So, here's my thinking, boiled down: A server with 200+ playfields, in a game where most MP 'public' servers average 20-30 players, isn't a scenario, it's a giant, pretty, desert with no real player interaction, and far too much resource abundance. Smaller, better craftsmanship, real things to fight over, no orbital autominers. Thoughts, please! --Brian
Good for PVP players but PVE players love the bigger space and intermittent interaction with other players. They want to explore and travel further and deeper into the universe. They love the differences and the unknowns that await them in a cold and desolate universe.
There are orbital automimers? Or do you talk about the cheaty and game destroying autominer mod? Just my pov.
I don't think the issue is too many planets... the issue is having nothing to do yet when we go there. Having certain ores in certain locations is a start, but we need objectives/missions/quests/tasks whatever to drive travel and exploration even more
Actually the issue is the same issue EVE had in its early days, tho Empyrion isn't an MMO, it does have very large population servers for a voxel building game in space. So the issue really is how to spread the players around evenly, or they all end up in one playfield and lag the system out. EVE does this by spreading special assets out around the stars drawing players to those regions. Empyrion doesn't have that luxury yet it uses Ore to draw players around the maps, but Empyrion is still in alpha and in a huge changing part of its evolution but we have no end game yet and no main goal yet. Finding Empyrion itself is the main goal of the game, a little hard when the planet Empyrion doesn't exist yet. [ from developers I know theres a scenario with a planet called Empyrion but that don't count ] So it doesn't really matter that the server offers a huge amount f planets to visit, the real trick is a mechanism to bring them together, some sort of cosmic event that you just cant miss or whatever. There are some default servers running the default map, 27 playfields, not a huge galaxy that, you tried them ?
In the end, it's the Engagement side of things. Right now, it's all "Emergent Gameplay", which is the polite way of saying "Asshole simulator". Hopefully, we can get better PDA/Mission/Event scripting tools, but, until then, spreading people out is just not a good solution. We need things to do, not lightly-randomized planets. As for the EAH "Orbital Autominer" Mod, it needs to die a horrible death. As always, these are my opinions, and I could be wrong. --B. PS: Yes, I need to put my money where my mouth is. Working on it. Even have a spreadsheet.
Yes I don't use the autominer mod either, PvP though on any server in pretty much any survival game is dog eat dog, you cant expect anything less really, what we really need is a proper tech levelling system, where the longer you play the higher tech level you can get and that just adds a small buff to all your builds armour, then the longer one is in the game the more powerful they potentially can become, just like real life so to speak, but only if you pour the resources into it.
