Eleon, I love Empyrion. I've played it for darn near 2,000 hours now. The only game I've played anywhere near that much is Everquest. I'm pretty frustrated right now though. I like the direction the game is going in, generally, but I'm just flabbergasted that you continue to add to a product that continues to be hilariously unstable. "The Galaxy" is really cool looking, and it's got great potential, but right now if there are enough players to even remotely fill some of that space, the server will have unplayable latency. You've essentially deliberately multiplied the game's biggest problem by a factor of 10. Players can't enter planets. Once on certain planets they can't exit the planet. They can't warp consistently from one star to another, or one planet to another. Tons of these planets and moons are empty. No POIs. Very few critters etc. Players have to search for places they can actually play the game. Chances are good they'll get stuck somewhere they can't play it. I really don't understand why you consistently push updates from experimental to live when they're neither stable or remotely ready. Your number one priority should be optimization. Until you can scale up the number of players this game is going nowhere. I want to play the game, but right now it's not consistently playable.
Maybe you should learn about software developement process if you don't understand why it is done like that? This game real name is "Empyrion - Galactic Survival" not "Empyrion - Galactic Survival Alpha XX". Alpha is stage of developement in software bussiness when new futures are tested (added and removed), sometimes they can drasticly change the way software works. No sane developer will be optimizing software in Alpha stage! You can compare it to factory: if you are unsure how many items you have to produce and of what type exactly, you are not optimizing production. Because if you optimize and decide later add or remove something your optimization is gone. So maybe your priority should be education about basic software developement process insted of telling professional developers what they should do? You have to wait at lest for Beta stage for some serious optimizations and from what I remember from Spanj interview with EGS on YouTube it will not come before A15.
Stability != Optimization. I bought the game at Alpha 4. The game has never been stable. Though, I acknowledge some improvement. Other criticisms (to name a couple): Features of the game get tossed into release half done - Map markers. Features in the game aren't kept working - COOP passwords. Numerous regressions in major releases. An update to the game that adds features is labeled a "hotfix". There is plenty to criticize for a game in "Alpha" state. And "Early Access" adds nuance and obligation to that. It's obvious code gets tossed into release with no realistic expectation that it will work correctly. While this is understandable for specific hard to fix issues it shouldn't be standard practice. Recently, save game compatibility was lost. I am really curious how that had to happen database change or not. The developers have a vision. I've enjoyed playing the game despite my frustrations. I wish them all the best.
@Paul_Shakur First off, I'm a paying customer not an aspiring developer. My understanding of game development is irrelevant. Second, they sold the game through early access in an alpha state to accomplish two things: raise capital to continue work and obtain critical feedback. This is that. If they're getting feedback on stability and not features, that means it's not stable enough to playtest the features. Their ability to develop the game is literally impaired by the inability of players to play it. So unless you want to engage with the actual points being made I suggest you piss off.
@Lomwymad First, just because you are paying customer doesn't give you right to tell other how to do their job. Especially if you have absolutely no idea how this process works. Second, if you want to give critical feedback you should be ready to get one too and from what I see you are using double standard. Third, in my lets play of A12 I seen just few empty planets and havent experienced any other issue you described in first post. So I have ability to play, test and enjoy game. Last thng. Don't tell me or anyone what to do, ok? It's bad habit.
This is not a game problem, but a server problem. Servers should tailor their maps to their player base. Many server communities want the galaxy and have no problems meeting up with other players. This is a problem and providing server logs to the devs to help fix it would help. I wish more server owners would give the logs so it can get fixed. Please file a bug report and include the server logs. The planets are the same in regards to creatures. POIs are mostly found within a faction's territories so there's always places you can go with plenty of POIs. Servers also have complete, full control over this with a few lines inside the galaxyconfig.ecf file. Absolutely disagree with this in alpha. Optimization is important but it simply cannot be the primary focus during alpha development. That's not how things work. This is not a MMO. It's not designed to be played with hundreds of concurrent players on a single server. It absolutely is playable. Some larger servers seem to have had stability problems, but for the majority of the player base the game is perfectly playable. One more note: It seems your issues stem mostly from you taking an issue with how particular servers are run. I suggest you get in contact with the admins on your server so you can tell them your concerns. The game map is completely, totally, 100% controlled by the server admins on a server or the scenario author in custom scenarios. They are in complete, total, full control 100%. The game developers have no control over what private servers do. Feedback is important, but just like you're free to give your feedback, other paying customers are also free to give theirs and they might disagree with your views. I understand the frustration of having issues with a favorite game, but that is what we all signed up for and agreed to when we saw that giant "early access" disclaimer before hitting the pay button on Steam. Prioritizing optomization now can cause harm to the game's development in the long run and my personal feedback is that I want to see this game be fully released to its full potential and that means not going to beta quite yet. I don't think it's ready for beta. That's just my view and I have the same right as a paying customer as you do to give it.
Optimizing a game in Alpha is like attempting to polish the Car finish before the Motor, Gear, Transmission Box and Wheels are mounted
I can answer this, there are not enough dedicated experimental testers around to spot the issues before release, when released the real playerbase then finds certain issues that were perhaps missed, resulting in quick hot fixes. And of all the players who do use experimental, I doubt most of them are even trying to find problems with everything, rather they are looking for problems that affect there own play, so they miss things that others might have detected. Most people use experimental just to play with the new blocks for their ship designs because they cant wait. Empyrion is a highly demanding product anyway with regard to server/client resources, we have seen the game struggle in the ways you describe since day one, running our of memory on server when more planets are added and then when all planets are inhabited by players and nobody can move from playfields. So I cant imagine how bad the resource usage is now with galaxy of 50k systems was it ? as wonderful as that sounds, imaging the resource cost for a server is a little scary if there is a player in each system for example ^-^ Only time will tell, if the final product can be optimised enough to make it stable. And lets all not forget that eleon recommend a max player count of 20 or was it 25 for this game when dealing with online servers. I used to play on HWS (egs server) every day with a player count of average 80-90 we had our moments of instability but that was usually caused by heavy combat between several players. I wonder how well HWS is doing now with the new galaxy. EGS is not a game you can just buy a little nitrado server for or use that old pc in the spare room as a server for, if your looking for a larger mutiplayer experience you need to pay thousands of dollars or join another server who already are paying thousands of dollars. These guys at HWS for example are paying tons of monthly cash for servers powerful enough to run a small country, to run empyrion. It seems to work for them so maybe try some of these bigger servers out in the meantime, you may find more stability there but they wont be without their own issues. I gave up trying to host my own servers on my spare pc, 10 players and it falls apart with 8gb ram lol, I joined HWS and never looked back.
Oh good lord. People are their need to white knight.... I am a software developer, I know all about the software development cycle. No where in any textbook, in any process, ever, is there a call to the public to defend against critical feedback. You are in a forum entitled, "Feedback" for crying out loud! Developers want to know when things aren't going right. There is no need for you to hit the reply button and start insulting posters! You don't need to come here and justify the bad performance. You don't need to come here and excuse the bad performance. You don't need to come here an insult people who report bad performance. You don't need to explain software development, alpha and beta, or the lifecycle to anyone. The purpose of this forum is to let the developers, again the _developers_, know about issues the players are experiencing. If the developers want to come here and acknowledge the issue, then great. If not, great. If they want to address it, great. If not, well, we'll see what happens. They don't need you starting a joust every time someone has an issue That said... Hey, devs! I've been playing for years and have never experiences so much chunk until alpha 12. Performance has always had room for improvement, but it is nearly impossible for me to complete a POI, much less get involved in PvP in the current state. People are giving up playing, because it is becoming so frustrating. Please do look into it.
I agree 100 %. I can't count the number of times I wrote that, but it seems that some players just can't cope with other's feelings differing from theirs. I really appreciate that somewone like you, having real knowledge of game development, comes out of the silent observers and say it loud. The point is also that I - and surely others - don't wish to be associated to the "core community" if it's becoming rotten and unfriendly. I had more than my share on these forums, but as the crowd thins out with time, the issue or "critic bashing" becomes more apparent, and incredibly boring to see coming up on a regular basis. Heck, even the developers have to tell the "groupies" to leave unsatisfied players alone, as they're free to voice their frustration. Kindergarden ? Mmm...
Maybe some history here might help or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Stages_of_development Not all software developers use these stages though. I know we didn't in our studio. But then we weren't a game's studio.
No, it will not, because it is completely and utterly irrelevant. This is a feedback forum. Someone left feedback. That is all there is to it.
I'm just waiting for a game to be future complete before serious optimization takes place and if it didn't I will be complaining about it. Yes indeed, but there is nowhere written that other players cannot respond and if you read first post more than a half of complaints about game is mulitplayer server related. It's not Eleon Game Studios fault that some admin messed configuration and they can do nothing about it. 100% aggree. I don't have problems with any of it in Single Player. It's either server issue or bad network code. Only way to find out is try to play on different servers. If most of them has the same issue then it's Eleon otherwise its Admins. I don't care about feelings, but about facts and like I've written before, most complaints by author of this thread are server configuration related and don't exists in single player. Only valid complaint is about performance. If I will write on forum or anywhere that I'm from SpaceX or Jupiter moon Europa, do belive me too? And now about hypocrisy. None of responders insulted anyone until this two gentelmen came. Remember this next time. Thank you for calling us so kindly and respectfully. I will remember real gentelmens. It doesn't matter how you begin but how you end.
And so did I without making any statement other then here is some info. Your the one to say I was wrong to do that and what I had posted was irrelevant. So can we assume you speak for everyone now? Or is this open to anyone's feedback. So is it now wrong to help people understand how some things work? Is that not feedback as well?
Maybe you should learn something, anything, out of your bedroom. Why not try a walk in society ? Let's see how your "I don't care about feelings" stands... But indeed, you do care about feelings, as I can see them been hurt because fingers are now pointed at your manners. Look at my posts count : I will happily hit the reply button just for you, until you realize how easily you will hate being put in face of your own contradictions. The multiplayer issues are well documented, here and on Steam. I don't think you're bringing any kind of advice either for the OP or for the developer. Repeating "it's an Alpha game" has been so used here and everywhere as an excuse for anything that most educated people don't even say it anymore... But feel free to parrot it if you feel better for it. Just know that it doesn't fool anyone but those who are just looking for a cheap thrill on a forum. What a "sane developer" could do is just too wide for you to begin teaching others about it. As a matter of fact, Eleon is well known to generate almost the same amount of patches for balance, optimisations and "cosmetic" parts of the game. Maybe if you stay on these forums long enough you will indulge into reading the huge archive, and see for yourself what "a sane developer" can do, instead of pulling random rabbits from your hat. Heck, the OP has over 2000 hours in game. That should be enough for anyone to pay a little more respect and STFU. That's way more efficient at laying a topic to rest than to "white knight" for a game that can easily be criticized. Try me on any of the usual excuse: alpha ? small team ? small budget ? players too dumb ? Come on, don't be shy.
Again, this is the FEEDBACK forums. The author left FEEDBACK. It is not a review site, it is not the general forums, this is not a complaint, and even if it was, it isn't your duty to argue it. Especially not here. It isn't written because most people expect you to be intelligent enough to realize you aren't on r/politics or Facebook. Again, it's the FEEDBACK forums! Let people leave their feedback. There is no need for you to argue with them. It serves no purpose whatsoever. All you are doing is discouraging people from leaving feedback at all. That is not good for the game or the community. No one cares what you do and do not have problems with. You aren't on the development team. It is not your job to figure out whose fault what is.
I think we should just let @Paul_Shakur flap his mouth and move on. It's clear from how he spends his time what his priorities are. I'm posting again because I wanted to offer a description of what a typical playthrough on a multiplayer server looks like right now. This is representative of servers between 10-50 players. When you start out the lag is noticeable but acceptable because you know there are tons of players on the starter with you. You hustle your ass into space asap because of the lag. You find a system a couple jumps off that seems out of the way enough to be ok for a while. Everything seems ok for a day or two. Then waves of lag start. I think this is because there's an ever increasing amount of **** the server has to keep loaded. When everyone is on one planet that planet runs like ****, but the server is stable. When everyone spreads out, it begins to overwhelm the server. Eventually the whole server will start getting waves of disconnect messages. People will be unable to warp, and when they log in later their ship will be somewhere other than where they are. I want to point out that in Alpha 9 the game was stable enough for Shattered Realm to become truly awesome. It had a large population and I was able to participate in massive space battles (as much as 8-9 cvs on a side). There was a bit of framerate stuttering and munitions passing through hulls, but it made sense because of the massive load 180 size class worth of cv's engaging in combat. I feel that the game has regressed. I don't think it takes a rocket scientist, or a developer @Paul_Shakur, to know that multiplying the number of playfields by 100, or 1000, is a bad idea when the game had trouble running 40+ playfields to begin with.
I have edited and ran many servers and I never saw a toggle for "how many playfields should be able to run without game breaking errors." I think that is all up to Eleon. The game ceases to function with fewer players and fewer playfields on a server now than it did two years ago. Eleon has increased the load on the server per player/playfield. If a server with 10 players playing on 10 different playfields is experiencing game breaking errors, that's on Eleon man. Playfields that have never been encountered aren't loaded. Empty playfields aren't loaded. It's not server settings.
I want to add that the only reason I'm posting here is I want Eleon to see this and improve the game. If you don't think the game is a ridiculous dumpster fire as it is currently implemented you're apparently not playing it in multiplayer.
