Hello you marvellous lot. Although I do lurk on and off, this is my first post and to be honest, it's a bit of a beast. I feel duty-bound to echo some of the opinions I'm seeing voiced by members of the EGS community around the state of the game coupled with the questionable decision to leave early access. I have not sunk thousands of hours into EGS like some players, but I still feel that as a "casual" player who is still relatively new to the game (I have about 300 hours and this is about the third time I've come back to see how it's progressed), my feedback is probably worth something. A lot of this is difficult to say because I don't like to upset people, and being a hobbyist game developer who has worked in the industry myself, I recognise in some small part the enormity of the task Eleon has undertaken in creating this fantastic game with such unbelievably huge scope and variety, and also the harsh realities of time and budget restrictions, and the constraints those put on what can and cannot be feasibly done with such a small team. Ultimately I admire Eleon for what they have achieved and I'm grateful to them for working so hard for so long just so people like me can play what is already a great game in many ways, and what has the potential to be a truly groundbreaking one. With that said, I do have some very critical feedback to relay. Clearly a lot of Empyrion's players, even veterans with thousands of hours of gameplay time, are upset with what I see as Eleon's apparent unwillingness to prioritise bug fixes based on the significance of their impact on everyday gameplay. Some of these issues may be considered minor, trivial or cosmetic on paper, but this isn't a true representation of their impact on the average player. Some are highly visible, particularly to new players (during the early game), which has a very damaging effect on their impression of the game's overall quality during those critical first few hours when they are forming their lasting impressions of the game. The more time a player has invested in the game, the more tolerant they will likely be of issues that may severely impact their experience. Conversely, new players are extremely unforgiving as they have not yet invested significant time or effort (they will however have invested the money required to purchase the game). And many prominent reviewers will no doubt base their overall score largely on their early-game experience. It's understandable that issues across the severity spectrum will occur in an early access title, but... here's the kicker. Empyrion isn't in early access anymore. Despite this, many of the same high-visibility issues I experienced when I first played the game around two years ago are still present in all their glory. What makes this worse is a sizeable fraction of these issues seem like they would require relatively little effort to fix. Even taking into account Eleon's small size and limited resources, alongside the scope of what they are trying to build (as I believe all players should), I am still shocked that some of these bugs are still present. I cannot understand Eleon's attitude to prioritisation of fixes. It can lead the player to many negative conclusions about the game. New players could easily be forgiven for thinking the game is abandoned in a half-finished state, or that Eleon is too lazy or incompetent to fix the issues, or that they simply don't care at all about the experience of new players. If I had to use one word to describe these issues, it would be "embarassing". In multiple senses of the word. They are embarassingly obvious when they occur, which is embarassingly frequently (often 100% of the time). They are also embarassing in the sense that they have been known issues for so long without any sign of a fix. Finally, they are often embarassingly basic things to be broken. Most players aren't programmers, but games like EGS do attract a technically-minded playerbase, and it's sometimes obvious what the potential causes of an issue might be, and therefore how much or little effort they would likely take to fix (although admittedly I know by experience that these are often not as they seem). Empyrion has an image problem, and this attitude to bug fix prioritisation is reinforcing every negative (and undoubtedly false) impression of the developers, their attitude, and their competence. The following is a list of bugs that are good examples off the top of my head (there are definitely many more I'm currently forgetting about): - When mounting motorbike in third person view, player character appears to stand/run on top of motorbike. For me, this is the absolute quintessential example. It has been in the game since my very first playthrough and has not changed at all, is reproducible trivially 100% of the time, is highly visible to new players due to the motorbike's importance in the early game, and is frankly embarassingly hilarious. - Mining drill flattening tool does not flatten terrain (if anything it makes it less flat) - Vehicle turrets (HV) frequently don't fire at targets they are configured to attack, for no apparent reason. On leaving early access this was claimed as fixed, but as far as I can tell it's exactly the same as ever) - Enemy NPCs can attack the player during their hit/taking damage animation, which seems very unfair as the NPC animations are the player's main "tell" / feedback mechanism during combat - Enemy NPCs can fire (but apparently not see) through solid objects such as walls, closed doors, blocks and terrain - again, leaves a very nasty taste in the player's mouth and is an embarassingly basic issue to have - Enemy NPCs frequently lose focus on the player during combat and simply stand idle, allowing themselves to be killed, as though they are so embarassed at the indignity of it all that they just want to be put out of their misery - Enemy pathfinding is buggy with enemies frequently getting stuck on walls, corners and other geometry - Poor performance (framerate and simulation slowdown) in vicinity of large structures and POIs, particularly worrying as this is where most high risk combat takes place, and where the player is most likely to be killed as a result of a big framerate drop, and where the consequences of death are the most severe - Vehicle must come to a 100% total stop (including rotation) before player is able to exit the cockpit. Very annoying given the frequency and importance of using vehicles, and also gives the impression of being quite easy to fix (although I recognise this could always be wrong). - Weapons and tools can be accidentally fired for a short time after player has selected a different item in the hotbar. At best this leads to wasting potentially valuable ammo, at worst it could lead to throwing away hard-earned faction status by accidentally shooting an NPC (although this is arguably more of a problem with the design of faction rep system). Or killing yourself with a point-blank rocket into the wall in front of you. Again, it seems pretty trivial in terms of effort required to fix. - Many entities in the game world still display names that are clearly development placeholders (example off the top of my head is base attack drones and troop transports) - NPCs in Polaris trading stations stand on top of tables and counters as though their pathing is unaware of the obstacles - Physics glitches occasionally throw the player high into the air or far across the map, in my experience this has happened when exiting a vehicle while it's upside down (this is not too frequent, but devastating when it does occur). - Disabling the jetpack mode while in EVA sends the player flying through space and spinning out of control with no apparent cause. I would expect to float through space without control, but preferably without violating Newton's laws of motion - if I'm standing still when I disable the jetpack I wouldn't expect a massive interial force from nowhere. - Vehicles constantly being obstructed by small thin trees (I believe Spanj calls them "twigs") which is very annoying. This would be relatively simple to fix, either by making the twigs destroy on an impact with enough momentum, or simply by disabling their ability to collide with vehicles. - Possibility for hostile dreadnaughts to spawn in orbit of the starter planet. This is really a design issue and not a bug, but has a big impact nonetheless. Such vessels are massively overpowered for the starter playfield. I have one in my current single player game in orbit of the temperate starter planet and it's absolutely wrecking me every time I try to explore any POIs in space. Leaving a ship parked outside is a ticket to being stranded when you come back and find it blown to bits. And the damn thing is so powerful you would need an impossibly well-armed CV to have a hope of surviving. In its current state, I have a love-hate relationship with EGS. It plays like the concept of sod's law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sod's_law) was somehow manifested in its Platonic form into the shape of a game. One could point at many potential causes, but I personally feel it's really down to how issues that have the biggest impact on the minute-to-minute experience of playing the game are apparently not prioritised, based on the fact so many of them persist in the game even after many years. Taking all of this into account, it seems clear to me that leaving early access at this time was a big mistake. The "work in progress" status that early access implies makes all of these things far more forgiveable. But to have so many embarassingly egregious experience-ruining bugs still present, alongside a clearly-exhasperated playerbase where many players appear to feel unheard and ignored, and to then come out of early access with all that implies? In my view such a decision has a strong risk of killing the project entirely. Let me say again that I love this game, I love what it's trying to achieve and what it has in large part laid the foundations for so far. I am grateful for the clearly massive efforts of the developers, and for the fun I've had playing as a result of their labours. I genuinely believe Eleon has the best of intentions and is simply buckling under the incomprehensible scope of chewing that which they have bitten off. I will continue to play the game out of hope it will one day reach a state where it's polished enough to be just a joy to play. But that day still seems very far away to me. Polish matters, certainly much more than Eleon appears to believe. A very small amount of effort and time focused at addressing the "low-hanging fruit" (most annoying issues visible to most players, especially new players, most frequently, that are relatively low-effort to fix) has the potential to drastically improve the average player's experience, and therefore the perceived quality of the product. In my opinion, the sensible thing for the devs to do now would be for them to put the game back into early access and acknowledge that it was a mistake to leave the alpha stage with the game in its current state. Either that or refocus their efforts heavily onto improving the user experience in the aforementioned ways, before they are totally destroyed by negative reviews. Please listen to your community more Eleon, particularly those who bring you a good chunk of your publicity (youtubers like Spanj for example) - watch their videos and learn from the quality-of-life issues they are repeatedly experiencing. Of course any playerbase is filled with all manner of crazy feature requests and "wouldn't it be cool if"s that would be completely impossible or take forever to implement. But the low hanging fruit is right there, but it's been there for years, it's rotten, and its stink is only getting more pungent by the minute. Love you Eleon, thankyou... and plz, plz fix. <3
Welcome to the forums ! You can read Eleon's explanations regarding "leaving Early Access" in the first 3 pinned thread of this section : https://empyriononline.com/forums/news-announcements.6/ These have many pages, and you might see echoes in there of what you are saying here, so this may help you understand where things stand right now. There were also many other secondary threads opened on the "leaving Early Access" topic, so feel free to browse the forum to see what was already discussed. If you want to be sure that your feedback will be read by developers, there are many specific threads in the "Feedback" section regarding most if not all aspects of the game.
Most youtubers I watch now have moved away from the vanilla game and gone onto the mod versions of it. It looks like they just got bored of the vanilla version. When was the last time Spanj played vanilla? I like Spanj as he got me into the game. Its a pity Eleon shunned him cause he pointed out the stupid despawning of POI's in space in one if his vids. https://empyriononline.com/threads/self-destructing-npc-ships-again.95115/#post-411370 The game came out of 'early release' but they have said it is not a released version. Some think it was purely for a money boost. The game does have great potential, it's a pity that the community isn't listened to more. I've personally giving the game a break, until the stupid minute crosshair is fixed. What's the point in playing if I can't see where I'm aiming and I end up dying lots...
Thanks guys, I'll have a read of those linked threads. I'm not super worried about the devs seeing my feedback specifically, more the community's in general. However I will do my part and report some issues if I find any that are not yet known...
