Alpha 12: Flaws and discussion about improvements

[nowhere man]

Renamed thread as it does not reflect the original title anymore.

Alpha 12 release driven down the review ratings to "mostly positive" again, and we are having a discussion about the reasons and ideas for future improvements.

[John The Bodge]

I play the older alphas and it's even buggered those - unable to start at all, so it wouldn't surprise me to see the reviews going more towards negative than positive. I have a cuppla thousand hours in game and I'm pretty sure my review wasn't that great - and that was written several alphas ago.

I also play an old pre-alpha and find it more fun. I think they added way too much to the game - it's simplicity in pre-alpha days was part of its attraction, and the whole game atmosphere has, imho, changed massively. It just doesn't have that eerie alien feel any more, even on the hard planets . I think it lost that soon after they started on the alphas (as opposed to pre-alphas).

imo they would have been better off leaving the old game as it was - fixing the glaring bugs - and then making a new game with all the gubbins we have today. It was so much better when we were forced to design and build our own ships and we all started on Omicron - which I also preferred the old version of.

I got my money's worth several times over, so I'm not complaining - but I am disappointed, though.

[Penitent Intent]

takes two months to fully grasp the game, life the game is great, its honestly meant for creative people to generate experiences for all you scavengers from 7dtd that dont build a robust base and just live off drops. theres more content for the creative folks, all a scavenger sees are walls. A builder sees challenges.

[GlassDeviant]

Johnny_Dioxin eredeti hozzászólása:

I play the older alphas and it's even buggered those - unable to start at all, so it wouldn't surprise me to see the reviews going more towards negative than positive. I have a cuppla thousand hours in game and I'm pretty sure my review wasn't that great - and that was written several alphas ago.

I also play an old pre-alpha and find it more fun. I think they added way too much to the game - it's simplicity in pre-alpha days was part of its attraction, and the whole game atmosphere has, imho, changed massively. It just doesn't have that eerie alien feel any more, even on the hard planets . I think it lost that soon after they started on the alphas (as opposed to pre-alphas).

imo they would have been better off leaving the old game as it was - fixing the glaring bugs - and then making a new game with all the gubbins we have today. It was so much better when we were forced to design and build our own ships and we all started on Omicron - which I also preferred the old version of.

I got my money's worth several times over, so I'm not complaining - but I am disappointed, though.

Not that there aren't improvements in many areas. I've played every available build on steam, unfortunately you can't go back beyond a certain point, and I always miss something from the newer builds that really is a big improvement over the older releases, but in the big picture I prefer the older versions. It's like Eleon is struggling with the old adage of trying to please all of the people all of the time, creating a hybrid survival/FPS/base attack/tower defense/platform/base building/ship building game all in one.

I've been told by insiders that Eleon wants E:GS to be the next EVE, but that's never going to happen. EVE focused on on thing: Space combat. Yes, it had a whole economy with building and trading, but it was all to support a huge, single-server PvP-only space combat game with everyone on together at the same time. The whole "Minecraft in space" thing that E:GS has didn't even come into consideration. You got the ships they pre-built and the most you could do was configure them with pre-designed modules that you bought or built from pre-designed recipes.

And FFS they need to let you disable the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spiders everywhere!

[mirasstone]

Indifferent Orangutan eredeti hozzászólása:

It's like Eleon is struggling with the old adage of trying to please all of the people all of the time, creating a hybrid survival/FPS/base attack/tower defense/platform/base building/ship building game all in one.

funny, that was what I thought they where trying when I jumped in the first time some years ago and thats what hooked me.

And I realy dont get the spider thing, Im afraid of arachnophobics

[GlassDeviant]

mirasstone eredeti hozzászólása:

I realy dont get the spider thing, Im afraid of arachnophobics

Most people who don't have a phobia don't "get it". It's a disservice that the medical profession defines them as merely "fear" and often as "irrational". It is something way beyond simple fear. It is a total and complete, crippling revulsion to something, one that is so intense that you can't even react. My mother can't deal with snakes, she locks up like a vise, ever muscle in her body clenched tight. For an arachnophobe, and there are a lot of us (it has an evolutionary component to it because for most of our species' lifetime we did not have modern medicine to deal with poisons and secondary infections so people who were bitten often died, while people who went out of their way to avoid them lived to breed) and was the most common phobia before technology turned a large portion of the first world into sociophobes of various types.

I can deal with it, in the game, but would prefer very much not to have to, just like some people have a huge problem with the game Subnautica due to their thalassophobia. I know several people who either have to psyche themselves up before playing or who simply can't play at all, and of those who can, if they encounter a trigger situation they can go days or weeks before being able to play again. Personally it's not the spiders that drive me away from E:GS repeatedly, but the devs.

[Midas]

Indifferent Orangutan eredeti hozzászólása:

mirasstone eredeti hozzászólása:

I realy dont get the spider thing, Im afraid of arachnophobics

Most people who don't have a phobia don't "get it". It's a disservice that the medical profession defines them as merely "fear" and often as "irrational". It is something way beyond simple fear. It is a total and complete, crippling revulsion to something, one that is so intense that you can't even react. My mother can't deal with snakes, she locks up like a vise, ever muscle in her body clenched tight. For an arachnophobe, and there are a lot of us (it has an evolutionary component to it because for most of our species' lifetime we did not have modern medicine to deal with poisons and secondary infections so people who were bitten often died, while people who went out of their way to avoid them lived to breed) and was the most common phobia before technology turned a large portion of first world into sociophobes of various types.

Probably because there are degrees of phobia. Someone can be disgusted or unnerved by something because they legitimately have a phobia, and someone else with the same phobia might be utterly terrified of them. I used to be arachnophobic to a degree (probably because my mom is), I still don't like the idea of handling them directly even now, but I have no problem with them in games, and no problem with scooping one up with a cup to drop it outside or something.

[GlassDeviant]

Midas eredeti hozzászólása:

no problem with scooping one up with a cup to drop it outside or something.

How big are the spiders where you live? Where I am, there are brown recluses the size of the palm of your hand and quite aggressive as well as toxic, though only fatally to small children, and those are fleas compared to the huntsman spiders I had to kill in my gf's house in Australia which shrugged off multiple hard smacks with my shoe, barely flinching. Those were big enough to cover a saucer or even a small bread plate, though luckily they are not poisonous. It's the little ones that are deadly there, ones tiny enough to miss if you aren't wary which can kill a large human adult with one bite.

[Maddox]

Also remember we live in an age where it is acceptable for devs to release an early access game and leave it in ea for eternity . There are alot of devs who abuse the ea programs.


With that said I never seen a dev team that is working hard and passionatly on a game that is still in ea for over 5 years. Most dev team would move on and start another project.

These devs set an example on how you should run a long term ea title. Yes there are bugs. But so far I really enjoy the game. It made it worth it for me with my time and money.

I seen other ea titles that goes out and every time there are problems they do not bother to hotfix anything and wait for the next patch to fix the issues at hand. I also seen where they will abandon a game after it's been in ea after 6 months to a year.

[D3matt]

Was it A12 that lowered the reviews, or was it the sale attracting a lot of new players? Frankly, EA or not, I can see why somebody might take issue with the (lack of) sheer number of problems with a 5 year old game.

[Midas]

D3matt eredeti hozzászólása:

Was it A12 that lowered the reviews, or was it the sale attracting a lot of new players? Frankly, EA or not, I can see why somebody might take issue with the (lack of) sheer number of problems with a 5 year old game.

12 added way more good to the game than bad, so it's almost certainly due to an influx of new players combined with the game's less-than-stellar first impressions.

[Maddox]

I will not play the game with cpu or mass and volume on. That kills the game. Other than that I am happy with a12.

[Apollyon]

Perfect or not, there is no other game in existence right now that offers as many sandbox possibilities as Emyprion does.

[The Undead Watcher]

I don't know about you, but that is pretty good for an EA game, don't know whats wrong with that?

[Menik]

If anything I don't think an in-game tutorial is necessary at the moment, as in alpha nothing is set in stone. I can't speak for everyone's initial experience, but it definitely helps having an immediate goal to fuel the motivation to learn. Anything I wasn't sure of after learning the basics, I learned through video tutorials and documentation.

What the developers can do for now, is make a video tutorial of an entry point in their game to get people on the right track.

It's unfortunate, but often times dealing with alpha projects demands a lot of patience and management of expectations(from my experience). Maybe somehow that gets forgotten.

For what Empyrion brings to the table and for the price(it was on sale for alpha 12 as well), I think it's pretty amazing. It's a shame people didn't get to delve into it.

[Helios]

Empyrion is a rough gem and i think alot people who buy it are spoiled from modern games where you can get your stuff asap to be honest was simmilar to me got the game several years ago during a sale but did not play much and started again just before A12 and loved it but had to invest alot time to learn stuff most people maybe dont have.