What the heck happened?

[BigRowdy]

How did this go to mostly negative reviews?

I bought it day 1 but stopped playing after the whole land on a planet and here is your base via crashed ship type thing. I honestly found the original idea of survival in this game more fun. You know just you in the open at night scarred to move till dawn because you could not see anything.... no personal fabricator, just the basic one placed by your oxygen collector.

[Donny]

The negative reviews have been driven by the new D.L.C. not the main game and most people have given these reviews in the main game instead of in the D.L.C. reviews section.

[TwitchyJ]

Originally posted by Donny:

The negative reviews have been driven by the new D.L.C. not the main game and most people have given these reviews in the main game instead of in the D.L.C. reviews section.

When the devs 100% stop working on the base game for a "few months" by their own words to focus 100% on a paid DLC, a DLC that is completely broken still this many weeks after release, yeah that affects the base games reviews too....

This means for 6 or so months now the DLC has had 100% of all development focus, again by the devs own words.

That's 6 or so months SO FAR that the base game has essentially been abandoned for a paid DLC.
Not to mention the devs still have many more months of work just to get the DLC how it should have been on day 1.

The only updates the base game is seeing right now, and for this whole time, are fixes that are again for the DLC in vanilla.
So the updates aren't actually for the base game still.

When all is said and done it may have been nearly a year without ANY work on the base game.
Plus, there is still AT LEAST one more DLC coming and AT LEAST one other unannounced title too.

Yeah, the negative reviews on the base game are 100% warranted and deserved.....

[Adaman]

The game has been completed. It is perfectly playable and looks great. There is no need to complain about a DLC or stopping developing for a couple months. If they did nothing on the game, it would not be a problem at all, because the state of the game is good.

[HashSlingingSlasher]

Originally posted by Adaman:

The game has been completed. It is perfectly playable and looks great. There is no need to complain about a DLC or stopping developing for a couple months. If they did nothing on the game, it would not be a problem at all, because the state of the game is good.

lol

[mystikmind2005]

Originally posted by Adaman:

The game has been completed. It is perfectly playable and looks great. There is no need to complain about a DLC or stopping developing for a couple months. If they did nothing on the game, it would not be a problem at all, because the state of the game is good.

Originally posted by HashSlingingSlasher:

Originally posted by Adaman:

The game has been completed. It is perfectly playable and looks great. There is no need to complain about a DLC or stopping developing for a couple months. If they did nothing on the game, it would not be a problem at all, because the state of the game is good.

lol

Lol indeed!
I mean, even by the developers own words it is not complete... Remind me again what is that message that pops up when you release the prisoners in the vanilla campaign??

BUT, having said that, the vanilla campaign is quite extensive as a campaign compared to other games, so, that plus the overall game i feel is extremely good value for money gaming entertainment,,, but yes, DEFINITELY NOT COMPLETE.

[BigRowdy]

Hmm looks like I will give it a couple months before I reinstall it then.

[TonyMax.Fr]

I keep my negative review beacause i've seen NO changes since the new water (alpha 11?)
And it was not great. The bugs i've seen since are still here. So... bad review. The devs deserve it, right?

[mystikmind2005]

Originally posted by TonyMax.Fr:

I keep my negative review beacause i've seen NO changes since the new water (alpha 11?)
And it was not great. The bugs i've seen since are still here. So... bad review. The devs deserve it, right?

Well, although your technically correct, overall the game is great value for money, so, no, they do not deserve a bad review.

[XLjedi]

Originally posted by BigRowdy:

Hmm looks like I will give it a couple months before I reinstall it then.

I doubt it will change state that dramatically in the next 6 months. The game is quite playable now, wouldn't hurt to give it a spin.

[Midas]

I don't think the core game deserves a bad review. Even in its current state there is a dizzying amount of gameplay there, and a lot of cool stuff behind it all.

The DLC is a mess though. That deserves a bad review.

[Ender424]

The game released prematurely with core systems still half baked.

By Alpha 12 Empyrion was already feature rich and the core PvE/survival game loops were essentially proven to be fun when you consider the number of players who have put significant hours even in Early Access.

It's also at this point that players were essentially much better at making content than the devs whether it's private servers with custom content, vehicles, POIs/dungeons, or entire scenarios like Reforged Eden. And in a way that is a good thing! Having events like Eleon including player made themed factions, dungeons, etc to include to the "canon" universe really showed the possibility for endless player made content.

It seems to me that this is where devs should really have focused on improving the framework and addressing issues like replacing stock assets, fixing enemy AI, address audio effects, fine tune physics both for flight mechanics and FPS combat, address questing systems, completing the main campaign, hell at least proofread the damn writing!

Instead it released as 1.0 with some goofy eye-rolling inducing speech from Eleon about modern game development and their view of Early Access. 1 year or so later after the apparently meaningless official release and a number inconsequential updates Eleon announced they are partnered up with Funcom for "marketing" reasons and announce their first monetized DLC. So instead of focusing on gameplay and optimizations they went for more content which predictably turned out as jank (if not worse) than the current state of the base game. What Eleon/Funcom expects to market here and to whom is beyond me.

As for their partnership with Funcom apparently some people think Funcom is either Satan or undercover CCP I personally could care less if this meant Empyrion got the polish it desperately needs and deserves. However given the recent developments I feel that, unfortunately, what we see is what we're going to get for a very long time, at least in terms of quality. Considering Empyrion is well past it's release and now selling DLC I have changed my rating to negative. If I felt there was any hope for actual improvement I would change to positive or at least a Mixed if Steam allowed for it.

[BigRowdy]

Originally posted by Ender424:

The game released prematurely with core systems still half baked.

By Alpha 12 Empyrion was already feature rich and the core PvE/survival game loops were essentially proven to be fun when you consider the number of players who have put significant hours even in Early Access.

It's also at this point that players were essentially much better at making content than the devs whether it's private servers with custom content, vehicles, POIs/dungeons, or entire scenarios like Reforged Eden. And in a way that is a good thing! Having events like Eleon including player made themed factions, dungeons, etc to include to the "canon" universe really showed the possibility for endless player made content.

It seems to me that this is where devs should really have focused on improving the framework and addressing issues like replacing stock assets, fixing enemy AI, address audio effects, fine tune physics both for flight mechanics and FPS combat, address questing systems, completing the main campaign, hell at least proofread the damn writing!

Instead it released as 1.0 with some goofy eye-rolling inducing speech from Eleon about modern game development and their view of Early Access. 1 year or so later after the apparently meaningless official release and a number inconsequential updates Eleon announced they are partnered up with Funcom for "marketing" reasons and announce their first monetized DLC. So instead of focusing on gameplay and optimizations they went for more content which predictably turned out as jank (if not worse) than the current state of the base game. What Eleon/Funcom expects to market here and to whom is beyond me.

As for their partnership with Funcom apparently some people think Funcom is either Satan or undercover CCP I personally could care less if this meant Empyrion got the polish it desperately needs and deserves. However given the recent developments I feel that, unfortunately, what we see is what we're going to get for a very long time, at least in terms of quality. Considering Empyrion is well past it's release and now selling DLC I have changed my rating to negative. If I felt there was any hope for actual improvement I would change to positive or at least a Mixed if Steam allowed for it.

I have kinda read around a bit by now, but I would say this summary best explains how the games main player base feels.

[spam]

Originally posted by mystikmind2005:

Well, although your technically correct, overall the game is great value for money, so, no, they do not deserve a bad review.

I think it could go either way. Personally I gave it a thumbs up with a LOT of warnings. Some people really hate janky games. Eleon is proven to be unreliable, so any review should reflect the game as it is, not what it could be or aspires to be.

[Baronfuming]

Imagine if you could go back in time to the 1.0 release announcement knowing what was going to happen years later.

[mystikmind2005]

Originally posted by spam:

Originally posted by mystikmind2005:

Well, although your technically correct, overall the game is great value for money, so, no, they do not deserve a bad review.

I think it could go either way. Personally I gave it a thumbs up with a LOT of warnings. Some people really hate janky games. Eleon is proven to be unreliable, so any review should reflect the game as it is, not what it could be or aspires to be.

I dunno, i just think people focus too much on the negatives and forget the fact that this game gives you way more entertainment bang for your buck compared to MANY other games which give less bang for your buck but are more polished and therefore generate less bad reviews.

In all my life i can think of only one other game that i got more out of than this game... Sid Meyers Alpha Centauri... Also special mention to X3 reunion, Medieval2 total war and the first original version of galciv3