I think that the majority of people playing this game would agree with most of what you have said. Personally I'm not a fan of an Empyrion 2. I play/watch Minecraft & 7D2D quite a bit. They did not do a version 2 of their game, they saw that the current setup of their game was limiting it, so they changed the original game. Also they are more in touch with their community. They let you know what they are working on and let you vote on future changes. I haven't played Empyrion for a bit now, I went back to playing Minecraft.
A sequel? I hope not in the medium term, the current game has a lot of potential to get better with its current engine. Only if Eleon shows that the company is able to finish a game decently any sequel will also have a success, otherwise NOT, a major reason to stick with this game for a good time onwards, polish it, add features and correct the bugs as good as possible. Only then the game will be a good foundation for a sequel, and considering these aspects we are currently quite far away from such a sequel date. So, for me the right answer was not proposed in the voting questions.
I agree with @japp_02 The current game is a great foundation, but I think it requires a final push prior to think in the next installment. Even just as the game is now I probably would to buy a sequel, but if there are some enhancement / refinement to this that we have now it would be a definitive reason making me jump in the bandwagon of a completely new "EGS 2". - Clearly the AI should be way better. - Vehicles dynamics should be enhanced, including collision detection. - Water / underwater locations are a lost opportunity in the current game. - Water physicalization is a must in a next installment. - Avatar movements (crouch, cough... cough...) are not at the level where they should for the FPS/TPV side of the game. - Dialog system should be way better, and do not interrupt the action on screen. - Construction assist should be there (blocks identification / suggestion for new matching adjacent blocks). More easy to use selection, copy / paste tools. - Walking on vehicles in movement... - More robust multiplayer and net code ... and I am sure I forget much more... I am not stating that all this should be changed in the current game, I know that this is like asking for the moon now; but should be in a new version definitely, this is, if Eleon someday makes a new "EGS 2".
Or worse, some additions have clearly done more harm than good, I think the game needs a lot of polishing and bug fixing and optimisations but it doesn't mean they can't work on a new project in the same time.
It does. Eleon is a comparatively small team and any time spent on another project takes time from EGS away. We can only guess but this game is somewhere between 70 to 80% finished and you know the old saying, it takes 90% of the time to do the last 10% of the work.
If they started working on a second Empyrion before even finishing the first then it would be almost certain death for their company. Likewise, if they called this game complete as it is right now then most of their player base would leave never to return for the second game. They would completely alienate themselves if they ended things in the sorry state of the current game. No, they need at least a couple more years working on this game before even remotely considering a new game.
A sequel of a techdemo? Lul. Thx for sharing DU, game looks awesome. Its in Verion 0.24, i think this is where Empyrion is actually too. There is nothing from the devs. What comes next? What are you working on? What will never be fixed? Everything in Empyrion is a placeholder -techtree is a placeholder -loot is a placeholder -controls are just simple movement without real dynamics -gunpplay feel pre alpha -jump and run feels pre alpha -no content but ressource gathering -gunplay on ships is horrible simple -enemy models are hopefully placeholders -animations seem missing at all -missions and story are not fluid and enjoyable Worst thing is the game is released so it cant hide behind the alpha tag anymore and deserve bad rating sadly. The communication by the devs is on minimum. So much things need rework. They need to drop a gigantic patchbomb to rescue this. Ingame it feels like a very good techdemo with endless possibillitys, not like a game.
You mean the players who got hundreds if not thousands of hours of enjoyement out of this game ? Some people would be happy with the alpha 6 version if it was the final version of the game. Humans can multitask you know. Depending on what they're working on in each projects, different devs work on differents parts of each game, for example if an update of EGS is all about bug fixing then only programmers would need to work on it which means artists can work on assets for the other game and vice versa if the update is about adding or replacing assets in EGS.
I'm definetely not one of the players who would have enjoyed being stuck at Alpha 6. And the 1400 hours are split between hundreds of hours of ship building just to watch them getting obsolete, several hundreds of hours having to restart because progress canceled all the time and now maybe 100 hours of diving deeper into scenario stuff only to realize how much WIP everything really is. The 200 hours or so of enjoyment i got was legitimately raviens work with some seasoning from vermillion. Those are the artists who scratch my exploration itch.
Well that's still playing the game and therefore enjoying it. Which proves my point, you're basically asking for more updates that will break the few things that are working fine right now. If we've learned something from EGS it's that more updtaes does not always mean improvement, there's only so much features and systems you can cram into a piece of software until it start falling appart. Look I get what you're saying, trust me I do, we all want more and better from any game or from any product for that matter but it comes a time when you have to realise a game has run its course and start thinking about the next project.
It's more about faith. If the developers abandon the current project and start a new one, people won't have faith to give them money.
Well, the devs stated that they aren't after the money and tbf they'd have gone bankrupt anyway. My impression is that this is more of a learning by doing project, I can of course be wrong though. We seem to have very different views on what enjoyment means.
It doesn't matter one bit how many hours some players do or do not have in this game. It doesn't matter how much enjoyment players have gotten over the years.... If the devs left THIS game in it's current state, then players would no longer have faith in them to do the right thing in "EGS 2", or whatever it would or would not be called. It's all about the faith they would be ruining for the future. If they can't be trusted to do the right thing in their first game, then they would never be trusted again. On the multitasking point you brought up, That has been covered MANY times already in this thread. They are simply too small of a team to multitask on 2 games at once. The devs have already stated that they don't have the manpower for it..... Same reason on why they won't even consider a port of EGS until the game is 100% complete, they don't have the manpower to do both at once (plus it would be pointless until the game is finished). Could they do both at once? Sure, they could, at the cost of a snails pace development on both..... Once again, it would be the end of them. The devs have stated MANY times now that they aren't abandoning this game. They still have more big plans in store for EGS. Sorry, but a sequel would not be a good thing at all until they are done with the first, as many people have already stated.
Right first thing, who said anything about abandonning EGS, it's a product of their compagny that generates and will generate for many years to come the cash flow they need to keep the campagny going, so abandonning it would mean shooting themselves in the foot. Now about spending hundreds of hours in a game you do not enjoy, like really you expect me to believe that ? If you're playing it (whether it's just building or staring at the main menu) then there's is something compelling in it that makes you come back to it, no one fires up a game they dislike and play for hours on end, games are made for entertainement so if you're playing it for an extended period of time then you're entertained which means you're enjoying said game, no other logical explanation. So it all comes comes down to this, do you feel like you got your money's worth out of this game ? apart from the people who bounced off after a few hours of playtime and extreme cases of veteran players who'd still wish they could get their money back after playing the heck out of the game, I think (even tho I hate speaking in behalf of other people) most would say they've got their money's worth out of it, tenfolds.
@Sofianinho , practically everything you wrote here has been already mentioned and covered in this thread, and also in the 'Leaving Early Access" aftermath, where some players made the same suggestion in general threads. Racking up thousands of hours "in Empyrion" does not mean all this time was spent "playing", and even if players enjoy building ships and stuff they still may feel they never got to really "use" all their builds in a definitive "gaming" context, because the game is not "finished". Now what should they do while waiting for the game to be finished ? Put the game away and do something else ? What if instead they just noodle around with it, for thousands of hours ? Does this remove their right to expect Empyrion to be finished ? I think most players feel that whatever the game may have cost them, they bought it expecting it to be finished at some point in the future, and that is all we have to know to address the current topic : should Eleon move on to split its forces to work on another game, while the first one is not even completed ? And that was answered a few times now, even by the developers : they will not do that. As I wrote above, you can try other arguments but they have all been used a few times now. Stop kicking that dead horse. .
Lol, how many people do you think bought this game? Just going by concurrent players i guess maybe 25000. We could have a number if we'd find the newest person who uploaded something to tje workshop as EGS assigns individual IDs for creators. The askimg price of 10 euro minus 30% steam cut minus sales tax and you land somewhere at 100k to 150k in revenue in the last 4 years for up to 10 staff members. They're not making money and if they would they'd be bankrupt. When i'm at home i can make an actual calculation out of it. Yeah people tend to spend time on things they do not enjoy all that much. Work. Time with X relative. For me its being trapped on a rock with a purely self destructing species i do not understand in the slightest. I am gracefully embracing every second that distracts me from them, enjoyable or not. I wouldn't want to have my money back, never said this. Still i'd like my faith not being disappointed again.
I'm inclined to agree. To be honest, for the past week or so, I've abandoned EGS to try something else (Surviving Mars) looking for something different and some ideas regarding this game. This is the longest time I've been away since I started. I don't enjoy the gameplay as much as when I began, so I spend my time mostly building with an occasional sortie to blow something up even if it's something I spawned for target practice. Even building has become a bit exasperating due to the limitations of the available blocks and devices. When I was younger I would have enjoyed the ability to enter the files and tweak away. Now, however, I find my comprehension of such matters has diminished. I would prefer to have readily selectable options in a menu, please. As previously stated, you can't have a sequel to an unfinished project, especially one that would be incompatible with the original. The OP had some very desirable elements, particularly the dynamic cockpit LCDs and the more flexible building block system. If it wasn't MMO, I might consider this DU as an option. (not happening!) What I found engaging in Surviving Mars was the use of robot drones to do most everything. It reminded me of numerous suggestion threads I've read or participated . Buildings and equipment are spawned using available resources. Drones gather together and gradually assemble it from the ground up. They also maintain the equipment and themselves. It's entertaining just watching them. Eventually, Colonists are added. They are also entertaining but a bit of a bother. They have skills, but they also have personal "baggage". Some are genius, or lazy, or alcoholic gamblers, or thieves & saboteurs. A little more than I bargained for, which is why I stick to SP here. Like EGS, there is farming. My biggest annoyance is when I'm told "Crop Failure", but not told why or how to fix it. Crops are tended by drones and colonists. But I digress. My point here is I would like to see this in EGS (except for the drunks and saboteurs). A few of my friends (I hope I can call them such) have tried to help me understand and even work some of the things they have done to rectify some of the shortcomings of EGS. I thank them and you. If I can focus long enough, perhaps I can accomplish one. Ultimately, the Devs are doing a great job (except for cross-hairs). I came back to EGS yesterday having gotten some inspiration. At the same time I got the exasperation that I mentioned above. I can only hope there is more to come, both in building and gameplay. I'm prepared to stick with it (with the occasional side trip to Mars).
Just check Steam Spy. I checked in 2018 and it showed +/- 350 000 owners. Checked again few months ago and this time it's "between 500 000 and 1 million" owners. Take the lowest figure, sell all units at 50% price (10$) and you have a much closer estimate than your 25 000, and you can safely speculate that they made more money than this very conservative estimate of 500K games at 50%. This information is not hard to find at all. You now have better grounds to make a statement. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- @Track Driver : be patient, we might still see some changes that will open big doors at some point. It doesn't need to be much, but sometimes little details make the whole machine squeak and rattle. The "scenario" interface, for one, can be used differently than what we're used to see. I don't really like text-based missions and story, I think this can be solved in a few ways to make missions feel very different. The sound still has to be fixed in some way, to better reflect distances and position of enemies, for example. I'm all for small changes that can have big impacts when used wisely, like the apparently innocent decals feature, that can completely transform parts of the game but that were only seen at first like simple "text and image panels". And with models, same thing. Only missing piece here is the ability to animate, even if just a little bit. I'm not thinking elevators or pistons here, though they're the obvious candidates for most players who don't like modding. But from a design standpoint, "objects that can move" is quite a deal. And of course, any amount of work one will want to invest is subject to caution, because if changes come in that make all work obsolete than it's a major drawback. .
@Track Driver : be patient, we might still see some changes that will open big doors at some point. It doesn't need to be much, but sometimes little details make the whole machine squeak and rattle. The "scenario" interface, for one, can be used differently than what we're used to see. I don't really like text-based missions and story, I think this can be solved in a few ways to make missions feel very different. The sound still has to be fixed in some way, to better reflect distances and position of enemies, for example. I'm all for small changes that can have big impacts when used wisely, like the apparently innocent decals feature, that can completely transform parts of the game but that were only seen at first like simple "text and image panels". And with models, same thing. Only missing piece here is the ability to animate, even if just a little bit. I'm not thinking elevators or pistons here, though they're the obvious candidates for most players who don't like modding. But from a design standpoint, "objects that can move" is quite a deal. And of course, any amount of work one will want to invest is subject to caution, because if changes come in that make all work obsolete than it's a major drawback. .[/QUOTE] Not to be too dramatic, I don't have all that much time left. I can't deal with the text! I had to give up on RG 'cause the the text went by so quickly. It would be nice if text remained until you hit 'ESC' or some other key. Animation is one of the things I love about Surviving Mars. It's a bit like watching an ant farm only better. Processors have moving parts, exhaust fumes, and visually add raw materials and expel finished product. Downright hypnotic! Currently, I cannot access any scenarios, and some of my "Creative" and "Freedom" games have turned into "Survival" mode! Most annoying.
