As the years go by...

[Agame3]

Years ago a gifted young Programmer tried the impossible that MineCraft already proved possible. He tried to make all by himself a voxel game better and more addictive and more rewarding for its players than all the other space games. He set his goals, he started coding, he spent days after nights after days working for this dream of his. On the way, various people noticed him, his dream, and came to lend a hand. Most of them had no useful coding knowledge, but they could test, could play and have fun, if nothing else then at least could suggest new features, new balancing for the variables, could design gorgeous textures, could write and keep more or less up to date entire Wikipedias about a game that improved and changed constantly. They became the young programmer's virtual friends and as the game progressed they became prouder of what they did for the game and its community. Leaders rose, leaders fell, new leaders came, players came and go then returned again... And in it all, the Programmer was in the center of the entire community, like some sort of a new religion God.

They all felt like they were part of the creation of a new world. The fact that the new world was virtual did not make anyone less of a God than if the world was real. People started creating INSIDE this newly created world and talking about their virtual creations like they were real life statues and new convoluted devices. People that could not create felt small in front of the lesser Gods. Lesser Gods had their own language. "Swarms", "Rotated core", "AA/s", "Skooms"... They talked about the development of thisworld like they knew what they talk about. And in the middle of them all, correcting wrong suppositions, encouraging testing, acknowledging bugs, wasthe Programmer.

But years went by... The Programmer grew tired and more tired, month after month, and once he got enough real life money, he created a company to do his job. And companies, all of them, no matter who create them and for what, have one single purpose for as long as they exist: Maximizing profits. Schema got lost into Schine more and more each year until it got hard to see or talk to him anymore for all those who were his Demigods just 1-2 years before.

And Schine worked and worked. Exploits were crushed once with the features that made them possible. New features were brought in without any consideration for general common sense about how things work or could work in space. Game changed its development direction first without telling anyone and then against anyone who thought for the future of this game and spoke. Well thought and refined suggestions got ignored, protests got moderated by steel and fire then when it became clear this won't make the community praise the new bug patches, Community got simply ignored by Schine, leaving just a few moderators behind to react moderately against nothing much anymore. To mask this indifference, Schema got brought back like a mock-up to keep a thread that takes less than an hour once every 2 weeks to be written by someone who maybe works for the PR, probably is not even the new Schema. Some questions get answers, some are ignored but only once every 2 weeks.

Recently, we were told by a Schine employee that Schine will show us what kinds of ships are viable and we should build instead of what we build now, after countless hours of testing, measuring, comparing results and improving. Worse, what kind of ships Schine, not the players, would like to see in the game.

Well, I think I had a revelation about the reason of these changes. But I am not sure, so I would like to ask the players that put a part of their soul into this virtual world: Can you please answer to the thread's poll? Because if Schine realized something that Schema never even dared thinking about: Making games for smart people is bad for Schine's profits, then all the changes in the last few years got a logical explanation. I hope I am wrong, please tell me I am stupid and understood nothing, tell me I am misinterpreting, but please contradict me with facts. I want to be wrong!

Thank You all and a huge Thank You! to those who also answer to this thread.

 

[JinM]

Can someone give me a TL,DR of why the poll question is asked?

 

[Agame3]

Can someone give me a TL,DR of why the poll question is asked?

Because what we perceive as a lower quality game and ignoring documented and thought suggestions from people who know the game could be just the attempt of turning a great complex and full of freedom game into a simpler game, for simpler people? I mean, Schine may be not dumb and ignoring us, but smarter and pursuing a very different goal than us?

If smarter people would pay more then Schine is dumb. If stupid people are more/would pay more, then we are dumb and Schine does ignore well thought and documented suggestions because it does not need the suggestions from the players who have documented opinions. It actually does not need those players at all.

 

[Nosajimiki]

Starmade has historically had very few players under the age of 16, and an incredible high population of 25-40 year old professionals who are themselves programmers, IT techs, Engineers, etc. who basically want to spend all night doing the fun version of what they spend their days already doing.

I believe Schine is trying to open the game up to be more balanced for younger audiences so that the older population doesn't curbstomp the people who just want to stack blocks, but in the process is actually forcing players to need a stronger understanding of the meta going into it, which is less inclusive for a more average population of gamers.

Even most of the meta players were actually for changes that make entry for new players easier, but a lot of the backlash has been because the features designed to level the playing field actually make getting started much harder. Integrity, stabilizers, chambers, etc are a lot to keep track of while also learning the basics weapon combos, managing your hot bar, build menus, etc.

 

[NaStral]

Dumb people always spend more money, wether they are ignorant adults with disposable income or inexperienced kids with acess to thier parents’ credit card. Just look at mobile games and other microtransaction heavy games on other platforms.

 

[ObiShawnKenobi]

If people like a product, they may buy it. It's not quite a level of IQ that will just buy it for little to no reason.

Schine's goal may be maximizing profit, but due to their misdirection and ignorance, they have lost their biggest factor to creating profit: the community.

Unless the entire Schine team releases an apology of some kind and what they will fix to make the game better for its community, I do not see a future for this game.

 

[MacThule]

People with more money will spend more money on voxel games. And custom skins. And everything else under the sun. That's my view of it.

Sadly though, while IQ under 100 predicts a substantially greater chance of working a very low-paying job, high-paying jobs are very evenly distributed across the IQ spread between 80 and 120 (yes, your boss may very well actually be a legit moron) so surplus wealth with which to purchase luxuries like $7 cups of coffee and $60 video games is going to occur at pretty much the same rate across the IQ spectrum, though higher IQ strata appear to be better savers and so those in low-paying jobs will be far less likely to purchase a video game, even at a very modest price like $15-25 (Minecraft is still $25, I believe).

So the IQ spread among people with money to spend (and willingness to spend) is going to be almost equal, but dumb people can always be tricked into buying dumb stuff regardless of whether they can afford it. They just flash their bondage cards and go "put it on my tab!" So there may be a slight edge to targeting lower IQs, but then again geniuses still play Frogger and that game is simple as hell, so complexity probably isn't a very good indicator of potential to appeal to high IQ so much as to personalities that enjoy dumping insane amounts of time into complex problem-solving for no money in a virtual environment more than they enjoy devoting that same span of time to complex problem solving in real life.

Return question: What value is divided by what other value to obtain the quotient of intelligence, and what is the expected significance of the intelligence quotient once calculated? How can game features be mathematically pegged to IQ results in a meaningful way? Knowing this may help determine if your suspicion is correct.



BTW, within this context, it's worth noting that chambers are substantially more complex than the dynamic of effects which they replaced (which consisted of just dumping a blob of effect blocks anywhere with no connection or consideration other than "moar." And if anything Power 2.0 is too complicated. I find it to be pretty straightforward, but even recently there are still experienced players who understand it so poorly that they firmly believe they have to build in straight lines to be effective because they don't distinguish between block stabilization efficiency and block contribution to total stabilization. In the old power I would just drop a waffle of 100m-long rods, fill with caps, and wrap in heavy armor - done (and same optimal shape, when considering target profile, BTW). The complexity of both power generation and effect have gone way up (by any solid definition of the concept of Complexity), so if complexity is the benchmark being used for IQ appeal then Schine's pivot is actually towards targeting higher IQs, not lower.

 

[Ratchet Hundreda]

I actually appreciate your concern and would agree with most of what you said however, I think your question is wrong. It's not the matter of who would spend more money on such games but who would spend their time on such games. (Time is money jokes HAhah) It's not enough just to buy a game, the community grows if buyers actually play the game as well. Without the community a playerbase is basically equal to a horde of ghosts. (StarMade is very much coming close to this picture.)

I would say people who have a more creative mind are obviously whom would more likely to spend their time playing games like this. Being more creative however doesn't necessarily mean a higher IQ I don't think.

Today's gaming industry became a soft fluffy pillow compared to how it was years ago. Any game which is a bit harder than the average is like Dark Souls. Casual players don't want hard games with complex mechanics they want simple games which tell a story or which they can finish in a heartbeat. Unfortunately there are simply a lot more of the casual kind of players than the dedicated ones. Dedicated players are more serious about the hobby and are more welcoming towards complicated games which takes time and effort to master. However they are a minority.

I wouldn't say the main issue in StarMade's case is that it is complicated but it's genre is which just started to die off. No matter how complicated it is or how much freedom it gives in terms of creativity if players are simply no longer interested in the genre itself. It is a sad picture but is what the fact is. Making profit on voxel games today is like playing game development on the extra hard difficulty. The only thing which can turn enough heads towards something like StarMade is innovation. I'm not talking about the reinventing the wheel kind but actual technological achievements in how a game runs its certain features. This is what this game lacks and currently keeps on trying its hardest to keep up the illusion of but fails. It's a mess of failing ideas and half assessed features which never got dealt with and is probably the reason for the revamps I would assume.

However, I don't think getting this game back on its feet is enough if it won't be able to run.

 

[Agame3]

If people like a product, they may buy it. It's not quite a level of IQ that will just buy it for little to no reason.

Schine's goal may be maximizing profit, but due to their misdirection and ignorance, they have lost their biggest factor to creating profit: the community.

Unless the entire Schine team releases an apology of some kind and what they will fix to make the game better for its community, I do not see a future for this game.

I was thinking about Need for Speed World. I guess it is (was) pretty OK financially, but I doubt it ever had a community. But it was simple, a reflex trainer just like Counter-Strike. By the way, Counter-Strike has some success. Does it have a community?

 

[Nosajimiki]

I actually appreciate your concern and would agree with most of what you said however, I think your question is wrong. It's not the matter of who would spend more money on such games but who would spend their time on such games. (Time is money jokes HAhah) It's not enough just to buy a game, the community grows if buyers actually play the game as well. Without the community a playerbase is basically equal to a horde of ghosts. (StarMade is very much coming close to this picture.)

I would say people who have a more creative mind are obviously whom would more likely to spend their time playing games like this. Being more creative however doesn't necessarily mean a higher IQ I don't think.

Today's gaming industry became a soft fluffy pillow compared to how it was years ago. Any game which is a bit harder than the average is like Dark Souls. Casual players don't want hard games with complex mechanics they want simple games which tell a story or which they can finish in a heartbeat. Unfortunately there are simply a lot more of the casual kind of players than the dedicated ones. Dedicated players are more serious about the hobby and are more welcoming towards complicated games which takes time and effort to master. However they are a minority.

I wouldn't say the main issue in StarMade's case is that it is complicated but it's genre is which just started to die off. No matter how complicated it is or how much freedom it gives in terms of creativity if players are simply no longer interested in the genre itself. It is a sad picture but is what the fact is. Making profit on voxel games today is like playing game development on the extra hard difficulty. The only thing which can turn enough heads towards something like StarMade is innovation. I'm not talking about the reinventing the wheel kind but actual technological achievements in how a game runs its certain features. This is what this game lacks and currently keeps on trying its hardest to keep up the illusion of but fails. It's a mess of failing ideas and half assessed features which never got dealt with and is probably the reason for the revamps I would assume.

However, I don't think getting this game back on its feet is enough if it won't be able to run.

Not just innovation, it needs a niche. Power 1.0 had this niche in its PvP community. None of the other games out there even came close to being able to support large scale battles and multiplayer the way Starmade could, because Starmade was made so much around achieving performance without degrading itself to a simple blockless damage systems. There was huge appeal here, but new mechanics have bogged the game down so much that they have lost that edge.

 

[ObiShawnKenobi]

I was thinking about Need for Speed World. I guess it is (was) pretty OK financially, but I doubt it ever had a community. But it was simple, a reflex trainer just like Counter-Strike. By the way, Counter-Strike has some success. Does it have a community?

Games will have their own communities, whether its official or unofficial. It doesn't even need to have an online forum. I know of groups/clubs that come together to play games, whether its console or tabletop. These are very much considered communities.

However, they will only grow if people find an interest in the game. If they like it, they might play it. That's satisfaction for the player, and it could be profit for the company.

 

[Nosajimiki]

I was thinking about Need for Speed World. I guess it is (was) pretty OK financially, but I doubt it ever had a community. But it was simple, a reflex trainer just like Counter-Strike. By the way, Counter-Strike has some success. Does it have a community?

I'm not personally familiar with Need for Speed World, but I do know Counter-Strike, and it definitely had a very strong community.

A gaming community is not just what happens on the official forums or in faction play, it is the thousands of players world wide who recorded and watched streams of it, it was the physical groups of gamers who would talk about it in real life and get each other playing it, it was the people who would write and read reviews, articles, and guides for it. It is the way I can now turn to my wife and have a conversion with her about a level we both remember playing on as kids long before we even met each other. No, I never got on their forums, but I still impacted their community and their community impacted me.

Frankly, if the Counter Strike franchise wanted to make a comeback, they could send a single press release to a single source, and the whole world would be talking about in in a month.

 

[MacThule]

There was huge appeal here, but new mechanics have bogged the game down so much that they have lost that edge.

The game lost a lot of its optimization and has gotten quite buggy again. Considering the extent of the changes they are making it's not surprising.

I think the difficult thing for people is that they have been making changes constantly for 6 years, but very rarely deep changes to core mechanics that might break optimizations that were made previously. So everyone rather expects them to make these 2.0 changes and have it only marginally impact game function. The changes to core functions are having deep effects on the game though (of course) which is why a lot of people are perceiving a sense of 'destruction' or 'failure.'

Starmade veterans have gone through a thousand new features and other changes over the years. So they think they are "used to it" and "know what to expect" from Schine making changes to game features. There have been a lot of people expressing a feeling that these 2.0 changes are "worse" because they are breaking a lot of stuff, but the real issue is that the scope of this change makes it a different creature entirely.

It has resulted in a loss of the game's edge. A sacrifice made because to prevent being overtaken by games with smarter core systems.

Because...

To be fair... Power 1.0 was kinda dumb. Opinion, of course, but there is that. It was a strange concept to be sure. That's not to say I haven't enjoyed the hundreds of hours I spent designing power cores in 1.0. I do remember first learning the system though and thinking "what the hell does running awkward lines in a 3D volume system have to do with power generation? Where's the actual generator? I feel like I'm just running cables that pull power out of thin air."

The biggest edge P1 had was simplicity - once you learned the general principle of it, it was very flexible and easy to work with. At large scales it was downright simple. The way the curve eventually stopped caring about shape - just pour gigantic bricks and slabs of reactors and capacitors into every available compartment you don't plan to fill with shields.

It will take a while to re-stabilize the game, but when they do I believe its long-term outlook will be far superior to anything it could have achieved without an overhaul. My only criticisms remain that 1] the overhaul should have happened a year earlier, before all the chunk and other major optimizations, and 2] they should not have released the new systems yet. Still not yet, but it's getting close now to playable. And my first criticism may be moot - it seems like a lot of time was wasted on optimizations that were then undermined by new systems, but... it's entirely possible that the new systems wouldn't even be viable had those optimizations not happened.

 

[Sheridan]

I am actually trying to get back into starmade, I haven't played for two years almost. I was a dreadnought, shipyard, and home base designer. I loved making a massive ship or structure, and then getting all the little details to my liking. I really enjoyed the game, but I got bored with building things and started designing super-weapons.

Then the weapons update, were they added all the different weapons types kinda ruined the game for me, I knew the game was in beta at the time and major changes were expected but I had found a niche prior to that update that I enjoyed. I had found certain, I'm not going to call them glitches, maybe exploits would be a better term, with the old missile system layout.

I didn't get to test them out in pvp because the update hit. So Ill be honest, I walked away from the game because I had this mindset of how it needed to be. I'm currently trying to get back into the game, and treat it like a new game. People need to realize every time a major update hits it could make the game different. Bugs always will exist, its just the nature of programing, nothing is ever perfected and when something is? guess what its obsolete by that point. My simple point to this is: progress while needed and in general healthy for the community will always alienate some of the community with the change. The key then is to minimize the impact of the change when necessary, to minimize the collateral damage. Its a lot easier to say than do, and its like playing with fire, sometimes you just get burned.