Devblog 18th July, 2017 - End Goal Document Part 2

[Keptick]

More shit we already know and absolutely nothing of substance besides finally confirming what the entire community already knows which is that you need to limit the game to one galaxy for it to be enjoyable

Still waiting on these things to be more than "we're for good game play and against bad gameplay!"

I would rather we go back to the dev blogs talking about actual concrete features we'll be getting soon. These things are like 5 short paragraphs each and half of those are duplicates from the previous one. Could these seriously not have been condensed into 1 or 2 dev blogs max?

While I agree with you on the lack of new information, I don't think this is the intent of these blogs. Not everyone has been around for years like you have. In fact, most new players wouldn't know this information, so blogs like these are pretty useful for them.

 

[AlabasterJazz]

You missed my point then. Not really surprising but I guess I'll re-elaborate for everyone else that doesn't understand, deliberately or not.

Schine needs to figure out what on earth it wants to do. You either make your game with rigid roles or you don't do roles at all, there's no in-between that works out. It doesn't matter how they quantify it or rationalise it, if you design your game from the perspective of players having roles, that's the crop you're going to reap - a game where players are supposed to have roles. It makes sense from the architect's angle, of course, but that's not how everyone sees it. If you don't force players to do something, they won't do it - so any balance you try to create based on these roles (which is an intrinsic part of creating game features) will be shattered. Not only that, but the pieces of your puzzle won't fit together when you design part of the game to work one way and another to work in another way. It doesn't flow, and it feels exactly like how it was designed - in pieces that don't mesh.

I don't care what way Schine goes, full sandbox or rigid MMO roles - I just want them to bloody choose one already and stop toeing the line.

And I think you missed the point that Shine is making. The game has no rigid roles and players are not meant to have roles. They are using the term roles only as a literary device to help focus their thoughts into a relatable and structured way. Players will be constrained by game mechanics (obviously), but not role archetypes. They chose to break it down this way because each role encompasses an area of the the game that they would like to focus on, and ensure each "role" is robust enough that if a player chooses to self-limit themselves to any of these roles they would be able to enjoy the game in a meaningful way; there is no attempt or desire to incorporate roles, as you are interpreting them, into the game.

Gee wizz, people provide criticism of things they don't like or find useless? How dare they!

Do you want the game to improve or not? You don't get there by never criticising.

Saying "Who the fuck wrote this piece of garbage" is not criticism, and certainly will not help the game be better. Saying something like "While I appreciate Shine's attempt to provide information, I feel it could be done in a much more concise and meaningful way, here's how: A, B, C" might be a little more helpful.

 

[Zyrr]

And I think you missed the point that Shine is making. The game has no rigid roles and players are not meant to have roles. They are using the term roles only as a literary device to help focus their thoughts into a relatable and structured way. Players will be constrained by game mechanics (obviously), but not role archetypes. They chose to break it down this way because each role encompasses an area of the the game that they would like to focus on, and ensure each "role" is robust enough that if a player chooses to self-limit themselves to any of these roles they would be able to enjoy the game in a meaningful way; there is no attempt or desire to incorporate roles, as you are interpreting them, into the game.

But they're not literary devices, Schine is outright saying they are using them to create features and balance. That's a player role, it's not a way of saying it, that's a bonafide, clear-as-day player role. They're thinking of the game in roles and adding features to compliment these roles. I don't know how many times I have to say it or Schine has to say it until it's made clear without a doubt. They're using the idea of player roles to create their game, and then leaving the roles out. It's building a house and then removing the foundation with the expectation that the new owners will replace it exactly the way it was.

And maybe it's just the difference between you and me, because I haven't seen you around the forums much or ingame much, but the people who disagree with what Schine is saying are the people who have been involved with them the most. It's not an inherent issue to do this style of development - it's not an automatic failing grade, you can most definitely balance a game properly with these insulated, self-contained branches of features that don't even really connect to the same tree. It takes more work, but it's doable, in theory.

But a lot of us have been around here for so long that we know not to expect that anymore. Confidence in Schine is hitting an all time low, which is surprising because I was pretty sure we already hit it a couple times before, but to their credit, they keep surprising me. It takes Schine two, three, sometimes four attempts to get a significant feature working as they intend. Some features they don't even bother, and just leave it as is and presumably hope we don't notice. So it comes as no surprise to me that when end goals, the most serious game discussion you can have, comes up, people put their feet down, draw a line in the sand and get equally serious. Endgame isn't something you can excuse with "oops lol its a beta", endgame is the end of the line. This is it. This is what the final product will be, when there's no longer an option to play the game for free. So you better believe that we are expecting the absolute best out of Schine here, with no excuses.

 

[AlabasterJazz]

But they're not literary devices, Schine is outright saying they are using them to create features and balance. That's a player role, it's not a way of saying it, that's a bonafide, clear-as-day player role. They're thinking of the game in roles and adding features to compliment these roles. I don't know how many times I have to say it or Schine has to say it until it's made clear without a doubt. They're using the idea of player roles to create their game, and then leaving the roles out. It's building a house and then removing the foundation with the expectation that the new owners will replace it exactly the way it was.

Perhaps you should re-interpret the information as follows:
The end-goals of Starmade is to have a sandbox style game where a player can do any or all of the following in any way they desire:
~ Build ~ Explore ~ Industrialize ~ Trade ~ Fight ~ Build an Empire
The only limits to how you play the game are your creativity and time investment. Each of the above aspects will be fully designed and balanced. If you so desire you could focus on only one of these aspects and enjoy the game, but there is absolutely no restriction to do so, and it is encouraged to embrace all of these aspects simultaneously.

 

[DrTarDIS]

The end game documents were normally going to be included with the usual dev blog news. Unfortunately in the last 2 weeks, there has been little to no news besides "we're working on getting a release ready" which is a bunch of boring testing and equally boring bug fixes.

We can't simply talk about concrete future features either, as talking about them is much much faster than actually making them. We would have the same issue where we run out of things to say.

Thanks for giving neutral/constructive feedback though, we'll have to reconsider what to do with this.

I thought "what we're doing" was the whole purpose of a devblog.
"these game breaking bugs fixed or being fixed, here's how you use/trigger them in the current releate. Our pre release should have fixed them all bout double check for us!
"this new feature does this and this, but we're not sure how it will interact with that, how about some community input on the balancing of it?"
"This other bug came back. really old players might remember when you could use a shipyard to spawn free entities using the old docking mechanic blueprints, and it's related to that same bug/exploit. we're trying to narrow it dow, it seems to trigger in this instance because we're using shared global variables for stationary entities....."

"boring" is when you have what would interest you decided by other people, not when you might not understand the technobabble and jargon in what's being said.

 

[Gmodism]

Ok sounds good!
You should make the Warpgates be able to connect by just linking them via the map, maybe a UI when the player is close by, I often felt I had the need to reroute gates when one is destroyed, or I wanna go somewhere else than I set it up, having 4 different warpgates for my little planet base is just silly, that is why rerouting them would make them much more useful.
-Regards

 

[Lecic]

While I appreciate Shine's attempt to provide information, I feel it could be done in a much more concise and meaningful way, here's how: A, B, C

So, the stuff that preceded my rhetorical question of "who wrote this trash?"

Your only arguments against me so far have been strawmen, taking shit out of context, and saying I'm being too rude, (waaah bloohoo), about my points. The only remotely valid point that's been brought up is that maybe a brand new player might appreciate these because they wouldn't need to research and hunt down the individual sources, but if that is the case, wouldn't it be better for them to condense these all into 1 or 2 dev blogs? These can't have taken more than a few hours to write each, and if they did I have bigger worries about Schine. Surely 2 weeks is plenty of time to write two decent dev blogs instead of spending a month and a half writing 6 shitty ones?

 

[akimzav]

And I think you missed the point that Shine is making. The game has no rigid roles and players are not meant to have roles. They are using the term roles only as a literary device to help focus their thoughts into a relatable and structured way. Players will be constrained by game mechanics (obviously), but not role archetypes. They chose to break it down this way because each role encompasses an area of the the game that they would like to focus on, and ensure each "role" is robust enough that if a player chooses to self-limit themselves to any of these roles they would be able to enjoy the game in a meaningful way; there is no attempt or desire to incorporate roles, as you are interpreting them, into the game.

I tried to tell that in discussion on the previous part of this document, too. I have a feeling that some just can't into theories which disagree with their internal feelings/assumptions.

 

[AlabasterJazz]

So, the stuff that preceded my rhetorical question of "who wrote this trash?"

Your only arguments against me so far have been strawmen, taking shit out of context, and saying I'm being too rude, (waaah bloohoo), about my points. The only remotely valid point that's been brought up is that maybe a brand new player might appreciate these because they wouldn't need to research and hunt down the individual sources, but if that is the case, wouldn't it be better for them to condense these all into 1 or 2 dev blogs? These can't have taken more than a few hours to write each, and if they did I have bigger worries about Schine. Surely 2 weeks is plenty of time to write two decent dev blogs instead of spending a month and a half writing 6 shitty ones?

OK, well I'm content to say that you have some valid points, as well as very strong opinions, and choose to voice them in an abrasive way because you're frustrated with how you see current development. Apparently you are content to criticize Schine, but have no capacity to be criticized yourself.

Suffice to say that we both want Starmade to succeed, and we will both voice our concerns, suggestions and opinions, but we have drastically different methods of doing so. While I would strongly prefer to be part of a community that didn't resort to petty insults in order to make a point, this is the internet after all, and it almost wouldn't be the same without it.

 

[Jananton]

We'll mostly be focusing on the same size universe we have now, other galaxies function has been discussed at length but is not set in stone. Many changes are happening in this phase where we update the Galaxy so we'd like to see how those shake down first, before we plan too far ahead.

I presume this is related to the statement that procedural generation will in fact make everywhere look seemingly the same over distance. With the current system that's true, but what if you expand the current procedural system with something I would call a layered procedural generation system.

As an example the first layer is the current system, the second layer picks a random number out of the total pool of a possible category of phenomena, the third layer places the picked phenomena random in the galaxy removing depending on size of, what was placed there in layer one. The second and third layer process can be repeated for the number of categories of phenomena you have in mind. Stellar and nebula phenomena, interesting and special locations, habituated planets with perks, and so on, the possibilities are endless. You could even put in a kind of weight relation between the layers, so the randomness distribution of different categories is slightly restricted or even bundled per galaxy. This way nothing will look the same over distance, and since, from what I understand from the blog, a kind of fog of war will be introduced on the map, galaxy generation farther out from the starting point can go on while the game for the player has already started.

Oh well, just my two cents. I hope I explained my brainstorm well enough.

Greets,

Jan

 

[Drakkart]

The end game documents were normally going to be included with the usual dev blog news. Unfortunately in the last 2 weeks, there has been little to no news besides "we're working on getting a release ready" which is a bunch of boring testing and equally boring bug fixes.

We can't simply talk about concrete future features either, as talking about them is much much faster than actually making them. We would have the same issue where we run out of things to say.

Thanks for giving neutral/constructive feedback though, we'll have to reconsider what to do with this.

I value the effort of tryin g to keep the community engaged so you keep posting (trust me the new power update would solve this as well bringing people back to play the game, just saying). And i consider them nice reads, informative as well. but i must agree with zyrr on this...

Schine needs to figure out what on earth it wants to do. You either make your game with rigid roles or you don't do roles at all, there's no in-between that works out. It doesn't matter how they quantify it or rationalise it, if you design your game from the perspective of players having roles, that's the crop you're going to reap - a game where players are supposed to have roles. It makes sense from the architect's angle, of course, but that's not how everyone sees it. If you don't force players to do something, they won't do it - so any balance you try to create based on these roles (which is an intrinsic part of creating game features) will be shattered. Not only that, but the pieces of your puzzle won't fit together when you design part of the game to work one way and another to work in another way. It doesn't flow, and it feels exactly like how it was designed - in pieces that don't mesh.

the builders role says "since there is no harvester role i want ressources to be everywhere" otherwise i prefer creative. The explorer wants rare special points of intrest... a conflict that already emerged.

what i find absolutely fascinating is the point that you guys are developing for over ten years and this vision still needs tweaking... How could you even start coding if the game concept was not done before?
Well the game has potential, which comes from the building aspect... just saying.
Thanks for reading

 

[AlabasterJazz]

I value the effort of tryin g to keep the community engaged so you keep posting (trust me the new power update would solve this as well bringing people back to play the game, just saying). And i consider them nice reads, informative as well. but i must agree with zyrr on this...


the builders role says "since there is no harvester role i want ressources to be everywhere" otherwise i prefer creative. The explorer wants rare special points of intrest... a conflict that already emerged.

what i find absolutely fascinating is the point that you guys are developing for over ten years and this vision still needs tweaking... How could you even start coding if the game concept was not done before?
Well the game has potential, which comes from the building aspect... just saying.
Thanks for reading

Hey Drak, I guess what some see as a conflict, others see as a meaningful choice to make regarding how to proceed with playing. In survival mode resources should not be free, and some resources should be difficult to come by. You are still free to build whatever you can fathom based on your available resources. If you want all resources to be equally available then you should be playing in creative, not survival.

My impression is that these documents have been informally known to the development team for a while, but are only now being released as a bit of info for anyone who's interested. Besides, you can start any project without a clear vision of the end goal, and I would say development of almost anything goes though iterations, and that end goals can and will shift as time goes on and circumstances change.

The game has much more potential than just building, as you can infer from these documents. If all you're interested in is building then the game is pretty much already done for you.

 

[Lecic]

OK, well I'm content to say that you have some valid points, as well as very strong opinions, and choose to voice them in an abrasive way because you're frustrated with how you see current development. Apparently you are content to criticize Schine, but have no capacity to be criticized yourself.

Suffice to say that we both want Starmade to succeed, and we will both voice our concerns, suggestions and opinions, but we have drastically different methods of doing so. While I would strongly prefer to be part of a community that didn't resort to petty insults in order to make a point, this is the internet after all, and it almost wouldn't be the same without it.

Much like these past two dev blogs, you continue to repeat the same ultimately completely devoid of new or useful information statements over and over again that accomplish next to nothing.

I thought the point of dev blogs was to give us new information, but all we've gotten for the past two weeks is a rehash of things devs have already said, just scattered about through posts, chat messages, and statements on stream. When are they going to give us something concrete about the future of the game?

 

[AlabasterJazz]

Much like these past two dev blogs, you continue to repeat the same ultimately completely devoid of new or useful information statements over and over again that accomplish next to nothing.

And you are guilty of the same.

 

[timmymorrison1]

When your original argument is that you do not want to be locked in to specific roles, and then Shine explicitly states that you will not be locked into specific roles, and then you continue to explain how disappointed you are that it seems that you will be locked into specific roles it either comes off as trolling, an acute language barrier, or steadfast reluctance to receive new information and reevaluate your initial thoughts.

And while I don't consider myself any form of "Schine Defense Force" I do feel that this game has amazing potential and am excited for what the game will offer in the end. As such, the End-Goal document is quite helpful to see what final goals the team has planned. Is it generic at this level? Yeah... It's supposed to be. Is this all info that exists in bits here-and-there-within the forums? Perhaps, I'm not digging through it all to find out. This is a great way to put everything in one place for easy viewing.

Lol that was just one detail in his massive comment. he wasn't talking about that specifically when he said my point was still there.

 

[DevajC]

The explorer role looks like the best one so far! I am very excited for the things you plan to add because those are what ive always wanted in this game. I hope no one starts complaining about certain blocks being locked behind dungeons because boohoo that ruins their precious "get 100% of the content from the start" sandbox game. Idk if its possible in SM but kind of like how Space Engineers has turrets and guns that aren't made out of blocks, but are stationary tools-that I would love to see. It'll make small ships more fun that way. Idk about the rest of the player base but I don't want EVERYTHING to be blocks.

As for the warp gates thing...to be honest they arent very useful. You can only use them to go between A and B, but if you want to go visit your friend at C or a far away shop at D, you have to make your gate, fly away to the new location and make another, and then go back ALL the way because you forgot to connect and then fly back again! Jump drives are wayyyy to slow unless you want to sacrifice 40% of your ship for them. Chain drives are fun, don't require you to hold down the mouse button forever, and much more fun than pressing W for 20 minutes at a time. You should just introduce official chain drives, and find ways to nerf them like after using your shields stay down for 5 minutes, or you can jam for 10 minutes, weapons deactivate because of "over heating." But a long time ago you were going to add hyperdrive which I still want to see. that's how it is in all the scifi games like Halo. I think you should reconsider that idea. Make it so you can only fly straight ahead, but you go incredibly fast, and it takes time to slow down too. And you cant exit hyperdrive in the vicinity of a station or planet....or you can but there's a threat of crashing into it and destroying your ship. Wheres a lot of things you could to, and they would all be better than teleporting with jump drives. With hyper drives you could make the number of modules determine how long you can stay in that mode.

One other thing id like to see with the universe updates are skyboxes that encompass larger areas. Right now each system has its own skybox which makes space feel really tiny instead of really big because you can fly in any direction for 5 minutes and it looks completely different, but your speed doesn't relate to that at all. Lastly and most importantly, I would rather have 40 huge planets in and around the galaxy rather than 500 small ones. This is a controversial opinion but quality over quantity right? Real planets with more than 30 block dirt depth and Id rather them be huge cubes because usable surface area is much more important than how they look like from far away! Maybe make them indestructible too if that lessens server load, because what is the actual point of destroying planets other than making mining lag free lol.

Someone else on here once mentioned instanced planets and that is still the best idea in my opinion. As long as you make it so you can still fly smallish ships in the atmosphere/leave them floating up there, It wont break immersion for me at all. I don't quit playing Minecraft because I have to wait for the Nether to load.

 

[Drakkart]

Hey Drak, I guess what some see as a conflict, others see as a meaningful choice to make regarding how to proceed with playing. In survival mode resources should not be free, and some resources should be difficult to come by. You are still free to build whatever you can fathom based on your available resources. If you want all resources to be equally available then you should be playing in creative, not survival.

My impression is that these documents have been informally known to the development team for a while, but are only now being released as a bit of info for anyone who's interested. Besides, you can start any project without a clear vision of the end goal, and I would say development of almost anything goes though iterations, and that end goals can and will shift as time goes on and circumstances change.

The game has much more potential than just building, as you can infer from these documents. If all you're interested in is building then the game is pretty much already done for you.

- i consider it choices to be made on how to proceed with development... i neither favor either way since the entire survival requires massive changes esspecially crafting... but in the actual state of the game survival is a massive grind so yeah just kill the game making everything more difficult to aquire... maybe fix the game first then redistribute ressources...
- you can do that, but proper development rules advise you to do it the other way around first you have a plan then you start building otherwise you later realize that you need to cater gamemechanics and content to an engine that meanwhile feels like being developed for a different game...
criteria like "must fit our engine" must never appear in a features list or youdid something horribly wrong. and we saw such statements already...
- yes the game has more potential than just building but the game is by far not done in that regard either for there are tons of unsolved issues... and there should not be a "either/or" situation. This game has potential for greatness but building is the part that sucks people into the game right now. the moment schine redistributes ressources should be the moment when ships should be able to be build partially from blueprints with the option to finish them later when more ressources were aquired - schine never managed yet to show such foresight. which is why i would advise against to drastic focus shifts...

 

[Lecic]

Idk if its possible in SM but kind of like how Space Engineers has turrets and guns that aren't made out of blocks, but are stationary tools-that I would love to see. It'll make small ships more fun that way. Idk about the rest of the player base but I don't want EVERYTHING to be blocks.

But the lack of creative freedom in turret and general weapon design in games like Space Engineers is one of their worst attributes. I don't think those sort of things belong in Starmade except maybe as tiny turrets for ground vehicles.

 

[AlabasterJazz]

Idk if its possible in SM but kind of like how Space Engineers has turrets and guns that aren't made out of blocks, but are stationary tools-that I would love to see. It'll make small ships more fun that way. Idk about the rest of the player base but I don't want EVERYTHING to be blocks

I wonder if it would be possible to implement various scale build mode? Similar to the Minecraft mod chisels and bits? That way it still has the creative freedom of blocks, but reduced size for smaller designs. Almost definitely not worth the time to implement directly, but a great mod idea for sure.

 

[DevajC]

But the lack of creative freedom in turret and general weapon design in games like Space Engineers is one of their worst attributes. I don't think those sort of things belong in Starmade except maybe as tiny turrets for ground vehicles.

Yeah I meant as small accessory things. But thats not how I feel like about SE. When I use those in SE it feels more like a real game, like in Futurama when Fry uses the gun on the Planet Express. Starmade has nothing like that because everything you pilot feels the same. And I wouldn't say SM has weapon designs either-it has an depth way to customize the skin of your weapons but thats where it ends. Well it also has effects but they all look the same so its not very "creative" at the end of the day.
[doublepost=1500411930,1500411599][/doublepost]

I wonder if it would be possible to implement various scale build mode? Similar to the Minecraft mod chisels and bits? That way it still has the creative freedom of blocks, but reduced size for smaller designs. Almost definitely not worth the time to implement directly, but a great mod idea for sure.

Theres a game called Fortress Craft that does something like that. I havent really checked it out but it has space elements too. That would be the best way to implement it I think. And it could be used for everything because it would add so much detail to the game. Things like plates and forks, knives, swords, and guns hanging on the walls of your bridge, better letters/signs without display blocks, roleplay joysticks and helmets laying around. Damn the more I think about it the better it seems! It would make detailing the future dungeons and planets easier too because the devs could just whip up any block designs in game instead of a editor.[/QUOTE]