CIR - Term 2 Councilors Announced

    Criss

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    I think something everyone needs to understand is that Schine is well aware of where the largest issues are in StarMade gameplay. I can list all the problems off the top of my head right now. See below.

    1 - Tutorial system needs to be redone. New players know nothing when they start the game. A new "help" feature is my personal preferred approach and I expect something similar to make it into the game.

    2 - AI is useless right now. Ships need to make smart decisions. When NPC's are in then they also need to act naturally and intelligently.

    3 - NPC's need to be in the game period. This is why they are the focus of development.

    4 - There needs to be new assets. This is why I am building them. This is why we want to do more contests. The universe is empty. It needs to be filled.

    5 - Weapons need something new. Right now 2 weapons are used ever out of the 4, and most players can tell you that a limited number of combinations are worth matching. Pulse is useless. Common knowledge even among devs.

    6 - The universe needs some restructuring. There needs to be a reason to travel, to fight, to claim etc... Hardly any of that exists. This ties very much into what is planned for factions and NPC's.

    7 - There needs to be a difficulty curve. Pirates in the void are just as easy to kill as pirates near spawn. This needs to change and we already have plans for this.

    8 - The economy needs to work. Credits need purpose, as do FP. There needs to be a reason to acquire them and spend them. We have plans for this as well (since it is not as discussed as other aspects of the game)

    So here is the thing. I am not concerned about whether councilors are incredibly experienced. They represent the players that are not on the council. We know the problems. We have solutions that we will try over the course of development. Some of these problems exist solely because the game is incomplete. People want things to do and a big part of that is what we are working on now, it's just not in yet. Balancing is a massive thing to tackle, because eventually it reaches every corner of the game.

    The councilors have a straight forward job. They provide us suggestions. Ideas. There was in fact lots of balance discussions. There were changes in the last few major patches because of this. I want that to happen more so I will make it happen.

    Don't be concerned if a councilor is here to get their favorite color into the game because frankly they aren't. There are more individual posts about pink hull on Kupu's thread than there were of messages from councilors asking for the same. They only need to say it once and it's there. The last time I have heard of anyone asking for decoration blocks was months ago and if sooner, it was restricted to Kupu's thread. Side note - decorative blocks and art are pretty much completely independent from balancing the game. Relax about decoration blocks.

    If you want to make an impact, then write a well thought out suggestion that backs itself up (I am looking at you Chckn Wildstyle). Now would be the best time as the councilors will ensure that I get a look at these suggestions and be able to communicate with everyone.

    The councilors hardly bring fourth suggestions with the intention of pushing their agenda. They bring them to us because those suggestions are usually the best we have heard.
     

    Chckn Wildstyle

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    4/7 councillors= 57%

    What's your definition of majority? :p
    Give the names of those who you say have good judgement and I may agree with you. Having a greater ratio would be better.
     
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    Survival is the main point of the game though. So why are you saying it is not?
    I didn´t say it´s not important to balance the things a bit but the game doesn´t need a council full of survival only players. As this discussion shows it´s pretty close minded to think that other people can´t handle it. Open minded people are usually better to handle suggestions. Also please consider that there are a lot of different opinions of how survival mode should work. PvP is not the only one aspect that has to be covered. PvE anyone? Coop? Empire building in singleplayer?

    You seem to not understand that people are voted in not for merit but for popularity. Mostly at least.
    As this stand now I prefer voting for someone open mindend who does it for popularity than voting for someone who can´t accept the voting of the community and just complains afterwards.
     

    Nuclear Doughnut

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    I think something everyone needs to understand is that Schine is well aware of where the largest issues are in StarMade gameplay. I can list all the problems off the top of my head right now. See below.

    1 - Tutorial system needs to be redone. New players know nothing when they start the game. A new "help" feature is my personal preferred approach and I expect something similar to make it into the game.

    2 - AI is useless right now. Ships need to make smart decisions. When NPC's are in then they also need to act naturally and intelligently.

    3 - NPC's need to be in the game period. This is why they are the focus of development.

    4 - There needs to be new assets. This is why I am building them. This is why we want to do more contests. The universe is empty. It needs to be filled.

    5 - Weapons need something new. Right now 2 weapons are used ever out of the 4, and most players can tell you that a limited number of combinations are worth matching. Pulse is useless. Common knowledge even among devs.

    6 - The universe needs some restructuring. There needs to be a reason to travel, to fight, to claim etc... Hardly any of that exists. This ties very much into what is planned for factions and NPC's.

    7 - There needs to be a difficulty curve. Pirates in the void are just as easy to kill as pirates near spawn. This needs to change and we already have plans for this.

    8 - The economy needs to work. Credits need purpose, as do FP. There needs to be a reason to acquire them and spend them. We have plans for this as well (since it is not as discussed as other aspects of the game)

    So here is the thing. I am not concerned about whether councilors are incredibly experienced. They represent the players that are not on the council. We know the problems. We have solutions that we will try over the course of development. Some of these problems exist solely because the game is incomplete. People want things to do and a big part of that is what we are working on now, it's just not in yet. Balancing is a massive thing to tackle, because eventually it reaches every corner of the game.

    The councilors have a straight forward job. They provide us suggestions. Ideas. There was in fact lots of balance discussions. There were changes in the last few major patches because of this. I want that to happen more so I will make it happen.

    Don't be concerned if a councilor is here to get their favorite color into the game because frankly they aren't. There are more individual posts about pink hull on Kupu's thread than there were of messages from councilors asking for the same. They only need to say it once and it's there. The last time I have heard of anyone asking for decoration blocks was months ago and if sooner, it was restricted to Kupu's thread. Side note - decorative blocks and art are pretty much completely independent from balancing the game. Relax about decoration blocks.

    If you want to make an impact, then write a well thought out suggestion that backs itself up (I am looking at you Chckn Wildstyle). Now would be the best time as the councilors will ensure that I get a look at these suggestions and be able to communicate with everyone.

    The councilors hardly bring fourth suggestions with the intention of pushing their agenda. They bring them to us because those suggestions are usually the best we have heard.
    I'm still waiting for ways to manage database size on large multiplayer servers... I know of multiple Admins that lost that battle... RIP Gravypod former owner of EE...
     

    Lecic

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    If you want to make an impact, then write a well thought out suggestion that backs itself up (I am looking at you Chckn Wildstyle). Now would be the best time as the councilors will ensure that I get a look at these suggestions and be able to communicate with everyone.
    No offense, but I think I speak for nearly everyone who's written a balance suggestion longer than the 10 lines the little thread offers- this is a load of horseshit. I can count on one hand the number of balance suggestions I've made that have gotten any dev recognition, and man, do I make a lot of balance suggestions.

    How're shotguns, Criss? Or pulse? Or dumbfire missiles? Where are the minelayers? Where the hell are our fixes for beams, which STILL can't break more than one armor block a tick? Where's our PD rebalance? Where's the fixing of docked hull, of bypassing effects, of stacking effects? People have been asking for this shit for years. Where the fuck is it?
     
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    Nuclear Doughnut

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    No offense, but I think I speak for nearly everyone who's written a balance suggestion longer than the 10 lines the little thread offers- this is a load of horseshit. I can count on one hand the number of balance suggestions I've made that have gotten any dev recognition, and man, do I make a lot of balance suggestions.

    How're shotguns, Criss? Or pulse? Or dumbfire missiles? Where are the minelayers? Where the hell are our fixes for beams, which STILL can't break more than one armor block a tick? Where's our PD rebalance? Where's the fixing of docked hull, of bypassing effects, of stacking effects? People have been asking for this shit for years. Where the fuck is it?
    Don't forget the Values that are still 32 Bit Integers :) Armor HP and System's HP...
     

    Master_Artificer

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    2 - AI is useless right now. Ships need to make smart decisions. When NPC's are in then they also need to act naturally and intelligently.
    But criss! Don't you know that AI was decided to be of backburnered completely because it was determined that proper AI was in not critical to be of gameplay? Game still works without pirates! :D
     
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    Keptick

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    No offense, but I think I speak for nearly everyone who's written a balance suggestion longer than the 10 lines the little thread offers- this is a load of horseshit. I can count on one hand the number of balance suggestions I've made that have gotten any dev recognition, and man, do I make a lot of balance suggestions.

    How're shotguns, Criss? Or pulse? Or dumbfire missiles? Where are the minelayers? Where the hell are our fixes for beams, which STILL can't break more than one armor block a tick? Where's our PD rebalance? Where's the fixing of docked hull, of bypassing effects, of stacking effects? People have been asking for this shit for years. Where the fuck is it?
    I relayed most of those suggestions, especially the shotgun ones .-.

    Schema is a one man army though, and he procrastinates on those little things I think, lol. Nothing the council can do about that, sadly.
     
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    when did you become such a **** ?
    Chicken has always been a ***** tho o.o
    Chicken was mean to me once when I was grumpy and I will hold it against him forever :D

    If Schema decides to replace isanths with Flying Nyan cats shitting rainbows, we'll have absolutely no power to stop him (we'll say that it's a really really really bad idea though).
    BUT THAT IS THE BEST IDEA OMG
     
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    No offense, but I think I speak for nearly everyone who's written a balance suggestion longer than the 10 lines the little thread offers- this is a load of horseshit. I can count on one hand the number of balance suggestions I've made that have gotten any dev recognition, and man, do I make a lot of balance suggestions.

    How're shotguns, Criss? Or pulse? Or dumbfire missiles? Where are the minelayers? Where the hell are our fixes for beams, which STILL can't break more than one armor block a tick? Where's our PD rebalance? Where's the fixing of docked hull, of bypassing effects, of stacking effects? People have been asking for this shit for years. Where the fuck is it?
    Just because you can list things up that are broken or unbalanced doesn´t mean that the devs change their focus to fix them asap.
     

    Master_Artificer

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    Just because you can list things up that are broken or unbalanced doesn´t mean that the devs change their focus to fix them asap.
    I think his point was things that things had been disused for so long that everyone just forgot about them and looking in the future it will likely be another year or two before they actually will.
     

    Criss

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    I can count on one hand the number of balance suggestions I've made that have gotten any dev recognition, and man, do I make a lot of balance suggestions.
    Shotguns need randomization as well as cone control. Pulse again, useless. We know this. At best it can be used to deter boarding, which rarely happens. Therefore boarding in some instances needs to be completely worthwhile. An additional idea is to completely redesign the weapon. Nobody said that wasn't an option. Minelayers still planned afaik. Just not a priority(like seriously it isn't. The weapon system allows easy implementation of new weapons. But that also comes with balancing that our testers could otherwise be spending on making sure the patches don't break your saves). Beams were the topic of discussion on one of the livestreams as of late. I will admit I need more information on the PD problems.

    I can't stress this enough. We are a small team. We unfortunately cannot build this game as quickly as we all want. Please, let's not assume that our lack of getting these specific things done is also a sign of us ignoring you. Someone else can come along and tell me about the suggestions of theirs that are not in the game yet as well.
     
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    I think his point was things that things had been disused for so long that everyone just forgot about them and looking in the future it will likely be another year or two before they actually will.
    Everyone said it at least a thousand times (and I really don´t want to say it) that alpha is to implement features. Beta will be used to polish the game. Unless all the features are in bugfixing and balance will not be the focus of the dev team. People can ignore this statement as long as they want but this will not change.
     
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    Master_Artificer

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    Everyone said it at least a thousand times (and I really don´t want to say it) that alpha is to implement features. Beta will be used to polish the game. Unless all the features are in bugfixing and balance will not be the focus of the dev team. People can ignore this statement as long as they want but this will not change.
    I know, I was just saying that I think that was his point. They added in features a year and a half ago and they never worked as intended and moved onto other things instead of getting the feature actually implemented.
     

    Nuclear Doughnut

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    Shotguns need randomization as well as cone control. Pulse again, useless. We know this. At best it can be used to deter boarding, which rarely happens. Therefore boarding in some instances needs to be completely worthwhile. An additional idea is to completely redesign the weapon. Nobody said that wasn't an option. Minelayers still planned afaik. Just not a priority(like seriously it isn't. The weapon system allows easy implementation of new weapons. But that also comes with balancing that our testers could otherwise be spending on making sure the patches don't break your saves). Beams were the topic of discussion on one of the livestreams as of late. I will admit I need more information on the PD problems.

    I can't stress this enough. We are a small team. We unfortunately cannot build this game as quickly as we all want. Please, let's not assume that our lack of getting these specific things done is also a sign of us ignoring you. Someone else can come along and tell me about the suggestions of theirs that are not in the game yet as well.
    Then you need to increase the Tester Team at a minimum and put people in charge of the testers that actually find these issues to give you guys the information and that are actually playing on live servers. I know of 1 tester that is on a public server... That's it.

    You have alot of assets sitting idle Criss. You have Server Owners and Admins that get burnt out trying to make the game playable. Schine doesn't have to do EVERYTHING but we need the ability to make it so we can FIX the small things to make our lives easier.
     

    kiddan

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    Congratulations to all of you new Counsel members! The future is bright with people like you strengthening the wings on the figurative spaceship. o7