SE2, the real question, why?

[LordZarmack]

People say SE 2 will bring people back and change things but in my opinion It wont because the issue isn't the game, it's the way it's played & the type of gameplay that comes with it.

Starcitizen has mining in it but mining in sc isn't visually boring, it's the lack of crafting in sc that makes space engineers superior (for now)

Combat in space engineers has improved massively over the years but they never added real physics to damage or anything that made you think "Okay, that's f'n cool" ... they have with SE2, but I don't think it will be enough because the core gameplay of SE, isn't combat - Like runescape, minecraft... it really just comes down to us all being on the spectrum and our love on intricate details and crafting/building giant ships or complicated systems, always did. We love this stuff, always will.

I have seen this community make some amazing stuff over the years, some of, if not the best ever made in sci-fi/ space gaming, it easily rivals minecraft.. and that's what SE is.

"Space minecraft" always was, so the question comes where minecraft continued to thrive, why didn't SE? - What's different? - well like MC, we all changed with SE, we all grew up, played different games but I could boot it up, right now at 33, and still en joy it, just like SE, but the difference is MC, like project zomboid, like 7 days to die... you want to get back on it to scratch that "ich" , SE doesn't give you that itch enough. "the incentive is not there"



....to drive back real interest or get new blood they need to change the actual gameplay loop of mine-build-fight/trade, add more, add a real dynamic ai universe to just compete with others that do the same OR focus on the multiplayer aspect hard, go full rust or make official modded, world/sci-fi universes with proper server meshing and player counts over 500/1000 per shard and 5k+ per server... currently it's always all or nothing, or "just fun" for a bit.

There is never any real reason to consistently play the game & the game isn't really unique past the block based building/destruction, our/ it's playerbase are now aged out, again, & people don't have the time to grind away all day.... at best you got a couple hours after work or before and so with no real focus on the journey of the gameplay, whats the point?

Personally I see SE future in going full on MMO, or Focus really hard down on the core aspects of gameplay and go full X3 Reunion style universe, with a decent MP, pvp and co-op aspects.





..again though the problem that arises then is accessibility there- goes out the window if you make the game too complicated, and yet I'm running probably 80- 90- maybe 150 + mods for zomboid and it runs like butter still, add a couple of SE mods + weaponcore and the game runs "just" even on a rig that plays most games on ultra.

It's not a easy fix, we all know and somehow, SE2 has the change the way we play SE.

[Shurenai]

As someone who quite literally just came back to the game after like a 6 year hiatus to wait for it to exit EA, get polished up, etc, Just so I could scratch that itch... I gotta say, No?

I don't think any of the things you suggest would meaningfully improve the game. Like, PVP content is rather inherently at odds with the 'build something really cool and awesome' style of gameplay. A quote I recently heard in a video is rather apt, a bit paraphrased: "It's pretty much impossible to put people who love building sand castles on the same beach as people who derive their joy from kicking down others' sandcastles and have the net result of that decision be a positive one".

SE is a building game- It's a mining game, a crafting game, a trading game. It's got AI enemies that the player can chose to, or to not, engage with. SE is a game about building sand castles. It does not play well with the addition of people who enjoy kicking down sand castles. Many of the game's issues in performance and netcode are a result of trying to balance the game for the people who kick down sand castles. We can't have nice things because the devs have to go out of their way to design the game in a way that it isn't easy to cheat, For example, We can't have calculations done client side and free up a lot of server head room because client sided calculations can be manipulated and abused in a pvp scenario.

Going MMO would be as bad, though for different reasons, as the pvp thing. In order to get an MMO on the level of 5k+ users online a single shard at the same time, You'd have to gut a lot of the things that make SE what it is- Fully customizable/buildable ships, believable physics, you'd have to harshly limit how big something can be built- Far more than current servers already do, You'd have to remove the deformation calculations and mechanics, etc, etc, etc...

As for AI driven dynamics... hard pass. Maybe in 10 years. More depth to the gameplay loop would be nice- But it should be improvements and depth in the mining/crafting/building/trading sectors, and should be done by hand and crafted with care... not thrown at a wall and hope something sticks.


Also... Why do you need a reason to come play this game 'consistently'? It's not a live service game, It's not meant to be. You don't have to play it every day to get login bonuses, Nor should you have to. Play it when it sounds fun to play- If you've had your fun with it and it never sounds good anymore, That's okay. It's okay for you to be done with a game, To have enjoyed it for everything it is worth to you, and to move on.

And maybe you, at some point, like me, Will come back just to scratch that itch. I've sunk over 12 hours in two days, with no signs of stopping. Having a great deal of fun exploring the game again, planning out builds- then realizing I'm woefully short of materials. Accidentally crashed my first ship which took 90% of what I had along with 70% of the crashed ship I had been salvaging with it- I forgot how much extra mass picked up from grinding/mining could affect the inertia and behavior of your ship.. and so much more.

Edit: PS: I am 100% looking forward to SE2. Just the improvements I've seen to building have me salivating, I haven't looked any deeper into it because I want to engage with it as blindly as I can once it releases.

[LordZarmack]

Cheers for taking the time to do a long articulated reply, i'm gna have to nip out to b&q for a minute to get a new broom and some wood but il read it when I get back.

[Dan2D3D]

Hi, about `Why SE2?" = Got the most votes in the survey where 5000 players participated.

That said, I think you have good ideas and I recommend to send all your ideas to the SE Devs by creating Vote Feedback(s), just specify in Title that it is for SE2.


How to participate :

Click "Submit Feedback" on their Support Portal

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/pc
(create "Bug report" or "Request help"(Private) or "Feedback"(Petition) on the Portal)
+
-> Important to know on Portal Feedback (suggestion) :

1 - Feedbacks must have only one idea in for the vote system to work properly, more than one idea to vote on will become unusable.

2 - A good title that shows what is in to vote on will give it a better visibility to have more votes.

And share your Vote Feedback links here on Steam asking the community to vote on your ideas.

___
EDIT
Note

In case some don't know me I must specifiy :

-> I am not a SE Dev but forum Moderator community helper/game tester and I help the SE community since 2013 because it's my Favorite Sandbox game on Steam, and they gave me the [Dev] Tag so I can be admin of the Workshop to help more.

[Atlas]

to add to this, and i agree with some of it, i think the real issue is "people are afraid to lose there builds in PVP". mods help with this issue like the build and repair mod that passively builds the ship or what ever for you witch helps out new PVPs that still have grid loss fear, tho not fully or every time.

morel of the story, its a sandbox game, originally designed in EA as a SP only building game, but Keen gave the fans most of what they wanted over the years and turned it into a multiplayer game, SE2 is a cool idea, tho i get from a game designer stand point Vrage 3 couldn't be just added to this game, they needed to start over, makes sense, my issue with SE is the community itself is quite horrible when your in a PVP faction on a popular server, i have, personally always ran into faction political drama, and left the server because its a game, not real life, i dont need the drama/stress.

[CPT Malcolm (Mal) Reynolds]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

I don't think any of the things you suggest would meaningfully improve the game. Like, PVP content is rather inherently at odds with the 'build something really cool and awesome' style of gameplay. A quote I recently heard in a video is rather apt, a bit paraphrased: "It's pretty much impossible to put people who love building sand castles on the same beach as people who derive their joy from kicking down others' sandcastles and have the net result of that decision be a positive one".

i've been thinking about the solution to this for quite a while and the best option that I have come up with is to have an "arena mode" outside of their build world where players can meet, paste (for free) their ships and battle. The drawback to current PVP is the dozens of hours or days to build and dozens of hours to fix ships makes PVP battles..... distasteful, at least for me. A free experience outside of the regular game could scratch that itch of testing your builds against others without destroying your hard earned ship. There could be events and rewards for winning and sized based battles.

[Ronin Planetary Industries]

Where SE is lacking is in its world creation. Take for instance asteroids. The procedural asteroids are a bit of a laugh. You can have procedural asteroids... or no procedural asteroids. Sure... you can control size and density. But that's about it. Being able to create clusters of procedural asteroids, the percentages of ores within, etc... and have multiple clusters around the map would do so much more for gameplay.

The spawn system is poor. Even with the advent of the Factorum... it's still the same spawn system as 2014. It's clunky as all hell. There's no way to have it respond dynamically to the level of the player, the disposition between the NPC faction and the player, and so forth. The biggest thing are "pirate antennas" that trigger NPC spawns until they are destroyed or unpowered. But even then, it's the same thing.

Planets being limited to 120km is a bit boring. Yes, you can force planets to bigger sizes. But the PNG surface mapping loses resolution over 120km and falling through the surface becomes a much higher likelihood in rougher terrain.

Building scenarios. That's some bamboo nail torture right there. Fighting through all of the SBC/XML formatting and figuring out why something isn't spawning or spawning correctly is enough to make you smash out your own teeth. It's a sandbox game. But with almost NO instructions. It's the most epic of side-quests to figure out how something is supposed to work.

SE2 is an opportunity for Keen to build these things into the game from the ground up. I'm excited for the new unified grid system. But I can wait for it. SE with a new game engine under it and a couple of rudy-poody novelties is going to tank reviews for SE2 immediately.

[Rude]

My main question is what will they do with all the mods ? Because if you get SE2 but doesn't have all the QOL and amzing thing modders did... IF it's only a graphical update and some building tweaks... then i don't see it be amazing.

Also sim speed dropped in the trailer so i'm scared for it....

[Ronin Planetary Industries]

Originally posted by Rude:

My main question is what will they do with all the mods ? Because if you get SE2 but doesn't have all the QOL and amzing thing modders did... IF it's only a graphical update and some building tweaks... then i don't see it be amazing.

Also sim speed dropped in the trailer so i'm scared for it....

Zero mods or scripts will work. It's a whole new engine underneath. There is an interface called the "Mod API" that allows for user created material to work. They will probably create a new interface created from scratch.

[carl.wear]

How do you make a game that caters to everybody? Some people like combat, some like flight, some like building, some like exploration.

Fallout 4. Good for combat, Good for exploration. Bad for settlement building, and vehicles basically non-existent.
7 Days to die. Reasonable for combat, Good for exploration, Fairly good for settlement building, has some vehicles that are locked behind a stupid hard to do tech tree.
Green hell. Reasonable for combat. Linear exploration, reasonable for settlement building and no vehicles.
Space engineers. In single player its not a first person shooter. Its great for exploration, good for settlement building and great for vehicles.

If only we could rip a good feature out of one game and add it into another but unfortunately we can't. There will usually always be something about a game that someone dislikes.

And with some of the things people often complain about in various games, they are probably playing the wrong game.

I play this game for exploration and building/ designing things and the odd puzzle solving from building something to do a task etc. if I want to shoot things, thats what Doom is for.

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by carl.wear:

How do you make a game that caters to everybody? Some people like combat, some like flight, some like building, some like exploration.
-snip-
If only we could rip a good feature out of one game and add it into another but unfortunately we can't. There will usually always be something about a game that someone dislikes.
-snip]

Simple: You can't.

And it's because, of a few factors. But, The two most notable ones are that:
1: the mechanics of a game are sometimes simply at odds with one another. For example, If you have the game mechanic called 'super powers', where your character can swing from the rooftops like spiderman or batman, or fly like superman or wonder woman, Or leap great distances like the hulk, Then adding a mechanic where you drive normal, basic little cars is rather.... Not good. Making the game a superb combat simulator is at odds with Stealth mechanics that prefer avoiding combat- Look at every game where the two exist at the same time, One of the two is always the better option, and the other is always a hot mess. Splintercell, amazing stealth games- Awful combat. Skyrim, Awesome stealth game, Atrocious non-stealth combat. Conversely, Look at a game like 7 Days to Die, It's one of my favorites- But, Stealth is... not very good at all.

Sometimes the mechanics are just at odds with one another and there's not a good way of implementing both in a satisfying way, By that very nature you cannot implement both in a way that satisfies everyone.

and

2: Everyone has a different idea of what a 'good' implementation is. Some people want simulation level driving in GTA 5, Others think it's already too realistic and want it to be more arcadey. By virtue of peoples' taste in games differing, It's literally impossible to make a game that pleases everyone. Even the most highly rated games in history still have their detractors and haters. Portal 2, Stardew Valley, Terraria, RimWorld, Left 4 Dead 2, and more- All amazing games, the highest rated in history, and yet... 97% positive reviews, Not 100%. Even these amazing game cannot please everyone.


You could rip the good features out of Game A and put them into Game B, You could do so with the best mechanic from every one of the best games distilling it all into one super awesome game- You could even make it fully customizable with settings and options for everything and fully moddable... And you still wouldn't have 100% happy customers.

[carl.wear]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Originally posted by carl.wear:

How do you make a game that caters to everybody? Some people like combat, some like flight, some like building, some like exploration.
-snip-
If only we could rip a good feature out of one game and add it into another but unfortunately we can't. There will usually always be something about a game that someone dislikes.
-snip]

Simple: You can't.

I know you can't, that was the point I was trying to make.

There will always be something about a game people dislike and wish they could change.

[FireFox]

Originally posted by Rude:

My main question is what will they do with all the mods ? Because if you get SE2 but doesn't have all the QOL and amzing thing modders did... IF it's only a graphical update and some building tweaks... then i don't see it be amazing.

Also sim speed dropped in the trailer so i'm scared for it....

Same as when any new game comes out, you wait for mods. When Oblivion and Skyrim came out no one complained that Morrowind mods didn't work on them. They made all new mods for them. And that's what will happen with Space Engineers 2, people will make new mods for it.

Also It's not like when Space Engineers 2 comes out you won't have access to Space Engineers 1 and it's mods.

[Kreeg]

The other two titles that wanted SE's players were MMO focused ; They died.
The one that went full into it, macro min counts of players with grind numbers, each faction needing 30-50 players to actually get anything done : Dead.
The one that went into PVP focus and multiplayer-sole focus : also dead.

The one that focused on survival & performance at the cost of physics, subgrids and most of the damage systems -- It survived, but the SE players they wanted returned to SE.

I don't see a practical reason to request SE focus on PVP & mass-scale player-counts, when that explictly hasn't worked out for literal years.
What is the point of making a game identical to the others, let alone remove the elements that make SE stand out in pursuit of elements that are in dead titles or titles absent of SEs special elements?

Do you know how much would have to be sacrificed for 500 player counts? Just for the sake of it saying that many, you wouldn't actually see more than 20 in an area.
Even WOW Servers, you don't have the entire population in one session -- would be the same problem but cost the game greatly for the illusion of having that many.

The other threads : Nearly removing SP, forcing resource economy to be microsopic for PVP purposes... effectively making it a quick-session match identical, or blurring it into a different game.
Which shockingly doesn't get "Why don't you change X to be like Space Engineers" but space engineers gets "Why aren't you RUST" or "Why aren't you X4", "Why aren't you Dual-universe", and one of those titles I mentioned is dead.

[Pembroke]

Beware the "KSP2 Trap"!

One of the major reasons why KSP2 crashed into a wall and burned, was that it lost its vision of what it wanted to be. Even though fans of a game tend to have lot in common, they still have different desires and opinions. In KSP2 the developers listened to the fans "too much". They tried to do everything and be everything. By trying to add all those "cool new things" like colony building, settlement management etc. they lost the original vision of what actually made KSP1 that Awesome Game. They simply forgot that old "sport's team manager's rule": If Your Team Keeps Winning, Do Not Change It!

Space Engineers 2. It could be awesome. We all love the game. Just do not make the same mistake that KSP2 did! Do NOT lose the vision of what a Space Engineers game is meant to be.

It is already a winning concept. We have over a decade of fans and gamers playing it and despite the various hick-ups and our constant complaining, let's be honest: we love it. Otherwise we would not have continued to play it this long.

The basic game concept is good. Don't change it. Simply make Space Engineers 2 basically the same as Space Engineers 1 but better. Take all what you learned in that 10+ years of developing SE1, and all those hindsight revelations of "we should have done this part differently", and put them to good use in developing SE2. Now you know how it should have been done. Now simply do it.

And yes, you can listen to fans. They do have cool ideas and some are even good. Just use a heavy-axe to cut the proposals and only pick-up those that actually fit the vision of what the game should be. Do not even try to add them all.

[carl.wear]

Originally posted by Pembroke:

Beware the "KSP2 Trap"!

Whats KSP?