Plead to developers.

[The Judge]

If you were to add any RP content its basically No Man's Sky with Blocks.
You'd be better off focusing on the PvP features imo.

 

[Black_Sun]

Hey man thanks for stopping by. Just to make sure that nothing is taken the wrong way, nothing I wrote is meant in a bad way.

... I can't speak about everyone in Schine, but plenty of us read the forums and acknowledge what is being said. We talk about issues that are brought up, we work solutions out if needed, we adjust our own ideas where we can...

Perhaps you're not seeing as much posts from Schine within those threads as you would like, but that's probably because after all those years, it's more apparent to us that every reply from a Schine member gets twisted in such a way that it would be better to just not reply at all. Reading and not replying is also just the faster way of processing information too, the more time we spend on the forums, the less time is spend on making the actual game.

To go back on topic:
I read the author's post, and I read any of those that followed. I see from where people are coming and plenty of its a valid concern. I'm happy to report that any of those concerns are already known by us, and thus has influenced our current and future plans.

This is where the problem actually lies. You are making plans. A lot of plans. But in the past few years, all of these plans that you made public have mostly not been worked on. As an example lets take a look at the roadmap Bench wrote a few years ago. It is full of ideas and Planned features and nearly none of these planned features have actually been developed. This is also the reason why people critizise Schine for having nearly no actual progress in this game.

I am talking about these posts here:
StarMade Development Direction
StarMade Active Development Timeline

Notice that the second link is now about one year old and less than one quarter has actually been done in the Alpha development segment. If development goes on like this, we will exit Alpha in about four years. Also remember that this year has seen only minor changes in gameplay if any at all.

---

You probably didn't mean it like that, but whenever I see a comment like that, or someone writing in a condescending manner (which you didn't) it just... disappoints me. Little anger still arises after reading community posts for such a long time... yet there's always this feeling of disappointment where I just don't know what we're doing wrong or how people even see us (Are we gods? demons? corporate members that look to make a quick buck?). It brings up the question why I even bother replying at all as no matter what I seem to do, something 'bad' always follows.


PS: Every time you write "Schine", replace it with the Schine member you like the most and see if that sentence is still worth mentioning considering the time that person spent into the community, and making StarMade what it is now. We'll see it as targeted towards ourselves personally and we can simply just not read it if we don't like the attitude (you want people to read it, right?).

It is important that you do not take things personaly when developing software. Software development itself can get really complex and frustrating. It does not matter if critique is coming from the outside or within your team itself. If you get critique from the outside you need to take it as a team and not personally. Than work together to fix arrising issues. Schema probably can tell you whole stories about problems in Software development and how to handle them.

Usually one would critique certain teams inside your company. Given that there is only one actual devlopment team if any at all, criticizing your company would be the next thing to do. However critizising individuals on the other hand is not productive.

Also not reading critique from your community because you do not like the attitude of some people is neither going to help the development of this game and you as a team nor the community. Especially given that most develpment models are built around this topic and adjust to changes in development plans and critique from the outside. Taking a look at your Release cycles and reading between your lines shows that you are working with more modern development strategies.

Edit: With that beeing said, your approach in development and the game itself is not bad. It is just not reasonably good either. This is understandable though given that you are a team with only little experience in developing this game as pointed out by other people in this thread. This is somehting that we should have taken into account when buying this game as mentioned just a few messages ago, which I now completely agree with. There has been good progress in your way of development itself, just not in the game development.

 

[Snowtiger256]

In context to the spawn station you guys mentoned, that can be done in game already. It just needs to be built and spawned in by admin and configured correctly to work.

I remember when I first logged into Shattered Skies an instead of the same boring stick shop at 2 2 2 was met with a vast, incredibly cool island floating in space. I went like WHOA! and fell in love with the possibilites of the game. It was mostly decorative, but also very cool, and really made an impression on me.

Some other servers are trying to do the same at the moment, Brierie has a nice custom spawn station with some kind of a tutorial tour system. It is still under development, but it's still way better than the ever-present stick shop we get in every new game we start in the game.

I've also done something like this in my personal SP build world on a smaller scale, switching the stick shop in 2 2 2 with something a little more interesting. If I can do it with a few admin commands, then you can do the same. You can even change the default spawn sector if you'd like for your spawn station to be somewhere else than in 2 2 2.

If the devs are doing stuff like that for the universe update, it would be very cool indeed.

 

[kulbolen]

(Are we gods? demons? corporate members that look to make a quick buck?)

youre some dude working on a video game...

PS: Every time you write "Schine", replace it with the Schine member you like the most and see if that sentence is still worth mentioning considering the time that person spent into the community, and making StarMade what it is now.

what if its a general statement that applies to a company? lol

 

[happahappa]

Someone here said, that the gaim lacks content. I don't think, that's the issue at all. The starmade community is one hell of a content producing armada. I'm always amazed to see, what people come up with.

In regard to the development progress, I'm mostly frustrated about bugs relating to features I sort of began to expect as basic part of the game.
For instance shipyards. When I started playing starmade, I was totally excited about shipyards, but everyone said to me "don't use them, they are pure evil", and after a while I realized the issues, shipyards used to have back then and stopped using them. After a very long time, they solved those issues and I began to use shipyards a lot. In this version they aren't working any more for me.

Other things that frustrate me is, when BP's don't work as expected. Wireless connections are forgotten, display module content, ... . That you can't get your blocks back, if you started to fill out the wrong bp.

Or in built mode, when copy and paste is bugged for some blocks or in general.

Missiles in this version. Someone said in another post, and it was very funny, that missiles would go out 'where noone has gone before' :D. That describes it very well.

Fleet mechanics. Just watching your fleet steering right into your station doens't make me feel very good. And that seems to be the default behaviour since fleets got introduced. Or why do i have to enter the coordinates of the sector the fleet is already in, to issue a fleet command like 'protect this sector'.

It would also nice if the chat function could get a little bit enhanced. There isn't even a new line, if the window is too small. That can't be much work.

I completly understand that new bugs arise in the progress of development. I just wish, that the most basic elements of star made could get maybe quicker bugfixes, so they become more reliable and stable, and in some cases better usable, so I don't have to wait several months for shipyards to work again, or have to relink wireless for each bp i spawn, or my missile systems start working again and i can use fleets without causing pain for all my playmates on the server or just so that I'm not unterly frustrated by the way some features work.

 

[ZombieMouse]

In context to the spawn station you guys mentoned, that can be done in game already. It just needs to be built and spawned in by admin and configured correctly to work.

I remember when I first logged into Shattered Skies an instead of the same boring stick shop at 2 2 2 was met with a vast, incredibly cool island floating in space. I went like WHOA! and fell in love with the possibilites of the game. It was mostly decorative, but also very cool, and really made an impression on me.

I had a similar experience on Sun-World. There were numerous custom stations in the spawn system, plus giant warp gates and things like that the admins have placed around the universe. Plus they had custom NPC factions before the NPC update. How alive a universe feels is more up to how much the admins are willing to put into that.

 

[Blodge]

How alive a universe feels is more up to how much the admins are willing to put into that.

I'd have to disagree. If StarMade were purely Sandbox PvP multiplayer then maybe, but it's not. It's also trying to be a PvE RP game too. In which case, it's up to the Devs to provide features for Admins to populate said Sandbox PvP PvE RP multiplayer universe with.

Minecraft would not feel half as much "alive" if it had no Villagers, Animals, Self-replicating plants, Ruined buildings or God-damn Creepers.


PS: I hope the above list of game genre types helps people realise how ambitious a project StarMade actually is.

 

[kulbolen]

minecraft doesnt really feel alive to me either. maybe im spoiled by older gen games but procedural stuff always feels ...bland to me. all of it. but thats not why i play starmade. and admins putting work into their custom universes can make it feel more alive. probably because its unique content and not just more procedural shit.

 

[Gasboy]

If the other voxel space-based games are better then Starmade, why aren't you playing them, OP?

If they aren't better, why not?

Perhaps making a good game takes time?

 

[Blodge]

If the other voxel space-based games are better then Starmade, why aren't you playing them, OP?

If they aren't better, why not?

OP started out by saying he is not playing StarMade and then went on to explain the reasons why, so I suspect he is playing other games.

Perhaps making a good game takes time?

100% agree. I personally have faith that the Devs know what they are doing and that the end product will be worth waiting for.

However, I can also totally understand someone using a feedback forum to express what they feel is lacking in a game, and not having the patience to wait around if some other game is already offering the features they want.

The faithful will always believe and the doubters will usually lose patience. The only question for me is whether these threads have any kind of constructive impact, or whether they just make everyone feel frustrated.
[doublepost=1498135756,1498135579][/doublepost]

minecraft doesnt really feel alive to me either. maybe im spoiled by older gen games but procedural stuff always feels ...bland to me. all of it. but thats not why i play starmade. and admins putting work into their custom universes can make it feel more alive. probably because its unique content and not just more procedural shit.

True, Minecraft is no Elder Scrolls game that's for sure. But it feels a lot more alive than StarMade does right now.

That said, sometimes it's nice to just load-up the game, put my headphones on, head-out away from any inhabited systems and just sit and take in the void for a few minutes

 

[Gasboy]

OP started out by saying he is not playing StarMade and then went on to explain the reasons why, so I suspect he is playing other games.

Well, he's not exactly said that, has he? 'Cause his complaint about there being nothing to do but build applies to pretty much all of the other space sandbox games. That's ALL they have to do right now.

 

[DevajC]

I've said it before and I'll say it again until the sun blows up. I would rather have a game 10 years in the making that actually means something and accomplishes its goals than have a once and done piece of garbage. Starmade has HUGE goals, goals that if realized could potentially have a large impact. I think that waiting however long, through as many seemingly mundane changes, will be worth it when we get to look at the golden game that will be the end product.

That beautiful, sparkling golden game will never be what Schine hypes it up to be. Its gonna suck. Anyone can dream big and promise massive amounts of content, but after 5 years I dont think Schine has the potential...or time, to ever deliver on that amazing promised game that we all want Starmade to be. Besides, this game had many more players years ago, and that amount is constantly declining. No one is going to be around to play the same game with a few different textures in 7 years. They need to show us what they can do NOW.

 

[JumpSuit]

I hate to get myself jumbled into this mess of a thread and toss my 2 cents worth, but devs can take as long as they need to make their masterpiece. You can't rush an artist to finish a painting or else that will ruin the original picture the artist had in mind. Same concept here: You can't rush the devs to finish a game that isn't polished or even finished with the foundation.

 

[Gasboy]

That beautiful, sparkling golden game will never be what Schine hypes it up to be. Its gonna suck. Anyone can dream big and promise massive amounts of content, but after 5 years I dont think Schine has the potential...or time, to ever deliver on that amazing promised game that we all want Starmade to be. Besides, this game had many more players years ago, and that amount is constantly declining. No one is going to be around to play the same game with a few different textures in 7 years. They need to show us what they can do NOW.

First off, do you have proof that there are less players? Or is it 'I personally feel there's less players so the game is dying' syndrome.

Secondly, Minscraft went through similar growing pains. As did Terraria. And Starbound. And many other games besides. If you do not think that Schine can deliver, why are you even here? If you don't think the game will be what you want it to be, what's the point of complaining, except to be petty?

As I said above, making a game takes time. Especially if you are a small dev company.

If you don't like it, go back to the AAA game devs who don't listen to you, and deliver 25% of a full game and nickle and dime you DLC for the other 75% of the game. So much better because they can deliver it all in a year, right?

 

[HorribleHedgehog]

That beautiful, sparkling golden game will never be what Schine hypes it up to be. Its gonna suck. Anyone can dream big and promise massive amounts of content, but after 5 years I dont think Schine has the potential...or time, to ever deliver on that amazing promised game that we all want Starmade to be. Besides, this game had many more players years ago, and that amount is constantly declining. No one is going to be around to play the same game with a few different textures in 7 years. They need to show us what they can do NOW.

Jesus effing Christ, the game is in alpha, it doesn't need players right now. What it needs - and has - is a loyal core of hardcore fans to influence its development. Wasting time pandering to a larger playerbase while the fundamentals of the game are still in development would be quite possibly the worst thing Schine could do now.

 

[Wrathserker]

When i bought this game 4 years ago after playing the free version into submission, i already liked the game and i still do.
I can remember it stated on purchase ( it wasn't on steam back then) that this game is early access and buying merely serves to support the development. Wich is exactly what my intention was.

It is fully and absolutly the developers right to make starmade into whatever they please as long it at least contains what has been advertised.

Maybe we should all be mature enough to be able to acknowledge that, them looking at the community and listening to us, is something they do out of free pieces, why i do not know, but im pretty sure it is not because someone of us demands it.

I think there will always be thoose that arrogantly mistake their position to be as demanding instead of being grateful.
Before developing an opinion one might consider to use reason intead of subjetive assumptions.

Also the developers have not made any promise i know of that states the game will be done according to your subjective opinion on when it should be. Thus its up to your own damn responsibilty if you are not statisfied with the current affairs since you bought the game knowing it is in early access. Wich is by definition a means to support a project that is still in the development and subject to change. it is well known and frankly obvious this is a risk to take, and you took it willingly its is also known that there are developers that use this to scam people wich is detestable. I bought the game knowing this and i trusted shine nevertheless, and i was not dissapointed if anything im posetively surprised they are still so engaged and focused on quality after all theese years.

Yes mistakes have been made but in my humble opinion the good far outweight the bad.

Yes you can voice your opinion especially if its critical. As far i have seen; it is what the shine wants you to do.
But remember it should be from an position of cooperation, not from a position of confrontation. Since they have no obligation to listen.
That would be the mature thing to do at least, the constructive thing.

If were to read year after year the same annoying selfish demands id be starting to regret to have offered to listen at all.

If the things one says aren't helpful or constructive how does one expect his words to be heeded?

Oh if you find any grammar or spelling mistakes, you may keep them.

 

[Amadeus]

That beautiful, sparkling golden game will never be what Schine hypes it up to be. Its gonna suck. Anyone can dream big and promise massive amounts of content, but after 5 years I dont think Schine has the potential...or time, to ever deliver on that amazing promised game that we all want Starmade to be. Besides, this game had many more players years ago, and that amount is constantly declining. No one is going to be around to play the same game with a few different textures in 7 years. They need to show us what they can do NOW.

I would argue that all of the reasons you listed above are the exact reasons that will lead to us getting a complete game. Schine is willing to:

• Wait, taking their time to create a game that will actually mean something in the future.
• Sacrifice a temporary swell in players in order to foster more longterm devotion to the game.
• Make changes that are far reaching in order to improve the game, regardless of the time, effort, and community impact.

Through these things that some may complain about, I see a very open development team doing a very nice job. We already have one of the most diverse and advanced building systems to be seen in a voxel game. We already have the framework for a living, breathing universe [albeit it has A LOT of stuff that still needs to be fleshed out]. We have one of the few systems that allows for large player created voxel entities to interact with the world. I could go on and on ad nosium, the point is that yes, there is a long road ahead, but have some faith in the developers. They are already working in uncharted territory, and have delivered on what many would have deemed impossible years ago. I understand that it can be frustrating at times to watch a game that you love seemingly have no progress, but demanding that the team rush to finish won't solve anything. The long term is, at times, pretty intangible, but I have faith that this team will deliver, if anything as based upon their previous performance.

 

[ZombieMouse]

I think it's pretty obvious to most frequent players that at the very least, since December 2016 the number of active players on multi-player has collapsed. And as I've said before, it does matter because without players there won't be servers, and without servers it will be very hard to get the ball rolling again whenever the game goes into beta. This is already happening - there is a video on Youtube about a formerly popular Australian server that decided to close.

Of course, with this being alpha sometimes these community damaging changes have to be done. It was brave of Schine to consult the players about the power system because it alerted them to the fact it wasn't worth building until the new power system comes out. On the other hand it helped prevent Shine replacing a flawed system with another flawed system people didn't want. Personally I think they should have done a complete NPC update rather than half-baked it and moved on, but whatever...

The point is, it's impossible for Schine to make everyone happy - perfect game, right now! It's not going to happen. But saying they don't need players, or pretending certain choices don't affect the number of players is denying reality. Like someone here already said - surprise, surprise, making a game is hard!

 

[DevajC]

First off, do you have proof that there are less players? Or is it 'I personally feel there's less players so the game is dying' syndrome.

Secondly, Minscraft went through similar growing pains. As did Terraria. And Starbound. And many other games besides. If you do not think that Schine can deliver, why are you even here? If you don't think the game will be what you want it to be, what's the point of complaining, except to be petty?

As I said above, making a game takes time. Especially if you are a small dev company.

If you don't like it, go back to the AAA game devs who don't listen to you, and deliver 25% of a full game and nickle and dime you DLC for the other 75% of the game. So much better because they can deliver it all in a year, right?

First off, do you have proof that there are less players? Or is it 'I personally feel there's less players so the game is dying' syndrome.

Secondly, Minscraft went through similar growing pains. As did Terraria. And Starbound. And many other games besides. If you do not think that Schine can deliver, why are you even here? If you don't think the game will be what you want it to be, what's the point of complaining, except to be petty?

As I said above, making a game takes time. Especially if you are a small dev company.

If you don't like it, go back to the AAA game devs who don't listen to you, and deliver 25% of a full game and nickle and dime you DLC for the other 75% of the game. So much better because they can deliver it all in a year, right?

Im complaining because I spent money on a game that is falsly represented.

 

[Groovrider]

Sounds more like you bought your own hype about this game. Grow up. Good things take time.