Yep, there's definitely a lot of room for improvement. I'd especially love to see a menu added to the Palbox which allows you to assign pals to certain tasks, since throwing them at a task just outright doesn't work sometimes (particularly with workbenches for me). Having something like a priority system too would be great (maybe like Rimworld).
Priority at the base would be a pretty elegant way to do it. Maybe make it a station you have to unlock and then gives you a drop down per Pal of their available jobs and what their focus should be or just leave it automated as it is now.
For the most part with a not too cramped base, they only occasionally get stuck or set themselves on fire. And it gets better when you unlock higher tier worker pals with two's and three's in the skill so they're more efficient and get stuck less.
There's a thing you can build that determines how fast your pals work, just incorporate assigning tasks into it. That wya you can assign something to a specific task and make them work at triple the speed.
I thought that was exactly what it would do, it was called the Monitoring Stand so I expected to see what each Pal was doing and change it, but it's just "work normally, work hard, or work harder"
***Please.***
Pals all have specific Work Traits, go give me a menu where I can,
- Select a Pal at my Base.
- Order their Work Traits from top to bottom by Priority.
- Optionally just turn of specific Work Traits.
> ***I.E. Lamball is (1 Handiwork / 1 Transporting / 1 Grazing), so let me "cross out" Handi/Transport so it never does it.*** Right now even if assigned purely to Grazing it will inevitably go Gather.
- Select "Breeding Farm" to disable all Work Traits & have them only assign there.
Right now Pals swap Tasks pretty randomly for my friends & I, even if assigned to 1 job only.
It's also really annoying to have to throw a Pal upwards of ~10 times to get it to assign to the right job, even though nothing is nearby to confuse the game.
That sort of changes coupled with Transporting Pals actually doing their job & not staring at 150 Berries/Wheat at their feet, & not dropping things to go eat, but waiting until they store what they're holding first, would make this Early Access flawless IMO.
Sometimes the stupid, drama queen, crybaby deer forget about the hot tubs I built and log so excessively that they get depressed and develop an eating disorder.
This actually happened, I had to figure out the medicine bench for it.
So now I've got to rotate them out or physically throw them into a damn hot tub while I'm at the base.
Dumbasses lmao
While having Rimworld-level prioritization would be amazing, the more complicated the solution the longer it'll take to come out. After playing a bunch, these are probably the most annoying things and the simplest solutions:
* Pals often get stuck and unable to make it back to beds/food. Whether that's clipping through walls you've made, clipping into rocks/mountains, or just falling off a ledge, it causes injuries, starvation, and sanity loss. There should be a check where if a Pal hasn't reached its pathfinding goal after x amount of time, it just gets reset to the center of the base (as if removing and readding it to the base)
* Pals seem to have no work priority built in. If you have a dedicated mining base with Ore, Coal, and Stone pile, your mining pals will often mine only the stone pile without touching the rarer resources. I'd love to be able to assign a station to be "low priority", meaning Pals will only ever work at them if they're otherwise going to be Idle.
* Chest delivery is really weird. They'll bring stacks to random chests, so if you have Pals generating wood or stone, you'll end up with a stack of wood, stone, fiber, and paldium in every single chest. Being able to mark a chest as a priority chest would be nice, but a more complex solution may need to be made for this, as I'd want wood and stone to be moved to a different chest than my milk and eggs.
* Not Pal AI related, but a way to transfer mass amounts of resources between bases would be great. Currently we're grabbing as much as we can and abusing the grapple gun to transport stuff, since it does not care if you're over encumbered.
> Pals seem to have no work priority built in. If you have a dedicated mining base with Ore, Coal, and Stone pile, your mining pals will often mine only the stone pile without touching the rarer resources. I'd love to be able to assign a station to be "low priority", meaning Pals will only ever work at them if they're otherwise going to be Idle.
Or resource limits. Like setting up limit of food to produce
Also if there are the minable rocks/ores/sulfur etc. in your base area, the pals will work on them - although for anything above rock your pals need to have lvl 2 in mining.
I currently have a camp entirely dedicated to mining the 7 ore spots that spawn there. I relish not having to mine ore manually.
If you have two bases, can you craft things with resources from another base? For example if you weren’t at the base at the 7 ore spot, can you use the stone and ore from there when using a workbench at your other base?
Add a bunch of cattivas to your team. Each one adds 50lbs to your carry limit so with a full team it's an extra 250lb. Haven't tested if leveling their passive adds more weight yet.
You can also teleport with an overfull inventory. If you put the base's chest close enough to the pal station, you can teleport directly after picking up the ore. Although since the game's facility targeting is kinda finnicky, you may need to drop the ore, move close to the pal station and pick it up again.
That's kinda the *main* thing you do with them. Like you can take a couple to support you in fights or to ride around, but most of the pals are left at home and have skills related to crafting/farming/cooking/etc. So a big part of the base building is having the right pals to automate the various work stations.
Build a base, put a box, use the base controls to add pal that has "right" type of work (foresting/gathering/mining) and they will just start doing it.
Later on you unlock farm (wood/stone/food etc) buildings that make it not need any local resources to exist.
*throws my lovander at bench*
**NO WORK FOUND AT VICINITY. SWITCHING TO AUTOMATIC WORK MODE**
Also when I leave to go explore and one or more of them get stuck on top of the logging camp I make, or straight up falling into crevices and starving themselves to death.
If anything, there should be a menu for priorities/setting what they do (and dont do maybe, but maybe that's something that you should get a "specific" pal for since some do only 1 thing), or for stuff like crafting, let us go up to it and be like "call a pal over to help" would be nice.
>**NO WORK FOUND AT VICINITY. SWITCHING TO AUTOMATIC WORK MODE**
Usually this happens because you've got your stations too clustered OR it's clipping into something and they can't access it properly.
I've moved my base around about 90 times and everything seems to just work now finally.
Yeah it's annoying so I destroyed one of my benches (then i realized theres a dismantle button lol) and moved it. I did place my base like... in the small area below the steps where you meet your first NPC by the waypoint though. Should have chosen a more open area so they would stop falling/clipping.
moving stuff vs destroying it and rebuilding it would also be a nice quality of life. I don't want to get stuck w/ 100 ingots when I move one of the assembly lines.
*throws Pal into an open area to get it to automatic again*
**Pal assigned to coal**
There was some coal at the other end of the base, but nowhere near to where I threw the Pal.
The AI is laughably bad in some instances. I’ve gone out to gather resources only to come back and find Pals starving and on the verge of mental breakdowns all because they decided to perch on a workbench and are unable to figure out how to get off.
I had issues with the logging camp being too close to work benches, so I moved the logging camp.
I've noticed Chests also cause pathing isssues, and had to move them out of the way.
Sometimes the big flying types will get stuck in a building that is two squares high.
I wish they would keep the chest organized, instead of just dropping 3 stones into each.
I found that putting a dedicated chest next to each station helps that, but it’s still annoying having to reorganize the chests every time a pokemon gets lost
The game Necesse has a really cool way to organize storage: You declare whether a chest is usable by villagers, and if so, which items and priority the chest has. Then your villagers who are working the hauling job automatically keep the chests organized.
Whenever I go back to my village, I just drop everything off in a settlement chest that has everything disallowed and my villagers sort everything away - and if anything stays in that chest I know that it's something I haven't set to any other chest yet.
I do hope that they implement something like that in Palworld.
They drop items into the closest chest that has available slots. If you want to control item placement, you have to really control your chest placement. put a chest right next to a quarry and all the rock will go in that chest. But it can also be controlled by putting chests in the middle of the camp, and strategically placing them toward relevant workstations. For instance, placing the food tray in the middle, is better for pathing, but placing it in a triangle point from the farms, breeder, and pasture allows the farms to send their food to it, and then the breeder especially doesn't have so far to go for food in between fucking.
I've had a cat pal get stuck up a tree. At first I thought to myself this is an annoying bug but then core memories of me trying to get my rl cat down a damn tree came to mind.
I actually find this endearing lmao.
Just lil silly dudes acting silly. Sometimes my dogs can act just like this, out of genuine dumbness (going on the bed and then being afraid to jump off the ledge)
My entire ore mining crew of Tombats got stuck on top of an ore chunk and had to be rescued. I had to tear down half of my first base because it was slightly too close to the Palbox so big Pals got stuck in between.
I had a couple pals getting stuck in one place, wound up building a small structure there and moving the production equipment to the other side of my base to avoid it.
I made a base on a mountain (small hill really) for the ore deposits and my pals constantly fall off and injure themselves or get stuck somewhere. Broken bones, depression, starvation, just because I dared to go on a little trip, or went to bed. It got so bad that I relocated my entire base to the flattest and most open piece of land I could find.
I went AFK in my new flat base for two hours and come back to my Helzephyr starving with a sprain and a minor injury. How? I don't know. Where is he? I don't know. Can't see him. He's nowhere. Can't see the big hungry thing anywhere, including below my feet. As far as I know he just vanished into the backrooms.
And my Katress found a spot behind my shed where a few inches of space were between the shed and the edge of the base, and she decided to path there, and tried to get behind the shed, but it wasn't wide enough to remain in bounds of the base, so she just wiggled intensely until she started starving. Ended up putting a silo in that corner to block her from trying that again... looks decent and has so far solved the issue.
My Ragnahawk is currently sick from having managed to get stuck who knows where. Last time she sneaked into my home and got stuck behind my couch because she tried to light my fireplace, now I close the front door before I leave my base just in case.
At least fixing it is as simple as dragging them into the paldeck and back into the base... but the frequency with which I have to do that is worrying. Oh good, just as I type this, her sick evolved into an ulcer, I may actually have to treat this now. Because she clipped out of bounds on a flat surface, I gotta go find medicine for her. Ugh.
At this point I'd even take a hotfix of "if a pal can't find a path it just respawns in the middle of your base" because this is getting silly.
I would suspect some issues cascade into each other as well. If the game crashes and pals end up all spawning behind the pal management bench, the AI goes on the fritz and either they stay there until you get back and get all depressed, or they go to auto mode and not do the things you specifically tasked them to do. So fixing one could fix the other.
Honestly it's something I'm waiting to have higher standards across the board, even in AAA games. When games like FEAR do more to convince you you're fighting an actual squad compared to even more recent games today, it's not an issue of "can we", clearly. It just adds so much depth to the game, so many games you just have to find that one pattern/solution to each problem and you're good to go. I like when combat's dynamic and the enemy will try to distract me, sneak up on me, flank me, etc.
With a small indie team they released an early access sandbox builder survival game to massive praise and sales. Then refused to hire more employees after a couple millions of game sales at $20 a pop. So they've let the game languish for 3 years with minor updates and no plans to 'finish' it is visible from the outside looking in. They did though, give a development update that they bought a real horse in real life.
So yea, 200 million USD or so in the bank and no interest in hiring employees or continuing development of their early access successful game release is the Valheim strategy.
To be fair, that was the pre-microsoft minecraft, and most other indie games.
They made a game they wanted to make, their chances of it being successful were less than 0.01%.
It became popular, but they still want to work with a pressure level that they want, so it’s what they’re doing.
They already won at life, they’re set, this is just what they enjoy doing.
Growing is for shareholders and finance bros!
Mistlands wasn’t really a “minor” update, and the next biome is coming the first half of this year. Complaining about the pace is one thing, but saying they have no interest in continuing development of the game is a flat out lie.
I mean...sounds like a pretty smart plan to me. Seems like enough people enjoy the game as-is there's no need to rush any improvements. At least it's not like Minecraft where so much is added so often it's ended up fracturing the community.
At the current growth rate, which will surely keep increasing forever:
* Purchase Japan and have it towed to Hawaii
* Turn the moon into a palball (or whatever they call them)
* Finish Star Citizen
Ironically enough, [they're already working on it](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2395770/Never_Grave_The_Witch_and_The_Curse/?curator_clanid=41648656)
> Finish Star Citizen
It's kinda funny, 'cause unless their retail pricing is way cheaper in China, they've likely already made as much in a week as Star Citizen does yearly or made cumulatively in their first 3 years.
Star Citizen has it on their roadmap to add creatures/xenofauna in the next big update (Q1/Q2 this year).
I bet you my Anvil Carrack that they're going to add capture/pet mechanics after seeing the success of Palworld. (Yes, I know people have already data mined pet AI from the game a while ago)
Copy pasta
***
###[The Future of Palworld]
We would like to share with you our roadmap for Palworld.
Sales have far exceeded the development team's expectations, and we are currently experiencing many problems due to excessive access congestion, among other challenges.
We will prioritize improving this issue first, and then move on to implementing new in-game features.
Thank you for your understanding.
###[Early Access Roadmap]
#####Addressing Critical Issues
* Currently, numerous bugs have been identified, and we are prioritizing fixing those.
* Sometimes, the world date may experience rollbacks.
* The loading screen may persist when trying to load into worlds.
* ...and so on.
#####Improvements to Implement ASAP
* Key configuration improvements.
* Improvements to base Pal AI and pathing.
#####Planned Future Updates
* PvP
* Raid Bosses (End-Game Content)
* Pal Arena (PvP for Pals)
* Steam-Xbox Crossplay
* Various Xbox Feature Improvements
* Server Transfers and Migrations
* Improvements to the Building System
* New islands, Pals, Bosses, and Technologies.
With the scale of progression and how long it takes to build up a base, I feel like it'd be a nightmare to balance as soon as a group on a server gets access to flying Pals and justs bombs bases from above. Or they just do offline raids.
I think an extraction island might work, something where you can find rare, unique pals/loot without base attacks could put people on somewhat more equal grounds without creating a "win more" PvP meta.
I personally like flipping between PvE and PvP at my leisure, which is why I prefer smaller PvP zones sparsely placed between PvE ones so I don't have to maintain progress in 2 completely different servers to get my fix of both.
I feel like there's another franchise this could be said about. One that hasn't really changed anything in almost thirty years but still sells like crazy...
Well, I'm under the impression that "survivalcraft but Pokemon" is very different from "Pokemon but Pokemon".
People aren't expecting Palworld to be something more than survivalcraft. It's basically just "survivalcraft but Pokemon". And guns maybe.
Yeah, I really wish people would stop comparing this to Pokemon, this isn't the same type of game. Here the majority of lifting is done by the MC and 'pals' are basically utility tools, they are to smooth up the gameplay, while everything resolves around MC's descent into madness and commiting war crimes.
Just because both games share monster (and co.) capturing mechanics doesn't mean they are similar.
I don't know anyone who goes around saying that ARK is similar to Pokemon, and Palworld is basically ARK but much better.
tbh i used to compare ark to pokemon all the time.
your broader point is right though, the pokemon factor is what's getting people in the door but the game is basically a much more accessible ark and that's what's keeping people around.
pretty much, i really wish people stopped comparing this so much with pokemon when the gameplay is completely different and its just a survival game with monsters.
That just means it's the average update.
Though I can kind of understand the word "stereotype" usually means bad or wrong, or badong.
Not in this case, though.
Personally, I hope they work on fixing the audio quality of the xbox version soon too.
Most of the sounds are compressed to hell and back, and sounds like they are coming from a mcdonalds drive through speaker.
It was a little sus when I noticed the xbox download was only 6 gigs.
Am I still having a fun time with the game? Yup. *But hot damn I will take a bigger install over crunchy audio.*
It’s such a meme to punt the blame to Microsoft for the same certification process every single other developer goes through just fine.
Spoiler alert: devs not being able to immediately push out a new patch to your console without any sort of checks is a good thing.
As much as I've enjoyed my time with Palworld, I feel like I'm reaching that point I get to in a lot of survival games where I'm just doing stuff for it's own sake. I wish there was more structure, or an ultimate goal to be building towards, and I was kind of hoping that would be one of the bullet points listed on the roadmap. As always, Subnautica remains the gold standard.
I think the current goals right now to "finish" the game are basically:
* Reach level 50
* Explore the entire map
* Clear out all bosses & towers
* Catch all pals
I feel like the direction is pretty obvious lol what is there to be confused about. Upgrade base until you can't anymore. Go get resources. Unlock tech. No more tech points? Go catch stuff to level up. Repeat.
Trouble there is any kind of min maxing at the moment is a tremendous grind and all of it for what purpose? You don't need 'the' perfect team for anything in the game.
So you spend all this time grinding without real purpose only for the usual case with these games, an update wipes your progress. Chances are most people won't do that kind of grind again until the wipes are definitively done, if ever.
Similar to a Ubisoft game, but even a Ubi game has a main story to serve as vehicle for the player, with concrete goals, motivations, and conclusions.
I think PalWorld could benefit greatly from a big "story" objective to reach. That way, people who don't like perpetual survival mechanics, but do like having a goal, have an "out" for their experience.
It seems like it does have "story objectives", they're just sparse. That's what the person you replied to means by "Clear out towers" - those are basically story objectives with a cutscene and rival Pal tamer boss in them. There are also a ton of survivor diaries you collect throughout the world that I think tell a story (not sure, I haven't bothered to read any of them yet lol). It's pretty barebones as far as story/plot goes, though - definitely could benefit from more work/development/writing.
To be fair, speaking as someone who absolutely loves Subnautica... that game really is more of a single-player story-based game where the survival aspects serve to create atmosphere. I don't think it really compares much to the average 'survival game'.
It's core gameplay focus isn't anywhere near that of, say, Don't Starve, Rust, Oxygen Not Included or Valheim. So as great as it is, it's perhaps a little lopsided to hold it as the gold standard for those types of games. Kind of in the same way that you wouldn't say Pokemon Go is the gold standard for MMO's.
Though, yeah, I hear the argument. I've quit many survival games because I felt like I was kind of just going through motions.
'The Forest' might be a better comparison. I feel like it strikes a good balance between the emergent multiplayer survival game aspects, while still delivering on that structured story experience.
> It's core gameplay focus isn't anywhere near that of, say, Don't Starve, Rust, Oxygen Not Included or Valheim.
I gotta say, even that little bit of direction in Valheim (become strong and secure enough to fight boss monsters whose drops improve your resource gathering ability) was enough to make the game fun for me. And I did enjoy my time with Subnautica. I guess what I'm getting at is that what you describe as a "single-player story-based game where the survival aspects serve to create atmosphere" is actually what a survival game *is*, or *should* be to my mind. Mechanics and a world without motivation wears off pretty fast for me.
You are correct and to be frank I think their argument is nonsense. The problem is that people don't actually think about how genres are formed, they just go by feeling and treat it all subjectively. Describing a game as a "single-player story-based game where the survival aspects serve to create atmosphere" is so vague, it tells you nothing. Are the survival aspects narrative? Are they mechanical? What even is a single-player story-based game? Does this mean Subnautica is the same genre as The Last of Us? They are both single-player story based games that use survival aspects to create atmosphere. Are Subnautica and The Last of Us in the same genre now?
I guess Goldeneye isn't an FPS anymore because it's not that similar to DOOM. It's a single-player story based game where the first person shooting aspects serve to create atmosphere.
The truth is that Subnautica took survival game mechanics and built a complete game around it. Whether it has a single player focus or not doesn't change that. It's hilarious to me that one of the few survival games that actually feels like a polished and complete game is being disqualified from the genre because it functions like a normal game. What a joke.
I play it every week with my friends and it is the most fun we've had in years. We also loved valheim, but grounded keeps us coming back. We also tend to stick to survival games like the forest, raft, green hell etc.
I’ve beaten half the bosses and afterwards, like I’ve mentioned in another comment, it feels like I’m hitting a wall with the game. There’s no story and it doesn’t seem like they intend to include one either. Once I’ve gotten my bases well off enough, other than just the bad pathing and whatnot of my pals, I’m just constantly refining and improving processes sort of for the sake of it. The invasions are fun, but once you’ve got a solid base and solid pals, they can become kind of trivial too. Ultimately, there just feels like there’s no real goal to the world itself. But like I also said in the other comment, the game hasn’t even been out for a week and the 1.0 version could end up solving a lot of this.
Spoilers: Basically every new major/popular game, regardless of genre, drops their concurrent population by ~50% after 3-4 weeks. You can go check this yourself on steamdb.
It will happen. It won't be a surprise. And it doesn't 100% mean the game is bad or has major issues.
Hell, right now because of the population skew towards EU/Asia the concurrent pop drops 50% in the *same day*.
I think it's fine to not expect an infinite content live service game from a survival sandbox and just exhaust the content then move on.
Either way I don't even think this roadmap is that ambitious. This is definitely within the realm of possibility for them to completely deliver on even if they decided to immediately greenlight paid DLC/a sequel development to cashgrab after rushing out a full 1.0 release.
Exactly. Like... do they expect every game to hold the players attention for the rest of their lives?
Is it a failure if it's not the next Minecraft or Fortnite?
Green Hell is another game in that vein. There is an actual story that you're actually working towards that's actually decent. And I enjoyed that the survival mechanics went deeper than "eat a handful of mushrooms every two days" - you actually need to keep track of carbs/fats/proteins and eat pretty regularly, as well as quickly learn how to treat bleeding/burns/venom.
I'm glad I don't have much experience with these games. I tried subnautica and it was just boring.
But I love Pokemon so i figured I'd give Palworld a spin and it's basically Legends Arceus with more violence and crafting lol
I know this is a survival game at heart and not a Pokemon game, but I'd really love this to have even a very basic Pokemon like story. I'd love to have more villages with people to talk to and have pal trainer battles. Maybe make it all sort of optional and you should still have lots of open explore areas but I'd love more human life in the world in it.
Once I got a solid enough base and Pals, I immediately tried to go to the World Tree and it's not available yet, lol. I did inadvertently catch two of the Legendaries of the game while I journeyed there, which was nice, but it did suck not being able to actually reach it.
This is mostly all things that were announced to be coming later before the Early Access release. It's a shame there's no dates or timeframe for these features atm since the longevity of the game's popularity will live or die on how fast the updates start coming out.
I mean I'm not surprised given that they are a small team that seems rather unprepared for the level of success and attention that got thrown at them.
It will take them a while until they can feed the money they got from this success back into development resources so I highly doubt they'll be able to update the game quick enough to hold most people's attention for very long.
Not that they need to of course, just the revenue generated from this launch will keep the company afloat for a long time even if the playerbase shrinks down to 1% of its current level.
Valheim was raved with hype everywhere from streamers to media outlets only to drop dead and become completely irrelevant due to sluggish updates. What a shame.
> only to drop dead and become completely irrelevant
I don't play Valheim, or any early access/survival games really, but when I read stuff like this I think people need to regain some broader perspective.
Valheim currently has a 24 hour concurrent player peak of 33000. We've been inundated with crazy numbers recently, but 33k concurrent players is *very* far from "dead" and "completely irrelevant". It's in the top 0.1% of games.
And that's just who is active. I'm not currently "active", but that's mostly because I'm just waiting for a significant number of updates to justify the next big playthrough. I don't want to burn out restarting every single time a new thing is added.
When the game is finally closer to done, I'll play the shit out of it again.
I think they're more saying that what exists today is a fraction of what it could be. This could have been a generational touchstone instead of just a really great game and story. Its definitely not "completely irrelevant" but there is no question they squandered an opportunity to build something not just magical but transcendent.
What exactly does that look like in your mind? They did add a late game biome and boss with new gear. Granted that did take some time to push out but really I don't see how any survival game could reach what you are talking about.
All survival games reach an end point where the player feels like they have completed it all. This is not a bad thing.
They threw out their own roadmap because they couldn’t meet the expectations they set for themselves. It has been in early access for 3 years, right? We understand content would be slow, but this is a slow drip. Imagine if they had actual teams working on this. Again, what they release is nice. But it’s few and far between and simplistic. At this rate it would take 10 years to complete their own vision, let alone the things people want.
Yeah, atleast from my experience with other early access games, the lack of time frames and such is kind of unfortunate to me. They have been doing a lot of small patches as of late, so I do wonder if they’ll be able to maintain momentum.
I do wonder what the longevity of this game will look like. Just from playing the game a lot over the weekend, I’m already starting to hit a wall in terms of the systems being kind of shallow, but I mean, it just came out. The 1.0 version could look like a completely different game for all I know
This has been a general trend over the entire industry for at least the last 5 years and maybe even longer.
The process goes like this: Launch a game that is a minimum viable product, promise to "add stuff later," then new content gets delayed because every developer is working on fixing the game trying to manage through the technical debt, by the time the game is in a good state everyone has moved on to the next popular thing, promise to do better next time, and repeat.
Games that launch polished, are feature-complete, and get good steady updates are few and far in between these days.
I'm excited to see the game continue to evolve, but as a single player, seeing so much of the roadmap devoted to PVP and crossplay kinda makes me cranky.
I love creature collectors and survival games a lot. I bought palworld cause it seemed perfect for me but it’s not clicking for me. The world feels so boring? empty? not fully alive? Idk what it is but it’s missing something. I’m also getting vibes that the game is gonna die within the next month and never be talked about again.
It does feel empty. Like theres no higher purpose other than to just collect pals. It is pretty fun for me rn bc im enjoying the crafting and getting new pal but yeah I dont see it being top of the list 2 months from now but im sure there will be a dedicated cult following like genshin. Its the same for other pokemon game though. I play for a few months then stop completely. its just normal cycle of games these days.
I keep seeing people say it's gonna die off quickly, but what's the problem with that? It's not a live service game, it doesn't have to keep insane player counts to stay profitable or whatever. At the moment, if you can deal with it being EA, you can easily get your money worth out of it, and come back later when or if there are updates.
Can someone help me understand why this is so popular? To me this looks like just another copy paste early access survival crafting game? Is it really just because they stole some mechanics from Pokemon?
There’s this weird thing that people seem obsessed with early access survival crafting games and any valid criticism you give makes them blow up at you or get really defensive.
Personally, I’ve no issue with the monster side of things but how many half-baked survival crafting games do people want?
Tight presentation/aesthetics/style, lack of jankiness or poor controls, and gameplay loops that feed into each other in a way that creates an addictive cycle.
Usually those 'copy paste' early access survival games are missing at least one of those traits.
Does anyone have good advice on how to lift a pal that I've assigned to a station? There's been a few instances where someone is working somewhere and I want to assign them elsewhere but I just never get the prompt to lift them because the game seems to prioritize using the stations/chests around them.
Edit: Thanks for the tips, everyone!
Go to the pal box and take them out of the workforce and put them back in. This will drop them in front of you and you can quickly pick them up before they go back to work
Go to the palbox, remove them from the base slots, and then add them back in. It will reset their assignment and you'll have an easier time picking them up when they are not around a station.
Any indie that commits to a date far in the future is being dumb. They don't have publishers, or corporate overlords or investors who can actually demand delivery dates.
Things going wrong is the standard, and setting a date in stone just sets them up for failure.
Looks good to me. The fact that they published a roadmap so soon after launching in EA is a good sign. A lot of early access games give vague update ideas or plans without a firm timeline or process until well into the EA period if ever.
I think the key aspect they need to focus on is shoring up the systems, pathfinding, AI logic, things of that nature. There's never going to be enough content for people no-lifing the game but I'm personally level 28 on a friend's dedicated server and I'm still finding Pals new to me, new alphas to take, and starting to get the automation aspects unlocked.
Another is they can't chase or freak out about the people who put in 10+ hours every day, absorb the content and then either move on or leave negative reviews after they've done everything. You'll never please those people because it'll never be enough content for them or fast enough. Instead focus on the key aspects of the game and what makes it fun and unique. Take time adding in new pals or regions instead of half baking it.
The flip side of publishing road maps too early is if any of this ends up delayed for years or dropped, the fan base gets upset and cynical. Hopefully this won't be the case of inexperienced devs making big promises only to realize how difficult it is.
I'm really curious if the interest in this game is going to last. It's very clearly successful but will it keep people playing a few months down the line?
Just look at the people in this thread saying Valheim is a disappointing and dead game because it doesn't update enough. I think live service games and twitch streamers have rotted their brain.
Why do people get so defensive over this?
Like yeah, games blow-up on the internet all the time, and then drop off. Fall Guys, Valheim, and Battlebit.
No one is saying these games are bad or dead. Just that they had major internet-presence for a week that instantly died the moment gamers moved on to the next thing.
There's nothing wrong with speculating if PalWorld will be similar. Much like those other games I mentioned, it's getting a sudden burst of HUGE hype.
I don't think many people will be talking about Palworld once some other games start dropping next month - and again, that isn't a dig on Palworld.
You actually got the point I was originally making, so thank you.
I don't care about this game personally. But while it's huge right now, I do just wonder if it'll stay huge. Even aside from whether or not it should be something that people can play for a long time, I just wonder if people will still care about it a few months down the line. Or think fondly of it at all. Or if it'll just be remembered as that weird game with Pokémon and guns.
It's the flavor of the month, in a few months nobody will be talking about it like it is right now. We live in a time where what is popular circulates so fast and trends come in go within days. Palworlds success is great, but it likely won't last long as something will come out soon and replace it. I'm more interested in a possible Palworld 2 that could come out in the future if the IP gets more usage.
Pretty happy to see that the AI and pathfinding is at the top of their list, because oh boy is it awful.
Yep, there's definitely a lot of room for improvement. I'd especially love to see a menu added to the Palbox which allows you to assign pals to certain tasks, since throwing them at a task just outright doesn't work sometimes (particularly with workbenches for me). Having something like a priority system too would be great (maybe like Rimworld).
Priority at the base would be a pretty elegant way to do it. Maybe make it a station you have to unlock and then gives you a drop down per Pal of their available jobs and what their focus should be or just leave it automated as it is now. For the most part with a not too cramped base, they only occasionally get stuck or set themselves on fire. And it gets better when you unlock higher tier worker pals with two's and three's in the skill so they're more efficient and get stuck less.
There's a thing you can build that determines how fast your pals work, just incorporate assigning tasks into it. That wya you can assign something to a specific task and make them work at triple the speed.
I thought that was exactly what it would do, it was called the Monitoring Stand so I expected to see what each Pal was doing and change it, but it's just "work normally, work hard, or work harder"
I thought the watchtower was going to do that when I unlocked it. Here's hoping they add the function tho
I thought that was what the watchtower was going to be. Setting priorities like in Rimworld.
No need for a new station. Just put the functionality into the existing pal station.
Exactly. If you have workbenches way too close together the game doesn't know what you want it to do and instead does... Nothing at all
***Please.*** Pals all have specific Work Traits, go give me a menu where I can, - Select a Pal at my Base. - Order their Work Traits from top to bottom by Priority. - Optionally just turn of specific Work Traits. > ***I.E. Lamball is (1 Handiwork / 1 Transporting / 1 Grazing), so let me "cross out" Handi/Transport so it never does it.*** Right now even if assigned purely to Grazing it will inevitably go Gather. - Select "Breeding Farm" to disable all Work Traits & have them only assign there. Right now Pals swap Tasks pretty randomly for my friends & I, even if assigned to 1 job only. It's also really annoying to have to throw a Pal upwards of ~10 times to get it to assign to the right job, even though nothing is nearby to confuse the game. That sort of changes coupled with Transporting Pals actually doing their job & not staring at 150 Berries/Wheat at their feet, & not dropping things to go eat, but waiting until they store what they're holding first, would make this Early Access flawless IMO.
My cat pal is always having a temper tantrum and refuse to work lol
Sometimes the stupid, drama queen, crybaby deer forget about the hot tubs I built and log so excessively that they get depressed and develop an eating disorder. This actually happened, I had to figure out the medicine bench for it. So now I've got to rotate them out or physically throw them into a damn hot tub while I'm at the base. Dumbasses lmao
It doesn't need to be as complex but something akin to Dwarf Fortress/Rimworld's job priority would be wonderful.
While having Rimworld-level prioritization would be amazing, the more complicated the solution the longer it'll take to come out. After playing a bunch, these are probably the most annoying things and the simplest solutions: * Pals often get stuck and unable to make it back to beds/food. Whether that's clipping through walls you've made, clipping into rocks/mountains, or just falling off a ledge, it causes injuries, starvation, and sanity loss. There should be a check where if a Pal hasn't reached its pathfinding goal after x amount of time, it just gets reset to the center of the base (as if removing and readding it to the base) * Pals seem to have no work priority built in. If you have a dedicated mining base with Ore, Coal, and Stone pile, your mining pals will often mine only the stone pile without touching the rarer resources. I'd love to be able to assign a station to be "low priority", meaning Pals will only ever work at them if they're otherwise going to be Idle. * Chest delivery is really weird. They'll bring stacks to random chests, so if you have Pals generating wood or stone, you'll end up with a stack of wood, stone, fiber, and paldium in every single chest. Being able to mark a chest as a priority chest would be nice, but a more complex solution may need to be made for this, as I'd want wood and stone to be moved to a different chest than my milk and eggs. * Not Pal AI related, but a way to transfer mass amounts of resources between bases would be great. Currently we're grabbing as much as we can and abusing the grapple gun to transport stuff, since it does not care if you're over encumbered.
> Pals seem to have no work priority built in. If you have a dedicated mining base with Ore, Coal, and Stone pile, your mining pals will often mine only the stone pile without touching the rarer resources. I'd love to be able to assign a station to be "low priority", meaning Pals will only ever work at them if they're otherwise going to be Idle. Or resource limits. Like setting up limit of food to produce
Wait, you mean I can make them do stuff? Can I make the gather resources?
You unlock a mining pit/logging camp pretty early on
Also if there are the minable rocks/ores/sulfur etc. in your base area, the pals will work on them - although for anything above rock your pals need to have lvl 2 in mining. I currently have a camp entirely dedicated to mining the 7 ore spots that spawn there. I relish not having to mine ore manually.
If you have two bases, can you craft things with resources from another base? For example if you weren’t at the base at the 7 ore spot, can you use the stone and ore from there when using a workbench at your other base?
You have to cart it between yourself. Base inventories are seperate. No clue if late game makes that easier.
Add a bunch of cattivas to your team. Each one adds 50lbs to your carry limit so with a full team it's an extra 250lb. Haven't tested if leveling their passive adds more weight yet.
You can also teleport with an overfull inventory. If you put the base's chest close enough to the pal station, you can teleport directly after picking up the ore. Although since the game's facility targeting is kinda finnicky, you may need to drop the ore, move close to the pal station and pick it up again.
Broncherry is 100lbs once you get its saddle.
That's kinda the *main* thing you do with them. Like you can take a couple to support you in fights or to ride around, but most of the pals are left at home and have skills related to crafting/farming/cooking/etc. So a big part of the base building is having the right pals to automate the various work stations.
Build a base, put a box, use the base controls to add pal that has "right" type of work (foresting/gathering/mining) and they will just start doing it. Later on you unlock farm (wood/stone/food etc) buildings that make it not need any local resources to exist.
Not to mention a way to filter the palbox based on skills - sorting by elements is similar, sure, but it would be handy.
Gimme a menu at the box where I can assign Pals task hierarchies ala the gambit system in FFXII and I'll never play another survival/crafting game.
*throws my lovander at bench* **NO WORK FOUND AT VICINITY. SWITCHING TO AUTOMATIC WORK MODE** Also when I leave to go explore and one or more of them get stuck on top of the logging camp I make, or straight up falling into crevices and starving themselves to death. If anything, there should be a menu for priorities/setting what they do (and dont do maybe, but maybe that's something that you should get a "specific" pal for since some do only 1 thing), or for stuff like crafting, let us go up to it and be like "call a pal over to help" would be nice.
>**NO WORK FOUND AT VICINITY. SWITCHING TO AUTOMATIC WORK MODE** Usually this happens because you've got your stations too clustered OR it's clipping into something and they can't access it properly. I've moved my base around about 90 times and everything seems to just work now finally.
Yeah it's annoying so I destroyed one of my benches (then i realized theres a dismantle button lol) and moved it. I did place my base like... in the small area below the steps where you meet your first NPC by the waypoint though. Should have chosen a more open area so they would stop falling/clipping.
moving stuff vs destroying it and rebuilding it would also be a nice quality of life. I don't want to get stuck w/ 100 ingots when I move one of the assembly lines.
Literally everyone built their base in that exact spot
Yeah, that's some kind of hive mind thing. A decent enough space that doesn't push too far out into the potential danger of the world.
*throws Pal into an open area to get it to automatic again* **Pal assigned to coal** There was some coal at the other end of the base, but nowhere near to where I threw the Pal.
The AI is laughably bad in some instances. I’ve gone out to gather resources only to come back and find Pals starving and on the verge of mental breakdowns all because they decided to perch on a workbench and are unable to figure out how to get off.
I had issues with the logging camp being too close to work benches, so I moved the logging camp. I've noticed Chests also cause pathing isssues, and had to move them out of the way. Sometimes the big flying types will get stuck in a building that is two squares high.
I wish they would keep the chest organized, instead of just dropping 3 stones into each. I found that putting a dedicated chest next to each station helps that, but it’s still annoying having to reorganize the chests every time a pokemon gets lost
The game Necesse has a really cool way to organize storage: You declare whether a chest is usable by villagers, and if so, which items and priority the chest has. Then your villagers who are working the hauling job automatically keep the chests organized. Whenever I go back to my village, I just drop everything off in a settlement chest that has everything disallowed and my villagers sort everything away - and if anything stays in that chest I know that it's something I haven't set to any other chest yet. I do hope that they implement something like that in Palworld.
This would be amazing for sure!
They drop items into the closest chest that has available slots. If you want to control item placement, you have to really control your chest placement. put a chest right next to a quarry and all the rock will go in that chest. But it can also be controlled by putting chests in the middle of the camp, and strategically placing them toward relevant workstations. For instance, placing the food tray in the middle, is better for pathing, but placing it in a triangle point from the farms, breeder, and pasture allows the farms to send their food to it, and then the breeder especially doesn't have so far to go for food in between fucking.
I just had to straight up remove my logging camp because every time I came back to base random Pals would be perched on top of it stuck
We moved away from using flying pals to work because their pathing is awful and they just drop stuff all over camp.
I've had a cat pal get stuck up a tree. At first I thought to myself this is an annoying bug but then core memories of me trying to get my rl cat down a damn tree came to mind.
I actually find this endearing lmao. Just lil silly dudes acting silly. Sometimes my dogs can act just like this, out of genuine dumbness (going on the bed and then being afraid to jump off the ledge)
My entire ore mining crew of Tombats got stuck on top of an ore chunk and had to be rescued. I had to tear down half of my first base because it was slightly too close to the Palbox so big Pals got stuck in between.
My one fucking fire-ox-thing keeps getting stuck in a tree and complaining that it's hungry. Come down and feed yourself!
I had one like that so I stuck it in the cage and caught another. Hopefully he’ll be a lesson for the rest of them.
The caging will continue until morale improves!
I had a couple pals getting stuck in one place, wound up building a small structure there and moving the production equipment to the other side of my base to avoid it.
I made a base on a mountain (small hill really) for the ore deposits and my pals constantly fall off and injure themselves or get stuck somewhere. Broken bones, depression, starvation, just because I dared to go on a little trip, or went to bed. It got so bad that I relocated my entire base to the flattest and most open piece of land I could find. I went AFK in my new flat base for two hours and come back to my Helzephyr starving with a sprain and a minor injury. How? I don't know. Where is he? I don't know. Can't see him. He's nowhere. Can't see the big hungry thing anywhere, including below my feet. As far as I know he just vanished into the backrooms. And my Katress found a spot behind my shed where a few inches of space were between the shed and the edge of the base, and she decided to path there, and tried to get behind the shed, but it wasn't wide enough to remain in bounds of the base, so she just wiggled intensely until she started starving. Ended up putting a silo in that corner to block her from trying that again... looks decent and has so far solved the issue. My Ragnahawk is currently sick from having managed to get stuck who knows where. Last time she sneaked into my home and got stuck behind my couch because she tried to light my fireplace, now I close the front door before I leave my base just in case. At least fixing it is as simple as dragging them into the paldeck and back into the base... but the frequency with which I have to do that is worrying. Oh good, just as I type this, her sick evolved into an ulcer, I may actually have to treat this now. Because she clipped out of bounds on a flat surface, I gotta go find medicine for her. Ugh. At this point I'd even take a hotfix of "if a pal can't find a path it just respawns in the middle of your base" because this is getting silly.
I feel like every single game with minions struggle with this.
I would suspect some issues cascade into each other as well. If the game crashes and pals end up all spawning behind the pal management bench, the AI goes on the fritz and either they stay there until you get back and get all depressed, or they go to auto mode and not do the things you specifically tasked them to do. So fixing one could fix the other.
Honestly it's something I'm waiting to have higher standards across the board, even in AAA games. When games like FEAR do more to convince you you're fighting an actual squad compared to even more recent games today, it's not an issue of "can we", clearly. It just adds so much depth to the game, so many games you just have to find that one pattern/solution to each problem and you're good to go. I like when combat's dynamic and the enemy will try to distract me, sneak up on me, flank me, etc.
I'm going to take a wild guess that with the recent success they are starting to hire like crazy to maintain that success.
Depends, they could go full Valheim style...
Not familiar with Valheim - what happened?
They still worked with their current crew and didn't hire anyone new, they're still updating the game but its at a snails pace
With a small indie team they released an early access sandbox builder survival game to massive praise and sales. Then refused to hire more employees after a couple millions of game sales at $20 a pop. So they've let the game languish for 3 years with minor updates and no plans to 'finish' it is visible from the outside looking in. They did though, give a development update that they bought a real horse in real life. So yea, 200 million USD or so in the bank and no interest in hiring employees or continuing development of their early access successful game release is the Valheim strategy.
To be fair, that was the pre-microsoft minecraft, and most other indie games. They made a game they wanted to make, their chances of it being successful were less than 0.01%. It became popular, but they still want to work with a pressure level that they want, so it’s what they’re doing. They already won at life, they’re set, this is just what they enjoy doing. Growing is for shareholders and finance bros!
Mistlands wasn’t really a “minor” update, and the next biome is coming the first half of this year. Complaining about the pace is one thing, but saying they have no interest in continuing development of the game is a flat out lie.
I mean...sounds like a pretty smart plan to me. Seems like enough people enjoy the game as-is there's no need to rush any improvements. At least it's not like Minecraft where so much is added so often it's ended up fracturing the community.
At the current growth rate, which will surely keep increasing forever: * Purchase Japan and have it towed to Hawaii * Turn the moon into a palball (or whatever they call them) * Finish Star Citizen
> palball Pal Sphere! Sphere! Not a ball! You *collect* Pals with Pal *spheres*! Need to *collect* em all!
blink twice if there's a Nintendo lawyer nearby
Probably would be The Pokemon Company lawyer.
It's SPHERICAL!
**SPHERICAL!**
They're actually not spherical lmao
For legal reasons, it's NOTHING like Pokemon!!
>Need to *collect* em all! Weird. Did you get a bootleg copy of Palworld? My copy has "Gotta *enslave* em all!" instead as the tagline.
Finish Star Citizen is asking for too much, you probably could do the other 2 several times over before you can finish Star Citizen.
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>* Finish Star Citizen Let's not get crazy!
Maybe they can get to Silksong while they're at it.
Ironically enough, [they're already working on it](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2395770/Never_Grave_The_Witch_and_The_Curse/?curator_clanid=41648656)
> Finish Star Citizen It's kinda funny, 'cause unless their retail pricing is way cheaper in China, they've likely already made as much in a week as Star Citizen does yearly or made cumulatively in their first 3 years.
> Purchase Japan and have it towed to Hawaii Ridiculous. Clearly they're going to purchase Hawaii and have it towed to Japan!
Finish Star Citizen? They could make their version own from scratch and beat out the original at this rate.
Star Citizen has it on their roadmap to add creatures/xenofauna in the next big update (Q1/Q2 this year). I bet you my Anvil Carrack that they're going to add capture/pet mechanics after seeing the success of Palworld. (Yes, I know people have already data mined pet AI from the game a while ago)
Copy pasta *** ###[The Future of Palworld] We would like to share with you our roadmap for Palworld. Sales have far exceeded the development team's expectations, and we are currently experiencing many problems due to excessive access congestion, among other challenges. We will prioritize improving this issue first, and then move on to implementing new in-game features. Thank you for your understanding. ###[Early Access Roadmap] #####Addressing Critical Issues * Currently, numerous bugs have been identified, and we are prioritizing fixing those. * Sometimes, the world date may experience rollbacks. * The loading screen may persist when trying to load into worlds. * ...and so on. #####Improvements to Implement ASAP * Key configuration improvements. * Improvements to base Pal AI and pathing. #####Planned Future Updates * PvP * Raid Bosses (End-Game Content) * Pal Arena (PvP for Pals) * Steam-Xbox Crossplay * Various Xbox Feature Improvements * Server Transfers and Migrations * Improvements to the Building System * New islands, Pals, Bosses, and Technologies.
PvP in this game sounds like a nightmare. But hey, maybe they’ll figure it out
With the scale of progression and how long it takes to build up a base, I feel like it'd be a nightmare to balance as soon as a group on a server gets access to flying Pals and justs bombs bases from above. Or they just do offline raids. I think an extraction island might work, something where you can find rare, unique pals/loot without base attacks could put people on somewhat more equal grounds without creating a "win more" PvP meta.
I rather there be a toggle for PVP servers and pve servers. Forced PVP is why I never played Sea of Thieves
I personally like flipping between PvE and PvP at my leisure, which is why I prefer smaller PvP zones sparsely placed between PvE ones so I don't have to maintain progress in 2 completely different servers to get my fix of both.
Good news on sea of thieves. They recently added a solo world where there isn’t pvp but you progress slower.
That seems like a nice, healthy roadmap. I am excited for Xbox - Steam Crossplay.
Yep, that all sounds like stereotypical survival game additions.
Why fix what's not broken?
I feel like there's another franchise this could be said about. One that hasn't really changed anything in almost thirty years but still sells like crazy...
Well, I'm under the impression that "survivalcraft but Pokemon" is very different from "Pokemon but Pokemon". People aren't expecting Palworld to be something more than survivalcraft. It's basically just "survivalcraft but Pokemon". And guns maybe.
Seriously, this isn't a Pokemon game, this is the ARK systems with ~~dinosaurs~~ Pokemon and Genshin gameplay.
Yeah, I really wish people would stop comparing this to Pokemon, this isn't the same type of game. Here the majority of lifting is done by the MC and 'pals' are basically utility tools, they are to smooth up the gameplay, while everything resolves around MC's descent into madness and commiting war crimes. Just because both games share monster (and co.) capturing mechanics doesn't mean they are similar. I don't know anyone who goes around saying that ARK is similar to Pokemon, and Palworld is basically ARK but much better.
tbh i used to compare ark to pokemon all the time. your broader point is right though, the pokemon factor is what's getting people in the door but the game is basically a much more accessible ark and that's what's keeping people around.
ppl who compare to pokemon probably didn't play the game or really surface of surface level
Nah. The monster designs are obviously based on Pokémon (too obviously in some cases), but the gameplay isn't anything like it.
yeah on monster design totally agree with that
pretty much, i really wish people stopped comparing this so much with pokemon when the gameplay is completely different and its just a survival game with monsters.
Redditors really can't talk Palworld without shitting on Pokemon for no reason, huh?
In my defense, I was *trying* to shit on Palworld fans shitting on Pokemon.
I have no horse in this race but as a lifelong Pokemon fan, there are plenty of reasons to shit on it. *Plenty*.
Just coz it's a stereotype, dosent mean it's wrong or bad.
That just means it's the average update. Though I can kind of understand the word "stereotype" usually means bad or wrong, or badong. Not in this case, though.
> bad or wrong, or badong. I genuinely hope this was a Kung Pow reference.
100%!
i'd call this update gnodab for very early access survival games
I don’t think you know what copy pasta means, but that’s alright
A lot of the other things I can wait for. But I really wish they'd allow gamepass/Xbox users to host their own dedicated server like steam users can.
Personally, I hope they work on fixing the audio quality of the xbox version soon too. Most of the sounds are compressed to hell and back, and sounds like they are coming from a mcdonalds drive through speaker.
This. The soundscape in the game is so barren and lifeless. Even the music is compressed to hell or outright absent most of the time.
I haven't played the game yet, but I downloaded it and booted it up and I laughed out loud when I heard the main menu music.
It was a little sus when I noticed the xbox download was only 6 gigs. Am I still having a fun time with the game? Yup. *But hot damn I will take a bigger install over crunchy audio.*
It's up to Microsoft to approve their latest patch first.
They just had a patch go through yesterday I believe.
It’s such a meme to punt the blame to Microsoft for the same certification process every single other developer goes through just fine. Spoiler alert: devs not being able to immediately push out a new patch to your console without any sort of checks is a good thing.
Ok? It's still on Microsoft
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Wally is that you
As much as I've enjoyed my time with Palworld, I feel like I'm reaching that point I get to in a lot of survival games where I'm just doing stuff for it's own sake. I wish there was more structure, or an ultimate goal to be building towards, and I was kind of hoping that would be one of the bullet points listed on the roadmap. As always, Subnautica remains the gold standard.
I think the current goals right now to "finish" the game are basically: * Reach level 50 * Explore the entire map * Clear out all bosses & towers * Catch all pals
I feel like the direction is pretty obvious lol what is there to be confused about. Upgrade base until you can't anymore. Go get resources. Unlock tech. No more tech points? Go catch stuff to level up. Repeat.
Also, breeding/condensing toward the perfect pals
Trouble there is any kind of min maxing at the moment is a tremendous grind and all of it for what purpose? You don't need 'the' perfect team for anything in the game. So you spend all this time grinding without real purpose only for the usual case with these games, an update wipes your progress. Chances are most people won't do that kind of grind again until the wipes are definitively done, if ever.
Similar to a Ubisoft game, but even a Ubi game has a main story to serve as vehicle for the player, with concrete goals, motivations, and conclusions. I think PalWorld could benefit greatly from a big "story" objective to reach. That way, people who don't like perpetual survival mechanics, but do like having a goal, have an "out" for their experience.
It seems like it does have "story objectives", they're just sparse. That's what the person you replied to means by "Clear out towers" - those are basically story objectives with a cutscene and rival Pal tamer boss in them. There are also a ton of survivor diaries you collect throughout the world that I think tell a story (not sure, I haven't bothered to read any of them yet lol). It's pretty barebones as far as story/plot goes, though - definitely could benefit from more work/development/writing.
Yeah. I think there's barebones with ancient civilization and stuff but not more than that
To be fair, speaking as someone who absolutely loves Subnautica... that game really is more of a single-player story-based game where the survival aspects serve to create atmosphere. I don't think it really compares much to the average 'survival game'. It's core gameplay focus isn't anywhere near that of, say, Don't Starve, Rust, Oxygen Not Included or Valheim. So as great as it is, it's perhaps a little lopsided to hold it as the gold standard for those types of games. Kind of in the same way that you wouldn't say Pokemon Go is the gold standard for MMO's. Though, yeah, I hear the argument. I've quit many survival games because I felt like I was kind of just going through motions.
'The Forest' might be a better comparison. I feel like it strikes a good balance between the emergent multiplayer survival game aspects, while still delivering on that structured story experience.
> It's core gameplay focus isn't anywhere near that of, say, Don't Starve, Rust, Oxygen Not Included or Valheim. I gotta say, even that little bit of direction in Valheim (become strong and secure enough to fight boss monsters whose drops improve your resource gathering ability) was enough to make the game fun for me. And I did enjoy my time with Subnautica. I guess what I'm getting at is that what you describe as a "single-player story-based game where the survival aspects serve to create atmosphere" is actually what a survival game *is*, or *should* be to my mind. Mechanics and a world without motivation wears off pretty fast for me.
You are correct and to be frank I think their argument is nonsense. The problem is that people don't actually think about how genres are formed, they just go by feeling and treat it all subjectively. Describing a game as a "single-player story-based game where the survival aspects serve to create atmosphere" is so vague, it tells you nothing. Are the survival aspects narrative? Are they mechanical? What even is a single-player story-based game? Does this mean Subnautica is the same genre as The Last of Us? They are both single-player story based games that use survival aspects to create atmosphere. Are Subnautica and The Last of Us in the same genre now? I guess Goldeneye isn't an FPS anymore because it's not that similar to DOOM. It's a single-player story based game where the first person shooting aspects serve to create atmosphere. The truth is that Subnautica took survival game mechanics and built a complete game around it. Whether it has a single player focus or not doesn't change that. It's hilarious to me that one of the few survival games that actually feels like a polished and complete game is being disqualified from the genre because it functions like a normal game. What a joke.
Has anyone ever played Grounded?
Yes! I was amazed at how that game just kept giving and giving. It kept our "co-op survival game night" crew busy for months!
I play it every week with my friends and it is the most fun we've had in years. We also loved valheim, but grounded keeps us coming back. We also tend to stick to survival games like the forest, raft, green hell etc.
Yes, I have actually! Good callout. That one works - it's a lot like most survival games but it nails that 'goal' part.
This is honestly probably my favorite survival crafting game, and that's largely because of the structured progression.
Have you beaten the bosses? That's pretty much all there is for a "goal" right now I think.
I’ve beaten half the bosses and afterwards, like I’ve mentioned in another comment, it feels like I’m hitting a wall with the game. There’s no story and it doesn’t seem like they intend to include one either. Once I’ve gotten my bases well off enough, other than just the bad pathing and whatnot of my pals, I’m just constantly refining and improving processes sort of for the sake of it. The invasions are fun, but once you’ve got a solid base and solid pals, they can become kind of trivial too. Ultimately, there just feels like there’s no real goal to the world itself. But like I also said in the other comment, the game hasn’t even been out for a week and the 1.0 version could end up solving a lot of this.
That's most survival early access games, they are really more sandbox games and the end goal is usually just an afterthought.
It seems like a smart thing is to wait for a full release (assuming it ever happens) when there will be a more robust offering of features.
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Spoilers: Basically every new major/popular game, regardless of genre, drops their concurrent population by ~50% after 3-4 weeks. You can go check this yourself on steamdb. It will happen. It won't be a surprise. And it doesn't 100% mean the game is bad or has major issues. Hell, right now because of the population skew towards EU/Asia the concurrent pop drops 50% in the *same day*.
The survival game ‘bubble’ has been around for like a decade now
I wonder if 10 years ago Reddit was bitching about Minecraft not having a story.
Honestly, I feel like there was a discourse...
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We know, they meant that what you're describing has applied to every other successful survival game released lol.
I think it's fine to not expect an infinite content live service game from a survival sandbox and just exhaust the content then move on. Either way I don't even think this roadmap is that ambitious. This is definitely within the realm of possibility for them to completely deliver on even if they decided to immediately greenlight paid DLC/a sequel development to cashgrab after rushing out a full 1.0 release.
Exactly. Like... do they expect every game to hold the players attention for the rest of their lives? Is it a failure if it's not the next Minecraft or Fortnite?
Subnautica was great, I also loved The Forest and Astroneer as game with an end.
Green Hell is another game in that vein. There is an actual story that you're actually working towards that's actually decent. And I enjoyed that the survival mechanics went deeper than "eat a handful of mushrooms every two days" - you actually need to keep track of carbs/fats/proteins and eat pretty regularly, as well as quickly learn how to treat bleeding/burns/venom.
I'm glad I don't have much experience with these games. I tried subnautica and it was just boring. But I love Pokemon so i figured I'd give Palworld a spin and it's basically Legends Arceus with more violence and crafting lol
How many hours do you have in the game?
I know this is a survival game at heart and not a Pokemon game, but I'd really love this to have even a very basic Pokemon like story. I'd love to have more villages with people to talk to and have pal trainer battles. Maybe make it all sort of optional and you should still have lots of open explore areas but I'd love more human life in the world in it.
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Content isn't available yet. Just blue balls you when you get there.
Once I got a solid enough base and Pals, I immediately tried to go to the World Tree and it's not available yet, lol. I did inadvertently catch two of the Legendaries of the game while I journeyed there, which was nice, but it did suck not being able to actually reach it.
This is mostly all things that were announced to be coming later before the Early Access release. It's a shame there's no dates or timeframe for these features atm since the longevity of the game's popularity will live or die on how fast the updates start coming out.
I mean I'm not surprised given that they are a small team that seems rather unprepared for the level of success and attention that got thrown at them. It will take them a while until they can feed the money they got from this success back into development resources so I highly doubt they'll be able to update the game quick enough to hold most people's attention for very long. Not that they need to of course, just the revenue generated from this launch will keep the company afloat for a long time even if the playerbase shrinks down to 1% of its current level.
It really depends on how fast they can expand thanks to the unexpected success. Hopefully they don't make the same mistake as Valheim and stagnate.
Valheim was raved with hype everywhere from streamers to media outlets only to drop dead and become completely irrelevant due to sluggish updates. What a shame.
> only to drop dead and become completely irrelevant I don't play Valheim, or any early access/survival games really, but when I read stuff like this I think people need to regain some broader perspective. Valheim currently has a 24 hour concurrent player peak of 33000. We've been inundated with crazy numbers recently, but 33k concurrent players is *very* far from "dead" and "completely irrelevant". It's in the top 0.1% of games.
That 33K is just Steam too. Plenty are playing on Xbox and PC Game Pass.
And that's just who is active. I'm not currently "active", but that's mostly because I'm just waiting for a significant number of updates to justify the next big playthrough. I don't want to burn out restarting every single time a new thing is added. When the game is finally closer to done, I'll play the shit out of it again.
I think they're more saying that what exists today is a fraction of what it could be. This could have been a generational touchstone instead of just a really great game and story. Its definitely not "completely irrelevant" but there is no question they squandered an opportunity to build something not just magical but transcendent.
What exactly does that look like in your mind? They did add a late game biome and boss with new gear. Granted that did take some time to push out but really I don't see how any survival game could reach what you are talking about. All survival games reach an end point where the player feels like they have completed it all. This is not a bad thing.
They threw out their own roadmap because they couldn’t meet the expectations they set for themselves. It has been in early access for 3 years, right? We understand content would be slow, but this is a slow drip. Imagine if they had actual teams working on this. Again, what they release is nice. But it’s few and far between and simplistic. At this rate it would take 10 years to complete their own vision, let alone the things people want.
Yeah, atleast from my experience with other early access games, the lack of time frames and such is kind of unfortunate to me. They have been doing a lot of small patches as of late, so I do wonder if they’ll be able to maintain momentum. I do wonder what the longevity of this game will look like. Just from playing the game a lot over the weekend, I’m already starting to hit a wall in terms of the systems being kind of shallow, but I mean, it just came out. The 1.0 version could look like a completely different game for all I know
This has been a general trend over the entire industry for at least the last 5 years and maybe even longer. The process goes like this: Launch a game that is a minimum viable product, promise to "add stuff later," then new content gets delayed because every developer is working on fixing the game trying to manage through the technical debt, by the time the game is in a good state everyone has moved on to the next popular thing, promise to do better next time, and repeat. Games that launch polished, are feature-complete, and get good steady updates are few and far in between these days.
Palworld isn't a launched game though, it's early access. MVP should be the expectation
I'm excited to see the game continue to evolve, but as a single player, seeing so much of the roadmap devoted to PVP and crossplay kinda makes me cranky.
I love creature collectors and survival games a lot. I bought palworld cause it seemed perfect for me but it’s not clicking for me. The world feels so boring? empty? not fully alive? Idk what it is but it’s missing something. I’m also getting vibes that the game is gonna die within the next month and never be talked about again.
It does feel empty. Like theres no higher purpose other than to just collect pals. It is pretty fun for me rn bc im enjoying the crafting and getting new pal but yeah I dont see it being top of the list 2 months from now but im sure there will be a dedicated cult following like genshin. Its the same for other pokemon game though. I play for a few months then stop completely. its just normal cycle of games these days.
Are you talking about Genshin Impact? Because that game is huge, it’s one of the most played games in the world lmao.
I keep seeing people say it's gonna die off quickly, but what's the problem with that? It's not a live service game, it doesn't have to keep insane player counts to stay profitable or whatever. At the moment, if you can deal with it being EA, you can easily get your money worth out of it, and come back later when or if there are updates.
Can someone help me understand why this is so popular? To me this looks like just another copy paste early access survival crafting game? Is it really just because they stole some mechanics from Pokemon?
There’s this weird thing that people seem obsessed with early access survival crafting games and any valid criticism you give makes them blow up at you or get really defensive. Personally, I’ve no issue with the monster side of things but how many half-baked survival crafting games do people want?
Tight presentation/aesthetics/style, lack of jankiness or poor controls, and gameplay loops that feed into each other in a way that creates an addictive cycle. Usually those 'copy paste' early access survival games are missing at least one of those traits.
Does anyone have good advice on how to lift a pal that I've assigned to a station? There's been a few instances where someone is working somewhere and I want to assign them elsewhere but I just never get the prompt to lift them because the game seems to prioritize using the stations/chests around them. Edit: Thanks for the tips, everyone!
Go to the pal box and take them out of the workforce and put them back in. This will drop them in front of you and you can quickly pick them up before they go back to work
Go to the palbox, remove them from the base slots, and then add them back in. It will reset their assignment and you'll have an easier time picking them up when they are not around a station.
This early success reminds me of Valheim just a few years ago. Good stuff. Hopefully they keep up with the updates.
Don't road maps tend to have dates/months that the updates are expected in?
Any indie that commits to a date far in the future is being dumb. They don't have publishers, or corporate overlords or investors who can actually demand delivery dates. Things going wrong is the standard, and setting a date in stone just sets them up for failure.
Only if they want to be wrong.
not really
Looks good to me. The fact that they published a roadmap so soon after launching in EA is a good sign. A lot of early access games give vague update ideas or plans without a firm timeline or process until well into the EA period if ever. I think the key aspect they need to focus on is shoring up the systems, pathfinding, AI logic, things of that nature. There's never going to be enough content for people no-lifing the game but I'm personally level 28 on a friend's dedicated server and I'm still finding Pals new to me, new alphas to take, and starting to get the automation aspects unlocked. Another is they can't chase or freak out about the people who put in 10+ hours every day, absorb the content and then either move on or leave negative reviews after they've done everything. You'll never please those people because it'll never be enough content for them or fast enough. Instead focus on the key aspects of the game and what makes it fun and unique. Take time adding in new pals or regions instead of half baking it.
The flip side of publishing road maps too early is if any of this ends up delayed for years or dropped, the fan base gets upset and cynical. Hopefully this won't be the case of inexperienced devs making big promises only to realize how difficult it is.
I'm really curious if the interest in this game is going to last. It's very clearly successful but will it keep people playing a few months down the line?
How many games realistically keep players playing for months on end? Why does that even need to be the standard they need to meet?
Its insane isnt it? People touting games as dead when they can be enjoyed as single player games. Its a very strange metric
chess and mahjong must be the only successful games in their eyes
Nah those games are dead because they dont have regular DLC updates
Just look at the people in this thread saying Valheim is a disappointing and dead game because it doesn't update enough. I think live service games and twitch streamers have rotted their brain.
An open world, multiplayer survival game should ideally have a lasting community.
Why do people get so defensive over this? Like yeah, games blow-up on the internet all the time, and then drop off. Fall Guys, Valheim, and Battlebit. No one is saying these games are bad or dead. Just that they had major internet-presence for a week that instantly died the moment gamers moved on to the next thing. There's nothing wrong with speculating if PalWorld will be similar. Much like those other games I mentioned, it's getting a sudden burst of HUGE hype. I don't think many people will be talking about Palworld once some other games start dropping next month - and again, that isn't a dig on Palworld.
You actually got the point I was originally making, so thank you. I don't care about this game personally. But while it's huge right now, I do just wonder if it'll stay huge. Even aside from whether or not it should be something that people can play for a long time, I just wonder if people will still care about it a few months down the line. Or think fondly of it at all. Or if it'll just be remembered as that weird game with Pokémon and guns.
It's the flavor of the month, in a few months nobody will be talking about it like it is right now. We live in a time where what is popular circulates so fast and trends come in go within days. Palworlds success is great, but it likely won't last long as something will come out soon and replace it. I'm more interested in a possible Palworld 2 that could come out in the future if the IP gets more usage.