Hey guys, Today my message is not a compliment. I have a complaint here. I have to open my heart. I don't even know how to express it, and translating this to English makes it even more difficult, but... well, let's try it. I love Empyrion. We all know it is a great game, but I'm angry. I think I can call "anger" what I'm feeling. A mix of frustration with anger due to Devs lazyness. Ok, I know they are not lazy "per se". In fact, they have done a great deal of work so far, I don't want to be unfair, but if we are talking about fair things, we must be really fair. Of course we understand and see all the hard work it has been done in the game, and I thought I had that by this time swollen this "Release 1.0" story, but I have not. And that angers me... and all the frustration makes me sad. Really. I feel betrayed. These are my feelings. I'm opening my heart here. As I said, we must be fair and admit a great deal of right things are correctly and masterfully done, but since we are being fair, we must also be fair and point things which aren't. It displeases me a lot by knowing the staff decided to release the game, leaving Early Access. Please, don't preach me that "we think the game is in an ideal state for 1.0 release" speech, because we players are not idiots and we all know it isn't. Sad, but true and bluntly honest. And to all community members, before rushing to volley back my words defending the devs, please, remember 1) you are not devs, so the game's decision and profit is not yours; 2) we are both players, thus at the same side; 3) read ahead, think about the examples I give and just think calmly if you don't also have your own examples before you judge my post. We all just accepted the fact Empyrion was "released" on market purposes, just to gather money by appearing to be a complete game. We all know a game has to have balls to be years on Early Access and hit its own chest while in this state, against all odds, facing the fact it is really in development. We know there is pressure and a Released game sells better - at least some game companies have shown to think this way. So please, do not pretend the game is ready when it is not. Today I visited Polaris Trading Hub. The sound effects there are still awful - the same stock library alien voices. There is a green insectoid NPC which was used as a monster (a night predator) in even earlier stages and now he is among the "sentient" creatures. All of them dressed up in tech equipment. This green one, naked like an animal. The sound? It's voice and another lower-toned one, repeating itself over and over. Crap. Let's look elsewhere: there are a bunch of items in the vendors, probably luxury items intended for commerce or player trading, like "Filters" or "Fertilizers" which the description is "InfoNeeded". And you still claim this is a finished released game? How dare you? You didn't even removed this "draft tag reminders" of the "project" you were working on. What was it? A dev got lazy or just forgot to remove them? And there are NPCs which are walking (and stuck) on the top of the counters, which means there is not a ready pathfinding system for them. "Leaving Early Access", you said? "In a state you consider ready to it", you said? C'mon... About the NPCs: there is a mix of Sci-Fi high-tech aliens, fully integrated to the environments, with 20th century office workers and even some "mall-shopping teenagers". What happened? You just decided to add every NPC from the game's engine library, without even caring it fit or not into the game??? But I have to mention this guy, which triggered all this here: there is a "fatso-chubby office worker" there, whose face seems like a bad 90's game reproduction, using jeans and a T-Shirt. Despite of being ugly, the model brings a very badly done futuristic looking hat, shoulders and two hanging stripes with "cool looking" runes, just to try making him look... what? Sci-Fi? "Star-Trekish"? Empyrion deserved better. We deserved better, not a mocking like this, not this worst amateurish example of how a job should NOT be done. I also found a Flamethrower to purchase in one NPC. After seeing all this unfinished stuff in one single POIs, I just didn't have the courage to buy and test it. There was a "Flamethrower Fuel" item, which used just the same exactly icon as the "BioFuel", i.e., the stock icon - even thought its decription said it is a different item. For goodness sake, did no one had at least the good will of opening Windows Paint and changing the icon color? *Sigh*. Community, I'm deeply sorry you have to read this. I'm even more sorry I have reasons to write that. I'm frustrated, a bit angry and as I said, since we always try to be just and fair to point the right things, we have the right to also be just and fair to point this project flaws and, since we are it's main and only supporters and sponsors, we have the right to demand, at least, a clean job. We are not idiots. Do not "we think the game is in an appropriate release state" us. We can see by ourselves the game is not. You are not just presenting your results to a board of directors or in a powerpoint presentation to a player audience, we are playing your game daily, having detailed and direct contact with your product. You try to convince us of something contrary to what we are seeing by ourselves! For goodness sake, we are your stakeholders and you try to deceive us? Well, beyond this point, I think I would only repeat myself. I think you all got my point, devs and community alike. It would have been nicer and more elegant if you probably said "we are saying this game is ready to be released to increase sales and raise more money" than telling a fake story about how the game is in a good shape to be release and, worst of all, hoping we believe it. This is mostly shameful. Ok, the game is good, but you didn't need to try to "smokescreen-idiotize" us. :-/ SmaugBR
I think a lot of us understand your frustrations, as we can all see the potential for a great game. I have stopped playing the game due to being frustrated with the minute crosshair and not being able to see where I am shooting. I will play again when/if the devs fix this but it seems that they have ignored all feedback about this. I think we can all relate to the very poor AI. Creatures falling down to lower levels in the trading stations. Enemies just standing there looking away when you shoot them.. (When you can see the crosshair). It's also frustrating then the changes the devs do look like knee jerk reactions and the changes end up making things worse. As for the release to 1.0..... I think we all know this was for a financial decision rather than a 'the game is at this stage' decision.
Thank you... Really. It's refreshing to see I'm not alone. It brings comfort to hear similar things from another player.
I would say : if there is no intent to improve the many aspects of the game that have been negatively described and criticized repeatedly by a majority of players, and if there is no more big cash income burst on the horizon past the " v 1.0" stunt, then Eleon could do like many other studios have done and release their game for free (they're not doing it for money, they said...). They could also release it "open-source" so players could mod all these aspects that the developers seem reluctant to indulge in, like sounds, animations, terrain generation, balance, etc. Empyrion already has half-open "source" but the parts that irate players the most are not. If we could customize sounds, models, textures, and animations to some extent, this game could be a blast. Right now it's just "waiting" to see what the next patch will bring, hoping for changes that were asked long time ago. We're not asking for top notch motion capture for NPCs and animnals, but what we have now is just too sketchy to be taken seriously. Besides that, we were told in August that we would get some kind of roadmap. It's November in a few days and I did not forget that part of the promise.
Yeah, I agree with a lot of this (especially the crosshair issues ) and it's sad that more basic things aren't improved. Any playerbase can be a massive load of whiny babies, but I'd say most (80%) of the complaints in these forums are pretty justified. If the game was still in alpha, I'd forgive it. 'Released' though, I definitely expect more. I keep coming back to the game, but I also keep turning it off again.
Would love if we had a way the people could point out the placeholder tests in the config files and suggest wordings for missing once. That's all very low hanging fruit and gives a impression of quality when items that have been in the game for a whole month or more don't have "todo" in the descriptions. For example, a super tiny detail. but in this screenshot https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2288240577 It's obvious someone forgot to add an icon for the ammo container above the ammo contents list, all the others have an icon, but the ammo column it's missing bizarre.
Maybe not - you can end up with quite a long list there: Would be annoying to have to scroll because of an icon instead of seeing entire list at a glance?
True, but 90% of us wont need to scroll, and since it's probably possible to add all the amo types and require a scroll even without the icon, I'm assuming the devs would need to add scrollbar/wheel to this panel regardless. Consistency is called for, consistency makes software easier to maintain.
There is already a scrollbar, although the text shows all even with all possible ammo types - the scrollbar just moves it a bit up/ down. Having the icon would obviously hide a few lines. Regarding "consistency" the "shield device" could be the shiled generator, to follow the logic, but everyone understands the shield icon I guess. I think I would rather get rid of all icons since there's already a "name" in the bar over each section, and have 2 more of each items in the upper parts ( custom switches and signals). They could even compress the "tanks" images vertically to free more space in the upper parts. In the "ammunition" section they could put both buttons side-by-side to avoid the "scroll" problem if the top secctions get bigger. .
Yeah, kind of agree now, the icons are pretty, but probably not needed in a cluttered UI. Unfortunately whoever added the icons did not have OCD, because the power bar and shield bar are not level with the fuel gauges, this has bothered me for some time, and I just opened 'paint and held down the SHIFT key while drawing on the screenshot....eeeew . Probably a good reason why pretty causes more problems than it warrants.
