A few weeks ago, we posted a survey on our Discord asking for player input on how you think death mechanics should work in survival games. The goal was to use this information to help create a death mechanic system for Forever Skies with the information the community gave us.
The answers you gave have been invaluable to us in the last few weeks of development. Thanks to your help, we are currently in the middle of developing a death system you will find challenging, but will also fair and enjoyable…hopefully!
Regardless of the difficulty, after getting your airship, if the player dies above the dust, they will respawn on the airship having lost stats such as health, food, water etc. However, based on the difficulty level, there is an extra layer of punishment in the shape of lost equipment and resources!
Please note, that these difficulty levels & descriptions are all subject to change before release!
Easy - Stats affected, no item loss.
Medium - Stats affected, some materials lost, no vital items that would harm progress.
Hard - Stats affected, all items in inventory & quick slots lost.
Perma - Yep, perma-death will also be a mode you can choose. Either load a manual save or go back to the start.
Death screen first concept *subject to change*
As we mentioned, these decisions were made based on your feedback in the survey! Below are the results of the survey.
The survey was divided into two sections. The first section was all about trying to understand each player's likes and dislikes about survival games to establish a baseline. The second section was specifically about death mechanics in games.
Section One
To begin, we asked you to tick your favourite survival games from a long list of titles. You were able to select as many answers as you liked. Here are the results:
1. Subnautica 78%
2. No Mans Sky 62%
3. Subnautica Below Zero 54%
4. Raft 42%
5. The Forest 35%
Unsurprisingly, Subnautica was the most popular title. 78% of you clicked that box!
In question 2, we tried to determine on average, how long players spent on any one survival game. It turns out that the majority of you put in over 200 hours per title, taking 39% of the vote!
1. Over 200 hrs 39%
2. 50-100 hrs 30%
3. 100-200 hrs 25%
4. Less than 50 hrs 6%
To close off section 1, we asked you about your favourite game modes and mechanics. 45% of you told us that your favourite feature was base building, (we don't blame you!) followed by exploration at 36%. A whopping 71% of you told us that standard survival mode was your favourite game mode from the list provided, and story mode took 27% of the vote in second place.
Section 2
In section 2, we asked which game had your favourite death system. More than one could be selected and yet again, Subnautica received the most votes.
1. Subnautica 54%
2. No Mans Sky 27%
3. Raft 18%
After reading through players comments, it became evident that many were happy to lose items on death, but with a chance to retrieve them by returning to where they died.
Here are your results for games with the worst death mechanics. Again, players could choose more than one. Interestingly, Raft made it onto the list for both best AND worst death systems.
1. ICARUS 15%
2. Raft 14%
3. Rust 13%
It appears that Raft's death mechanic has a split opinion among players. Some liked it, some hated it! It’s clear by looking at the results, that this was down to if the individual liked a tougher punishment or not.
A few more quick facts you told us in the survey:
- 60% of you believed losing items upon death is a good punishment and the other 40% of you did not. But this was with the caveat that you were able to retrieve your items after death as mentioned before.
- 70% of you want to see a modern auto-save system. 9% of players wanted to see a classic manual load and save system.
- A definitive 93% of you believe that you should be able to revive your teammates in a survival game multiplayer session.
- 33% of players believe falling from your airship or a location should result in a "Game Over" screen. Another 33% believe you should auto-respawn at the airship having lost some health. The final 33% believe your fate should be something different...like a parachute!
Finally, thank you for all of your responses regarding how you want the death mechanics to work in Forever Skies! Here are a few of the responses we received.
What's your opinion on the direction we’re taking with death mechanics? What did you think of the results of the survey? Let us know in the comments!
Have a great day, folks!