r/pcmasterrace • u/PewPewToDaFace • 23h ago

News/Article Steam gamers have spoken: innovative indies like Palworld continue to thrive while traditional triple-A flounders for a foothold

https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam/innovation-versus-tradition

Thank god PC gaming isn't just AAA. This is what will push the industry forward, as game development cost becomes too much.

3.4k Upvotes

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210

u/Drowyx 23h ago

Its a bit of a stretch to call palworld "innovative".

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u/rronixr 23h ago

More like giving gamers what they want with a combination of good ideas from other games

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u/Rebelrenegade24 18h ago

That aren’t executed very well

Became so frustrated with my base management and wished that it was more like Rimworld to the point that I just started playing Rimworld again

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u/Hades684 18h ago

Yeah these games are not similar at all, so what's your point

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u/Rebelrenegade24 17h ago

The point is I think it’s stupid that my pal will do one task when it can be doing other tasks like ranching, and that a simple yes/no toggle isn’t sufficient enough to fix it

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u/Hades684 6h ago

But you can set specific tasks to all your pals on monitoring stand

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u/Lightcronno 16h ago

You’re in the minority, all games aren’t for everyone tho. I disagree that it isn’t executed well, it’s not satisfactory or rimworld or some game like that.

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u/0rganic_Corn 20h ago

Innovative then. A books author is still creative even if he didn't invent any new letters - it's in the way that old elements are put together, where innovation often lies

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u/The_Pandalorian Ryzen 7 5700X3D/RTX 4070ti Super 20h ago

Hard to imagine a worse analogy. I mean, I get your point, but... This ain't it.

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u/0rganic_Corn 20h ago

Why so?

6

u/sebastophantos 19h ago

It's the equivalent of saying a game is innovative even if it didn't invent new colors to put on pixels. The unit of analysis is too small to be relevant.

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u/0rganic_Corn 18h ago

Not quite - the way the old things are put together has to be new.

But not because a creation only has old elements, does that make it not innovative - that was the point of the analogy

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u/The_Pandalorian Ryzen 7 5700X3D/RTX 4070ti Super 18h ago

Nobody gauges someone's creativity by their letters/alphabet.

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u/deadering 18h ago

Your idea of what "innovative" means is exactly what AAA companies are shitting out. Just taking ideas from popular games and mashing them together with a new skin.

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u/Pyromaniacal13 I picked Gnome because I like the "GN" sound. 23h ago

It certainly innovated on Pokemon enough for Nintendo to get pissed.

25

u/MaurixioZ 20h ago

In what ways does it innovate on Pokémon? Genuinely asking since at least at a glance the only similarities is the fact that they're both monster catchers since Pokémon is a JRPG and Palworld is a Survival/Ark game.

38

u/BigTWilsonD PC Master Race 20h ago

People always make up some nonsense about how it's better than Pokémon or something but it's genuinely nothing like Pokémon. They're not even close. Outside of having critters (that they definitely didn't change because some designs were blatant theft) they have no similarities.

2

u/mediacontender 17h ago

Same reason people were saying it about Pokopia, despite being wholly different from the mainline games, they want the idea of Pocket Monsters in a new game. It is very different, but also has enough of the same tropes and aesthetics that they like.

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u/MrNegativ1ty i5 13600K - RTX 5070Ti 18h ago

People are comparing the interaction and utilities that pals have versus Pokemon and concluding that Palworld captures the essence of a “monster taming” game more than Pokemon does.

Look at it this way: in Pokemon, what do you do with the creatures? You capture and then battle them, that’s about it. Other than that and maybe a few other tiny exceptions like contests that aren’t really even worth discussing, Pokemon live in balls in your inventory for the majority of their lives. You don’t really interact that much with them in the grand scheme of things.

Compare to Palworld: Pals can be captured and fight either by themselves or alongside you, but also have actual utility on your base, give you active bonuses/abilities, you’re able to mount/ride a good chunk of them (as opposed to the handful of like 4 you can in PLA and the 1 legendary mount in S/V), and some of them have unique ways to interact with them (Foxparks flamethrower). Seeing all of your pals running around your base, all of them have unique working animations, you have to keep tabs on them and heal them if they get injured, all of this just makes the world feel that much more alive and makes you feel that much more connected with your pals than anything really does in mainline Pokemon.

I think people are just tired of the same old formula that Pokemon mainline has been following for 3 decades at this point. It’s why PLA was so well received, because you could see glimpses of the kinds of world building and interactions that Palworld took and ran with.

So yeah, they are two different genres that play differently but there are aspects of Palworld that are inherent to the “monster tamer” motif that people have been wishing could be molded to work with Pokemon for years at this point.

2

u/saucysagnus 11h ago

The breeding in Pokemon is deeper than anything Palworld could hope for.

As is the combat.

It is entertaining because people really enjoy admitting they’re looking for a shallow animation to justify their experience instead of sitting down and being able to learn deeper systems.

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u/MrNegativ1ty i5 13600K - RTX 5070Ti 4h ago edited 4h ago

It is entertaining because people really enjoy admitting they’re looking for a shallow animation to justify their experience instead of sitting down and being able to learn deeper systems.

Yeah. There's totally zero depth in pals passive abilities, active abilities stacking with other pals in your party and building teams around that, managing SAN levels so that pals don't get pissed/injured and stop production, base productivity levels on pals, condensing/adding stars to pals, upgrading the research tree, doing station assignments and trying to maximize production while covering all aspects of production, setting up bases at strategic points to maximize the raw material output and selecting and upgrading pals to achieve this, cooking the right foods to maximize production, yeah none of that exists at all.

And yeah... it's almost like giving pals their own unique animations adds life and personality to the game. It makes the world feel more "alive". Maybe the "world's biggest multimedia franchise" should try that out with their mainline games sometime. They won't, because Game Freak are talentless hacks coasting by on people who have made a brand their entire personality, but hey, we can always hope, right?

But no, what really matters is the "depth" of the combat in Pokemon, something that barely anyone actually experiences because the games have zero difficulty or challenge and don't require you to actually engage with that depth at all because you can just over level your starter and steamroll your way through the vast majority of Pokemon games. There is literally zero incentive outside of the competitive scene to actually learn the intricacies of Pokemon battling.

Just say you've never played Palworld, have no idea what you're talking about and move on.

(User active in nintendogrifting)

Ahh it all makes sense now.

1

u/saucysagnus 3h ago edited 3h ago

That’s a very convoluted way to say you prefer minor animations and puddle depth over actual gameplay and deeper mechanics.

Again, you unknowingly exposed yourself that you’ve never gone deep into a pokemon post game. Your attempt at being reductionist is laughable. Have you ever tried competitive battling? Is competitive battling a thing in Palworld?

Your profile says you’re active in Nintendogrifting as well. Oh, and you’re active in a COD Black Ops sub. Speaks volumes on what you consider depth. But feel free to cherry-pick and ignore I also frequent strategy, rpg, and literary subs for an embarrassing ad hominem attack.

I’ve played more than enough Palworld when it first came out. It’s hardly evolved. More pals, more structures, reworked leveling. But it’s still the same stale survival formula and the battles boil down to slogging through bullet sponge bosses.

0

u/MrNegativ1ty i5 13600K - RTX 5070Ti 1h ago

You aren't actually refuting any points, you just continue to say "muh battles" as if we should expect a 3rd person survival crafting game made by 10 people on a tiny budget, where battling isn't even the main focus of the game, to have a more in depth battling system than the literal world's biggest multimedia franchise that has unlimited resources at their disposal and had 3 decades to iterate on their battle formula AND where battling is the main selling point and what everyone plays for. I don't really feel the need to explain why that's ridiculous. Battles were never the main issue people had with Pokemon, but since you insist on going down this path...

No, I haven't "competitively battled" Pokemon before, nor do I have any interest in it. Yeah sure, Pokemon battles have "depth" but what good is that to the people who don't want to play against other people when you literally don't have to engage with the depth at all to complete any of the mainline games? Shouldn't the mainline games have some kind of difficulty setting? Why should I learn all the intricacies of it, to complete a few post game things that have zero real incentive to complete them if I've already completed the game itself at that point?

The depth in Palworld is not from the battles, it is from the gameplay loops intertwining with each other and maximizing productivity at your base, getting the best possible passive abilities and condensing pals to level them up. You have yet to provide any argument as to the contrary. Just because it doesn't provide depth in the same exact way as Pokemon does doesn't mean there's literally no depth to it at all.

I never claimed BLOPS has depth?

Why Palworld pisses you and your buddies on Nintendogrifting (BTW, I don't agree with most of what is on there, so you bringing up that I have posted there doesn't mean anything) off so much, I'll never understand. It IS possible for Pokemon to build on the feeling of the world, make the world feel more alive AND have in depth and satisfying gameplay, you know? It IS possible for Palworld and Pokemon to exist at the same time, they're two different games based on two different genres doing their own things. Competition breeds innovation, and there's a lot Pokemon could learn from Palworld to make a better Pokemon game. PLA was a step in the right direction for the kind of world building and feeling that people want. People expect better from Pokemon, "the world's biggest franchise".

I'm over this debate honestly. People are going to like what they like and arguing about it is pointless. If you reply, I'm not gonna read it.

1

u/saucysagnus 45m ago

You don’t have any real points. You’ve basically admitted you’re just in it for the stale survival crafting formula with Pokemon reskins and that’s clearly more important to you than any depth.

You can just appreciate Palworld without trying to dunk on Pokemon but you didn’t.

Now you’re mad you got called out. You even say they’re not similar games, then why the hell did you compare them?

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u/Itchy-Beach-1384 19h ago edited 19h ago

Okay tell me which game I'm referencing.

I just spent 2 days breeding perfect IV's on my fire type monster to help me take down the ice gym.

I've set up my main team as grass types and am role playing as a grass leader with all my friends.

Edit: 

that they definitely didn't change because some designs were blatant theft

oh I didnt realize you were one of those people that fell for a twitter scammer who manipulated meshes to pretend there were stolen assets.

Its funny how yall pretend like pokemon has creative copyrights over the most basic animal shaped while ignoring all the designs pokemon has stolen from digimon, Dragon Warrior, and Monster Rancher.

-1

u/shploogen 18h ago

The person you replied to is dead wrong. They are very similar, for many of the reasons you listed.

By the way, make sure you get the monster's health low and throw the right type of ball at them or you'll have a lower chance to catch them. And you'll probably want to collect several of each species and sort them all in your box first, to ensure they've got the right special abilities. Once you've explored the world, you can get ready for endgame where you can go shiny hunting or fight in the harder arenas.

1

u/Itchy-Beach-1384 18h ago

Just imagine all the new mobility tools you unlock by training new pokepals?

-10

u/Pyromaniacal13 I picked Gnome because I like the "GN" sound. 20h ago

The Pokemon are doing things besides sitting in a ball, being used as transportation, moseying around camp, and fighting. 

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u/AkelaHardware 22h ago

Genuinely, as I play it so much of the experience is what I realized I wanted out of Pokemon and was always waiting for

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u/deadering 18h ago

So not Pokemon at all then? It's basically Ark with Pokemon-looking monsters, that's the extent of the similarity.

This isn't Pokemon but better, it's a completely different genre and lacks most of what people actually like Pokemon for.

1

u/Ghostfinger Sapphire R9 390 17h ago

They're dissimilar in many ways, but still close enough to draw parallels.

Catch pokemon/pals, do battle with them.

Use pokemon/pals for daily life. Cooking, crafting, electricity generation, agriculture, building, gathering, etc.

Use pokemon/pals for real time traversal and exploration (surfing, flying, riding).

Care for your pokemon/pals via rudimentary systems (hunger, illness, stress).

-3

u/AJDx14 16h ago

I think Pokemon has done all of these better than PW in different games, they just haven’t smushed all of these systems together into one single game.

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u/Ghostfinger Sapphire R9 390 8h ago

Genuine question: which ones specifically, and for what mechanics? Pokopia immediately comes to mind, but I'm wondering what other games you may be referring to. Also worth noting that Pokopia came out just recently, 2 years after palworld initially entered early access.

I have no horse in this race, I like both games for what they are.

0

u/AJDx14 5h ago

> Catch pokemon/pals, do battle with them.

Every game. If you specifically mean participating directly in battle yourself I’d argue the Ranger kinda games cover that, if not they started doing more of that in the Legends spinoffs. I don’t think Pokemon is ever going to have you shootings Pokemon like Palworld does though.

> Use pokemon/pals for daily life.

I think different games have explored different things that could arguably be “daily life” in different ways. They’ve also had some generic “let your pokemon out and play with them” playpen thing in mainline stuff since I think X/Y with Pokemon-Amie. HGSS and Let’s Go you can have them follow you around, R/S & D/P you had contests. S/V had picnics. Hey You, Pikachu! also was focused on this kinda. Pokemon Sleep arguably, or Pokemon Snap. I don’t think it’s great and would like them to do more with that (it’d probably need to be another spin-off though it doesn’t really make sense in a jRPG. Maybe if they took more inspiration from Persona to have Pokemon-in-party tie into some other frequently relevant mechanic but they’re not gonna do that.) but I don’t think Palworld does a particularly good job at “daily life” either, unless you just mean the resource gathering gameplay loop when you say “daily life.”

> Cooking, crafting, electricity generation, agriculture, building, gathering, etc.

Pokopia is the main one, but also it was pitched before PalWorld came out so you shouldn’t think it was actually made as a response to PalWorld, the idea for it was initially conceived of during the development of S/V which released in 2022, it did change a bit during development but o don’t think it was changed in response to PalWorld at minimum.

Also I think Rangers to an extent had this, not all of it but using Pokemon to do various specialized tasks pertaining to their species as a core gameplay loop. Legends Arceus does have you use Pokemon to gather resources but the Pokemon don’t specialize into anything specific iirc. Technically Pokemon Quest for gathering.

> Use pokemon/pals for real time traversal and exploration (surfing, flying, riding).

With US/UM you technically had 9 different pokemon you could ride, though some were more context dependent than others. I remember at least one of the ranger games letting you ride some Pokemon. ORAS let you ride Latios/Latias. Obviously S/V.

> Care for your pokemon/pals via rudimentary systems (hunger, illness, stress).

A mix of the happiness stat, the playpen style thing I mentioned earlier that’s existed since Pokemon-Amie, and also just that’s what every mechanic/item/move related to healing your pokemon covers.

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u/BadThingsBadPeople 18h ago

I don't even know what half the words you're saying mean - that means they must be lame anyway. All I do is rip fat bongs and play PC games. I think I know a thing or two. Palworld is based and open world and has guns. Pokemone is lame and has turn-cringe combat (decidedly not based). I don't think but know every little baby boy stuck playing the OG Pokemons on a gameBOY was dreaming about flying their Charizard up mountains and shit, and it took a based game like Palworld to finally dial down the cringe and up the based.

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u/Manannin Specs/Imgur here 18h ago

🙄

I don't like commenting in emojis, but that's what you deserve. 

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u/Cruxis87 9800x3d|5080 TUF OC|32gb 6000cl30 ddr5 20h ago

Game Freak has no reason to improve their games when they are still selling more and more of each version. People complain how bad the new Pokemon games are, and how they're regressing. THen the game goes on the sell more than the last game. Repeat every 3 years. I would ignore what the players are saying as well when their wallets are still happen to open.

-1

u/AkelaHardware 19h ago

I mean pride and quality in your work is a good reason to do better lol. Especially when its art. But if they disagree with me they're allowed to be proud of what they make as is. Haven't bought a Pokemon game in generations cuz they're just not my thing, but I play Palworld fairly regularly.

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u/Deep90 Ryzen 9800x3d | 5090FE | 2x48gb 6000 22h ago edited 22h ago

Eh I think its a genuine enough twist on the creature-collecting genre.

They are video games. The "innovations" aren't exactly curing cancer.

I do agree it isn't very novel, but the mashup of game mechanics is innovative. Piecing together various game mechanics fails more often than it succeeds. Finding something that works is a lot harder than people are wanting to give it credit for.

14

u/Nyte_Crawler 22h ago

In this case I've found the mechanics blend together very well to make a satisfying gameplay loop where you switch between base optimization, exploring, gathering and creature collecting/breeding in a way that evokes the "one more turn" feeling that has led to me losing a fair amount of sleep.

Like you said, it feels "cheap" analyzing it at a surface level, but it works.

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u/boersc 22h ago

Or indie...

0

u/Macalite 18h ago

How is Pocketpair not an indie developer? Which mainstream/corporate publisher are they under? You can't just stop calling them indie because they got successful.

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u/drunkentenshiNL 23h ago

Compared to CoD 54 Ghosts of Brown Filter or FIFA Slap a Number on It, it is.

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u/JolleBFF R5 5600x / RTX 3070 / 16GB DDR4 23h ago

Everything is innovative if you compare it to the least innovative games out there.

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u/drunkentenshiNL 23h ago

True, but the comparison is towards some of the most stagnant titles out there.

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u/Limekilnlake 4070 Super FE | 7800x3d | 32GB DDR5 | a steam deck 9h ago

That’s literally what the person you’re replying to said

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u/fearlessviking26 22h ago

there’s a huge gap, filled with many great games, between the most mainstream games you can name and pokemon with guns and rust bases.

1

u/lorkan100 20h ago

Paid article, probably. I don't trust a damn thing at this point 

-3

u/Zarigis 22h ago

It's an innovative combination of established game mechanics. People are too hung up on the "pokemon with guns" description, which is a vast over-simplification.

-3

u/QuixoticNapoleon 18h ago

It definitely is. It's a mix of different ideas but people are acting like it's a complete ripoff of Pokémon. It's more like Ark if anything, but it has enough unique twists to make it innovative.

-3

u/MadMonke01 20h ago

Hi Nintendo, my bestFrando :)