WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST IS NEGATIVE AS HELL. IT WILL LIKELY BECOME THE SINGLE MOST UNIVERSALLY HATED THING TO EVER BE POSTED HERE. I AM EFFECTIVELY COMMITTING FORUM SUICIDE BY POSTING IT.
While Blackeyez could certainly handle Himself in a more polite manner, I pretty much agree with Him. The only reason I'm not ranting like mad on the forums is that I'm tired of spending an hour+ hammering out some heavily detailed TL;DR, only to have the point completely missed by fellow players, and completely ignored by Dev and test personal. in the current state, I'd end up typing an article that would rival the flipping Magna Carta for size.
Instead, the time the I could have wasted here is spent on other video games. (Like Xenominer)
Updates take months.
The large time gap would make sense if the updates were bug-free and balanced, but waiting months for an update that makes the game worse is unacceptable.
"Dude! It's an alpha! You don't have to participate-" Nope. EVERYTHING'S an alpha/beta now. Seriously, go hit Steam. Developers are releasing everything as alpha/beta now. I don't want to play a half-finished game, but I can't find finished ones anymore. Well, AAA titles are the exception, but those are boring.
"Well, then just wait for the game to finish an-" Whoa, sparky, I'm gonna just interrupt You right there. There's no such thing as "Finished" anymore. Devs pride themselves on it. "Oh, well, the game is always going to be in development, so We can keep delivering new material to our players yaddyayaddayadda". Look up a game called "Cortex Command". It's been in "alpha" FOR ELEVEN YEARS. By the time a game hits a playable state, if ever, I'll be even fatter and older then I am now.
The updates deliver more bugs then fixes or content.
Really. an update that takes months to come out, has been "tested" by countless players thru dev builds, have had videos made about them, daily, and it's the same thing every time. An update comes out, and the forums erupt with reports of really, REALLY obvious bugs that should have been sqaushed in dev. Hot fixes are sporadic. Take the update that had the new hull bits. When that came out, all ore disappeared from the asteroids. It was reported, confirmed by testers.....
.....
....
....
Nothing. This should have had a hotfix within two weeks.
"Awww lardo! Be reasonable! It's just one or two guys working o-" Then get more personnel. Making video games is hard. Really, REALLY, hard. Which is why they are developed by teams. Even tech demos who's only purpose is to look cool and show off the maker's skill, are normally developed by groups. You want to have a viable product on the market, with money and praise to follow? Well, You're not going to get there alone. You want all the glory for Yourself? That's fine, I can dig it. But it also means You get ALL the criticism on Your shoulders as well.
The annoying part is that Schema wouldn't even have to hire anyone. Talents like to volunteer for this sort of thing all the time. All schema would have to do is hold a contest, or set up an application process, and hand pick the finest.
"But chunkybutt! Some dude posted an article about how adding extra people negatively effects the workflow o-" Nope. The "too many cooks in the kitchen spoils the sauce" reason doesn't work went the kitchen is obviously understaffed.
I know We have talented players out there. We have at least one musician, there's probably a few SFX guys out there, and there are a few coders who have already contacted Schema, hoping to help out in some way, or at least get some information on how the game's engine works so they can write efficient mods for it. Nothing. I would gladly offer My services as angry bitter fat old man. Video game developers need those, right?
Besides, We already have documented proof that miscommunications between what few testers there are and Schema have already happened. Evidently, that's how the shield power drain issues came about. So adding personnel mid-project couldn't possibly hurt.
The new weapon system only half-works, and is inherently flawed.
Small, low-power, rapid-fire weapons in arrays have been the bread and butter of fighter craft due to small size and ease of use. Now in Starmade, A bare cannon is pointless. It fires too slow, and pulls too hard on the powerplant. You NEED to add "support" blocks. Now the weapon in question is TWICE IT'S MASS PER INDIVIDUAL WEAPON, has about as much damage as a spitwad, cannot be tuned; requires nearly a 1:1 ratio of support blocks to function, and pulls on the powerplant so hard most fighter-scale spacecraft cannot function.
Shields, on the other hand, are scary-op. I had to intentionally leave empty spaces in My ships, spaces that I'd normally pack with Shield generators, out of fear of ending up in godmode. But, let's not fixate on small ships. This effects larger ships almost the same way. Sure, on a large vessel You have more room to mount blocks, but the power usage is horrid! How did this ever get past test?
"Well gee whiz fattie, the old system was a placeholder, You knew you'd have to update-" This isn't about having to update My ships. I expected that. The new system itself is bad on it's own concept and merit. It is not to much to ask that a 60-to-100 mass fighter be able to operate six small five-to-ten block cannons, with a secondary weapon onboard, like a set of ten-or-twenty-block d1000 missile systems.
Not now. No, now almost all mass has to be devoted to weapon support blocks and powerplant. In yesterday's refit tests, I was able to get some of My ships to sort of work with their primary weapons, but start to struggle with secondary weapons due to the massive power and physical space needs. Again, this scales up. With a larger ship I could fit almost everything, but there were severe power issues. Which means scaling up the ship in question not for more weapons or equipment, but just so you could cram a powerplant in there big enough to power the meager weapon system You had started with! Oh! but now your ship is bigger! So much bigger, that You now need a larger thrust system to move at Your old speeds..... Which uses more power. Oh, and by the way, now that cool cheap simple little starfighter You were working on is the size of a small corvette........ And still sort of sucks.
"Oh come on partysized! surely You just don't fully understand the new weapon system. Maybe You made a few mistakes?" Yup. I probably did. Which is another problem. If a guy who's rabidly obsessed with this game is having trouble reasoning out how to simply make a ship work, what about potential new players? Sure, starting out in a new game is a pain, but after a short bit of trying and failing, You figure it out, and go have fun. Then, in a few weeks time, You've gotten good enough at said game to go deeper. Now You're sitting there, obsessing over min-maxing a build, looking to make it the best it could be.
At least that's how it's supposed to be.
Now, that same amount of effort is needed, just to get something to work on the most basic level. Imagine what a brand new player is going to go through with this..........
And let's talk about them weapons. I already touched on AMCs. But how about those damage beams? Poop.
A weapon like this is considered "Hitscan". It has an instant travel time and hit, at the cost of doing very little damage in time, thus needing to be held in a certain spot in order to reliably cause harm to Your target.
Instead, the Starmade beam works like this: It still needs to be held in place, but it does no damage whatsoever until it's been on one spot long enough, then delivers it's damage in one dedicated hit...... So what's the point of using this over a cannon? Range? All weapons have the same max range. Projectile speed? All weapons currently travel fast as hell. Ease of use? Cannons are easier.
The only reason I can see for mounting beams.... Is so I can say IMMA FIRIN MAH LAZOR! and nothing more.
Missiles? Well, I'd like to give you a full opinion on them..... BUT THEY DON'T WORK. When fired, they take off like a bat outta hell, and ghost their way through any solid object. I can comment on their power usage.... HOLY SHIT. Again with the horrid power issues. What kind of missiles are these? Did I just break into CERN, swipe their stuff, and strap a couple of Large Hadron Colliders to the bottom of My plane?
And another thing..... Oh god.... OH GOD! I did it anyways! I said I wasn't going to blow hours typing a TL;DR, And I just blew hours typing a TL;DR!
Damn it Starmade! Not again! Glob help Me! -sobs-
