SE2 makes me sad

Daniel Horstrand shared this feedback 20 days ago
Not Enough Votes

Good morning,

I’m going to try to explain my experience with SE2.

To me, the progression and the “soul” that SE1 had are gone. In SE2, you can access space content almost as soon as you start playing; it takes maybe 15 minutes to reach space and gain access to an almost endless amount of resources with barely any effort. That genuinely makes me sad because I believe (and I’m not speaking only for myself) that many—if not most—of us liked SE more for the engineering than for the exploration. And don’t get me wrong: I do enjoy exploration, but I want to earn it through my own work.

What I loved was starting a survival game with literally nothing—just dropped alone on a planet—and then, with my own hands, finding a nice forest and turning it into a true massive mining base: a world-eating, industrial monster built step by step.

Space exploration isn’t a bad direction, but I have to say it: there are already many space exploration games out there, and some of them are incredibly good. What made Space Engineers feel unique was that if you wanted space exploration, you first had to do engineering—slowly, progressively—and exploration became a secondary reward. In SE2, exploration feels like the primary focus, while engineering has been pushed not into second place, but into third. It can feel almost unnecessary, which doesn’t make sense when the game still carries the same name.

I don’t want this to come across as pure criticism—if the developers wanted to make a game more focused on exploration, that’s totally valid. But along that path, it feels like the players who loved building huge drill rigs, carving out massive areas of terrain, and creating insane advanced engineering factories have been left behind.


Best regards, and have a great day. ()

Replies (8)

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Makes me sad too.

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+1 Me too...

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I'm hoping that this is just because it's in early access and they are working on the framework of the game still. They've included this as a very basic tutorial/example of what can be done. Once they get more features up and usable, they will add onto the campaign both in more sectors, but also in better balance of the existing campaign so that you don't end up in space so quickly. Based on the current campaign, by the time we get back to the original ship, we will have something 10x it's size without even trying.

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Bonjour,


Le jeu ai a sont prémisse, les rouages ​​du game play sont pour le moment très basique, il permet de le mettre à disposition des joueurs et de valider chaque étape de sa construction, je reste confiant dans l'engagement des développeurs à nous apporter une expérience de jeux à la hauteur de nos rêves. Il est trop tôt pour juger le fond du jeu.

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Yes. I hope "survival" mode is renamed to "Campaign" or "Story" mode, and the survival aspects of SE1 get integrated later.

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You somewhat nailed how I feel on the head. "Survival Mode," in my opinion, is actually the actual "Campaign Mode" that Keen has put a different label on, so the players can test it out for them, without telling the player it's actually the main story.

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Probably with the intent to get feedback on it, which is OK for a game in Alpha. And this "campaign mode" needs some feedback.

Getting a bit off topic for a moment, the missions need to be far more focused on repairing the colony ship Napir and bringing the colonists safely to the planet. A first step could be collecting resources and bringing them to the Napir. Including a med kit or two for Ivan. Then do some repairs together with Ivan, which would be part of the FTUE and tutorial. If the player goes gallivanting off through the Almagest system at this point, he has made at least some effort to help and the mission instructions make sense.

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Im confident it wont be so, i will repeat myself, my first experience with SE1, was dropping on a barren ice planet and my pod tipped over, cant explain the joy when improvised a piston to settle it, and it took me a while. No script, no mission, just resolution, best experience ever.

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Yeah, what was the source of that joy you felt? You had a natural goal to work towards and successfully managed to achieve that goal.

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The space exploration, pirating, scavenging and similar should be equally viable playstyles in this sandbox game. You could easily start with a huge amount of credits on a space station, buy your first ship and make your way out from it. But you can also choose to slowly progress out of nothing, dropped on the surface of the planet, slowly gathering a couple of resources available on the surface and clearing small encounters like abandoned outposts, building your first production blocks, making suit modules (backpack and jetpack) and so on. Moreover, even if you own an empire but has been dropped somewhere with nothing, you will need to progress out of it the same slow way or find another way out of it (like asking a friend to rescue you).


This is literally how we start the campaign right now. We are land crashed on the Verdure and need to find our way back to our damaged colonization ship with some resources. TBF, the plot has a major flaw in it from the beginning, as why would you deliberately crash-land on the planet if you could just much more easily gather resources in space? I think this has to be fixed. The crash-landing in an escape pod should be scripted as not a deliberate choice but an emergency thing, and then you will need to slowly progress on the surface of Verdure to be able to get back to orbit again, all without an OP backpack, or at least requiring some rare resources to craft or repair it. Being able to immediately mine resources and craft components inside your starter backpack is taking away a lot of early game progression IMO. Much better and interesting would be doing something to earn your first backpack, jetpack, and other capabilities to progress.

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Ah, but we have a problem. SE2 doesn't have a "campaign," yet. It has a "Survival Mode," that hands you everything you need to get onto the next stage, without you, personally, building the Grasshopper or the hydro-orbiter, or placing down the cornerstone of your own base that your contract eventually leads you to. Did you crash your first Grasshopper? Don't worry. There's another one at the next quest marker, so no need to build a replacement. Matter of fact, SE2 does not even teach you how to build anything, or even place a block. It just tells you to "do this," and "do that" with expectations that you already know what to do, and how to play the game. You, yourself, did not earn it. It was all given to you, by the Deus ex Machina, because the story - the Campaign - demanded you have it. You, the Player, had no choice in the matter, because following the Storyline was how you progressed, eventually unlocking all the blocks in the G-Menu. Yes, you could ignore the Story, but you could not progress and achieve the same results without following and doing what the Story wanted you to do. Heck, even the "Creative" and "World" - sans "Empty" - starts give you everything you need, ship and pre-established base included. They do not start you off in a drop pod, all alone, with just a survival kit and your backpack, like in SE1, and allow you to build up by your own effort.

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Yeah, I agree 100%.

But I can also see why they did it.

They needed to collect feedback about some key systems they’re currently working on. So forcing players to do contracts in order to unlock blocks was likely a deliberate decision — it helps them get that specific feedback faster.

I’m pretty sure super dampeners exist for a similar reason. They probably reduce the number of crash landings so players can progress through the contracts and tick more boxes. You might call that evil design 😄 but honestly I’m more concerned about the long-term survival systems than the temporary testing setup.

Right now the game simply isn’t ready to give us full survival freedom yet. A lot of core mechanics are still missing.

For example:

  • proper recycling
  • non-pure ores

either of those would naturally require ingots


In VS 2.2 we’ll also get the first trade mechanics. I’m honestly a bit skeptical that it will be anything very meaningful for survival yet, but it’s still an important step.

Then there’s simple balance issues too. The already mentioned super dampeners, and generally overpowered flying vehicles. That will probably stay for a while, at least until we get wheels and rovers properly implemented.

So yeah, the current game mode is definitely misleading right now.


If anything, I think the developers just need to communicate more clearly about what exactly they’re testing and why. That would probably reduce a lot of the negative feedback from players who expect these alpha releases to behave like a finished survival experience. 🚀

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Bonjour,

je ne vois pas les choses comme vous, je pense que pour le moment rien est finalisé, pas de survie, pas de mécanique de jeux, que quelques blocs et des réacteurs, le choix d'un gameplay complexe est utopique, pour le moment. Le jeu est en cours de conception et notre accès au jeu aide à déceler les bugs. Les sauves gardes actuelles vont être obsolètes et on va devoir tout recommencer, peu importe ce que l'on a fabriqué ou accumulé en ressource puisque l'on va devoir tout recommencer. Je suis convaincu qu'une fois le jeu finalisé, on pourra démarrer de rien avec des conditions météorologiques difficile, une faune hostile et des pnj agressif.

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