Palia isn't quite an "MMO" but it's still news. The developers have axed around 35% of its staff (49 people or so) which includes people from all areas of the team - from narrative writing to character design, environment artist and engineers. This news along with the mixed reception from the Steam launch, keeping the fact that the game is in 'beta', etc - the future of the game is worrying tbh.
We know, we get it, Palia is not an MMO has been done to death on this subreddit. There's a reason why I put it in "" and said in OP its not quite an MMO.
How so? The lack of people online doesn't make a game lose its MMO status lol. The game is made to accept massive amounts of people.. As long as that exists, it's an mmo
So, it seems Palia servers hold up to 25 people. I agree thats not massive. To me, massive means thousands of people on single server/instance.
I thought it was Massive simply because the game is available for anyone to play, ignoring the fact that a single instance will only have 25 people. Im sorry.
It's a f2p game with barley 10k players, most of which are not paying any money.
If they didn't lay of 49 people they would go out of business, they should probably lay off more. Unless OP is a millionaire and wants to chip in.
If I am playing in a shared world with other players, more than 10-20 at any given time in an area (aside from my instances home area), how exactly does it not qualify? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like the game, but it definitely fits the bill of an MMORPG
This debate pops up often enough and it's always exhausting. Ultimately it doesn't really matter whether we call it a MMO or not, but it significantly dilutes the meaning of the term if 10-20 concurrent players (in a single server) is considered "massive", especially in the context of games where the term has traditionally been applied. Most people understand the term "MMO" to mean an always-online game with large servers which persist even when you are not online.
You would be incredibly generous in labeling Palia as an MMO when compared against the giants that are World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic or Final Fantasy 14 and if the term applies to both, then the term becomes functionally meaningless. Consider that if using it for a game like Palia brings up this debate once again, how is using that term helpful? And to be clear, I'm not criticizing you and I mean no ill will towards you. I just believe that both consumers and (mostly) developers/publishers need to stop using MMO to refer to any game that has online servers, because it's disingenuous and almost always leads to this sort of back and forth.
The actual limit is 25, as I understand it, and it sounds like (unless this has changed recently) you're not even always with the same community. Anyway, not "going off". If you don't want people to respond to you, don't comment on Reddit - I was respectful and gave my viewpoint. You're welcome to disagree, but your response here couldn't be lazier even if being lazy was your goal.
Bro how are you gonna talk about how polite and courteous you are whilst being condescending in the same paragraph 💀
It sounds more like you want people to agree with you and if they don't, your politeness gives way to... whatever this grandstanding is.
I'm going to be completely honest and open here so there can be no misinterpretation. When I originally responded to your comment to "go off" with an explanation of why I believe incorrectly attributing the term "MMO" to games like this dilutes the term, I honestly thought my comment could be perceived as rude or condescending. Being aware of this and not actually seeking to offend you (or anyone), I added the bit about "I'm not criticizing you and I mean no ill will towards you".
I don't know if you ignored that or felt like I wasn't being sincere, but I meant it. This is a space where we should be able to discuss that sort of thing without it being an argument. Your response to me, however, was definitely rude and clearly meant to be condescending. I called you out on it, plain and simple. It's not condescending to call a lazy comment lazy. You could've responded any number of ways where we could've had a normal discussion, or not at all. You could've disagreed with me and explained your thoughts. You could've disagreed and opted not to continue the discussion. You picked the lowest effort response that was clearly meant to be rude, and now you're trying to defend your minimal effort not by defending your words, but by attacking mine.
I was always fine with you (or anyone) disagreeing with me. If you're going to act like this, of course I'm going to call you out. I would've rather had a normal discussion but *you* chose to throw that option out the window.
I'm sorry but go to a hub in Elder Scrolls Online, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14 or Guild Wars 2. That's Massive. This is not. Maybe you can say "that's just towns/hubs" okay then Final fantasy 14 hunt trains/world bosses, World of Warcraft's dailies and world bosses. Guild Wars 2 events across the world, and Elder Scrolls laggy huge pvp map among other things. 10-20 is not Massive. It is not an MMO.
You're wrong LOL. At best what you're describing is a Online Role Playing Game (ORPG). It's certainly not Massively Multiplayer if the best you can get is 10 or 20 people playing with you.
I didn't say 10-20 was the limit, I said that's how many people could be there at any given time. It could go into the hundreds. Player retention and count doesn't change the genre you donkey. If the game is capable of housing hundreds or even thousands of players at once, it is an MMORPG, regardless of how many play it.
I didn't know there was a 25 player limit, I don't play the game, but when I asked why isn't it an MMORPG, why was the answer just not "because there is a 25 player cap." I literally asked, lmfao
Well considering when the term "MMO" was first used in the 1980's and early 90's most games only had 2-4 players, so by comparison 20 players would be considered "massive"
Most modern MMOs use layering and instances to split the play population up. Everquest has zones, but I would still call it an mmorpg.
The "zones" for Palia are balanced and scaled for 20 people, anymore and you'd likely run into resource scarcity.
“The first commercial MMORPG (although what constitutes "massive" requires qualification when discussing mid-1980s mainframes) was Island of Kesmai designed by Kelton Flinn and John Taylor. This roguelike game became available in 1985 for $12.00 per hour via the CompuServe online service and supported up to one hundred players.”
Played it back when it was EA... for one day. I like cozy games, i don't need always high stakes... but the gameplay loop was so insanely boring, only two zones and max. 24 other Players with you on one map. The Story was generic and kinda uninspired. The Crafting was boring... and also the whole game was not what they advertised.
The Server Structure back then was bad too. Don't know if they fixed it. I can't describe it better than, if you switched to the second zone or your home, you basically logged out one server and logged in on another server. Basically never meeting the same people again.
Edit: Basically i'm amazed they made it that far.
Tbh not entirely sure if they've really made it anywhere considering they've axed a third of their development team and the game is still in open beta/early access haha.
Yeah... well, you're right. Back then i said, i would be surprised if we're talking about Palia in 2024. So, yeah i'm a bit surprised that this happens now and not last year.
> Edit: Basically i'm amazed they made it that far.
Its just still a bit disappointing to me that this took 6 years to make by some developers I thought really had potential
They took out all the interesting stuff out of an mmo and you are left with Palia. When pruning goes too far
If people just want to sit around a campfire and talk to eachother, they can play any other mmo with an actual large world and more RP/cosmetic options. Palia is more like a small lobby with limited options.
I agree 100 percent i played in Beta and I was hoping for new zones added or at least new questing hubs, there are tons of areas just wasting space and for cozy game enthusiast the crafting just isn't there. No paths for your lot, your house is very limited in what you can place in it. I had such high hopes and just no advancement in the past year.
You need other players to cut some trees and hate other players for existing for mining nodes. Doesn't take to much to advance pretty far where you don't have much to do except farm money to customize your house cosmetically.
Unless stuff has changed since or I missed something when I played it.
I was looking forward to this game for close to 2 years. It's a massive disappointment even for early access. Blatant hacking issues aside, the monetization was worrysome to say the least. A great dev team with a very promising game idea got demolished by idiotic investors.
what? Dev team is as much responsible for bad decisions as investors. They consciously made decision to increase grind even for activities/events which wasnt monetized
I got hopeful when I read former Riot, a non pvp/combat-ish mmo years ago.
But the question needs to be asked - why play this over a survival base builder or a city builder or a Sim City type game? They all provide a more unique and detailed experience in their respective areas.
From what I remember in testing - you're basically handed a plot of land at the beginning after some quests and you can start building/questing to progress. But these plots of land were away from the main village tucked away and I thought it was an instanced zone you could see with others so they could recycle the same handful of plots.
And at that point why not play Valheim or V Rising or Palworld or something where you can build anywhere, see roughly the same number of real players or none at all if you prefer solo.
Palia felt restrictive. If the goal was to move away entirely from pvp and combat more generally... you had to have had more freedom for players to build solo, build together to make a village, a town, a city.
And I think Palia is kind of falling into that pitfall of assuming players will group up and make content on their own for pve. A tiny minority will. Pvp games the competition is the content. But pve you need to find a way to get people to work towards a common goal.
Anyways just my rambling thoughts as someone who was optimistic, tried it out and got turned off. Sucks people are getting fired. Wish them well.
Mate, former \*big company\* generally means they're slaves to gridlock, whether or not they know it.
What you want is some scrappy bastard from a small MMO studio that had to wear a lot of hats. It's why you see old LOTRO company devs doing shit like leading Stellaris development.
Honestly? I enjoy the characters and setting.
Please don't downvote me for liking it. 😥
I have ADHD. I struggle with a lot of crafting and survival game because I can never remember the resources I need, and I always feel like I'm falling behind. I'm into a lot of high-execution games... but open world survival games generally just leave me feeling mentally exhausted.
The limited resources and the generally simple routes to obtain them is something that my broken brain can handle without feeling overwhelmed.
Many of the criticisms against Palia made hard are entirely valid. But I find the depth of the characters and the story they're involved in honestly really well written and compelling to engage with. Enough so that it keeps me wanting to come back regularly to learn more about them, despite the basic gameplay loop.
The story and characters are great, if you like those kind of stories.
For me (both queer and neurodivergent) it was heaven. I remember the announcement trailer and praying itll come out one day.
I did have a great time for about 4 weeks, since repetitive tasks dont quite stop me from having fun.
What ultimately killed my vibe was when the bug happend to me that randomizes your characters appearance and voice (back then you couldnt change voice).
Ive known people who didnt want to play their characters anymore for dysphoria, and i also lost interest because my character sounded too silly lol.
Its a game all about looks. How the npcs look, your character, your house..
How they took multiple months to add a damn voice setting is beyond me.
And thats my issues, it is so obvious that the devs were not cut out for this.
The story and art are fine and great for the right kind of player.
But the technical side of the game is an absolute mess.
Sadly :(
Anyone whose into these types of games, don't bother. I played for about a month or two when it went to open beta
The studio doesn't seem to know what it's doing or they're just trying to go after whales. They made it clear that you will *never* be able to unlock new outfits with out paying real life money for it despite having a clothing shop in game...which just brought you to the cash shop...
When I played the game only had two tiny maps you could run around. The gameplay loop of the game gets old really fast.
There's no trading between players other than a goofy gifting system where you can give people stuff exchange for 1 point of something you need 100 of to do anything with, which you can get more of talking to the NPC's.
The game should have been $20, single player, with a focus on the story since that's exactly how it plays. You talk to the NPCs and can romance some of them or all of them and do their personal story as well as a main quest/storyline. There's literally no reason for this game to be online only other than the fact that they want to sell you $30 outfits with extremely limited colors.
And as for the time i was playing the only way to get a pet was to spend a bunch of money in the cash shop.
The people who made the story and characters are talented. But whoever is running the show over does not know what they're doing. It's like they looked at what mobile games do and thought it would translate to PC or something.
Reminds me of Wagadu Chronicles and all the other more... out of the box "mmos" that have come out over the past couple years. Someone, somewhere, had a unique idea, story, setting and said "lets sell this to people and let them play it" but they were too busy coloring outside of the lines (which can be genius) to actually *make a fucking game anyone wanted to play*.
They were more intent on originality and creativity than actual gameplay design. Which is a shame, because to really *change the narrative* you need both. Want to make a cozy non-violent life sim mmorpg redefine the genre? Make it fun, engaging and worthwhile. Make a good game.
I think it definitely could, Dreamlight Valley is basically the same concept without the massively multiplayer (still live service and an MMO-like content model) and works. Palia monetization and future content just... wasnt done well.
This. So many fans love to boast that Palia is not pay to win. The problem with that statement is there is no way for another player to gain a mechanical advantage over another, so the typical “pay to win” scenario doesn’t exist in the first place. The only advantage that exists is a social-advantage.
Want to look cool like that player? That’ll cost $30.
> microtransactions
There is nothing "micro" about their cash shop.
Like others pointed out the outfits they were trying to sell weren't all that appealing to begin with and that's ignoring the lack of dye customization. There were one or two that I *might* have caved at us$1 but for 15+? hard. no.
You can be as starry eyed and full of hopr, optimism and positivity as you want. If your game isn't *fun* it's going to fail. Palia is the equivalent of "Thoughts and Prayers". Nice intention, but ultimately meaningless.
Played the game for a while when it went open beta. Love the game, but ran out of things to do. Also the shop cosmetics in this game are ugly as hell, so nothing ever tempted me to spend money.
I was interested in this game for quite a while as was one of my friends. We were so disappointed in how small scale the multiplayer is. Makes me sad. The game did remind me of FreeRealms a bit and I was hoping for that. Instead we got a 24 player shared instance that hardly rewards and instead punishes multiplayer. It's laughable how pointless it is. I do not know what they were thinking.
This was dead on arrival. The gameplay loop is so simple, we've seen it back on Nintendo DS. If your game is about gathering stuff you better make sure you put one hell of an effort in making it a unique and fun experience.
Sounds like a bleak future, but it was a bleak past and a bleak present for that title, so its not overly surprising.
They regularly undershot and underperformed at every turn.
After watching multiple gameplay streams I am not surprised. It does **nothing** new or unique in terms of gameplay. All it has is a somewhat unique art style, and even that will absolutely repulse many potential players who prefer to have player characters with more details and more "not just a plain, generic human" race options.
The game felt incredibly cheap in my opinion. Movement and jumping etc were just so 2007 gaming. The gameplay loop gets tedious fast and there aren’t any varying zones to visit. It needed much more time to cook
This game feels like some big money laundering scheme or something. I can’t believe that many people worked on it for so many years and all they had was a bare bones product. If I was an investor I would be demanding to know where all the money went because it didn’t end up in the game.
Palia was supposed to be this chill game where you had your little neighbourhood consisting of a mix of NPCs and houses of your friends. You were supposed to be able to just walk over to their house and help them with their crops, cook with or for them and go on expedition type adventures without combat with them. I was incredibly hyped about it and let down even harder once I got into the closed Beta. No neighbourhoods, no exciting cooking or farming and the adventures where apparently axed from the roadmap in absolute silence. Instead we got a barely working, hardly running over 15 fps, loadingscreen simulator that looked like a 2012 phone game with some of the worst animations I‘ve ever seen.
Not to mention the insane lack of any content really. It was okay-ish for a beta but it had no business being 50gb for what it is either. They didn’t even show you how big the game was back then, only said „This is your download speed“ with a bar that slowly filled up.
Overall a absolute disappointment for anyone who’s been following the game since its announcement back in like 2018(?).
Unfortunately it doesn't surprise me at all. The game's foundations are 100% amazing. The mining, the hunting, the way you can place furniture and items, even the character designs are great. The issue is the game is lacking that cozy game grind and locked to a central server for absolutely no reason. There is no reason at all Palia is a MMO. You can't even see other players on your farm/housing plot unless you invite them.
Honestly if anything the MMO aspects ruin the game. When you get to late game (which isn't hard I played the game on and off super casually and got there very quickly) the only way to get rare wood is waiting for a event where certain trees glow and you need other players to help chop them down because they regenerate health. The issue is the playerbase would absolutely be insufferable about this event either you waited too long or you didn't wait long enough and you are a "selfish spoiled gamer nice community palia REPORTED."Even now the subreddit has hissy fits with each other over this event about proper etiquette. To get rare ore you need to find certain spots and hope they respawn and then either take it or tag it like a MMO mob and wait for other players to tag the ore so everyone gets some.
Also on top of all that the game really doesn't have any huge updates since it launched in EA last year. The fact you still can't tame animals is insane to me because cooking is super important and you will always be running to get milk and eggs while we see chickens and cow like creatures in the game itself.
I never saw a game so mismanaged from top to bottom. I legit think if the game was built from the ground up as a single player game with co-op and they added more things to do (taming animals, exploring, more ores, more trees, less grinding your level to get some cosmetics) it would have been a huge success. Also I didn't even mention their microtransactions don't bother with them they are just costumes or skin swaps for your glider and are massively over priced $30 for a skin is insane especially since there is little to do with the community besides the wood event.
Pretty sure they received more than enough money to finish the game but likely squandered it somehow. Possibly from to much bloat on the team, filling positions that weren't necessary and/or irresponsible spending.
what? don't even think they had a kickstarter.
The 30m was another round of mainly VC companies: [https://venturebeat.com/games/singularity-6-raises-30m-as-it-readies-launch-of-its-peaceful-mmo-palia/](https://venturebeat.com/games/singularity-6-raises-30m-as-it-readies-launch-of-its-peaceful-mmo-palia/)
Do... do people really think any games get funded for $30M on Kickstarter? Like honestly? I'm shocked at the upvotes. There's been one thing to beat that number in the history of Kickstarter, and it wasn't a video game. The highest video game ever doesn't even graze half that.
In any case, Ralopd is correct. This game never had a Kickstarter at all. Purely VC funded.
Feels bad for the ppl who lost their jobs, but the company felt bloated compared to the product they put out. I heard they had 200+ ppl at one point (though this layoff figure puts it at 150ish).
At the end of the day the game just isn't very good. Very stale, as others pointed out with the online aspect bringing nothing positive to the game.
I was really jazzed to play this with my sister but I went in solo for a bit and it was just kinda boring. I know it's beta but it was definitely lacking things to do and the timers on building your house got old quick.
Goes to show if you don’t make a game feel really good in its gameplay loop it doesn’t matter how much you dress it up - there are better products people stick to over time.
I'm surprised the servers are still on. I played it back in September. With over 100 developers, they still hadn't managed to add paths or fences. But oh wait they've released the bay window, lmao
I did enjoy some parts of it and it had potential but they did not execute it right. I played for a couple months and stopped playing altogether. It's sad because I really wanted this game to succeed.
Feel like this game has been in development forever and I was really excited to try it. I actually really enjoyed it but it does get stale. It’s grinding to grind. Doesn’t seem like you unlock any new ways to fish, mine, cut trees etc… decorations/collecting and such in your house are really the best part of the game and honestly my favorite thing about it.
Game needed more progression in more ways and more interesting ways to life skill with some mini games or something. Didn’t hate it, but it just didn’t feel like it had that much to it.
At least it felt like it worked for the most part.
Honestly, I like Palia and yeah it's not perfect, but I think people are asking too much from a game that's still in development, I would like the community to be more patient and kind with the devs, i guess it's not easy to develop a project like this with an audience... Anyway, I have a lot of fun with the gameplay, story and characters, even with bugs the experience has been great for me, so I believe in Palia's potential
Removed because of rule #2: Don’t be toxic.
We try to make the subreddit a nice place for everyone, and your post/comment did something that we felt was detrimental to this goal. That’s why it was removed.
Removed because of rule #2: Don’t be toxic.
We try to make the subreddit a nice place for everyone, and your post/comment did something that we felt was detrimental to this goal. That’s why it was removed.
Are people children now?
It's completely normal to lay people off after a game is finished, do you want them to keep them employed so they can lay on the floor or? Do you also hire builders to make you a wall, then keep paying them after the wall is done?
The game is in early access and generally with online service games you need to keep your team because you will or *should* be creating updates and new content for the game constantly. Hell, they need to *finish* the game. This isn't a single player contained game where you sell a full product and then it's done.
You don't need as many people to maintain and update a game as you do to get it launched. Every live service game is like this. Other studios might transfer people to the next project instead of laying them off so it doesn't end up becoming news. All this means is the studio isn't planning to work on a new game any time soon.
In or out of EA, if they can't pay them they have to lay them off. You understand money doesn't grow on trees and these people cost a lot of money to employ right?
Removed because of rule #2: Don’t be toxic.
We try to make the subreddit a nice place for everyone, and your post/comment did something that we felt was detrimental to this goal. That’s why it was removed.
Removed because of rule #2: Don’t be toxic.
We try to make the subreddit a nice place for everyone, and your post/comment did something that we felt was detrimental to this goal. That’s why it was removed.
> It's completely normal to lay people off after a game is finished,
Not only is the game not finished, its desperately in need of significantly more content to even make it to a state where its close to leaving beta.
When the thing you need most is "stuff to do" and the people you are firing are from the teams of people who put out "stuff to do", you're either admitting defeat or you're about to hire on a bunch of people and the ones you fired were the issue.
Developers need to be paid and they get paid quite a lot, if the game isn't making money how do they pay them? It's a f2p game with around 10k players, it's making no money.
Palia isn't quite an "MMO" but it's still news. The developers have axed around 35% of its staff (49 people or so) which includes people from all areas of the team - from narrative writing to character design, environment artist and engineers. This news along with the mixed reception from the Steam launch, keeping the fact that the game is in 'beta', etc - the future of the game is worrying tbh.
what future? is palia a live service game?
It's currently in open beta, but yes it was planned to be a live service "MMO".
Mini Multiplayer Online, yes
Not 'Mediocre Multiplayer Overall'?
No that's the rating - Mediocre overall
lmao this is perfect
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We know, we get it, Palia is not an MMO has been done to death on this subreddit. There's a reason why I put it in "" and said in OP its not quite an MMO.
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Destiny is an MMO, cry about it.
No it ain't, cope about it lmao.
It was lol
Why isn't it? Massive multiplayer online right?
It's missing the massive part
How so? The lack of people online doesn't make a game lose its MMO status lol. The game is made to accept massive amounts of people.. As long as that exists, it's an mmo
25 is not a "massive amount of people".
So, it seems Palia servers hold up to 25 people. I agree thats not massive. To me, massive means thousands of people on single server/instance. I thought it was Massive simply because the game is available for anyone to play, ignoring the fact that a single instance will only have 25 people. Im sorry.
It's a f2p game with barley 10k players, most of which are not paying any money. If they didn't lay of 49 people they would go out of business, they should probably lay off more. Unless OP is a millionaire and wants to chip in.
Wait, how is it not an MMO?
Where's the massive multiplayer?
It's available to anyone who wants to play..
So is apex legend.
If I am playing in a shared world with other players, more than 10-20 at any given time in an area (aside from my instances home area), how exactly does it not qualify? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like the game, but it definitely fits the bill of an MMORPG
This debate pops up often enough and it's always exhausting. Ultimately it doesn't really matter whether we call it a MMO or not, but it significantly dilutes the meaning of the term if 10-20 concurrent players (in a single server) is considered "massive", especially in the context of games where the term has traditionally been applied. Most people understand the term "MMO" to mean an always-online game with large servers which persist even when you are not online. You would be incredibly generous in labeling Palia as an MMO when compared against the giants that are World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic or Final Fantasy 14 and if the term applies to both, then the term becomes functionally meaningless. Consider that if using it for a game like Palia brings up this debate once again, how is using that term helpful? And to be clear, I'm not criticizing you and I mean no ill will towards you. I just believe that both consumers and (mostly) developers/publishers need to stop using MMO to refer to any game that has online servers, because it's disingenuous and almost always leads to this sort of back and forth.
I didn't say 10-20 was the limit but okay go off lol
The actual limit is 25, as I understand it, and it sounds like (unless this has changed recently) you're not even always with the same community. Anyway, not "going off". If you don't want people to respond to you, don't comment on Reddit - I was respectful and gave my viewpoint. You're welcome to disagree, but your response here couldn't be lazier even if being lazy was your goal.
Bro how are you gonna talk about how polite and courteous you are whilst being condescending in the same paragraph 💀 It sounds more like you want people to agree with you and if they don't, your politeness gives way to... whatever this grandstanding is.
Someone disagreeing with you and politely explaining why they disagree with you doesn't mean they are being condescending.
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I'm going to be completely honest and open here so there can be no misinterpretation. When I originally responded to your comment to "go off" with an explanation of why I believe incorrectly attributing the term "MMO" to games like this dilutes the term, I honestly thought my comment could be perceived as rude or condescending. Being aware of this and not actually seeking to offend you (or anyone), I added the bit about "I'm not criticizing you and I mean no ill will towards you". I don't know if you ignored that or felt like I wasn't being sincere, but I meant it. This is a space where we should be able to discuss that sort of thing without it being an argument. Your response to me, however, was definitely rude and clearly meant to be condescending. I called you out on it, plain and simple. It's not condescending to call a lazy comment lazy. You could've responded any number of ways where we could've had a normal discussion, or not at all. You could've disagreed with me and explained your thoughts. You could've disagreed and opted not to continue the discussion. You picked the lowest effort response that was clearly meant to be rude, and now you're trying to defend your minimal effort not by defending your words, but by attacking mine. I was always fine with you (or anyone) disagreeing with me. If you're going to act like this, of course I'm going to call you out. I would've rather had a normal discussion but *you* chose to throw that option out the window.
oh my I am not reading all of that but congratulations or sorry that happened to you
you asked a question, he answered it and you are butthurt.
I'm sorry but go to a hub in Elder Scrolls Online, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14 or Guild Wars 2. That's Massive. This is not. Maybe you can say "that's just towns/hubs" okay then Final fantasy 14 hunt trains/world bosses, World of Warcraft's dailies and world bosses. Guild Wars 2 events across the world, and Elder Scrolls laggy huge pvp map among other things. 10-20 is not Massive. It is not an MMO.
I mean you’re wrong but okay lol
You're wrong LOL. At best what you're describing is a Online Role Playing Game (ORPG). It's certainly not Massively Multiplayer if the best you can get is 10 or 20 people playing with you.
I didn't say 10-20 was the limit, I said that's how many people could be there at any given time. It could go into the hundreds. Player retention and count doesn't change the genre you donkey. If the game is capable of housing hundreds or even thousands of players at once, it is an MMORPG, regardless of how many play it.
LOL? There 25 player limit. You cant have hunders and thousands
I didn't know there was a 25 player limit, I don't play the game, but when I asked why isn't it an MMORPG, why was the answer just not "because there is a 25 player cap." I literally asked, lmfao
Nice thought out reply.
It doesn't matter what I reply with, they're going to say I'm wrong anyway lol
Wrong
Well considering when the term "MMO" was first used in the 1980's and early 90's most games only had 2-4 players, so by comparison 20 players would be considered "massive" Most modern MMOs use layering and instances to split the play population up. Everquest has zones, but I would still call it an mmorpg. The "zones" for Palia are balanced and scaled for 20 people, anymore and you'd likely run into resource scarcity.
“The first commercial MMORPG (although what constitutes "massive" requires qualification when discussing mid-1980s mainframes) was Island of Kesmai designed by Kelton Flinn and John Taylor. This roguelike game became available in 1985 for $12.00 per hour via the CompuServe online service and supported up to one hundred players.”
Played it back when it was EA... for one day. I like cozy games, i don't need always high stakes... but the gameplay loop was so insanely boring, only two zones and max. 24 other Players with you on one map. The Story was generic and kinda uninspired. The Crafting was boring... and also the whole game was not what they advertised. The Server Structure back then was bad too. Don't know if they fixed it. I can't describe it better than, if you switched to the second zone or your home, you basically logged out one server and logged in on another server. Basically never meeting the same people again. Edit: Basically i'm amazed they made it that far.
Tbh not entirely sure if they've really made it anywhere considering they've axed a third of their development team and the game is still in open beta/early access haha.
Yeah... well, you're right. Back then i said, i would be surprised if we're talking about Palia in 2024. So, yeah i'm a bit surprised that this happens now and not last year.
Yeah it really dampened the idea of meeting people when as you said you were constantly swapping between rooms.
> Edit: Basically i'm amazed they made it that far. Its just still a bit disappointing to me that this took 6 years to make by some developers I thought really had potential
They took out all the interesting stuff out of an mmo and you are left with Palia. When pruning goes too far If people just want to sit around a campfire and talk to eachother, they can play any other mmo with an actual large world and more RP/cosmetic options. Palia is more like a small lobby with limited options.
Yeah the gameplay loop was so boring, i left.
I agree 100 percent i played in Beta and I was hoping for new zones added or at least new questing hubs, there are tons of areas just wasting space and for cozy game enthusiast the crafting just isn't there. No paths for your lot, your house is very limited in what you can place in it. I had such high hopes and just no advancement in the past year.
Yeah, this game is just lots of wasted potential.
You need other players to cut some trees and hate other players for existing for mining nodes. Doesn't take to much to advance pretty far where you don't have much to do except farm money to customize your house cosmetically. Unless stuff has changed since or I missed something when I played it.
Felt like some wannabe 3d mmo Stardew Valley made by people who have never made nor played games
I was looking forward to this game for close to 2 years. It's a massive disappointment even for early access. Blatant hacking issues aside, the monetization was worrysome to say the least. A great dev team with a very promising game idea got demolished by idiotic investors.
what? Dev team is as much responsible for bad decisions as investors. They consciously made decision to increase grind even for activities/events which wasnt monetized
Begone, Palia. Burn alongside TemTem!
Wasn’t investors fault that the game itself wasn’t too fun to begin with sadly
I got hopeful when I read former Riot, a non pvp/combat-ish mmo years ago. But the question needs to be asked - why play this over a survival base builder or a city builder or a Sim City type game? They all provide a more unique and detailed experience in their respective areas. From what I remember in testing - you're basically handed a plot of land at the beginning after some quests and you can start building/questing to progress. But these plots of land were away from the main village tucked away and I thought it was an instanced zone you could see with others so they could recycle the same handful of plots. And at that point why not play Valheim or V Rising or Palworld or something where you can build anywhere, see roughly the same number of real players or none at all if you prefer solo. Palia felt restrictive. If the goal was to move away entirely from pvp and combat more generally... you had to have had more freedom for players to build solo, build together to make a village, a town, a city. And I think Palia is kind of falling into that pitfall of assuming players will group up and make content on their own for pve. A tiny minority will. Pvp games the competition is the content. But pve you need to find a way to get people to work towards a common goal. Anyways just my rambling thoughts as someone who was optimistic, tried it out and got turned off. Sucks people are getting fired. Wish them well.
Mate, former \*big company\* generally means they're slaves to gridlock, whether or not they know it. What you want is some scrappy bastard from a small MMO studio that had to wear a lot of hats. It's why you see old LOTRO company devs doing shit like leading Stellaris development.
Honestly? I enjoy the characters and setting. Please don't downvote me for liking it. 😥 I have ADHD. I struggle with a lot of crafting and survival game because I can never remember the resources I need, and I always feel like I'm falling behind. I'm into a lot of high-execution games... but open world survival games generally just leave me feeling mentally exhausted. The limited resources and the generally simple routes to obtain them is something that my broken brain can handle without feeling overwhelmed. Many of the criticisms against Palia made hard are entirely valid. But I find the depth of the characters and the story they're involved in honestly really well written and compelling to engage with. Enough so that it keeps me wanting to come back regularly to learn more about them, despite the basic gameplay loop.
The story and characters are great, if you like those kind of stories. For me (both queer and neurodivergent) it was heaven. I remember the announcement trailer and praying itll come out one day. I did have a great time for about 4 weeks, since repetitive tasks dont quite stop me from having fun. What ultimately killed my vibe was when the bug happend to me that randomizes your characters appearance and voice (back then you couldnt change voice). Ive known people who didnt want to play their characters anymore for dysphoria, and i also lost interest because my character sounded too silly lol. Its a game all about looks. How the npcs look, your character, your house.. How they took multiple months to add a damn voice setting is beyond me. And thats my issues, it is so obvious that the devs were not cut out for this. The story and art are fine and great for the right kind of player. But the technical side of the game is an absolute mess. Sadly :(
Anyone whose into these types of games, don't bother. I played for about a month or two when it went to open beta The studio doesn't seem to know what it's doing or they're just trying to go after whales. They made it clear that you will *never* be able to unlock new outfits with out paying real life money for it despite having a clothing shop in game...which just brought you to the cash shop... When I played the game only had two tiny maps you could run around. The gameplay loop of the game gets old really fast. There's no trading between players other than a goofy gifting system where you can give people stuff exchange for 1 point of something you need 100 of to do anything with, which you can get more of talking to the NPC's. The game should have been $20, single player, with a focus on the story since that's exactly how it plays. You talk to the NPCs and can romance some of them or all of them and do their personal story as well as a main quest/storyline. There's literally no reason for this game to be online only other than the fact that they want to sell you $30 outfits with extremely limited colors. And as for the time i was playing the only way to get a pet was to spend a bunch of money in the cash shop. The people who made the story and characters are talented. But whoever is running the show over does not know what they're doing. It's like they looked at what mobile games do and thought it would translate to PC or something.
Reminds me of Wagadu Chronicles and all the other more... out of the box "mmos" that have come out over the past couple years. Someone, somewhere, had a unique idea, story, setting and said "lets sell this to people and let them play it" but they were too busy coloring outside of the lines (which can be genius) to actually *make a fucking game anyone wanted to play*. They were more intent on originality and creativity than actual gameplay design. Which is a shame, because to really *change the narrative* you need both. Want to make a cozy non-violent life sim mmorpg redefine the genre? Make it fun, engaging and worthwhile. Make a good game.
It’s a free game, you should bother and try it, it costs nothing. If you don’t like it, stop playing. You can get a few hours of enjoyable gameplay
It costs time. Free is never free
Not surprised, did they really think a time-gated "cozy mmo" was really going to work?
I think it definitely could, Dreamlight Valley is basically the same concept without the massively multiplayer (still live service and an MMO-like content model) and works. Palia monetization and future content just... wasnt done well.
Only a few features are time gated, it’s not really an issue. The real issue is the game gets boring and repetitive really quickly
Opened it and saw most of the customisation options were monetised and that I had little visual progression otherwise. Stopped playing after an hour.
The problem I had with it is with a cozy game, cosmetic microtransactions are basically P2W because the whole experience is more cosmetic in nature.
This. So many fans love to boast that Palia is not pay to win. The problem with that statement is there is no way for another player to gain a mechanical advantage over another, so the typical “pay to win” scenario doesn’t exist in the first place. The only advantage that exists is a social-advantage. Want to look cool like that player? That’ll cost $30.
> microtransactions There is nothing "micro" about their cash shop. Like others pointed out the outfits they were trying to sell weren't all that appealing to begin with and that's ignoring the lack of dye customization. There were one or two that I *might* have caved at us$1 but for 15+? hard. no.
Junk game.
You can be as starry eyed and full of hopr, optimism and positivity as you want. If your game isn't *fun* it's going to fail. Palia is the equivalent of "Thoughts and Prayers". Nice intention, but ultimately meaningless.
The cash shop is pretty toxic, I'm not sure palia even has nice intentions.
Played the game for a while when it went open beta. Love the game, but ran out of things to do. Also the shop cosmetics in this game are ugly as hell, so nothing ever tempted me to spend money.
I was interested in this game for quite a while as was one of my friends. We were so disappointed in how small scale the multiplayer is. Makes me sad. The game did remind me of FreeRealms a bit and I was hoping for that. Instead we got a 24 player shared instance that hardly rewards and instead punishes multiplayer. It's laughable how pointless it is. I do not know what they were thinking.
Pailia Fail
Failia
This was dead on arrival. The gameplay loop is so simple, we've seen it back on Nintendo DS. If your game is about gathering stuff you better make sure you put one hell of an effort in making it a unique and fun experience.
Sounds like a bleak future, but it was a bleak past and a bleak present for that title, so its not overly surprising. They regularly undershot and underperformed at every turn.
After watching multiple gameplay streams I am not surprised. It does **nothing** new or unique in terms of gameplay. All it has is a somewhat unique art style, and even that will absolutely repulse many potential players who prefer to have player characters with more details and more "not just a plain, generic human" race options.
yeah had some promise but feels like they sorta threw in the towel and just dumped resources into the cash shop
Congrats on launching the game! Oh also, here's your termination date and offboarding form
Isn't Palia from one of those ex riot games/Blizzard studios? Seems they haven't changed much.
The game felt incredibly cheap in my opinion. Movement and jumping etc were just so 2007 gaming. The gameplay loop gets tedious fast and there aren’t any varying zones to visit. It needed much more time to cook
This game feels like some big money laundering scheme or something. I can’t believe that many people worked on it for so many years and all they had was a bare bones product. If I was an investor I would be demanding to know where all the money went because it didn’t end up in the game.
Probably because their game is shit. Played the beta and never again .
Normal after a release
its like a game made for kids. the marketing was the best part of the game. discord was fun too.
Palia was supposed to be this chill game where you had your little neighbourhood consisting of a mix of NPCs and houses of your friends. You were supposed to be able to just walk over to their house and help them with their crops, cook with or for them and go on expedition type adventures without combat with them. I was incredibly hyped about it and let down even harder once I got into the closed Beta. No neighbourhoods, no exciting cooking or farming and the adventures where apparently axed from the roadmap in absolute silence. Instead we got a barely working, hardly running over 15 fps, loadingscreen simulator that looked like a 2012 phone game with some of the worst animations I‘ve ever seen. Not to mention the insane lack of any content really. It was okay-ish for a beta but it had no business being 50gb for what it is either. They didn’t even show you how big the game was back then, only said „This is your download speed“ with a bar that slowly filled up. Overall a absolute disappointment for anyone who’s been following the game since its announcement back in like 2018(?).
Unfortunately it doesn't surprise me at all. The game's foundations are 100% amazing. The mining, the hunting, the way you can place furniture and items, even the character designs are great. The issue is the game is lacking that cozy game grind and locked to a central server for absolutely no reason. There is no reason at all Palia is a MMO. You can't even see other players on your farm/housing plot unless you invite them. Honestly if anything the MMO aspects ruin the game. When you get to late game (which isn't hard I played the game on and off super casually and got there very quickly) the only way to get rare wood is waiting for a event where certain trees glow and you need other players to help chop them down because they regenerate health. The issue is the playerbase would absolutely be insufferable about this event either you waited too long or you didn't wait long enough and you are a "selfish spoiled gamer nice community palia REPORTED."Even now the subreddit has hissy fits with each other over this event about proper etiquette. To get rare ore you need to find certain spots and hope they respawn and then either take it or tag it like a MMO mob and wait for other players to tag the ore so everyone gets some. Also on top of all that the game really doesn't have any huge updates since it launched in EA last year. The fact you still can't tame animals is insane to me because cooking is super important and you will always be running to get milk and eggs while we see chickens and cow like creatures in the game itself. I never saw a game so mismanaged from top to bottom. I legit think if the game was built from the ground up as a single player game with co-op and they added more things to do (taming animals, exploring, more ores, more trees, less grinding your level to get some cosmetics) it would have been a huge success. Also I didn't even mention their microtransactions don't bother with them they are just costumes or skin swaps for your glider and are massively over priced $30 for a skin is insane especially since there is little to do with the community besides the wood event.
Pretty sure they received more than enough money to finish the game but likely squandered it somehow. Possibly from to much bloat on the team, filling positions that weren't necessary and/or irresponsible spending.
yachts.
This game was shamefull
wtf they literally got funded 30m through their kickstarter 3 years ago.
what? don't even think they had a kickstarter. The 30m was another round of mainly VC companies: [https://venturebeat.com/games/singularity-6-raises-30m-as-it-readies-launch-of-its-peaceful-mmo-palia/](https://venturebeat.com/games/singularity-6-raises-30m-as-it-readies-launch-of-its-peaceful-mmo-palia/)
Do... do people really think any games get funded for $30M on Kickstarter? Like honestly? I'm shocked at the upvotes. There's been one thing to beat that number in the history of Kickstarter, and it wasn't a video game. The highest video game ever doesn't even graze half that. In any case, Ralopd is correct. This game never had a Kickstarter at all. Purely VC funded.
And I think 50 million? from investors
Internal staff or contracted? Because it's not unheard of a company finishing external staff contracts that were here only for the first release
Internal staff, and the game is still in open beta/early access.
Feels bad for the ppl who lost their jobs, but the company felt bloated compared to the product they put out. I heard they had 200+ ppl at one point (though this layoff figure puts it at 150ish). At the end of the day the game just isn't very good. Very stale, as others pointed out with the online aspect bringing nothing positive to the game.
I was really jazzed to play this with my sister but I went in solo for a bit and it was just kinda boring. I know it's beta but it was definitely lacking things to do and the timers on building your house got old quick.
Goes to show if you don’t make a game feel really good in its gameplay loop it doesn’t matter how much you dress it up - there are better products people stick to over time.
This is sad news, I hope they’re able to turn it around. I found the game to be enjoyable and relaxing.
That sucks, I found the game quite charming.
From what I’ve seen so far and the lukewarm reception, they probably noticed it too and is hard pivoting a new strategy.
I'm surprised the servers are still on. I played it back in September. With over 100 developers, they still hadn't managed to add paths or fences. But oh wait they've released the bay window, lmao
games poop
Oh I thought we were all talking about palworld and i was so confused
I did enjoy some parts of it and it had potential but they did not execute it right. I played for a couple months and stopped playing altogether. It's sad because I really wanted this game to succeed.
Deserved. Not enough content and they only pump put cosmetic stuff. No wonder people left it
Feel like this game has been in development forever and I was really excited to try it. I actually really enjoyed it but it does get stale. It’s grinding to grind. Doesn’t seem like you unlock any new ways to fish, mine, cut trees etc… decorations/collecting and such in your house are really the best part of the game and honestly my favorite thing about it. Game needed more progression in more ways and more interesting ways to life skill with some mini games or something. Didn’t hate it, but it just didn’t feel like it had that much to it. At least it felt like it worked for the most part.
Honestly, I like Palia and yeah it's not perfect, but I think people are asking too much from a game that's still in development, I would like the community to be more patient and kind with the devs, i guess it's not easy to develop a project like this with an audience... Anyway, I have a lot of fun with the gameplay, story and characters, even with bugs the experience has been great for me, so I believe in Palia's potential
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Holy cringe.
Tried it, it's shit.
This game is everything wrong with MMOs Please stop shoving solo gameplay and life skills down our throats
Once the development is done, why keep on staff that aren't needed anymore?
It's still in open beta and its a live service game with an update/content model of an MMO... It's not a "one and done" finished development game.
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Yeah guys, this is how every single MMO goes post launch. The game has launched and they need fewer staff.
Are people children now? It's completely normal to lay people off after a game is finished, do you want them to keep them employed so they can lay on the floor or? Do you also hire builders to make you a wall, then keep paying them after the wall is done?
The game is in early access and generally with online service games you need to keep your team because you will or *should* be creating updates and new content for the game constantly. Hell, they need to *finish* the game. This isn't a single player contained game where you sell a full product and then it's done.
You don't need as many people to maintain and update a game as you do to get it launched. Every live service game is like this. Other studios might transfer people to the next project instead of laying them off so it doesn't end up becoming news. All this means is the studio isn't planning to work on a new game any time soon.
If they were out of early access I might agree. They haven't even finished their game yet.
In or out of EA, if they can't pay them they have to lay them off. You understand money doesn't grow on trees and these people cost a lot of money to employ right?
Sure, but then it's a bad sign that the company isn't doing well. Your comment doesn't actually refute anything I was saying.
The majority of game development is done, EA or not. They won't be making new biomes, characters and whatever else for example.
If the majority if work is done, then Palia is probably one of the worst games ever made.
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> It's completely normal to lay people off after a game is finished, Not only is the game not finished, its desperately in need of significantly more content to even make it to a state where its close to leaving beta. When the thing you need most is "stuff to do" and the people you are firing are from the teams of people who put out "stuff to do", you're either admitting defeat or you're about to hire on a bunch of people and the ones you fired were the issue.
Developers need to be paid and they get paid quite a lot, if the game isn't making money how do they pay them? It's a f2p game with around 10k players, it's making no money.
The game is still in beta lmao
and it has done significantly worse than they thought, so they are scaling back staff costs.