I'm not sure I understand why @ASTIC isn't allowed to advertise his mod in this thread. The OP didn't specify what this thread was for other then informing everyone what was happening. Most everyone congratulated Eleon on what they had achieved and what they had changed. Some people vented in here and others joked. There was no real topic to follow, at least none that I could see. Now if this is a joke on Astic then I must apologize for sticking my big nose into it
Yeah, that's the idea. A lot of games use cutscenes to provide illustrations of varying subjects. This may be more difficult to accomplish due to the individual nature of the game
Well they can trigger a "cutscene" for the warp sequence, I guess they could at least trigger one for the game start. The biggest problem would be to make the cutscene istself. The Unity player (the thing that "plays the game" here) can easily do that. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yesterday I went a bit further in the tutorial. I got the HV, first spider attack (I just ran), then got to the first base, killed critters and started re-fitting the base... Ooh the clunky, visually unpleasant "logistics" interface... When commanded to hit F4 to open logistics, I forgot what key I rebind for it and pressed F4 and it closed the game... I had been playing for... well I didn't count but it was sure around 3 hours. 3 hours ? Damn... what took so long ? Well the thing that comes to mind here is: the portable constructor is excruciatingly slow. Infuriatingly slow. And we're asked to do lots of things with it. I noticed that when refitting the base, there is nothing related to oxygen. The temperature was around 35 deg. and there is no way to get normal temperature without a sealed o2 base. The O2 and water parts are missing here, and should be done much earlier in the tutorial. I think it's not a good idea to put all these "advanced tips" below the tutorial instructions. It doubles the amount of text to read and it is incomplete and not necessary for the task. A simple "check PDA for more tricks" could do. I had to play hide-and-seek with raptors to be able to mine the 3 ores. I could go into many details here, but lets say that if I was a new player I would be overwhelmed and lost there. Making the large constructor minutes after manking the small one is a bit ridiculous. Making the small constructor is just a waste of resources here.
I think that it was me who did most of the promotion so far. And why? Because I want such a scripting feature in the main game. I would add so much to how lively and immersive ships appear and would also add much to what can be done with POIs (have a look at the stuff from @shadowiviper for example). Also the mod is quite simple yet well thought and you can do so many cool things with it. Even such things like access level control (which functions are accessible by players/admins) are in. Also it is quite accessible even to non-programmers due to his handlebars wrapper. Coolest thing would be a Imbiss implementation where the programming is done in a language like blockley. So what’s your problem?
Ok. Got back in the turorial... Now I don't see the point to make turrets before making the armor. In fact I don't see the point of capturing a base at all prior to get the first armor. The new player has no experience, no "light" and no jetpack, and the game sends him to step "capture a base and make it your own" while he has close to no materials. and is already exposed to cold/ heat/ radiations in many instances before "the base", and even in the base when close to devices. "Survival" only lasted for a few minutes before I was directed to lots of goodies, but not enough to sustain the tutorial requirements. This means that at many points in the tutorial, the new players are forced to get out and seek more and more materials and can get killed many times in the process. And frustrated. Following strictly what the tutorial says, I would only have 15 silicon, iron and copper. That's far from enough to build all what the tutorial asks for, and then after generator + fuel tank + small constructor + containers + large constructor + repair the base + ammo box + 4 turrets + ammo (if player doesn't forget) then only we are told to make the LOL armor locker required to put the armor on, and then the armor. At this point if many new players don't have a weird feeling that something is wrong in this sequence, maybe that's because they already spent a week to get there. And they spent 50% of that time looking at text, menus, and constructor interfaces by fear of seeing their stuff disappear like it did for me many times. And when they will play the game, they will think they need to build a base (or find one) fast, because that's what they learned from the tutorial... and they will get the "drone" treatment, while it can be avoided altogether by simply staying nomadic just a bit more on the starter planet. In fact right after the player has built the motorbike, he simply never has to use it because the next step is to look for the HV which is just a short walk from there... ------------------------------------------------ When heading to the base for the first time, the player is instructed to "stop and make a temporary camp" then to use the sniper to destroy the sentry gun. At this point I was in a pentaxid-radioactive zone, quite a good walk distance from the base. I set the tent down like asked, then walked all the way there (left the HV as told to approach carefully with the rifle zoom to spot enemies). When I cleared the enemies and claimed the base (tell players to get at some distance before they blow the core or they will get damage from the explosion!) then I am told to put down the tent and small constructor... which I left with the HV far behind following instructions. Going back now... have to pretend I have full understanding how to make grow plots, while I didn't think of putting the O2/ water gadget down long enough anywhere since the start to get one bottle of water. But let's pretend the new players just thought of this by themselves...
An "Undead Rufus" posted the following (not recommended) review on Steam (text copied and pasted below), and I can't help but agree with pretty much all of it. Until today, Empyrion was in Early Access for five years, and I suspect it will remain in an EA state for years more, if not perpetually. I've reached high-tier survival maybe a handful of times in all the years I've played this title, with most of my 600+ hours having gone into early to mid-game efforts whenever a new alpha drops. That's not to say I don't play for fun. I do, almost exclusively, and I wouldn't keep checking in if I thought Empyrion sucked completely. FWIW, the building system is engaging, and exploration can be loads of fun in co-op. However, there's a notion going around that players are somehow unreasonable when they're critical of Eleon Game Studios or the game after X number of hours played. A certain fanboy/moderator would apparently have everyone believe that his own 16,000 hours played is somehow reflective of the immense quality of this game, and anyone who has hundreds or thousands of hours is in fact a living testimony to Eleon Game Studios' unrivaled greatness. Meanwhile, in the real world, Empyrion is clunky, bug-ridden, amateurish and frustrating even at its best. I'm usually fine with that. Kenshi is one of my favorite games of all time, after all. But "You played X hours and got your money's worth, so shut up," is not an argument. Version 1.0 is not a complete game, and shouldn't be portrayed as such through deliberately confusing manipulations of common game dev nomenclature. However, if "shut up" is the official fanboy/moderator/developer position, then my official position is a negative review, and a strong recommendation to look elsewhere for sci-fi survival. Few similar games do as much as Empyrion on such a massive scale, but nearly every game I can think of does what it does, within its own scope, better than Empyrion. - The first-person mechanics are perhaps the worst I've ever seen. Playing Empyrion doesn't feel like moving around as a character, but rather gives me the sense of a camera on wheels. Animations are ugly or nonexistent for basic tasks. It would've been a damn shame twenty years ago. Today it's inexcusable. - Characters are hideous and hideously animated. Despite the first-person woes, don't even think about playing this in third-person. - Combat is an uninspired, impact-lacking mess. Weapons feel like BB guns, and even saying that feels like an undeserved insult to air rifles. If there's one single gameplay element that kills my Empyrion joy faster than any other, it's the awful, pea-shooter combat. This is unforgivable, because combat is central to the game unless you're only in it for creative mode. - The AI is rock-stupid and blatantly plays by different rules. Enemies can magically "hack" (take over) your base from long range if they can't reach your core, and their base and ship weapons are superior to player weapons in almost every way. Fighting against NPCs is essentially a matter of learning how to cheese. Recent attempts to create end game content have exacerbated this problem. - Unity Store assets are still commonplace. I mean ... whatever, I guess. I couldn't afford to make my own game assets, either. - Physics—what physics? - Flight model—what flight model? (It's been brought to my attention that I should point out there technically is a so-called flight model. Sadly, there's no real sense of mass or weight. Never was, and neither the "flight model" nor atmospheric engines that were added with it changed this. The same floating camera phenomenon that applies to walking/running also applies to every class of vehicle. I say this as a flight sim fan who thinks Space Engineers and No Man's Sky both did a decent fakery job with flight, and I would have been fine with something similar in Empyrion.) - Bugs. Everywhere. Various systems are glitchy. - No volumetric water. Dug a hole at the bottom of a lake? Congratulations, you've made a permanent air pocket that you can build on and live in just like on dry land. This also means you can't create a Minecraft-style backyard pond, or build a Subnautica-style underwater home. I mean, you *can* build underwater, but it's just depressing. - Canned environmental sounds, probably from the Unity Store (I can't confirm this). It's weird to be on a completely alien planet, but hear crickets and howling wolves. This is all stuff one would expect of an ALPHA product, of course. If you just want to build stuff or walk around on some same-y alien worlds, it's hard to say Empyrion isn't worth twenty bucks. It's huge with lots of moving parts. If you're looking for a deep game with polished (or even competent) survival and action mechanics, investing time in Empyrion might leave you some combination of irritated, bored and sad. Review subject to change, but I wouldn't bet on it.
600+ hours since Alpha 1.6....very impressive dedication to help the Devs on their Task to hunt down bugs. Also seemingly a PvP Player. That 2500+ People find this 'recommendation' Helpful...pretty devastating.
Tutorial - going forward on my "base" chapters: When player is instructed to "craft and put down the O2 condenser" : the device name is " Water/ O2 Condenser", and the player already has one from the start of the game. If he tries (logically) to find this newly named "O2 Condenser" in the large/ small/ portable constructors he will never find the template, and neither while searching in the tech tree. When asked to go to the "nearby lake" there could be a waypoint leading there (there is none). On the map, since this is a swamp planet, the lakes are "green" and unless the new player got severely off track while going from starting wreck to the base, he most likely has no clue where to look for a lake. Good luck to him trying to steer his HV in the dense forest to get there... When asked to "craft and put down a O2 tank" : this step has already been covered right after claiming the base, when the player is instructed to look at the control panel and see the "missing devices in yellow" = generator, fuel tank AND O2 tank. Logically the player already crafted the O2 tank, and like me he will have to craft another one here... When instructed to "make Large O2 bottles" once again these components are simply named "O2 Bottle" (the blue one). Same problem here as with the "O2 Condenser" = player will not find it in constructors templates. Going to Polaris now...
I don't know what happened on the 5th of August, but I just checked some other games just to see : Skyrim with a "peak" on the 5th of august : Fallout 76 with the same : Fallout 4 : Shadow of War : I think the same cool gang of reviewers all had their wires touching on that day... or maybe something in the news I missed ? Of course I checked many others, but these were the first ones I thought about when trying to solve this question : if I was about to post rants on many games, which ones would I choose ? What are these games "unsatisfied players" often mention when talking about bad design and lazy developers ? The only one standing out here is "Shadow of War" but it's on sale, so easy to see from the store front. So of course that eliminates all those games that already can't be shove further down like Osiris New Dawn and Starmade. That's just a funny coincidence. .
Thanks, but I will keep posting here, mostly because there could have been a dedicated "feedback" thread for the tutorial and it has not been done. This is the first "taste" players get of Empyrion, and it could have been much more simple but safer and more focused, while preventing whoever made the tutorial from going through lots of trouble for no real good impact at the user end. When the player has finished the tutorial he might as well be above level 10 and this makes no sense. Devices should all be provided in containers or as "chapter rewards", the tutorial should not "stop" between chapters, these could be triggered by entering specific areas and allow the players do only replay specific parts, etc. If the game is so different from other games, and complex, that's reason enough to make the tutorial different and coherent with its content, keeping the "story" apart from it. No need to submit the player to danger and death to learn mechanics, and best to show these in a completely controlled environment, but I'm only repeating myself here. I also completely agree with new players feeling that the tutorial was made for them to spend their 2-hours refund window in something that looks interesting like a story, but where they have to spend half of this time trying to figure things out by themselves or reading pages of text that may be relevant only when they "play the real game". On some points the tutorial "instruction" only has 1 line, and the "extra info" is a whole paragraph below it, but absolutely not necessary to complete the task. More smaller, more focused tasks, free devices, etc. For all "experience gaining" and "tech tree unlock" it's also quite easy to keep that for a chapter in itself, by rewarding the player with massive XP amounts and then direct him to the tech tree. Or even with a "sequential" format, but with much more XP gains so the player always has enough points to unlock devices required by the tutorial. Same principle for materials and components. Players don't enjoy "reading" they want to learn by playing.
I have been around since alpha 4. This version 1.0 thing really makes no difference to me. It will to people who only buy games that are full releases. I like the game, just wish there was more end game to it. There is really no reason to explore once you get a nice CV. I get tired of taking POI after POI just for sake of doing it. I am not a fan of adding more grind as substitute for content.
I'm trying to figure out what you're trying to say here, and what percent of that post is intended to be taken as sarcasm.
The weird way STEAM handles those Reviews show a pretty braindead Picture: From mid-July to start of August the game was termed to be "VERY POSITIVE" reviewed. Than there is August with ONE Day having more negative than Positive reviews. And..it jumps to MIXED instead of only POSITIVE.
Steam reviews don't go by "one day with more negative reviews than positive". They go by the percentages of positive vs. negative reviews over a period of time. In this case, by month, which means the end result is "Mixed" for August 2020, so far. Because a day with 20 positive reviews and 19 negative reviews isn't "very positive", nor os a day with 19 positive and 20 negative reviews a "very negative" day. They're both pretty "mixed". The only braindead thing is trying to white knight troll about this on a very primitive level.
Neither is trolling and distorting things to match your agenda. Edit: oh, and I was referring to your actions, not your person. There is a difference. I consider white knight trolling in a primitive way just as braindead as you consider the logic of steam reviews. Which I consider far less braindead, in comparison. I'm not calling you braindead. I labeled the action you took up there with the same attribute that you used to describe steam reviews, which work differently from the "braindead" system you perceive them to be. tl;dr: There is a difference between "I did a braindead thing." and "I am braindead".
