my new conclusion

[Piggy Hill]

the game is great, it suck you in really quickly, but after few hundred hours, its not that good. the feeling is gone, there isnt much to do beside building stuff. exploration is basicly the same over and over again. its still god great atmosphere going on and the planet biomes are pretty epic imo. if only the game got more to it, like no mans sky does for single player, that would be sweet. its sad, cause i hoped i will be playing this game for long time, but its just not it anymore, best part of the game is the begining, gathering materials, building your first base and ships, surviving and exploring new scary places, the game got huge potential but i think it will never be as epic, as it can be. kinda sad, just my thought

[JDaremo Fireheart]

Buiding & Exploring is the main part of this game. Always fun to see what you can build next.
I have been playing this game since Alpha 6 and have enjoyed my over 4000 hours in the game. Some players have over 10k hours in this game.

If you don't like this game, don't even bother looking at Space Engineers. There's less story and is more technical than this one.

[Piggy Hill]

the building is excellent but building bases all over the galaxy and doing the same thing feel shallow, if there were at least some dungeons or something more to do on the planets, that utilize the great surroundings to its full potential. i really do enjoy walking around and just admire the locations, but it would be great to do something more while walking around.

[ZomBeGone]

I know the feeling. I tend to play it for a few months then put it aside for a year or so. Been doing that for 6-8 years since version 0.4.5.

RE2 does expand some of the mid game to end game play but its very combat oriented.

This play through I set a goal to become honored friends with the 5 zirax "houses". I am friendly with 3/5 so far. Its a goal to work toward.

Yeah, but after a while it is time to move to something else.

[UncreativelyNamed]

Are you still playing vanilla? If so, you might want to look into scenarios. There are many different ones on the Workshop, the most popular one being Reforged Eden, with RE2 in active development and RE1 being discontinued (but still entirely playable, if you want). RE in general slows down progression, gives you many different starting situations of different difficulty levels, adds more missions, adds more factions, has so many "dungeons" (in the form of land- and space-based POIs) that you can't possibly explore all of them in just a few hundred hours, as well as balances the various game mechanics and objects better. Among many other things. And the RE scenarios aren't the only good ones, either. There is lots to explore outside of the vanilla game.

At this point, my sense is that the vanilla game is basically dead. There may be little official updates to it here and there, but I'm not expecting anything grand. But, player-made scenarios can keep the game going for a good long time, and you can even get into making your own. So, I would advise trying them out, if you aren't already doing so.

[Piggy Hill]

ive already tried RE2, Dark Faction and Ad Astra, DF is very janky ang buggy RE2/Astra has some good things going on, but it eventualy ends with the same feeling like vanilla, but it feels more refined and complex, thats a great thing. i will try it some more later, like ZomBeGone said.

[ravien_ff]

The game does have dungeons. The abandoned POIs. And others. Especially RE2.

[Piggy Hill]

i know it got abandoned POIs those are fun, but i would be more happy if it got more variety of these points, for example biome inspired or just some walk-through on map in swamps, forests etc, some interesting planet areas

[ravien_ff]

Originally posted by Piggy Hill:

i know it got abandoned POIs those are fun, but i would be more happy if it got more variety of these points, for example biome inspired or just some walk-through on map in swamps, forests etc, some interesting planet areas

It takes time to make POIs, but yes there are biome or planet specific POIs in RE2.
For example some desert planets have caves you can explore. There's one type of desert planet that has a massive abandoned tomb you can explore.
But these POIs take dozens of hours to make each and there's just two of us working on RE2.

[cwsumner]

If you want other POIs to play, it is possible for players to make them or even make a simple "Scenario" (full mod) to set them up. Some who got tired of playing have made a few POIs, for fun, and put them on the workshop. 8-)

Actually, even the POIs in the main game were originally made by players. (I think...)

[ravien_ff]

Yes all the game POIs were made by players.

[Piggy Hill]

interesting, many things are perfected by players rather than dev lol

[Midas]

Yeah, it's a problem that can come with many sandbox survival games where you hit a point of having 'everything' and are no longer interested in progressing.

My recommendation is to come up with 'goals' to work towards. RE2 is very good for this, because it gives you stuff like very late-game legacy and progenitor-related places you can try to reach and explore. You could make it a goal to, for example, go deep into the Dronelands and the Sea of Silence, and acquire the tech there to expand your ship capabilities. These can each be massive undertakings, requiring tons of exploration and combat, depending on how well-established you already are.

[Narn]

This is why enemies who destroy your bases and ships are needed. I dont mean a small raid. I mean a full scale anti player war. That would give the player something to do and keep the game going.

[Kassonnade]

Originally posted by Piggy Hill:

the game is great, it suck you in really quickly, but after few hundred hours, its not that good. the feeling is gone, there isnt much to do beside building stuff. exploration is basicly the same over and over again.

You still got a few hundred hours out of it, for 20$ that's not bad at all. I only played between 100 and 200 hours of some popular MMO and singleplayer open worlds and it gets repetitive quite fast, and most of that time is spent doing the same stuff over and over again.

Empyrion has a very good replay value because it can be modded, tweaked and many good scenarios expand the game in many directions. Also the community is still quite active after all this time, and you'll always get help and tips in here.

[UncreativelyNamed]

Originally posted by Midas:

My recommendation is to come up with 'goals' to work towards. ...

Yeah, this is what I end up doing in all open-ended sandbox-type games I play. The content of the game itself will only take you so far, and from there it's up to the player to keep themselves interested. I create goals, rules, and challenges/obstacles that keep me interested and doing things outside of my comfort zone.

For instance, in the one save I'm playing, my goal/challenge is to gather the materials to build a very-late-game combat CV that I subscribed to on the Workshop. It's a challenge to me, personally, because it requires components that can mostly/only be gotten by taking on and defeating high-tier POIs, which is something that I generally shy away from. I've also further hampered myself by not allowing myself to buy anything except food and meds (so that I don't have to farm or spend a lot of time foraging for food/med ingredients). So, if I need a reactor core for something, I need to find one via looting rather than just going to a factory and buying one.

Doing this sort of thing isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, of course, because it's "grindy," but it keeps ME interested because I don't mind grinding to achieve a goal that I've created for myself. The point is that, generally speaking, to remain interested long-term in this genre of game, players need to be creative and make their own fun, not rely on the game for that.