Anyone who is interested in this game, but wonders where the actual gameplay is, should familiarize yourselves with an innovative game mod that is shaking things up in the game world.  I'm simply going to post a link to the thread on mmorpg.com, and a link to a recent interview at PC Gamer with the Day Z mod developer. 

Watch a few videos and imagine how much fun Xsyon would be if it had this emergent and dangerous gameplay factor rolled in with all of the great sandbox features.  In my opinion, Xsyon could learn a lot of lessons from Day Z to become a much better game, and not just a construction sandbox with no sense of purpose.

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/351384/page/1

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/05/16/day-z-interview-how-zombies-arma-2-created-gamings-best-story-machine/

This is all we talked about in vent the other night playing DayZ.

The Xsyon developer missed the mark for sure.

That game had the greatest potential of 2011, but it never had a point/goal, it was nothing more than a simulator basically....so it failed misserably .:(

I cannot imagine how good Xsyon would have been if it had the structure/goals of DayZ...

:D

Originally posted by BigCountry

This is all we talked about in vent the other night playing DayZ.

 

The Xsyon developer missed the mark for sure.

 

That game had the greatest potential of 2011, but it never had a point/goal, it was nothing more than a simulator basically....so it failed misserably .:(

 

I cannot imagine how good Xsyon would have been if it had the structure/goals of DayZ...

:D

Day Z is hardcore to the maximum, but even if you toned it down and moulded it a bit for Xsyon, it would be awesome.  The problem with Xsyon is that there is no real danger element. The developer expected people would just want to run around and fight each other for basically no reason, but he was wrong.  What Day Z tells me is that resources in Xsyon should be much more scarce so people will have to fight over them, and the PvP element was simply not harsh enough. 

It seems to me that the developer could fairly easily take the Day Z ideas and implement them and potentially save this game.  The easiest start would be to make mobs much more dangerous, throw in some mutants or something, and make resources more scarce.  From there they could start adding a lot of other ideas.

Most of the comments I read here, and exactly how I feel about this game, is what you said.  The crafting and stuff is awesome, but there is no "survival" aspect to it.  No sense of danger, or man vs man, group vs group with a compelling reason behind it.

The other part of  Day Z that works is perma-death, but you could come to similar gameplay by making a fairly harsh death penalty instead of permadeath.  The way these games are played now, no one cares of they die.  They suicide to fast travel, and they run suicide missions because they just don't care.  You can't have that in a survival game.  It is antithetical.

Originally posted by MindTrigger

Most of the comments I read here, and exactly how I feel about this game, is what you said.  The crafting and stuff is awesome, but there is no "survival" aspect to it.  No sense of danger, or man vs man, group vs group with a compelling reason behind it.
 

Agreed.

Leave the full looting intact (it was full looting when I played Xsyon, except for starter tools) and that's perma enough for sure.

I am pretty sure the owner (Jordy) of Xsyon has checked out though. He maintains that game only for a hobby it seems. He made enough money up front for profit, then he makes enough money off subs to support it, since his team is all outsourced cheaply overseas. And that's about as far as that game will ever go unfortunately without any further design, motivation...

What we need to do is sit Jordy down in front of a PC and have him experience Day Z. That might motivate him to take his game where it needs to be....

:D

Oh and keep this thread bumped. Maybe he, or someone on the Xsyon forums will see it. :D

I read that Day Z has had almost 50k people playing it.  That has to smoke anything that Jordy has now.  And this is from a bare-bones and buggy FPS engine mod with few persistant world features. Jordy could have a killer little niche business going there if he just made some tweaks that weren't related to crafting.

Well the Arma II engine is pretty georgous though on full settings. That helps.

:D

Originally posted by MindTrigger

I read that Day Z has had almost 50k people playing it.  That has to smoke anything that Jordy has now.  And this is from a bare-bones and buggy FPS engine mod with few persistant world features. Jordy could have a killer little niche business going there if he just made some tweaks that weren't related to crafting.

Correction:  they are well over 100k now.

The game needs a total tear down and rebuild.  This developer has his hands full with the horrible "roma victor" game engine...the same game engine that played a part in that game going bust.  Hes devoting too much resources to fixing a broke engine rather than pumping out content.

Its been a while since i last played (one of the lucky few to get a full refund)..I left the game in this state:

Combat was terrible, weapons and armor didnt have any effect other than weapons slowing your attacks.  I was a naked puncher and would drop people using weapons (had my preorder weapon on me but never used it)

There was no PVE combat, other than an occasional bear or deer, but those were VERY rare and not worth looking for.

All structures and terraformed defenses were visual only.  Why defend a safe zone?

And finally the community detested PVP in any form so it was either make them mad and pvp since not much else to do in a tribe (it was all made already ect) or fill countless baskets with stuff that had no use.

Also the client was unstable and preformed poorly..and not by todays standards of less than optimal is bad...it was nearly unplayable.

So its been like a year or two...

Did they add a combat system, do weapons and armor do anything other than gimp your attack (no skills?)

Did they add pve mobs...not just nature mobs that were rare moblie resource nodes?

Did jordy decide on a pve or pvp game?  Are people still defending safe zones with terrafromed walls and moats?

My guess is that not much has changed other than possible stability due to the fact that under 50 people are probably on at any given time.

The concepts behind DayZ are what's missing from most of the video games industry, these days.

I am seeing a aweful lot of, "should've, could've, why didnt he" crap being spewed around.  Not to say DayZ is not a good mod, but it is just that a mod.  I love Arma2, DayZ, and even that new WWII stand alone based on the Arma2 engine.  But I also like Mount & Blade Warband and the new Napolean mod for it.  

Lets look at DayZ, it has a large open world.   But it lacks terraforming, and actual building, which Xsyon has.   But Xsyon lacks real thrill, or excitement which DayZ has.   DayZ is a ZOMBIE APOC game, Xsyon is a POST-APOC game.  

That alone is like comparing Ultima Online to Eve Online.  Sure they both are sandboxes, but one has space ships and the other has horses.   (being a bit extreme here for those of you who are to thick to get that.)

Honestly I would love Xsyon to be "harder".   But I doubt that is going to happen.  

Oh and Xsyon isnt based on the same game engine as Roma Victor, Redbedlam owned that engine.   

Honestly I am tired of all the Zombie shooters, which is all DayZ is, or the fantasy building games, which is what Xsyon is.  I want a Wild west, or a Frontier style game set in the 1870s US.    That or a decent medieval non-fantasy sandbox game like Alba which may never see the light of day.

Originally posted by Hodo

I am seeing a aweful lot of, "should've, could've, why didnt he" crap being spewed around.  Not to say DayZ is not a good mod, but it is just that a mod.  I love Arma2, DayZ, and even that new WWII stand alone based on the Arma2 engine.  But I also like Mount & Blade Warband and the new Napolean mod for it.  

 

Lets look at DayZ, it has a large open world.   But it lacks terraforming, and actual building, which Xsyon has.   But Xsyon lacks real thrill, or excitement which DayZ has.   DayZ is a ZOMBIE APOC game, Xsyon is a POST-APOC game.  

That alone is like comparing Ultima Online to Eve Online.  Sure they both are sandboxes, but one has space ships and the other has horses.   (being a bit extreme here for those of you who are to thick to get that.)

Honestly I would love Xsyon to be "harder".   But I doubt that is going to happen.  

 

Oh and Xsyon isnt based on the same game engine as Roma Victor, Redbedlam owned that engine.   

 

Honestly I am tired of all the Zombie shooters, which is all DayZ is, or the fantasy building games, which is what Xsyon is.  I want a Wild west, or a Frontier style game set in the 1870s US.    That or a decent medieval non-fantasy sandbox game like Alba which may never see the light of day.

What I feel is missing from Xsyon is a *reason* to be building.  I played the game, and I loved the building sim aspect of it.  I love the crafting and gathering, and the social environment that only a sandbox game can provide.

What was missing from the game was a sense of the environment being harsh, dangerous, and deadly.  Sure, there were some player killers running around in the mountains, but you could completely avoid them if you wanted to.  There weren't even really many creatures to fear.

If Xsyon was my game, I would make some immediate changes.  The first would be to make the game feel more like a fight for survival than it does now.  I would make resources more scarce, and I would make sure the players have to come together once in a while to fight over *some* important resources.  Not all of them, but some of them.  Day Z accomplishes this by putting most of the resources and loot in the cities where you have to deal with more zombies and bandits (player killers) to get the things you need to survive.

The other thing I would do immediately is add more creatures to the game that are dangerous, including some mutants or zombies or whatever you want to call them.  In Xsyon there is no feeling of having to look over your shoulder, travel in groups for survival, or the feeling that your home is a bit of a safe zone from the harsh world around you.

I don't think any of these things would be a big deal for the developer to add to the game, but they would go a VERY long way toward making the game feel more like a fight for survival.  Right now, it's a building simulator with a few bad guys and a few mobs running around.  The main reason people quit the game was because there is no "game".   You don't have to use zombies, or turn Xsyon into a zombie game.  The gameplay ideas are the same no matter what types of mobs and lore you want to use.

As for Day Z, it's not the end-all-be-all of gaming, but what it does is remind players and developers that there are plenty of good ideas out there yet to be tried.  Its a reminder to MMO developers that their games need to start taking some risk, and start putting some of the gameplay back in the players hands rather than feeding them story-driven content from somebody else's story.

Originally posted by MindTrigger
*snip*

 

I agree that Xsyon lacks a reason to do things, other than, hey look I did it.   The thing is some other posters here, seem to have this idea of turning Xsyon into another Zombie apocolypse game, which quite frankly I am tired of.   Between the Walking Dead (great show), The Resident Evil franchise (movies and games), 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Shaun Of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, World War Z, Left for Dead 1 and 2, the four thousand Zombie mods for Battlefield, Arma, COD, and any other game that has a shooter element to it.   This is a cow that has been milked almost as bad as the WWII games of the early and mid 2000s. 

Originally posted by Hodo

Originally posted by MindTrigger
*snip*

 

I agree that Xsyon lacks a reason to do things, other than, hey look I did it.   The thing is some other posters here, seem to have this idea of turning Xsyon into another Zombie apocolypse game, which quite frankly I am tired of.   Between the Walking Dead (great show), The Resident Evil franchise (movies and games), 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Shaun Of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, World War Z, Left for Dead 1 and 2, the four thousand Zombie mods for Battlefield, Arma, COD, and any other game that has a shooter element to it.   This is a cow that has been milked almost as bad as the WWII games of the early and mid 2000s. 

There really has yet to be a solid zombie survival game though. Most zombie games have been the one man army zombie slaying god style. There have been very few gritty realistic zombie games that focus on actual survival.

Originally posted by TruthXHurts

Originally posted by Hodo

Originally posted by MindTrigger
*snip*

 

I agree that Xsyon lacks a reason to do things, other than, hey look I did it.   The thing is some other posters here, seem to have this idea of turning Xsyon into another Zombie apocolypse game, which quite frankly I am tired of.   Between the Walking Dead (great show), The Resident Evil franchise (movies and games), 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Shaun Of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, World War Z, Left for Dead 1 and 2, the four thousand Zombie mods for Battlefield, Arma, COD, and any other game that has a shooter element to it.   This is a cow that has been milked almost as bad as the WWII games of the early and mid 2000s. 

There really has yet to be a solid zombie survival game though. Most zombie games have been the one man army zombie slaying god style. There have been very few gritty realistic zombie games that focus on actual survival.

Xyson already has a lore to its fundamental breakdown of society, i really dont think it needs 'zombies'. however, i do agree with you that the game needs an 'antagonist'. now this could just be nature, adding more elements that affect player health and well being, or just simply natural events that push players to forge ties and create a means of living with or through the event.

whatever is used, the concept of an antagonist should be approached, but carefully. antagonist could quite easily lead to themepark elements, something which that game has purposefully eschewed.

Originally posted by TruthXHurts

 

There really has yet to be a solid zombie survival game though. Most zombie games have been the one man army zombie slaying god style. There have been very few gritty realistic zombie games that focus on actual survival.

The same could be said about Wild West style games, what Red Dead Redemption is the only one and it isnt even a MMORPG or really that great, its a COD with a Western theme.  

There is no really good true medieval MMORPGs either, sure there are thousands of Fantasy games, but no true medieval ones with no magic, elves, orcs, or dwaves or something like them.    Mount & Blade does not count, because its not a MMORPG.

There is 2 maybe 3 Sandbox to sandbox'ish space games.  Eve, being at the forefront, then you have Vendetta Online, and Black Prophacy. 

Futuristic sandbox to sandboxish MMORPGs, well there are maybe 3 or 4 of those, Face of Mankind, which was on the market when Jesus was a gamer.   Anarchy Online, which was played by Zeus and the other gods on Olympus.  And Perpetuum Online which is Eve on a distant moon just not as good, or as polished. 

And coming soon, the "horror" MMORPG market, The Secret World, and World of Darkness.  One I feel is getting rushed to beat the other, but will just turn into another average MMO, with the same gameplay cues, as thousands of others but will have new skins.   And the WoD is still to far out to tell, hope its good, but not puttin money on it.

So again I ask why do we need to make Xsyon which has an astablished lore, and story, into a zombie survival game?

Originally posted by Hodo

Originally posted by MindTrigger
*snip*

 

I agree that Xsyon lacks a reason to do things, other than, hey look I did it.   The thing is some other posters here, seem to have this idea of turning Xsyon into another Zombie apocolypse game, which quite frankly I am tired of.   Between the Walking Dead (great show), The Resident Evil franchise (movies and games), 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Shaun Of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, World War Z, Left for Dead 1 and 2, the four thousand Zombie mods for Battlefield, Arma, COD, and any other game that has a shooter element to it.   This is a cow that has been milked almost as bad as the WWII games of the early and mid 2000s. 

Actually if you read the lore it is exactly that.

Only..the look of the game is nature survivalist

And they never added the pve mobs which were suppose to be mutants ect

and they never added a reason for making those items other than making it.

This was at the heart of this games origional population surge then bust.  There was no direction with half the players assuming it would be a pve collect and craft game and the other half expecting a darkfall style sandbox with less of a focus on just pvp.

It ended up turning off both crowds since it fails to provided a basic game, and the developer kept trying to appease people who wanted a real pvp sandbox and players who wanted no pvp.  For instance, since resources are NOT scarce and items have no use it would have made sense to allow tribe seige and destruction, but to appease the pve only players they made tribal areas safe zones, so there was no need to make any structure more than once, terraform defenses were for looks and people just crafted and stockpiled stuff...on top of that you could do most your resourcing within safe areas  meaning pvp was boring and pve was boring (no pve combat unfortuately)

So you had bored players in a buggy game with no direction and "stuff to do" was suppose to be in game in 9 month (a year later and nothing still)

Look im the first one to support a game like this but in the 2 years its been "launching" nothing much that matters has been done, just a lundry list of things that dont address the main issue and that is the actual game is pointless and boring from both the pvp player and the pve crafter standpoint.

The crafting system and the abundant resources scream for the need for people to break and destroy, it compliments eachother so well...instead you have stockpile and look at while the pvpers roam the world looking for someone to actually leave their safe area so they can have a form of combat to enjoy...and those looking for pve combat have to search for moble resource node animals that need to reproduce to respawn (they go extinct untill the server crashes) making the hunt boring as well.

But yeah this was suppose to be a zombie apocolypse sandbox...you wouldnt know it if you dont read the back story...they failed pretty hard creating that atmosphere...feels more like nature survivalist...even their ruble piles, which are terrain hills with diffrent textures applied, as very lacking...i mean it should be a pike that depletes rather than changing the tile on the hill from "garbage" to  "dirt"...and even then most players wont even know its a rubble pile untill told since it doesnt resemble wreckage (and theres no ruins or anything of the sort, which is strange for a game apparently occuring a year after the world ends in fire and brimstone)

In short, this game should have been a mod, it wouldnt have terraforming if it was but it would be a playable and enjoyable game perhaps.

On the topic of what is missing from Xsyon...

What is missing from Xsyon is a vision. Jordi has clearly lost interest in this project since it's inception, and it shows, since there hasn't been a clear vision for quite some time. It's a bad sign when even the lead dev can't get excited enough about new content to actually explain how it will work, or why it will work. The updates read as if they're written for worried investors, repeatedly parading every minor peice of work, and frequently trying to justify a lack of progress. The  Q&A thread is just sad now, because even after mulling over questions for weeks, most of his answers still boil down to vague "yes", "no", and "maybe"s. It is less a Q&A about the game, but rather a Q&A of what Jordi dreams about for Xsyon. "Yes, we would like to add that feature after X, Y, and Z, are in", "Yes we would like to add that feature in the distant future", "Yes that feature is coming up, but the details won't be ironed out until we start on it". That's a dream, not a vision.

On the topic of lore...

Xsyon has some insanely vague lore written on the About page. We're told that "the world draws its inspiration from history, mythology, and prophecies of the Apocalypse", and that "The leaders of the new world, under the guidance of the reinvigorated once forgotten gods, have hidden traces of the scientific progress that led to the devastation of the earth".

What happened in the Apocalypse?

Who are the leaders of the new world? Why did they take guidance from the once forgotten gods?

Who are the once forgotten gods? Why did they want to hide the cause of apocalypse?

It doesn't matter, apparently. There is no trace of history, mythology, or prophecies of the apocalypse in the game whatsoever. What we are left with is that Xsyon is a game that takes place around Lake Tahoe, where some apocalypse happened, and then some dudes came and cleaned everything up for us, though they made sure to leave behind plenty of scrap metal, plastic, and cloth. And now we....

Survive? No. Everything is plentiful and, if you do happen to die, you are revived at some totem, for some reason.

Explore? No. Everything was cleaned up by the leaders of the new world, remember? All that remains is pristine nature, except that some ground is now a bottomless pit of very specific garbage. Want to explore the mysterious green mist? You can't, it's unavoidably lethal.

Live? Yup. Your goal, now that you've survived the apocalypse, is to live. Build yourself a nice little shack, stock up on raw fish and food, and enjoy life.

Simply put, the current world of Xsyon restricts the game from properly functioning. There is a reason why people tend to not make games about simple things like "Living around Lake Tahoe", or historical medieval settings, like Hodo so desperately lusts for in this thread -- the game would either need to break it's rules, or it wouldn't be able to implement necessary systems. For example, players of Xsyon were getting upset that they couldn't effeciently trade with others, so the GMs started hosting trade fairs and offering teleportation services to and from them. How does THAT fit in the lore? It doesn't, he broke the rules to implement global trade, something that makes no sense in the world of Xsyon. Another example is safe zones around totems. What is it that makes totems offer invulnerability? No explanation, Jordi just broke the rules to implement a way for players to be safe, something that makes no sense in the world of Xsyon.

We also have some cases where being unwilling to "break the rules" has caused gameplay issues. Creature breeding sounds interesting on paper, but it has been a complete flop in-game, and a huge sink of dev-time as they continually try to fix it with tweeks. Jordi could "break the rules" and implement a more traditional and simple spawning system, but he would rather drive this game into the ground than give up on his favourite feature -- animal sex.

Originally posted by Hodo

So again I ask why do we need to make Xsyon which has an astablished lore, and story, into a zombie survival game?

The problem is the "established" lore and story is no more than a vague back-story with virtually no connection to the actual gameplay of Xsyon.  Xsyon is "Lake Tahoe without technology" which gives us game mechanics that are just as simple and uninspired as the setting. You need interesting things, like magic and technology and lore, in order to give explanation to game mechanics that can be more creative.

By the way, revenants are zombies... Xsyon will be a zombie "survival" game whenever Jordi finally implements that.

Originally posted by Mirokata

Originally posted by Hodo

So again I ask why do we need to make Xsyon which has an astablished lore, and story, into a zombie survival game?

The problem is the "established" lore and story is no more than a vague back-story with virtually no connection to the actual gameplay of Xsyon.  Xsyon is "Lake Tahoe without technology" which gives us game mechanics that are just as simple and uninspired as the setting. You need interesting things, like magic and technology and lore, in order to give explanation to game mechanics that can be more creative.

By the way, revenants are zombies... Xsyon will be a zombie "survival" game whenever Jordi finally implements that.

Its the Emberverse books come to a game.    "When technology fails, electricity stops, gunpowder goes quite, what happens next."