The Emerging 'Survival MMO' Genre

[Morreion]

Rust, H1Z1, and the emerging 'survival MMO' genre (Massively)

I'm naked and alone again, but that's OK. After having to level up in other games a million times, deal with boring tutorials, repeatedly turn in quests that add no value to my play time, and then watch as my guild slowly bleeds members to the next MMO asking us to repeat the whole ordeal, "naked and alone" is actually nice. Well, maybe just the naked part.

And that, my friends, is the horror-survival/post-apocalypse genre. I love MMOs, but recent themeparks and building games have left me wanting something a bit more dangerous but still not a pointless murderfest. For the most part, these games are less about levels and quests and more about finding items to make sure you don't die. Hunger meters, diseases, and limited supplies in a world filled with enemies who loot you certainly feels like a good throwback to classic RPGs mixed with the multiplayer I've been craving since Asheron's Call first hooked me on MMORPGs.

...Trust is a big deal in this genre. FFA PvP games often start off with your spawning and another player killing you with little to no reason or warning. Those who apologize and offer you gifts just want you to get closer so they don't waste shells shotgunning you in the face. Welcome to your new life! It's certainly hostile, and it's just so easy to switch servers and wreak havoc anonymously. I would hope that a game like H1Z1 will launch with fewer servers and large worlds rather than many servers with small worlds so that players have a chance to spread out, build something, and then risk losing something for their poor behavior. But though I'd love to believe that the behavior is better with a larger playerbase, in Rust, the players I've met seem far more interested in speed hacking up to me and stoning me to death than building community. Finding social groups even on recommended servers has proved impossible, even on weekends at prime time. In a genre that should be experimenting with social models, the high number of servers combined with low death penalty for new murderers sadly generates only a lesson in drudgery. Perhaps a bit more PvE -- stronger mobs, wandering hordes that will take up residence in player homes, or giant, town-smashing monsters -- would help. Perhaps if there were a third side that players feared more than each other, they'd have more reason to work together.

[Oatik]

Those who apologize and offer you gifts just want you to get closer so they don't waste shells shotgunning you in the face.

From what I've seen my son play it seems the basic goal is to take what other people have while going up the weapons tech tree as fast as you can to keep from having this happen to you.

Thanks for collecting all this stuff for me *shotgun to face* now I don't have to waste time doing this.

[Regolyth]

It seems that there are more of these "survival MMOs" out there than I thought. I need to try one out. I keep hearing Lath (or was it Dort?) talk about the DayZ mod and it sounds cool.

[Loendal]

People don't want The Walking Dead type scenario, where you have to cooperate to survive. They know that you can kill anyone at any time, so why bother? I've played DayZ (The mod, not the new standalone) and usually after sneaking around on my belly in the grass to avoid zombies just to maybe get lucky and find a gun I wind up suddenly dying from some direction I can't even see anyone. They have a sniper rifle, I have no defense, I'm dead. Now I'm back to crawling around on my belly trying to find a tin of beans so I don't die from starvation, a hour later, bang.. I'm dead again, probably from the same sniper who got me last time. If the Zombie Apocalypse ever becomes a reality (Think of all the psycotropic and cheistry altering drugs we have these days, someday, the right combination of these things..... It could happen! ) people are not going to waste time trying to live, they'll go out, rape, pillage, murder and steal... Not nescisarily out of any NEED to do so, but just because they can. No more laws, no more barriers.

Anyway, back on topic... There's no motivation to form communities in these games, from what I've glanced through. You don't have any real NEED for someone else. A fix might be that you give people randomized skills at character creation so that they can't do it all by themselves. People with, for example, medical skills, would be valuable and thus be protected and welcomed into any given community.

[Morreion]

May 20, 2014 17:52:13 GMT -5 Loendal said:

If the Zombie Apocalypse ever becomes a reality...people are not going to waste time trying to live, they'll go out, rape, pillage, murder and steal... Not nescisarily out of any NEED to do so, but just because they can. No more laws, no more barriers.

You have an essential grasp of human nature An understanding of human nature is very important for people, because their world view arises from this understanding. A flawed view of human nature is a very bad thing. One could discuss implications for politics, but I'll stop here

For you readers out there, an example of this point can be found in science fiction author Larry Niven's short story Cloak of Anarchy.

There's no motivation to form communities in these games, from what I've glanced through. You don't have any real NEED for someone else.

This is the crux of the matter. Hardcore FFA PvPers will say, 'become an anti-PKer. Join a guild and get some friends to track down players that kill you and return the favor until they stop.' This is a decent point, but, outside of UO, I can't remember seeing hardly any of this behavior...I'm sure it happens, but most people don't seem to be sufficiently motivated.

I like the permadeath risk, but it becomes a fragfest without meaning. Case in point- in Salem (which has permadeath), a group of naked players would roam around ganking anyone who they didn't like. It took no investment or effort to do this. There always seems to be a way around making consequences for a FFA PvP setting. I'd like to see a successful game that got the risks and rewards in line...but most of the time, these games eventually become ghost towns- remember Mordred and Andred?

[Regolyth]

May 20, 2014 17:52:13 GMT -5 Loendal said:

If the Zombie Apocalypse ever becomes a reality (Think of all the psycotropic and cheistry altering drugs we have these days, someday, the right combination of these things..... It could happen! ) people are not going to waste time trying to live, they'll go out, rape, pillage, murder and steal... Not nescisarily out of any NEED to do so, but just because they can. No more laws, no more barriers.

Sometimes I wonder that it might actually happen. Obviously it'll never be walking corpses that can't die, but a viral outbreak causing insanity, I think is certainly possible. The scenarios of movies like 28 Days Later and I Legend seem like fiction, but I think that with enough tinkering, it could happen. Of course, scenarios like Outbreak, The Road and The Book of Eli are more likely to be the case. Either some disease breaks out and kills a large portion of the population (think of the black plague wiping out 1/3 of Europe and Asia), or some natural disaster beyond our control takes people out (perhaps a solar flare or meteor).

Although the way I see it more likely to happen is like The Stand. Some government agency poking around with something they shouldn't and it gets out, killing a large majority of the people - minus a few who have some odd mutation in their body that allows them to survive. Just think of some of the recent news on how bacteria are becoming more immune to treatment due to us pumping our livestock chalk-full of antibodies. Once the meat/milk/whatever gets to us, the bacteria have fought back enough that they have built up large immunities to the antibiotics, that we can't fight against it. They're becoming super-viruses.

Of course, once society collapses, then begins the stealing, raping, pillaging, and murder you spoke of. Its sad to think that people would be that way. Hopefully there are enough people not that way to be able to fight them back. But I do imagine it to be very much like Road Warrior or The Walking Dead (minus the zombies).

[Morreion]

May 21, 2014 9:56:33 GMT -5 Regolyth said:

Sometimes I wonder that it might actually happen.

I think there's a chance for some kind of breakdown to happen. EMP or solar flare, widespread power outages, weather disasters, terrorist attack, perhaps the H5N1 bird flu mutating into a virulent disease and everybody locks themselves in their house. Heck, if the dollar stops being the world's reserve currency (this has been talked about by China etc.) and its value drops like a rock, we could have economic catastrophe with accompanying civil unrest. Sound farfetched? Similar things have happened in other countries, such as hyperinflation in Weimar Germany which led to Hitler taking power, the 1998–2002 Argentine great depression where half the people were impoverished and riots broke out, Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe which has lasted for 5 years and they've literally abandoned their currency and use other country's money- and so on.

Incidents like Hurricane Katrina are insightful to look at- cops confiscated guns but couldn't defend the citizenry, criminals boldly took what they wanted, groups of people here and there defended their neighborhoods, people who were unprepared waited for days before the government acted effectively.

I'm not paranoid about these things, but it's a good idea to have a disaster preparedness kit handy- stuff like a wind-up radio, a flashlight with extra batteries, candles and matches, extra food and water, extra cash on hand if ATMs are out, extra meds if you take any, even items that would be valuable for barter (stuff like gas, ammo, old silver coins), and a means to defend yourself if you so desire.

I think a good amount of people would act decently, but a good amount would not. Even decent people would become desperate if they couldn't feed their kids. Morbid to think about I know, but someone once said that civilization starts to disappear after three missed meals- something to think about.

One fiction book that comes to mind is The Jakarta Pandemic, where a deadly disease spreads over the world and how people would react.

[Regolyth]

May 21, 2014 14:48:52 GMT -5 Morreion said:

Heck, if the dollar stops being the world's reserve currency (this has been talked about by China etc.) and its value drops like a rock, we could have economic catastrophe with accompanying civil unrest.

Incidents like Hurricane Katrina are insightful to look at- cops confiscated guns but couldn't defend the citizenry, criminals boldly took what they wanted, groups of people here and there defended their neighborhoods, people who were unprepared waited for days before the government acted effectively.

That's kind of the one I'm worried about. I figure that if our economy collapses (most likely due to over printing of currency and artificial inflation - I still don't get how they justify what they do), the Katrina thing will happen. Only this time, with no relief. Not for a long time at least. And who knows, during that time, our enemies could invade and take parts of our land for their own. We certainly owe China enough.

Then again, I've also heard that if the dollar falls, it pretty much creates economical problems for the entire world. Since so much of the world's economy depends our buying and the dollar in general, it'll be bad for all. I think that's probably at least half true. I'm just wondering how the world will recover at that point. Will it eventually get back to how it was, or will someone new (China) rise to take our place?

May 21, 2014 14:48:52 GMT -5 Morreion said:

Even decent people would become desperate if they couldn't feed their kids. Morbid to think about I know, but someone once said that civilization starts to disappear after three missed meals- something to think about.

Yeah. I'd probably do just about anything I could to feed my family if it came to it. Now I wouldn't murder, rape or pillage, and I can honestly say that, but I might have to resort to stealing or at least being considerably more aggressive than I normally am.

I have heard that about the three meals before. People with creature comforts get so desperate so easily.

[Morreion]

I think the biggest problem with our way of life is that we are hyper-specialized. This works great for good times, but if a catastrophe occurs, most people cannot produce their own food or have access to electricity, gasoline, heat. Stores rely upon a stream of semi trucks to bring in the basics required for life. In other words, if things go bad, we're a very fragile society.

There's a guy who has a blog called Surviving in Argentina who writes about being prepared for catastrophes- he lived through the Argentina economic collapse in 2001 where their currency was devalued and people became desperate. He even wrote a book about it. Money became less and less valuable, street crime skyrocketed, riots happened...he has plenty of blog posts on how his family got through this mess.

And don't think, 'Well, that's Argentina- it can't happen here.' Argentina was the 8th wealthiest country in the world in 1900. Things change!

[Oatik]

Ain't logical. Cuttin' on his own face, rapin' and murdering - Hell, I'll kill a man in a fair fight... or if I think he's gonna start a fair fight, or if he bothers me, or if there's a woman, or if I'm gettin' paid - mostly only when I'm gettin' paid. But these Reavers... last ten years they show up like the bogeyman from stories. Eating people alive? Where's that get fun?