Looking for something my own pace like astroneer, raft, factorio and satisfactory, is this it?

[yoinkster]

Hey guys,

I am looking for something with an underlying story, but not a forced story, where you can leisurely do whatever you want. No hardcore forced combat like a zombie survival game, but with a goal always in the back of my mind. In factorio, I needed to leave but I didn't have to. In astroneer, you need get "those things" but you didn't have to. In satisfactory, there were fun tech trees to unlock the next cool gear but you didn't have to. In raft, you get new codes when you're ready to progress but you didn't have to. You could just play, build, optimise and experiment.
I'm not interested in any PvP whatsoever but I would like a game I can co-op with a mate and basically just chill while we build a castle or a hut, whether we decide to grind for resources or explore.
Is that the focus of this game or is it more like forced hazards/constant missions or tasks? Or is it a super tedious grindfest like stranded deep or ark? I'm really hoping to find a 500+ hour game where it just drops you in and says "here you go, look around, there's stuff to build and a story hidden in there somewhere if you want".

If that isn't this game, does anyone have any games recommendations for that style of play?? Cos I've been looking and oh boy are the options that I've found so far really bad!

Thanks,
yoinkster.

[ShelLuser]

I'd say that pretty much describes this game as well. Although there is a survival element which means that you'll need to keep yourself fed and nourished, unless of course you decide to use a different setting ;)

Like in the tutorial... it's been a while for me but when it taught me how to collect resources I kinda went on a collecting spree so when it then told me I had to collect 3 or 5 flower instances I was already way ahead: had even torn down several structures (this was in an older version mind you!). Would it still force my to pluck some flowers?! Nope, I could easily skip that specific step and still continue following the tutorial.

IMO this game is whatever you make of it. It may sound stupid but in my normal survival games I never managed to leave the starter planet so far. Well, sorta... I did manage to teleport ;) But that's not because I can't, but because I'm just playing casually and taking my time while enjoying myself.

IMO Empyrion severely improved on itself here because in the old day it was either "play the adventure" or none of the NPC's will respond to you. Now you can just do whatever you want.

Where one of the best parts - to me - are blueprints. I can build a fun contraption in survival, keep track of how easy it'll be for a newbie to build, and then bring it into my survival game. I love that mechanic. Of course there's also nothing stopping you from building in your survival game.

I am biased, fair enough, but I also play Satisfactory and Empyrion definitely gives me the same kind of vibes.

[Bahrman74]

Caveat, I've not played vanilla in a while: That said there are some early missions that are tutorial like and maybe a "forced" combat in there but otherwise you can do things in your own time. As for grind fest, well the autominers help with that but expect to mine a lot of stuff. Once you get some salvage going on there's less mine grind but some things are not automineable. As for multiplayer you can do a private MP game with just you and your pals.

Sounds like this might be what you're looking for, or somewhat adjacent

[AlbertoXczx]

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[Maya]

Select "Freedom" mode when starting the game.

https://empyriononline.com/threads/a9-freedom-mode.46784/

Right now I personally play empyrion how I want.
Without caring about story or quest. I had set my personal goal to find paradise planet and build my dream house :) .

I had started on the "Purgatory" planet, which is cold, hard and boring.
So it will be nice, with warm and beautiful surroundings with beaches.

The best thing about Empyrion is that you have great freedom.
And don't forget the difficulty setting in Survival mode. Good luck

[OldGuy_UK]

you can always change difficulty settings when loading the save game, just set it up and try, if your not liking the settings, just save and exit, click on the save again and on the right, click difficulty and change your settings again and start the save again, rinse and repeat until your happy with them :)

[Maya]

Originally posted by OldGuy_UK:

you can always change difficulty settings when loading the save game, just set it up and try, if your not liking the settings, just save and exit, click on the save again and on the right, click difficulty and change your settings again and start the save again, rinse and repeat until your happy with them :)

Nice explanation . I had read so many complaints of players not even bothering to read common functions at the beginning of the game.
- Complaint about lost backpack, hello, then change settings to keep inventory on death - "Everthing".
- Complaints of having to sleep for BP and constructor to be finished
. Just change to "instant" and you have everything done in seconds.
Overall drone presence - OF.
Drone base attack - OF.
Fod consumption -OF.
And so on . Until you get perfect nerf game lol.

https://youtu.be/9eTuGDTJQvc

[Sabaithal]

This game has a number of primary elements to it, and while none hold up the game on their own they cooperate together in a way that works well:
- Exploration: There's lots to find, especially once you get into PE/RE
- Survival elements: All these are tweakable. If you use the easiest settings they're not very harsh if you ask me.
- Building: Strong emphasis on this, you can build bases, ships, or smaller craft from scratch, texture them, shape them, etc. Though thanks to the factory system you don't have to, you can always download some from the workshop and use those ingame.
- First person shooter: Just because the combat is this when you're not piloting a craft. Its pretty minimal though. Not super fast paced like souls games, though I wouldn't call it slow either.

Exploration being the biggest. The main reason to build, gather resources, etc, is to explore. Though getting into combat at POIs or with large ships can be fun too, I would consider it secondary.

How much is there to explore? The game randomly generates around a couple hundred star systems at the game start, each with individually exploitable planets and moons. That expands to over a thousand (well over) if you go for RE/PE.

[yoinkster]

Thanks for all the replies guys, really appreciate it. I've decided I'm going to dive in and give it a go (: