Feedback from coming back to the game over 4 years. 95 hours of survival gameplay.

Let me preface this by saying I've played this game on and off since 2015, and distinctly remember harvesting "corn dogs". I had a lot of fun in this game, but also a lot of frustration. A lot of this is basically a rant.

I consider myself a very average player - I prefer to play the game "the normal way" which means survival mode, without a bunch of handouts. I think a large majority of this forum/community are going to be players who have probably played and mastered survival mode, and have moved on to creative mode to simply build ships. Or they have played the beginning so much they are happy to take the starting items.

I wanted to give some feedback as the "standard newcomer" perspective.



Things that are great but need a little more:

1. If you struggle to find ore early on, I love the fact you can turn stone into various ores. I think this needs to be more obvious for new players. Having the ore icons in the crafting grid makes sense, but isn't enough. I was blind to the icons in the early game just because I've seen the ore and I don't have the concept of "I need to craft ore". It's just unusual. A tier 0 "survival ore sifter" or something like that would help by making it more obvious you can do it, and just add another gameplay element.

2. The rotation system in thing game is (mostly) great. It is a little unusual to get used to but it's so much better than games that rely on your relative position and the position of the block you are clicking on (eg. minecraft).

3. The HV drill with fixed position is great. But it is quite slow which is probably intentional. The Shift+O hotkey is difficult to find and even more difficult to press in a standard WASD+Mouse configuration. Luckily I caught the hotkey in a patch video, which I expect very few new players will ever watch. If not for that, I would probably not know the feature existed and would have just been disappointed with HV drilling (like in the past versions, it was garbage).

4. Growing plants is wonderful and I am so glad it is pretty much hands-off until harvesting. And most importantly that you don't need to re-plant seeds and deal with that crap. I also like that you can craft seeds which eliminates the RNG of finding seeds. I would like to see this attainable earlier especially to deal with status effects, which I'll explain later.

5. I love the different starting options. I would prefer a no-tutorial option that does not start you with an advanced vessel, though. However this didn't seem to work in multiplayer which was disappointing.



Things that are particularly BAD:

1. There are many recipes that need 1 or 2 metal bars early on. There is no way to craft just one or two ingots at a time. Finding 5 ore early on can be tedious, even with the stone crafting I mentioned earlier. Because your first HV requires a collection of parts before it is even functional, this can become a real problem as you realize "oh, I need this too". It would be great if your suit or survival crafter could do smaller quantities, but faster. The small or larger constructers could stay the same.

2. Drills take too long to get, and you just don't get enough experience overall. We successfully raided a multi-level alien base and found plasma rifles, warp drives, etc and killed dozens and dozens of dangerous aliens. And when we came to the surface, I still didn't have the technology to build a mining drill. I think you should pretty much have everything available (although still need skill points for them all) by the time you can go to space. With the exception of a lot of Tier 2 items. I also think that most of the higher tier stuff is unlocked too closely to the original tier item. It would make more sense if all of the base materials/blocks/weapons/tools can be unlocked by level 10, and then you can get better versions later. Especially for the HV drill. Hover Vessels are next to useless for a large majority of the early game which is exactly when you SHOULD be using them.

3. Not all of the single player settings apply to multiplayer, or at least are too difficult to find. The config needs more of those options.

4. There is a lot of really vague tooltips and missing information. The ore scanner for example, it makes sense once you know how it works but the tooltip is just so poor. It should explain that it is only relevant for Pentaxid and Prometheum etc, at the very least, so you know why it doesn't do anything on Iron/Copper.

5. All of the multi-block pieces are great and I'm sure this is planned to be fixed, but you can't see stats or descriptions until you build it. This is especially annoying if you want to check what type of ammo a turret uses and it says "This block represents a multi-block blah blah blah". This really harken back to the oldschool gmod days where you get "stools" that did advanced things, but some of them were like "Wire Tool" "This tool creates wires". That's useless, tell me what a wire is for instead! To be fair, Colony Survival is worse because their tooltips are all really crappy jokes and even less helpful.

6. I personally think the motorbike was a poor decision. Yes it is a great "fix" for the need to do a lot of walking to find ore, but it makes hover vessels a lot less necessary and I think hover vessels should become a more critical part of the early game. It seems weird to me that you have this wonderful building-oriented game and yet you put so many barriers on the first vehicle.

7. Surface ore needs to be more frequent mainly for the early game. It took a very long time to find iron.

8. It needs to be better explained that lots of energy items work with biofuel. Me and my friend spent a lot of time trying to find prometheum for our first HV only to realize biofuel also works in a generator. It's just not obvious enough, but once you realize that it's like "duh!". Just explain in the T1 generators that biofuel works or you can use fuel packs would be a good start.

9. The multi-tool is too expensive for early game. You basically can't get blocks back from your HV and lose a lot of resources. Early game is the worst time for this to happen. And after that early game the tool charges cost basically nothing. A decent fix would be adding a deconstruct tool to the survival tool that uses biofuel, and if you don't have fuel it still works but it deconstructs the block instead of returning it.


Serious issues that should be a priority:

1. Getting a co-op game up and running is a disaster. Not because I failed at port forwarding or had a firewall on. I'm very experienced hosting games (ps: love that you can change the port in-game). There are internal problems like error messages that are very vague like "App not running". When the server is clearly running and you connected successfully, but just got "some problem". Also if you use a password in dedicated.yaml your friends can't join for some unexplained reason. This is all exascerbated by the only real "how do I fix this" articles from Google are on steam community. The steam community is useless in most cases where people just start arguing and ignore the actual question. Or the information is simply out of date. This isn't the game's fault directly, but this is a problem me (and people like me) will run into BECAUSE of the game having vague problems.

2. There is far too much lag / stuttering particularly in combat. This has been around since the beginning and it's just as terrible as always. I'm running an OC'd 7700k, GTX 1080 8gb, 32GB memory and have 6 SSDs. I don't have my graphics maxed out or anything unusual. Yet in a local server there's still this stuttering whenever the pressure is on. It makes combat incredibly frustrating. My friend described the (half-life stalker) gangly alien creature as having "Lag arms". And it is totally accurate, and in no way a ping issue between us.

3. There are too many negative status effects in the game. Especially early on if you are trying to take on some bases with pistols/shotguns. It should be sufficient to bring a couple items to heal, something to eat, and something to fix a wound. Instead I guess you have to fill your inventory with 15 different consumables to deal with every possible fracture, broken leg, open wound, skin parasite, dermal burn, etc. And if you happen to find a plant that does cure one of these you eat it and get FUCKING INDEGESTION. It just doesn't work with this game. Like the developer played Oregon Trail recently and was like "im going to throw a bunch of that in, even if it doesn't add any value to gameplay".

4. As if the negative status effects aren't enough, they often last 20 minutes OR LONGER. And that's NORMAL. So if you fall into a pit in a base, no weapons to break your way out, and you break your leg. You can't jump. You have to suicide. And that is EVEN WORSE because some bases have pit-fall traps. So you fall down, lose a ton of health, are surrounded by enemies, and BREAK YOUR LEGS so you can't even escape. It is a death sentence, and not fun at all. It is not even the challenging type of punishment that you can overcome and feel good about. It's just a thing that can happen and immediately sap all the fun out of the game and ruin your mood.

 

I didn't even mention this but it is worth pointing out too:

I first started by using the "Co-op" option in game. My friend couldn't connect over steam. After about 10 minutes of trying to debug the problem I did something, I think with the anti-cheat option, and then got some sort of message that said "local co-op".

I stopped at that point and assumed that meant LAN co-op which is why I switched to the dedicated server. I had the same problem though. I think the issue all along was using the password, although we changed ports and toggled the anti-cheat so many times, who really knows.

 

Hey @RadGH ,

Welcome back to the game (again?) Always good to see feedback on the game - I agree with all your points as it relates to tooltips, hotkeys, and just generally about features that are not readily apparent - in many cases you either have to keep up to the day/minute on release notes, or try to go through after even a brief absence and "reconstruct" what has changed/been added.

A properly maintained wiki-style "user manual" is long overdue in my opinion (unless of course there is one I am unaware of already).

As to your comments regarding resources, I respectfully must stenuously disagree.

With 3200+ hours into the game in survival/SP and another 1,000 or so in MP - I've come the opposite conclusion... resources are WAY too easy to find, ships too easy to build, and enemies too easy to overcome.

To me, in any game but particularly in ones with a "survival component" like EGS, scarcity is everything - perceived value is a function of rarity/scarcity - and in it's present iteration, there is almost zero scarcity.

That Epic EM Pulse Rifle is a hell of a lot more impressive when you don't have a cargo hold with 8 of them in reserve... that Zascosium deposit you just found is infinitely more significant if it's NOT just one of 30 in the solar system that have thousands of ingots worth of ore just sitting there waiting to be plucked from the surface.

Additionally, also related to scarcity, is a almost total lack of material/resource sinks - once you have something, you generally never lose it (or have it in such quantity that the wear mechanics and consumption rates are effectively non-existent)

Just a counter-point of view - in my belief, video games are at there very core exercises in "accomplishment illusion" - across all genres, they hold our interest based on the same common factor... despite the fact that, in truth, all any of are doing is changing "00101100" to "10100011" a million times per second... it's the illusion of accomplishment that triggers the brain to seek more. That's what makes a game great... that's what underlies the addictive nature of the very best games ever made.

If everything is easy, that little hit of dopamine that you trigger when you get/make something cool - doesn't occur.

(All that said, in defense of Eleon, the game is still in early Alpha - it's "throw in as much content/mechanics as we can" mode - balance and fine tune comes later).

 

Thanks Jacob - I expected that sort of reply.

To clarify for the starting resources, I strictly meant the surface rocks that give a couple pieces of ore. And the rarity/scarcity and progression issues I brought up are all intended for the very early game (pre- small vessel). After that point you're rolling in resources and can do everything you want, which is a different issue. I imagine it is like an exponential graph of resource collection. For a long time you get scraps, and suddenly you're mining hundreds of ore. It doesn't progress nicely.

Everything I've said applies to before you even get your hands on Zascosium. Sorry if that wasn't clear. This is all early game feedback!

Although to be fair as far as rare items go, we found this epic pulse rifle when raiding our first base with regular pistols. Which was a nice find, but we left the base with our inventory full of T2 rifles and laser guns.

Getting ore in the first 30 minutes of the game is difficult. Getting end tier weapons in the first 3 hours of the game is surprisingly easy. Both ends of the spectrum need some work.

 

The Ore scanner works for every ore ASLONG the deposit in question is set to SSOR. What in our base game only is done to Promethium and Pentaxid. There are servers who dont use SSOR at all so the ore scanner has compleet no use. There are servers who only use SSOR so any deposit can be seen with the scanner.

There two type of deposits in game SSOR (the rock looking deposits) and Voxel. The Scanner doesnt work with Voxel Deposits.


In other words the tooltip makes sence aslong you know it doesnt work with Voxel.

 

As text based communication lacks tone, I'm not sure how to take that comment - I hope that you weren't offended by my post, as that was certainly not my intention... I was just offering a different viewpoint. Hope that's how you took it.

I guess it's just a different style of play/preference concern then - IMO, there are FAR too many ore rocks... I've walked through fields of them largely ignoring them because of their prevalence... add in the standard deposits that surround the crash site in Default Random SP, and you've got another 300-500 ingots of iron, copper, and silicon by the end of day one (game time).

In countless SP games, by the setting of the sun on the second day (in game time), I've usually spawned one of my starter SVs- and it's basically another couple game days, a POI or 2, and I'm into one of my mid-range CV's... and honestly, at that point... what's the point?

Go get more resources (from deposits or POI's)? Why, already have a fully loaded CV...

In short (based on the current iteration of the "pre-story")... I've barely survived the destruction of the ship I was serving on, crashed on an alien planet with little more than some meds and survival tools... and less than 24 hours later, I'm cruising around in a brand new, shiny, combat fighter craft that I materialized out of thin air... doesn't really make a lot of sense to me in general, and certainly doesn't sound like how a survival game would/should play early on.

Again, just my opinion... but I think the very early game needs to be stretched out significantly... after all it's Empyrion Galactic Survival, right? At no point in the game (as at present build), have I ever felt that my character was in danger of NOT surviving.

While we may not share the same perspective on how things need to evolve, at least I think we can fairly say that we agree that both early- and end-game need work!

 

I agree that most things are poorly explained and worse set up (e.g. the shift+O command that's both ridiculously obscure and unpressable). However, there seem to be uhh... features missing from your playthrough that were available to use but not used.

Surface ore. Each rock yields 2-6 ore and 5 ore converts to 10 ingots. Surface ores make up over 50% of all surface rocks.
Really, you shouldn't even consider sifting rocks for ores. The conversion ratio is terrible and the fact that it gives ores instead of straight ingots is even worse.

The survival tool you start with functions as a drill. It merged with the old T1 mechanical drill so it's actually quite OP. Though I agree about the crap EXP yield from mining.

There are indeed a lot of status effects. However, you won't see 90% of them because they're escalations of lesser status effects that you get for not treating an injury (Dermal Parasite upgrades to Endo Parasite if left untreated). On the starter planet however, there are around 5 common status effects that you can be afflicted by and most can all be treated with Bandages. Craftable from plant fiber and some protein by your suit constructor and you start off with some of them. They fix open wounds, broken legs and all those other fractures and even restore some health.
Anything else is a rarity, inflicted from going somewhere or doing something that you shouldn't be doing before you have a base, an HV and all the stuff needed to cure the 2 other status effects in the game: Dermal Parasite and Poisonous Bite. The treatment for either effect also covers a half dozen other ailments and is dropped 70% of the time from zirax soldiers found outside in zirax territory you can safely take out with HV gatlings or a sniper rifle.

 

Sorry about that, I realize that could sound very aggressive but I didn't mean it that way. I meant it simply a matter-of-fact that I did expect someone to reply with the experience from the opposite end of the spectrum.

I feel like we had VERY different starting conditions. It took 5 minutes before we found our first ore rock - we were considering digging to see if they actually spawn in the ground.

Did you use an option to increase resource amounts maybe? I left everything on default when I got the multiplayer server to work.

Otherwise maybe it was just poor RNG.

Sorry for the confusion, I was specifically referring to converting ore into ingots. And this only applies to the extreme early game where you are searching for an ore to craft a specific item. I needed just one bar and had 1 iron ore. If I was able to just smelt that I would have had enough, but I had to find 4 more. I already explained that iron was difficult to find so I resorted to mining rock. The starting tool is slow and mining 45 more stone to get 1 iron bar pretty lousy.

I know that. The problem is it just takes too long to get the drill. It should be a level 4 or 5 unlock. Starting fresh and using that terrible starting tool which is super slow, you just have to deal with it for a long time. As an experience player who knows what you are doing, it's no problem. As a new player you're stuck with this for far too long. That's the problem I was bringing up. Although now that you mention it, this might be based on the old drill that was separate so maybe I just felt like I should have had an upgrade. I forgot that was a thing. Didn't it drop ore too? That was annoying. I'm starting to like the survival tool more


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I might have missed some other points, but I get the impression people are trying to solve problems for me or are just thinking about the game with their level of experience. This was all written as a newcomer's perspective and the feedback was to improve the early game. It doesn't have to make the game easier, instead of just making more ore rocks for example, you could make more ore rocks with fewer items in them or make the plain stone ore give some random ore as well to help with the RNG.

Anyway, I feel like all of my feedback was ignored/disregarded based on everyone else's perspective. Which is what I was afraid of with a forum. Only veterans stick around so the early game goes to ****. I'm out of here.

 

Not at all Rad, not ignored at all, nor disregarded.

As for veterans, yes we do stick around, but I would offer this counter point for your consideration: as the game is in such an early state, most of the time I spend in game is actually testing, not "playing" in the traditional sense... I know that's true for many other veterans here as well.

So, the practical effect of that is that one is constantly starting new games - as a matter of policy, I start a new one with every single release, no matter how minor (that can be multiple games in a given week, as Eleon release new builds at a very fast clip).

What I mean is that perhaps unlike other games, veterans here are not solely playing end-game content - not even on MP servers, as wipes are fairly common due to code updates requiring them.

I took your commentary to heart (and btw, I think you are correct, your server seed must have been an odd RNG as it relates to ore rock prevalence)... perspectives from brand new players, non-jaded like veterans get , is always welcome.

Hope you will reconsider.

 

I see you were just setting yourself up to fail from the beginning.
Most of your feedback isn't from a newcomer's perspective but a former veteran's. Most of your claims have little or nothing to do with being new and more to do with wanting something that's intentionally withheld.
If you hadn't seen or used the old T1 mechanical drill or Multitool for example, you'd have no comparison. A real newcomer would get their survival multitool (which is faster, longer ranged, wider radiused and free to use than the old drill) and be happy with it for they'd know not what they miss.

 

In my experience, players try to be helpful to new or returning players like yourself. That's all that was happening here, people were trying to give you advice to help you out and you took it the wrong way it seems. This is your decision and you certainly have the right to feel like you were attacked, but I don't think that was anyone's intention here and it's really unfair to say something like this when those "veteran" players were just trying to help you out.