The thrill of playing Astroneer has been lost by many

[Jeff]

Back when 1.0 was released, the populations on Astroneer had swelled to huge numbers. However a couple years later the game development has progressed slowly. Coming up with a new visor or other cosmetic addition is not going to entice veteran players to stay. So the populations are mostly at an age of 8 to 15. I know this due to the large number of times I played in multiplayer with a new "unknown friend" only to learn who I was playing with. Then I quickly left. There is an incredible difference between a veteran's gaming ability to a child's. They are happy mining by going down a "goat path", filling up their pack and walking back up. They will mine this way for weeks in a single game. That is fine for the first hour of the game, but by then I have progressed much further.

The game actually ends for me a couple days later when i have filled large resource canisters for each resources on every planet/moon. Like a large canister filled with nanocarbon alloy made through automation. Due to System Era not giving us a higher purpose such as building a "mothership" to go to far off galaxies, this game and my interest ends. This is because I have very quickly gathered more resources then we could possibly ever use due to my industrialized mining ability. Like personally gathering over 350 laterite in less than 25 minutes. Or gathering up over 90% of all resources on Desolo in less than 45 minutes. The game is very limited in my book.

I've been playing computer games since they were invented back in the mid 70's. The first personal computer that I purchased (not a hand-me-down) was a Color Computer 2 from Radio Shack in 1982 (16k of memory and ran at a blazing 1.2 MHz for $239). I was 27 back then so today I've reached 66 and retired a few months ago. My expectations of a game are very high. Much more than an 8 year old. I've played Astroneer for over 2,000 hours and because of my experience I've pushed the gameplay to new heights.

I was lucky enough to find a couple new friends on Astroneer that were my age. Because of this the three of us spent an enormous time in-game. Usually 10-14 hours per day. We took the game about as far as you could stretch it until it broke. The shortcoming of the game made us move on to other SCI-FI games like No Mans Sky (NMS) and Space Engineers (SE). The other two still play SE (one has over 2,000 hours in SE and the other well over 3,000 hours), but I have moved on to higher interests. NMS was also very limited. After only three days I had the best tools, armor and ships in the game. Since the game didn't progress any further, my interest was gone.

This has happened to Astroneer. It should have been 4.0 by now.

[JohnnyZerg]

+1

[Xilo The Odd]

yeah, once you've gotten every achievement, blown up a planet, launched a rover into space, there is only so much you can do to challenge yourself anymore. the events are alright but they are just a grind if anything.

[Jeff]

Want a thrill in Astroneer? In creative mode , try putting two hydrazine thrusters on the back of a large rover with the drill and paver on the front. Then go straight down (vertical) towards the core and press the "V" key. Did this back when Creative first came out and later brought friends along for this very fast ride.

[Xilo The Odd]

Originally posted by Jeff:

Want a thrill in Astroneer? In creative mode , try putting two hydrazine thrusters on the back of a large rover with the drill and paver on the front. Then go straight down (vertical) towards the core and press the "V" key. Did this back when Creative first came out and later brought friends along for this very fast ride.

lol did something like that, had a large rover rigged to blow itself up. covered it with dynamite and hydrazine, had a friend ride it and keep the drill active for the whole ride off the ramp, he then plunged into the ground and kept goin, and when the hydrazine medium tank went empty, the sensor triggered a single dynamite on the rig.

sadly, as host it was still too much for his older PC and it simply killed the game... kinda sad because he was fairly near the core so we would seen just how big a space it'd have cleared.

[BlackWater]

Fellow Gameing since the days of D.O.S. player here, ive just started playing this in earnest, really like how you can swap wind turbines and such from power a base to throwing them on a rover.

[Xilo The Odd]

Originally posted by BlackWater:

Fellow Gameing since the days of D.O.S. player here, ive just started playing this in earnest, really like how you can swap wind turbines and such from power a base to throwing them on a rover.

dont worry, it'll wear off :)

in all honesty game wise this still isnt a bad game, its a lil on the casual side but thats not a bad thing. but it does hit a hard stopping point after a time when your only left with playing with the game physics and calculations for any kind of entertainment.

[Jeff]

As far as the "most" bizarre thing we ever did was to split Desolo into two halves, We did this in adventure mode by stretching tethers between the two poles of the moon twice (two rings about 15 feet from each other (after we started making a road below the surface, the tethers fell into the split)). By using the poles we could better align the tether rings also by using the compass. We used this as a road for our large rovers with the drill and paver up front. We proceeded to drive between the rings (three separate rovers - three players). We kept going around the moon, over and over many, many times for a couple days. Of course as we got lower, the trip around the moon got shorter. This is what happened:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1985765549

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1985766139

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1987295092

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1985761493

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1986230741

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1985768612

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1985766754

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1985767538

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1985763878

[Jeff]

Here's one we did in creative mode where we got over 10 million bytes per minute using 140 research chambers.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2023833223

[Pahbi]

I tried to dig all the dirt off a planet by going into creative mode, and using cheat engine to enlarge the size of the dig tool from 750 to 16000. It worked for a little while, then the game crashed. booooo

[Pahbi]

Originally posted by Xilo The Odd:

Originally posted by BlackWater:

Fellow Gameing since the days of D.O.S. player here, ive just started playing this in earnest, really like how you can swap wind turbines and such from power a base to throwing them on a rover.

dont worry, it'll wear off :)

in all honesty game wise this still isnt a bad game, its a lil on the casual side but thats not a bad thing. but it does hit a hard stopping point after a time when your only left with playing with the game physics and calculations for any kind of entertainment.

Astroneer desperately needs some DLC

[Balloonicron]

Originally posted by Jeff:

Back when 1.0 was released, the populations on Astroneer had swelled to huge numbers. However a couple years later the game development has progressed slowly. Coming up with a new visor or other cosmetic addition is not going to entice veteran players to stay. So the populations are mostly at an age of 8 to 15. I know this due to the large number of times I played in multiplayer with a new "unknown friend" only to learn who I was playing with. Then I quickly left. There is an incredible difference between a veteran's gaming ability to a child's. They are happy mining by going down a "goat path", filling up their pack and walking back up. They will mine this way for weeks in a single game. That is fine for the first hour of the game, but by then I have progressed much further.

The game actually ends for me a couple days later when i have filled large resource canisters for each resources on every planet/moon. Like a large canister filled with nanocarbon alloy made through automation. Due to System Era not giving us a higher purpose such as building a "mothership" to go to far off galaxies, this game and my interest ends. This is because I have very quickly gathered more resources then we could possibly ever use due to my industrialized mining ability. Like personally gathering over 350 laterite in less than 25 minutes. Or gathering up over 90% of all resources on Desolo in less than 45 minutes. The game is very limited in my book.

I've been playing computer games since they were invented back in the mid 70's. The first personal computer that I purchased (not a hand-me-down) was a Color Computer 2 from Radio Shack in 1982 (16k of memory and ran at a blazing 1.2 MHz for $239). I was 27 back then so today I've reached 66 and retired a few months ago. My expectations of a game are very high. Much more than an 8 year old. I've played Astroneer for over 2,000 hours and because of my experience I've pushed the gameplay to new heights.

I was lucky enough to find a couple new friends on Astroneer that were my age. Because of this the three of us spent an enormous time in-game. Usually 10-14 hours per day. We took the game about as far as you could stretch it until it broke. The shortcoming of the game made us move on to other SCI-FI games like No Mans Sky (NMS) and Space Engineers (SE). The other two still play SE (one has over 2,000 hours in SE and the other well over 3,000 hours), but I have moved on to higher interests. NMS was also very limited. After only three days I had the best tools, armor and ships in the game. Since the game didn't progress any further, my interest was gone.

This has happened to Astroneer. It should have been 4.0 by now.

""So the populations are mostly at an age of 8 to 15. I know this due to the large number of times I played in multiplayer with a new "unknown friend" only to learn who I was playing with. Then I quickly left.""


You have no idea the stigma this exact mindset has caused on kids in the gaming community. They aren't worth ♥♥♥♥ unless they are an adult. This is why my 8 year old wants to grow up. Because he thinks he's not allowed to have friends in games until he is.

You're a joke of a human who's so disconnected from their humanity that you don't develop long term relationships, you just want a friend here, now, and exactly like me.

Good luck with that.

[Tachyon]

Originally posted by Balloonicron:

""So the populations are mostly at an age of 8 to 15. I know this due to the large number of times I played in multiplayer with a new "unknown friend" only to learn who I was playing with. Then I quickly left.""

You have no idea the stigma this exact mindset has caused on kids in the gaming community. They aren't worth ♥♥♥♥ unless they are an adult. This is why my 8 year old wants to grow up. Because he thinks he's not allowed to have friends in games until he is.

You're a joke of a human who's so disconnected from their humanity that you don't develop long term relationships, you just want a friend here, now, and exactly like me.

Good luck with that.

Well said.

[Jeff]

As a parent you might feel that way, but I've never had kids (never married at 66). Sure, I've played with nieces and nephews, but when I went home its just me again.

I played with a ten year old once. He ended up destroying the base that I spent months building and he just laughed about it. I unfriended him and re-logged. I play with a friend's eight year old grandson sometimes. We have fun and he like's to learn. Two different kids. Which one would you want to play with?

[Balloonicron]

Originally posted by Jeff:

As a parent you might feel that way, but I've never had kids (never married at 66). Sure, I've played with nieces and nephews, but when I went home its just me again.

I played with a ten year old once. He ended up destroying the base that I spent months building and he just laughed about it. I unfriended him and re-logged. I play with a friend's eight year old grandson sometimes. We have fun and he like's to learn. Two different kids. Which one would you want to play with?

They are both kids... One just is more calm than the other? I don't know if you know this or not. But kids break ♥♥♥♥, they can be mean, they can get angry, they can be vindictive, the list goes on. They are human... However they learn from US. How many adults have you played with that do the same? I had kids come into my Ark game and wipe my entire map with hacks. They even commented on my photos. Unfortunately for them, I have backups. You can take measures to prevent them from having to deal with added traumatic experiences just because an adult is upset over something that doesn't actually exist.

What lesson did he learn? It's just like my boomer parents yelling at my 8 year old for running around the house. Being loud, existing as a CHILD... 8 year olds are often still teething ffs.

Old humans expectations of young humans is beyond ridiculous. It's the reason a 8 year old in Fortnite 2 years ago wound up crying to the point he almost threw up when 2 people left the second he spoke.

They and the hundreds of other kids I've met in games are the reason I'm in college for human services, because there is absolutely nothing out there to help these kids who are dealing with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ "adults" who just want friends but aren't willing to allow humans to be human. Who demand respect but don't give an ounce in what THEY view as respect. He just wants to play. Playing to him vs playing to you, two different things. And he has to play by your expectations or you unfriend, delete, block, whatever.

So dehumanizing and just makes them feel like they shouldn't exist.

[BlackWater]

Originally posted by Pahbi:

Originally posted by Xilo The Odd:

dont worry, it'll wear off :)

in all honesty game wise this still isnt a bad game, its a lil on the casual side but thats not a bad thing. but it does hit a hard stopping point after a time when your only left with playing with the game physics and calculations for any kind of entertainment.

Astroneer desperately needs some DLC

Got your DLC or even game #2 right here. We unlock tech to travel to the next star. make it happen Devs, even The Kerbals are going to go interstellar.