Empyrion - Galactic Survival

[FlowerChild]

I've been playing this one pretty heavily the past couple of days. Probably the most succinct description I could give for it right now is that it's like Space Engineers...except it's a game :)

So far, I like it a lot. Pretty heavy (relatively speaking) survival focus early on. When you finally manage to put a ship together (or repair the one you crashed in), there's quite the sense of satisfaction in getting back to orbit.

It's pretty early in development, so I'll hold off recommending it outright, but if anyone has been eying it and has been on the fence about it, after about 15 hours I've play, I will say that it looks very promising. With the possible exception of The Long Dark, I don't think I've played a game recently that's scratched my survival/progression itch quite as much as this one.

[BinoAl]

Have you played Starbound yet? My biggest gripe with that game was how "disposable" the planets seemed to be; There was never any real reason to stick with even a main home planet, it was always more about exploration. That's the biggest thing keeping me from buying this one, I'm worried it will have some of the same major flaws

[FlowerChild]

Have you played Starbound yet?

Well...yeah :)

Lots of Starbound discussion has occurred on these forums man.

My biggest gripe with that game was how "disposable" the planets seemed to be; There was never any real reason to stick with even a main home planet, it was always more about exploration.

Yeah, I'm not into that aspect of Starbound either. This one seems to be doing a good job of avoiding that so far though, in that each of the planets have particular resources, and as far as I know, only the first one you crash on has water and is thus capable of producing oxygen in the long run, meaning you have to keep going back there for it.

How that'll evolve once you're able to travel to multiple star systems, I have no idea, but for now, it really doesn't have that same vibe to it.

Also, unlike Starbound, you're constructing your own ships here, meaning your "bases" will wind up flying around with you. I think the prefab ships in Starbound amplified the "homeless" feel to it as the one location that was a permanent return point, you couldn't customize fully.

EDIT: Actually, scratch that bit about the water. Just found it on another planet as well :)

I think the game is essentially over for me (for now anyways) at around the 20 hour mark. The other planets have substantial bases already prebuilt on them, and the components you can scavenge from them make going to various planets for ore largely irrelevant. Was fun while it lasted though :)

[ryoloth]

So I spent the past few nights playing this, after many many deaths do to my own stupidity or simply not calculating my resources correctly, I have managed to get a decent base together. Then I decided to go on a scouting trip in my brand new state of the art hover potato. 5 minutes later and some green/red laser missile things and I'm dead with no hover potato. A game hasn't held my interest like this has since BTW and I am loving it!

[FlowerChild]

A game hasn't held my interest like this has since BTW and I am loving it!

Nice :)

Yeah, I was pretty hooked on it when I picked it up as well. Current progression is limited (once you get off planet things rapidly begin to lose meaning), so I've put it aside for the time being until I see an update that sparks my interest.

We'll see what future updates bring. I've seen many a games like this start strong and then go wishy washy (Starbound is a great example) after the initial release due to public feedback demanding everything get easier. I'm pretty hesitant about getting too enthusiastic about early access titles now until I see what kind of changes further updates bring :)

[Gilberreke]

I can't really get into it, not sure why. It seems like I should love this game, but I don't. I'll give it another try later, going to wait for some of the procedural stuff to come.

[jorgebonafe]

I played for a bit, until I had to use the flatten tool to build a base. That as a nightmare. I don't know if the tool is buggy or I was doing something stupid, but trying to flatten the terrain only made it more and more chaotic... Eventually I just gave up.

Other than that it was kinda fun.

I'll try again when it's released, I guess...

[FlowerChild]

I played for a bit, until I had to use the flatten tool to build a base. That as a nightmare. I don't kno if the tool is buggy or I as doing something stupid, but trying to flatten the terrain only made it more and more chaotic... Eventually I just gave up.

Yeah, that one is a bit tricky. What I eventually figured out is that the title of "raise/flatten" (or whatever it is) actually indicates left and right click mouse button functionality. Thus, it's only the right mouse button that flattens things. The left will just keep raising to its heart's content.

If all else fails, I think building directly on water works fine too as it's considered already flat :)

[jorgebonafe]

IMO, the building aspect in every building game looks clunky to me, in comparison to Minecraft. Notch got it right the first time, and every other game that tries to implement building seems to fall short in some way. I don't know if that's just because I'm used to MC, but building stuff in it seems so easy, fast and intuitive, and other building games I tried since just... don't. I can't quite put my finger on why it feels like that...

[FlowerChild]

IMO, the building aspect in every building game looks clunky to me, in comparison to Minecraft. Notch got it right the first time, and every other game that tries to implement building seems to fall short in some way. I don't know if that's just because I'm used to MC, but building stuff in it seems so easy, fast and intuitive, and other building games I tried since just... don't. I can't quite put my finger on why it feels like that...

Well, one of the things that I feel is responsible for this is the separation of voxel worlds into completely separate systems for say terrain and player construction, and I agree that I don't like it. It's happening in pretty much every "next gen" voxel game I play to varying degrees from 7 Days, to Subnautica, to Space Engineers, to Empyrion.

One of the brilliant aspects of Minecraft, and you may have seen me go on about this before, is that it provided a unified system for pretty much everything, and I think where many developers have gone wrong is that they say want their terrain to look good, and then fuck up the gameplay of dealing with it to make that happen because they wind up creating big exception cases in how the player interacts with the world.

Not only does that wind up making building a chore, but IMO it winds up making the entire world feel less real because you have all these exception cases breaking up the consistency of how things work, and reminding you that you're just playing a game.

So yeah, I agree with you 100% on that being a sucky trend with such games. I do think there's a decent game lurking behind the surface if you can look past that here though. I think I just had a bit of a head start getting over it with Empyrion given my past experience with Space Engineers, so I was already somewhat used to "let's have 4 different systems to not only cover player-made and terrain differences, but also for various sizes of player construction!" :)

[Gilberreke]

What REALLY grinds for me is that you build on top of the water. I really like the base you get in creative being grounded on the lake floor, but you can't actually seem to build like that yourself. So my base is floating in the air just above the water, which I hate, but I hated trying to flatten terrain even more.

[FlowerChild]

What REALLY grinds for me is that you build on top of the water. I really like the base you get in creative being grounded on the lake floor, but you can't actually seem to build like that yourself. So my base is floating in the air just above the water, which I hate, but I hated trying to flatten terrain even more.

I hear you, but I think you can build down into it (not the same thing I realize, but the end result looks similar). One of my bases extended over a lake, and I built down into the water to wall off a section containing an oxygen generator and water purifier.

[FlowerChild]

All right, second major release and they've already blown it IMO.

They've removed the need for oxygen on your starting planet, thereby removing much of the survival pressure and motivation to advance in tech. You can now just roam around freely without a need to return to your escape pod to replenish your oxygen supplies, chowing down on whatever edible plants you come across as you go.

Was nervous they might wreck what was apparently an interesting start in typical early access fashion, but doing so on the 2nd release must be some kind of record ;)

[ryoloth]

They've removed the need for oxygen on your starting planet, thereby removing much of the survival pressure and motivation to advance in tech.

Yeah, this really bothered me when I was reading it, so I opted to forgo giving up on what I thought was a hopeless world. Instead, I struggled through making the new and improved flying potato and got off the surface for the first time.

Spoiler

Show

I Just barely got out of orbit in the test drive before coming back to refuel and resupply before getting off this god forsaken rock

[FlowerChild]

I Just barely got out of orbit in the test drive before coming back to refuel and resupply before getting off this god forsaken rock

Whereas I just spent an hour wandering around the new lush green temperate starting planet that has food laying all over the ground before realizing I never wanted to leave and had no need of more advanced technology. I have since declared that I had immediately won the game by crash landing in paradise, and leave my character until the next update happily sipping margaritas underneath a parasol next to his escape pod.

Go me :)

[jorgebonafe]

Better Than Breathing, coming 2016 :)

[ryoloth]

Whereas I just spent an hour wandering around the new lush green temperate starting planet that has food laying all over the ground before realizing I never wanted to leave and had no need of more advanced technology. I have since declared that I had immediately won the game by crash landing in paradise, and leave my character until the next update happily sipping margaritas underneath a parasol next to his escape pod.

I sincerely hope that they realize the error in this design choice, but I doubt they will. It almost makes me not even want to land there

[FlowerChild]

I sincerely hope that they realize the error in this design choice, but I doubt they will. It almost makes me not even want to land there

Supposedly there are some kind of plant creatures that come out and attack you now that I haven't encountered yet. Will give it another try to see what they do, and if they up the difficulty sufficiently to make it worthwhile.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah...played some more yesterday, plants don't really help here. They're just more aggressive enemies that means you'll be shooting more in the very early game, which increases the value of magnesium a bit (used to make bullets).

I played up until the point I hit orbit, tooled around the various planets a bit, picking up some aloe (only found on the desert planet) to complete the farm in my base, then dropped the save. By the time oxygen is introduced as a resource it's largely irrelevant as you've already established that you can make a portable station with whatever ship you've used to get to orbit.

That whole sense of being tethered to your escape pod in the early game, having to return to fill back up on oxygen was a big part of what made it feel special IMO. It put all your activities on a timer, which added a sense of pressure to the whole thing.

I can understand the problem with it due to the introduction of procedural world gen, given it's not guaranteed that you'll have enough oxygen on you to be able to reach the resources you need, but I think it was a pretty horrible trade-off and another solution should have been found.

Will see what happens in the future, but personally, I just don't find this release to be anywhere near as fun as the previous one.

[Gilberreke]

They also upped detection range to 500m, which irks me. I found the 300m range to be ridiculous already. You're stumbling about in early game, barely any oxygen or food, but your suit is pinging like Facebook "HEY! LISTEN! THERE'S AN ORE DEPOSIT WAY OVER THAT WAY". It ruins the survival atmosphere by giving you handouts.

I agree that the 300m detection range was useless once you got a ship going, but it ruins the early game when I actually want to stumble onto these things. I'd much prefer a system where only a vessel fitted with a sensor array, or whatever, will detect ores (500m sounds fine in that case). Then maybe capital vessels will do a planet-wide scan, but don't mark specific deposits. I foresee a future problem where planets will all sustain life completely, because players will be mad if they land on a planet only to find it useless. If I can scan first and it tells me: "useless, but large amounts of this specific rare resource", I'll probably want to visit later. Anyway...

Theory: They want you to get up and going quickly, so you can explore their pretty new universe generator, so they made paradise as a starting planet. If that's the case, we might see the return of a more unforgiving planet later on. Though, the problem is this: most survival games call for a tiered approach. In this case, oxygen-locked becomes planet-locked becomes end-game. If you properly balance these tiers though (like in BTW), you run the risk of alienating 75% of your player base, because they will never see any content beyond the dirt stage. I'm a bit scared that in case of Empyrion, they'll never provide a proper early game, to avoid people never experiencing capital vessels. It's moderately understandable too, as you probably spend so much developer time on those, that you want people to experience them ASAP.

[FlowerChild]

My theory on it is that they realized that they couldn't guarantee survival with proceduraly generated planets, since your oxygen supply effectively limits the range you can travel from your escape pod, and unless certain resources are within that range, you'll either die due to lack of power, or won't be able to progress because of lack of other ore types.

If you check the other changes since the last release I think there's a trail of bread crumbs pointing to the above. You'll notice that your ship contains an already made oxygen generator (now irrelevant since you don't need it). You'll also notice that portable oxygen bottles you can refill with on the go have been added to the recipe list (also irrelevant until the stage of the game where you have mobile oxygen stations anyways).

My impression is they kept trying to nerf the oxygen system in various ways to deal with the above problem, then decided to effectively remove it entirely before release by making the starting planet have a breathable atmosphere.

IMO, that was a mistake, as it effectively removes a huge part of what made the game unique. Rock Paper Shotgun referred to it (with the previous release) as the closet thing to "The Martian" in video game form. They just axed that for the sake of having random ore distribution. IMO, the tethering effect of being tied to your space craft was an integral part of the whole feeling of being stranded on an alien world and went a long way to establishing the tone for the game. Now, you've basically got a Minecraft style world with slightly weird looking plants and animals.

Procedural worlds are cool and all, but I think a better solution should have been found, and personally, I would have refused to release that way, especially since the main claim to fame this game has is "it's like Space Engineers...except it's a game".

Anyways, I had a long thread going on the Steam forums for the game where I uttered a rather loud "wtf?" over that design decision, and after the way it played out, I have little hope for the future of the game. People upset about that change are in a tiny minority, the developer doesn't seem to really get it with regards to why this was bad, seeming to equate it more to a complaint about difficulty than it being any kind of crucial game element, and my face is still aching from the severe palming it received over the course of it. It's also making me take a closer look at some of the other design errors in the game that I was overlooking due to having such a great time with it, like the whole "let's have 4 different voxel systems in the same game!" thing which is pretty much copy/paste right out of the Space Engineers design for no apparent reason.

Maybe they'll turn it around later and I'll certainly check back later. For this release anyways, I've totally lost interest and will assume that any apparent brilliance on display in the previous release was purely coincidental :)

[Gilberreke]

Maybe they'll turn it around later and I'll certainly check back later. For this release anyways, I've totally lost interest and will assume that any apparent brilliance on display in the previous release was purely coincidental :)

I made the same observations, but you just know I'm going to play the optimist to your pessimist :D

Repeatedly walking into the same object is a skill I honed for decades, I'm not about to give up now :)

[FlowerChild]

Repeatedly walking into the same object is a skill I honed for decades, I'm not about to give up now :)

Whereas seeing apparently brilliant intent in what turns out to be a random set of accidental design decisions is something I've done repeatedly over the years and has become something I try very carefully to avoid. On the bright side, every time I see one of those accidents, the results tend to get filed away in my design repertoire for later use :)

Like the tethering through oxygen thing: brilliant. Gating player progress in open world games is an inherently challenging problem because they are so, well...open. I thought the oxygen thing was a very organic and natural feeling solution to that problem which also incentivized player construction as it motivates you to build in order to move out further into your initial world, and ups the tension level significantly of the early game given it put almost every activity on a timer.

So, I saw brilliance in its inclusion, despite seeing a bunch of "meh" decisions elsewhere in the game. Now though, I suspect it was more along the lines of "hey...Space Engineers has oxygen, so we should too" ;)

[Gilberreke]

This is why some of my favorite games are really bad. A badly designed game tends to have a more interesting puzzle to solve (given that it's predictable). Honestly, lately I've been leaning towards games that weren't designed as much. I like games that design their game on a lower level, so the high level design is just entirely emergent.

I think Empyrion was off to a great start in that regard, but I think that will only result in disappointment down the road, as they start tackling the high concept, thereby destroying the core game-play, as we largely saw with Minecraft. Maybe some games shouldn't be designed, as much as they should be curated and gardened.

[kazerima]

Like the tethering through oxygen thing: brilliant. Gating player progress in open world games is an inherently challenging problem because they are so, well...open. I thought the oxygen thing was a very organic and natural feeling solution to that problem which also incentivized player construction as it motivates you to build in order to move out further into your initial world, and ups the tension level significantly of the early game given it put almost every activity on a timer.

Perhaps something to look forwards to when we can finally Go Home? :)