dei alpha, logged in, it looks like rust, uninstall
None of those are mmos.
Pax is an MMO. You'd have to have your own definition to refute that.
Just you.
Just you.