• Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    240
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    4 months ago

    I bought palworld.
    i played it.
    i enjoyed it.
    i had enough.
    i stopped.
    there is nothing wrong with this sequence of events.

        • Crowfiend@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          15
          ·
          4 months ago

          Only twenty?!?? Man I play NMS like I play Sims or Minecraft. I put 100hrs in, get bored and don’t play for a while, when I come back there’s been at least one or two updates and I’m easily able to put back in another hundred with new/revised content.

          Not that it’s a competition, I’m just surprised cause of how much time I put into things. (x_x)

          • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            4 months ago

            There are only a few games in my steam library where I have 100 or more hours.

            • Crowfiend@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              4 months ago

              That’s crazy. Not even counting time spent on pirated versions of games, any game that I truly enjoy has at least 300hrs logged. I think my most played game is sitting at a little over 1100hrs because fuuuck am I a sucker for a game dev that respects and engages their players, but that’s a different story to tell.

              • DaTingGoBrrr@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                4 months ago

                Since you like great games and devs that care, have you played The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild?

              • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                4 months ago

                I mean just because I have 40-60 hours on games I like doesn’t mean I didn’t truly enjoy them. I played through the campaign and side quests and after a while life happened or I just got bored or played another game.

              • TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                4 months ago

                There are plenty of games that I loved that I only played for 30 or so hours. Hours aren’t everything

    • theneverfox@pawb.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      4 months ago

      I did that, then started up a new playthrough to check out the updates. That’s a sign of a good game IMO

      • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        4 months ago

        I’ve been eyeing that up since I’m a business management game kinda guy. But it depends on exactly how jank it is. Is it worth playing?

        • FiveMacs@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          4 months ago

          I personally love it, haven’t really felt a lot of jank tbh. AI seems to like walki g backwards before the ing around when they are in your shop but it all works.

          Tons of items, hiring ai to work actually works, they do their job and make money while you roam.

          Building takes some finesse but that’s mostly due to structural stuff. No floating bases basically.

          I’d say it’s totally worth playing, worst case steam refunds are available.

          Edit: I should add there’s an actual questing system too. Main and lots of side quests. Devs are very responsive in their discord too. Amazing ppl

  • Hildegarde@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    96
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    4 months ago

    whether a game is “dead” or not only really matters for online games with matchmaking. If a game requires a large playerbase to function, like an MMO or a matchmaking based competitive game, the game can die. This doesn’t apply to single player or small scale coop games.

    Anyone will get the full single player game experience even if they are the only one playing. If the game has multiplayer, like coop or vs play where the expectation is that you will find the person who you will play with, the game cannot die.

    Calling palworld a dead game is just as nonsensical as calling starfield dead because of a lower playercount. It literally doesn’t matter for this kind of game.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      4 months ago

      At most it matters to have a healthy player count to get quality guides/videos/forums, which don’t always matter, but are nice to have. Palworld still has a pretty good base for that though.

      • rekorse@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        4 months ago

        You dont need a big base for that, just a small one that likes to dig deep and document and talk about it.

        I feel like snowrunner would be a good example but maybe thats too mainstream even.

  • QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    58
    ·
    4 months ago

    Really good article discussing the unfortunate trend where

    a lot more people are trying to push gamers to play games that aren’t really designed to be played for months on end.

    -Buckley

    Some other great quotes in there, the whole thing is worth a read.

  • Corhen@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    59
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    4 months ago

    Strongly agree, palworld didn’t need to sustain hundreds of thousands of players for years. Not every game needs to be factorio. It did what it set out to.

    I bought it, played it for a while, and moved on. nothings wrong.

    • ashok36@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      4 months ago

      Speaking of factorio, it is the example of “If you want your game to have true replay value, the best thing you can do is embrace the modding community”.

      Factorio made mods first class citizens and reaped the rewards.

  • Tattorack@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    49
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    4 months ago

    This whole “dead game” rhetoric seems to stem from the sane idea present in capitalism that something must be constantly growing.

    People have bought Palworld, and they’ve made their money back and then some. And despite this not being a “live service” type game, it’s still receiving updates and still has active players.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      4 months ago

      Pretty sure Stardew Valley got more post launch content than many actual live service games…

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      4 months ago

      People have bought Palworld, and they’ve made their money back and then some

      Yes, but they didn’t sell themselves out to Microsoft or EA at their peak in order to hook into the Endless Invasive Advertisement Machine, so they’ll never be a true success story like Origin Systems, Westwood Studio, or Mythic Entertainment.

    • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      4 months ago

      Seriously, and I still want to play it. Like every other games that seems continuous improvement, there will be an active and dedicated player base for it.

      I hate these new trends of “Oh, that game came out last month, it’s too old now”.

      I plan on playing again when it’s further fleshed out. It’ll be super fun.

      • Tattorack@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        4 months ago

        I haven’t bought it myself yet. When Palworld was all the hype on my discord server I noticed it still was incredibly jank. Clipping, pathing, physics, AI, those sorts of things.

        If the issues get polished I’ll probably buy it. But the devs seem to be doing quite well so far.

  • Rinox@feddit.it
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    39
    ·
    4 months ago

    Checked SteamDB, it says the online players are between 20k and 50k, and it’s summer (meaning everyone is out and about).

    How does one take these numbers and proclaim a game dead? It’s like 30th in the overall Steam Chart for number of online players.

    • frezik@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      24
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      Line must go up. If line doesn’t go up, it’s dead. It can’t go down, and it can’t level off, either.

      It’s an unhealthy approach to anything. Things will level off eventually. Palworld’s initial hype was never going to last, but if it settled into a nice plateau that let the devs pay their bills, that’s fine. The giants of the industry consider such a thing to be failure, but fuck them. Players shouldn’t buy into that mindset.

    • Nosavingthrow@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      4 months ago

      I think a lot of people are preoccupied with the optics of not being HUGE and receiving frequent updates or losing a lot of players. Especially people who grew up with games that didn’t really have a lot of competition for their time or were decent jumps over their competitors. Halo 2 came out, and EVERYONE was playing. There wasn’t any real competitor. Nowadays, survival crafters are a dime-a-doze.

    • 5too@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      Dead? Really? Cuz Portal and Minecraft are my kids’ top two games!

      • astropenguin5@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        I think they mostly mean dead as in not many people playing them consistently, but that’s of course due to the fact that they are quite old and don’t have a ton of replayability. (In regards to portal and half-life.)

        Though I’d also argue that they are far from dead in spirit, as they are still very well regarded and thought of, and still talked about quite a bit. And there is of course always new people discovering or playing them since they are such classics.

        Minecraft is still of course alive and well, for me personally it is my single most played game, and I still play it from time to time, albeit primary modded.

  • Wilzax@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    35
    ·
    4 months ago

    Palworld is a dormant game, much like Terraria, that will spur to life with content updates as it approaches completion.

  • ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    28
    ·
    4 months ago

    1.5 million concurrent players with a 99% drop off is STILL THOUSANDS OF CONCURRENT PLAYERS for an indie game.

    The only games that can’t work with a playerbase in “only” 4 digits are MMOs. Otherwise there’s no excuse.

    Same thing is said about Helldiver’s 2,and there were 60k online players in game last week on a weekday. That’s exceedingly healthy, especially when games run most of the infrastructure peer to peer anyways!

    I hate the narrative, and I wish more games supported private servers for this same reason. There is no reason why a good game that failed to become the next Fortnite shouldn’t still enjoy a long life as a cult favorite for decades.

  • jaxiiruff@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    4 months ago

    Im convinced the people saying Palworld is a dead game are dumbass pokemid fans angry theres not a content update every month.

    Yet I check every now and then and the game still has like 30k players on steam! thats way better than a shitty live service disaster like Multiversus could ever hope for!

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    People are calling it a dead game because it was a flavor of the month random meme game that happened to get wildly popular and was then left in the toy trunk after its novelty wore off.

    When people are calling it ‘dead game’, they do not mean it in the older sense of either a server reliant multiplayer game that has no more players, or that its so old and buggy or incompatible with modern hardware and is not being developed any more, such that the game is unplayable.

    They mean it in the sense of ‘i got bored of it and so did almost everyone else.’

    Everyone heard ‘Pokemon with Guns!’, thought this was amusing, then played yet another open world survival crafting game with a gimmick.

    • Donut@leminal.space
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      4 months ago

      multiplayer game that has no more players

      ‘i got bored of it and so did almost everyone else.’

      Sounds like the same thing to me, unless you mean the servers would be down for the multiplayer game and nobody can play it anymore.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        4 months ago

        Basically yes, the last part of what you said:

        A game that basically cannot be played without the existence of servers which are typically too complex or too expensive or outright banned from an average user with a decent internet connection acting as the server, that is a game that is ‘truly dead’, a game that is not really playable in single player whose multiplayer infrastructure no longer exists.

        You can host a few people on your own minecraft or valheim or palworld server, or you can play the whole game single player, and the vast majority of gameplay systems and experiences work in single player.

        Compared to say an MMO whose servers are just down, a live service game whose live service is now discontinued, a massive multiplayer fps that just no longer has any dedicated servers, etc.

        Palworld is still a playable game getting updates from the devs and its multiplayer capacity still works.

        It just is no longer wildly popular, which is again due to its nature of being yet another flavor of the week or month for twitch, yet another open world survival craft game with a goofy gimmick.

        It is only dead in the sense of the collective zeitgeist moving on to something else once they got bored of it.

        Popular gaming lingo does conflation or concepts with totally different meanings all of the time.

        We’ve got ‘dead’ as in unpopular or less popular versus ‘dead’ as in literally unplayable due to lack of infrastructure.