Games similar to Therian Saga

glumetzul
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Games similar to Therian Saga

Postby glumetzul » Fri 24 Nov 2017, 11:40

Hello,

Every once in a while I feel the need to play another game besides TS, this happens especially when my character in TS is involved in raising some sort of resuource for one week or more at a time like now. And starting with yet another TS character won't cut it.

Every time this happens I'd start looking for some other browser games but I end up disappointed every time. Either they are pretty stupid from the very 5 minutes or they get really repetitive after 3 days. Or they have worlds that only last for a specific number of months before resetting (eg Travian) thus making it a race for who can become the strongest in a certain timeframe. Or they require active involvement on my part for anything to evolve (eg: RuneScape).

After another such "personal crisis" yesterday, I decided that the best place to ask for something similar to TS, which kept me active for almost two years, would be this community. Any suggestion would be welcome. To sum it up, what I'd like would be:
1. To have a persistent word. Anything that resets after 6 months won't work, I'm not much into starting it over again and again.
2. To have part of it work while I'm offline as well, not to be a race of who can spend most time online.
3. I'd preffer an RPG but I guess some sort of strategy / city building would be an interesting change as well.
4. Obviously not get extra repetitive too fast. Even though some might call TS as such, I find it exciting that I'm working on different things now than I did two months ago, even though those tasks take up so long.
5. Idealy to offer some sort of activity + reward when I do decide to be active.

TS fails pretty much at point 5. There are many times when there's nothing I can do except wait for activities to complete. Runescape would be ideal but it fails at point 2 (unless they changed things).

Any suggestion or feedback is more than welcome :)

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Falkarma
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Re: Games similar to Therian Saga

Postby Falkarma » Mon 27 Nov 2017, 18:20

That's an interesting question and hope you get some feedback from the players.

I've looked a lot for games similar to TS and you will not get a "similar mix" anywhere. By this, I mean that our game has elements you will find in other games but the way we fit them together is quite unique. It's been a nightmare for us at first to try to explain the game for our marketing. At first glance it looks like a strategy (RTS, City builder) because we do not have active control over a hero...and then the planning system for tasks where you can not only plan your next action but a whole sequence of gameplay does not exist anywhere, so it's almost impossible to explain that in a video or article.

Anyway, there are some place that you could find similar feeling.

1-Maybe check out Eve Online, but for myself there are things too much time consuming to play this game. I did not check the latest

2-"City building" but I'm not aware of any new revolution in this game genre (it's been idle with "reskin" of games for quite some time).

3-Oh, one game you could check out is Game of Thrones : Ascent. From Disruptor Beam, make sure you get Ascent, not the other one that is a reskin of a city builder).

4-On the non-persistent world we have a lot of players coming from Bay12 with their Dwarf Fortress.

I look forward for other comments on that subject.
Therian Saga

Melindra
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Re: Games similar to Therian Saga

Postby Melindra » Wed 29 Nov 2017, 19:21

I think the lack of responses indicate the best answer to your question, but I will tell you about a few games that you might enjoy.

1. Ilyriad - This is a very complex city builder with strategy elements. It's very slow progression. It's persistent, it works offline, city building and not repetitive. You can fight npc monsters actively when you want to. It has a PvP element, but noone picks on noobs... and if they do, a quick statement in global will get the vets to annihilate the offender and send you 1000x what you lost. It's a very friendly community. The pay aspect is also very reasonable, like TS. They also give you enough free premium currency to maintain premium status (if you collect it daily). All in all, a very good alternative to TS.

2. Wurm Online or Wurm Unlimited - If you haven't played this, you are missing out on an incredibly rich game. It has old graphics and the character models are appalling, but the game mechanics more than make up for that. Over 60 skills to learn. The online version is a free to try and pay to elevate skills past 20. Monthly subscription, but enough can be earned in game, through moderate work, to sustain the sub. You can play it totally solo or join a guild. There is a pvp aspect, but you have to travel to a specific cluster to engage in pvp. There is a more sinister pvp element, though, and some people will try to grief you through completely legal in game mechanics. The population is pretty low, similar to TS. The Unlimited version is basically the stand alone version of the game to play as single player, or with a community server. It has increased skill gain, increased gold and other things to make life easier. So if you want to become a Master Puppetmaster (yes, that's a skill!), you can do it here. Sailing is also one of the best things in this game. Riding a horse and exploring, although simple, is incredibly rewarding and fun. Check it out.

3. A Tale in the Desert - This is another mmorpg with a ton of skills to learn and use. There is no pvp, all community-centered coop mechanics. You can play as a single player, but you won't be able to do all the things. The crafting system is one of the most complex I've ever seen. Forging a weapon/tool is one of the most complex and difficult things to do. You can breed camels, breed flowers, grow flax, and many other fun skills. It's subscription based, but worth the money. The main problem is that the world gets reset about every 24 months. Bad to join at the end of a cycle, more fun if you can join at the beginning. Very fun and worth a look. There is a free option, as well, iirc.

4. PBBGs- Persistent browser based games are growing. Check out Amaranthine(amar.bornofsnails.net), Fallen Sanctum, Gates of Survival and Elysia. These are persistent worlds where you perform tasks to gather goods. Most of them are very similar in scope. There's not much depth to them. The communities are friendly and helpful. Most people run them while they are at work for lack of something better to do.

5. Minecraft - don't laugh! Minecraft with mods is not the same game. There are some very complex modpacks out there that completely change the game. There are mods that add quests and progression (similar to an rpg) and there are mods that add computers to minecraft, with programming! You can also explore mods that add extensive farming and breeding into the game. It's worth a look if you haven't experienced minecraft with mods.

6. Runescape - yeah, ok, maybe not. xD But, worth another look if you haven't played in awhile. Although the microtransactions are certainly more prevalent with the new owners.

Hope that helps a bit :) TS is a very unusual game that is unparalleled imo. Some of these might scratch a different itch, though. Have fun :)

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Hardsun
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Re: Games similar to Therian Saga

Postby Hardsun » Wed 29 Nov 2017, 23:51

Very nice list, Melindra. I would say it looks not like pure TS-like games list but more like list of games with complex crafting/skill systems, often with good economy and world simulation.

I can add Haven and Hearth somewhere near WURM Online. Any activity has its complexity and definetly will have to use wiki to get on with details - be that farming or hunting or finishing or something else. World is huge and intresting to explore since it has different biomes and what you might find will depend on that. Just beware since game is pvp - so while some people might help you others might kill you on the sight.
And in some cases death can be permadeath here... beware.

As for persistant browser worlds i agree, those have its own charm with its slow progression and ability to be run while doing something else. TS has best style of those though ;) but probably lack some sandbox mechanics - currently feels more like WoW when you eat new content and everything below becoming absolete.

glumetzul
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Re: Games similar to Therian Saga

Postby glumetzul » Thu 30 Nov 2017, 18:18

Hey!

Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad to see this thread catching some traction. I won't be able to try any new game in the following days but I'd like to add my own feedback on some of those mentioned here that I've already tried in the past.

1. Game of Thrones: Ascent I've tried a while ago. Logged in the other day and it seems I was level 81. I remember that I gave up on it when I had one of those "what am I doing with my life?" moments when I realised I spend too much time doing the same thing over and over again in order to progress in some online game. Can't say I'd feel like returning to it.

2. Ilyriad. This is one I might try again. I gave up on it shortly after building my second city because I realised I'd have to do some serious planning now and I was too busy at work to bother with that. Some more time passed and I didn't feel the urge to take up on it again. But I might. I'd recommend it as a Travian with peace time and persistent world.

3. Minecraft is a game I wasn't really bored with then I gave up on it. I did something stupid and died with a lot of stuff on me and had to take a break before going back to recover my stuff. That break went longer and longer and I never went back. Never tried it recently, the version I played was before it was aquired by Microsoft, I remember I had to pay for it some 15$. Anyway, this I wouldn't consider a backup option for TS because nothing happens while offline, can't play while doing something else so it's pretty much an alternative to Witcher or other single player offline games I play.

4. Runescape. I remember there was a lot of grinding to better my skills and it required my active involvement. Kinda like the usual MMORPG's like WoW. If they addes some sort of idle working I might give it a try. Otherwise, looking at a screen and clicking every 10 seconds for two hours a day only to be still behind the guy that did that 3 hours a day is something I promised myself I won't ever do again.

I also watched some videos of Wurm and it's interesting to say the least, seems like Minecraft on steroids. My only problem would be the same as in Minecraft or Runescape. If I can only progress with active involvement, I'd rather play some story driven single player game instead or just read a book.

There are a few not mentioned here that I would also like to add.

1. Asterix and Friends. It does resemble TS in a way but, while in TS the focus is 90% on waiting for things to develop offline and 10% (or less) on active involvement from players, Asterix and Friends is the other way around. There are some actions that take a while but there's a lot to gain by logging every hour or so (some bonus resources spawn around the map, you character's energy refills so you can do some actions). Also, unlike TS, your progress will regress if you are not active (there are roman patrols and camps that will respawn unless you either keep attacking them every once in a while or feed resources to a sentinel that is meant to keep them away for a while). Also it has a limited inventory which is a nightmare when compared to TS.

2. Kapi Regnum. This one simulates an economy in a very interesting way. Could be the most complex one I know when it comes to gathering resources and producing more and more advanced items from them. My main grief with it is that you have to keep ordering every building to do it's job instead of it doing it by default. For example if I have a farm and I want to harvest apples. I need to give it X of wanter and order it to produce Y apples. And when it's ready, I ought to do it again. And yeah, in theory I could order it to produce for 999 days if I have enough water but that's not only the case, especially with complex crafting system. You could argue that it's no different to TS where I have to prepare the resources first and then order my character to craft something but in Kapi Regnum you will end up having some tens of buildings and each of them will await your orders to work. I just ended up having to give orders to each of my buildings every night for the following day, but as soon as I forgot to do it for a few days, I kinda never went back to it.
This game would be so much better if they just had some sort of real time working like Travian, just take up water from my storage, 1 unit every X seconds and produce apples and when there's no more water stop.I think I will go back to it some day though.

3. Hattrick. This is the grandfather of browser games, might just be the closes I know to TS, if not for the different theme of it (it's a Football Manager game). My main problem with it is that it's engine is based on a concept from 1997 that isn't as entertaining now. They do try to mask it and spice up the game with all kinds of concepts but I kinda grew tired of it. There's also that feeling that Hattrick isn't what it used to be because once it almost reached 1 millions players but before it could do that, the number started to decline and it now rests at 250k users. The premium features, are not game altering, that was their main concept, but they are fun. Though not many still buy them and this forced them to raise the prices a lot. The community is great, many people just keep their account active because of that, myself included. There are dinosaurs that are 15 yers or perhaps even 20 years old in the game, even my own account is almost 9 years old and during that time I've met tens of other players in real life footbal games or social gatherings. There are about 10k messages per day in the forum even if it's some kind of outdated in house forum engine.


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