Do not make this game die

[Lecic]

RabidBat lilheartless

You two do realize that the groundwork features are being added right now to build the actual interesting content, right? You can't have massive empires without the cargo system to move the stuff around. You can't move the cargo ships themselves around or defend the places that cargo is going to without fleets.

 

[terra mining corp.]

and once they add npc factions and trade routes siege warfair could be an interesting mechanic for "turtles"

 

[StormWing0]

and once they add npc factions and trade routes siege warfair could be an interesting mechanic for "turtles"

Making it so they can't auto dock an AI Mining ship to HQ would solve that. Make it so they need a dedicated Cargo Transport without any salvager arrays on it to fairy the cargo from the mining station to the HQ. The only chance anyone will get to hit their mining operations. Anything without salvagers on it in a fleet could auto dock though to HQ. Doesn't stop a player from manually docking them to HQ so that could be the only way around it.

 

[Honytawk]

A game can not die if it keeps receiving updates.
The community can become small, but it will keep existing.


And my take on the PvP vs PvE debacle is: why not let the faction decide if they want PvP or not?
Let them have the options:
Peaceful: nothing can attack your homebase sector and you can not attack anyone elses.
Survival: Pirates can attack your sector, but no player can. Nor can you attack anyone elses sector.
Challenge: Factions with the same selected option can attack your homebase sector and you can attack theirs.

Changing the option takes 24 hours.

So you can set it to peaceful when you start, move up to survival when you get turrets on your base, change to challenge when you have titans and a giant base.

And with "nothing can attack" I mean either do 0 damage on all weapons or can't fire anything inside the faction homebase sector.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

A simple yet effective solution; I like it.

 

[lilheartless]

RabidBat lilheartless

You two do realize that the groundwork features are being added right now to build the actual interesting content, right? You can't have massive empires without the cargo system to move the stuff around. You can't move the cargo ships themselves around or defend the places that cargo is going to without fleets.

you do realize that thats exactly what i'm talking about right? sure now its more realistic but you could have ferried stuff between your empire in the endless chest last year cargo update wasn't NEEDED to add actual gameplay ... could it have been added later to make the game more balanced ? yes

i have no dislike for this game.... i am however worried that with how its been going by the time it gets done if there are enough people still interested in a year or two for schema to keep working on it, it won't ever take off

 

[Lukwan]

I cite the fury of this debate as proof that this game is alive and well. Having even a modest online community is better than most games can manage even after full release and much hyping. Die-hard players who have stuck around for years are here for a reason. They are still engaged.

Another way of saying InDev is 'no promises'. When you are the boss you get to decide what pace to maintain. Is there some time limit on development that I should be aware of? I have no problem waiting for for this process to unfold. I own a ton of games that I never play...many were released in a unfinished or half-assed state and are not worth my time.

Do we all have better things to do with our time...or have we decided to spend it massaging SM into a better game?

 

[Minsc]

Without reading the whole topic,...

I can see worry and panic that when new players come to this game they'll be put off by some of the buggieness in the games development state. When introducing the game to someone, would it best to first see if they even want to try a game in an incomplete state? As people have said, some simply do not have the patience for it. Let newcomers come in at their own pace. Pestering someone to play a game when they really don't want to is more likely to drive a person away. They'll look at the first flaw they find and use it as an excuse to never look at the game again. Those who want to play the game, will. Be honest about what the game currently is, both the good and the bad, and respect the person we introduce the game to. A surefire way to turn someone away is to berate them for not liking a game we like.

 

[RabidBat]

I cite the fury of this debate as proof that this game is alive and well. Having even a modest online community is better than most games can manage even after full release and much hyping. Die-hard players who have stuck around for years are here for a reason. They are still engaged.

Another way of saying InDev is 'no promises'. When you are the boss you get to decide what pace to maintain. Is there some time limit on development that I should be aware of? I have no problem waiting for for this process to unfold. I own a ton of games that I never play...many were released in a unfinished or half-assed state and are not worth my time.

Do we all have better things to do with our time...or have we decided to spend it massaging SM into a better game?

A modest online community is fine, when a game has already been released fully made it's money and time has moved on meaning those communities have enough content and the tools to keep on playing without developer or community support. It is fine when players have paid for the game and have a reason to invest themselves.

A modest community that seems to be slowly shrinking is terrible however when a game is far from complete after a seriously long development cycle, especially when 90% of those playing it haven't even bought said game.
What happens when the money runs out? They ask for customers to give them more free community content like stations and AI fleets?
Do they continue developing just to keep 20 or so diehard fans happy? With no income coming in? I dunno maybe Schema has inherited a massive fortune or is on a disability pension or something so can continue working without StarMade making money...... Maybe the rest of the Schine team can live off hugs alone.
This game not only needs players, but it also needs to be able to pay those working on it.

You're happy to wait? So were many of us to begin with, but updates are slow, nothing has majorly changed in a long while, and planned updates just come off as 'upgrades to existing features' which is always how every update seems to be.
Many have grown tired of doing the same grind over and over and want some real gameplay added even at the most basic level. Most I know who have stopped playing have just grown tired over couple of years of doing the same few basic tasks over and over. It would take a massive update to gameplay in StarMade to bring them back.

It gets harder for people to be sympathetic and remain interested when they see other projects develop (with small or one man teams) and add content at the same time at a quick pace.
And gushing fanboys who defend everything about a product are sadly outweighed by those living in reality.

Not sure maybe Schine wants just 10-20 hard core fanboys circle jerking over their product on a single moderate community server, good luck to them if they do. Or maybe, just maybe they would like several thousand players on numerous servers and a decent income.

If they want the former then they can keep doing what they are doing at the pace they're doing it at, but if they want the latter they need to really pick up the pace and make this game more fun than it currently is.

RabidBat lilheartless

You two do realize that the groundwork features are being added right now to build the actual interesting content, right? You can't have massive empires without the cargo system to move the stuff around. You can't move the cargo ships themselves around or defend the places that cargo is going to without fleets.

Sorry as far as I am concerned just the same old fanboy excuses we've had over the last 2 years. Why cannot we not have the groundwork and some interesting content? Many other developers seem to manage a good mix of both at the same time. And again with small teams or even smaller ones before 'but schines a small team.'
All that ground work will be for nought if a developer cannot keep people interested.

 

[StormWing0]

Rabbit Games can only be made so fast and the day games are made instantly to the exact specifications anyone could want isn't going to happen. How fast a game can get made is based on the number of devs in each area of if and how well they coordinate. If you think it can be done at some super high speed with a low number like this than prove it and come up with a game yourself. Yes we all know some people run out of patience and don't come back but that happens in every game.

 

[sayerulz]

Can we make this thread die please? We have 91% of people saying that the meta was NOT better before.

 

[ZektorSK]

*Ryuko prepares for capturing this thread

Yep, this thread is already death, could someone close it ? It looks like Life Fibers are coming here

 

[Master_Artificer]

*Ryuko prepares for capturing this thread

Yep, this thread is already death, could someone close it ? It looks like Life Fibers are coming here

I dont think I will ever understand what you say
XD

 

[Drakkart]

Sorry but i read this thread and people come up with the most crazy ideas like forcing playstyles on players and mechanics to prevent - idk i stoped reading... the point is this game is awesome and on a good way. yes everyone who loves starmade is concerned about stuff not getting implemented the way they would have hoped and stuff taking too long and ... BUT this game is on it's way to real glory and it delivers in a lot of aspects already and more are to be added. kid friendly might be not one of them or a quick in shoot stuff quick out approach. there are other games for that. but if you want to become part of a breathing universe starmade in the future will become the space simulation crafting rpg open sandbox building action shooter puzzle adventure game we might love. and just by listing all these different genres you maybe caught a glimpse on the scale this project is heading for. this is not farm ville on facebook this game might be crushing some million dollar AAA titles in the future a few years ahead of us. not graphics wise ofc for that was never the intent but game play wise and stuff you can do in it wise. So untill they announce going beta soonish which would indicate the inclusion of features will come to a decline. i suggest to not even worry about player numbers... sure i would wish for some updates and fixes too but i also understand let us first put everything in and then fix what is broken.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

100% agreed.

From what I've seen, the dev team has released a lot of good ideas that keep getting progressively better. Above all else, this is a game of creativity and imagination. As such, when Schine releases something with a potential to 'break' your builds, you should be prepared. I don't mean blindly accept the issue and chalk it up to the "well, it's still in alpha" excuse. What I mean is, you need to adapt with them and more importantly; around them.

Example; remember when chain docking wasn't supported (sighs)? Remember "docking enhancers" and "turret enhancers"? I've made preparations and accommodations for these kinds of updates before they were even mentioned by Shine on literally every design I've made since the game looked like this...

This game has already eclipsed Minecraft and Space Engineers in terms of graphics and raw building potential and shows no sign of stopping. ...and now we have actual fleets? Let the fun begin.

 

[ZektorSK]

This game has already eclipsed Minecraft and Space Engineers in terms of graphics and raw building potential and shows no sign of stopping. ...and now we have actual fleets? Let the fun begin.

 

[Lecic]

Space Engineers only looks good from far away. Up close, the textures are horrible. High resolution graphics need good textures to back them up, you know. Graphics is making things look good, not trying to convince people that turd quality textures and models are good.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Lecic beat me to it... Bad, bad, BAD textures.

Tell you what; I'll give you a pass on the planet landings due to one thing; Lighting. Space engineers has great lighting but you have ZERO creative freedom to do anything worth while with planets. Also, as a former 3D animator, I can tell you that I'm not particularly impressed with their texture mapping either. It's basically an upscaled grass jpg texture map stretched on the ground.

The rest of the game doesn't do much for me in the way of graphics and object design. Lighting effects aside; for what it is, (a creative space simulator) it falls short of StarMade in MANY other aspects.

 

[refirendum]

The tutorial isnt good since its incomplete as well. lots of things like ambient sound or ai-guild side-missions are not present to engage the player in the expanse of the game. Like, you don't see missions where a player is contacted by some hypothetical Pirate HQ to kill off pirates and take over a pirate station as a test to obtain a pirate-tag meta-item which when used would invite and accept them into the pirate guild and auto-generate a 2-3 ship fleet of pirate ships with the player's ship as the flagship. or you don't see beginner missions from the trading guild to obtain some resource to trade to them for extra credits over what the resource is actually worth. or escort missions where trading guild freighters are being attacked and you have to make sure the freighter reaches the next shop before they pay you in your choice of credits or blocks. none of this kind of stuff is in the game to engage players, so it gets empty and lifeless. The singleplayer needs to be fun to get people to really stick with the game.

ships as mission rewards, blocks as mission rewards, credits as mission rewards. we need missions for that.

 

[kiraen]

The tutorial isnt good since its incomplete as well. lots of things like ambient sound or ai-guild side-missions are not present to engage the player in the expanse of the game. Like, you don't see missions where a player is contacted by some hypothetical Pirate HQ to kill off pirates and take over a pirate station as a test to obtain a pirate-tag meta-item which when used would invite and accept them into the pirate guild and auto-generate a 2-3 ship fleet of pirate ships with the player's ship as the flagship. or you don't see beginner missions from the trading guild to obtain some resource to trade to them for extra credits over what the resource is actually worth. or escort missions where trading guild freighters are being attacked and you have to make sure the freighter reaches the next shop before they pay you in your choice of credits or blocks. none of this kind of stuff is in the game to engage players, so it gets empty and lifeless. The singleplayer needs to be fun to get people to really stick with the game.

ships as mission rewards, blocks as mission rewards, credits as mission rewards. we need missions for that.

You forgot to say 'yet'.
All of this is planned.