I am at the point where every puzzle turns into tying around the area for 45 minutes looking for the last damn battery.
Been sitting at Ogni Mining base for the last hour trying to find one.
Some things you’re looking for have subtle environmental cues and others just don’t.
It is incredibly frustrating and just breaks the flow of the game.
External link →Hey guys, thanks for the feedback. Your opinions are very much validated in here, and we're keeping an eye on how players are enjoying (or in this case, not enjoying) the varying aspects of EVERSPACE 2.
Some quick clarity: EVERSPACE 2 very much puts emphasis on space combat, but we also utilize open world exploration as well. It seems there's a disconnect here, like the game is supposed to be either one or the other, and can't be both...
Exploration in the game is definitely meant to have the player intentionally look around the handcrafted environments, instead of just a follow-the-dots mission design. Still, there are points of interests around varying environments to aid in this, some more obvious than others.
100% completing core areas should require the player to take time into this endeavor; it should not be a one-and-done routine that takes mere seconds. However, it also shouldn't slam a player's head against the wall for hours on end either. I get why there is frustration coming out of some of these sequences, especially when part of a puzzle is found while other parts feel frustratingly missing. It's hard to find solutions to this without just giving the answer to the player, since the whole point is designed to have the player figure it out, so this is a difficult position for us to make any action on. Regardless, we're keeping an eye on this, and may tweak how some areas can be explored with a bit more brevity, but I can't guarantee anything at this time.
All in all, thanks for your feedback everyone! The early access period definitely helped move EVERSPACE 2 in a much better direction because of users who spoke up just like this. We truly do feel good about how exploring locations feel, but maybe it deserves another look.
The frustration is also compounded with the crappy UI. If you fly the ship that has the special ability of summoning drones to fight with you, your HUD now shows icons for your drones with is totally unnecessary, then also showing 30 icons for salvage you can pick up to repair your drones. Why????
To be fair, the drone salvage is almost completely hidden from view so long as all your drones are active and at full health. Regardless, your point is taken.
The problem is this feedback is nothing new. This has been brought up CONTINUALLY to Eric and Rockfish over the last 2-3 years probably just about every week on their streams and posted CONTINUALLY in forums throughout the same time span. And it just continually got shrugged off. It's not the time commitment that is the issue. Its that its NOT FUN and a huge momentum derailment of the game looking in every nook and cranny for the last part of the puzzle.
"If you don't like 'em, you don't have to do most of 'em! Goodness gravy!"
But they are such a big part of the game that if you dont do them, a huge chunk of the reward content goes away. Most importantly mainframe expansions. Something that important shouldn't be tied to something that mundane to do.
You're not wrong that the type of feedback isn't anything new, but the game has changed quite considerably over the years. Location secrets and challenges saw a world of adjustments across development because of this feedback. In fact, we doubled back on all secrets in our homestretch before launch, and made some tweaks and adjustments even then.
We received two types of feedback on this front, and we have had some rude, vocal users about this topic. We're not going to pretend that we can please everyone, nor that we can make every single secret super fun, engaging, and unique. But we're going to do our best, utilizing the feedback from our playerbase to get things to a better place.
Regarding the reward content: I can see your reasoning, and this was also something we adjusted over time because of feedback as well. We iterated on the attributes and how the Mainframe Expansions adjusted them accordingly. Our goal was to make little boosts to the player for more agency over their builds, rather than make them a necessity to progress through the game.
Are the location challenges and secrets perfect? No, they aren't, but because of feedback like this, we have been able to make a lot of them better. I do feel it is perfectly acceptable to not do something in a game because you don't enjoy it, but I also hope you see a statement like "don't do it if you don't like it" is not being used as an excuse for us to avoid community feedback.
At the end of the day the question remains: why did the puzzles have to make up such a large part of the content when you knew from feedback going on years that it was a lot of player's least favorite thing to do in the game? That's where I get confused. Did it just become "too big to fail" , you guys were at a point of no return with it and it had to be the volume/quantity it is?
You want to appeal to players who enjoy looter shooters and games like Diablo,etc, but in hardly any of those games do you get met with the absolute emergency brake on the gameplay loop because youre busy looking for one last key or part of a puzzle in order to finish something up.
Some clarity: You're speaking on the topic still as though years of feedback were provided while we ignored it, so let's be very clear on this front: Early access was about 2 years total. We had multiple large updates that added or wildly changed core aspects of the game, because of further implementation of our core vision as well as the feedback to aid its development. We aimed to make a lot of handcrafted environments - landing at a little over 100 - and utilized a lot of healthy level design to help guide players from one point of interest to another. The expectation from the get-go isn't that players will do everything, but rather be pleasantly surprised when they stumble upon a secret that rewards them across an expansive game.
An observation: It sounds like you expect the game to be Diablo-only, but in space. This was never our aim, nor ever preached from us. Yes, there are aspects of Diablo, and Destiny - which we have stated - but there are also more aspects of Freelancer, Descent, Wing Commander, Privateer, and other classic space games. This isn't a one-trick pony that solely focuses on looting and shooting, but rather focuses first on a narrative driven open world RPG across space, that utilizes looter shooter mechanics.
With the open world being a core focal point - as well as being in the bounds of a space game - we wanted to ensure there were things to do in each area for players to encounter and interact with. I suppose we could have simply left out all the puzzles, but I have a feeling there would be a lot of threads saying "man there's nothing to do in all these places, what's the point, it's so empty!" and the like.
At the end of the day, it was a development decision to ensure we were meeting the criteria for our vision. Early access was done to assist in that, and we are very thankful for the feedback we've received to get us there, including on the exploration thereof. It sounds like you don't like the direction we took, okay. But this is the direction we took. Furthermore, we're still receiving feedback on the direction we took, including what-not-to-dos as we add more content to the game in free updates and in the premium DLC next year.
I'm speaking on the topic from being a day 1 supporter of the game (and the first game) waaay back in Kickstarter and playing every released iteration of it, throughout all the time it was available to us in Early Access and even that really early Alpha build. I know what the game is. I don't expect it to be only a "Diablo in space" game, I expected it to be a looter shooter with aspects of Diablo and games similiar in it. Which it is.
But I think there needs to be some brutal honesty here. No one is playing this for the story, they're playing it for the action and outfitting their ships as they want and how they want to play the game. The puzzles get in the way of that. It doesn't enhance the main gameplay loop. That's the problem. And with it being as big a part of the game, there's a reason why there's continually criticism on it. Because in every iteration, from Early Access through all the changes to the 1.0 release.....the puzzles still get in the way. They're still the least favorite things for most players to do. Most of them are just not fun to do, especially when you're talking 20- 40 hours into the game. They just become mind numbing.
I'm asking is there a point where you guys just...couldn't pivot away from making them as big a part of the game? Or couldn't come up with more than a few different puzzle mechanics that just constantly get used over and over again?
First, thanks for your support and being a part of this journey. While I personally don't play the game for the story, I think it's important to recognize your opinions don't represent the entire playerbase, especially since statistically we have seen a lot of players both play for and enjoy the story (and the puzzles thereof to see all the sites), and still more players do enjoy breaking up the pacing when they decide to instead of feeling like they can only do one thing. Claiming the entire playerbase views this topic exactly the same as you, is actually a disservice from your own opinions. It discredits them with falsehoods, and I'd much rather validate your opinions here so we can have a discussion on how your experience was shaped and your needs met (or not met). Yes, there are users who don't like the puzzles, but even calling this the majority simply isn't true. It doesn't make your opinions less valid, but it does mean there needs to be careful thought as to what our team needs to do to move forward. A large part of our playerbase are space game enthusiasts, and exploration is at the forefront of space games.
Alright, so to directly answer the question "is there a point where Rockfish just couldn't pivot away from make puzzles as a big part of the game." That implies we were trying to pivot away from them, which we weren't. We wanted each handcrafted location to contain intentionally placed secrets to find. We don't want our open world, to be empty. We wanted to ensure something was available to explore in every location, else there was little reason to handcraft them at all.
Because you were with us from the beginning, there were a lot of instances I'm sure you can recall where we took the feedback surrounding combat, and amplified it to contrast the exploration. We did see the desire for people to get more into the fray and blowing things up, since it's something we designated as one of the core foundations to the game - much like exploration is. As far back as the prototype, the interdiction mechanic was impeding this process. It wasn't the right type of separation from combat, but rather an annoyance that the player couldn't choose. Based on this feedback, we removed it. We saw the desire to engage with more enemies at once, so we incorporated more combat-style events (keep in mind we wanted events to be separate from combat but changed this because of the community desire). We upped the ante and added combat-focused jobs, too. We even developed and implemented High Risk Areas that players could pursue if they wanted, which are entirely combat-focused with unique mutator challenges. These elements were pushed due to community desire for more combat.
On the side of exploration, we revisited and removed secrets from certain areas for being too annoying or troublesome, based on feedback. There were a wide range of suggestions for puzzles, and we added a few of those that were relevant to the environments made. We moved some challenges to be more easily findable, and added points of interest to aid in this regard. All of this, again, through player feedback. You'd had to have seen these results - especially in contrast to the very beginning - as some were rather wild adjustments. I must admit I feel like I keep repeating this over and over again, but I'm hopeful you truly see how intentional we pushed these directions because of feedback.
All of these inclusions were to provide more opportunities for the player to choose, never forcing. We've always been about creating more opportunities, and avoiding tedium or monotony. It would be great to have even more time to develop more challenges across these locations to have more incentives for both combat and exploration, but this is a very big ask in leu of our position. We are very pleased with what we created because of the community feedback through this process.
Your feedback is validated: You don't like puzzles, you feel like you have to do them, you'd rather blow stuff up. Okay. We heard you, and we've been designing the game with this in mind. Even still, we've cleaned up how these exploration challenges work and pushed more combat-focused situations. Can more be done? Absolutely! And we will, especially moving into new territory for the future of EVERSPACE 2. We'll see what else we can do to help make certain puzzles more fulfilling and less tedious.
The problem with puzzles in this game is that they have very little to do with reasoning or logic. Instead they are about randomly stumbling upon solutions.
Obviously I'm not an idiot and I can tell that a battery socket requires a battery, but finding the battery has nothing to do with my deduction, pattern recognition or problem solving skills. There were no clues pointing to the location puzzle piece, no environmental narrative. One just finds it after searching long enough. It's not rewarding. There's no eureka moment. The one type of puzzle that works is the ancient lens one, specifically because it is supported by reasoning, environmental clues and level design in general. It's not particularly challenging but that's not the point. This is an actual problem to solve rather than finding a needle in a haystack like others have aptly described.
From what you are saying, it looks like this is meant to incentivize looking at your objectively beautiful handcrafted levels, but this is like expecting me to enjoy looking at furniture while I'm trying to find my damn keys. There is going to be very little appreciation for your level design when there is this much frustration in the process of exploration. At the very least, your hard work is overshadowed.
Unlike the other commenter I've only followed the game for a year and a half, and not continuously. However, I can certainly see the disconnect between puzzles and the rest of the game. I'd even add that there's a disconnect between them and player expectations when picking up the game. They may be a welcome addition for some, but not an expected one.
For my part, I think the game was too often slowed by these puzzles. Like they were getting in the way of the better side of the game. You kept saying that they can be ignored, but i would argue that a well intentioned player would struggle to. When so much of the game is puzzles, ignoring them feels like leaving half a meal in the plate at a restaurant. The player is constantly encountering them. An empty energy sphere socket here, a power core there, a location challenge on the HUD. These are pressuring the player, making them think they're leaving important things behind, even if we disregard the rewards these give.
If i had to guess, I'd say my playtime was only 25% dogfighting. I feel like the game kept pulling me away from what I wanted to do, from what I bought the game for. That 25% is glorious, but I genuinely expected the game to be more about it than finding batteries. Perhaps my expectations were misplaced. You should obviously make the game you want to make. However I believe the confusion and feedback warranted. Some know you from everspace 1, a dogfighting game, and expect the second installment to be similar. The steam page shows high speed combat. People share videos of their battles. I don't think it's out there to say that players expect to spend their time doing that instead of trying to find mcguffins for tens of hours. If my thinking is correct, i can't help but think resources and time could have been spent better.
I don't want to end this post on a bad note, I want to insist that you've made a fantastic game. I love it. There's just a large part of it that could be better... or just not there at all.
Thank you for taking the time to put together this post and sharing your frustration here. I'm sorry you're frustrated by the latest rendition of the game and how these exploration challenges have come together. Much like others here, I think there may have been a little bit of a misalignment with expectations, but I see healthy points from what was to be expected. While I can't say there's a focus on this right now (since we're working on priority hotfix elements that truly damage or hinder gameplay), I can say there have been some discussions internally on managing these specific expectations via updates or adjustments in the future.
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