A call for PvP servers

[Matt_Bradock]

This game desperately needs no-strings-attached PvP to bring it back to life. Because let's face it, what is PvP in survival mode Starmade now?
It's either roflstomping people through vastly superior firepower, or raiding unmanned, lightly guarded bases, or homebases for undocked small scraps. In my 4 years of playing Starmade, in my more than 1200 hours spent in PvP-focused factions, from NASS to old EE to Starside, I can barely count up to 10 hours total of actual fighting other people involved.
Which is pathetic. People spent more time than that flaming each other on the forums. Actually, probably a hella lot more time than that.

People who liked PvP are abandoning Starmade. It's supposed to be a core element of gameplay, even a complete server gamemode was designed around it, yet there are absolutely 0 (zero) servers around, that offer genuine, no strings attached PvP where you don't have to grind for days to have your ships, just to see them blow up in minutes.

Ares mod was a good concept for objective-based, team oriented cooperative PvP. Yet the lack of interest caused it to vanish into the dark.

So, this is a desperate call to server owners, admins, event managers: PvP is dying. Needs revival.

 

[Lecic]

There's really only one faction I've ever fought and not had fun in the process. I'm sure you guys can guess which faction that is.

Just avoid them and PvP is a blast, actually.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

There's really only one faction I've ever fought and not had fun in the process. I'm sure you guys can guess which faction that is.

Just avoid them and PvP is a blast, actually.

What PvP? When was the last time you actually fought a player? When was the last time you could jump into it right away and not only after days of grinding for resources?
PvP is a blast if you can find anyone who would fight you. Which is getting incredibly harder and harder lately. Having a server that lets people focus on the fight and have fun without having to worry about replacing a lost ship or losing weeks of hard work would make finding people to battle so much easier, would it not?

Right now, the vast majority of the community does not want to fight. Mostly because there is no place to learn it, or safely practice without burning through valuable resources, punishing every minute of fun with half an hour in the grind before you can have any fun again. No wonder everyone is salty after a battle...

 

[Az14el]

tbh I just make tiny starter mat/credit ships on alts on the most populated server and gank the fuck out of NO FACTIONS
best pvp the game has to offer rn

 

[Lecic]

What PvP? When was the last time you actually fought a player?

That would be.... when FCM ambushed and severely damaged Zoro before he got away, which was, what, a handful of days ago? Plus plenty of fights with Vaygr and Sleep Space before that.

When was the last time you could jump into it right away and not only after days of grinding for resources?

Maybe a few months ago on a private server?

You say that like it's a bad thing, though. This is a tactical game. Mining and resource gathering is an important factor. It makes decisions like "can I, and SHOULD I, bring nothing but my biggest ships?" important.

I might not enjoy the grind, but I enjoy PvP having some level of actual stakes and resource management a lot more than just having a spawn-what-the-fuck-everfest.

Right now, the vast majority of the community does not want to fight. Mostly because there is no place to learn it, or safely practice without burning through valuable resources, punishing every minute of fun with half an hour in the grind before you can have any fun again.

As for this, singleplayer vs AI and creative servers such as NFD build are both great for testing PvP without limits. I don't think we need more PvP servers. Nearly every server that exists is a PvP server. I think we need more build servers.

 

[StormWing0]

I'd say right now the only limiting factor is resources. That's the main issue people have and the reason people try to build their game ending ships over fleets of smaller ships. People are too afraid of losing crap they avoid fighting at all costs so if we had a way of sending the AI out into the area to mine in our place, we could focus on building/rebuilding our fleets and stations after fights and go out and fight as well while the AI piled up resources back at base.

 

[jorgekorke]

I'd say right now the only limiting factor is resources. That's the main issue people have and the reason people try to build their game ending ships over fleets of smaller ships. People are too afraid of losing crap they avoid fighting at all costs so if we had a way of sending the AI out into the area to mine in our place, we could focus on building/rebuilding our fleets and stations after fights and go out and fight as well while the AI piled up resources back at base.

I really hope that in the next updates, AI fleet mining becomes reliable. Right now it's useless, but the concept is the solution for all those grind problems.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Lecic To clarify my original intention, I'm not calling for more PvP servers in the sense of what they are now. I'm calling for creative servers, battle mode servers, PvP events so we have more of those than a single Blood and Steel tournament the whole year (if it happens at all).

I'm calling for an environment where people can duke it out without the repercussions, to freely test their skills, would it be shipbuilding or piloting, as frequently as they wish to. Whether these are themed events, like "Assault and board" or "One for all" (everyone gets the same ship so only piloting and tactics matter) or just free-for-all or team deathmatch events, these are desperately needed, especially for players who would love to enjoy the game but simply don't have the time to build it, then grind for it, before they can fly it.
I'm calling for battle mode, Ares mod or similar, or just for servers with active admins and frequent PvP arena events. We have seen how all the big new-and-shiny "PvP servers" ended up, look at Light vs Dark for example. They in the end, offered nothing new. Or at least, certainly not enough to make people actually fight battles instead of offline raiding each other.

Last but not least, this is offtopic, but I'd actually like to officially dub Lecic "Advocatus Diaboli Starmadeum" as he is the ever-vigilant voice of (arguably constructive) critique and I have yet to see him argue FOR and not AGAINST a topic.

 

[Jasper1991]

Vaygr and Odium are one of the very few factions that actually seek out and fight competent opponents, not many factions forumside do that, and some claim they do but don't follow through.

Its not servers that are the problem.

Its just that most factions forumside refuse to fight for any reason, Vaygr has always showed up are hostile homebases and encourage them to undock and fight, but most factions will simply not undock and then cry at an admin to ban us for homebase camping.

 

[Lecic]

Its just that most factions forumside refuse to fight for any reason, Vaygr has always showed up are hostile homebases and encourage them to undock and fight, but most factions will simply not undock and then cry at an admin to ban us for homebase camping.

Can you provide even the tiniest smidgen of evidence for something like this ever happening, let alone recently?

 

[NaStral]

|I'm calling for an environment where people can duke it out without the repercussions, to freely test their skills, would it be shipbuilding or piloting, as frequently as they wish to. Whether these are themed events, like "Assault and board" or "One for all" (everyone gets the same ship so only piloting and tactics matter) or just free-for-all or team deathmatch events, these are desperately needed, especially for players who would love to enjoy the game but simply don't have the time to build it, then grind for it, before they can fly it.
I'm calling for battle mode, Ares mod or similar, or just for servers with active admins and frequent PvP arena events. We have seen how all the big new-and-shiny "PvP servers" ended up, look at Light vs Dark for example. They in the end, offered nothing new. Or at least, certainly not enough to make people actually fight battles instead of offline raiding each other.

I try to hold such events as often as I can, utilizing standardized ships of various kinds, or certain criteria for participation. We are also developing the means to automate such events via scripting so it's not just dependent on admins.

A major problem is that the user base here is sharply split between persons who are brand new and those who have been playing for years. The persons who have been deeply entrenched in this game for a very long time all want different things out of the game and have little to no regard for viewpoints other than their own. The newer players generally get put off by the attitudes of these established players and generally move on after bouncing around a few servers. Schine could really benefit in making the game more intuitive and offering more tools for server owners and admins. In it's current state, the game is still very off-putting to new players.

Steering back to the topic, when all of these expectations from various players collide, they pull admins, (who are often overworked due to Schine's updates breaking servers), away from being able to host such events due to the bugged out game play or downtime. Once the conflicting values of the constituent players are brought in on top of everything else, it gets even worse as players utilize the flaws of an unfinished game in the inevitable clash of egos over game play and forum.

Despite all of these problems, I and the LvD admin team will continue to work at providing a quality experience to our players. I'm open to anything suggested.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Can you provide even the tiniest smidgen of evidence for something like this ever happening, let alone recently?

(psst, he forgot to mention Vaygr always brought a fleet of at least 2x theirs and 4x the firepower)

 

[StormWing0]

Maybe there's a way to update that ARES Mod that was floating around a while ago but instead of credits it's resources. That was my only issue I had with it and that aside it was rather good for testing things against actual players. The only problem it had was not enough people only at any given time for a full match.

Maybe the faction and crew updates will give the maker of it something to mess with to compensate for the low player count where players can come in and break the stalemate the AI is having.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Maybe there's a way to update that ARES Mod that was floating around a while ago but instead of credits it's resources. That was my only issue I had with it and that aside it was rather good for testing things against actual players. The only problem it had was not enough people only at any given time for a full match.

Maybe the faction and crew updates will give the maker of it something to mess with to compensate for the low player count where players can come in and break the stalemate the AI is having.

Its main charm was credits. Gave it simplicity. Every single ship uses different types of resources, different amounts of resources, and the more detailed it is, the more types of different resources there are in each and every ship. That added up, rapidly increases the complexity of a system that intends to reward players with resources for kills and holding objectives. UNLESS all ships in the battle are uniform, which on the other hand restricts players from putting their own designs up to the test and see how they fare in a real PvP battle instead of just picking off derpy AI small fighters.

 

[Napther]

I loved to occaisonally derp around on Ares Mod Battleserver.

Found a guy in a 30-40k mass red/grey hull bumble bee thing (Ala doom-shape), Absolutely destroyed it in my Blood and Steel prototype at the time, my 12k mass Firebee.

Fun times, fun times...

But yeas, As a miner, it takes me at least 20 hours to get the resources for a 300k mass ship (That is mostly thrust/power, with "adequate" shields and weapons) depending on server and all things like shop availability, pirates, planet/roid size, etc. I can do that in 4 days or so if I have the free time but thats no fun. 20 hours for 20 minutes of combat use? Thats not a good trade...

Id much rather I have my AI fleet miners that I spent hours to create all nice like go do their thing on all the systems to get me ore to process and refine to make my big ships even without me doing anything.

hell when it becomes more viable Id send fleets out rather than 1 large pvp vessel that I know wont fail me

 

[Lecic]

I think part of the problem with the long grind is the fact that people are building 300k mass ships in the first place.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

20 hours... I don't HAVE 20 hours to grind for one ship... partially the reason I don't use anything near 300K or above. Hell, biggest ship I ever used was that, 150K mass including turrets.

Napther , gtfo -.-

Believe it or not, there are people with a life, who can't spend 5-6 hours a day on Starmade. So how are they going to still experience anything other than mining mechanics?
"Yay, another day where I did nothing but mined. 7 more left and I can have that 60K mass ship I spent 2 weeks building in singleplayer, on this server finally."

 

[Napther]

I think part of the problem with the long grind is the fact that people are building 300k mass ships in the first place.

Because it reduces the chances the materials that make up the vessel are lost, especially in the current state of AI being derpy as hell and would probably fly into the middle of a star if you gave em half a chance.

Sure you can get a smaller warship in, but a fleet costs roughly as much to produce as a larger ship with several downsides. Fleets are currently only good when you split them off between players and factions such as you do yourself, I, being alone most the time, have only got the AI to keep me company, and they arent nearly as dependable in a fight as Im sure you are aware...
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20 hours... I don't HAVE 20 hours to grind for one ship... partially the reason I don't use anything near 300K or above. Hell, biggest ship I ever used was that, 150K mass including turrets.

Napther , gtfo -.-

Believe it or not, there are people with a life, who can't spend 5-6 hours a day on Starmade. So how are they going to still experience anything other than mining mechanics?
"Yay, another day where I did nothing but mined. 7 more left and I can have that 60K mass ship I spent 2 weeks building in singleplayer, on this server finally."

Thats... exactly my point. 20 hours is a significant investment of my time (Granted I use AFK miners a LOT so the actual resource gain may be less) that I dont want to see get wasted.

...and yes. its very, very dull, hence AFK miners and Netflix... I'd willingly stop producing super large ships regularly and instead use fleets if the AI will go and mine for me. Ive spent many hours building the blasted things. So they need to be put to work

 

[Az14el]

so much this, one thing that's really putting me off servers nowadays
And huge fleets are just another reason why the grindan is a thing, 50 destroyers is approximately as pants shitting to a reasonable sized easily farmed ship as a titan is. Sure they should be (and big ships SHOULD be scary and make you rethink things), but that's not the point. The resources & time invested to deal with it is. Any wonder why I mostly just BP near-costless warhead torps nowadays.

these things make sense but aren't necessarily good game play material.

But then you bump up the resource rates so you can mine casually, and suddenly everythings exponentially larger/spammier and you're back to square one as far as competition goes :/
I can only see proper fleet mining really helping this dynamic, make them put in the time & not necessarily the work, because simple resource boosting obviously isn't the answer here.

ya know what, I don't even know what I want in a pvp server nowadays, just block cap me hard fam

 

[JinM]

I have an idea: Why not introduce a designer fee? So if you join a server, you can upload your blueprints. If they are good (not compared to others but rated by some objective score), you get money, no matter if they are getting buyed or not. Extra reward would be if your blueprint gets buyed. If he he buyed once, its price is raising. So other not so popular blueprints are still nice to buy, because the good ones are expensive. The goal I have in mind is, to reward carefull engineering and to spent less time with engineering own ships.

You also get money by participating in pvp and pve events, and can then buy new ships. So the "I have to design my own ships all the time and have to mine all the time" stuff in Starmade is countered. If some day the devs include better logic and mission options, you could even include some kind of quest lines (that you also can get ingame currency for, if they are played on a server).

I mean OP asked for more fighting. Thats one solution, and there are serveral others as well. Just wanted to point out a new one, not the best one.

I agree that Starmade servers are a timewaste to play on. For the action you get its really not worth the time. I want to join a server so badly, but all the descriptions I read really scare me away. Who in the world cares to join a server whose biggest ships can be 500k mass big? Do you really think I have the time to mine 500k? All I read is: the average ship size begins with 200m long ships and after you mined 5 hours for one ship, you loose it in a 30 min battle. But chances are very high, that there wont be a fair battle at all because out there are like 10 500k ships who just vaporise the ships of the average gamers if they dont join a faction that takes like 5 hours to find too.

Well I tell you what: if you want to make the community bigger, just lower the max ship size and normal people with a normal amount of freetime will join your servers too. And not only alpha-testers or faction guys who have the time searching and maintaining a relationship with a faction.

Its really frustrating to see what can be done by setting up rules that make sense for the average gamer, and stop listening to the hardcore players all the time. Ofc the server owners are hardcore players too, no one else would spent the time setting up the SM servers, they are difficult. But why! If you want to have some bigger community, consider that the gamestyle at the moment really only appeals to some hardcore gamers.