CraftAU shutting down.

[RabidBat]

I'm sad to announce the CraftAU server is being shutdown on the 22nd of April and just wanted to give people a heads up. Doing so as a long time player and am not in any official capacity or a representive of CraftAU.

This is the last and one of the longest running Australian server for the game that currently exists to my knowledge.
So if you play there it might be an idea to get on ASAP and make sure you've backed up your stuff to offline blueprints.

Info given here:
Important - End Of An Era

But here's a quote of the post by one of the sites senior staff members anyway:

After much discussion and deliberation, we've arrived at a difficult decision. The time has come to shut down the StarMade server.

This decision has been made in part due to the lack of fresh features, as well as the persistence of game-breaking bugs and a significant drop in players.

We are exploring other options as a replacement for StarMade, however no final decision has been reached at this time.

The final date for play will be the 22nd April 2017, coinciding with the server down time/upgrades on the 23rd/24th April.

One of the world's most popular servers, consistently ranked 4th most months.
(Pretty good considering Australia’s small population )
It's slowly been dying due to the reasons stated by CraftAU staff, possibly along with other reasons related to the games bumpy and slow development.
Understandable that it is pointless hosting a game if nobody is playing it.

Sadly without a local English server to play on I am probably going to be putting the game in mothballs myself until I see some significant changes that warrant coming back to it.
Even locally, the lag and network issues could be a challenge, so I couldn't handle playing on a foreign high ping server.

So RIP CraftAU StarMade, great community and I'd personally like to thank them for hosting the game for as long as they have with all the ups and downs the game has seen. I have made some great friends there and had countless hours of fun (and the occasional fight lol)

Here's hoping SM gets to where it needs to be sooner than later before more popular servers begin disappearing.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Well, the server owners summarized pretty much everything wrong with Starmade currently. schema

 

[DukeofRealms]

Well, the server owners summarized pretty much everything wrong with Starmade currently. schema

This decision has been made in part due to the lack of fresh features, as well as the persistence of game-breaking bugs and a significant drop in players.

• Lack of fresh features
• Persistence of game-breaking bugs
• Significant drop in players

We're well aware of these three points. We've been working on addressing "game-breaking" bugs in the last 30 days. In fact, we're heavily working with a number of servers to solve some of their larger issues.

You can see our news post about it last month: StarMade News - StarMade Dev Update: Spring Cleaning
Our first pre-release for our massive bugfixing round: StarMade News - StarMade Pre-Release 0.199.491

We're still focusing main development on bugfixing, we've had a lot of positive feedback from pre-release tests from users and servers.

In "feature" additions, we're currently working on planets, soundtrack, our second power proposal, planning/documenting for audio engine work and brainstorming a few cool new features for gameplay. Universe update planning might begin soon (probably going to be the largest update to StarMade yet), which will require a lot of documentation, we're aiming to have most new content that needs a universe reset in that update. It's a lot of work.

Additionally, we've changed (and still changing) how our release cycles and development goes. With additional focus on stability and reducing bug count. What this means is that releases might be slower to come to public, but be more stable and will likely increase development speed (due to the reasons mentioned in that news post).

 

[Shaker]

sorry DukeofRealms , but it sounds like the fleet update, so much promise, so little gameplay added.

We had a good run, 20 players on for a big chuck of our timeline, then the dreaded power talks came out and killed our community.

Reasons why CraftAU has decided to shutdown:

• lack of game direction, on top of the slow development cycle
• community disbanded on the power talks
• lack of reason for players to stay or group up

Bugs wise, fleets losing all their docked entities once they fly into a player loaded sector.

to put it bluntly, once you build your ship in the game, what can you do?

 

[AndyP]

I am not sure how 'the power talks killed the community'.
Many understood it 'as is' proposal, and there were only very few constructive comments in the whole thread.

Actually the 'power talk' is not over in the way you think.
We worked through the thread and all brought up concerns, suggestions and ideas several times and are adjusting and refining our ideas and view on it.
At some point we will then come up with another improved version of it,
when we are sure we weighted and identified all strong and weak points.
Ideally removing all weak points of suggestions we could implement and giving enough value to justify the drastic change.

And just to make sure and not re-run the whole discussion: We plan to make it an optional feature until all other related functions are mature enough.
So a change of the default power-system to the 'new' one, will most likely happen together with the (for later planned) universe overhaul.
There will most likely stay the option to switch to the old one for servers.
(Like the "buy by block" was optional for over a year until we altered the default setting for new worlds, and you can still switch back to "buy by credits" in the config.)

About the fleets losing their docked entities:
T2094 - Fleets losing docked entities
We fixed that already, as its a hard to track down bug, and not really easy to reproduce.
At least not on purpose in controlled environment.

However, we also just recently found another huge bottleneck on larger servers, and fixed it.
Beside fixing the /despawn_all command that seems to be broken on some servers by corrupted entities.
This allowed already one server to drastically increase their performance as it recently (the weeks after the news post) really went worse because they hit a performance limit in the database.
I am currently contacting servers here and there, where I hear players complaining about performance and try to look into the causes and identify the bottlenecks.

While this may not help, but I have to say:
Unfortunate timing,
the reasons mentioned for the shutdown are all known and being worked on or already fixed with the next release.
A ton of bugs has been fixed while working out the next steps in development, and giving us time to plan ahead, and only once, not many times and fix systems that were not 'good' in the first place.

However, if the decision about it, is not final, we can for sure find a way for the CraftAU staff to get in contact and look into possible problems.

- Andy

 

[splatthecat]

Being in the UK I have obviously never played on the CraftAU server but it is sad that they are planning on closing. If the bug fixing cycle is almost ended maybe a release should be imminent? Definitely get in touch with them and get them to postpone it for a month, even if you offer to pay their hosting fee?

The power discussion DID kill the game for many players despite your protestations. Many of the established YouTubers have cited this as the main reason as to why they are not playing so much or concentrating on other games.

I hope to see the CraftAU server in my list for a long time to come and genuinely hope that a solution can be found ASAP.

 

[JinM]

"This decision has been made in part due to the lack of fresh features, as well as the persistence of game-breaking bugs and a significant drop in players."I am sad to hear, that the majority of your people felt, that SM didn't offer enough anymore. As servers are expensive in booth time and money, I am not doubting that there was the need to make a final decission.

I wish you good luck in finding a sandbox game that fills your guys interest. To use easy words: You expect high quality, in a very underpopulated sector of gaming (scifi sandbox), that allready pulls away a considerable playerbase of under 18 year olds to Empyrion. This might be partly be blamable to the dev, but not entirely. And reading it, it sounds like you search all the mistakes at the devs.

You guys don't understand, that the need you have, namedly to build, play and fight with own unique build stuff in a sandbox, can't be satisfied by another game. I watch the market, and the others are not comparable, because they aim at other aspects (Emp: survival, Space Eng: physics). Why should I blame the dev, that I want something, that only a small percantage of overall players want? I think the biggest problem SM has, is not lacking features, but lacking approachability, so all the youngsters are willing to pay and play with it.

Comeon, look at the power system, you need one hour to put those lines into a small ship (it is a real pain to make power efficient in ships below 100m length). Ofcourse it needs to change. But it isnt so important overall. Another thing is, that pretty ships are really hard to build, and need a very advanced understanding of design.

There could be so much done server owner side, by supplying booth ship hulls (and there are thousand of such in the CC you just need to use the replace tool gut a ship, and maybe ask the author for permission) to fill with systems by new players, and tutorial stations to give a better entry to the game. There is a CC entry around that is named "hasty power rechargers". Thats the stuff new players need. Blueprints that open the game up.

I mean, I find tousand things to do besides building ships in Starmade. Modular stations, riddles in stations via logic and displays, minigames, factories...Just saying, that for 15 Euro I have more to do here, than I ever wanted to do in Minecraft.

The devs can only do their part in delivering their game. But we can do very much too. Often people forget this.

And to everyone who still likes to play Starmade: in the current state of the game, I highly recommend to play on a server with an active admin that can respawn your station and clean up your sector if there is a chunk error or undocking error. I am myself currently on Genxnova and it works for me very fine. On the other servers like brierie or systemhack I would ve perrished after having a chunk error, on Genx my entire game progression was restored within one day.

Don't play on servers with non active or stubborn admins.

Don't make a server if you are a non active admin or are unable to find co-admins that you can trust.

(this is not aimed at craft au, its aimed for the players who want to play this game and think brierie is a good place just because of players. player count alone is not all thats needed for having fun in SM)

 

[RabidBat]

AndyP
Hi mate, I was going to address a few of the issues players were having, the planned power balance being just one, in more detail as well as read yours, dukes and others posts properly. Alas it's now 2am here and I need to get to bed so I will do so tomorrow when I get home.
But from being one of the longest playing on craftau as well as former admin and someone who interacts with the majority of the community from players to staff, I have plenty of insight into a lot of what is concerning people right now.

I will say for now that I personally think StarMade has now entered make or break time and it is a moment where it's going to be important which direction SM goes from here on in.

Anyway time for bed, you all have a great day. ttyl

p.s, people may want to hold of on their judgments and opinions until they know the reasoning behind things in better detail. Hard to form an opinion without knowing all the details/facts and making assumptions helps nobody.

 

[Lecic]

About the fleets losing their docked entities:
T2094 - Fleets losing docked entities
We fixed that already, as its a hard to track down bug, and not really easy to reproduce.
At least not on purpose in controlled environment.

Uh, fixed where? It's definitely still happening in the current pre-release.

 

[AndyP]

Uh, fixed where? It's definitely still happening in the current pre-release.

The exact steps we used to reliably reproduce it, do not work any more.
We will look into it again.

- Andy

 

[Shaker]

We will look into it again.

From what ive heard, its just simply moving fleets from an unloaded sector into a loaded sector.
Grab some ship off the docks that has multiple turrets, send it 20 sectors away, admin jump to that sector before it gets there and it should work.

 

[Crusade]

It has been said time and time again that schine is not focusing in increasing their player base. They have made this clear in the past.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

It has been said time and time again that schine is not focusing in increasing their player base. They have made this clear in the past.

I wonder when will they. At some point they'll have to...

 

[Shaker]

schine is not focusing in increasing their player base.

Which is fine, but if no ones playing it why host a server for it? Its why we are shutting down.

 

[JinM]

To put it in other words: Everytime we open this url: Top servers by connected players
we see: hey there are players active at all time in Starmade. I wouldn't call this game "dead", because the statement: no one is playing it is just not true, even if I take an exageration in account and try to put it into the right context; I say, there are enough players for Starmade. Just not enough for all the servers out there.

What frustrates me a little bit, is, that players tend to join bullshit servers like Brierie or Systemhack, where the admins aren't dedicated for restoring lost progress due to game bugs, and enforcing server rules like no lag or bug inducing entities. And I hardly understand that. Some guys even once said, that Brierie fakes his users by having 10 bot players in there, lol. Well, yes, I know that finding mods and admins to do such stuff is difficult...but...I mean the zero online time of the mods and admins on the 2 strongest poppulated servers might easily be topped, or did I understand something wrong there?

(I am from europe, so I don't know if the servers are differently poppulated in another time of the day. - Oh and I don't take this french server into account, because it isn't open for international players, as the majority of stuff is written in french there.)

 

[Matt_Bradock]

To put it in other words: Everytime we open this url: Top servers by connected players
we see: hey there are players active at all time in Starmade. I wouldn't call this game "dead", because the statement: no one is playing it is just not true, even if I take an exageration in account and try to put it into the right context; I say, there are enough players for Starmade. Just not enough for all the servers out there.

What frustrates me a little bit, is, that players tend to join bullshit servers like Brierie or Systemhack, where the admins aren't dedicated for restoring lost progress due to game bugs, and enforcing server rules like no lag or bug inducing entities. And I hardly understand that. Some guys even once said, that Brierie fakes his users by having 10 bot players in there, lol. Well, yes, I know that finding mods and admins to do such stuff is difficult...but...I mean the zero online time of the mods and admins on the 2 strongest poppulated servers might easily be topped, or did I understand something wrong there?

(I am from europe, so I don't know if the servers are differently poppulated in another time of the day. - Oh and I don't take this french server into account, because it isn't open for international players, as the majority of stuff is written in french there.)

I have played on servers that had no lag reduction policies. It didn't end well.
I have played on a server with an enforced turret count limit and mass limit. It was the most stable I ever played on.

Facts are, while the game itself doesn't have a hard cap regarding ship size and docked entity count, the game's engine, and server/player hardware definitely has a softcap for that.

 

[Calhoun]

To be honest, your population was pretty much dead before the NPC update and the power proposal.

 

[JinM]

I have played on servers that had no lag reduction policies. It didn't end well.
I have played on a server with an enforced turret count limit and mass limit. It was the most stable I ever played on.

Facts are, while the game itself doesn't have a hard cap regarding ship size and docked entity count, the game's engine, and server/player hardware definitely has a softcap for that.

Which one was the server with the limitations you played on?

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Which one was the server with the limitations you played on?

It was the GenX Nova server, when I played it had a block limit of 1M and a turret count limit of 12

 

[Zackey_TNT]

I am not sure how 'the power talks killed the community'.

Andy, my dear friend, (and I mean that) the reason it made a lot of players leave is because it highlighted two main issues with starmade, quite painfully.


1st, schine listens to (and there's no better way to put this) a small, inexperienced, and highly inflamed portion of the community, one which does not represent actual issues and actual gameplay. This problem is mainly from everyone else being driven out of the forums by this group, and it's a horrible cycle which cannot be broken by anyone else but schine.


When the entire power issue was raised, basically everyone came out of the woodworks, people who have long since left the forums, to defend this mechanic, and this highlights how much feedback we are missing out on.


2nd, The stability of starmade was called into question. A mechanic which was fundamental to the game, to the existence of entire groups who study it, was suddenly, and without cause, formally put up for replacement (the very suggestion of this is what caused the most pain) The entire mechanic which was suggested to replace it was based on the feedback of the group I highlighted in the 1st problem.


Patch after patch we have lost critical areas of the game which was the driving factor for many in this community, the endless complexity of axis trees and generators, the shapes involved with their design, they were both called into question, and one of them was removed. This is the single biggest reason for starmade's loss of these players, schine failed to replace the mechanics we loved to study with something that matched the complexity and innovation of the previous mechanic. Generators themselves where entirely based on unintentional mechanics, and yet they provided the backbone behind thousands and thousands of ships made by this community.


Schine, when a mechanic in a game exists for more than a year, no matter how unintentional, it becomes impossible to replace it unless a vastly better solution is found. Too much time is invested into these mechanics for players to be able to just start all over again, and hiding behind the early access will seldom fix the shattered dreams of people who lost everything they worked towards for years. You cannot keep replacing parts of your game that make it unique just because a few players feel that it is old, uncomplicated, and undesirable. These should be clear signs that this player has failed to fully investigate the mechanic.


My suggestion to fix both problems is to revive the long-lost parts of this community, by first focusing on increasing the total population of starmade (something that any business would surely benefit from, after all, schine is a company) which will dilute the current population of the forums, provide more viewpoints, increase total player retention, and give schine the manpower it needs to improve and have a think tank, including the tester team. This increase of population will make it easier for old time players to come back, as the new players will provide new content, competition, and make those who ruin active debate less common. The first step towards this? Change the colour of the forums. It's that easy. This forum is not a happy place, its colours inspire darkness and night-time, it makes me feel like I’m in a dungeon, and this I feel is why many people get so worked up over things here.

This servers closure is just another example of this drop in active thought and in player participation in important issues. It is sad to see that this entirely preventable collapse of a valued part of this community was allowed, and I am truly sorry to everyone at CraftAU for your loss, you where a wonderful and productive part of the community.


A humble player,
-Zackey