Where is the community?

[tomgie]

I mean, last year there were hundreds of people playing the game on servers. Then all of a sudden, everyone just kinda died. The highest server I have seen today is at 33 players. That is super low for me at least. Yet again that is one of 3 servers with that amount of players. The rest of them usually have 1-7 players on.

 

[nightrune]

The rough idea that has been talked about is that the game has mainly been build focused until only recently. The game play is starting to get fleshed out now and its awesome. I see tons of people talking about how different of a game it is now vs a year ago. Hopefully that's it. As the gameplay features start to get fleshed out it'll be a good idea to start building the community again.

I know I'm thinking about joining one of the larger servers now, but I play locally with 7 people now.

 

[Gamel]

For my server what i know is:

1.) This is not a online game, just can play online doesn't mean have to play online
2.) People are sad when they haven't online for few days, all things got push away or even destroy by others.
3.) Currently players of my server are only active in weekends, admin load ship to fight only,
During the rest of the week they are building ship in SP, to save time from mining and mining and mining....

 

[Keptick]

I mean, last year there were hundreds of people playing the game on servers. Then all of a sudden, everyone just kinda died. The highest server I have seen today is at 33 players. That is super low for me at least. Yet again that is one of 3 servers with that amount of players. The rest of them usually have 1-7 players on.

33 players is pretty good. A year ago you could see maybe 15, 30 tops (depending on the server you played on).

 

[Mariux]

33 players is pretty good. A year ago you could see maybe 15, 30 tops (depending on the server you played on).

Yeah, anything more than 25 players on will lag the server quite hard regardless of what hardware it uses because Stramade's multiplayer is not yet optimized for larger amounts of players logging in at once.

 

[PriZm]

not sure. For me there was some updates about 1/2 year ago, which sort of took the motivation to go on playing for some months. I decided to wait for some hotfixes and content updates. But, well, now with all the new stuff like rails, transporters, armor/ship hp, shipyards, cargo etc... there is just so much to do once again. I know from talking to other players that it was pretty similar for them. Also, there was some sort of player peak when the steam release happened. Lots of casual gamers appeared and disappeared again soon afterwards. A small percentage of them might have joined the core community, but also some of the old guys either left starmade or take a longer break

 

[jayman38]

I can't get any new players excited about StarMade. They keep returning back to RoboCraft for their build-and-fight fix. And generally people are lazy, so they aren't all that interested in spending a lot of timing building their own stuff. They generally want to be given something pretty easily and go with that. (This is one of the reasons why I think the spawn station will need a used-car-lot-type ship seller, to support more casual gamers. And also why we should be able to assemble large ships out of relatively huge parts, pre-made and available on Community Content by Master Builders.)

 

[Ithirahad]

Problem is, all those premades will get analyzed by us builders, and two days after they're released we'll know exactly how to kill them really really easily. :P

 

[Ender of Hope]

I mainly play creative mode now. For me there isn't much point of playing on someone else's server, investing time and effort into something that will get deleted if I go on vacation from the game for a few weeks.

For me the game has me more excited than ever. I constantly check for updates on the website at least once per day. I'm reading up on everyone's ideas. I've not been this interested in an early access game ever.

Honestly threads such as this one do little to encourage others to get active in the community. In fact it does the exact opposite for people who are wondering whether or not to get involved in the game. If you're really interested in encouraging involvement in the game you should create more positive threads such as : 'new gameplay improvements to increase user activity?' That way you're not implying the game is dead when it is actually the complete opposite.

 

[StormWing0]

Ender there is a reason most of us save our BPs to local when on servers so we don't lose them and can quickly rebuild what we've made.

 

[Colt556]

I've played starmade on and off for years now and I never leave my SP server. I get the urge to build, I tinker on my ship for a few weeks, and then I get bored and go do other things. Rinse and repeat. I'm sure a lot of people spend most of their time in SP as currently the only draw of starmade is to build, and it's easiest to build in SP.

Once there's more gameplay beyond just building I'm sure the online component will grow larger. I mean, I remember when Minecraft came out and it was pretty much the same thing. The majority of players played singleplayer. But as time went on and new content emerged, people played more online. Starmade will get to that point too.

 

[Batavium]

The missile nerf made a lot of people pack there bags and leave. Why? Because it wasn't a missile nerf it was an energy nerf. Rather then let missiles do less damage they made them use more energy to fire. So over night every blueprint ever made until then or still under construction could no longer do anything. And because placing energy grids and weapons is such a complex task retrofitting was not really an option. Months of work hundreds upon hundreds of hours were wiped out. And the worse thing of all we got mocked ridiculed and ha its alpha na na na nah. The game is way past final. You don't change the law of physics you just don't!

And this keeps happening. Cargo same thing a change across the board. Not just a nice gimmick for cargo ships no no. That would be way to simple. Lets change how ALL storage works because he it's alpha na na na nah. Yea we know you played this game utill now like this. But he we got vision we don't even have time to play this game! And we are telling you this is the new universe now boy.

This is a sandbox game. We all build our sand castles using the same sand yet not one is the same. Don't change the sand. KISS Keep it simple stupid.

Some sand by everyone for everyone.

 

[Groovrider]

Casual gamers do not have the staying power or the patience to deal with a game in this part of development. Change a few setting or mechanics in development and watch the QQ. Add that to the fact that you're game experience will depend greatly on the server you join and avoiding any power trippers.

 

[PizzaPress]

The missile nerf made a lot of people pack there bags and leave. Why? Because it wasn't a missile nerf it was an energy nerf. Rather then let missiles do less damage they made them use more energy to fire. So over night every blueprint ever made until then or still under construction could no longer do anything. And because placing energy grids and weapons is such a complex task retrofitting was not really an option. Months of work hundreds upon hundreds of hours were wiped out. And the worse thing of all we got mocked ridiculed and ha its alpha na na na nah. The game is way past final. You don't change the law of physics you just don't!

And this keeps happening. Cargo same thing a change across the board. Not just a nice gimmick for cargo ships no no. That would be way to simple. Lets change how ALL storage works because he it's alpha na na na nah. Yea we know you played this game utill now like this. But he we got vision we don't even have time to play this game! And we are telling you this is the new universe now boy.

This is a sandbox game. We all build our sand castles using the same sand yet not one is the same. Don't change the sand. KISS Keep it simple stupid.

Some sand by everyone for everyone.

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This is exactly why it's called alpha. If you don't have the time to rebuild, maybe you really should play something else and wait for the game to be more developed. I'm not trying to be patronizing, I'm just telling you that this game isn't quite smoothed out yet. And this game is far from a full release. If you play it, you're testing. It's not finished.

In the long run it's better to make the system overall better than to make an easier-to-adapt-to patch that worsens the game in the long run. Perhaps there should be a disclaimer that the game will change, because it will, and we've got a long ways to go.

Problem is, all those premades will get analyzed by us builders, and two days after they're released we'll know exactly how to kill them really really easily. :p

Problem

That's a problem?
:p

 

[StormWing0]

At least the devs let you know the change in question is coming. They could just as easily not tell us jack and totally ignore our very existence. Games like this use people like us as free testers for things that can't be tested in a normal dev environment and if they make a little money off it so they can keep making a good game why not.

Me I'm just riding these waves and not caring since I like programming things myself, that said it also means I'm one of those people that can go from nice to outright mean when the devs seem to have failed game design 101.

 

[GRHayes]

I mean, last year there were hundreds of people playing the game on servers. Then all of a sudden, everyone just kinda died. The highest server I have seen today is at 33 players. That is super low for me at least. Yet again that is one of 3 servers with that amount of players. The rest of them usually have 1-7 players on.

In honesty I would suspect most moved on.
If you just look at the fact there are multiple other games available you can build ships in there is fairly good competition.
If you are looking for a playable single player game some of them are more polished than this game is.
You have space engineer, Rodina, interstellar RIFT and others.

In truth sticking with this game means you are pretty much the tester and you have to deal with the changes and right now there isn't a hell of a lot of game play. Most people are not going to sign on for that and stick with it when others offer the fun aspect of the game.
Granted it will come with this game as well in time but most people have both the attention span and patients of a gnat.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

I find that it's a good idea to try to stay ahead of the build releases by building modular ships that are designed to be upgraded and refitted. This is what you have to do if you want to play a game that is prone to semi-frequent ship-breaking changes and not lose your mind in the process. Unfortunately, many people simply do not possess the patience and foresight needed to build smarter so they can avoid a painfully complicated rebuilding process.

:Edited for typo

 

[Ithirahad]

I find that it's a good idea to try to stay ahead of the build releases by building modular ships that are designed to be upgraded and refitted. This is what you have to do if you want to play a game that is prone to semi-frequent ship-breaking changes and not lose your mind in the process. Unfortunately, many people simply do not possess the patience and foresight needed to build smarter so they can avoid a painfully somplicated rebuilding process.

Not always possible; certainly not always practical.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Not always possible; certainly not always practical.

I respectfully disagree,

This is actually the basis of all my more recent builds and THE defining characteristic of my faction; the United Star Axis. With each new design I make, I have learned to anticipate potential weapon nerfs/breaks and logic glitches as well as block behavior changes. Here's a key example of what I'm talking about.

This is one of my first generation ships. Refitting it would be kind of a pain since it predates all the major updates and has its weapons arranged in the old multiple array method. Its only saving grace is the fact that it can already hold cargo.



This is one of my newer ships. It is specifically set up as a multifunction ship. It has weapons that are relatively easy to replace/reconfigure, 3 drop bays which can carry cargo fighters, power armor, torpedo launchers, salvagers, docked generators or just additional shield/power capacity. The big cannon on the bottom is removable and my turrets all follow a basic template so they fit without issue.



I'll admit; there is a lot of research, trial and error involved but you can learn to make nearly "future proof" designs if you're paying attention to where the game is going.

:Edited for a LOT of typos...

 

[PizzaPress]

Not always possible; certainly not always practical.

I think it was certainly a lot to ask before some of the recent tools. But if you have a decent amount of time to invest into the game(not everyone does), I think it's doable. You should wait a few days after a release first though, as the recent power change shows.