It's not us getting older this time, as it could have been for our parents, facts are clear, quality of products, quality of life, social interactions, romantic interactions, common sense presence, manners, nature and so on and so on...were way better before. Another plus of being older is that when we were teenagers, games like Empyrion did not exist, I would have wasted my entire youth playing it) As for the bitterness, give yourself a break, it's hard to be "politically correct" in nowadays Bizzarroworld;-)
We did have Carrier Command and Elite though. Both subtracted many, many hours of my early life. They were the Empyrions of the 80s.
Wonderful times man, really wonderful... And purchased games were yours... for ever. Not this, not owned, license nonsense...that only favors one side. Great times, ooooops... I think that my 53s are affecting me again.
This is also now 'fully released' too as far as anyone looking at the game on steam is concerned, unless they have got around to making a point of stating otherwise. It will only be after playing for a while that people will start to realize this is really a hacked together alpha prototype. I also get the distinct impression they have very much gone into release maintenance mode. 1.3 experimental? OK so there is some embryonic feature experiment in there but TBH it looks more like a fix patch (of not particularly in-yr-face issues that I guess were easy to resolve). Maybe you as a scenario designer feel there was merit in the patch, but as a player I do not (actually I find it to be a detrimental patch). Re SE, I think you missed the bit about not starting to do DLC until after most of the technical talent had left / been moved onto other stuff and thus leaving cosmetic DLCs as mostly the only thing left within the remaining team competence Eleon seem from the outside to already to be there to me (in terms of lacking adequate technical gurus) and maybe mostly always were which to would explain some of the many issues in what should be straight forward to implement features and avoiding anything even remotely technically challenging/requiring thought to implement. There was a comment from one of them around the out of the blue alpha->release transition about people move on that made me wonder if their tech guru had left leaving alpha->release transition as about the only practical option for them. For many people, I guess it is only you and vermillion that keep this playable (at least for those who agree with your choices.) - all credit and respect to you both for that
Maybe I'm alone in this but the thing I would like to see most is more variety in the wild life on the various planet types. Large lizards, snakes and spiders on desert planets. Dire wolf, bears, mammoth like creatures on snow and Ice planets for example as well as the more alien looking creatures.
I already paid for the game. I would like the rest of it. The fact you used Space Engineers as an example speaks volumnes...that company and its cash grab making people buy a game then charge them more, for pieces of what should have been in it and that game, with the DLC costs far more than this one and still has far less actual game. Lets not turn this game into another cash grab suckering money out of players shall we? You want DLC, go buy a game that has it and throw your money away. Or, write out a check and make it out to Eleon and send it to them as a donation.
I agree and think a DLC is perfectly appropriate if adding new content such as blocks and devices. I personally like to get new content and will absolutely be ok with paying. I play a lot of SE and the amount of complaining that goes on regarding a 3 dollar DLC is ridiculous. I buy every one of them without issue or second thought.
Block availability governed by purchased DLC would be a nightmare to balance in Empyrion. Content would have to balanced simultaneously against players both with all and zero downloaded content. Even if you could do this (probably by making them all reskin options), it would still fracture the blueprint sharing that is the bread and butter of the Empyrion community. SE gets away with block DLCs first because SE has no core gameplay loop to interfere with. Add a new box of Legos or a whole bucket, they all wind up in the same pile on the play room carpet. The second reason they don't cause SE a lot of problems (especially for blueprint sharing) is because the freely available community modded blocks are all better anyway.
