So I wrote a while ago on my experiences with my excursion into public servers on Empyrion. This is the conclusion. I quit. PvP is exactly what I was afraid it was; a series of pointless dickishness. A guy started shooting at me on Masperon while I was trying to help a guy OFF "his planet", just for giggles. Tried to blame it on turret auto-fire as he chased me around. Someone got him back though...they joined his clan and multi-tooled his clan base. Good luck building that back on Akua, Dances with Mom. I started building up to retaliate, but, really, I was using up resources that I already had way too much of just to be a bigger ass than he was to begin with...By the time I finished my ship the complete pointlessness of it got to me and...well, I quit playing. I'll never need more Zasc, and the only reason I ever WOULD need more Zasc was if I spent it all hammering on this guy and his friends, and even then...I'd just fly in and grab the meteors when they are offline. I'm just not interested in a game where the only point to PvP is to be the bigger asshole. And there is literally nothing I can do to them on Akua anyways. They are free to grab all the resources they want/need and already have all the Zasc they need, so ultimately, all I could hope to do is to be slightly more annoying than they are to me. That's PvP. The factions are stupid. There is no ownership of my buildings, I can't pull my stuff back out of a faction, they could just kick me out and steal my crap. I mean, between the entire Empyrion team, NONE of you considered that could be used for nefarious purposes? I have a choice between shoot or don't shoot predator, prey, alien and "other factions." I can't decide between "friendly factions" or "nonfriendly factions" and I don't have a "shoot back if shot at" option or "shoot if hostile" option. I still don't know what offline protection does. The tooltip says "protects me in PvE" but...why do I need protection in PvE? Also, does it make my buildings indestructible? Do my turrets still shoot? Does that mean my indestructible ships/buildings SHOOT at things while I'm offline? So why wouldn't I fly my CV into a base and alt-F4 out? You're on version 4 and you STILL have blocks that get painted differently depending on how you rotate them. There are still about 20 or so drop pods in my field of vision at any given time on Akua. I mean, REALLY, how hard is it to ignore them and not load them when you reload a playfield, or delete them out with a script? Or...put a timer on them! Or make them scrappable and spit out power cores! They'll be gone in five minutes. I can't build new things on Akua so now I have to fly out into space, start a ship, dock it, then fly it back to finish it. Now I read in patch notes that you now check for max structures before entry. Akua is well over 300 buildings, does that mean if I leave Akua in a ship I can't get back without respawning there? Does that also mean I might not be able to LEAVE Akua again since I can't spawn a new ship? You still haven't addressed the inevitable problem that if an auto-miner "protects" a resource, that no one else can mine it and meteors won't drop, meaning new people can't get resources. Currently, new people can't build a base for themselves. I don't understand why instead of "max structures" you don't have a "max population" and each "person" gets a max number of BAs, CVs, SVs, and HVs on any given planet. Someone ELSE having 15 bases should not stop ME from building 1 or even 2 bases. You have done nothing to fix the "indestructible POI" issue where someone can drop a core into a POI and remove it and it basically "lives forever." The only reason I have anything to do is because I keep starting all over for updates, but...eventually, the updates are going to stop and I'm going to be left with the same inevitable dead end that there simply isn't any content past that one wild suicide run to Masperon for Zascosium. My FINAL straw was when my "private faction" SV stopped being able to dock onto my "private faction" CV and trying to land the CV on flat land to work on it made it hop and dance and flip around until it literally got stuck in the air and I had to reinvite physics to try and fly up there and jump "out" of my SV and "in" to my CV to try and land it...only for it to dance and jump around and throw it's epileptic self into the ocean. Upside down. It was in someone else's base for a minute there. Robocraft is a GREAT PvP game where I build my own "ships" and take them in and shoot at people and one of us dies, and if I die, it's no big deal, I get a little time out and I respawn with my ship intact and all my bullets back and I can jump right back into the action. That's how a PvP game works. Sword of the Stars is a GREAT 4x game where I design and build ships, discover technologies, get new resources, take over planets, and eventually fight someone for resources, and if I win it says "Hooray! I win!" or "I'm sorry, you lose" and either way, the game ends and everyone starts all over. Empyrion tries to be the best of both of those games. It's good at being neither of those games. Empyrion is more like...Skryim, where you have an open world, you quest, you explore, you discover things, you buy a house, set it up the way you want it, arrange your furniture, stock up your bookshelves, get married, have a kid, then at some random point someone from Starcraft comes in and wrecks your **** and you respawn way back at the chopping block and have to walk all the way back and your house is a pile, your wife and kids are dead and Empyrion shoots you a giant middle finger for being such a pathetic loser. Oh, and you can NEVER PLAY AGAIN because...Akua has too many structures. S'what you get for being such a loser...geeze. Loser. Your inability to decide which genre you want to be a part of results in an uncomfortably mediocre inbreed with bad concept of personal space and halitosis. It translates into incredibly stupid design decisions that only coincidentally haven't dumped you into a catastrophically bad dead end (but will) and a lot of really silly, mundane, and boring bugs and flaws get pushed to the side for more interesting and exciting new content. Nothing about the past few months has given me any indication that Empyrion will approach sustainability ever. You promised us, literally, the universe and you gave us new thrusters that are comically big. We're stuck on the same two planets. We have endless of every resources except 3, and no one gives a **** about two of them, and the last one is only coincidentally dangerous to get, and is mostly just a die-roll because of meteors. No one can protect all of Masperson all the time, you don't even give us the technology (radar) to do that. You've done nothing to resolve the inevitable dead ends that exists for players who start 2-3 months after a wipe. You've done nothing to produce new content or replayability. You've produced nothing tangibly different than 3.0 or even 2.0. Now we're talking about 5.0 but you haven't fixed really simple design issues yet. You're trying to accomodate to both the "explore design build" crowd and the "PVP" crowd but you've done LITERALLY nothing to either allow them to co-exist in the same sandbox or give them their own place to play. If you want Empyrion to exist six months from now, Empyrion is going to have to become a procedurally generated universe. Players will need to get a SMALL starting planet by themselves, big enough to build a "home" and a ship to explore the universe. The universe will need to be a fog of unknown, PvP vs PvE will need to be scattered and probably random, resources will need to be random and limited, players will need the OPTION to base together and take over sectors or try to hold their own planets. Finding a "good" planet with good resources needs to be a big deal, finding a "good" planet with good resources in a PvE space needs to be a big fucking deal (if it ever happens), eventually the world view needs to shift away from the planet aspect of pointing a mining gun at rocks and blinding yourself with special effects and it NEEDS to shift perspective to life on your capital ship, that you built, with autominers feeding resource stores that you get to watch fill up and deplete as you field bases and ships on other planets in other sectors in other galaxies that you are discovering as you explore. The microcosim of exploring a planet's surface for ALL the resources you need needs to shift to a macrocosim of a galaxy map/universe map depicting "Promethium planets" v/s "Erestrium Planets" light years away and whether you focus on mining promethium or erestrium (or whatever) will depend on how rich in any given resource a planet is and what resources you need, and you'll plant a limited number of auto-miners on a planet dependent on whatever resources are A: most available and B: most needed. And if it has the super-rare small vein of Zascosium on it, well, it gets an autominer too and is yet another trickle-stream of zasocosium. Your CV will need to become home. Your home will need to be relatively safe. Repairing and replacing ships will need to step away from the "pocket factory" and go to shipyards, which you built, which are fielded by the resources stores fueled by your autominers on planets that you've claimed and protected galaxies away. It needs to become less about your "Base" and become a LOT more about this space-bound mobile monolith that you've built and rule your new empire from using computer screens and holographic maps. Commands need to be sent electronically, factories driven roboticly. Ships will need to get bigger and better as you take over more and more planets and have more and more resources. New technology will need to become available. Better weapons and shields will need to become viable as you produce more and more promethium to feed these things. And if you die and lose your ship then it's the SHIPYARD that produces a new ship. And if you're part of a faction, then your faction builds you a new ship to command, and it gets armed and outfitted by the ship yards during production. And if you're solo, then it gets armed and outfitted by the resources you've collected over your solo career. And THAT can be the timeout you get for PvP, watching your ship get assembled by robots before you head on out into space again. REGARDLESS, it doesn't kick you back to a goddamned motorcycle staring at a rock on a planet where you may or may not be able to build a new ship. And your faction should become a CULTURE. The head SHOULD be an intergalactic ruler calling out commands and tactics across the universe, with fleet commanders and wing commanders all the way down to the proud captains of our CVs reporting for duty as our individual explorations allow us. I should start out as a lowly fighter SV pilot gunning down drones (or other lowly SV fighter pilots) in hopes of being my own CV captain one day. and you guys are a far, FAR way away from that. You have an entirely new game to write after Zascosium and it's taken you months to twiddle out just a little bit of content in 4.0. And the "it's only Alpha" excuse will only carry you so far. That "4.0" and "5.0" excitement will only last so long. You've got shields and maybe one galaxy map to keep us hanging on but then you're going to HAVE to fix these old bugs from the very beginning and actually MAKE the decision of "what is Empyrion going to be" after Zascosium. Empyrion started out as perhaps the greatest game I ever played. It promised, and in the beginning, delivered, everything...but the playtime is about 4 hours. **4 hours** That doesn't cut it...if all you have is 4 hours of content, then you're not done. You have ATLEAST another 20 hours to fill up, and that means either stretch out what you have...add more at the end, or both.
4 hours? Not the 386 hours you put into Empyrion, as shown on your profile? http://steamcommunity.com/id/mercestes/ Sorry, I would say more, but this whole post appears to be flame-bait, so I'm gonna leave it at that.
Four hours of playtime? That doesn't even make sense. Starting over and building up again takes a lot more than 4 hours. That's quite a rant but pretty offbase. The features are coming and the devs haven't disappeared. They keep pumping out content and fixes. They listen to their players and make adjustments that way too. Empyrion is the funnest game I have.
The grid limits on planets exist to keep playfields stable, not as a gameplay restriction. If the starting planets are full admins need to create more starting planets or wipe the starting planets more regularly. Most long running servers wipe starters every week for several reasons. A restriction on cores per player per planet would help. Offline protection creates a deadly blue forcefield cube around your grid that essentially places it in stasis when there are no members of your faction online. Nothing functions, but nothing can harm it either. The principle issue with this is that it discourages people from inviting pubbies to their pvp factions - some random guy logging on, and your stuff getting killed while you are offline, really sucks. So in practice you should faction with people you know, and/or keep a private base. The resource metagame does need work. The maps arn't always great at compelling pvp gameplay because of this, but that is an issue that can be and often is addressed and tweaked by the server. The addition of autominers makes good resource nodes (esp Iron) extremely valuable, and the addition of the marketplace makes it much more viable to base on planets with 'missing resources' via trade. Masperon is good for the game, we need more Masperons where pvp factions can stake out their claims :^)
This game is in early release, and still in Alpha. This is clearly advertised in Steam. The developers are putting lots of effort into improving things across the board, just look at the amount of updates that have been released in the past few months. I'm not sure what you were hoping to achieve by posting this but it looks to me like you need to put a post up on the Steam forums asking for clear definitions of the terms "Alpha" and "Early release".
Yeah, I'm not going to read anything that long with a title stating 'i quit'. Good luck then in whatever next you buy and get disappointed in. You'll be back. /unwatch thread
I was going to let Slam and Frigidman essentially end this thread with their comments, but this, monstrosity, is almost something to respect in the sheer scope of its lunacy. I mean holy ****! Even with a rocket typing speed, that must have taken you... what, 2 hours? 3? And it is proof read too(something I am expert at even if I do not always exercise it ) so that means you are likely wanting to read the responses to it(The desperate gasp for attention is pathetic.) The awesome level of pretentious self-righteousness is... by god, it is almost a work of art. Rarely does one see such a lewd display of myopic thinking. I will give you some hints: "You still haven't addressed the inevitable problem that if an auto-miner "protects" a resource, that no one else can mine it and meteors won't drop, meaning new people can't get resources." These are brand new. BRAND NEW. Maybe, what, 2 or 3 weeks old? Good heavens man, give the team of what 4 - 6? A break! "Your inability to decide which genre you want to be a part of results in an uncomfortably mediocre inbreed with bad concept of personal space and halitosis. It translates into incredibly stupid design decisions that only coincidentally haven't dumped you into a catastrophically bad dead end (but will) and a lot of really silly, mundane, and boring bugs and flaws get pushed to the side for more interesting and exciting new content." You might even be right about this... but why, why on earth are you bringing to bear such a hurtful personal attack? That is so... unnecessary? "Empyrion is more like...Skryim, where you have an open world, you quest, you explore, you discover things, you buy a house, set it up the way you want it, arrange your furniture, stock up your bookshelves, get married, have a kid, then at some random point someone from Starcraft comes in and wrecks your **** and you respawn way back at the chopping block and have to walk all the way back and your house is a pile, your wife and kids are dead and Empyrion shoots you a giant middle finger for being such a pathetic loser." Couple things. First, Empyrion is not really at all like Skyrim; there are no npcs, questing had only recently been added and it is not very good, you never buy a house, last time I checked you cannot get married.... unless those devious Zirax are hiding something..., you definitely cannot have kids, there are no dragons, no one in either game has people from starcraft enter them, etc. Second, Empyrion does not punish you for your inadequate skills... you are just terrible with pvp? That is not the games fault, that is your own. "My FINAL straw was when my "private faction" SV" This is not your final straw; by definition, a "final straw" comes at the end. Your comments about the galaxy, the CV design as the center of your world, the culture of factions... These are, by definition, features, that could, or could not, be added to a game, and they do no indicate it's completeness. They are just options. If you wanted them added, you should take this energy and write a suggestions thread about them all. You could have really added to the game? "The head SHOULD be an intergalactic ruler calling out commands and tactics across the universe, with fleet commanders and wing commanders all the way down to the proud captains of our CVs reporting for duty as our individual explorations allow us. I should start out as a lowly fighter SV pilot gunning down drones (or other lowly SV fighter pilots) in hopes of being my own CV captain one day." This is... just, disturbing. I mean, really disturbing. The factions can only be complete once everyone is in a galactic autocracy? Really? You do realize that might be a tremendous FLAW in other games... but you choose not to question it because you are a happy little toady? Holy fuck man! I am glad you are leaving! "It needs to become less about your "Base" and become a LOT more about this space-bound mobile monolith that you've built and rule your new empire from using computer screens and holographic maps. Commands need to be sent electronically, factories driven roboticly." You do realize that other people outside of yourself exist right? What if some people want CV's to be small, and BA's to be larger? Part of the problem with a post like this is that is entirely based on your assessment and utterly dismisses others... so kinda fun, why should other people listen to you if you cannot listen to their pleas or interests? 100k+ people have purchased and played this game. There are gonna be a lot of different takes on things. "Empyrion started out as perhaps the greatest game I ever played. It promised, and in the beginning, delivered, everything...but the playtime is about 4 hours." Unless you are playing on single player survival... or teaming up with people in multiplayer to kill POI's, or if you are like myself and invite other members to do co-op builds of things... etc. I know I am being somewhat repetitive, but, AGAIN, more to the Empyrion universe than just you bud. "and you guys are a far, FAR way away from that. You have an entirely new game to write after Zascosium and it's taken you months to twiddle out just a little bit of content in 4.0. And the "it's only Alpha" excuse will only carry you so far. That "4.0" and "5.0" excitement will only last so long. You've got shields and maybe one galaxy map to keep us hanging on but then you're going to HAVE to fix these old bugs from the very beginning and actually MAKE the decision of "what is Empyrion going to be" after Zascosium." So kinda fun: my intention is not to insult or put down the dev's... but, what if, dare I say it, they do not have the skill for a lot of these changes/additions AND they are either having to learn those skills, choosing to build into the game what they do know, or cannot gain said skills. That changes this mighty message of hurt into someone who is trying to inflict harm on people that cannot respond - kind of like someone bullying because of some quality - like down syndrome, or religion, or physical features that they cannot help, or race, or intelligence, ETC. Because I know that you did not stop to think about this, again, because you are only thinking of yourself here; that puts you into some shitty company. So feel free to not come back. Expanded: "And the "it's only Alpha" excuse will only carry you so far." You also confused sir; the idea of "its only in alpha" is not an excuse, it is a fact. They can leave it in alpha for as long as they want. Maybe even never take it out. It is the developers game, not our own. "Robocraft is a GREAT PvP game where I build my own "ships" and take them in and shoot at people and one of us dies, and if I die, it's no big deal, I get a little time out and I respawn with my ship intact and all my bullets back and I can jump right back into the action. That's how a PvP game works." Robocraft is a cute game, but more cute than great. I am glad the developers are taking lessons from other games, but also kinda glad they are doing their own thing. Since they are actively responding to at least SOME feed back, I feel, as I think others do, that I can help to propel this game. That is a fascinating thing to find. Very rare. "The factions are stupid." See this? This right here, is brilliant constructive criticism. "Oh, and you can NEVER PLAY AGAIN because...Akua has too many structures. S'what you get for being such a loser...geeze. Loser." Yeeeeeesh! You are not, despite this exercise in negativity that you wrote, a loser. No one is... period. This brings out whole potential armadas of psychoanalysis from me. I will not ask those questions here, as that would be a violation of sorts, but dang! "That doesn't cut it...if all you have is 4 hours of content, then you're not done. You have ATLEAST another 20 hours to fill up, and that means either stretch out what you have...add more at the end, or both." This is one of the best parts of this whole thing - it gave me a good chuckle. How on EARTH did you reach 20 hours? As opposed to say, 40? Maybe 50? I know... how about 600? Others have put in as much as 1500 - 3000(which is NUTS.) As Slam mentioned, you have put in considerably more than 24 hours? Soooooo, weird? I will end with: "I started building up to retaliate, but, really, I was using up resources that I already had way too much of just to be a bigger ass than he was to begin with" This, and its parent paragraph, sums up this ENTIRE salty, wet rag rant of hysterical cruelty: You wanted to be the jerk, but you either did not have the skill, did not know what to do, could not put in the time, or just are just a plain dumb, mean, sore loser. That dude that shot you down, or decides to mine resources, or builds ships that look neater; they are not yours to condemn. And everything in your field of vision does not belong to you. When you come back to the game, and @Frigidman is right, you will be back(someone who puts 300+ hours into something will at least be curious ,) take that energy that you used to write this thread with, and do something with this game that you can enjoy. Do not bang your head against the wall trying to turn the game into something it is not.
Pvp in sandbox/open world has its..flaws..because humans play it. If you don't like pvp don't play it. 4 hours? Perhaps for your post.
A huge writing effort would have resulted in a well structured essay, making points and suggestions for improvement while taking in to account the state of the game, the devs resources, the player base and their wishes. This was just projectile vomiting from his fingertips.
Wrong. An intelligent or at least constructively made huge writing effort would have resulted in that. He obviously wrote this post because he had to vent some frustration because of personal pvp failures or whatever ruined his day when he wrote that post. But just because someone goes into full on butt hurt idiot mode before starting to write a post does not mean he can't put a lot of effort in it. The effort is just pretty much wasted, because people will either stop reading after the first 1-2 paragraphs of inflammatory rants or continue reading for the sole purpose of making fun of it afterwards.
I was implying that "huge" includes intelligent and constructive, at least it does from my perspective. That 'effort' was about as much effort as projectile vomiting takes...none, it just happens.
>You still haven't addressed the inevitable problem that if an auto-miner "protects" a resource, that no one else can mine it and meteors won't drop, meaning new people can't get resources." What does this even mean? Where I'm at in MP right now I'm sharing a planet with another team(different faction). Their autominers and mine are both on the same resources without issue. Right next to each other without a peep. >Your inability to decide which genre you want to be a part of results in an uncomfortably mediocre inbreed with bad concept of personal space and halitosis. It translates into incredibly stupid design decisions that only coincidentally haven't dumped you into a catastrophically bad dead end (but will) and a lot of really silly, mundane, and boring bugs and flaws get pushed to the side for more interesting and exciting new content." We want, ALL THE GENRES! That is what is making Empyrion so awesome and giving it so much weight as a game even in the alpha state. I got over 500 hours in an ALPHA GAME. Every time I get frustrated or mad I reflect on that and it calms me down. Bah it's to much trouble to quote and paste and forum warrior. I like a good rant as much as the next guy. Hell I still hate it that this game is MP And I'll say so every chance I get. But it seems like this guy is going way off base and just swinging wild. Face it. You love Empyrion and you need a break while the devs make new features. Same thing happened to me.
Mercestes, i am completely agree all what you sayed. Just dont expect , that all this features will be realized. It needs huge amount of work, money and time. No one possibly can do it in present day game industry. Sorry for bad speling.
I think there's some useful feedback scattered about in there. I think he's correct here. Well that's how some PvP games work. Never the less, I kind of share his opinion that when it comes to risking a ship that I spent hours building in a winner-take-all battle, I'm not willing to do it, so I play single-player. That's just me. I can't stand to lose $20 at a blackjack table in Las Vegas, either. So yes, I enjoy PvP when I get to respawn and wade back into the fray. That doesn't mean Empyrion PvP cannot be successful. But, perhaps there's some interested in alternative PvP features? Of course, that's an exaggeration. On first play through, its maybe 40-60 hours to get to where you have all resources and you can build anything. On subsequent play through, it takes about 24-40 hours. I could probably get that to 16 hours if I hustled and avoided fights. That said, its an open game. You set your goals. If my goal were to have a space station in orbit around every planet, a base on every planet, and having destroyed all of the NPCs, then it would take much longer. With current content, I usually stop after clearing Akua and its moon. And, of course, Empyrion isn't finished yet.
The game should simple get renamed from: Empyrion Galactic Survival, into Empyrion Galactic PVP. That is what this game has become. A pure PVP game. Due the PVE Content is obsolete after (when you are a real slow gamer) 1 week. Expeirenced gamer take only 2 days. Building is only decorative, due there is no real intern mechanic *plug it on the vehicle and it works no need to think off any "laws" " "Yeayy let`s fly with a plattform with a chair and the minimal needed". Since Alpha 1, the updates were more or less only "artistic" nature. And did not rela face the urgend needed and since long promised things. Who the hell asked for modular basebuilding? But I know many who asked for: Round Planets, for volumetric Water and Air, for !!serious!! PVE Enemys, for a REASON to do anything. Like said, simple rename the Project to what it is. I for my personal oppinion lost hope that this game will ever become more than a nice looking but very flat shooter / pvp thingi. What is to the reaon I did quit my cowork here.
