Read by Council Bringing Starmade back up to SpaceSim+Sandbox standards

[KillaKrazy]

Did the slightest thought of "maybe he didn't want more than himself coding the game until recently" pass through your head?

And that's an acceptable excuse why?

 

[Lecic]

And that's an acceptable excuse why?

Because you're treating a game that a guy made alone in his spare time and had (and still has) free to play for anyone who didn't want to pay for something with an irregular update schedule as if it was a project made by a AAA company with strict deadlines and lots of preorders waiting.

He did not have another coder, not because he didn't "manage his finances properly," but because he did not WANT another coder working on his project. This is not a AAA game. He can have as many coders on his project as he damn well pleases.

 

[KillaKrazy]

Because you're treating a game that a guy made alone in his spare time and had (and still has) free to play for anyone who didn't want to pay for something with an irregular update schedule as if it was a project made by a AAA company with strict deadlines and lots of preorders waiting.

He did not have another coder, not because he didn't "manage his finances properly," but because he did not WANT another coder working on his project. This is not a AAA game. He can have as many coders on his project as he damn well pleases.

Yes, he can have as many coders as he wants. Still not an excuse for why the development cycle is taking so long or the fact that the updates he is pushing out now are half-assed shits that may or may not work.

He doesn't have any strict deadlines per se, but the players will set them. I can understand why people are getting frustrated with the lack of quality updates and the excuses of "lone coder" and "alpha" are getting old.

 

[kiraen]

Yes, he can have as many coders as he wants. Still not an excuse for why the development cycle is taking so long or the fact that the updates he is pushing out now are half-assed shits that may or may not work.

He doesn't have any strict deadlines per se, but the players will set them. I can understand why people are getting frustrated with the lack of quality updates and the excuses of "lone coder" and "alpha" are getting old.

What is getting old is people who don't even support the game bitching because they don't understand how complex the code is for these 'half-assed' updates. I would very much like to see what you can code while working a day job. If you are really concerned you will buy the game so they can quit their other jobs and work on the game full time. That's is kind of the whole point behind Early Release in Indie Development.

If you don't like the game, go away and quite bothering the rest of us.

 

[Alphajim]

Yes, he can have as many coders as he wants. Still not an excuse for why the development cycle is taking so long or the fact that the updates he is pushing out now are half-assed shits that may or may not work.

He doesn't have any strict deadlines per se, but the players will set them. I can understand why people are getting frustrated with the lack of quality updates and the excuses of "lone coder" and "alpha" are getting old.

How can someone be so close-minded ?

Soooo...

Are you talking about Cargo, new docks, thrust update ? Are you seriously saying this is "half-assed shit" ?!?
If you can't understand why they implement these, I will clear it for you: THESE ARE THE BASE STRUCTURE OF THE FUTURE STARMADE.

Nope, player simply CAN'T play StarMade without paying and just GIVE AN ORDER to Schine's team. This game is free, because Schema is a really good guy who's not interested first by money (like other games we don't name). StarMade's existence is based on donations, have you bought the game to support him ?

Lack of quality... Same that my first part, and just troll...
"Lone coder" and "ALPHA" actually ARE real excuses, even if you can't accept it.

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Yeah I agree, new players just want a game where they win easily, with no effort, even paying for this... This leads to cheaters and abusing premium in many games

Excuse me to be aggressive but I really hate when I see this kind of stupid things about StarMade. I can't keep my words.

 

[MrFURB]

...Again? C'mon folks, there's gotta be something you can talk about without getting into internet slappy fights.

As for the original post, there are a couple of other things should be taken into account when wondering why Starmade's population is the way it is. I'll put them in list format since I'm not going to be writing a whole paragraph for each one.

1. Stamrod isn't commercialized. At all.
2. Stamrod has terrible player retention rates due to-

• Lack of up-to-date comprehensive tutorials. People have to figure things out themselves or rely on the questionably correct in-game information.
  
• Numerous hardware/software issues. While most of these are simple to fix, they are everywhere.
  
• Lack of gamified content. There's tons of stuff to do in game, and 80% of it feels more like engineering than gaming. It's pretty damn niche in a way that is unhealthy for player count.

3. For a good chunk of its lifespan Starmade has been Schema's (Lead dev) hobby, not Schine's (Entire team) product. I won't get into origin stories or whatnot, but consider Starmade the product of a spark of interest, a bit of experience, and infinite motivation.
It still is, though experience is growing. I consider Starmade to still be in the state of transition between one man's hobby and a full team's job. There's a lot that could be changed to streamline the development process and Schine is still working toward those.

That's a few of the reasons why Starmade's population is so small yet so eerily devoted.

 

[Lidren]

Actually all three games have a public server list to join multiplayer servers.

Actually, you have to specifically change config settings in starmade to even be on that list. It in no way represents the multiplayer playerbase.

 

[KillaKrazy]

What is getting old is people who don't even support the game bitching because they don't understand how complex the code is for these 'half-assed' updates. I would very much like to see what you can code while working a day job. If you are really concerned you will buy the game so they can quit their other jobs and work on the game full time. That's is kind of the whole point behind Early Release in Indie Development.

If you don't like the game, go away and quite bothering the rest of us.

I have purchased the game, I purchased it years ago when the new forums came online. I don't feel the need to have my badges showing. Though it does show a lot that it is always your go to attack on people who post their opinions.

How can someone be so close-minded ?

Soooo...

Are you talking about Cargo, new docks, thrust update ? Are you seriously saying this is "half-assed shit" ?!?
If you can't understand why they implement these, I will clear it for you: THESE ARE THE BASE STRUCTURE OF THE FUTURE STARMADE.

--------------------------
Yeah I agree, new players just want a game where they win easily, with no effort, even paying for this... This leads to cheaters and abusing premium in many games

Excuse me to be aggressive but I really hate when I see this kind of stupid things about StarMade. I can't keep my words.

I'll just truncate your ridiculously long quote. Have you tried using the shipyards or more recently the fleets? I'll speak briefly on the fleets and the mining portion more specifically. A few of the issues:
1. They can only mine asteroids
2. They can only mine in loaded sectors
3. You have to manually tell them to move to a different sector each time they finish mining
What was the point of releasing this feature in its current state? Why not wait until it was more fleshed out or complete.

 

[Lecic]

2. They can only mine in loaded sectors

Uh, yeah, were you expecting them to be able to do things in unloaded sectors? That's a massive feature that should have all the things that NEED unloaded sector actions to be in the game first. Why would they put unloaded sector mining and combat in yet when crew, an important part of how fleet ships are going to work, are not in yet?
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3. You have to manually tell them to move to a different sector each time they finish mining

Why would you not want it like this? Imagine you've got an asteroid sector above a planet that you plan on colonizing. Would you want the drones to suddenly start mining the planet after they ate the asteroids?

 

[Alphajim]

A few of the issues:
1. They can only mine asteroids
2. They can only mine in loaded sectors
3. You have to manually tell them to move to a different sector each time they finish mining
What was the point of releasing this feature in its current state? Why not wait until it was more fleshed out or complete.

What you're saying is exactly the same as telling to an english student to read Victor Hugo one or two months after he begins french...

1) mining planets isn't their main focus in this FIRST mining fleet system

2) nothing can be done on unloaded sectors, this is not implemented yet

3) this is the FIRST system, don't expect a noob to build a great and beautiful ship in his first day


My quote is ridiculously long but you ridiculously don't understand that Schine isn't (and want not to be) an AAA team. So they do what they want, this is their game and if they want to release a functionality they do it. We are like alpha testers.

Look at some really large games in their closed alpha and you will see what's really the worst.

 

[StormWing0]

KillaKrazy if you think it is so easy apply for a job with them and try to code the game as well. Programming in general is harder than you seem to be thinking and also shooting down valid reasons for why the game is taking so long saying they aren't valid is a fast way to Ignored Vile, nvm Banned Vile. >_>

 

[Gamel]

I don't think you should put SE on the table to compare with SM.
SE's team sucks, they let the game public with ridiculous bug.

For example a common bug between SM and SE.
Player will drop out the ship when jump drive is on. the ship jump away and player will stay in the same place.
SM had that bug before, but only in dev build and it is fixed before jump drive is update to public.

And look at SE, no QC check, SE:
"we have a new function, lets get it public NOW, if there is any bugs, will fix later, company as big as ubisoft also do like this, it is fine"

I mean.....WTF ?????

 

[Edymnion]

Pretty much stopped reading the OP as soon as he hit "Starmade has been around the longest, but has the least amount of features!".

Yet another person comparing the work of one person to the work of an entire team. Give bench 20 programmers and I'm sure the game would hit fast forwards on feature progression too.

 

[Shaker]

I dont think starmades population is getting smaller, it just looks that way as players move back to singleplayer creative mode as current multiplayer isnt worth much besides build testing PvP and seeing what others have built

 

[Edymnion]

I dont think starmades population is getting smaller, it just looks that way as players move back to singleplayer creative mode as current multiplayer isnt worth much besides build testing PvP and seeing what others have built

There's a lot of truth to this.

Especially when its so damned hard to find a server that isn't running crazy mods or going all PvP crazy. For the most part, there simply isn't a plain jane vanilla survival build server out there anymore. The fan community has basically overspecialized itself to the point there isn't a single starting place to go to anymore.

 

[Alphajim]

We have a french server, all vanilla, with builders and PvP players and Rp players, with fair admins, but with a lot of rules xD
Orion has a "Coalition" system, with a reward station-capture system, missions...
It's open if you want :p

 

[TheWurm]

I've always been under the impression that playing a game marked as alpha is the same as signing up as a game tester. I assumed this was generally accepted. Perhaps I was wrong.

 

[Shaker]

Players will come back to moldyplayer when mission/quests get done and when factions become worth something :

● reason to cap other sectors besides mining bonus
● not having all your storages boxes cleaned out by a 4th rank member
● faction permission block to be able to restrict by rank!

The devs focus for the moment is fleets/NPCs, player pop will look low all the way through this till they start up on things players can do together/against each other.

Edit/
Fleshed out version of above

 

[Lecic]

not having all your storages boxes cleaned out by a 4th rank member

Lock up your storage with ranks.

faction permission block to be able to restrict by rank!

You can get around this by docking things with different rank locks. If your main base is locked to rank 1, and you want something that only rank 3+ can access, dock something to the HB that's locked to that rank. I agree it would be nicer to have that, but you CAN already do this.

 

[StormWing0]

That said it'd be nice not to have to use docked entities for that. >_>