Thanks to a friend, I've been lucky enough to have spent the last month or so playing the beta of Dual Universe (DU). While soaring above DU's beautiful planets, delving through endless mining tunnels, and hovering over my vehicle creations, I couldn't help but compare it to Empyrion. They are actually very different games. Yet something about DU seemed to highlight for me what Empyrion does so well, and what it fails at, and above all, what Empyrion could be. (https://du-creators.org/makers/Armando/ship/Talocan - I liked the look of this ship) When I came into DU I was a little worried it was going to be an Empyrion (and Space Engineers) killer, but after some time I've come to realise - Empyrion occupies an important niche that it's competitors simply can't rival. Empyrion has a game structure that outshines all competitors in terms of its potential for diverse PvE encounters, for survival gameplay, for a coherent story, and for its incredible capacity for user-made content. DU is quite a different game. But the DU experience also made me examine all the reasons I was tempted to stray from good old Empyrion in the first place - those quirks that never seem to get fixed, the lack of meaningful tactic choices in combat, the lack of balanced economics and end-game gameplay, and just the general sense that the pace of development is flagging long before Empyrion reaches its full potential. I believe a sequel, one built on a new engine and with a new business model, is the solution needed to revitalise the Empyrion project. I think this project would be a commercial success and bring us some of the features that will otherwise simply be impossible. I'm going to try to explain why, and what I think the sequel should look like. Comparing DU and Empyrion It wasn't immediately obvious, but after playing for a while I realised Dual Universe is taking its queues not so much from Empyrion and Space Engineers, but from the MMO Eve Online. The economy feels very similar to Eve, in that you spend a lot of time trying to figure out profitable activities, and engaged in discount wars with faceless rivals trying outbid you at the local market. Cargo is such that there is an actual need to plan the transportation of goods and logistics. The long-term and universal nature of the economy does add to the sense of value of commodities. You also get all the darker Eve antics. Already, scams and insiding are rife. It will depend on your personality if this is to your taste. Blueprints are something you can protect and sell in-game - this is something Empy desperately needs to consider. Combat is another area where the Eve influence is very visible. In Empy, you're almost in shouting distance of your enemy. But in DU, the maximum speed in space is 30000 km/h. As far as I can work out (so far, anyway), you'll rarely be in visual range with the people that you're shooting at or taking shots from. Instead you'll be interacting with a radar UI and activating the guns on little UI boxes, similar to Eve, and the results feel much more like a MMO than the arcade flight sim feel of Empyrion. (You might want to check out some vids of DU PvP if you get a chance) This is probably a more realistic representation of space combat, and it's going to make insanely large battles of thousands of people viable. However, it's certainly no Battle of Endor, with huge ships firing broadsides at eachother and fighters darting between them. That makes me sad - I'd kind of like to actually see pieces of the other ship exploding when my volley of plasma tears into them (PvE or PvP!). DU's graphics engine is predictably superior to Empyrion. Where they've actually created and polished the graphics, it shows too (finally, lots of really shiny metal texures). The building system is likewise far more sophisticated. You build using voxels, which can be deploying in cylinders, spheres or even smoothed into a curve with a tool. The minimal voxel distance is about 1/10th of the size of a large block in Empyrion, and you place working and decorative objects like engines and plants within the voxels at whatever angle and position you like. Element location matters too, because engines push at specific angles with semi-realistic physics and are blocked by obstructing voxels or elements. Finally DU offers some incredible power with its LUA code - basically you can program your spaceship IN THE GAME to do stuff, such a autopilot to another planet while you take a seat, or to give it a completely different flight HUD with live information of your choice. (https://du-creators.org/makers/Deadvard/ship/Space Shuttle Luxury - that's a custom HUD with live info) There's a downside to all this, however. It's actually pretty complex, and while the potential is greater, in practice its a pretty hard and time-consuming task for most people to create a good looking ship. Most people are flying around ugly boxes (more so than in Empy). As yet, the top ship designs are nowhere near the quality of the top Emyprion designs. Time will tell if that changes. There is basically no PvE to speak of in the game, unless you count face-planting into a mountain with your ship (which due to the physics happens to me more than I'd like to admit). This is what I really miss from Emyprion. Yes, the first-person shooter gameplay was janky, and yes, POI assaults where cheesy, but raiding POIs with a couple of buddies made for a relatively enjoyable day-to-day activity to break up mining, ship designing or waiting for some PvP. Coupled with this, the story is near non-existent. As far as I understand, there isn't a lot of plans to focus on these things. Both games are spaceship building games, and that's great. But all in all, what I came to realise was that DU is a space MMO first. Empyrion is a space multiplayer survival adventure. And this is where Empyrion can offer something that others can't. Empyrion's Niche Here's what I think should set Empyrion's apart from other games in the space building genre: Up-close-and-personal space combat - with lots of tactical depth (ship specialisation, complex manoeuvring, PvE focus with some skirmish PvP) and actually use 3D space Dynamic PvE - crisp infantry combat and smarter AIs that require planning and tactics to defeat Deep story - via enlisting players to make and publish their own story elements - aliens you can talk to, POIs with unique events, missions that aren't fetch quests. Strong survival and economy - that means you're always having to manage your resources to progress Meaningful social aspects - cooperation with other players in small groups, and reasons (other than gang warfare) to team up or visit others Customisation - buying the game gives you access to many different worlds and gameplay flavours, because the community can customise the game so easily. And if something you want doesn't exist, you can create it. Leverage the power of the Empy community! There's no need to try to be NMS, Star Citizen, or especially DU. Focus on the above areas, and Empyrion will be the best by far in its niche, not because it has the most resources, but because it has a design best suited to its focus. Why a Sequel is Needed It's tempting to say Empyrion should just change, rather than have a sequel. This lacks insight into the problem. A sequel is the only answer because: Engine and code limitations - Empyrion is suffering from severe graphical and gameplay limitations due to the engine (edit - perhaps it would be better to say "codebase"). There isn't enough object IDs or space for new objects or textures, the frames per second doesn't match the graphical performance, walking on ships during flight is near impossible for the devs to implement. The existing infrastructure stifles the developers and community's creativity! New revenue mean new features - Empyrion's dev team is tiny (it's impressive what they've done with such a small team). In order to implement a flourishing new set of features, there is no getting around the fact that they need to take on more talented coders. And there's no way to do this without new revenue. Realistically, much of the audience for this game already own it. A new game, modestly priced, would be something the majority of Empyrion players would jump at, IF it meant big improvements in graphics and gameplay. And without this, the new features are just not going to happen. There's just not enough developers at Eleon to do it - for comparison DU has around 90 developers compared to Empyrion's 7 or 8! If it's done right there might even be possibility of crowdfunding for new development. New business model - Empyrion 2 should be a subscription model, purchasable through steam, but at a significantly lower cost than its rivals (say $7 a month rather than $30 of some others). Why? In an up-front model, developers are incentivised to cut-and-run as soon as the sales slow, but if the revenue is ongoing, an enthusiastic core of gamers continue to support the game for years to come, and the devs will know this. In an up-front model, developers increase revenue by making a game that looks good in a trailer (sales), whereas in a subscription model, they make what makes the game fun, because that keeps people subscribed. Most of us would be happy to support the game if it meant we got the features we wanted. Share revenue with enthusiasts - Empyrion 2 should have a model that takes some of the revenue from subscriptions and shares it back with the players that authentically contribute. Those that work to create the best ships, the best mods, the best suggestions, the best POIs, should be rewarded - offering actual cash for the winners of a ship design competition, for example. If this is done in a transparent and fair way, and when gamers hear there is a game that actually values the contributions they make, watch sales rocket upwards and active contributors pour into the game! First steps The design of Empyrion 2 should be carefully considered. The key features needed should be planned for from the start - walking during flight, crisp FPS, shinier graphics, specialised ships, a careful refresh of the CPU/power/ship layouts, effective AI etc. To get this right, Eleon might get feedback from the community, first through a general survey, and secondly by consulting key contributors (the best modders, designers and constructive forum participants) for more detailed feedback. Considered enthusiast feedback can offer something casual opinion cannot, and that should be valued. Conclusion Empyrion is a unique but unfinished project. The reality is that it's running out of steam, despite Herculean efforts of the tiny dev team, constricted by an outdated engine and a business model that can't provide an incentive to invest in the future. On the current path, we'll never really see the incredible potential fulfilled. But a new injection of excitement, revenue, talent, features and progress could revitalise Empyrion. The world's greatest space adventure and building game could rise again to become what is was always meant to be. That's why we need Empyrion 2. (Empyrion 2 - because it's nice to see what you're shooting at)
Vary Nice! well done I would like to have a conversation with you in Discord I think your persecution is just a little off https://discord.gg/DfvfbRdD
@Average A nice idea - unfortunately Empyrion will never be an open community project in which the developer, designer and content creator create an Empyrion 2 together with Eleon :-( There are too many barriers, prejudices and egos for that.
There is room for improvement and optimization in the actual version that could make the game way more satisfying than it is now. It is still too early to make predictions or comparisons, because the fine-tuning cycle only began. There are some old game engines that have nothing to envy to the newer ones. Eye candy is cool, but it will never make up for real content and gameplay. Also I'm completely against any kind of subscription model. That is the ****** of gaming, and I have seen what it has done to "content-based games" and how it became a cash cow for developers while players are the "meat and bone" of the action... and they pay for it ! Come on... Another problem is that newer engines usually require newer hardware, which means less buyers overall even if the game is cheap. In fact even on a same engine two games can be very different, because it depends on talent of designers, animators and coders. So there is absolutely no garantee that simply starting from scratch and using a shiny new engine will give better results in the end, visually and gameplay - wise. Let's see how much polish they can give us here and now first.
@ASTIC You make a fair point, but despite all the barriers and quirks and shortcomings, Empyrion has such a great core concept that it has attracted a very dedicated following who in turn contribute a lot to the game, more than most games of this size and budget could ever hope for. I strongly believe the viable model is there, it just needs a few people in the dev team and the core community to believe in it, and the potential could be realised.
There's been some pretty unfortunate abuses of the subscription model by large game publishers, so I 100% understand why people feel this way. But I do want to point out that as a model it provides several big advantages for us gamers. As it stands, there's no real way an up-front customer can financially incentivise long-term development or influence its direction - once you've bought it and the company has your money, they don't need to continue development or improve the game. Game development is harder than most people think, and there is a strong temptation to just walk away if you have a partially complete product, especially where the dev team is stretched very very thin. A subscription model provides a sort of soft-guarantee for the devs to listen very closely to their community, because the community has the ability to effect the bottom line if the game doesn't live up to expectations. It also provides a steady revenue steam that creates stable jobs and therefore better staff commitment to the game. Attracting talented developers that make the cool features we want means providing them with a steady job they can trust in. If there's no future in the game, the best talent will move on. Players like us need those top devs to get the features we want, and given the large number of hours most of us have got out of a very low cost game, it would be crazy not to contribute the cost a cheap lunch per month to ensuring the game achieves the level of quality and features we all want. Just wanting the team to "deliver" without considering how game development works is understandable, but it isn't the smart strategy for the community to get what it wants from the game. There's no reason not to think that what we see in Empyrion currently isn't the best efforts of a small dev team working with a great concept. There just isn't enough momentum currently to realise the full potential, so I think we need a sequel or something similar to revitalise the game.
I am also totally against any subscription in any games. maybe add the option in the pole above and see how many will & will not pay a subscription for Empyrion 2. Good devs listen to their community anyhow... Just look at Minecraft & 7 days To Die. They communicate well. There is no subscription for these games.
Average I always enjoy reading your ideas, and there is a lot in what you say, but I think it is a little early to write this version off. If nothing else, providing more polish to the game would give a degree of confidence that E2 would not be just abandoned half way through. For what it's worth, I think Eleon could do with starting to cut down their list of ideas and focus on what they will do, e.g. is it worth the cost of trying to get walking on ships to work? I think them going back and polishing up features, and getting rid of the remaining placeholders would be a good focus. For me this might be: Improving the player model and controller - crouch yes, but more general improvements (it was interesting when they released and I watched a few of the SE tubers reviewing it and this seemed to be one of the sticking points to them) Overhaul and improve AI (which links to crouch, making this meaningful in combat) and include getting base attacks scaling properly and configurable, and expanding to to other factions Player progression and factory placeholders replaced with the final versions UI improvements (including customisable tool bar, and the wireless interface for example) Finishing the story and adding the filling content (ongoing anyway I know) Trading and loot tables improved (and possibly, if it requires not massive amounts of coding a better economy model, even if only very simple) There is a long list of features they have commented on as being interested in implementing at some stage which I would love to see, but are not core. As I say, it might be that some of these have to be written off - and perhaps when they've got the other features polished can see what they really want to do. In terms of revenue stream, they could then think about if some of those things were moved to an expansion (they have said they are not going to do the DLC micro-route but I would happily pay for meaty expansions) - e.g. new origins, with a new story, environmental effects, assets and mechanics. Perhaps mix these with updates to the base game that everyone got access to. I have no idea how practical these things are - I have never designed a game and my programming is confined to FORTRAN 77 20 years ago, but that is the sort of path I could see them taking. Then start building towards E2. Finally, subscription - I understand what you are saying, but absolutely no, no no to that from me.
Very true! I'd include Eleon in this group. But its a tiny dev team, and there is limits on what they can do. Like I said DU has around 90 devs by comparison, and I don't think the current model is delivering on the things the devs or the players really want. At the very least there needs to be a change in the business model that includes a larger team. That has to be funded somehow, and so I think a criticism of the subscription model has to involve comparison with an alternative that doesn't leave us where we are now, which is without some key features which everyone would love. Your suggestion to add the extra option in the poll is a good one - I can't see an option to change it now sadly :/ Thanks for the comment Foofaspoon! I wouldn't be against a meaty expansion to provide as new injection of revenue either, but my strong suspicion is that without an expansion of the team and a re-write of some of the basic code infrastructure (and perhaps the code that deals with the config file problems), we could miss out on the features we ultimately want like smart AI ships and troops, walking on moving ships, expanded block selection and textures, tactical complexity to the combat etc. I think there's some key features that are worth the effort to see these things happen, and to keep Empyrion attracting new players for years to come. Cheers for positive comments in any case!
I just trust what Eleon told us : they will continue development, they're not doing it for money, all "core" features are now "in" and they now move into "polish" and bug fixes phase. That's what they told us when leaving Early Access, and a big patch has been announced for December. I will wait until then to see how this fits with what we've been told in august. But in any event, there's an old saying in French (my birth language) : " Un tien vaut mieux que deux tu l'auras" - which translates grossly that one given is always better than two promises. Well first, like I mentioned in my previous answer, my birth language is French, so I have a problem trying to understand your first sentence here, because it has 3 negatives... lol But if I understand well, you're saying that what we see is the best effort from a small team, right ? If that's right, I agree, but the only missing piece here is "time". We can't have Eleon's perspective on "time" because we're mostly "waiting" and they are most probably "working" regularly on the game, and don't see time passing as big an issue as we are. As long as we stay here on the forums, providing ideas, feedback and activity, I'm confident it motivates them to continue despites what we may think. As an example, I'm following the development of the Torque 3D game engine - the "old" version that is slowly being upgraded to a more "actual" flavor. You can google it, and you will see that only one or two guys are actively working "freely" on it, but given the product quality compared to what is on the market now, if these guys are passionate, they are surely very proud of what they have done too, and will most probably deliver pretty close to what they promised. I may be wrong, but they have a small core of supporters, and some people working on personal projects with the game engine, which show promise and the product's viability. So this parallel is just to show that Eleon can very well become the same kind of journey (just like Minecraft too) where updates and fixes continue to be issued for years, and the game keeps selling X units per year, being enriched both by developer and community content.
Yes you are right on what I am saying. Please excuse the wordy writing. It's true that enough time might eventually see some of the features we all want, but I also can't help but notice that the current rate of changes seem to suggest such things are years and years away, and that the general rate of change is also slowing significantly. I'm not an insider so I don't know specifically what that is, but I suspect the growing complexity of ad-hoc changes to code are creating a growing cost to each change. A partial or full rewrite could create a clean updated code infrastructure that would allow complex changes to occur in a reasonable tiemframe, but its a big ask for a tiny dev team. So my thought is that a revitalisation and expansion could be a worthwhile solution and add a real buzz that Empyrion is lacking right now.
I think it's actually easier to try to fix the game than to try starting from scratch in another engine, especially if the main coding language (ex. Unreal = C++) is not the same as the one the developers have developed an expertise in over the years. As such, what benefit is there to change engine ? It would at least require to support the same language, in the same capacity. And if that means that they would have to choose Unity over other engines then why start something new while all that work has already been done ? Jumping from one system to another is not something trivial, and is way more risky than sticking to known territory and expanding expertise. And while it takes time to polish assets (textures, models, sounds) those things can not "break the code". That's why they use placeholders.
I take your point. I don't necessarily think an engine change is the central change needed, and as others have pointed out utilising Unity's more recent features may allow improvements to occur. But the core codebase in a large 5yo project can very often benefit from a rewrite, because the lessons learnt create a better overall architecture and address the increasing complexity of code with years of ad-hoc changes. I don't have inside knowledge of the state of the code, but from an external perspective it does look like they may be running into increasing costs to implement changes. I don't want to suggest the reasoning for a sequel is purely based on hypothetical problems with codebase. I am primarily wanting to suggest that a sequel may be the best way to inject some energy into Empyrion and produce the full game we'd all like to see.
No subscription! I would shelf the game. I have not seen a slow down in new players, which equates to income for the devs. We all paid for early access to a game being developed so we could test and provide feedback to the developers, to make changes to better the game to draw in more players (buyers). I think I will just wait and see what they will accomplish with this version, rather than jumping ship to a EGS 2 because it doesn't have every shiny thing "I" want in a game. I could pick a few things out of this game that I would rather not see or see changed....but it is their game and our voices are just opinions to possibly be looked at. I also feel that we still have a ways to go with new content. Core mechanics are in. Thats great news as now we can see what they can do with the polish. I attempted to "play" Dual Universe. It was the most painful 12 hours of gaming I have endured in quite some time. It felt so empty and the complexity of even simple builds put me off right away. I would rather be forced to play Space Engineers than to ever load up DU again. That being said, I think it might have potential, but it still has a long way to go in development to be enjoyable. It is truely a test bed right now. I marked your poll as "Willing to Consider". I would consider this idea AFTER the complete development of the current game, several years of play after final release, a road map of what would be in a version 2, and after seeing just what the developers consider a final version of EGS. But for now I will just put my faith in what they supply us with to test and have fun. I have more hours of game play in this game than any other game or Alpha I have tried. After so many hours spent playing EGS, I have completely gotten my money's worth and have no room to complain. I might state my opinion, share ideas, or even back other player's suggestions, but not going to leave if I am not heard or the changes are not made....unless it becomes subscription based. You put a lot of time and effort in your post and I appreciate the passion you have for this game and wanting to make it better.
Emprion's biggest, gaping hole is # of concurrent players on servers.. after 100 on my setup's the game server noticeably slows down and data corruption can occur. why the latest galaxy explosion (# of) with such a small online player base.. we need alot smaller galaxy with 100's or even 1000's of more players.. smaller galaxy so there is more PLAYER INTERACTION.
It seems like Dual Universe is catering to a different player base. Empyrion is far from being a finished game and if they stopped developing it and started on an Empyrion 2 then not only would they lose the respect and trust of their community and investors, but also the 5+ years of development they spent on Empyrion. They need to "finish" Empyrion first before they even start thinking of a second game otherwise the entire studio will collapse. In short: Empyrion 2 would be a very, very bad idea anytime in the next few years. It doesn't make sense from a PR, financial, or development perspective for them to start a second game. Even if they somehow got a major investor who told them "make a second game and we'll let you hire 100 people", it wouldn't be a good idea.
Unity uses C++ as well. UE4 can't do with Voxels what Unity can. Hell, UE4 didn't even support voxels until a few years ago, and even then it's only through an additional plugin. It's not built around it from the core up like Unity is. Most of the issues are due to a lack of polish and optimization. Something that is done after you leave the Alpha development phase, which isn't something Empyrion has done yet. They're already balancing a pretty fine line getting the performance they are with the detail and complexity that currently exists. UE4 would fall flat on it's face attempting to pull this off.
That may be the popular opinion, but it won't get us, the community, what we want. I don't think the dev team show any sign of abandoning development. But the reality is the dev team (while having created something very impressive) is tiny, and the pace of features is such that we won't see some of the most requested improvements for probably years and years. Walking on moving ships seems unlikely to ever happen on the current path for example, and there's dozens of other things that have been repeatedly requested with wide support in this forum for years. I'm not saying that is the devs fault - if we're honest about it, most of us have paid a couple of cents per hour for some of the best gaming fun around. That's why we're here. Of course, in a way you're totally right, we payed for the game, we're completely entitled to say "please give us the finished game". That's morally justified, but at the same time, that high-horse won't get the great features we want. That gets us 7-8 very thinly stretched devs, dozens of incomplete feature requests, and a game that only half lives up to its incredible potential. What we've got, flawed or incomplete as it is, that has given most of us hundreds or even thousands of hours of fun for a mere $20 or $30. This game, at its best, is majestic. It has so much potential. But it's not living up to it yet. So I'm suggesting an alternative. We, the community, should make this deal with them - "we'll give you a steady flow of money, IF you hire some more devs and make this game live up to its true potential". A sequel is the best way I can think of to do that. That's an idea worth a little effort in trying to sell, regardless of current opinions.
