Kind of need framework before you can have content, though. Too much content before framework is generally a waste of everyone's time.
Well... Plants, new "basic" enemy creatures, different planet types, deco, space anomalies, ... What "framework" gets in the way of that? Most of that is just artwork and basic coding thats already been done. I mean... I get it. Everyone participating in the forums is generally happy with the games current development. Thats why we are all here. But lets be honest... If its 5 years before NEW content becomes a thing... This game will be just about dead or like it has been for 3 years now. Its still sustaining almost the same amount of players it had when it came out with brief windows of improvement. That doesnt say much for a game that has so much potential. Not to mention the development cycle is slowing way down and we may have only gotten one major release for all of 2018. Entire year, one major release. And 8.0 was not "Amazing". Was by no means bad... Just not amazing. While i do understand your part of the argument here... I also understand that re-skinning devices multiple times... Adding screen shake... Reworking weapons again... The tent (wtf was that for anyways didnt we have beds already that could have served the same purpose?)... Re-working icons... All could have, and should have waited until beta or at the very least until end of alpha. There's more... But im just trying to make that one point here. If all they concentrate on is framework, reworking trivial stuff, adding more complexity to configuring and content creation, and making the start-mid portion of the game include more grind... Whats already there is going to get very... Very... VERY... Stale in the meantime. I only make this argument because I want to see the game last through its development and I would LIKE to see the community not only sustain a stable player-base but actually grow it out! The game is phenomenal for what it is... Dont get me wrong here... But things could improve drastically with some minor tweaks along the way throughout its development. Not to mention community management is a bit racy here and often times alienates players instead of fostering positivity and overall constructive conversations. I mean... You guys find more ways to kill thoughts and ideas than you do to include them or see the potential in the thought. Yeah we know its alpha, yeah we know framework needs finished, yes we know this game is going to be developed for a long time... Doesnt make the facts any different. Just means you have no interest in a solution to the issue and rely on canned responses instead of critical thinking. Other dev teams manage to do it. Even smaller indy teams. Whats the harm in exploring a way to improve things here? I totally recognize what they HAVE done. The new "Captains Chair", the new textures, the larger planets, the new window blocks, the additional turrets and rework of the landing gear with that sweet as hell mechanical feel, the new wing blocks... But a few new creatures could go a long way... A few new plants could make the difference in a new type of planet or not... More planet textures could give great creativity options... A replacement for the PDA that involved NPC's (Or even in addition to the PDA) could mean tons of new player created content thats reactive rather than waiting for someone to find it in its weird menu... A reputation and NPC faction system (Like what we are seeing tidbits of) could mean new server configs on the horizon if done right that fosters long term game play! Some new block shapes could mean way cooler designs... They dont even have to build with the stuff for new content to spring into action just make it available. There are things that could honestly be worked into their framework over time and go a long way in extending the playability, and the likability of the game.
By framework, I mean things like physics and game systems, which I'd classify as heavy-lift coding (i.e. if you want it done right, it's going to take some time without distractions). It's true that graphic design/modeling is separate from heavy-lift coding, but any new interactable item (that's not just a re-skin) is going to need some amount of effort on the part of the systems programmer(s) to actually integrate it into the game. Too much of that, and progress on systems development slows. The larger (and "spherical") planets alpha 8 release probably represented a huge amount of heavy-lift coding (including cleaning up of legacy code, no doubt); meanwhile, alpha 9 is introducing multiple completely new game systems, each also requiring quite a lot of heavy-lift coding. There's always a balance to be struck between working on core systems versus interactables. At this point, I still come down on the side of spending most of the effort on game systems rather than on new items and visuals. It's relatively easy to add new items and visuals later; it's a lot harder to integrate new game mechanics as time goes on without breaking/changing gameplay significantly (inventory mass and volume is a prime example of this). The thing is, I don't think Empyrion is ready to grow yet (unless the devs are in imminent danger of running out of money, in which case, anything goes, I guess). It certainly has a lot of interesting features, and many stunning structures have been built in it, but it still has a lot of missing systems (improved flight physics, shields, sensors, research, power rework, thrusters/rcs rework, etc.) that limit its current potential after you get through the early game. I'd argue that the last thing we'd want would be for an influx of new players to get their hands on the game and then decide that it was a waste of their money because the game didn't deliver sustained mid- and late-game gameplay.
Did you have any specific examples in mind? I see tons of ideas flowing through the forums, but I've rarely seen the devs or moderators simply dismiss them without any justification. Personally, the issue I have with many proposals is that they aren't fleshed out enough in terms of how the proposed mechanic would actually function and how it would integrate with other game systems (which is why I strive to make any proposals that I make as complete as possible).
I totally see your point. Space is all about the journey and exploration though. When there's nothing to discover... Whats the point of a space game? Thats why content, while it does get in the way of development, is VERY important in this genre specifically. You cant just leave it on the back burner until some magical "right Time" comes along. You may just find yourself without an audience to view it.
Follow the empyrion Steam community. You would see enough examples on your own over time. One specific example here though... I made a suggestion about HV's BECAUSE they have been very problematic since inception. In 3 years I dont think too many people have ever said "Man HV's are AWESOME" lol. I suggested that they make the HV Amphibious for a number of reasons besides the obvious ones. We never got a chance to discuss it. The thread was promptly locked with very few responses. Now while I do understand they MAY have plans to fix the mechanics behind HV's... I made the suggestion, like I always do, Based on thousands of hours interacting with their player-base directly. Not talking to them via forums and chat windows. When they locked that thread they basically told every player that had something to say through me "Too bad until we feel like solving the issue you're SOL, even if we could fix it tomorrow". As always, I relayed that to our entire community. So 1100 people saw that happen. Lets face it... Not much of the community is actually involved here in the forums. The Idea was simply dismissed because they intend to look into it at some point. Thats not great for P.R. and could have been handled better. Its just one example, of a few times i have personally had that happen. And I hear about stories like this all the time. Eleon has a bad reputation now among a growing body of players. Especially server owners. Not because of the game, but because of how they handle people. In all honesty a damn trello would solve a lot of issues for them.
If I take for example Osiris developer I just said I have a problem with a small font inside the GUI thanked me for this and told me to look at what can be done to be bigger in a way that does not break something in the game. Personally, I like Eleon but this mystery and little information about 9.0 is a bit dumb.
Fair enough. It's definitely the case that content development should proceed in parallel with framework/mechanics development in so far as possible. Well, perhaps Eleon feels more threatened by comments/criticisms in the Steam forums than here. That's really unfortunate and sounds like it shouldn't have happened. Though, to be fair, anything involving changes to the way water works is a big undertaking and probably the reason you got the response that you did. That said, it sounds like they cut off discussion too soon without adequately explaining what it would take on their end to implement your suggestions. But, yes, I do get the sense that, at least some of the time, Eleon would prefer to deal with code than upset players. They want some surprise when alpha 9 drops, and I expect they're also wary of over-promising on any specific features.
Thats the typical responses I see from developers and from members heavily involved in their communities. Im used to developers being open to ideas, generally flexible, and professionally wrangling back their responses to be both intelligent and PR Positive. Many developers employ social engineering techniques to guide bad conversations in better directions before resorting to straight up shutdown, deflecting, or banishment. They also explain their positions on changes that might negatively impact their development process. I feel that eleon lacks in these departments a bit. I see them trying... But its like watching my kids fight over legos. There are plans sitting 10 feet from them that tell them how to build that cool lego kit... If they would share their plans... They could build that kit a heck of a lot faster because everyone involved wants to help but needs to know what the hell is going on to do so. That one kid keeps moving the plans so no one else can. So it takes them 10 hours to complete a 1 hour project. The plans dont mean they have to follow them... Its just a guide. Gets everyone on the same page. Without them... Nothing co-ordinates the overall effort. They have the plan... We cant even peek in the room. So a lot of our effort just goes to waste needlessly. Its like all their plans are secret... And only the hood wearing neophytes are in on the vibe until the bass drop. Lets not get started on how 8.0 and 9.0 reveals are being handled. LOL I could nitpick that to death. Honestly I think they should drop news from behind a curtain of solid information. Delay their news for a month. Keep notes on whats news worthy. Come back to it and look at it again in a month before you push it. Then come up with solid and news worthy. Revealing pictures of the 2nd or third rework to the weapons system is not news worthy. Showing random pictures of a bunch of drones swarming when the AI has, in the 3 years of history in this game, never worked correctly... Is not news worthy. It shows that more ai has been added to what is well known to be a flawed system for now. News worthy... A video showing drones intelligently wrangling a player down to the ground and destroying all their hard work. Flawlessly. Thats worth a release. Otherwise its a glorified patch note lol. IMO. This is my opinion, there are many like it but this one is mine. I have named it... Charlene. lol Im not sure I know any players that are genuinely wetting their panties over pictures of weapons getting re-worked again... Or of ramps. That seems like more of the same stuff we have been getting... Seeing a picture of a new planet type... Now that gets me going. Now ive got something to do that may take a good chunk of time. A planet that generates its own light? With bio-luminescent plants? Sick! What else could be going on there? It gets the imagination going. Im always excited to see new things to explore Not so excited about new features as those typically aren't done well their first go through and I know they wont be fixed for a long time should they be too complex. So whats there to get excited about? 8.0 DID have a few new planets come into play! That was great. That was about all that saved the release. I personally got about a week of play from just two new planets. I enjoyed them so much that I wanted to create my own again . Otherwise it seemed 8.0 took as much from the game as it added initially.
I feel the same. Personally, i am not happy with the games development at all. I don't want to go into details, so let me just state that more than 90% of all updates i have witnessed (started playing in late 2016), where about things i didn't care at all. I was waiting for the devs to flesh out starship systems, like a basic power generation system, energy shields or a rudimentary CV space combat system (weapon ranges/balance, power drain balance and so on). So it would be possible to build ships (that's what i'm interested in) that are useable in the finished game. But even in the current state of the game this is utterly impossible, because key features aren't even included, or not even defined. This of course is just and example, there are LOTS of things that are missing also. Nothing in this direction has been done, at least not in a way that it would be useful to create content one can be sure to be useful in the finished game. Instead weapon sound clips have been added here and there, Multiplayer balance has been an issue for months, new weapon models, one pointless tutorial overhaul after another (heck this is ALPHA, who the hell cares for a tutorial anyways?), a nonsensical and complicating structural integrity mechanic that makes things harder to build instead of easier and more fun. The list goes on and on. My point: nothing of this is even relevant to the finished game or improving it, it is just wasted time and helps no one. Don't get me wrong, i would really love the game, but i simply don't see any reason that it is even developing in a direction i am interested in. Sorry for being off topic, i think i just had to let off some steam.
To be honest, i couldn't care less about graphics. To me gameplay, immersion and creativity is much more important and aside from that, NMS looks more than good enough to me. On the other hand, i think EGS will never be able to compete with AAA games when it comes to technical things and realistic graphics. The devs just don't have the manpower to make EGS hold it's own in the technical arms race with other games. Btw, a "cartoonish" graphics style can have its merits too. If well done, it can make a game look timeless and let the palyer fill the gaps with his own imagination and so create its own reality. (even more than super realistc graphics in my opinion.)
I have zero complaints about the graphics in NMS. Empyrion is improving, but their art style is all over the map, and will continue to be until they get a proper Art lead in-house to manage things. At least NMS has a consistent visual style, even if some of the proc-gen results are a tad... odd. But that's the joy of exploring. Find the weird, the exotic, the beautiful and the terrifying. Majestic whale-sized catfish? Flying alien cows? Demonic T-Rex devouring a moon? Winged tiger-beasts as big as your ship? Sure! Why the heck not. Or my personal favorites, the adorable little whiptails on my homeworld, Tranquility. It's Space Tourism: The Game, with the added bonus of being able to claim and colonize a world when you finally happen across that 'perfect' planet - for whatever definition of perfect you desire. All journey, and the only destination is whatever you want it to be. Most games only dream of having that kind of freedom.
See thats what I imagine when I see the stars in the sky. Thats also whats not in empyrion. Instead of 9.0 having this freakish "Logistics" system thats almost there but annoying at the same time... I hear thats releasing in a week or so? God that makes me shudder... Wheres the alien worlds? lol. I know, I know... Its an alpha and yadda yadda. But isnt space exploration the core of these games? Its arguably the most important part of it besides meeting alien species and "Maybe" having a chat. All things lost on empyrion atm, and probably forever. The PDA, as I have always said, seems out of place in this game... Really out of place... The planets just are not packed with things to see... And space is so so empty... So empty. And here we are on the third redesign of the hand held weapons we cant even crouch with lol. Its crouch man! What the heck is so wrong with wanting to crouch? lol.
Oh, I hope not; it is so not ready for release yet. Where did you hear this, out of curiosity? I'd like to see them get the building mechanics stabilized before tackling the wider universe aspect. It's hard to go exploring for long when your ship continually needs redesigns because of mechanics changes. And I think the devs need to spend some time in serious thought about how they want to render the wider universe, i.e. what kind of global simulation do they want to run in the background to make the universe come alive. If all they end up doing is replicating NMS's bite-size packaged NPC interactions, then honestly that's not very interesting or original. The work that they're doing with the factions system gives me hope that we may someday see dynamic factions that battle for territory and deploy their own fleets for combat/mining/salvage. In other words, I'd rather they not rush into creating a ton of content without thinking about what its story should be and why it's even there in the first place.
This is exactly my pet peeve i have about EGS. It's utterly pointless to create ANYTHING if you don't know the mechanics they will implement later and without knowing how stuff is going to work in general. For example, will ships need to be aerodynamic to a certain extend to fly in atmospheres or to reach higher FTL speeds (similar like in Star Trek for example). Are they going to elaborate the FTL game mechanics so a ship needs to have more than just a Warp core to FTL from A to B? Meaning will some FTL systems need something like Nacelles (in the widest sense) or are they going to go the lazy route and just handwave such things like in Star Wars/stargate where you no need for visible "devices" like that on spaceships? How big are Power generators/reactors going to be to sustain a decent Shield around the ship? (If they are too small, people will have one less reason to build big awesome ships. Are those generators going to be really huge, ship creators need to know to leave enough space on their ships and so on.) Are Shield bubbles going to have a predefined diameter which a ship must not exceed? (I'm just wildly assuming stuff here, because we do not know ANYTHING) What about space combat ranges? Will ship shape be a decisive factor, or will Space weapons be accurate enough to hit anything greater than a tennis ball with 99% accuracy? (Speaking about small fighter craft vs. Big capital ships. Again what is their ultimate goal?) I know all this may sound trivial to some, but it is crucial if you want to create something decent and effective. But hey, i'm glad we have to concern about cargo weight from now on. That will add a ton of fun to the game, for sure. I'm not going to ramble about the "Improved Weapon Handling" and (another...) "Improved Game Start", because this is utterly rediculus at this point in my opinion and i wasn't 100% sure if that was not some sort of trolling to be honest, lol. Sorry for being off topic, i promise to talk about NMS from now on. Btw. i'm going to buy it next month. Heck i had no idea that those "freighters" look really nice! https://nomanssky.gamepedia.com/Starship_Catalogue_-_Freighter Except for what they call the "Enterprise-Class" which looks and makes me want to throw up. https://nomanssky.gamepedia.com/File:CS-9_Kotendoss.jpg Is it really so hard to come up with a good looking Starfleet mock up? But these: https://nomanssky.gamepedia.com/File:Ainazaki.jpg https://nomanssky.gamepedia.com/File:Oranonodait.jpg https://nomanssky.gamepedia.com/File:Freighter_Ragibaleroillanul.jpg Look really sexy in my opinion.
Ok, i have played NMS now for about 15 hours. I must say it looks gorgeous and the games size and scope is just overwhelming! Flora and Fauna look amazing and everything feels alien without being overly menacing (which i like). A nice detail is that you don't understand the language of an alien (on a spaceport for example), you need to learn individual words of their language. It's a nice little detail, but i really like it! But i have also several points of criticism sadly. Altough space is huge (which is an understatement) it feels really tiny, mostly because planets are so close they seem to crash into another. Between planets theres is some DENSE Asteroid field (everywhere) for some reason, i guess so people can mine resources whenever they need to. So space doesn't really feel like space, it's more like "videogame space", if you know what i mean. I'm not sure if this is because of my short play time, but the tiny Starship (lol), handles terribly sluggish. It's so bad i have lost several dogfights against NPC pirates (?), altough i consider myself as a quite competent pilot usually. Navigation is also unneccessarily awkward, since you don't have a planetary map or a map of the current star system. So orientation is poor by nature in that game. The games interface feels (like everyting else) sluggish and it feels definitely made for console. In general, everyting feel sluggish and laggy. I have tried lots of different Graphics adjustments, but it didn't change anything. It is obviously made to work that way. The thing that keeps you busy all the time is resource gathering. Maybe it's just me, but it really feels like a chore to gather the same stuff over, over and over, just to be able to do another warp jump to the next system or to do something else. The most incomprehensible feature (like in EGS btw) is that the game wants you to build a base. Maybe it's just me but wasn't the point of the game to explore new Star systems and to TRAVEL? Oh btw, it's not fun to explore a new planet just to find abandoned (tiny) bases cluttered all over the place. Not just one planet, but EVERYWHERE. Maybe it gets better if you venture deeper into the unknown idk, it just catched my attention and was really weird to me. After a while i got my hands on a Freighter (i didn't buy one, i got one for free by rescuing it from pirates), it was really cool at first, but after a while (some minutes) i realized that a freighter is nothing more than a moveable* base. *You can't fly it yourself, it just jumps to a position in a Star System, and it stays there... You can make it jump to your current location, but you can't fly it directly and i have found no way that would allow you to take it inot battle. It's probable not meant for that anyways. You can change the interiors of the Freighter, but i never cared about THIS kind of customization anyways. If it was outside customization, like changing certain elements (just for its appearance), i would he happy. You can send Frigates on missions, if you can manage to keep the fueled. Btw, these Frigates are bigger and more powerful ships than your "starship" (it always makes me giggle to call a tiny spacefighter a "Starship"), but you can't fly such a Frigate... for reasons... So you are stuck in your tiny spaceship, which you will use most of the time anyways and you have a mobile base which you can use to jump to other star systems which in turn (afaik) all have a small starbase themselves anyways. Again, i don't get it. Sorry for the long incoherent ramble.
@Neal You will find that after awhile all planets are the same and the critters are a bunch of parts thrown together. And yes now you need a base and you can build it and make your farms to make your food. And yes you have to keep gathering resources as to why there is so many asteroids out there is so you can collect the stuff you need to travel with. You have to build up resources to sale and then start buying and sale what you can to make the millions of credits you will need to buy better ships. You can have 6 ships that you can park on your freighter. They forced everyone to slow down because once you do reach the center. The whole game starts over and your in the next universe starting with the ship you were in at the time you entered the center and it's all broken up and you have to repair it again. So basically rinse and repeat. After I had played over 2000 hours in that game I gave up on it. And trust me the dev's don't hear anything you say there! I have tried to go back after the last few updates but nothing really changed other then grind getting worse That's my 2 cents.
I'd be perfectly ok with that, if the game woudln't feel like a chore. I guess i have played EGS creative mode for too long, i think EGS survival would feel like a chore too... Oh, thanks for the spoiler btw... I'm used to it, i'm part of this commuinty since 2016. There are three big things i really don't like about NMS. 1. is that the UI is everything but practical at all. There's no Planetary (surface) map and no Star System map (where are the planets?). The UI itself is clearly made for controller use. I don't know how often i have accidentaly placed a blueprint analyzer or some other device because the menu was unclear. The extreme lag makes aiming a weapon almost impossible, especially when the target is moving. These are rather small problems that could be solved with one update imo, but obviously the devs don't give crap about it (sry for that expression). 2. is the universe and how it looks and feels. As i stated in my previous post, the universe feels unnecessary small. You can see planets stand next to each other which makes everyone who as at least a slight idea about astronomy shudder. Is this neccessary? No, absolutely not. Without any bich hassle they could make the space between plantes much bigger, if they had a decent map of each star system that would allow the player to travel from one Planet to the next. Placing the this close next to each other makes the game feel like a Kindergarten painting. Kerbal Space Programm gets it right. Altough it is only limited to one star system alone you really feel the vast emptyness between planets, because it takes time to travel from one to the other. This is where player input can kill the very basis a game imo. If people the devs are listening to are either impatient kids or ppl. with ADHS. 3. Freigthers are utterly pointless, if you cannot use them in big fleet engagements, fly them yourself or even configure its crew. They are basically big garages with some little storage space. The devs seemeingly have no clue what makes big spaceships awesome in the first place or they are simply too lazy to implement them accordingly. It is not about creating ANOTHER layer of the same stuff i.e. another base with configurable interiors, but about expanding the scope of gameplay that turns the player from a lone traveller to commanding a ship and its crew. Not about sending NPC ships to missions that would have been much more exciting if you could play them yourself. They took the concept that commanding a ship is somewhat more passive than flying a spacefigher way too literal. Heck, Freighters (what a stupid name in a game about exploration of space) would have been THE opportunity to expand the game towards crew management and in general a more Space opera feel. For example what they could have done: Hire new crewmembers on a starport and make the Ship more effective. Instead of feeling like the commander you get the feel of being employed as a butler for that ship, if you have to gather resources for even more ppl. Instead you should order crewmates (NPCs) to join you when visiting planets and dig for that stuff themselves, while you order them what to do. But i get the feel that MANY game developers are using that kind of logic (giving the player even more work, instead of evolving the game) Give the player the opportunity to fly the Capital Vessel similar like a ship in Star Trek Online or Bridge Commander. Have other factions/species travel around their territory in Destroyers and Cruisers, instead of small one seaters. Have selected Crewmembers follow the main character on planets (defending him or even taking samples of Flora Fauna themselves and so on). Give them equipment you can select accordingly to their skill and task. I better stop here, it is getting too long anyways. Yes i should have spend my scarce money on something else. I really mean it.
