I have had an issue with Empyrion for the longest time. Weapons and ammo (especially for ships) was nonsensical and inadequate. But that's a separate issue to gunplay with small arms. You generally have two kinds of fights - horror combat missions against the Legacy and fighting the Zirax. With legacy, mobility matters and having a jetpack is a must. Tough the constant jump-scares with enemies spawning behind you and coming from cleared room is annoying. But fighting Zirax soldiers and turrets and mechas is even more annoying. They are hitscan, so no dodging. You WILL get shot so it becomes a game of armor and healthpacks. If you didn't bring enough, you're boned. It doesn't really feel satisfying. Especially since the AI can sometimes not detect you at all. Other times turrets track you trough walls. And lets not even get into Zirax and Talon and wild animals/creatures ignoring each-other completely. How such a oversight is still in the game is beyond me. I can lure Zirax drones to the polaris outpost and they can shoot at it trying to get to me and they will be ignored. Same for wild animals or legacy creatures. The world STILL feels sterile because of that. No actual interaction between factions. Everything except the player feels static. what are your thoughts?
Yes - agree. The bests way to deal with Zirax bases on foot I find is with a rocket launcher. Dont wait until you go around a corner, just shoot the floor past the corners in case something is there so the splash takes it out. If in doubt get back in SV and pummel the place with rockets. Half the time if something is there I find the game just freezes momentarily preventing you from firing while whatever you encounter just shoots you in the face. And then there is those horrors or whatever that seem to have an insane and invisible melee range from our view point. Once past early game as less in need, I have to admit I barely even go inside most zirax buildings and instead pummel them with sv or hv until there is nothing moving and the lights are out (de-cored) and then check the usual locations for a barrel to loot as that is usually the only thing worth looting (100s of boxes with just a steel plate or some other basic component gets old fast). If I had my way we would have backpack nukes for dealing with this - tunnel under, plant nuke, tunnel to next base and detonate - dont even bother to go back and loot it
That is part of their point, that is terrible gameplay. That does not make for a fun experience. The fact that we even have to consider that type of playstyle shows there are major issues with both ground and vessel assaults alike. We still have ground enemies somehow seeing us before they even turn to face us. Then most of the time they begin shooting (and hitting) us before they have turned to face us as well. Instant hit scan..... No way to avoid it. Don't even get me started on melee critters hitting us even though we should have successfully dodged before the animation even started.... I know, you already know all this.....
Heaven forbid the devs ever give the ground troops the ability to heal like the player. We would have nothing but cheese tactics then. Ground assaults especially needs like 15 compete overhauls....
The gunplay is a omly cramp. Its absolute no fun. The enemy models, the "animations", the impact, the aim, the feedback,... just everthing feels like SuperNintendo Doom quality. Thats not rant, its technical really on a very bad niveau. I cant even describe in parts what exactly feels bad, its so much together. Same with shipfights. Autoturrets never hit moving objects but always hit stationarys, always miss when you move your ship. Will the game get anytime proper 3D models with some enjoyable animations? Is this on the plan or is Eleon fine with them? Have you seen this Nightmares creatures? The "model" and texture, the hand and the feet? Its really all bad: -the models you shoot against -the "animations" they have -the moment of not existing impact -the moment of firing -the effects The game has other strenght. Imo it has the most enjoyable creativemode buildmechanic. The gunfight is on the same niveau like the story telling anywhere around SuperNintendo age with not moving pictures of low resolution characters and textboxes you have to skip forever.
Gotta agree there. I play on RE mostly, so enemy sight range and reaction time is turned way up. Damage is up too, but they're not as tanky. It does help some aspects, but it exacerbates others. Things I would work on. Enemy damage: I don't think they make any reaction sound when hit. Yes, there's the bullet collision sound, but I'm talking about screams or grunts. More importantly. They don't flinch. They do flinch visually, but it doesn't affect their aim at all. This means you can dump dozens of bullets into an enemy and they just keep on trucking. I would make it a variable for enemies that they flinch when [X] amount or percentage of damage is taken. Flinching would produce a pain sound and either cause them to stop attacking or throw off their attack momentarily, as well as stopping them from moving. It should be a variable so like basic dudes would flinch more, and elites or special enemies might flinch less or not at all. AI: I'll be honest. I can't think of another game with this variety of user created content that has AI that can navigate without needing to be given special navigation points. Props for it actually kinda working out of the box. But it needs work. Mainly just lots and lots of polish. I don't know what the AI logic is, but they pretty much just rush you, even snipers and other long range enemies. This should be changed. Enemies should attempt to stay within their individual optimal range. And when line of sight is broken, long range enemies should have a delay before they move to find the player. Example: Melee enemies will always chase. A ranged enemy like a shotgunner will always be closing the distance, but a sniper will hang back. When line of sight is broken, a shotgunner will advance almost instantly to find the player, but a sniper will wait several seconds before moving. Also, they should attempt to not cluster up. At least certain enemies like Zirax troops. Any military personnel should know about proper spacing so as not to have a whole squad killed with one explosion. One thing that works well is Raptors. They come in packs, but flee when their numbers are depleted. I'm pretty sure the recent update to AI pathfinding made them no longer zig-zag, which is a shame I think. (Side note. I think the AI actually attempt to do the above, but they're really bad at it to the point that I'm not even sure if they do.) The main thing is consistency. The AI gets stuck a lot. And then other times, it's like they're on some high-level aimbot. The difference between wiping out enemies with ease and getting wiped out yourself is most dependent on whether the AI decides to randomly flush their brains out through their bowels. Animation: Basically this just needs work. Enemies can shoot without facing where they're shooting. The Zirax commander for example can shoot sideways from the tip of his gun, directly around a corner. I have video proof of this BS happening. Overall, it just needs a lot of polish. Most melee enemies can hit way beyond their model appears to reach. I wouldn't want the effective threat of Horrors turned down, as they are actually a challenge in decent numbers, but there's got to be a way to get the models to match up with the range of effect. The animation for movement is also really basic. I'm pretty sure they don't strafe or backpedal. Meaning ranged enemies may turn their back to you only to whirl and shoot at random. Same as above: consistency. Player feedback: Sounds are entirely an opinion, but I do really hate some of the sounds they use. Pulse rifles for example, and laser pistols. Actual bullet hit sounds are pretty good. They get the job done fine. Other: Weapon handling: Weapons need to switch faster; full stop. I don't know if this is already the case, and if it is, it's so negligible that it's impossible to notice; but certain weapons should draw way faster than others. A pistol, for example, should be a quick-draw backup gun in a pinch. They're outclassed in every other way so that would give them an actual reason to carry. But overall every weapon just needs to switch faster -- entirely for balance purposes. I know stuffing a shotgun up your butt and retrieving a rifle would realistically take some time, but this game lets me bake food and build objects from my backpack, while running and gunning, and all while carrying a small house worth of blocks and a dozen or so weapons. Heck, maybe armor type could influence weapon swap speed. On that note, an armor mod that increases reload speed would be really nice. As it stands, it's janky. I can swap weapons and start firing while the weapon isn't shouldered yet, so the animation looks wonky, and yet it's still tediously slow. Enemies: I'd love to see more ranged enemies with non-hitscan weapons. Non-hitscan means the player can dodge if they're skilled enough meaning player skill directly translates into better combat performance. The hitscanners also don't really add any variety, it's just different damage output and health pools. Zirax laser, commander, androids, Mechanoids, defense droids, Assault mechs, shotgunners, snipers, minigunners, etc. They all have one strategy which is don't let them see you; shoot them before they round a corner if their model is big enough. If they start firing, you will take damage. In any case. That's my $0.02 I'm sure it's all been said before, but it's still a thing so I think it's worth saying again.
Well, as far as on-feet ground combat goes the game has most features you expect from a shooter. But all of it is of a pretty low quality. Be it enemy Ai, movement, weapon feedback and handling, collision, different opponent types, Traps, coverage, crouch (!), models.... Everything is there and kind of works enough to qualify as playable. But also every aspect of the shooter gameplay is in desperate need of some polish. But honestly, trying to bring all of that to modern standards might be a fools errant in a game like Empyrion. The complexity that comes with the building system is a beast on its own, and including shooter + space + ground vehicle combat on top of that was bold to begin with. So I do feel we should not get our hopes up for the ground combat to get anywhere near Triple-A Game levels. Still, that does not mean there aren't a lot of low hanging fruits they should be able to pick and improve. Agree with basically all the points said above.
I'd honestly be grateful for an upgrade of first-person mechanics quality to the level of Quake (1996) or even DOOM (1993, nineteen fricking ninety three).
Doom was sprite-based, so not much to grab from there. But Quake ? It's a very simplistic AI model that ignores/ attacks on sight. We already have more options in Empyrion with "neutral" creatures, some that change mood and decide between attack/ retreat, etc. We can also engage at distances that easily encompass entire Quake levels, and Quake used pre-baked lights and geometry.
That is correct, but also has nothing to do with gunplay. And yet, on the player side: the movement and the controls overall were responsive the shooting was fun and engaging the controls were responsive the animations were good timed and synchronized with action and sound every single weapon was unique in its looks, mechanics and behavior shooting sounded good and sfx were unique for each gun taking damage was made obvious with distinct audio-visual feedback different amounts of damage made different sounds different damage sources made different sounds same as previous two but for on-screen effects What of those do we have in Empyrion? Only one: thank the Divines, weapons have different looks (yet the devs seem to work in the opposite direction by making them look more similar with the latest model update). And on the enemy side: all enemies felt unique they looked, moved, fought and sounded differently they did not ignore each other (in case of friendly fire) their animations and sounds were synchronized with their actions melee ranges were well-adjusted enemies were fun to shoot at, and to take shots from hitboxes were well-adjusted enemies reacted to being hit, and flinched hitscan was exclusive to a few of them What of those do we have in Empyrion? None. Yes, however, they are overshadowed by everything else. The fact that enemies retreat or change mood is hardly noticeable given that a skirmish is an unresponsive, unpolished and unpleasant mess.
Quake's combat was high speed, high mobility combat that involved a great deal of sprinting and jumping with many enemies being melee or firing slow-moving projectiles. Items were everywhere and picked up on contact with no sorting through inventories (There was no inventory in quake), there was no stamina or status effects either. Adopting gameplay to match quake would be detrimental to the game in every aspect as Quake followed Quantity over Quality, with lots of enemies that are all easily killed and pose little threat to the player in a series of interconnected rooms and corridors. Empyrion can't do that. Even the largest Empyrion POI is smaller than a single Quake 1 map. Empyrion's gunplay is closer to 7D2D or ARMA/DayZ than it is to any quake/doom-like FPS.
While this is technically true, in my opinion Empyrion's gun play is way inferior to 7D2D or ARMA/DayZ.
None of the points I brought up from Quake rely on "high speed, high mobility" combat, items abundance and inventory absence, infinite stamina or lack of status effects. The points I brought up demonstrate quality of implementation and degree of polish, and are universal for any first-person shooter there is. The fact that, apparently, the level of FPS quality set by games released 26-29 years ago is still pretty high. It puzzles and frustrates me, why can't we come even close to that. I'm not even proposing to surpass it. I'm saying that all those aspects except ONE are totally lacking in Empyrion. Nowhere I was saying we should adopt the gameplay of Quake. It is a very different game, with very different gameplay. One thing really worth adapting is the quality of implementation, constituting in at least those aspects I listed earlier. They are gameplay-independent. Oh, how strange. So the enemies that are "easily killed and posing little threat to the player in a series of interconnected rooms and corridors" in Quake are "Quantity over Quality", but the "easily killed and posing little threat to the player in a series of interconnected rooms and corridors" enemies in Empyrion POIs are not? There is something wrong with this statement. The difference is that in Quake, due to good animation timings, good controls, vast differences in enemy types, pleasant to shoot guns (etc, as mentioned earlier), fighting those dumb bots was fun. Here, in Empyrion, first-person shooting is bad. In every aspect. And the enemies are even dumber, spongier, and there is more of them per unit of space! A whole level in Quake contained about 30 creatures total. One POI can easily spawn that number of enemies. And, just as you said... and so the POI is just crawling with Zirax. That are easily killed alone, dumb as a rock, shoot from their back with hitscan, and are animated like a glue-fed turtoise. Where's the "Quality" that should win over "Quantity"? In terms of gameplay mechanics yes, it may be. In terms of controls, responsiveness, animations, sounds, enemy behavior, and overall quality, Empyrion's current gunplay is closer to Fallout 3.
I state this multiple times since i'm here. This game need a complete overhaul on ground combat. It's stopping me from playing.
Unfortunately there are key differences in Empyrion that make it very hard to match the snappy gameplay of a simple corridor shooter with its very own engine like Quake. And it's not just one detail but a major player on the whole gaming scene, from the very start, while Empyrion is build upon Unity, and... well, that's Unity. Nuff said. To even start making comparisons, we would have to remove all building mechanics, inventory, and litterally strip the game down to have it as simple as Quake. With that much less content, of course the developers have much more time to polish combat, and it could be way more precise and satisfying than the arcade style of Quake. Levels in Quake, like I already mentioned, were pre-baked, no dynamic lights, very basic AI, and highly optimized geometry (levels and models). In Empyrion we can destroy everything, POIs are sitting on huge chunks of unoptimized geometry, and there are tons of scripts running at each game update to keep track of everything, not just a 1st-person cam and polling the user mouse+keyboard for updates. Quake had, what, total of 9 weapons ? In Empyrion we have way more + tools + interaction with the environment. If we have at least 9 different weapons sounds (and we have more) then we "match" Quake. Checked. Enemy behavior : Quake has limited animations sets : idle, wander, chase, hit/ attack for the humanoids, and most of the simpler critters had just wander + shoot stuff. We have something very similar in Empyrion, but way more creatures for the developers to care about. Here's a simple comparison where I deleted many of the "variants" and even some are missing for Empyrion : There is just no comparison possible, both in quality and quantity. Hitboxes better in Quake ? Not so sure, and not uniform either. Player had insane weapon spread and all combat is in close quarters. Sure we can adjust weapons to make it more like Quake in POIs but then for all exterior combat it will just not work. I agree that the whole game (Empyrion) feels gooey and slow, and synch (sound/ animations/ damage indicators) suffers from that, but it can not be fixed independantly from the rest of the game. The best that could be done right now would be to take care when designing POIs and environment to not overuse the "usual content" & deco, which drag the FPS down and has a direct effect on good synch and play fluidity. It's not just "combat" that suffers but lots of other aspects too (slow mo constructors, playfields load/ change, delays between key presses and actions, etc). As for animations, well it's one big chunk of work given the number of critters to take care of, so while I agree it can be improved I'm not going to throw rocks for this. Many if not all critters in Quake have very basic/ cartoony animations, and they almost all fall flat on their back when killed. I'm not sure Empyrion is so bad compared to this : we have kneeling humanoids, running/ walking/ feeding for animals, in ways that tend to be less cartoony, etc. But on that point : what would be the most "prominent" missing animations for specific critters/ NPCs in Empyrion ? Edit : all Quake icons were taken from the public wiki
I agree that Unity was a strange engine to pick, given that it's only advantage over other (free or cheap) competitors seems to be the ability to deploy on a large array of platforms: PC/Mac/Linux, consoles, Android/iOS, etc. , and there doesn't seem to be plans to port Empyrion anywhere, which makes sense, as Empyrion is already struggling to run on the most powerful platform there is. However, Unity is not a terrible engine per se -- it is just a more DIY one. And the implementation is the bottleneck of many of those "bad Unity games", and, as it seems to me, Empyrion, unfortunately. And this is where I agree with the basic point. True, Quake is not more (but not less, not even by an inch) than an FPS. However, it can be easily observed from the Empyrion game itself, there is an overall lack of polish in every game aspect. And also, it isn't like the mass of the content is growing so fast that the polish can't catch up. Core game mechanics haven't been expanded all that much recently. And by 'recently' what I really mean is 'in years'. It isn't something of a secret. Over years I see an ever increasing number of complaints about lack of polish everywhere. From the controls, to the UI, to graphics, to net code, to animations, to missions... basically, the only aspect that I see receiving a relatively low number of streamlining requests is creative building. Quake had ad least 5 distinct weapon types: shotguns, nailguns, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, and arc lightning gun, every one of which had their uses through the whole game, had good sfx and handled perfectly, only two of them having hitscan. Empyrion has: ballistic pistols (better known as "why is that occupying my inventory") 8 variations of the same gun (ballistic t1, t2, pulse t1, t2, minigun, and their epic variants, all essentially behaving in a very similar way), sniper rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, plasma cannons (t2/epic being nothing but an upgrade for all of the ) 2 variant of "laser" (more like plasma) weapons behaving in a same way (pistol/rifle) for a total of 8 distinct weapon types, 5 of which (including all of the assault rifle flavors) using hitscan, all of them having awful handling, sounds and animations. So yeah, imo, having 3 more gun types than 23yr old game is.. not a point to be proud of, especially given poor handling, sfx and animations. In Quake, enemies had very different attack patterns. Soldiers just plainly blasted you in the face, the dogs rushed to you (bites and jump attacks). Ogres moved around to get LOS, then launched grenades at you; chainsawed if you got close. Zombies threw pieces of themselves at you, slowly closing distance; (+bonus undying mechanic!). Scrags howered above, spitting dodgeable projectiles in bursts. Fiends quickly closed distance by huge leaps, then rended you with claws and teeth. Knights moved swiftly, used two types (lunge forward or simple slash) of quick melee attacks. Death knights used magic (a fan-like burst of dodgeable projectiles) while closing distance, then chopped you with sword. "Spawn" (slime) moved rapidly in jumps (hard to aim at), damaging you on contact, exploding painfuly on death. Shambler closed distance for a deadly claw attack, launching a slighly less deadly arc lightning attack at mid range (with warm-up animation to dodge it!). Vores launched hard-hitting, strongly homing explosive spiked balls. Meanwhile... All the creatures in Empyrion basically behave in a singular way: get to the range and LOS and attack. Melee enemies run up to their close range of attack. (Oh, and line of sight seems to be broken for them Ranged enemies usually have the player already in range and LOS and so they just shoot. That's it. That's their whole mechanic. Each additional creature needs to have: attack and move animations attack range and power And that's all there needs to be to cover the enemy behavior observed in-game. I honestly can't imagine where did all those advances in AI (patched in recently, 1.6 I think?) went. With all of the above, this statement of yours sounds.. ironic. Okay, mostly on-par, I checked recently. No, not at all. Only shotguns had spread. Nailgun was firing in two very slightly offset streams (matching the looks of the weapon!), the grenades and the rockets had their collider, and all of the weapons (ex. shotguns) were firing without any amount of spread. Correct, and it would be foolish of me to propose such radical gameplay change. All I say is the quality of gunplay, in it's current state, is awful. And I provide an example of a game that used 1000 times less computer resources, less polygons, and an engine built from the ground by 3 people, and that beats Empyrion's gunplay in terms of quality and polish. I agree. As I mentioned above, it feels like almost the whole game desperately needs refinement. While it is true that raising the FPS improve some aspects, as synch, it does not eliminate stutters, misaligned sounds/animations, retardation of Zirax troops, the lack of enemy attack variety, etc. Which ones? Maybe soldiers, maybe knights, but others? Hard disagree. I find most Quake monsters to look and move scary or, at least, monstruous. Also, consider this: all of those animations, even those you see as cartoony, are in perfect synch with their actions. So when the animation hits, you get hit. You can actually dodge the melee monsters there, unlike Empyrion. I take goofy animations with synch over serious without it. And let's face it, the Empyrion humanoid enemies already do look either goofy or high-as-a-kite, with the pace of their animations. So we have cartoony, but no synch. Sad. For humanoid NPCs (incl. station ones): walking/standing/idling not as a mannequin (The 'behave like an NPC' meme is just a meme, people! Do not re-create it in game! They almost T-pose in standing idle, Carl!!!) use terminal lazily/as normal/under stress observe screen/someone else doing something searching/patrolling on guard (don't aim all the time like freshman on caffeine) relaxed walking (weapon on sling) quick/relaxed ready weapon watching over terrain relaxed/on guard climbing ladder relaxed/fast ascending/descending in the elevator walking on stairs/slope up/down inspect weapon, clear weapon malfunction reload eating/drinking/substance use using medkits, bandages, injections, pills crouched movement (like the player has) prone shooting and movement believable melee interaction: pistol grip / buttstock attack push away from self, trip running player knife slash/thrust suppressive fire standing / over barricade / around the corner / while running away covering (flinching) in fear from being fired at while standing / crouching / running grenade toss standing / over barricade / while quickly opening and closing door place mine or remote explosive + detonate it wield door shut and many others. Obviously, some animations here imply additional AI behavior and player interactions, a few of them -- new gameplay mechanics even. I believe, they would greatly improve gunplay, if, however, and only if, the chunkiness of the present gunplay features is largely mitigated, stutter is no more desynchs are gone, sounds effects are bearable. Bonus points if the weapons become more than not copies of each other with different stats. But that is more related to balance, and it doesn't seem to concern anyone here, so... unlikely. For all animals: 2-3 alternative attacks, "all-in" power attacks (all attack limbs simultaneously or in quick succession), running/charging attacks idling: smell ground, smell air raise head to hear scratch ground, dig ground look at something with interest, turn head to look at different angles shake head/body (like dog that came out of the water) stretch limbs, body muscles stealthily creeping on prey howling/calling warning roars / hisses for trespassers running in panic injured movement, injured panicking movement exhausted movement stumbles and falls sitting/lying on the ground, warming up in the sun playful fooling around (for babies and social creatures) fighting for food self cleaning, cleaning others, bathing, dust bathing drinking water, lying in water (for cooling) Again, for some of those, additional interactions and mechanics are requred. In conclusion I feel I need to state my condensed overall thoughts on the gunplay aspect. The chunkiness, lack of refinement and any polish is felt in the most aspects of the game. In first-person combat, it is exceptionally obvious, painful and fun-breaking. My conclusion is that the game really needs fixing, refinement, polish, and QA, right now, maybe even yesterday. For the reason that the snowball of problems is not getting thinner, and that it influences every aspect of the game, "fixing" the gunplay alone seems impossible, not without fixing everything else. tl;dr: I compared only the directly comparable aspects of the gunplay. Quake had interesting distinct enemies, interesting guns, and the smoothness/responsiveness of interaction of the two on a level that is above the today's state of Empyrion's first-person shooter component. Many animations are lacking from Empyrion. The game imo is in desperate need of fixing and refinement, as all of the aspect suffer from the same things: stutter, animation desynch, slowness, control chunkiness, etc.
I find enemies in Empyrion, as I said above, inconsistent. If you don't have good armor, they can wreck you pretty quick. In vanilla, I think it's that they're really accurate hitscanners mostly; in Reforged a lot of them are less accurate but do more damage. When the AI actually kicks in and does something, Empyrion enemies can be a serious threat. (But again, inconsistencies and bugs get them stuck on stuff or simply left staring at walls.) Off the top of my head, that's almost entirely because of weapon reload animations and weapon swaps speeds. I've played 7D2D and seen videos of current builds. The swap speeds in 7D2D are way faster than Empyrion. But a big problem for Empyrion is the fact that auto reload cannot be disabled, meaning if you run dry and hold the trigger for just a millisecond too long, you're now locked into a lengthy animation. If you switch weapons during the animation, it still takes time and then the animation has bullets spraying forward from your gun while the barrel it pointing to the sky. The point there is it's very clunky and even a slow-moving zombie game has faster, more responsive weapon handling. The other issue is with the way enemies are in Empyrion. If what you say is true, and the gunplay is farther from Quake or Doom, unfortunately the POIs are not built with this in mind. In fact, a number of your more notorious POIs feature traps and enemy layouts more like old-school Doom than anything else I can think of. Things like the end of the Abandoned Bunker, the end of the Abandoned Vessel Yard, and the end of the Rados Missile Silo have me swarmed by enough hitscanner enemies that I flashback the the Plutonia WAD. (Okay, they're not that sadistic, but you get my point; it's a lot.) Not that I don't love those POIs, I do. But I think just a little less time getting stuck in lengthy animations if I run a weapon dry would make designs like that more fun and more viable. As it is, I'm often left hoping the AI breaks down long enough for me to reload because they can certainly kill me before I get a fresh mag in and there's a lot of them. It's not like you can chuck a quick grenade of flashbang to distract them and give you breathing room. On the other hand, we get stuff like this: And I've not seen this happen much so I think there's some oddity where the animation becomes untied to the hitbox/enemy position so he actually kept moving before triggering the attack but the animation triggered earlier... I think. Haven't done enough research to confirm. Otherwise it's just a massive melee range. Same goes for most melee enemies. I get it though, because if melee range was equal to animation/model reach, I'd never get touched. Enemies run, then stop to trigger an attack, then run. They're all like Pinky demons from OG Doom. They'd be trivial at worst if their range wasn't expanded as it is. So the solution would be to speed up the transition between running and attacking, and possibly have dashing or lunging attacks. Lots of work, but hey, that's game development. And then there's this. Edit: I guess I can't just link it so just skip to 7:45 (There's a follow-up close up of the shot about a minute later.) (Yes, I'm aware the think with Zirax Commanders is known. My point remains) There's about a million little things like these. It's just polish and tightening of animation/model sync with damage/hitbox calculations. I think I said it before, last time I was complaining, that with the jetpack and mobility + arsenal, your ability to output damage and move around is like 2016 Doom or Serious Sam. But then you get swiped by an enemy you thought you dodged, or sniped by a hitscanner you either can't dodge or are just praying on the game's internal dice roll for whether it hits, or you need to reload a gun so you're stuck in an animation. It's a mixed message I think, because there's not really a defined way to advance through POIs that doesn't result in tanking damage and relying on lots of health packs. I think it is another one of those things that, if improved, would make a world of difference. More responsive weapon handling/gunplay + more consistent enemies + maybe less reliance on hitscan so incoming damage felt like player error instead of fated to happen = a more engaging gameplay experience. I think players should be encouraged and enabled to advance forward rather than tediously wait at corners and try to bait enemies out or take advantage of when the AI has a stroke. Oh, and a second to most of what akimzav said just above me. A lot of good stuff there. I'll add this though; comparisons to Quake or Doom, I think, should be taken in with the idea of overall design goal. As stated above, the weapons in those games each had a purpose, and the enemies likewise. Empyrion plays like a whole bunch of stuff slapped together, but not properly assembled. Whichever way Eleon decides to tune the game in terms on ground combat, changes and additions need to reflect that. If they want it to play more like oldschool arena/arcadey shooters, great; if they want it to be more methodical, tactical, or just slower, also fine. But as it is we have enemies and ways to shoot them and ways for them to damage the player, but there's no cohesion or balance to it because so many parts of it contradict each other. Well, I think I'm rambling/repeating myself. Too tired I guess. I'mma go off and play the game some more, because I do enjoy it. So I hope no one gets the impression that I just want to complain for the sake of it.
Replayed Quake a few days ago, so much yes to this. After some time clearing Empyrion POIs, I even began to have the same fifths sense, the feeling, like "I'm gonna be ambushed here", as I got in Quake. Isn't it sad (and also ironic) that the game breaks on so many occasions some of them even cancel each other out somewhat, in terms of difficulty? There would be, if the enemies were designed differently. Right now, the only way to avoid this battle of "can I cheese the AI just enough to survive on 3 health packs" is to tunnel to the POI core, and, imo, that way is infinitely more fun than this "usual" way. And it's also not like it's hitscan's fault. It is just... bad implementation. For instance, in Quake 2, there was a lot of hitscanning enemies. Like, almost all of them. However, they had their point of aim travel with a finite speed, and so, you could dodge their shots. Absolutely agree with every single point here.
POIs are made by players (not all) and we have combat both inside and outside of these. Comparisons with corridor shooters that hold hands of the AI and have very limited distances, content and other mechanics are not only unfair but it looks like making abstraction of key elements of a game just to make a point. But the fact remains that Empyrion is more than the sum of its parts, and if it wasn't I don't think players would spend so much time on a game they don't seem to enjoy, because the combat part is apparently so bad. While some things can be fixed I would not get my hopes too high, and because a better shooter game was made many years ago doesn't mean it would fit Empyrion. I would be tempted to say : put building/ crafting/ vessel combat/ base attacks/ factions/ trading/ scenarios/ mining/ cutting wood with machinery etc in Quake/ Doom and see how these games fare overall. This is like spending hours saying Minecraft is blocky, and games like Half-Life 2 was made before and was way better looking. True, but not very relevant to each game's focus. The whole AI is also responsible of drones, patrols and wild beasts/ fauna on terrains, so another key difference that seems to get swept away in generalisations of combat being mostly in POIs so Empyrion can be compared with old corridor shooters. In fact for many players this is the contrary : they have more "foot combat" with wildlife (while mining/ gathering) and only tackle POIs from an armored tank/ ship. Combat needs polish, but hitscan matters/ unforgiving enemies... that's quite common in other games. Can be greatly alleviated by modding armor and weapons, and that's up to players. Some enjoy Dark Souls style, some enjoy Serious Sam, some in-between, so for all damage/ armor this is easily modded.
Don't take this the wrong way, but what exactly is your point? We're making comparisons to other shooters not to belittle Empyrion, but to give examples of what is established as working well and why we believe it was so. You're right, Empyrion is more than the sum of its parts. It's also worth noting I wouldn't bother typing out explanations for this if I didn't enjoy the game enough or didn't think the devs competent enough to improve. And I would be tempted to say there might already be a WAD or two with most of those features. But that's more a testament to the sheer number of WADs out there. However, I don't have my hopes too high. I'm not setting out my points as an ultimatum saying "do this or else." A: that wouldn't work. B: that'd just be selfish. I've not made a game and I'd have to completely change the direction my life is going if I even wanted to try. As said above, I'm just saying I've played other games and pointing out what I like and why. Not really what I've been getting at at all. Minecraft is blocky and it works for what it aims to be. So is Empyrion in a lot of senses, but that's not the point. From what I've played of Minecraft, I don't recall seeing enemies bug out... like ever. I'm not comparing looks, just functionality of what's there. I don't compare a Ford F150 from 1993 to a Corvette from 2021 and say the 'Vette looks better and drives faster; but I do expect both of them to have wheels that roll, and steering and brakes that work every time. Flying drone drone are handled by a different AI, as are space drones, as are fauna, etc. Flying drone AI could use work too, but it's not an issue that pops up too much. Space drone AI I've not had an issue with. Space CV AI, however, is another matter. This thread is about gunplay and therefore the majority of relevant conflicts will be between the player and AI in POIs. POIs are where you go with your guns to A: use them, and B: get more of them... so you can then do more of A. Story/plot missions take you to POIs as well. I don't recall a story mission or even side mission that requires you to shoot down CVs, OPVs, or drones of any kind. (Could be wrong there. Even if there are, they're in the tiny minority so my point remains.) That point being on-foot combat is a sizeable factor to this game. Because of that, it should deserve some attention. I can dig up videos of this game in earlier alpha builds and see the AI is all but functionally identical to that, and it didn't look particularly great then. My points have been that the areas with most room for improvement have been weapon handling, allowing the player to move, shoot, and perform actions without them feeling clunky or ill-fitting; and have been the enemies, the main target of the above-mentioned moving, shooting, and performing of actions. For combat with wildlife or whatever, I've not had much of an issue with it so I think it works well enough that I see little point bringing it up. If it ain't broke... Enemy AI with purely combat roles is a squeaky hinge and I think that hinge needs oil. I only bring up hitscanners because I think hitscan should be used sparingly. Shotgunners, chaingunners, and Spider masterminds in Doom served their purpose, but if they were 70% or more of what you encountered, well, see my previous comparison to the Plutonia WAD. (Infamous for punishing amounts of chaingunners, if you're not familiar.) I think projectiles with velocity are better for the "fun" factor because it's possible to dodge or avoid them. That allows player input to directly affect the result of combat... or more importantly, allows more player input to affect. With hitscan making either guaranteed hits or turning it into a dice roll, you leave the player input down to "should I enter line of sight or not?" With projectiles you can possibly avoid, you leave it open to "should I enter line of sight?" "do I think I can dodge that?" "how should I dodge that?" and then all the input required to make the attempt at avoidance once a shot has been fired. To that end, the difference is more like a fighting game versus a turn-based combat game. For example, the Zirax Elite Plasma guys in RE are super fast, super accurate, and can take off the majority of your health in a single hit even in the best armor with the best armor mods. But I like taking them on because it's still possible to avoid the shot unless I get really really close. Thus, the challenge is on me as a player to avoid the damage while still landing shots of my own. (Though I catch more of those shots to my face than I care to admit, that just means I need to improve at something I can improve.) Rocket Zirax, Blue Spiders, the big bugs with fat butts, the little green alien bugs, the Olyughs, the Talon crossbowmen; all of them fire projectiles than can be avoided and I find them more fun to engage for that reason. That's just my preference regarding hitscanners. Shotgun guys, fine. They're deadly at close range and are fine. Snipers are fine at long range because they don't fire as often so you have time to get out of line of sight. But Zirax lasers, minigunners, human marines, turret bots, mechanoids, mech walkers, all androids/cyborgs. They're the bread and butter of what you fight in any shooting POI (as opposed to an Abandoned POI with lots of horrors/other melee monsters. And don't get me started on turrets/sentries. It's like guaranteed damage walking through doors in a lot of Zirax POIs. I just think it's a disproportionate amount of hitscanners. Even if it's as you say and other games use them a lot, then the question becomes which games do and why do they work? Which again goes back to my initial explanation about comparisons to other games. For example, almost every enemy in the Halo games has avoidable projectiles which get faster and more accurate as difficulty goes up. Except Jackal snipers in Halo 2, which on harder difficulties could one-shot you before you saw them if you didn't have the level memorized; they are notorious for being generally not fun to deal with. Again, if another game used X, did X work and why did X work? Anyway, all the stuff about hitscanners is just my opinion and has more to do with difficulty balance than consistency of AI and animations or whatever. It's a bit of a side topic, but kinda related. To an extent. I mostly play RE so enemies turn around wicked fast and can gun you down in a hot second, but they're less bullet-spongy than vanilla. The decrease of enemy reaction delay plus faster movement speed makes it quicker, and it does help some of the times you see enemies kinda stand there and drool for a second. Still, the previous complaints of janky animations/wonky behavior are not something any scenario can change. Likewise the AI bugging out and just not responding. If such things worked consistently then player modifications or changes would be about personal preference and not attempts to fix broken things. So again, not to get all up in your face or anything, but what is the point your getting at? I, for one am just pointing out things I see that I think could be improve, how I think they could be improved, and why I think they need it. Other users seem to be doing the same thing. Again, I'm not--and I don't think others are--angrily demanding things be made exactly as we see fit. I'm just taking part in the discussion. But you seem to be kind of shooting down suggestions and contradicting them, or trying to claim the issues we bring up aren't worth looking at or are excusable. I don't want to take your posts the wrong way so I guess I'm left to ask directly what your point is? Is the AI fine for you? Do you actually like it as-is? Do you just ignore it and play other parts of the game? Do you think all of my points are wrong, or maybe you have an alternate suggestion for how to improve or solve the issues brought up in this thread? Did you answer all that already and I'm just missing it somehow? Not trying to attack or anything, literally just asking for the sake of discussion?
