An Urgent Message to Schine

[Muffin_man17]

I feel what alot of you guys are saying, I didn't make a Starmade account until after 2 years already playing so believe me when I say I've been through alot of the history for this game. The "Pvpers" were kinda toxic in my opinion since they were 1 staring ships that didn't fit their PvP expectations. I also notice a huge lost of playerbase when the power update came into effect. Personally I love where the game has gone, from a more meaningful building experience with designing a reactor, a new health system rather then "who can shoot the core block first" and etc...I could go on and on. I have been preaching this game for years to family & friends and will probably continue to do. As I'm typing this up the mostly negative recent reviews are only at 15 people with a overall review rating of 69%. That is not terrible at all. I'm sure that when this game enters Beta that if enough of us within the community alone give the game positive reviews we will bump that score back up to 'Mostly Positive' rating once again. I think Schema is making a smart move at holding back on any free promotional features until this game is in a more complete state. I have full trust in the dev team and will continue to make content in hopes of this game going big someday. As many have said in this thread, patience is key.

 

[aceface]

Ps dont preach about yogsswarm if you werent here for it. I had far more fun during that time period than I did during my latest bout of activity in this game.

yogswarm was a golden time

 

[OfficialCoding]

yogswarm was a golden time

When was yogswarm?

 

[therimmer96]

When was yogswarm?

Late june 2013

 

[aceface]

When was yogswarm?

the day the yogscast released this series: was what drew me into the game. there were so many people playing back then.

 

[JinM]

schema reads the steam reviews btw

And even replies to some of them (including this year; newest reply is only 2 months old or so).

 

[Skwidz]

the day the yogscast released this series: was what drew me into the game. there were so many people playing back then.

that Dave looks a lot weirder than the temporary player model of the first Starmade versions. I would like to see a once more very active community soon though

 

[aceface]

that Dave looks a lot weirder than the temporary player model of the first Starmade versions. I would like to see a once more very active community soon though

yeah, imo game was much worse back then (trash mechanics and much more glitchy) but the amount of content from players alone made up for it.

 

[Comr4de]

yeah, imo game was much worse back then (trash mechanics and much more glitchy) but the amount of content from players alone made up for it.

The galaxy felt a lot more populated... may have been because lack of FTL meant everyone had to slowboat aroubd.

 

[jstenholt]

Ugh, I came on right during Yogswarm and I have no idea what Yogscast is, TO THIS DAY. But I'll be forever thankful to them for making this game visible enough for me to find it.

 

[aceface]

The galaxy felt a lot more populated... may have been because lack of FTL meant everyone had to slowboat aroubd.

yeah true...
now that I think of it on ee pre universe update I think most factions would have been contained within 2-3 current systems.

 

[DrTarDIS]

yeah true...
now that I think of it on ee pre universe update I think most factions would have been contained within 2-3 current systems.

Depended on your server really. THough I will admit to etting up shop in 8 8 8 and 0 0 0 on a couple of the ancient ones. I still miss those old shite textures. And the sweet cookie planets you could fall/launch off of

 

[jstenholt]

I miss cookies, so much more fun than dodecahedrons. I really hope that the new planets deliver.

 

[MilitantCollective]

Love or hate pvpers, without them all you're doing is accumulating blocks in your invulnerable base.

Pvpers balance an economy, they remove surpluses and drive stories. Noone ever heard stories of exploration or mining adventures on games with weapons.

No, they hear about the great war of EE or the pirates ambushing supply lines getting rich off the bounty of merchants. Without PVP you end up with what you have now. A husk of a game with no server activity and subpar storylines. The problem is lack of forced development on servers. Too often people get hit by pvpers or pirates and just jump servers. This is why eve gets it right, you can't do that. You end up with excellent prolonged war stories, stories of hauling a 1B Isk load through a civil war, stories of a 1,000 ship betrayal.

Pvpers make storylines, PVEers play their part in developing those storylines further, but this game can survive without them. Dont believe me? Go look at YouTube content for starmade. It's mostly pvp

 

[Sachys]

I dont disagree with the rest of your post, but this:

Go look at YouTube content for starmade. It's mostly pvp

..is not true. I just tested in a private window after cleaning my browser and the vast majority of stuff I found by simply searching "starmade" was video tutorials and RP based series. My guess is, you've watched a lot of PVP videos, and thats what youtube is feeding you.
Of course, youtube could be guessing what Im looking for based by region. Either way, its an empty point you have.

 

[vaudevillian]

This power update kind of sucks bad for creativity. I just jumped in this morning and after 3 hours of play building a nice compact ship I'm underpowered. Sucks hard when the you have to design a tube.

 

[JinM]

This power update kind of sucks bad for creativity. I just jumped in this morning and after 3 hours of play building a nice compact ship I'm underpowered. Sucks hard when the you have to design a tube.

It's reactor - stabilizer - chambers - thruster - shields - weapons in this order.

Not weapons first.

Nontheless the building with the current power is a little bit cumbersome, so I can totally understand your frustration. I didn't finish the systems of my latest 50m ship too.

 

[DarkTranquility]

i do not see the pvpers ruining the game , or toxic attitudes ruining the game. forum activity Yes...Game no... during 2016 the game was very active. even with all the social political toxic drama going on. it did not deter people

but the game itself underwent enough changes in its interegnum that it made even building less enjoyable, and of course time in the span of years can mean a lot for momentum if the playerbase is waiting to long. even now building seems less enjoyable if all the math changes again in 2 months.

 

[Dire Venom]

the day the yogscast released this series: was what drew me into the game. there were so many people playing back then.

Thank you for forcing me to watch the whole series again
Dam Starmade was great (and still is!)

 

[MacThule]

The community isn't really... "falling apart," it was negatively affected by a small clique that wanted to dictate Schine's development path. When Schine spurned their aggressive, overtly threatening demands, they began libeling (really) mods and developers, sliding the forums to control discussion, and spamming up bad reviews everywhere on the net exactly as they had explicitly threatened to do if their demands about specific changes to game mechanics were not met.

In the end it turned out that a few of them (unknown how many) were actually involved with a crowd-funded knock-off of this game that is much more... 'pay-to-play' (I believe it even has micro-transactions?) and may have had some "vested interest" in giving Starmade as much bad press as possible.

Some of the specific development demands were even very good ideas, really... I supported quite a few of them when they were still being presented as persistent, polite requests, but the tone and tactics used became grossly inappropriate (probably because of the advent of people investing real money in a competing application) which forced me to split with the progressive party. Personally I'm still amused that anyone above the age of 4 could ever hope for a positive response to the kind of incivility that ensued. If you don't feel like spending hours reading backthreads in the forum, just think of it as "Starmade Justice Warriors;" a very loud minority trying to get their way by militantly screaming down and insulting anyone who had anything good or even "not bad" to say about the game until all the normal people just... quit...

It's not a big deal though, it's just a tantrum really (and a little industrial espionage). Schine has yet to ever invest anything in marketing the game at all. The community is plenty for play-testing at the moment.