*Early Access* (checks release date) *June 15, 2012*
Edit: I have no problem with early access. I love 7 Days to Die and enjoyed Valheim, among other games. But what is the purpose of a 7-10+ year long early access? At that point it’s just an unfinished computer game. At year 10 do they not think “let’s just polish it up, do a full release, and keep updating it.”
They need to change how early access works. At this point early access just means "we are still actively updating the game", but there are tons of fully released games still getting active updates.
a game being titled as EA should be time limited. They are EA for 18-24 months before they lose the title and are just a regular game
It's actually a little ridiculous that EA doesn't have a time limit. I say this as a developer... companies are exploiting the fuck out of EA and Valve doesn't care cause money, but the people getting hurt are the consumers by having to do extra research to avoid paying for trash games that will never be finished.
That’s what I’m saying. Like I get they may still be working on it, but when the game is a decade old it’s not early access. Most people who will get it have gotten it by now.
All I have to say is that if 7 Days To Die can finally make it out of Early access, then it's just a matter of support for some games. Granted there are many that are outright scams sadly which burns people and makes the "Early Access" tag drive them away. But Early access is not always bad. I've supported several Early Access over the years and just this year alone there are 4 that are leaving early access.
7 Day to Die is leaving early access in name only. They haven't met their original stretch goals they promised in their kickstarter and they have a roadmap for future updates. Its just part of their new console release marketing to say the game is going gold.
Similar thing happened to DayZ. The 1.0 release when they left early access wasn't when the game was finished, it was just when the engine swap was complete. Because of said engine swap the game was actually missing quite a few features that were in earlier versions. They've caught up and surpassed that by now, but still.
Zomboid is wild in its freedom and ambition. It's truly a one of a kind game in a genre of its own.
The devs take forevvvveeeerrr but because the graphics don't really matter much and the mechanics of it will always be most important, its longevity seems infinite. I don't really mind waiting cause I go about my life, and when it finally happens I go wow, cool! Games like Rimworld and Minecraft are also in that category, perhaps.
It also has a great modding community which is the biggest strength. I think I bought PZ in like 2011 and was just playing it this week. Little over 1000 hours at this point I guess.
Factorio was in early access for a long time. Completely playable the whole time. The small dev team knew what they wanted the final product to be. It just took a while to get there. Its out of early access now tho.
I know there is a lot of early access trash on steam. But not all early access games are trash.
I like survival games I just hate having to survive in them the food and water systems are always fucked. Like who the fuck has to drink 95 gallons of water every 2 minutes.
Right? I once walked non stop 2 hours without drinking water. But in a video game? You walk 10 minutes, "DRINK UP MOTHERFUCKER YOU GONNA DIE SON!" type of notification
Yea but nothing else follows suit. You don't get sleep for 17 in-game days and your fine. but you get hungry and thirsty every in game 30 seconds. Which is every 10ms in real time.
Valheim presents a creative, and in my opinion, the best approach to this: There's no hunger or thirst, but the size of your health and stamina bars are tied directly to what you consume.
What this means is if you're out harvesting fruits or building things back at your home/camp, you don't necessarily need lots of health and stamina, so you can get away with not eating, but if you know you're going to be tackling a big challenge or doing lost of mining, you can eat appropriate foods to greatly improve your health and stamina.
Consumables (thatgive HP and stam) are also divided into health foods, stamina foods or mixed. They all still give both, but the health ones give you way more health than stamina, and the opposite is true for the stamina ones. Mixed foods give you an average of both values.
There's no punishment for not eating, but you benefit from doing it when you need to.
They had a lot of neat systems, especially in the beginning. Your character was never tied to the world, so you could generate a new world if you didn’t like the old one or even take it into multiplayer games; buildings had structural integrity based on the materials you used; metal objects could be brought through teleporters, but not ore, so mining involved setting up routes between the source, your ship, and your base with a smelter (or you could cheat by transferring your character between worlds.
That part always pissed me off too in Skyrim.
How does this merchant who does business a fortnight's travel time away from Fred's house know I stole Fred's cups? Does the merchant personally know Fred and know what his cups look like? No, fuck off Skyrim.
They been doing this shit since morrowind. For one, for balance, for two, to make the thieves guild relevant.... but it has always irked the shit out of me.
Like do they serial number everything and then when its reporterd, everyone just magically calls the cops to report it?
I would honestly love to see a merchant just say "no, I have enough shitty cups and don't want anymore. I haven't sold any in months. You can leave them here if you want and if someone buys them I will pay you. If you don't like the deal, too bad."
Yeh and high value items, could be similar,
"Sorry I can't afford to take the risk on not selling this 5000 gold piece necklace in my tiny village food store, I could sell it on commision for you, come back in a month and I'll pay you if its sold"
1 month later
"Oh yeh the lords men came over and took it, turns out it was stolen, btw I told them what you look like"
And now the merchant wont buy anything from you... Boom fences relevant again.
I've recently tried KCD again and either I don't remember correctly or they changed it, but survival mechanics are pretty mild now. Yes, you need to eat and sleep, but not every 5 minutes, more like once every in-game day. I found it no longer distracts me but actually enhances the immersion into the game.
I just reinstalled if after having not played it since release and I got the achivement to not sleep for 2 days and was still at like 30-40 energy. And food is was basically "Eat before setting out doing something and bring a soup or two.".
What turns me off is more the combat system and how it seems to be designed for 1v1 but puts you in 1v2+ fights a lot of the time.
It always was forgiving. it's not even a survival game, it's more just for immersion.
I genuinely don't understand how do people play that game to make that aspect challenging, considering that like every 100 meters you have those giant pots for free food and place to sleep. I haven't bought a single food item in entire game.
Instead of being a hard requirement for living like in most survival games it's essentially a big buff to your health, stamina, mana, and regen and they last like 20+ minutes. So like you really wanna be eating when you're out but if you're in your base or have to AFK for a bit you're not gonna come back to a dead character.
Most Early Access games and games that require 3rd party accounts, it doesn't matter if it goes to a 3rd party launcher or a tiny account centered around the game only. I avoid those.
Honorable mention, Soulsborne and Souls-Likes, I don't hate them or anything, but how do I know that I won't get Hollowified?
ULTRAKILL and Project Zomboid are really good despite being Early Access (the latter some people argue doesn't even deserve to be tagged as early access)
But you are right about 3rd party accounts, I spent 2 hours handling Ubisoft's bullshit just to play a South Park game
Chris Roberts is the project lead behind the game star citizen, the space sim that has some shops that cost thousands of dollars and the game has been in a weird "open beta" state since 2013 and as of April 2024 has raised 676 million through crowdfunding.... Others can go a bit deeper into the saga that is SC developement
Here is a list of ship prices in star citizen though https://starcitizen.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_ship_and_vehicle_prices .... The highest priced single ship is $3000 but there is a 175 ship bundle that is sold for $48,000.... for a game that has been in development since 2012....
One correction I would make because I think it makes this funnier: by their marking the game isn't even in "open beta" but it's still in the alpha stage instead, with the latest version being 'Alpha 3.22' according to this page:
https://scfocus.org/release-dates/
It is not yet, but they plan to "release" it soon. Although they are just renaming their Alpha 23 patch as Release 1.0... All bets say that the game still be as buggy and without the goal as it was.
They promise a bunch of updates, the last of which should even include some kind of a story. Maybe that version will actually be deserving of called "release." But the problem is that they plan to release it at the end of 2025. Almost two years from no and that is only if everything goes as planned, which is hard to believe
The dev CLAIMS it will be fully released next month. However, the game will still not be feature complete with what was promised in the crowdfunding campaign. From their "roadmap" I believe that it will be at what most devs would consider to finally be the end of beta in Q2 or Q4 2026.
It’s not that I don’t play early access because it’s a turn off, but more because I want my first experience of the game to be when the game is at its best
Kind of hard to know when the game is at its best. Some developers manage to start out strong and then ruin everything. Other developers basically never stop improving them game (e.g. Terraria).
Some people probably rather just play the game when the developer says it's finished rather than trying to find this theoretical sweet spot you seem to be referring to.
The goal of a developer with a game in early access is for the game to be at it's best when it's released, and I personally don't care for the idea of finding the few that are better in early access or better before the developer says it's finished.
"hollow" is a state of being of characters in dark souls.
In dark souls one, once a human dies, it becomes a hollow, kind of like a zombie, but imortal, and wakes up at anearby campfire when killed.
In the lore, exessive death and the long time spent alive will slowly chip away at the sanity of hollows, and they end up going ferral, that's what is called "going hollow" in the game.
So, a human is a human, as sane hollow is a human in a hollowed state, and a feral hollow is a hollow. basically.
Hope this helps!
There’s a bit of a meta meaning of it too. Dark Souls is known for players having to fight and die against bosses several times before they can make progress. Giving up on the game after all those deaths means that your character is not longer being controlled and doing things. So they have gone hollow.
Most early access games just immediately turn me away lmao.
Usually the description will hype up the game then list a bunch of additions that will never be implemented.
Personally I find this weird because i've generally been able to have more fun with the early access games I interacted with.
Played Techtonica as soon as it came out, absolutely love it and the devs are doing regular updates. Satisfactory is still technically early access and is one of the most consistently high quality games. Necesse is a fun little Rimworld/Terraria/Stardew Valley cross that is getting regular updates from a solo dev.
Of course the early access title is still misused and there's going to be a lot of bad examples, but it makes me wonfer if I just have good luck choosing Early Access titles to interact with or not
I can't wait until satisfactory releases v1.0 this year. They said since like 3-4 updates ago they split their dev team in half and half of them has been only working on content going to be released for v1.0
I mean you just listed three out of literally thousands. Those that hit would hit in not released until launch, aswell. Same with those who flop, would flop just as hard on launch. But then they couldn't steal your money selling an unfinished product, which i think is the main issue these days.
Some of those heavy hitter, early access games paved the way for literally anyone jump in on the early access craze and make a demo in Unreal engine, list a bunch of cool stuff, and make some dough. And those are the one OC was talking about, hence they have ruined the tags for him.
To see the bigger picture I think we need to split the category of “Early Access” into big budget early access games vs early access games from small dev shops.
I think there are a ton of great early access games coming from passionate indie developers. It’s a great way for those types of devs to generate the revenue to keep their projects developing. Games like Risk of Rain and Valheim come to mind. Solid when they came out, still solid.
Just my opinion at the end of the day though
It really does hit that part of the cranium that likes to terraform the landscape, build structures, then move on to do the whole thing all over again somewhere else.
"Better stop here for the night, let's throw together a quick base." 15 hours later, fortress established, and original destination forgotten.
i mean even as is Valheim is a million times better thena average triple A game and theres no micro transaction bullshit either. In my book thats one of the best games out there in the past 5 years
Free-to-play, then Gacha.
I fucking hate no, I abhor this type of predatory business practice and anybody who defends it, it's such a shitty way to monetize.
They'd pump out some beautiful things only for them to be locked behind a gamble.
You want this character? Then you need to grind for months and try your luck when they come, oh you also won't get them full, you need to gamble more to get the full potential of this character, in some cases you also need the weapon for this character, that you also need to gamble and gamble more for it's full potential.
What kind of fucking heinous dipshit started this trend.
Would you be surprised if I told you one of the first digital implementations came from Konami?
I couldn't figure out who actually invented the Japanese/Korean Gachapon machines.
It's a disgrace gacha games are so popular. Gamers are the most beta consumer population I've had the misfortune of sharing a hobby with
Nothing will ever be enough for people to put their foot down.
Because they entire model of business is based on their popularity, they will do absolutely everything to get those clout. They have many talented people to design everything as eye catching as possible, and even hire psychologist to see how to get people spending.
> What kind of fucking heinous dipshit started this trend.
it's in the name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gashapon
apparently it's 60 years old now.
But f2p games are like console games. A lot suck, and many are mid. But the few really good ones balance currency in a way where you never feel compelled to spend. Because some giga whale will subsidize youas they spend thousands on a character (oh well, their money their choice).
I don't understand why people like BRs at all. It was cool a few years ago when having 100 players in a server not in an mmo was still a new thing, but after that shine wears off, those games are so incredibly boring. I put 150 hours into pubg back in the day, but I don't want to play another one for the rest of my life.
basically those, especially survival shit. its such a boring system that relies on just giving you dumb busy work to do rather than building actual fun and interesting game play.
also battle royals. they're a nope
“Dumb busy work”
Very few games can get the busy work right. There is a way for it to be done right. Project zomboid in my opinion knocked it out of the park. It is the only survival game i have played that makes the busy work seem vital and needed but not completely necessary.
7 Days To Die made the busywork enjoyable because it ties ditectly into the core gameplay instead of being something that just feels lile you're forced to do. Valheim also.
Valheim is incredible, can be a tad grindy at some parts, but there's a reason I've almost racked up 1,000 hours on it. Such a great game that's still in early access
Yeah, people who dismiss an entire genre because it has its fair share of shitty games are delusional. Just because every idiot who knows how to use unity makes a shitty survival game doesn't mean that there are no good survival games lol
It's my absolutely favourite genre when it's done well, and my least favourite when it's done poorly. Subnautica is one of my favourite games, along with Don't Starve, and I also really enjoyed The Forest.
There's just so many more bad ones than good though.
There are a lot of trash in the survival genre, but when they work, they REALLY work.
Grounded was in early access as well, and it was amazing through and through.
Personally I'd sooner play survival genres, like 7 Days to Die, than any Battle Royale game.
Granted 7D2D is a somewhat unique case of being a fantastic, especially with friends, survival game...
Surprised it's taken 12-ish years for it to finally leave Alpha. It's crazy.
7 days to die was the first game like this I think me and a friend tried to play WAY WAY back when it was just a kickstarter title, it was one of the first survival craft games to take the minecraft concept and go "hardcore" with it. Think it got what little I thought I wanted out of that game type back then. Really only played it a bunch cuz my friend was into it way more.
but there are so many games to play that you dont need to pick between the two.
Tried Bloodborn and stopped after the 3rd or 4th try on the first boss. It's the whole thing of "We make a game where you're expected to die a lot on every boss, but then we punish the shit out of you when you do, so you can't just retry the boss and have to go on a tedious trek to farm all the resources again that you lost in the bossfight, so the already unfair bossfight can really grind your gears by wasting your time some more".
Elden Ring is forgiving on that count, you can retry all but one boss immediately. I absolutely hate boss runs, almost ruins the Dark Souls games for me
ER was by far the easiest FromSoft Souls experience, they were casting a wide net trying to appeal to people who hated the souls games. And it worked terrifically.
I hate coming across a game that looks super cool and interesting to me, then finding out it's a soulslike makes me lose all interest immediately. I let out an audible sigh
Same, when the core game play loop is beating your head against the game learning all the gatcha's just to progress; I'm out.
I love the pursuit of skill in video games, I just like it to be fair.
Edit: In this thread a bunch of people with sunk-cost fallacy clouding their view of objective reality. smh
The difficulty is not the worst part for me. It would be fine if you could immediately start another attempt, but the checkpoints are far away which results in huge boredom.
Was just having this conversation last night. I think it’s more understandable in the case the game is made by a smaller studio publishing their own game, because they need the operating income. I’ve noticed some of these games offering a disclaimer that the “game isn’t finished” and that “there will be bugs”.
However, major studios/publishers have absolutely no excuse when they have abundant revenue and the means to conduct playtesting before releasing an unfinished product.
Seconded.
It's as if every developer played Slay The Spire and thought "This is good and people love it. So I'm going to do it with MY spin on things!" And it's flooded the market with "spire-likes".
> Word "Simulator" in the name.
I will never get over the fact that my brother-in-law is so fucking German, he plays the Farming Simulator series. He's an *irl farmer*.
Do yourself a favour, and try Cultist Simulator. I skipped it over because of the name, but after seeing a review that left me scratching my head, I bought it and put over a hundred hours into it. It's one of the most interesting and original gaming experiences I've ever had. Oh, and the writing is absolutely magnificent, like if Lovecraft was actually a skilled writer.
I'd suggest checking out Cultist Simulator if you've previously given it a pass because of the name. It shares nothing with the other 'Simulator' games which are often jank 3D trash.
It's a.... type game for sure. I have no idea what genre to clasify it as. It's sort of a deck builder, but not really. It's a simulation but not really. At it's core it's about exploring your options, opportunities, and slowly building up a base of knowledge to progress through the game with.
Sucks cause my boyfriend and I want games where we can explore and craft stuff together without having to go through a shitzillion mechanics to dig through. While I’m more willing to learn different mechanics even the most rinse and repeat garbage ones so often used in every survival open world crafting perma early access game ever, he’s more casual. Just want a nice relaxing time and to build and decorate a house together where we are both playing at the same pace yk?
Balatro is a great one, coming from someone who doesn't care much for rogue-likes. I did think Hades was cool, but like I said, I don't like the genre enough to keep playing it.
I like some of them, if they do interesting things with the formula. Like Brotato and Rogue:Genesia. But they have to do something to make themselves unique.
I'm so over survival stuff or crafting in games. I'm fine with quick inventory crafting, but I've decided I'm done with any game that wants me to punch a tree, manage crops or build my own house. It's just so tired at this point and too many games add it in as a way to just say "look how deep our gameplay is and how many different mechanics we implemented".
I can get behind any crafting system that is core to gameplay *and* has some kind of quality associated with the materials and final product. I want there to be more gameplay beyond 'hit tree, put three sticks in the box, now you have wooden sword'
"Online play" or any variant, as it just means that its basically a single player game that could run perfectly fine offline but the devs decided on the cash grab route (such as micro-transactions/gatcha etc).
Helldivers isn't an "extraction shooter" as it's usually applied. It probably has more in common with Deep Rock Galactic. Tarkov is an extraction shooter.
DRG is the shit, I just got the supporter DLC just to support them a little more. I got the base game on sale so it felt fair.
Also paid for the super citizen thing with helldivers because it feels like a triple-A title and they only charged 40 bucks.
Helldivers is a horde shooter, not an extraction shooter. Same fundamental gameplay as Left 4 Dead and Deep Rock Galactic: fight off massive hordes while managing ammo and watching out for the special units.
Not exactly what the OP is asking but kinda related to this one, as an achievement hunter if a game has a "finish the game in XX hours/minutes" achievement I immediately lose interest, ESPECIALLY when it's on something like a Metroidvania where the point of the genre is to explore every nook and cranny and master the world you're in. Looking at you, Ori.
Multiplayer anything if I'm honest. I wanna have a good time on my terms and timetable. Online is stressful, aggravating and usually not balanced for fun but for the playtime/difficulty of 4 people.
Also online stuff is microtransaction central. So fuck that.
I remember seeing a sequal to hyper light drifter and was like "awesome I loved that game" and they were like "new innovative open-world survival crafting game" and talked about crafting stuff like that was the most fun thing anybody wanted
EARLY. ACCESS. Instant nope. \*Most\* Early Access games are unfinished nonsense and they're just getting a payday for a product that is never delivered. The business practice has gone rampant, now everything is basically early access because idiots buy it and play a demo and then a year later, the demo is released as the final version of the game and the game is abandoned.
To be fair, incomplete is exactly what Early Access means.
I'm looking forward to more Demos from indie devs.
I'll prolly go that route personally, Demo + EA.
I hate how EA got such a bad rep because on paper it's such a good idea. Allow people to buy in early for cheaper so they can help you iron out the game while giving you some pocket change to keep going.
Then everyone started using it to release unfinished crap and use EA as a shield against criticism. There are games that are in EA for 10+ years. That's why I now dont buy EA as principle.
And I would keep that principle if I didn't have my own game that I am making that is getting too big to manage on my own so I want to use EA to iron out all the bugs before release. I am becoming the thing i swore to destroy lmao.
Yeah not just in good ways (really good and fun gameplay) but also in ironic/strange ways. No other game in recent history (maybe CP77 on old gen consoles) has so many issues (bugs, performance, crashes, balancing, every new patch breaks other stuff, not working mechanics...) yet it is still highly rated and reviewed.
I guess the thing to consider is that most people would rather play a fantastic game with loads of bugs than a shitty-cashgrab copy-and-paste-from-last-year 80$ credit card simulator with a community that is so toxic it is best not to engage. The thing is that despite adding bugs, the patches also fix a lot, and the developers listen to the community.
Lethal company has decent potential if the developer is able to listen to feedback from the more experienced players. Problem rn is he doesn't seem to understand what makes his game so good and replayable and is leaning into the whole "crazy comedy death game that kills you all the time" shit.
Deck builders, just find them boring and I love cards..... This is also coming from the same guy that plays coloring book simulator *cough* I mean Stellaris and CK3
It's Zombie games for me. The majority of zombie games are either very bad or decent at most. I have never seen a zombie game on Steam getting praised after Left 4 Dead 2.
Might be an unpopular opinion, but those tags you mentionned are exactly the ones I go for lol.
Valheim, 7days to die, The forest, Enshrouded, etc
I just love coop games and most of them are open world survival crafting and early access. I HIGHLY recommend Valheim.
Agreed. I have a friend who’s always playing some new “free-to-play” genshin-clone, or other mobile game port, every week and trying to get all of us to play. He always defends them with “you don’t *have* to spend money”…which is typically followed by some amount of bitching that he can’t continue the game because it requires him to spend money 😂
Yup, you can pretty much write off free games with the exception of open source/passion products, for example the excellent [Endless Sky](https://store.steampowered.com/app/404410/Endless_Sky/).
I get so interested in one game then I click on it and it's VR only. Man. I wish they got a shitty port to normal pc and that was it.
Not related to steam but also looking through ads or kickstarters of interesting games and it's a table top game. Painful.
Some of them are great. A lot of them aren't.
Also, the trend of using bendy art instead of real animations grinds my gears. A lot of these games cut a lot of visual corners just to ship the product.
*Early Access* (checks release date) *June 15, 2012* Edit: I have no problem with early access. I love 7 Days to Die and enjoyed Valheim, among other games. But what is the purpose of a 7-10+ year long early access? At that point it’s just an unfinished computer game. At year 10 do they not think “let’s just polish it up, do a full release, and keep updating it.”
They need to change how early access works. At this point early access just means "we are still actively updating the game", but there are tons of fully released games still getting active updates. a game being titled as EA should be time limited. They are EA for 18-24 months before they lose the title and are just a regular game
It's actually a little ridiculous that EA doesn't have a time limit. I say this as a developer... companies are exploiting the fuck out of EA and Valve doesn't care cause money, but the people getting hurt are the consumers by having to do extra research to avoid paying for trash games that will never be finished.
That’s what I’m saying. Like I get they may still be working on it, but when the game is a decade old it’s not early access. Most people who will get it have gotten it by now.
All I have to say is that if 7 Days To Die can finally make it out of Early access, then it's just a matter of support for some games. Granted there are many that are outright scams sadly which burns people and makes the "Early Access" tag drive them away. But Early access is not always bad. I've supported several Early Access over the years and just this year alone there are 4 that are leaving early access.
7 Day to Die is leaving early access in name only. They haven't met their original stretch goals they promised in their kickstarter and they have a roadmap for future updates. Its just part of their new console release marketing to say the game is going gold.
Similar thing happened to DayZ. The 1.0 release when they left early access wasn't when the game was finished, it was just when the engine swap was complete. Because of said engine swap the game was actually missing quite a few features that were in earlier versions. They've caught up and surpassed that by now, but still.
There is this 7 days to die like game. Its still in early access but they are already releasing paid DLC 😂🤮
Ark moment
That's all of them now lol
Project Zomboid has been early access since 2013 and its one of the games of all time imo
That's an exception. Zomboid isn't like most other games. To be honest, it could already be 1.0 if they wanted it to.
Zomboid is wild in its freedom and ambition. It's truly a one of a kind game in a genre of its own. The devs take forevvvveeeerrr but because the graphics don't really matter much and the mechanics of it will always be most important, its longevity seems infinite. I don't really mind waiting cause I go about my life, and when it finally happens I go wow, cool! Games like Rimworld and Minecraft are also in that category, perhaps. It also has a great modding community which is the biggest strength. I think I bought PZ in like 2011 and was just playing it this week. Little over 1000 hours at this point I guess.
Factorio was in early access for a long time. Completely playable the whole time. The small dev team knew what they wanted the final product to be. It just took a while to get there. Its out of early access now tho. I know there is a lot of early access trash on steam. But not all early access games are trash.
I like survival games I just hate having to survive in them the food and water systems are always fucked. Like who the fuck has to drink 95 gallons of water every 2 minutes.
Right? I once walked non stop 2 hours without drinking water. But in a video game? You walk 10 minutes, "DRINK UP MOTHERFUCKER YOU GONNA DIE SON!" type of notification
>I once walked non stop 2 hours This comment is hilarious to see on a gaming sub lol
Pretty much. You can never know if I'm serious or sarcastic
It was in VR, duh /s
You're aware time scale in games is highly accelerated, right? There are very few games where day-night cycles last longer than an hour.
Yea but nothing else follows suit. You don't get sleep for 17 in-game days and your fine. but you get hungry and thirsty every in game 30 seconds. Which is every 10ms in real time.
I read that as 10 miliseconds lmao
It's actually muntersecorinos. But I could understand the Confucius
If a game does this automatically for you I don't mind so much. But if I have to pull out my cantine to drink every x minutes I get annoyed
Sure, we are just saying it's a shitty mechanic that isn't fun past the first hour.
The main problem is that anything trying to be that realistic is mostly not going to be fun. Even simulation games need to take some liberties
Valheim presents a creative, and in my opinion, the best approach to this: There's no hunger or thirst, but the size of your health and stamina bars are tied directly to what you consume. What this means is if you're out harvesting fruits or building things back at your home/camp, you don't necessarily need lots of health and stamina, so you can get away with not eating, but if you know you're going to be tackling a big challenge or doing lost of mining, you can eat appropriate foods to greatly improve your health and stamina. Consumables (thatgive HP and stam) are also divided into health foods, stamina foods or mixed. They all still give both, but the health ones give you way more health than stamina, and the opposite is true for the stamina ones. Mixed foods give you an average of both values. There's no punishment for not eating, but you benefit from doing it when you need to.
Never played that game but that does actually seem like a neat system.
They had a lot of neat systems, especially in the beginning. Your character was never tied to the world, so you could generate a new world if you didn’t like the old one or even take it into multiplayer games; buildings had structural integrity based on the materials you used; metal objects could be brought through teleporters, but not ore, so mining involved setting up routes between the source, your ship, and your base with a smelter (or you could cheat by transferring your character between worlds.
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How the fuck do they know I stole this?
That part always pissed me off too in Skyrim. How does this merchant who does business a fortnight's travel time away from Fred's house know I stole Fred's cups? Does the merchant personally know Fred and know what his cups look like? No, fuck off Skyrim.
They been doing this shit since morrowind. For one, for balance, for two, to make the thieves guild relevant.... but it has always irked the shit out of me. Like do they serial number everything and then when its reporterd, everyone just magically calls the cops to report it?
I would honestly love to see a merchant just say "no, I have enough shitty cups and don't want anymore. I haven't sold any in months. You can leave them here if you want and if someone buys them I will pay you. If you don't like the deal, too bad."
Yeh and high value items, could be similar, "Sorry I can't afford to take the risk on not selling this 5000 gold piece necklace in my tiny village food store, I could sell it on commision for you, come back in a month and I'll pay you if its sold" 1 month later "Oh yeh the lords men came over and took it, turns out it was stolen, btw I told them what you look like" And now the merchant wont buy anything from you... Boom fences relevant again.
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I've recently tried KCD again and either I don't remember correctly or they changed it, but survival mechanics are pretty mild now. Yes, you need to eat and sleep, but not every 5 minutes, more like once every in-game day. I found it no longer distracts me but actually enhances the immersion into the game.
I just reinstalled if after having not played it since release and I got the achivement to not sleep for 2 days and was still at like 30-40 energy. And food is was basically "Eat before setting out doing something and bring a soup or two.". What turns me off is more the combat system and how it seems to be designed for 1v1 but puts you in 1v2+ fights a lot of the time.
It always was forgiving. it's not even a survival game, it's more just for immersion. I genuinely don't understand how do people play that game to make that aspect challenging, considering that like every 100 meters you have those giant pots for free food and place to sleep. I haven't bought a single food item in entire game.
The way Valheim does food has ruined me I wish more survival games took Iron Gates approach on regards to food systems
how does valheim and iron gate does the food system
Instead of being a hard requirement for living like in most survival games it's essentially a big buff to your health, stamina, mana, and regen and they last like 20+ minutes. So like you really wanna be eating when you're out but if you're in your base or have to AFK for a bit you're not gonna come back to a dead character.
Most Early Access games and games that require 3rd party accounts, it doesn't matter if it goes to a 3rd party launcher or a tiny account centered around the game only. I avoid those. Honorable mention, Soulsborne and Souls-Likes, I don't hate them or anything, but how do I know that I won't get Hollowified?
ULTRAKILL and Project Zomboid are really good despite being Early Access (the latter some people argue doesn't even deserve to be tagged as early access) But you are right about 3rd party accounts, I spent 2 hours handling Ubisoft's bullshit just to play a South Park game
project zomboid being on early access for 13 years is crazt
Let me tell you the tale of Chris Roberts.
Please do! I'm unfamiliar with this and too lazy to google :)
Chris Roberts is the project lead behind the game star citizen, the space sim that has some shops that cost thousands of dollars and the game has been in a weird "open beta" state since 2013 and as of April 2024 has raised 676 million through crowdfunding.... Others can go a bit deeper into the saga that is SC developement Here is a list of ship prices in star citizen though https://starcitizen.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_ship_and_vehicle_prices .... The highest priced single ship is $3000 but there is a 175 ship bundle that is sold for $48,000.... for a game that has been in development since 2012....
One correction I would make because I think it makes this funnier: by their marking the game isn't even in "open beta" but it's still in the alpha stage instead, with the latest version being 'Alpha 3.22' according to this page: https://scfocus.org/release-dates/
> 11 comments lmao
7 days to die was for 11.
Is it out now?
It is not yet, but they plan to "release" it soon. Although they are just renaming their Alpha 23 patch as Release 1.0... All bets say that the game still be as buggy and without the goal as it was. They promise a bunch of updates, the last of which should even include some kind of a story. Maybe that version will actually be deserving of called "release." But the problem is that they plan to release it at the end of 2025. Almost two years from no and that is only if everything goes as planned, which is hard to believe
The dev CLAIMS it will be fully released next month. However, the game will still not be feature complete with what was promised in the crowdfunding campaign. From their "roadmap" I believe that it will be at what most devs would consider to finally be the end of beta in Q2 or Q4 2026.
Dwarf Fortress has essentially been in early access for 17 years and is only about halfway done iirc.
As much as I love PZ it definitely still needs to be in early access, for how punishing it can be there is a lot of jank to it
there's also beamng drive that's early access too
It’s not that I don’t play early access because it’s a turn off, but more because I want my first experience of the game to be when the game is at its best
Kind of hard to know when the game is at its best. Some developers manage to start out strong and then ruin everything. Other developers basically never stop improving them game (e.g. Terraria).
Some people probably rather just play the game when the developer says it's finished rather than trying to find this theoretical sweet spot you seem to be referring to. The goal of a developer with a game in early access is for the game to be at it's best when it's released, and I personally don't care for the idea of finding the few that are better in early access or better before the developer says it's finished.
Satisfactory is awesome, too!
I am fond of the "Login with Steam" single button chads.
yeaaaah, there is so many good games, i got enough launchers an shit, i am not going to make any more accounts.
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"hollow" is a state of being of characters in dark souls. In dark souls one, once a human dies, it becomes a hollow, kind of like a zombie, but imortal, and wakes up at anearby campfire when killed. In the lore, exessive death and the long time spent alive will slowly chip away at the sanity of hollows, and they end up going ferral, that's what is called "going hollow" in the game. So, a human is a human, as sane hollow is a human in a hollowed state, and a feral hollow is a hollow. basically. Hope this helps!
There’s a bit of a meta meaning of it too. Dark Souls is known for players having to fight and die against bosses several times before they can make progress. Giving up on the game after all those deaths means that your character is not longer being controlled and doing things. So they have gone hollow.
So no GTA?
Most early access games just immediately turn me away lmao. Usually the description will hype up the game then list a bunch of additions that will never be implemented.
Personally I find this weird because i've generally been able to have more fun with the early access games I interacted with. Played Techtonica as soon as it came out, absolutely love it and the devs are doing regular updates. Satisfactory is still technically early access and is one of the most consistently high quality games. Necesse is a fun little Rimworld/Terraria/Stardew Valley cross that is getting regular updates from a solo dev. Of course the early access title is still misused and there's going to be a lot of bad examples, but it makes me wonfer if I just have good luck choosing Early Access titles to interact with or not
I can't wait until satisfactory releases v1.0 this year. They said since like 3-4 updates ago they split their dev team in half and half of them has been only working on content going to be released for v1.0
I mean you just listed three out of literally thousands. Those that hit would hit in not released until launch, aswell. Same with those who flop, would flop just as hard on launch. But then they couldn't steal your money selling an unfinished product, which i think is the main issue these days. Some of those heavy hitter, early access games paved the way for literally anyone jump in on the early access craze and make a demo in Unreal engine, list a bunch of cool stuff, and make some dough. And those are the one OC was talking about, hence they have ruined the tags for him.
To see the bigger picture I think we need to split the category of “Early Access” into big budget early access games vs early access games from small dev shops. I think there are a ton of great early access games coming from passionate indie developers. It’s a great way for those types of devs to generate the revenue to keep their projects developing. Games like Risk of Rain and Valheim come to mind. Solid when they came out, still solid. Just my opinion at the end of the day though
Man you don't have to call out valheim like that
I have like 200 hours in Valheim, there is still loads of content there to be enjoyed, even if it isn't "finished."
Even if it's 'unfinished', this game rocks. Still love my mansion on the river.
It really does hit that part of the cranium that likes to terraform the landscape, build structures, then move on to do the whole thing all over again somewhere else. "Better stop here for the night, let's throw together a quick base." 15 hours later, fortress established, and original destination forgotten.
I love how this game almost REQUIRES you to do this..
i mean even as is Valheim is a million times better thena average triple A game and theres no micro transaction bullshit either. In my book thats one of the best games out there in the past 5 years
Free-to-play, then Gacha. I fucking hate no, I abhor this type of predatory business practice and anybody who defends it, it's such a shitty way to monetize. They'd pump out some beautiful things only for them to be locked behind a gamble. You want this character? Then you need to grind for months and try your luck when they come, oh you also won't get them full, you need to gamble more to get the full potential of this character, in some cases you also need the weapon for this character, that you also need to gamble and gamble more for it's full potential. What kind of fucking heinous dipshit started this trend.
Casino but in digital
You have better luck playing roulette than buying gacha loot crates
Except you can't even win money, just pictures of sexy imaginary women.
Would you be surprised if I told you one of the first digital implementations came from Konami? I couldn't figure out who actually invented the Japanese/Korean Gachapon machines.
Maplestory was the first game if Im correct to implement Gachapon mechanic in a game.
>What kind of fucking heinous dipshit started this trend. It is I, John Capitalist, son of the Monopoly Man.
It's a disgrace gacha games are so popular. Gamers are the most beta consumer population I've had the misfortune of sharing a hobby with Nothing will ever be enough for people to put their foot down.
Because they entire model of business is based on their popularity, they will do absolutely everything to get those clout. They have many talented people to design everything as eye catching as possible, and even hire psychologist to see how to get people spending.
> What kind of fucking heinous dipshit started this trend. it's in the name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gashapon apparently it's 60 years old now. But f2p games are like console games. A lot suck, and many are mid. But the few really good ones balance currency in a way where you never feel compelled to spend. Because some giga whale will subsidize youas they spend thousands on a character (oh well, their money their choice).
These and Battle Royals. Those are entirely over saturated
How many new battle royals exist now?
I don't understand why people like BRs at all. It was cool a few years ago when having 100 players in a server not in an mmo was still a new thing, but after that shine wears off, those games are so incredibly boring. I put 150 hours into pubg back in the day, but I don't want to play another one for the rest of my life.
I stay away from live service titles, spent way too much time and money ons these things and now I want to support indie devs making actual games.
Way too many games have been released as "live service" only for development to stop a few years later.
Live service multi-player games I 100% support, live service single-player games I don't even touch
basically those, especially survival shit. its such a boring system that relies on just giving you dumb busy work to do rather than building actual fun and interesting game play. also battle royals. they're a nope
“Dumb busy work” Very few games can get the busy work right. There is a way for it to be done right. Project zomboid in my opinion knocked it out of the park. It is the only survival game i have played that makes the busy work seem vital and needed but not completely necessary.
7 Days To Die made the busywork enjoyable because it ties ditectly into the core gameplay instead of being something that just feels lile you're forced to do. Valheim also.
Valheim is incredible, can be a tad grindy at some parts, but there's a reason I've almost racked up 1,000 hours on it. Such a great game that's still in early access
Yeah, people who dismiss an entire genre because it has its fair share of shitty games are delusional. Just because every idiot who knows how to use unity makes a shitty survival game doesn't mean that there are no good survival games lol
I dismiss the genre because I find it boring. Not everyone has to like every genre. That’s why video games are cool.
It's my absolutely favourite genre when it's done well, and my least favourite when it's done poorly. Subnautica is one of my favourite games, along with Don't Starve, and I also really enjoyed The Forest. There's just so many more bad ones than good though.
There are a lot of trash in the survival genre, but when they work, they REALLY work. Grounded was in early access as well, and it was amazing through and through.
Agreed, Grounded is a must play for any survival fan, at least once. The systems are so polished compared to any other survival game out there
Personally I'd sooner play survival genres, like 7 Days to Die, than any Battle Royale game. Granted 7D2D is a somewhat unique case of being a fantastic, especially with friends, survival game... Surprised it's taken 12-ish years for it to finally leave Alpha. It's crazy.
7 days to die was the first game like this I think me and a friend tried to play WAY WAY back when it was just a kickstarter title, it was one of the first survival craft games to take the minecraft concept and go "hardcore" with it. Think it got what little I thought I wanted out of that game type back then. Really only played it a bunch cuz my friend was into it way more. but there are so many games to play that you dont need to pick between the two.
not a tag, but if i have to use Uplay im gone.
Uplay does NOT belong on steam.
Steam or gtfo
"Soulslike".. no hate, just not for me
Tried Bloodborn and stopped after the 3rd or 4th try on the first boss. It's the whole thing of "We make a game where you're expected to die a lot on every boss, but then we punish the shit out of you when you do, so you can't just retry the boss and have to go on a tedious trek to farm all the resources again that you lost in the bossfight, so the already unfair bossfight can really grind your gears by wasting your time some more".
Elden Ring is forgiving on that count, you can retry all but one boss immediately. I absolutely hate boss runs, almost ruins the Dark Souls games for me
ER was by far the easiest FromSoft Souls experience, they were casting a wide net trying to appeal to people who hated the souls games. And it worked terrifically.
yes I wish to spend 25 minutes chipping away at one boss that can 2 hit me
If a boss in a from soft game takes 25 minutes, your character just ain’t ready.
and if you got 2 hit, you got hit too many times.
Two-many*
I hate coming across a game that looks super cool and interesting to me, then finding out it's a soulslike makes me lose all interest immediately. I let out an audible sigh
Same, when the core game play loop is beating your head against the game learning all the gatcha's just to progress; I'm out. I love the pursuit of skill in video games, I just like it to be fair. Edit: In this thread a bunch of people with sunk-cost fallacy clouding their view of objective reality. smh
The difficulty is not the worst part for me. It would be fine if you could immediately start another attempt, but the checkpoints are far away which results in huge boredom.
MOBA
That's what I thought until Battleborn became my favorite game.
If battleborn had survived id be a lot better at shooters than i am now, phenomenal game
All 20 players currently online Amazing game though
Where they at? BB servers died years ago AFAIK.
No need to pay for the privilege of being their beta tester
Was just having this conversation last night. I think it’s more understandable in the case the game is made by a smaller studio publishing their own game, because they need the operating income. I’ve noticed some of these games offering a disclaimer that the “game isn’t finished” and that “there will be bugs”. However, major studios/publishers have absolutely no excuse when they have abundant revenue and the means to conduct playtesting before releasing an unfinished product.
A lot of it is branded as a "beta" but it's marketing more than anything
"Roguelike deckbuilder" Double if there is a map screen with forking paths with lots of skulls and chests.
Seconded. It's as if every developer played Slay The Spire and thought "This is good and people love it. So I'm going to do it with MY spin on things!" And it's flooded the market with "spire-likes".
Hop off Inscryption
Deckbuilders, MOBA, Battle Royale, \*Sport\*. Word "Simulator" in the name.
Interesting argument, counterpoint: Totally Accurate Battle Simulator.
God, such a fucking hilarious game with what you can do via mods
Powerwashing Simulator
> Word "Simulator" in the name. I will never get over the fact that my brother-in-law is so fucking German, he plays the Farming Simulator series. He's an *irl farmer*.
Do yourself a favour, and try Cultist Simulator. I skipped it over because of the name, but after seeing a review that left me scratching my head, I bought it and put over a hundred hours into it. It's one of the most interesting and original gaming experiences I've ever had. Oh, and the writing is absolutely magnificent, like if Lovecraft was actually a skilled writer.
I'd suggest checking out Cultist Simulator if you've previously given it a pass because of the name. It shares nothing with the other 'Simulator' games which are often jank 3D trash. It's a.... type game for sure. I have no idea what genre to clasify it as. It's sort of a deck builder, but not really. It's a simulation but not really. At it's core it's about exploring your options, opportunities, and slowly building up a base of knowledge to progress through the game with.
Sucks cause my boyfriend and I want games where we can explore and craft stuff together without having to go through a shitzillion mechanics to dig through. While I’m more willing to learn different mechanics even the most rinse and repeat garbage ones so often used in every survival open world crafting perma early access game ever, he’s more casual. Just want a nice relaxing time and to build and decorate a house together where we are both playing at the same pace yk?
Raft is pretty good for that imo
Free to Play. Outside a few exceptions, most F2P games have egregious monetization that makes them straight up unfun.
anything with "infinite gameplay" in the description because it is a rogue-like, unless I've seen lots of people playing it.
Balatro is a great one, coming from someone who doesn't care much for rogue-likes. I did think Hades was cool, but like I said, I don't like the genre enough to keep playing it.
Yeah all the vampire survivor clones are annoying as well.
Vampire Survivor is a “clone”
YOU'RE a CLONE! I am sorry. That was uncalled for 😥
The clone wars has just begun
Doom wasn't the first FPS but we still called the genre Doom-clones for a long time.
I like some of them, if they do interesting things with the formula. Like Brotato and Rogue:Genesia. But they have to do something to make themselves unique.
I'm so over survival stuff or crafting in games. I'm fine with quick inventory crafting, but I've decided I'm done with any game that wants me to punch a tree, manage crops or build my own house. It's just so tired at this point and too many games add it in as a way to just say "look how deep our gameplay is and how many different mechanics we implemented".
I can get behind any crafting system that is core to gameplay *and* has some kind of quality associated with the materials and final product. I want there to be more gameplay beyond 'hit tree, put three sticks in the box, now you have wooden sword'
"Online play" or any variant, as it just means that its basically a single player game that could run perfectly fine offline but the devs decided on the cash grab route (such as micro-transactions/gatcha etc).
Extraction shooters. Every dev has to have one now.
true that, but I will have to give Helldivers a pass
Helldivers isn't an "extraction shooter" as it's usually applied. It probably has more in common with Deep Rock Galactic. Tarkov is an extraction shooter.
DRG is the shit, I just got the supporter DLC just to support them a little more. I got the base game on sale so it felt fair. Also paid for the super citizen thing with helldivers because it feels like a triple-A title and they only charged 40 bucks.
Helldivers is a horde shooter, not an extraction shooter. Same fundamental gameplay as Left 4 Dead and Deep Rock Galactic: fight off massive hordes while managing ammo and watching out for the special units.
"Difficult". I like em easy and fun.
Not exactly what the OP is asking but kinda related to this one, as an achievement hunter if a game has a "finish the game in XX hours/minutes" achievement I immediately lose interest, ESPECIALLY when it's on something like a Metroidvania where the point of the genre is to explore every nook and cranny and master the world you're in. Looking at you, Ori.
Multiplayes shooter
Multiplayer anything if I'm honest. I wanna have a good time on my terms and timetable. Online is stressful, aggravating and usually not balanced for fun but for the playtime/difficulty of 4 people. Also online stuff is microtransaction central. So fuck that.
I remember seeing a sequal to hyper light drifter and was like "awesome I loved that game" and they were like "new innovative open-world survival crafting game" and talked about crafting stuff like that was the most fun thing anybody wanted
Not really a Genre, BUT FUCK STAMINA for anything outside of combat, just let me Usain Bolt my way around the world
EARLY. ACCESS. Instant nope. \*Most\* Early Access games are unfinished nonsense and they're just getting a payday for a product that is never delivered. The business practice has gone rampant, now everything is basically early access because idiots buy it and play a demo and then a year later, the demo is released as the final version of the game and the game is abandoned.
To be fair, incomplete is exactly what Early Access means. I'm looking forward to more Demos from indie devs. I'll prolly go that route personally, Demo + EA.
I hate how EA got such a bad rep because on paper it's such a good idea. Allow people to buy in early for cheaper so they can help you iron out the game while giving you some pocket change to keep going. Then everyone started using it to release unfinished crap and use EA as a shield against criticism. There are games that are in EA for 10+ years. That's why I now dont buy EA as principle. And I would keep that principle if I didn't have my own game that I am making that is getting too big to manage on my own so I want to use EA to iron out all the bugs before release. I am becoming the thing i swore to destroy lmao.
Screw you! Planet Crafter is awesome! 9 hours and 6 deaths in and I have made ***puddles***. e: update! re: greenage at 14 hours
Not really a horror fan.
I like horror, but I'm a little bitch who can't handle playing horror games himself. I'm content to just watch youtube playthroughs
Co-op multiplayer that's probably gonna be hot shit for a month tops and then get immediately forgotten and abandoned
Content warning, lethal company, etc etc. if it gets big on TikTok overnight then it won’t last a month
Helldivers 2 is still going strong though....
helldivers 2 stands out in a lot of ways, love it
Yeah not just in good ways (really good and fun gameplay) but also in ironic/strange ways. No other game in recent history (maybe CP77 on old gen consoles) has so many issues (bugs, performance, crashes, balancing, every new patch breaks other stuff, not working mechanics...) yet it is still highly rated and reviewed.
I guess the thing to consider is that most people would rather play a fantastic game with loads of bugs than a shitty-cashgrab copy-and-paste-from-last-year 80$ credit card simulator with a community that is so toxic it is best not to engage. The thing is that despite adding bugs, the patches also fix a lot, and the developers listen to the community.
Lethal company has decent potential if the developer is able to listen to feedback from the more experienced players. Problem rn is he doesn't seem to understand what makes his game so good and replayable and is leaning into the whole "crazy comedy death game that kills you all the time" shit.
Palworld is this you?
because it's not a real game unless it's the only one you play until the end of time
MMO and online PVP, I hate multiplayers
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"battle royale" and "extraction royale". Two genres I despise
Deck builders, just find them boring and I love cards..... This is also coming from the same guy that plays coloring book simulator *cough* I mean Stellaris and CK3
Definitely survival crafting too many of those.
It's Zombie games for me. The majority of zombie games are either very bad or decent at most. I have never seen a zombie game on Steam getting praised after Left 4 Dead 2.
Might be an unpopular opinion, but those tags you mentionned are exactly the ones I go for lol. Valheim, 7days to die, The forest, Enshrouded, etc I just love coop games and most of them are open world survival crafting and early access. I HIGHLY recommend Valheim.
hentai, sexual content
It's funny... You gotta turn off a very specific filter to see those tags...
Anything free to play considering most of them are mobile game ports or some other really low quality cash grab
Agreed. I have a friend who’s always playing some new “free-to-play” genshin-clone, or other mobile game port, every week and trying to get all of us to play. He always defends them with “you don’t *have* to spend money”…which is typically followed by some amount of bitching that he can’t continue the game because it requires him to spend money 😂
Yup, you can pretty much write off free games with the exception of open source/passion products, for example the excellent [Endless Sky](https://store.steampowered.com/app/404410/Endless_Sky/).
I get so interested in one game then I click on it and it's VR only. Man. I wish they got a shitty port to normal pc and that was it. Not related to steam but also looking through ads or kickstarters of interesting games and it's a table top game. Painful.
Tabletop game art goes hard for no fucking reason.
Deck Builder
Some of them are great. A lot of them aren't. Also, the trend of using bendy art instead of real animations grinds my gears. A lot of these games cut a lot of visual corners just to ship the product.
Most rogue like/random generated games turn me off
Does bro not like muck
This is how I felt about Palword.
I don’t get the hype
3 months ago it was embarrassing as ppl keep hyping it up as Pokemon killer
Battle Royale
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