Do not make this game die

[chetyre]

This game have been losing players over years and I have been here for 3 years
I remember the time when there was +30 players/servers with many servers

The game is now really hard to get in for new players, players active today are mostly old players
All the game have been made really too fancy the factory system isn't fun

Try to remind the first time you got in starmade!
When I started there was no rail, no anti missile, no effect, no jump drive, no need to use factories
and it was already hard for me to get in, and only using shields, docks and using game menu
Now to start actually playing here is what you need:

Today:
ship >> need all the blocks >> shipyard / factories >> hours of building >> farming >> building salvager >> know about factories to make one in the first place >> know about faction to have actual output
(basicly to get a decent ship you must know factories, farming, factions, building, even by knowning all tips in the game, starting on a server takes me hours / days, its not even possible to imagine for a new player)

Before:
ship >> money >> pirates / salvaging / selling / scraping

There is not much actions on server, players are too far, too afraid of loosing ships after hours of farming

Today I even listen to podcast or watch videos because the game requieres no attention AT ALL, nothing is happening, the game is silent, no sounds, no music,

Now ALL factions hide very far from spawn, this is stupid, last server I got in the 2 active factions where at 3500km from spawn roughly, this make non-sense
Most factions don't even talk in main chat, they are just ignoring other players, new players just leave after seeing no one, the old meta was much more friendly, without jump drive people were not going so far to build bases
(even if, again I love this updates)

The game really need a action mode, pvp battle thing with limited sectors, limited ship size
(and if you tell me it have one, you know this is not even an option today...)

I have nothing to gain by posting this message, I just don't want this game to die, it could be the best sandbox game,

 

[Borr]

I like new updates as a builder, so many possibilities, I can build complicated ships and contraptions, automate things using logic. This game is good for builders but not really for people who want some action, story, exploration. There is no content in this game for players who want to buy a ship, fly around, make some credits, spend them on something they like, new gear, upgrades, join some npc faction, make missions, quests, fight with opposite npc faction or pirates, be a pirate. This game is like, if you're not good builder, then you suck in this game.

 

[chetyre]

I like new updates as a builder, so many possibilities, I can build complicated ships and contraptions, automate things using logic. This game is good for builders but not really for people who want some action, story, exploration. There is no content in this game for players who want to buy a ship, fly around, make some credits, spend them on something they like, new gear, upgrades, join some npc faction, make missions, quests, fight with opposite npc faction or pirates, be a pirate. This game is like, if you're not good builder, then you suck in this game.

This is the problem, lot of people don't like building, before they just had to spawn a blueprint with some credits, now the game is only building because all the pvp content or things like that are stupid today
even builders left the game, guess why

 

[ZektorSK]

Not everyone likes to fight and die imiedatly in first sector.There are many PVP servers for you to play, and the game can be played without factories or other logic shit.It is only a player's opinion how will he play

 

[chetyre]

Not everyone likes to fight and die imiedatly in first sector.There are many PVP servers for you to play, and the game can be played without factories or other logic shit.It is only a player's opinion how will he play

1: no there is no active pvp server today
2: as explained no you must go into fancy stuff just to get a starter ship
3 explain why there was TONS more people on the old meta? instant pvp?, you still had choice to buid btw

 

[Madman198237]

Were there really tons? Or do you just remember something differently?


I've not been here for that long and I'm not into multiplayer, but most of your issues here are, at least from your presenting of them, the fault of the community and not the fault of Schine. Yes, we would all like some updates that make it more interesting to go exploring stations, flying through space, interacting with the environment. But if you want that now, well, join a good RP server. PVP's always slow, because NOBODY wants to lose their ship, so they don't risk them if they don't have to.

As far as fancy stuff goes, well, the logic of "One power block + one thruster = flight" is simple and can be taught quickly.
Perhaps you can recommend improvements to your favorite servers. Perhaps this can be implemented: Recognized by Council - Schine/Council-run Server and then recommended as a starting place for beginners. Perhaps an official-ish faction can set up at spawn in order to teach new players.

Maybe we, as a COMMUNITY, can interest people more by doing things, making the places on a forum to go for help even more obvious. Maybe even a "New Players" subforum where we, as a community, direct people to for a quick and simple introduction to basic mechanics. Then maybe another area in that part of the forum where advanced mechanics are discussed. Perhaps we can make recommendations for factions based on their preferences, recommendations for servers based on their desires.


TL;DR: we as the community can improve new players' experience, assuming that we are losing players that fast.

 

[Gamel]

there is no active pvp server today because flighting is kind of boring and imbalance
how to solve boring? More interesting system like rails and effects.
and imbalance can't be solved at the moment, because there are more systems coming
Which are planned long time ago to make the game complete and interesting.

Most of the planned system are in game already after all these updates.
now we only have a few more system to wait for, eg. AI, quest and survive.
But it will take time, because the plan have been slow down as planned.
So now will have half of the time fixing the old bugs.

So learning curve is not a reason for no active pvp server
The reason is because most player watch the streams.
They know this is an alpha game, and time is needed to finish the plan. For better gameplay.

There have no reason for anyone to be active on pvp server when fun yet to come

 

[chetyre]

Deny wont fix anything
the current gameplay is just not viable for many players, and you lose them,
yes before there was more players, I even remember the huge server list with different website to find them
servers were overloaded, even lead to crashing most of time, I was playing on 4 very active servers before, now you can't find a single server as active
more and more people leave,
can you also tell me there is new player? because there is no
[DOUBLEPOST=1460291410,1460291208][/DOUBLEPOST]oh now you say pvp is boring? thats ridiculous
why most of games today is about pvp,
why there was tons more people when it was pvp meta?
"More interesting system like rails and effects." you say that because you find it interresting, and you know most player don't care about this system, just like most minecraft player don't care about redstone, the game is currently only about that

 

[jontyfreack]

1: no there is no active pvp server today
2: as explained no you must go into fancy stuff just to get a starter ship
3 explain why there was TONS more people on the old meta? instant pvp?, you still had choice to buid btw

1: I would like to point out that EI is rather active and a PVP server.
2: most servers have starter ships in blueprints already filled out. and I don't think it is any more difficult, to a certain extent I think it is much better than simply spawning in with enough credits to spawn in a frigate, because ships actually take effort to make like they should. even in space engineers that I hate, you have to mine for every material and refine it to make a ship, however you can't survive in the game unless you already have all the factories and materials required to build. but is it difficult for a new player to start? yes and no, the materials are already there and it takes a bit of trail and error, but it takes a bit of trial and error.
now back to starmade, you have suit based factories that you can use to refine ores and scrap, and you can use the materials created to make a factory, that you can use to make anything else you will need to build.
3: it was called the yogswarm, and people left during the old meta because there was nothing to do apart from fly around with some credits that you would lose if you died, and soon you wouldn't be able to spawn any ships and you would have to leave the server because you can do anything.
the new meta if you lose it all, you can still do something.

old meta: if you had credits you could do stuff, but if you died you would lose credits and thus you wont be able to afford to spawn some ships, and because shops would often restock you could not sell to get credits. and if you ran out of credits you had nothing to do, because you could not do anything apart from using cubatoms to make stuff to try to sell to other players, who would instead shoot you in the face.

new meta: if you have knowledge that you need to make a factory and mine, you are set for life. and even if you lose everything, just start again with what you had to start with. it is that simple.

 

[Madman198237]

What am I denying?
Why, exactly, is it not viable?
There's still another website list of servers, with lots of servers.
You've clearly not really looked for a server. I don't play multiplayer yet, but I can find dozens of servers with people online.
Really? There's new accounts here, and I'm sure that if you looked somebody'd be a new player. I imagine, however, that most new players use SP to learn the game, or try to, so you wouldn't necessarily seem them.

If you think that I'm missing your points, then propose a mechanism for a solution, like I did.

 

[jontyfreack]

also if you ever hang out in the twitch streams, almost everyday we see a new person getting into the game

 

[chetyre]

ok you are telling me starmade is getting more and more active "almost everyday we see a new person getting into the game"
you are telling me if there is no pvp its because its boring
and you are telling me its easy to get in when you start on a server as a new player
and you are telling me if the game is boring because you have to farm much is "normal" because you have to work hard to get good ships

lol

I call that deny

 

[Dannage]

Having played for around 2 years now, I can confirm the only logic thing I've ever built in that time is one elevator, one set of hangar doors and a lights system, which basically made little perimeter beacons around the station flash. These were all on the one space station and I've never managed to put logic on anything else, because it fries my brain.

I think we can all agree that missions and quests needs to be done, but if you read the dev blogs, you will notice they are on the roadmap and will be implemented at some point, but the players are getting some toys first.

I personally don't try and join pvp servers because everyone else on this game seems to build massive super titans, and I tend to build precious little ships I fall in love with which then get butchered by npcs, let alone other players.

I do think though, that the rp/pve servers suffer from needing to give players freedom. I personally, wouldn't mind a much more restricted server, where you are a fixed species and the goal is not just to randomly survive and build big ships and stations, but to all join one faction, and fight an NPC enemy. Starlight came very close to this and the admin tried to make missions and team events, but it ended up with people just sticking to their own corner of the galaxy and building their ship, "just need to make it that little bit bigger", and the admin lost faith and left. This isn't a problem with the game, it's a problem with the people (players and admins, and you and me!)

I have started building a station, with the intent on releasing it to the community as a good start for an RP heavy PVE server, but I cannot see that anybody would want to play with a restricted backstory and being given 'missions' by the server admin. Yet without this, I cannot see what players can do other than build and fly around.

Perhaps your poll should read "who would join such a restrictive server"

 

[Gamel]

yes i am saying PVP is boring.
think about the thunder fighter tournament
it was fun in the first few month then become boring
when people only fly and shoot AMC to each other without fancy things.

And yes there are new players, I have 2-3 new player each week on my server/group.
But they ALL felt bored after building some small fighter and PVP for sometime
please note they don't have a deep learning curve, my server have a high start credit and an infinitely shop at 2,2,2

So what affect them is the old META.

What make them continue to play is the new META. They found the game interesting again
after watching some of our server's cool, fancy ship. Then they start to learn mining and rail slowly.
But now they prefer stay single play at the moment since the price is too high for losing a well build ship in server.
Only when there are PVP event hold by admin will attract them to PVP because admin is going to admin load the ship.

Why causing this? BECAUSE the battle mode is buggy at the moment.
And simple ship fight without the fancy things are boring.
With fancy thing is fun but pain in the ass to lose the ship.

 

[SkylordLuke]

why is this thread made in suggestions? :p

 

[Borr]

why is this thread made in suggestions? :p

because it is suggestion to not make this game die xD

 

[SkylordLuke]

because it is suggestion to not make this game die xD

I guess,but its more of a thread for general discussion.
I cant put a tag on this.. xD
DukeofRealms to the rescue! can we move this thread to general discussion?

 

[chetyre]

why is this thread made in suggestions? :p

I suggest changing the meta, or adding actual new gamemode

 

[Borr]

I do think though, that the rp/pve servers suffer from needing to give players freedom. I personally, wouldn't mind a much more restricted server, where you are a fixed species and the goal is not just to randomly survive and build big ships and stations, but to all join one faction, and fight an NPC enemy. Starlight came very close to this and the admin tried to make missions and team events, but it ended up with people just sticking to their own corner of the galaxy and building their ship, "just need to make it that little bit bigger", and the admin lost faith and left. This isn't a problem with the game, it's a problem with the people (players and admins, and you and me!)

Maybe if they get free ships from faction they join, or free ships every time they finish some quest, get higher in ranks, you know, join an army and get weapons, equipment, payment, resources, an they could retire with enough resources, credits, knowledge about the game, some nice ship, to establish something of their own, they would participate in it. But this have to be supported enough from the dev team, we need good tools to make it happen. I also tried to make something like this in the past, but we lost interest of keeping server alive.

 

[wanzer]

what if we divide users into classes?
builders, fighters .. and mby more

as a fighter your not allowed to build
but you are allowed to participate in matches
like world of warcraft battle ground or warthunder matches.

both sides having a resource limit per team and per user depending on what size you sign up
the fighters can then earn points to buy ships from the builders
the builders can then use these points to buy a temporary mining buffs or ... fill something in
builders however can not participate in battleground matches like the fighters do

when you enter as a new fighter you will be given a basic ship
so you can always sign up for a low weight fight

just an idea ^^