- Joined
- Jun 11, 2016
- Messages
- 1,170
- Reaction score
- 646
TLDR;
There is so many many small things, that are easy to implement, but attract new players booth young and old, so much easier, than any of the other planned features (like planets, universe tick, weapon overhaul, power changes, faction changes).
Introduction
After some time playing this game, I think I want to throw my cents in. Many players talk about the planets, or the power change. And that the weapons should be changed, and docked shields and stuff... So many suggestions. They all miss out one thing: Accessibility, and giving this "yes I like playing this game" feeling after one hour of playtime!
I think we need new players, and the biggest playerbase lies in young ones, that need approachability of the game, or older ones that need game depth, but first need to learn the game too.
From my experience, there are many new players, who join a server, and then try to understand a game by asking questions there.In the recent playtimes I had on servers, many new people joined. Often they come regularly for 2 weeks, and then they give up. We can do so much stuff for them, by making playing the game easier:
Actual suggestions:
-Ships from the start: Minicargo, Minisalvager, Miniscout (jump+scan), Minifighter, Mini-Fullstealther.
-Station from the start: factory+respawn point, cargo,turrets(pd and defense) - lets say we make 3 different styles that a new player allready has in its inventory: scavenger(with a home - feeling, looks friendly and warm), trader (industrial/futuristic), pirate (intimidating, black).
-Stuff to fight with the mini-figther: Small drones that scout around from the pirates, small non-faction drones that can be raided, small non-faction stations that actually have cargo to steal.
-The following Blueprint flags: has no systems, has only power, for new players.
-Stations that can be spawned via blueprints for newbies that are small but easy to use.
-An allready existing set of shipblueprints and turretblueprints, and the ability of the server owner, to edit a such a list of blueprints that are allways loaded to the server and are colorcoded or have a nice color-label(like "beginner-friendly"), so new players immediatelly recognise them as "hey that might be a good catch to use".
-Some tutorial stations, with example ships, and most importantly: examples for power, turrets, armor and shiphp, logic for rails and spinning of rails, logic for doors and maybe a flip flop example, factions, hotkeys for multiplayer usage...
-A server-side editable tutorial system: Displays text that doesn't vanish and it's chapters are loadable even if you skipped them the first time. Example server owner then can write "if you now go to the south of the station you can see some ships you can buy, press "u" to access the blueprints". Just some easier way to give the player guidance via text, instead of displays (really, setting up displays for a serious tutorial is a joke, so much fishy work).
-A client-side loadable tutorial system, so I can download some tutorials as part of the CC.
-Maybe make it as some kind of quest system (I know, that this point is a big coding thing so I would say its not the best suggestion).
Explanation:
For booth groups, young and old, count: they need to understand the game and whats going on.
Let me name some the things, that need to read or watch at least 10 minutes of tutorials first:
1 Powerrecharge
2 Turrets: rail setup and bobby AI understanding
3 Armor and ShipHP
4 Logic for Rails (oh and logic for hooking up doors via linking)
5 Logic for spinning of Rails (you need booth to understand any door in this game, so I say it can't really be skipped long term)
6 Advanced Build mode
7 Keys for: factions, chats, faction search and finding a player's homebase via pressing f1 and then typing the players faction into the faction list to diplay the hb-coords
8 Cargo Linking over rails
9 Weapons: Power and overflying Rules for linking
10 Factions: whats about the first station and homebase, mining bonus, permissions, ranks, permission modules and what they do if put next to a certain block.
11 shops, buying and selling there as good alternative to early factories
12 blueprints, the community content, blueprints on the server list and the hotkey for it (u)
13 factories and enhancers, all the complicated recipes
14 Servers, which one to play on, authentication
15 Your first station, where to put it and which hotkey, sun damage, decayed stations
16 Templates, where do I get them, where do I put them, why are they so great
----------
Logic for Sensors to Chests
Chain Drives
Weapons: Effects
Shields and Armor: Defensive effects and Weapon interaction
Docked Armor, Docked Thrust and self sufficiently powering turrets knowledge
Transporters
Warpgates: Linking
Black Holes
Galaxy Generation and What the traders and all that stuff do
Own Shops
Now for EACH of this things, we need to invest at least 10 minutes of time. The last points after the line are not needed to play the game, but all the others are highly needed to actually enjoy this game and understand half of whats going on. You seasoned players and devs might not notice it, but for a new player this is not just "a steep learning curve". This is a: Either you have fun in learning and not playing a very long time, or better play another game.
And yes, you might be able to play the game with like 3 or 4 of my points up there missing, but still it is a really big chunk that needs to be swallowed before we even can start playing the real game, and we can say: ok, I play now, I don't learn to play it anymore.
Even for adult players, the time thats needed to learn this game is very big. For a grown up, with work and stuff to do, this is an unacceptable ammount of time needed to learn the game, without any guidance. And for a younger player its maybe not even possible, because looking so much stuff up and still calling it fun for a young player...no.
The ammount of time needed, to learn only the most neccessary aspects of the game, can be high ofcourse, but only with enough guidance! And with this thread, I ask for this guidance for the 16 most neccessary aspects of the game, by offering us more abilities to take care of it.
Closure
I really doubt, that new planets or another power system, or any other gamechange or new gamemechanic, is the biggest thing this game should improve on. Yes, planets are great. Well they are allready in the making.
But this guidance for new players is nothing that I would take light hearthedly. We reached a line, where I would say, Starmade allready has many hours of content, but this content is not accessible. Me, and every other player, who dedicatedly played this game for longer than 3 months with reading many stuff in the forum, and watching countless (really really many many) youtube videos, know how to play Starmade and what it offers. But new players don't even know what's possible, and may know it only after playing it for like 20 hours. But even then they often miss so much stuff out.
This is really important. New players are the only thing that count in the end. And I think this will change the communities feeling about the game more drastically, than planets, power changes, or faction/universe generation. Have a nice day, and thank you for reading.
There is so many many small things, that are easy to implement, but attract new players booth young and old, so much easier, than any of the other planned features (like planets, universe tick, weapon overhaul, power changes, faction changes).
Introduction
After some time playing this game, I think I want to throw my cents in. Many players talk about the planets, or the power change. And that the weapons should be changed, and docked shields and stuff... So many suggestions. They all miss out one thing: Accessibility, and giving this "yes I like playing this game" feeling after one hour of playtime!
I think we need new players, and the biggest playerbase lies in young ones, that need approachability of the game, or older ones that need game depth, but first need to learn the game too.
From my experience, there are many new players, who join a server, and then try to understand a game by asking questions there.In the recent playtimes I had on servers, many new people joined. Often they come regularly for 2 weeks, and then they give up. We can do so much stuff for them, by making playing the game easier:
Actual suggestions:
-Ships from the start: Minicargo, Minisalvager, Miniscout (jump+scan), Minifighter, Mini-Fullstealther.
-Station from the start: factory+respawn point, cargo,turrets(pd and defense) - lets say we make 3 different styles that a new player allready has in its inventory: scavenger(with a home - feeling, looks friendly and warm), trader (industrial/futuristic), pirate (intimidating, black).
-Stuff to fight with the mini-figther: Small drones that scout around from the pirates, small non-faction drones that can be raided, small non-faction stations that actually have cargo to steal.
-The following Blueprint flags: has no systems, has only power, for new players.
-Stations that can be spawned via blueprints for newbies that are small but easy to use.
-An allready existing set of shipblueprints and turretblueprints, and the ability of the server owner, to edit a such a list of blueprints that are allways loaded to the server and are colorcoded or have a nice color-label(like "beginner-friendly"), so new players immediatelly recognise them as "hey that might be a good catch to use".
-Some tutorial stations, with example ships, and most importantly: examples for power, turrets, armor and shiphp, logic for rails and spinning of rails, logic for doors and maybe a flip flop example, factions, hotkeys for multiplayer usage...
-A server-side editable tutorial system: Displays text that doesn't vanish and it's chapters are loadable even if you skipped them the first time. Example server owner then can write "if you now go to the south of the station you can see some ships you can buy, press "u" to access the blueprints". Just some easier way to give the player guidance via text, instead of displays (really, setting up displays for a serious tutorial is a joke, so much fishy work).
-A client-side loadable tutorial system, so I can download some tutorials as part of the CC.
-Maybe make it as some kind of quest system (I know, that this point is a big coding thing so I would say its not the best suggestion).
Explanation:
For booth groups, young and old, count: they need to understand the game and whats going on.
Let me name some the things, that need to read or watch at least 10 minutes of tutorials first:
1 Powerrecharge
2 Turrets: rail setup and bobby AI understanding
3 Armor and ShipHP
4 Logic for Rails (oh and logic for hooking up doors via linking)
5 Logic for spinning of Rails (you need booth to understand any door in this game, so I say it can't really be skipped long term)
6 Advanced Build mode
7 Keys for: factions, chats, faction search and finding a player's homebase via pressing f1 and then typing the players faction into the faction list to diplay the hb-coords
8 Cargo Linking over rails
9 Weapons: Power and overflying Rules for linking
10 Factions: whats about the first station and homebase, mining bonus, permissions, ranks, permission modules and what they do if put next to a certain block.
11 shops, buying and selling there as good alternative to early factories
12 blueprints, the community content, blueprints on the server list and the hotkey for it (u)
13 factories and enhancers, all the complicated recipes
14 Servers, which one to play on, authentication
15 Your first station, where to put it and which hotkey, sun damage, decayed stations
16 Templates, where do I get them, where do I put them, why are they so great
----------
Logic for Sensors to Chests
Chain Drives
Weapons: Effects
Shields and Armor: Defensive effects and Weapon interaction
Docked Armor, Docked Thrust and self sufficiently powering turrets knowledge
Transporters
Warpgates: Linking
Black Holes
Galaxy Generation and What the traders and all that stuff do
Own Shops
Now for EACH of this things, we need to invest at least 10 minutes of time. The last points after the line are not needed to play the game, but all the others are highly needed to actually enjoy this game and understand half of whats going on. You seasoned players and devs might not notice it, but for a new player this is not just "a steep learning curve". This is a: Either you have fun in learning and not playing a very long time, or better play another game.
And yes, you might be able to play the game with like 3 or 4 of my points up there missing, but still it is a really big chunk that needs to be swallowed before we even can start playing the real game, and we can say: ok, I play now, I don't learn to play it anymore.
Even for adult players, the time thats needed to learn this game is very big. For a grown up, with work and stuff to do, this is an unacceptable ammount of time needed to learn the game, without any guidance. And for a younger player its maybe not even possible, because looking so much stuff up and still calling it fun for a young player...no.
The ammount of time needed, to learn only the most neccessary aspects of the game, can be high ofcourse, but only with enough guidance! And with this thread, I ask for this guidance for the 16 most neccessary aspects of the game, by offering us more abilities to take care of it.
Closure
I really doubt, that new planets or another power system, or any other gamechange or new gamemechanic, is the biggest thing this game should improve on. Yes, planets are great. Well they are allready in the making.
But this guidance for new players is nothing that I would take light hearthedly. We reached a line, where I would say, Starmade allready has many hours of content, but this content is not accessible. Me, and every other player, who dedicatedly played this game for longer than 3 months with reading many stuff in the forum, and watching countless (really really many many) youtube videos, know how to play Starmade and what it offers. But new players don't even know what's possible, and may know it only after playing it for like 20 hours. But even then they often miss so much stuff out.
This is really important. New players are the only thing that count in the end. And I think this will change the communities feeling about the game more drastically, than planets, power changes, or faction/universe generation. Have a nice day, and thank you for reading.
Last edited:
