What are you referring to here? There have been plenty of personal attacks but I'd hazard to say that most of them weren't coming from me.
Man, really? I'm not going to comment in huge posts again. I'm just going to start addressing each point. Go reread your first post. It was you that threw the first stone.
You called the guy childish, and pretty much a liar.
Then you expect them to act like you are all goodie goodie?
Originally posted by Mirokata A prospective player wants to know what the ambience of Xsyon is? Just watch a video or a stream. Here is a really recent stream that accurately shows that ambience: (spoiler: she's running or dieing or being spawn camped for the entire 1 hr).
Man thanks for the video that was great. Shows just how bad it was for a new player.
Lucky, they did just update this after being told this for over a year. They now have starting areas that are easy (areas around the lake) where animals are non aggressive and dont hit as hard.
So this should be a good start for new players to not get so upset about dying non stop.
I've played both. I've also played crafting centric sandboxes, like SWG and ATITD in the past -- absolutely love 'em.
Shallow comparison:
Minecraft is a fun game. You start with nothing, build a few simple tools, set up your base, further your technology, and eventually just free-build fun stuff. The tech and buildings are usually meaningful -- a diamond pickaxe is MUCH better than a wooden pickaxe; a shelter is necessary; redstone circuits can be useful. There are options to bypass the actual progression and resource gathering game and play in creative-mode if all you feel like doing is building an epic structure. There are also options for online vs and coop play since the servers are highly customizble. It is a sandbox.
Xsyon is not a fun game. You start with nothing, and will spend hours and days to build a few simple tools and set up your base. You will be killed repeatadly by animals and zombies while you do this, since you have no way to defend yourself. Once you build walls, the architecture game is done, unless you want to spend hours and days gathering materials to build completely useless structures. Instead of exploring the world or digging mines for resources, you will be walking across terrain poorly-skinned to look like a junk pile and tapping your "Scavenge" button, then after a 10 second progress bar, you get a random item usually completely useless to you. Specific item gathering is even worse -- you walk to "grass" terrain, start the 10 second progress bar, and then you recieve one unit of grass. Players can work together to hunt hard monsters, but there is no incentives since high-end gear is only slightly better than low-end gear. Players can work together to build cool looking tribe areas, but they do nothing. Calling this is a sandbox would be silly.
In the above two paragraphs, I tried to draw some comparisons between the two games on actual mechanics, but it's really being too kind to Xsyon and doesnt speak to the actual experience of playing the game. This is like comparing apples and oranges.
In-depth Comparison
Minecraft is a well-thought out, well-coded, and well-maintained game. It appears to have been designed with gameplay in mind. Progression through the early systems, though simple, is fun and rewarding. Eventually you encounter the games more complex systems: farming, animals, redstone, pistons, etc., and you want to explore these because they're not only interesting, but useful.
Xsyon is poorly thought out, is coded terribly, and has been limping through development worse than any game I've ever seen. It appears to have been designed with a concept in mind, and gameplay is just the result of how they coded that concept. Character creation demands that you spend time out-of-game researching through third-party forum posts how the game works, since the stats you choose here will GREATLY affect how the game plays and what you can do in the game. That said, this is not an intelligent decision you're making here, you just have to create your character without gimping it (which is easy to do). Early game progression is the worst grind I've ever experienced. In short, it involves a lot of: death to wildlife while gathering, progress bars, and inventory managment, since you will be picking up random items and receiving hundreds of useless items while you grind crafting. There are no more complex systems in Xsyon.
Xsyon's individual systems are really bad, but when viewed as a whole, it's just nonsense. It looks and feels like hundreds of developers worked independantly, then just stitched it together. Keep in mind, this is an extremely small dev team working on Xsyon. It SHOULD be an extremely cohesive game for that reason, but it's not, it's the exact opposite.
Further problems
The problems with Xsyon's gameplay are HUGE, but the problems with Xsyon as a game, as a product, are far worse. In short, the lead developer is not capable of developing this game. He seems to develop completely blind, which turned out to be true since he proudly announced just recently that he has been playing his own game. He doesn't understand the complexities of his own game (ex. every creature is global, yet he is frustrated that he recieves "conflicting feedback" on the difficulty of creatures -- he doesn't understand that this is because new players and veterans are interacting with the same creatures, despite this being pointed out numerous times). His priorities are completely dependant on what he feels like doing, and not at all what is needed for the game -- he's just plain out-of-touch (Ex. A recent answer in his Q&A: "I'm sorry that we had to switch gears and focus on our website rather than the crafting update. It wasn't what we planned. This was highly recommended by the ad agency we're working with and it needs to be done." and "Regarding the number of players, the main problem right now is that we don't get enough exposure. Our coming advertisements should solve that"). Finally, he doesn't even realize he's doing a bad job (Ex. "We do our best. In my opinion the game is constantly improving. With each round of development we try to balance adding new features with improving current features and optimizing the client and server. Many small improvements go forgotten shortly after we release them, but the game is definitely far improved from a year ago in all respects").
Xsyon has some interesting core-concepts, but make no mistake about it, the game is an absolutely atrocity. Updates are not "patches", only more garbage to add to the existing uncohesive pile. If any game needs to be left to die, it is Xsyon.
This sadly should have been the end of the thread. Anyone thats played Xsyon will pretty much tell you the same with the exception of the developers and maybe a few die hard fans. Xsyon had some great ideas, but they were so badly done almost everyone following the game has moved on and forgotten about it. I actually assumed it shut down awhile back until I saw this thread in the news feed lol.
Comments
You called the guy childish, and pretty much a liar.
Then you expect them to act like you are all goodie goodie?
-MrDDT
Man thanks for the video that was great. Shows just how bad it was for a new player.
Lucky, they did just update this after being told this for over a year. They now have starting areas that are easy (areas around the lake) where animals are non aggressive and dont hit as hard.
So this should be a good start for new players to not get so upset about dying non stop.
-MrDDT
This sadly should have been the end of the thread. Anyone thats played Xsyon will pretty much tell you the same with the exception of the developers and maybe a few die hard fans. Xsyon had some great ideas, but they were so badly done almost everyone following the game has moved on and forgotten about it. I actually assumed it shut down awhile back until I saw this thread in the news feed lol.