Interesting. This is about what I expected. Did not expect the "world design" to come in at a firm 4th though. What does world design mean to everyone? Also, @XCaliber ripples?
Multiplayer Content wasn't even a concern? I mean some people do dedicated servers so that friends can play, and there's nothing really more than singleplayer content. Maybe make singleplayer content playable without breaking on multiplayer? Was just a suggestion.
The game needs a global goal. It would be nice to choose a faction and help it in every possible way. For example: I destroy the POI of the zirax and the colonists' ship lands on this place. I supply the new colony with resources and it begins to grow, turning into a large city with NPCs and merchants. The Zirax are trying to recapture the territory, they are sending troops, and I am helping to defend the colony. In short, a global confrontation is needed. It would also be interesting if my base will be attacked not in the form of drones, but a full-fledged landing with the help of SV and HV.
I'm fairly certain you can tell from my join date that I have a NDA directly from Eric from the "technical demo" days. This game has come further than any game I've ever played to include Space Engineers and No Man's Sky (though NMS has come real close) and don't get me wrong, the first technical demo Eric sent around to some of us was actually quite fleshed out. But what really appealed to me was the multiplayer (or the early promise of it). That is, a group of friends can get into their ship and fly to another world that would feel alien to claw our way to survival to establish a foothold there with nothing more than a few resources and a SV. At one point this was realized - I remember having my early SV on the planet surface surrounded by lakes of lava and like out of a nightmare these spider monsters coming out and attacking us at night. This gave me a sense of freedom. That warrants some explanation: I felt like (if I wanted) I could get the whole 7 days to die experience on the ground, and at the flip of a switch, by virtue of getting into my ship and taking off, I could get that space engineers experience combining the 2 best games I've played into one fantastic game. But then as a bonus PVP came out with the advent of playfield servers. Sure, it was just a few planets but those planets had the resources that everyone wanted for really awesome ships. Just on my server alone where we had 9 player factions and over 40 concurrent players, there was a LOT of action to be had - by far the most fun I have ever had in a multiplayer game. I remember the days on my own server a new faction came in and start charging rent for mining rights in a PVP system. A week later another faction that had been native to the server went in and wiped them out to liberate the mining operations of that very desired system. My point here is, this kind of emergent gameplay no longer exists. But since then, things seem to have gone down-hill - not to the point of it not being fun or warranting a negative review, but concerning. That concern really being what seems to be the gutting of PVP and multiplayer. Now, you can barely find a PVP system anywhere and if you do find it, it's pretty much empty making that system just a small arena - there is no more room for emergent gameplay because of this - not the kind of emergent gameplay I used to see on my server 1-2 years ago. The multiplayer netcode seems to have been almost abandoned - rubber banding, no ship-world simulation as of yet, etc. I realize these are big feats but what really concerns me is that they were not even an option in the survey and nothing on the survey to bring back pvp-locked resources. Additionally, there seems to be almost no benefit to a multiplayer faction building one giant flag ship any more. In fact with block limitations, cpu limitations, and class limitations, it's far more saine for a 50 player faction to create 50 class 10 ships rather than 1 class 50 (which is unfortunately far higher cost on server resources). It's far more convenient for every member to have their own CV's or SV's which if I had to put my finger on what is hurting multiplayer team efforts - it's exactly this. In my humble opinion, the direction of multiplayer and PVP is a concerting topic as of late and I think it needs to be discussed and at the very least merits a place on a survey. PS What ever happened to the giant golems raiding our bases?
Those are entirely up to individual servers to decide. There is still PvP on some servers, but again, most servers are mostly PvE because most players want a PvE experience. There is nothing stopping a server from running the built in Invader versus Defender scenario or creating their own PvP focused one. The developers can't force PvP on everyone (and it would be a disaster if they tried). The lag and desyncs, yes those are issues and could be improved. However, that's why PvP servers should enforce a low size class limit.
The majority of players who answered want Single Player Content - fair. I hope the developers realize there are literally thousands of PvP and Multiplayer players who quit playing because of the lack of MP content/polish and the general instability that combat in Empyrion seems to bring. TLDR: There's a huge base of players who would come back and engage again if Eleon started giving MP/PvP more love.
That's not the same and not even close to the PVP experience the game used to be. In case you don't remember or weren't playing at the time, the easy, low-tier resources were all in PVE systems. A little over half of the systems were PVE, and a third or more were PVP. Those PVP systems had the good stuff. You never had to go to a PVP system to simply enjoy a standard server, but if you wanted the best of the best - you had to PVP for it or be prepared to pay for it. This gave everyone even PVE'ers incentive to PVP - a sense of risk vs reward and the reward was worth it - otherwise there is zero reason to ever PVP even from a PVPer's viewpoint. Just to point out a truth: When they gave the option about 3 months (or so, it's been a while) later to entirely disable PVP on the servers, the servers that did disable PVP had near zero populations. It was obviously nearly 100% of the community enjoyed this system even the PVE'ers because (as one told me), "The economy on servers like yours are thriving and way more dynamic than on [snip]'s carebear server". I will reiterate, it was a PVE'er (who hated PVP) who said that. It's very self explanatory that the trade of goods between PVE and PVP systems were lucrative for BOTH PVEers and PVPers. I don't know of a single PVP game where there is a massive risk of loss with no reward that has a thriving PVP community - Empyrion used to have this community, but no more because PVP currently has near to no reward but still maintains the massive risk of losing your ship. Even EVE Online gives you a massive reward for elevating your risk (either by better asteroids, better ratting, or moon mining). As it stands right now you have 3 choices - no PVP at all, PVP everywhere (even on starting planets which devolves into baby seal clubbing), or you have the PVP in just small areas like arenas that no one has any incentive to visit and if they do praytell, they ensure their ship is cheap and empty giving their opponent near to no reward at all. Let's just speak from a platform of honesty here, this is pretty much the middle finger to the PVP community - there, I said it. People aren't PVPing because they have no incentive to do so and this game has bled off it's otherwise thriving PVP community in this anti-PVP shift it's gone though. And I believe (and is a matter of my opinion) that this has led to another symptom of pushing the multiplayer issues of the game aside and giving them less of a priority and not even a footnote on the survey. I'm sorry if I sound confrontational but I have a lot to say on this matter and I'm more than willing to die on this hill. Just to point out the obvious: This game saw steady growth until it started nerfing the PVP. In fact even with 100's of servers, MANY of them were at their player caps. Unlike every other steam game out there, it was gaining concurrent players without even dropping a patch or running a sale. Now you can only find a handful of servers with any decent populations and to state it one more time, this began with the nerfing of PVP - this was my observation but if anyone has any other explanation to what happened, I'm more than open to alternative views here. But again, I'm also open to sending someone to 12 other discord servers of rather LARGE PVP communities that called my server their home who ALL 12 dropped Empyrion as their primary game right after the nerfs started coming in targeting PVP (just to ball park a number, I think between the 12 of them it was some 9,000 players - yeah, if there was a war going on, they would quickly cap out my own server and I would have to take the server down to raise the cap and the CPU count for the VM just so the war could take place). I really miss the days that a server admin had to take down their server just to give their VM more resources so 2 factions could have their war over dwindling resources in the game.
This was a surprise for me too. I definitely wasn't expecting them to be released, especially when we were told with the survey before this one that those results would be shared and yet they never were...
I'm not sure what you don't understand. This is entirely up to server owners. They control which areas are pvp, where resources are, etc. If servers are not being set up for pvp, that is a choice the player base is making. Has nothing to do with the developers.
Good question. I imagine the Devs meant the game world design. The new water, biomes, etc. I wish it meant the world design that players do. I very much look forward to a big "Spring Cleaning" update that would fix inconsistent LODs and render distances, texture anomalies, and other OCD type stuff. I only give this comment to the two games I feel are the GOAT for building and survival. Other developers have building plugins that seem like an afterthought. They get testy when I nit-pick their building system, or just ignore the comments. Eleon does this awesome survey and actually modifies their plans to satisfy a very diverse playerbase. That's why EGS is the Best Game Ever! Cheers!
Thanks for sharing the results. Features importance order corresponds to my deep expectations : game mechanics >> single player content (to me these two are the same thing, I would even put activities" inside them) >> AI >> world design I'm ready to support Eleon through buying any DLC, or even an Empyrion 2.
Having a local chat is probably still the biggest hud/qol bit we have to have. There is much in empryion for all types of players, but only have global to express in (as a community) is just terrible. In the day and age we are in, its a tough pill to swallow. I know people can use Alliance and Faction chat, but generally speaking players should have more ways to community to enhance their experience. There is much frustration with the database. As an admin to a community and servers that are and remain dedicated to empyrion this just has to be addressed. As a scenario designer, an an indie game designer, I feel much we have in lag is due to the database solution chosen. Soon as I say this, people like to jump on the server. We at SDG run custom servers that are WELL past any requirement and are beyond what you can get from a hosting package.
First off, I would like to say that I have really enjoyed this game and all the effort both the devs and the community has put into it. I'm looking at you ravien_ff. Unfortunately I missed the survey so I thought I'd stop by here to throw in my two cents to the mix. The game has plenty of content as it stands, lots of POIs and more every day from the community. A remixed and improved campaign along with enhanced combat mechanics brought by amazing community members as well. What the game needs most, above all, is bugfixes and polish. The game isn't in alpha anymore and at times it still really feels like it should be, how easy it is to bug out the vanilla campaign, the way POI ships can blow up immediately without even the 5 minute timer. The average user should not be expected to solve these issues with console commands and google searches. I do realize the sad reality that selling the game is more important than fixing the experience for those who have already bought it, but there comes a point where the people who have bought it begin to tell others its not worth buying, and those voices are louder than any fancy new graphics. What interests me most about Empyrion versus its competitors is the story and expansive galaxy to explore. It surely could benefit from new quests taking you to interesting places to explore. But the community is already on this tenfold (and don't get me wrong I'm sure they will make fabulous use of the new graphics and deco in ways I cant yet imagine). What the game needs most is the bugfixes and smoothing to support the efforts from amazing community members like ravien_ff and Vermillion. They have created a game experience far more compelling and interesting than exists in vanilla, and new mechanics/content will delay and slow their efforts to keep this experience updated. That isn't to say polish is only minor work either. The game desperately needs in flight collision systems (walking on a moving ship, boarding an enemy ship, maybe even actual collisions with damage, if I'm allowed to reach for the stars), which I can only imagine how hellish it will be to implement. But minor tweaks to the base game's combat statistics could also be made, slowing the rate of fire of enemies/sentry turrets in personnel combat (Less instant death moments), global NPC damage modifiers based on difficulty (tried and true method of making combat enjoyable for all skill levels). Doing something about suit durability in actual combat (imo have armor reduce the durability damage). The list goes on with hundreds of small complaints that together become absolutely agonizing in gameplay. (I can go on tho, Playfield based local chat would be amazing as mentioned above, a better chat HUD for multiplayer that doesn't feel like an afterthought, the 5 minute timer bugging (yeah yeah I put it twice. Its annoying!). Control over the duration of the '5 minute timer', (At least a slider in difficulty, something both SP users and Server Admins can control) And the ability to override the timer by placing your own core. If illegal blocks are an issue perhaps run a quick script to destroy all illegal blocks (except looty ones?) when a core is placed into a destroyed POI ship. Ship to ship combat is by far the most blood pumping amazing part of this game and its been turned from insane risk insane reward to insane risk no reward.) Again, bugfixes and polish, that's what I'm hoping for in future updates, thank you for your time and consideration!
I'm not sure what part of this you're not understanding. You can't achieve this without heavily modding the world files and being that the galaxy seems to be entirely procedurally generated that's a LOT of modding a server owner has to do to keep the spawns consistent. I'm sorry but telling someone to spend literal days (or even months) editing their world just to meet the PVP environments from a couple of years ago is yet another middle finger - thanks for that.
It's actually what many servers already do. Running a server community is a lot of work. Many have spent years on the content for their servers. I know because I've worked with some of them. And for those who do not wish to spend the time to make a unique experience for their players there is the built in Invader versus Defender scenario available for anyone to run with no setup. It's meant for a pvpve experience. Again, this is all up to the player base. If most people gravitate to pve focused servers, that means most people prefer pve focused servers. Forcing pvp on them isn't going to get them to like pvp because that's not why they play empyrion.
The FACT that servers are mostly PVE is because people DONT want to do PVP.. in fact, PVP in this game is largely pointless and has been for several years. Its one thing shooting at people with guns or in SV's (without turrets), where some kind of skill etc is required, rather than who has the most blocks, the most turrets, and can perform spirals better than the other guy. There is not a "huge player base that will come back if pvp is given some love", because the "huge player base" is a PVE player base. I've been playing since 2016 or so.. and I am STILL experiencing the same bugs, the same graphics, the same glitches, the same annoying lags and things that cause you to die for no reason. Lesson 1. Making it easier to die, or more importantly, so you can not play without dying, is not compelling. Its annoying as hell. It is a SURVIVAL game, its not COD. You should be able to survive... it should be a challenge but it shouldnt be near impossible. Lesson 2. Implimenting CPU and stuff to fix issues with lag, rather than fixing what is actually causing the lag.. is daft. Its relatively hard to find an active server with MASS/CPU on. Lesson 3. If players are still experiencing the same bugs after 5 or 6 years, which we are. The same frustrations and annoyances, then people will leave. They can only put up with it so long. My self and most of the other people who I have talked to who run servers get tired of the never ending issues.. I've run a server or been an admin for 4 years, and it's made me stop playing... Just fix the stuff that needs fixing first, then work on the other stuff, like content. Once you get to level 25, have a CV, the games over. You can only do it so many times. Getting there through bugs, and glitches and pointless deaths and frustrations makes it worse. Yes, there's reformed eden, which is an impressive piece of work, but its got WAY too much stuff, and i'm not randomly flying around for hours on end to try and find some random stuff. Anyway, rant over.
So let me get this straight - to set up the old way of PVPing, you have to sit down and work on the world files for 6-8 months at the time and before you finish the game patches and you start all over again. And YOU think this is acceptable? Thank you for illustrating everything that is wrong with this game.
To set it up like the old way of PvPing would take probably a day. You'd just need to create a custom sectors file with a single solar system, lay out the planets and moons the way that you want, and change the pvp chance on the playfields so for example planets with high end resources will be pvp. PvE focused servers can do it. Why can't PvP ones? *edit* or just use Invader vs Defender which is built in and comes with the game.
There's already PVP zones and stuff.. but as I have pointed out, despite what people say, most people dont want to play PVP.. the number of actual PVP players on any server I have played on is tiny. Servers with an average of 30-40 online at any one time have like 3 people who want to PVP.. a very vocal 3 people.. but only 3. This whole discussion is waste of time.. its not a PVP game, it might have originally been that, but it isnt any more, and hasnt been for years.
