Low-replayability
I have a concern about the colonization system, the almagest story, and game re-playability.
I can see myself possibly working on Colonization... once anyways. But after that... why? The game is basically just a giant pile of basically meaningless tasks. Build infrastructure for non-existent people.... why? Be creative. Why? Accomplishing the game means going from A to B to C, and just executing tasks.
I think it's fine if you want to include this kind of playthrough as an option for SE2 players who were never able to get into SE1. I think you'll get a player base bump, and some of those people might eventually move forward and play the game more deeply... which is where your real long term engagement will come from.
Many people who play SE1 do it because they can do as they like. They can play the game they want to play. That's where the re-playability comes in. If people can't mod, they add other peoples mods in, they experiment, mess around. Start again. Different mods. Different game. Create your own game.
It's not good when people are saying basic SE1 game features are missing in SE2, and they'll just wait for the community to FIX it with mods. To me, that means those people already see what you're developing as fundamentally broken.
I like this feedback
This is why I want more realistic systems. Inevitably, it gets added onto ad infinitum, new block that utilises this to do that, and so on. But just letting us interact with the world in lots of various ways, especially in multiplayer, adds so much depth that the developers don't need to directly add by hand; Having some pseudo-chemistry where you can mix together different types of liquids, gasses, and plasmas to create other forms of it, and giving properties to it and allowing it to be interacted with means the devs don't have to create a list of what can be done, but rather the players discover how to use it in ways the devs never even imagined.
This is also why I want aerodynamics; If you need to transport stuff, and you have limited fuel, you need to at least somewhat work towards being optimal and efficient in your fuel usage, at very least for your logistics transport stuff. It gives you things to work toward. Ideally, I would say, colonisation is only half of the problem. You can "colonise" the whole system, but to make getting around actually functional? You should have to set up infrastructure. You shouldn't have so much fuel that you can hop from one planet to the next to the next to the next and then go mine some asteroids and then to the next planet and then another planet and suddenly you realise you're low on fuel, and now need to make an emergency detour... Slapdash to the other end of the solar system, to the only place you bothered to set up refueling infrastructure. Nuclear energy is good, but it should be heavy, dangerous, and expensive. You should only have nuclear power on your most vital, important, long-haul ships, or for ships that act as mobile refuel/repair bays and the like. Hell, even in our real world, those ginormous cargo ships are diesel powered. It's just more cost-effective to go long distance that way, because you don't need to shield everything in lead first.
I also think that communication is important; Not as in me talking to you communication (Although that would be a great addon to what I'm suggesting), but radio waves, frequencies, communication. If I sent a drone, rover, or whatever else to the other side of the planet, I should either have to build a network of radio towers to transfer that signal (ever play Mars First Logistics?) or send a satellite up into orbit to deflect my uplink signal over to it. If we need to operate multiple drones, I may need to use logic gates or even code to resolve what chain of satellites to use to reach my rover or drone.
The issue is that all of these only delay the problem. There is no "end goal". That is not an issue for me, as I would have plenty of fun using the things I just suggested. However, I think lots of open-ended games, such as modded Minecraft, end up with this problem. I remember in Garry's Mod, there were a gamemode called "Spacebuild", which typically used a specially made map that was conducive to actually building rockets and everything. On each of these "planets" was various cool things to check out, you could plant a flag, or do whatever. But some of these maps had eastereggs. There'd be a cave that had an artifact hidden behind a rock, or maybe an ancient alien temple where you had to solve a maze and avoid traps before your oxygen ran out to grab another artifact. If you found and brought them all back to Earth, there was a secret fountain or pedestal or something that you could place them on, and it'd activate a portal to an easteregg room. I'm not saying this is the perfect "end goal" for the game, but look at how long eastereggs kept GTA 5 going, with the Mount Chilliad Conspiracy and everything. People enjoy scowering around and searching for things in large, open worlds. You could replace "alien artifact" with a rare material that's needed to make a special kind of engine or a supercomputer, or really anything. Games like Subnautica, while they contain an overarching story, involve lots of exploration. My very first time entering the underwater temple thing was awesome, and while I was invested in the story, I was also spending plenty of time just exploring that part of the map.
"Just executing tasks", as you put it, is not necessarily a bad thing. Many people enjoy games like Factorio or Satisfactory just for the purpose of building large production chains, although I will admit I never got into Factorio as much as I didn't feel like the end goal was actually all that fun. That said, there was the concept of eradicating bugs off of asteroids and planets and the like; Perhaps SE2 could take a page out of Factorio + Helldiver's book, and have a planet or two infested with alien bugs, and we can work on eradicating them? I can see it now, having to set up forts, research centers, and hardened bases to keep bugs at bay, figuring out how you can quantify the infestation of the planet, and working towards killing them all off. Some players may just nuke the entire planet, some might try to build automated culling defenses like roving drones or just gatling guns along a big wall around their bases and resource outposts, but it would provide a much larger goal. You think you need some help, and gather an army of friends who build tanks and orbital ships and... you see where I'm going.
In Elder Scrolls Online, I really like that you can unlock characters to plonk down in your bases. Since there aren't instanced areas in SE2 (thankfully, obviously), maybe being able to set up trading halls, working on increasing trade reputation with various factions, and getting emissaries to set up in your trade halls or outposts would cater to those who like that sort of thing? For instance, if you need to trade for a certain alloy from a faction of environmentalist pacifists, they may not be willing to trade you those alloys if you're using them to go attack the bugs...
Really, I think the only way you get long-long term "end goals" is by having multiplayer. Good, large multiplayer, not just 2-3 friends, but not even necessarily MMO. Typically, with MMOs, I see people form into little sects that they stick to and really refuse to interact with outside of that. Even games like Star Citizen, you don't really interact with random human beings that you pass by at an outpost, you just sort of pretend like eachother aren't there, as you're working toward such different goals. A game called "Eco" has the end goal of killing a giant asteroid headed for the planet, but is formulated in such a way that you can screw over the whole game intentionally for profit; It's supposed to be a moral teaching game, I think, but most people just use it to try out economics or whatever. Eco requires easily 20 people, but they don't all have to be constantly present for the game to actually progress. Unlike Minecraft, which has such a short-term lifecycle that a handful of players grinding the game can kill the end boss in an hour flat, if not quicker if using speedrun techniques, Eco can be running constantly, and you can always have stuff to do, things to work on... but you can never *finish* the game on your own. You MUST work with others. That proved bad for that game's longevity, because who has friends in this day and age right? But I think easily being able to set up online servers (so not having to use dedicated server hosts), having automatic mod downloading (so you don't have to share giant mod packs and players can instead just hit "join" and end up in game), and having dedicated systems for "community building" (like if I wanted to set up an apartment building for a dedicated server, how could I get new players to spawn here and use the resources I choose to share?) would all heavily lean into creating a server community, where in turn each of those players are working towards their own personal goals, where in turn they need larger or unique set ups, which creates unique constraints, which lends to you being able to choose from a very large array of goals you wish to pursue.
To me, this whole issue seems to boil down to the fact they say the game is "a sandbox", but even in sandbox games, you usually go in with some other goal. I've never opened up Minecraft for the sole reason of exploring a randomly generated world. The game needs to choose a true identity, rather than trying to do it all, but the issue is that it could do so many identities well... So which one should they choose?
This is why I want more realistic systems. Inevitably, it gets added onto ad infinitum, new block that utilises this to do that, and so on. But just letting us interact with the world in lots of various ways, especially in multiplayer, adds so much depth that the developers don't need to directly add by hand; Having some pseudo-chemistry where you can mix together different types of liquids, gasses, and plasmas to create other forms of it, and giving properties to it and allowing it to be interacted with means the devs don't have to create a list of what can be done, but rather the players discover how to use it in ways the devs never even imagined.
This is also why I want aerodynamics; If you need to transport stuff, and you have limited fuel, you need to at least somewhat work towards being optimal and efficient in your fuel usage, at very least for your logistics transport stuff. It gives you things to work toward. Ideally, I would say, colonisation is only half of the problem. You can "colonise" the whole system, but to make getting around actually functional? You should have to set up infrastructure. You shouldn't have so much fuel that you can hop from one planet to the next to the next to the next and then go mine some asteroids and then to the next planet and then another planet and suddenly you realise you're low on fuel, and now need to make an emergency detour... Slapdash to the other end of the solar system, to the only place you bothered to set up refueling infrastructure. Nuclear energy is good, but it should be heavy, dangerous, and expensive. You should only have nuclear power on your most vital, important, long-haul ships, or for ships that act as mobile refuel/repair bays and the like. Hell, even in our real world, those ginormous cargo ships are diesel powered. It's just more cost-effective to go long distance that way, because you don't need to shield everything in lead first.
I also think that communication is important; Not as in me talking to you communication (Although that would be a great addon to what I'm suggesting), but radio waves, frequencies, communication. If I sent a drone, rover, or whatever else to the other side of the planet, I should either have to build a network of radio towers to transfer that signal (ever play Mars First Logistics?) or send a satellite up into orbit to deflect my uplink signal over to it. If we need to operate multiple drones, I may need to use logic gates or even code to resolve what chain of satellites to use to reach my rover or drone.
The issue is that all of these only delay the problem. There is no "end goal". That is not an issue for me, as I would have plenty of fun using the things I just suggested. However, I think lots of open-ended games, such as modded Minecraft, end up with this problem. I remember in Garry's Mod, there were a gamemode called "Spacebuild", which typically used a specially made map that was conducive to actually building rockets and everything. On each of these "planets" was various cool things to check out, you could plant a flag, or do whatever. But some of these maps had eastereggs. There'd be a cave that had an artifact hidden behind a rock, or maybe an ancient alien temple where you had to solve a maze and avoid traps before your oxygen ran out to grab another artifact. If you found and brought them all back to Earth, there was a secret fountain or pedestal or something that you could place them on, and it'd activate a portal to an easteregg room. I'm not saying this is the perfect "end goal" for the game, but look at how long eastereggs kept GTA 5 going, with the Mount Chilliad Conspiracy and everything. People enjoy scowering around and searching for things in large, open worlds. You could replace "alien artifact" with a rare material that's needed to make a special kind of engine or a supercomputer, or really anything. Games like Subnautica, while they contain an overarching story, involve lots of exploration. My very first time entering the underwater temple thing was awesome, and while I was invested in the story, I was also spending plenty of time just exploring that part of the map.
"Just executing tasks", as you put it, is not necessarily a bad thing. Many people enjoy games like Factorio or Satisfactory just for the purpose of building large production chains, although I will admit I never got into Factorio as much as I didn't feel like the end goal was actually all that fun. That said, there was the concept of eradicating bugs off of asteroids and planets and the like; Perhaps SE2 could take a page out of Factorio + Helldiver's book, and have a planet or two infested with alien bugs, and we can work on eradicating them? I can see it now, having to set up forts, research centers, and hardened bases to keep bugs at bay, figuring out how you can quantify the infestation of the planet, and working towards killing them all off. Some players may just nuke the entire planet, some might try to build automated culling defenses like roving drones or just gatling guns along a big wall around their bases and resource outposts, but it would provide a much larger goal. You think you need some help, and gather an army of friends who build tanks and orbital ships and... you see where I'm going.
In Elder Scrolls Online, I really like that you can unlock characters to plonk down in your bases. Since there aren't instanced areas in SE2 (thankfully, obviously), maybe being able to set up trading halls, working on increasing trade reputation with various factions, and getting emissaries to set up in your trade halls or outposts would cater to those who like that sort of thing? For instance, if you need to trade for a certain alloy from a faction of environmentalist pacifists, they may not be willing to trade you those alloys if you're using them to go attack the bugs...
Really, I think the only way you get long-long term "end goals" is by having multiplayer. Good, large multiplayer, not just 2-3 friends, but not even necessarily MMO. Typically, with MMOs, I see people form into little sects that they stick to and really refuse to interact with outside of that. Even games like Star Citizen, you don't really interact with random human beings that you pass by at an outpost, you just sort of pretend like eachother aren't there, as you're working toward such different goals. A game called "Eco" has the end goal of killing a giant asteroid headed for the planet, but is formulated in such a way that you can screw over the whole game intentionally for profit; It's supposed to be a moral teaching game, I think, but most people just use it to try out economics or whatever. Eco requires easily 20 people, but they don't all have to be constantly present for the game to actually progress. Unlike Minecraft, which has such a short-term lifecycle that a handful of players grinding the game can kill the end boss in an hour flat, if not quicker if using speedrun techniques, Eco can be running constantly, and you can always have stuff to do, things to work on... but you can never *finish* the game on your own. You MUST work with others. That proved bad for that game's longevity, because who has friends in this day and age right? But I think easily being able to set up online servers (so not having to use dedicated server hosts), having automatic mod downloading (so you don't have to share giant mod packs and players can instead just hit "join" and end up in game), and having dedicated systems for "community building" (like if I wanted to set up an apartment building for a dedicated server, how could I get new players to spawn here and use the resources I choose to share?) would all heavily lean into creating a server community, where in turn each of those players are working towards their own personal goals, where in turn they need larger or unique set ups, which creates unique constraints, which lends to you being able to choose from a very large array of goals you wish to pursue.
To me, this whole issue seems to boil down to the fact they say the game is "a sandbox", but even in sandbox games, you usually go in with some other goal. I've never opened up Minecraft for the sole reason of exploring a randomly generated world. The game needs to choose a true identity, rather than trying to do it all, but the issue is that it could do so many identities well... So which one should they choose?
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