The thing you got "wrong" is you didn't test the story on permadeath with the hardest settings on a snow starter. I wouldn't be surprised if you've never tested the game on a legit playthrough. My Hiedelberg spawned in an area that was an average of -60 degrees. Scrolling through several pages of text when you freeze to death in seconds isn't an option. I would rather have read the PDA in my nice warm HV. The story is fine, the problem is the mechanics. Following the story missions shouldn't make you feel like a sucker who walks into deathtrap after deathtrap.
Permadeath is not part of the default scenario and the default game should't be balanced around it. This is a good point. Maybe the ship should spawn in a warmer biome or be powered, or the info added to the PDA log as well.
Testing in extreme conditions reveals flaws you would likely never have discovered otherwise. When you play permadeath on hardest settings without cheats you see things differently than the guy who kills himself to get rid of radiation poisoning or uses commands to spawn in epic armor. You'll find issues that others may have missed and imbalances become more obvious because they are exacerbated. While I'll agree that you want to base your balance decisions on normal settings, you do need to consider hard settings. Permadeath should be an option in single player mode of survival games, because it certainly enhances the experience for many of us. I've noticed about half the youtubers of survival games play permadeath. There is certainly a market for it.
@Hummel-o-War Might be you get it wrong, but now I do not claim I always write/say stuff in a way that is easy to understand. It is not about the story itself, but the mechanics on how the story are told and how the player have to interact. Dialogue starts: Some text, can skip with right click. Some text, can skip with right click. Some text, can skip with right click. Some text, can skip with right click. Some text, can skip with right click. Some text, can skip with right click. ... Click to answer and continue. Some text, can skip with right click. Some text, can skip with right click. Some text, can skip with right click. Some text, can skip with right click. ... Click to answer and continue. Some text, can skip with right click. Some text, can skip with right click. Some text, can skip with right click. Some text, can skip with right click. Some text, can skip with right click. Some text, can skip with right click. Some text, can skip with right click. Some text, can skip with right click. ... And so on until done with the mission sequence. *** If you get attacked or have to do something, then better exit the dialogue. Or on a server you get cut off for some reason (like maintenance restart). Then you have to go through all of it again. The system should be able to store this progress, and maybe ask if want to continue from where left off. If you selected a console out of sequence, you do not know until the end, maybe even not then. When you realize it were the wrong one, then to find the right one in the sequence. This behavior can be repeated many times, if the mission allow it and the player might become confused. *** Also have that most of the story makes no difference in the actual game play, it is "just" entertainment. Then if you do some starts and will test out the missions - You want us to test stuff right? - Then all the time use and clicking doing the steps becomes annoying (at least for me). Of course can use the check box (if have a star * ) to just skip it all together, but then you do not either test the sequence end trigger. *** Why I suggested a "Skip to end (or next important section)". Along with a "Do not start dialogue/action until sequence xx is done" ... Preferable dialogue a " ... sequencing mismatch ... collect more data ... ". *** Could also have more text in one go some places. If the text is planned to be audio (spoken) too, then maybe even more important
hello not sure it's where i should post it but i was stuck on one glitch : Xenu Mainframe Last step when you use the "switch" that will make explode the whole complex, the timer is far too short : - Read the dialog, all explode and no way to teleport without power - Go back before dialog end, you just see the teleport loosing power And with the saves on ironman it's a big pain to try again you just get stuck on the dead Mainframe and could suicide but then restarting to build power on mainframe just to move on next mission will make lots of people leave. I would suggest to put twice the time of current counter, and if someone dont make it in time, make the player die instead just getting stuck with this mission state saying to teleport back.
Ok being blunt the survey up the top there is a total waste of time. Your saying is it good and you have two answers, its good and its really good, ? WTF ? How is that even a question, what about , is it average ? Did you not like it ? And why ? It could be improved ? So anyway here it is, Eleon stated this game was about finding the planet Empyrion. SO LETS DO THAT ! My suggestion is this, create ONE unique planet, unlike ANYTHING this game has seen. I personally would create an EGG planet. This planet is an ODD shape, looks like a chicken egg. Why do this ? Its a unique shape, geometry matters. It also works with current flat map yaml system. Where as a DONUT shaped planet would not for example, and yes I thought about that too because it would be even more awesome if possible. But this game NEEDS the unique planet called Empyrion if it ever wants to complete its story properly, like its stated it was planning to from day one. There should be a heap of new game assets on this planet, mainly trees that have never been used or seen in Empyrion before. This is how you make this games finale exceptional, a thing for people to remember, an actual voxel builder game with an actual story you can follow out to the end. Another thing that needs addressing, are the vast amounts of same planets, its like a default placeholder, legacy systems, with the same of everything thoughout them, they are such a BAD thing for long term of this game so Im hoping they are just for the intention of putting much better planets or solar systems in later as they come, and on that note here is another suggestion to help fill the Empyrion verse with an utterly HUGE range of unique planets. Start a BETA competition for planet builders. Create a new section on this forum and Steam forum, where people can upload a link to there home made planets, use us testers to check them before any devs even touch them to save you time, maybe create a planet name list you would like to use and assign them as the planets get approved. This will create the ability to add whole solar systems that are completely different to any other solar system in the game, something SO MANY GAMES have failed at for so long. This game has the potential here to destroy that long standing flaw in this type of game. With players creating the solar systems or planets, you just really never know what your going to get do you. Can anyone think of a more diverse way to do this ?
I refuse to respond to surveys that are written in such a manner. If it was April 1st, I could accept its a joke but not on 7/17/2020. At best it looks like the survey writer does not how to write a useful survey. At worst, it looks like the kind of deceptive surveys used to make marketing statements that while inaccurate and underhanded are not legally considered false advertising. A survey like this can be used to make marketing statements such as "all of our research indicates that our customets like the story, with a little less then half considering it great." Note the less then half is based on the 7 Results of Thumbs Up and 6 Many Thumbs Up that is the results at the time of this post. I expect tricks like this to be used by Politicians, not Game Designers or Developers that need genuine feedback to facilitate the best quality game possible. Keep in mine the Best Quality Game Possible, with existing staff and techology, is particulary important for building the reputation of a independent game company. My response to the nature of the survey aside. I do like the Current Story's Content and hope to see it Completed, although i do think the Story Implementation could use some refinement. I have been picking games primarily based on the quality of the story since Blizzard's First Starcraft and am currently in school for Game Design to better tell my own stories. I would like to congratulate and thank who ever created the Story Content on it, other then that if if a Developer or Staff want suggestions on changes to implementation, they are welcome to respond here or message me. I will not bother with those suggestions without being asked due to the the apparent lack of interest implied by this "Survey".
Soon, very soon, I will enter rant mode and will not stop until someone sends me cookies to my personal address... Here's a link : https://empyriononline.com/threads/how-to-share-a-custom-playfield-planets-moons.91657/ But that's not a thread where they "use us testers to check them before any devs even touch them to save you time, maybe create a planet name list you would like to use and assign them as the planets get approved" like Piddlefoot proposed. You, for your scenario, you made numerous unique worlds, didn't you ? Did you share them on this thread ?
I'm on my second Game with A12 and on the Mission Totally Overpowered. The Zirax are attacking the Brewery and the Brewmaster yelled Alarm, but no one in the Station is acting alarmed. I was shooting from the Door at the Zirax Troops when some idiot Civilian casually walked in front of me so i accidently hit him and the reputation with Polaris dropped to unfriendly. If the Station is under heavy Attack then let the People act like that and not stroll around in front of the enemies.
I dislike that part of the mission for one reason, reputation loss. Since they make you fight the Zirax troops at the POI it's all too easy to accidentally kill a civilian or accidentally destroy one of their blocks thanks to the inaccurate and clunky aiming. The nearly invisible targeting reticle we have definitely doesn't help things either. There are still major issues with aiming in this game where often times the game doesn't let you make small aiming adjustments. You try to move your mouse a pixel or two to line up and sometimes it just refuses to recognize small adjustments, then suddenly it jumps much farther than you wanted. This is the most noticeable when using a vessel to fight them (and doesn't matter where the torque sliders are set, it still happens). They definitely need to massively work on these areas of the game. It didn't used to be this bad as well.
I just redid this in my actual game and made a Backup before switching the Lever. When i stand still until the Message "Self Destruct" Shows Up (which you usually do if you play this the first time) i have not enough time to reach the Teleporter. On my second attempt i run immediately to the Teleporter, used it and broke the Questline because i was to fast (needed to manually complete the Teleport Step). So to do this as intended i need to run to the Teleporter before the Message to do this is even showing and wait until the "Teleport out" Queststep is showing, doing something different than this breaks the Questline for me. This needs some rework.
Thank you for the input on what is required to actually get this quest to process correctly. I agree that their is something wrong with this quest implementation if you have to be that specific to avoid breaking anything. Hopefully they will fix this and the other problems with the story quests before their "full release"
The problem is that the dialog blocks any other input, regardless of the situation. It was probably assumed that the block occurs in a predictable designated place, but this is not the case. It doesn't have to be like this, if it's not a focused dialogue with an NPC, you should have a dialogue, read, and at the same time be able to move, shoot, etc. The way it is done now is a text quest built into the game from early games, without variation. If the player always has the same answer, why press the button? If there are two responses, allow them to respond using shift-1 or shift-2, but DO not BLOCK all INPUT.
It would be nice to allow a second type of dialog window that works like you said, so you can still use the full screen one if needed, or the smaller one.
Okay so heres some story feedback... 1) STORYLINE needs to be a LOT LONGER The storyline needs to be a lot longer then it is. What we have currently is a nice START of a storyline, but you could really expand another 20 chapters on it easily. Don't expect people to stay busy with the sandbox-type of gameplay forever, alot of people will likely quit the game after they seen the storyline and right now the storyline can be played through mostly in ONE day, that needs to be a lot longer.. and chasing a lot of people just to find out they are all dead would be very unfulfilling.. just saying, cause it sort-of feels like its heading that way. 2) PDA PDA integration needs to be improved a lot. If you get attacked while your reading and you skip something it should be in the pda log for reading later. PDA quest interface needs a lot more polishing, the 2-word descriptions ain't very descriptive at all and the content table is just a list of the same word over and over and over for all its substeps.. nice for debugging, useless from a players point of view. Take a look how quest interfaces look in other mmo's. They need to give you a clue what the quest is about and where it takes place at the very least, so you know where to continue if you took a break in the middle of it. 3) WAYPOINTs If you die while on a quest or take a break you ain't have a waypoint anymore, the only workaround i know to fix this is to activate another quest and then switch back to the one you were on before to get a waypoint again, this needs to work without a workaround. 4) Make the story span the GALAXY! Theres no point to even have a game with gigantic galaxy if all your quests are on the starter planet or orbit above the starter planet. So it would be nice to make future quest episodes span the galaxy.. and don't just do this the random-generated way.. a random-generated galaxy is once you know what to expect the most boring thing ever.. so you need unique planets/systems across it, at the very least for the storyline.. but generally the more unique stuff the better, gives a reason to explore too. And don't make it all easy.. difficulty shouldn't all be about the amount of npcs or guns you encounter in a space game.. environmental dangers need to play a role too. 5) Story background.. A lot of games enrich their story by putting some optional background around it, like you find pda-logs that you can read optionally or books.. like the lore books in skyrim that you find just about everywhere in the game. Those ain't dialogues, they are items you pick up, carry around and can open and read if you want to give you clues on what happened, what some places are about.. its all about immersion.
After all this time, the surveys still only have ''do you like'' or ''do you like alot'' effectively. What an utterly incompetent survey Eleon. Some of your worst work to date these surveys. We should rename them the Trumpian surveys... Where you only get the options that make one feel good....... These surveys are nothing more than a feel good load of rubbish. They retrieve no useful data whats so ever. prove me wrong. Why be so obviously bias and controlling ? Why assume we are all to stupid to realize how rigged this survey is ? Do you think your own playerbase is incapable of making a fair decision ? Why are you so afraid of FAIR results from a survey ? Empyrions story is incomplete. As an incomplete story it sux. No story game is ever any good with an incomplete story, thats just logical. No talk or mention of any ideas for end game, whats happened to ELeon did you kill of half of your staff or something ? Yea I know this post is pretty brutal and blunt, but you guys need some hard truths, these surveys make you look incompetent. They are an embarrassment. Empyrion promoted itself as a MP game AND a SP game. Its blatantly obvious the SP story is so incomplete, it does not even warrant a feel good survey yet at all anyway. But here, so you feel good. The story is complete and awesome, can I have cookies now ?
Please don't bring the current occupant of the white house into this. This is a joke survey for a game. He's a wannabe dictator who is causing people to needlessly die.
Well I think you missed the point there dude, Empyrions story is, being blunt, very incomplete. EMPYRION. Where your looking for the actual planet Empyrion. The original concept of the game from 2013-2014. Is not even in the game yet ? Empyrion , what actually is it then ? Just a myth ? See that to me feels like a lie. You are searching for Empyrion seems pretty clear. Pretty straight forward concept, unless you want to talk about it being just any solar system you so choose to be your solar system of Empyrion, which I find utterly the most lazy approach to this possible short of abandoning the game entirely. I really hope thats not the road we are on. The reason games like Subnautica got such great sales and ratings, is because of the immersion and complete story..... I mean thats a simple rule set to follow, complete story and immerse as best as possible. Thats not impossible in Empyrion, Unity, Subnautica, Unity, suggestions of data pads that talk, like your GPS, ignored for a click every 2 seconds and read pages of text story system, WHY ? Thats a loss of immersion in any story for any game like this. Read, click, read, click, read, click. Why not take the time to correct this very cumbersome system, that many have complained about. Why not create some form of ipad / data pad. Why not allow scenario builders, access to audio files so they can create their own audio files. All of this is possible with just yamls from my reading up on it. Devs set parameters , we get limited adjustment values via yaml, same as it is now for all other yamls. But it gives the game something astonishingly immersive. You could take it a step further to better Subn if you were really out of the box, like Elon Musk is, by adding video files to those ipads also, so we could record low res short clips to dd to ipad files, to be watched by players. You know, if you want to actually make it even better. The story needs to be fed to the player, with triggers at set times, so it makes sense. All things we have asked for. Features that make, building a scenario, an absolute dream, imagine being able to record sound files or even video maybe, for a data pad for a scenario and create your own story, to be fed to the player like subnautica did, via audio file, not text and click file, and imagine actually having a system, where you have special set of creative assets for just the planet Empyrion itself, so you could literally create your own planet Empyrion for a scenario. Seriously, with the right tools, the devs dont even need to finish the story, I have no doubt with the right tools, a player would do it, and the devs would end up literally with a choice, of which scenario to take modify and use as the vanilla story and scenario. It ALL boils down to the right modding tools, and for years we have been asking devs to get this right and Eleon are so close, push them in this direction for the betterment of the game. Programmable by scenario builder data pads. And assets for the planet Empyrion itself. Two things that could complete the story in total immersion and bring the game up to a standing in steam comparable to Subn.....or better...
