Yeah, you're prone to having one of the biggest drops when you've got one of the biggest peaks. What a garbage article.
Palworld’s next update and early access roadmap are already on the cards, so it’s now up to Pocketpair to keep supporting the game and listening to players to keep them hooked.
NO IT'S NOT. The only thing it's on them to do is to finish it. They sell the game for $30, and this is not a live service game. They don't need to keep anyone hooked.
I mean, as it stands now, there’s no gameplay other than “build up base”, “collect all monsters” and “level up”. End game is non-existent. It needs something more or it absolutely will die. There’s been a million open world survival games that have come and gone for the same reason. This very well could just be a flash in the pan, largely held up by hype more than anything.
You are right, but is it any different for games like Ark, Conan, VRising, Rust or any other sandbox builder focused on multiplayer? It's always just a farm-build-collect-repeat cycle. It's why I get bored of them easily at least, the only games in that genre that can usually keep my attention are Factorio and Valheim.
I can't think of a game that I've played and enjoyed that had an "end game" except rolling credits, and that's totally fine. Flashes in the pan are totally fine. The game can't "die" as long as a single person wants to play it, because it's playable regardless of the presence of the company's servers.
I can definitely think of quite a few non-live-service games with an "end game" that I've enjoyed:
(Older) Pokémon games with their battle towers, where putting together a flexible team with as few weaknesses as possible is the aim.
Loot games like Borderlands, Grim Dawn and Last Epoch where I want to make new builds and test their limits against harder and harder challenges.
Factorio, where I want to optimise my factory. Although there's absolutely an argument to be made that that is the game, but I think it becomes more about player-set goals once you've launched the rocket.
All of them are either offline or have offline modes available. All of them have potentially infinite "content" if you're the sort of person who like optimising, or just being able to set yourself new targets. They're all enjoyable to play for their "campaigns" alone, but they also have very strong sandboxes that players can continue to engage with even after the game stops giving them objectives.
I don't necessarily disagree with your overall sentiment, though. I think MMO-style "end games" where you login for your daily, time-gated quests and do the same thing you always do with no variation or sense of progression (be it narrative, emotional, build-related or some other kind of progression) isn't necessarily healthy. And I dislike the way "end games" have tended to move away from being optional post-game content for people who aren't ready to finish playing yet and instead are often viewed as the main game that you have to get through the sorry excuse for a campaign/story to access.
Factorio is definitely the one I had in mind, especially since it's the game I've played most similar to Palworld, and that game is over for me once I've launched the rocket. I did do that twice though, with two very different factory designs. If I'm not compelled to play Palworld two different ways, I'll still have gotten my money's worth.
that game is over for me once I've launched the rocket
Ahh, well that definitely isn't the case for me! I usually keep playing long after I've launched the first rocket. For me, launching the rocket is a somewhat arbitrary "ending"; it's a good objective for people to focus on - especially new players - but I don't think anything really changes before or after the rocket launch in terms of gameplay loop (and there's no narrative to change). Just like before the rocket launch, there are still things to optimise, new ways to build, etc, (some of which are supported by the science you get from launching rockets, in fact).
I suppose it partially comes down to whether you're an objective-driven player or someone who enjoys the process. For me, it's all about the process/journey, and the objectives are more of a guide than anything. If the objectives are complete and I'm still enjoying the process, and there's still room for me to enjoy the process, then I'll keep playing.
OMG, stfu. No one is talking about “you’re still alive as long as someone remembers your name” type bullshit. We mean an active and engaged player base. That’s what a games “death” refers to. You are being incredibly obtuse.
Who cares if there's a huge player base a year from now? Really? This isn't "you're still alive as long as someone remembers your name", this is the game literally still exists and can be played. To play multiplayer, ping your friend on Discord and host it yourself, even if that's thirty years from now, but good luck doing that with The Finals or something. That game really will be dead in 30 years (maybe even 1 year). If Palworld's population is in single digits a year from now, they're still filthy rich, and people who bought the game still have access to it whenever they want. Nothing about the game is worse off for the population not being in the millions anymore.
why does an “active and engaged player base” matter at all? you can host a personal/local dedicated server, so no worries about them shutting the servers off. the game has no larger community interactions beyond what happens on a server. there’s not even pvp that would suffer from a diminished player base.
do you, like, only play games that other people think are cool?
The older, significantly more polished Pokémon games come to mind. Every decent platformer of the last 2 decades had one as well, in one way or another. They’re honestly a common feature.
not to speak for anyone what they ment but I took hooked the saw way I see satisfactory. keeping engment high by taking in feedback to make a really good end product. not use exploitive tricks to get people addicted to something that is not fun.
It's hard for me to take it that way when the author is citing player count numbers in the headline as though that matters at all in a game with finite content and a low cost of entry. Even you using the word "engagement" in what's meant to be an innocent way just has me thinking about how live service games have poisoned the way people speak and think about video games.
There is nothing in the article about the game being dead, in fact it says it explicitly assumes that it will have respectable numbers once the dust settles.
It’s like you made up a reason why the article is wrong about something that it didnt even claim.
It’s hard to believe you didn’t write this comment as some sort of shitty troll attempt. You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about. Among us peaked years after It’s release and stayed super popular for a long time.
The beginning is fun and really just sucks the life out of you as your are flooded with new mechanics and npcs.
Then the game very quickly shows itself for what it is, an open world game.
It's a glorious grindy repetitive complicated open world game that doesn't hold your hand.
I knew I was in love the moment I started compiling my pal attribute database. 90% of gamers dont like that kind of stuff. They just want to be lead from A to Z.
I mean I don’t see what mechanics you could possibly be overwhelmed by. I’m enjoying it but I think it’s biggest flaw is that it’s TOO simple
If you feel underwater with 10 mechanics total, there’s not many games you can play. The building is basic, the crafting is extremely straight forward, and fighting consists of run, shoot, and roll.
Said sucked the life out of me. Had me engrossed. My first sit down was 4 hours that felt like 5 minutes.
Edit: Cheeky, but I gotta sat it... people who are taking "sucked the life out of me" as a negative statement have never enjoyed a blowjob. At least not a good one.
Maybe pick something else to say in the future so people won’t be confused? Usually “sucked the life out of me” is used for when people feel negatively exhausted after something.
I played literally all night when I first started, I didn’t want to stop even when I noticed the sun was up.
I think it’s fun, actually. If the game never updates again I’ll be disappointed that it never became what it could have been but I won’t regret buying it or spending time playing with my friends.
Personally I kinda hope it turns even more into Ark. Maybe we could get other big maps in future updates that could act as different “regions” like in Pokemon. It already kinda works like that in the game, but they could introduce new pals that you can only find in certain spots on the new map.
And of course the rest of the story with the crazy world tree and ancient civilization.
That one is a special case. Yes, it got completely annihilated in numbers by even the goose goose duck clone, but, the thing is, the majority of its userbase just started playing on Mobile (where the game is free) well before the game left its popularity peak. So, the steam numbers are hardly representative of its playerbase, and the app’s download count shows it.
PUBG did not have a similar story at the time of its release, but does right now. It’s one of the most played games in the world… On chinese phones, so, uh, kind of invisible depending where we’re looking for. To put it into perspective: PUBG straight up dethroned the biggest, most profitable shooter in the world Crossfire, by splitting the population, and the takeaway there most people would have is “What the hell is a Crossfire???”.
It's still hard to believe it's been 3 full years since it released and we only got one new biome since then (and yeah I know it had other smaller updates but considering its success and potential I was hoping for much much more from them).
Mistlands update was the only big one, maybe hearth and home can be called big due to the new foods and combat changes but honestly, it's a regular monthly patch in any other early access game. I've seen more additions for Against the Storm in a span of few patches than I did in Valheim in all 3 years combined.
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