I know its Alpha but...

[nightrune]

This is coming from someone that loves this game to death.

I just tried to get two of my friends to play, and after two hours they were fed up with the interface. They happen be to a founder for a successful software startup and the lead architect for that start up. Its not just them though... Trying to get someone into this game is damn hard. The two above glitched out of the tutorial area and didn't even finish it. I couldn't even get my wife to play with me as it was too intense at the beginning.

I've heard talks about UI updates, and help for new players but lately we've not seen much on that front. The founder's biggest comment was that schine was working on many great features but if you can't really use any of them, they aren't any good.

I suppose I'm just exasperated at trying to get friends into the game, and the reasons they aren't playing really are not getting addressed.

/rant

EDIT: Some grammar.

 

[Gamel]

as I remember, they are doing a total remake for tutorials, in the future you don't need to be transfer to tutorial sector. player will be able to finish/revisit tutorials in the spawn station, just like normal MMORPG, you can accept the tutorial quest from NPCs in the spawn station.

 

[Phocian]

As nightrune said.

A lot of us (from our server community) are getting frustrated with advertised features that don't work, they don't work because they are not completed.
Yet still more features are released that are not complete before the previous ones are patched to a point of being useable in the game.

The call of "Alpha" to me doesn't explain why you would advertise a advancement to the game which is not complete.

After you spend a day trying to get it to work you then find out that no matter what you do it won't work as its not complete.

The list is a long as the releases, since shipyards.

The last update was great, BUG fixes, fighters can dock. An update that allows players to have fun and improves the game.

Fleet mining, fleet control? Keep it in the Dev build until it's ready and release it when it's ready. Because at the moment it brings more problems than it solves and turns off players. Our server was basically unplayable for two weeks until the last patch.

Update day is not generating excitement almost a resigned feeling of "here comes the null pointer train, just look at the follow up posts to the release statement, a few pages if lucky. Server populations are falling. Well for us, you guys can info about your own.

I would rather see what is in game work and work well before anything else is added.
I know what has been said regarding bug fixing, I'm not a programmer but you don't build walls from straw and put a concrete roof on with the intention of making the walls brick at some point (soon).

Alternative is maybe take a break for 6 months again and see what happens. It's a game after all.

 

[Pacific_Jim]

Making the game "work well" before things are added would be such a waste of time, because every other feature added or optimisation made would likely mess up something else. The game would take forever to finish. Something else to bare in mind is part of the reason for having the game be open alpha at all is to increase the player base testing the thing, to give the dev team a better idea of where the problems are. It's part of the trade off for early access.

 

[Phocian]

Making the game "work well" before things are added would be such a waste of time, because every other feature added or optimisation made would likely mess up something else. The game would take forever to finish. Something else to bare in mind is part of the reason for having the game be open alpha at all is to increase the player base testing the thing, to give the dev team a better idea of where the problems are. It's part of the trade off for early access.

Waste of time?

Being able to play the game is a waste of time?
Adding new features that work and are usable is a waste of time?
Retaining your existing playbase which run servers for other players to use, so spreading the word, making promotional videos showcasing the game is a waste of time?

Opening up Alpha (steam) is to generate revenue, take on more staff.

Starmade is not retaining players atm, bare that in mind.
That is something we all want to see change.
"Word of mouth" is the most influential tool in any entertainment industry, but it is a knife that cuts both ways.

 

[kiraen]

Yes, waste of time.
So we stop development to get fleet working properly and fully.
After that, then they implement NPCs and/or Quarter system.
These effect how fleets work, so now fleets are broken again.
Yes, waste of time.

 

[Phocian]

Wondered how long until you piped up Kiraen., the badge holder for aggressive posts since Feb 22 2015.
What are your game design qualifications for those five lines of detailed explanation as you said "we"?

Shipyards.
Chat disappearing.
Boundry box lag.
Fleets.
Mining (larger ships than drones).
Teleporters retaining info.
Wireless connections disconnecting.
-------------------
To name a few.
-------------------
Constructive replies not the STFU posts you like to issue regularly.
What some have stated in this thread are reasons that we see that players are leaving, long time and newer ones which nobody wants.

 

[nightrune]

Making the game "work well" before things are added would be such a waste of time, because every other feature added or optimisation made would likely mess up something else. The game would take forever to finish. Something else to bare in mind is part of the reason for having the game be open alpha at all is to increase the player base testing the thing, to give the dev team a better idea of where the problems are. It's part of the trade off for early access.

Its no excuse to not be iterating more on the interface though. They've got a pretty good idea of where they are going and the interface can follow that.

 

[SuperWookie]

Chat disappearing.

Just if you didn't know, the fix for this is to shrink the chat box as far as it goes and pull it back open. This is just a temporary solution, it still needs to be fixed properly cause its god damned annoying.

 

[kiraen]

I'm sorry you took that as aggressive, I just didn't feel like spending a lot of time typing out a simple concept.

The point I was trying to make was that StarMade is a complex web of intersecting systems and functions. Fixing all the bugs at this point would serve no purpose since the addition of the next set of systems will simply break things all over again. Not to mention that some of the existing bugs are only there because the system that completes them hasn't been implemented yet. Are you aware that transporters will be interacting with the upcoming Quarters?

The common analogy here is building a house. You want to hang all the drywall before the framing is complete.

As for losing player base, I think you are mistaken. In fact I see quite a few new names appearing in the forums on a regular basis. What you see as losing players is called churn. Certainly we are losing people. But we are gaining more then we are losing. I admit, the game does have a rather steep learning curve. It's also not finished yet. If this is something that is a problem, then a six month hiatus is a good idea.

This is, unfortunately, how alpha development works. Spend fifteen minutes on steam looking at other Early Access games. You will see this thread is being repeated for every one of them. Spend five minutes searching in this forum. This is not the first time someone has started this thread. (Hey, SkylordLuke, should this be in the FSM?)

Strangely, Schine never responds to them and Schine never changes their plans on how they are developing the game.


As for my qualifications, I actually read the posts that Bench and other developers have made. I've also watched the various videos that they have made. In short, I paid attention.

 

[Phocian]

I take most of your forum replies as aggressive as thats how they are.
Replacing "aggressive" with "sanctimonious" still gives a good impression of what your about. I won't wiki link that for you.

You have failed as always to address the content of the posts on the thread, so only you only pay attention when it suites you.
Your as qualified as me when it comes to knowing what Schines schedule and how priorities are decided.

Anyway thank you for a more thought out reply, your link to alpha development was not required. Nearly three years on these forums have explained that to me.
But as for the player base I do know what Im talking about, from a multiplayer point of view, because I hear it over and over from players new and old.

I know you have a degree of hero worship with Schine and so defend them with zealotry normally reserved for sacred religious texts, but understand that most people on these forums as well as you eagerly read up on any information available regarding the game but are able to question, ponder and hope.

Im not expecting Schine to reply in this thread, its a forum for discussion. One could hope that they read it though eh?
Being told its sunny outside and getting soaked by the rain the minute you walk out can be disappointing, best to tell it as it is.

Just if you didn't know, the fix for this is to shrink the chat box as far as it goes and pull it back open. This is just a temporary solution, it still needs to be fixed properly cause its god damned annoying.

Great thank you, that is really helpful !

 

[CyberTao]

Spoiler: House Rant

You people and your stupid "building a house" analogies. Lets break it down.

The first thing in any form of construction is laying the foundations, or the core of the game. The question here is, "What are the foundations of Starmade?". In my opinion, the core is the following;

1. Building ships, stations, bases, etc. Making things in general is a core element of voxel games.
2. AI. AI is a core element because of how everything relates to it, pirates, turrets, fleets, etc all depend on AI.

In the case of Starmade's foundation, we also need to make plans for a 'basement', in otherwords, Modding. Modding will hopefully be a big part of SM's future, and that requires so much space set aside in the foundation/engine for everything to work properly.


Now, what comes after the foundation? Walls you say? You're half right.There is actually multiple kinds of 'walls'. What's next is "Load bearing walls", also known as What the game needs to be able to stand on it's own. People tend to fuck up here and throw some of these into "foundation" or just "drywalling", examples of Load bearing features are PvE, and PvP.

1. PvE; The early game and livelihood of a passive player. PvE includes all aspects of the universe, such as resource/universe generation, fleets and commands, and arguably a method of spawning your ships (shipyards). Also pirates and trading guild.
2. PvP is the mid-late game, and meat of the game for the agressive type. Includes Combat (duh), fleets (strategy and such), rough balance, and various options for doing things (Missiles? beams? Spyboat?).

As you can guess, Load bearing features are what the game will depend on to survive past beta. These features will define what the game will look like, so it's a good idea to get them right early on. The foundation and load bearing features are what I would expect from an Alpha.

I'm not gonna go on and try to label all the bits of SM as building components, but things like Interface are neither load bearing features, nor foundation. Nor are they "drywalling". They are the exterior paneling/strapping, the part that fits under the siding and drywall, and hides the ugly and clunky mess that is the load bearing beams, and presents them in a way that is much easier for people to work it.

That said, in construction you never complete 1 before you can start 2. If there is room to put up some strapping on the walls where the load bearing features are already finished, then I say you can. You dont need all of them up.

Game design process are similar to building a house in many regards, but you still need to know how it's actually done before you can start tossing around hard criticism.

Rant aside, I don't see why Schine shouldn't look to cleaning up some of the 'implemented' features. Shipyards are pointless afaik in the current game because almost everyone I know builds in SM or on a build server with creative, and actually have a few bugs that delete ships that get too close iirc. Kinda the opposite of useful.

Same for the UI and difficulty curve, that can probably be addressed someone, not just Schema. The UI might be clunky as hell, but if you streamline the design a bit more make it more obvious what does what (tooltips or such), it would probably help loads.


Also, as a bonus mini-rant; Schine should stop rushing to work on the next new feature. Like it's been said, we've been left with a few crippling bugs over the years because instead of waiting a day to start someone new, the Devs just jumped into it, meaning that whatever they started needs to be finished/stable before they can stick out a patch most times. It does get very tiring, and although the new player count might be stabilizing the community, we are losing a few of the old players. We aren't growing as a hole, just holding steady. More people stumbling onto the forums does not mean the game is growing.

 

[canadianbacon]

Spoiler: House Rant

You people and your stupid "building a house" analogies. Lets break it down.

The first thing in any form of construction is laying the foundations, or the core of the game. The question here is, "What are the foundations of Starmade?". In my opinion, the core is the following;

1. Building ships, stations, bases, etc. Making things in general is a core element of voxel games.
2. AI. AI is a core element because of how everything relates to it, pirates, turrets, fleets, etc all depend on AI.

In the case of Starmade's foundation, we also need to make plans for a 'basement', in otherwords, Modding. Modding will hopefully be a big part of SM's future, and that requires so much space set aside in the foundation/engine for everything to work properly.


Now, what comes after the foundation? Walls you say? You're half right.There is actually multiple kinds of 'walls'. What's next is "Load bearing walls", also known as What the game needs to be able to stand on it's own. People tend to fuck up here and throw some of these into "foundation" or just "drywalling", examples of Load bearing features are PvE, and PvP.

1. PvE; The early game and livelihood of a passive player. PvE includes all aspects of the universe, such as resource/universe generation, fleets and commands, and arguably a method of spawning your ships (shipyards). Also pirates and trading guild.
2. PvP is the mid-late game, and meat of the game for the agressive type. Includes Combat (duh), fleets (strategy and such), rough balance, and various options for doing things (Missiles? beams? Spyboat?).

As you can guess, Load bearing features are what the game will depend on to survive past beta. These features will define what the game will look like, so it's a good idea to get them right early on. The foundation and load bearing features are what I would expect from an Alpha.

I'm not gonna go on and try to label all the bits of SM as building components, but things like Interface are neither load bearing features, nor foundation. Nor are they "drywalling". They are the exterior paneling/strapping, the part that fits under the siding and drywall, and hides the ugly and clunky mess that is the load bearing beams, and presents them in a way that is much easier for people to work it.

That said, in construction you never complete 1 before you can start 2. If there is room to put up some strapping on the walls where the load bearing features are already finished, then I say you can. You dont need all of them up.

Game design process are similar to building a house in many regards, but you still need to know how it's actually done before you can start tossing around hard criticism.

Rant aside, I don't see why Schine shouldn't look to cleaning up some of the 'implemented' features. Shipyards are pointless afaik in the current game because almost everyone I know builds in SM or on a build server with creative, and actually have a few bugs that delete ships that get too close iirc. Kinda the opposite of useful.

Same for the UI and difficulty curve, that can probably be addressed someone, not just Schema. The UI might be clunky as hell, but if you streamline the design a bit more make it more obvious what does what (tooltips or such), it would probably help loads.


Also, as a bonus mini-rant; Schine should stop rushing to work on the next new feature. Like it's been said, we've been left with a few crippling bugs over the years because instead of waiting a day to start someone new, the Devs just jumped into it, meaning that whatever they started needs to be finished/stable before they can stick out a patch most times. It does get very tiring, and although the new player count might be stabilizing the community, we are losing a few of the old players. We aren't growing as a hole, just holding steady. More people stumbling onto the forums does not mean the game is growing.

Absolutely.

Most of the old players worth knowing are gone. Many of the old faction leaders and countless no name pillars of the community. We are left with a husk of a community that for some reason concentrated the trolls and aggressive communitykillers. Some of these people were even moderators.

The game used to have 2000 people logging on per day, to play with the galaxy rangers. The vaygr literally conquered a server. I played my first multiplayer game and got destroyed by some dude from across the galaxy.

We have so many new features but merely 100 people per day logging hours into the game. Questionable design decisions, turmoil amongst the developers, moderator intervention never there when we need it but always there to interfere when it isn't needed. The vaygr devolved from kicking the shit out of everybody to its leaders getting banned for doxxing. This community honestly has to be the biggest stain on humanity I've ever seen. There are a few good people left (fire should have been the only moderator, nuclear doughnut used to run an excellent server, flying debris is still one of the most important members of the community), but largely this forum has been a hive for heated bullshit that doesn't even qualify as trolling in my book because NOBODY gets to laugh.

So maybe you want to know why I'm here?

I'm here, not because I like the game, but because I really like what I want it to be. Rails and the new turrets however laggy are an inkling of greatness. I'm going to finish writing my manifesto of suggestions and just fucking leave. If I come back in 6 months and the game is dead, so be it.

No offense to schema, but it took us five years to get here. How long will it take to finish alpha, and then how long will it take to make all the broken, buggy feature additions work?

When tarn Adams releases an update once a year, he releases a huge number of staggeringly amazing features. His game cab stand on its own with ease judging by the thousands of players and massive amounts of publicity dwarf fortress gets.

And at the end of the day, I still prefer the old site over this one.

 

[kiraen]

Replacing "aggressive" with "sanctimonious" still gives a good impression of what your about. I won't wiki link that for you.

You have no idea how much this made me laugh. :D And the hypocrisy had nothing to do with it.

You have failed as always to address the content of the posts on the thread, so only you only pay attention when it suites you.

It is possible that I missed the point. My take away from the OP is that it is difficult to bring in new players because the difficulty of the game, compounded by the fact that many systems don't even work as advertised. You responded to this with:

I would rather see what is in game work and work well before anything else is added.

Which completely contradicts your rebuttal statement:

your link to alpha development was not required. Nearly three years on these forums have explained that to me.

Alpha development is when all of the feature and systems are added. They do not always work right and there are many bugs. Getting more 'players' into the game is very difficult. Those of us who are dedicated to the game at this point are not actually 'players'. We are 'testers'. I suppose it comes back to the old adage. 'If you find a job you love to do, you will never work a day in your life.' The people we are losing are the ones who are no longer having fun testing. They might come back in six months. They might not.

And that is fine. We receive a new influx of testers on a regular basis. This the churn I mentioned previously.

But as for the player base I do know what Im talking about, from a multiplayer point of view, because I hear it over and over from players new and old.

What I hear most is that people are fed up with multi player. To much griefing and lag. More permission controls and protections are needed, more optimization. They leave the servers, but they still play the game single player.

At this point the game is 'playable'. But no one ever said it was 'easy' or 'fun'.

I know you have a degree of hero worship with Schine and so defend them with zealotry normally reserved for sacred religious texts,

Guilty as charged. I've converted my basement into a small temple. I have a marble cat statue with ruby eyes resting upon a golden bench. Criss' avatar is painted onto the Blessed Chest of Legos and Danki graces the Sacred Chimes. The rest of the dev avatars have been inlaid into the oak and mahogany paneling. This reminds me, I need to run to the store for more incense and cleaner. Chicken blood is surprisingly hard to get out of silk rugs.

CyberTao :
I agree with your rant, but most people don't know enough about construction to really follow the detailed stuff. I try to keep it simple.

The following are some educated guesses on my part.

• The main functionality of shipyards is in. The main reason progress isn't being made here is probably because of the need to make changes to the design/blueprint formats. But there is no point in updating those formats until the rest of the functionality is in the game. I imagine that the movable cores, quarters, and duty stations may require some fiddling. They need to figure out how this stuff will work before they can figure out how the shipyards will handle it.
  
• The UI is a low priority problem. Sure, they could spend a few weeks updating it, but why? A month later they will have added new systems which will require new UI elements. And a month after that people will be complaining that the UI needs an overhaul. Better to wait and figure out everything we need in the UI then to waste time rebuilding it every update.

Personally I agree with you about the rushing. I never start on a new update until a couple days after it goes live. I'm always waiting for that hotfix. I think a once a month update would be better. But I'm not sure that's what you meant and I expect more hate because of this idea.

canadianbacon :

iirc, schema worked on this game completely on his own for the first four years. This last year the code teams has tripled (meaning there are now 3 coders). A lot of progress has been made in the last year. The new launcher is about done, which frees up one of the coders to work on something else. Criss is busy making new stations and ships. And let's not forget the addition of Bench and the several thousand pages of planning documentation he has done making the team more organized. Schine has the next years worth of work already planned out for the most efficient progress.

 

[Reilly Reese]

And at the end of the day, I still prefer the old site over this one.

Wait wat? It's only good feature compared to this one was the chat.
[DOUBLEPOST=1458959050,1458958902][/DOUBLEPOST]

iirc, schema worked on this game completely on his own for the first four years. This last year the code teams has tripled (meaning there are now 3 coders). A lot of progress has been made in the last year. The new launcher is about done, which frees up one of the coders to work on something else. Criss is busy making new stations and ships. And let's not forget the addition of Bench and the several thousand pages of planning documentation he has done making the team more organized. Schine has the next years worth of work already planned out for the most efficient progress.

Exactly and most of that time up until 2012 was still engine work.

 

[CyberTao]

The UI is a low priority problem. Sure, they could spend a few weeks updating it, but why? A month later they will have added new systems which will require new UI elements. And a month after that people will be complaining that the UI needs an overhaul. Better to wait and figure out everything we need in the UI then to waste time rebuilding it every update.

Yes and No. They could spend a few weeks doing it, but who would be doing most of the work? Most of the buttons are already there, they would just need moving around, things renamed, and a bit of a screen tweaking. Most of which Kupu could do I imagine.

Yes things would have to be changed as things are added, but imho the current UI barely handles what we already have as is. It feels so clunky and more often than not it's a hunt to find the button, because the shortcuts arent easy to find. Small things like putting a (Hotkey) after a name of the menu that actually has a hotkey would be very helpful. I dont imagine float over tooltips would take a week either (useful for things like turret AI menus).

Small changes like these would benefit us now, and would not need fixing in the future. It's less about layout (as I assume you're thinking about), and more organization and Quality of Life improvements.

 

[BDLS]

Didn't read all the thread but schines policy has always always been features before stability and usability.

If you want to continue following this game you better be a grade SSS masochist. It'll pay off at some point though, hang on.

 

[AtraUnam]

Didn't schine try not realasing things until they were complete once? I remember we got a few rounds of much needed bugfixes and a few dozen 'THIS GAEM IS DED' posts from people who were very louldly angry about the lack of frequent updates.

 

[nightrune]

It is possible that I missed the point. My take away from the OP is that it is difficult to bring in new players because the difficulty of the game, compounded by the fact that many systems don't even work as advertised. You responded to this with:

This absolutely my point, and its kinda heart wrenching everytime I go to share what I love about it to people and they can't get past the UI or the tutorial... While I keep saying its worth it...

The point is at the beginning it feels like a game that doesn't want to be played.

 

[Keptick]

Can't say that anyone here complaining about the problem of half-assed features is wrong. It's actually something that the rest of the council and I mentioned pretty frequently in our discussion with the devs.

There's good new though, I was told that the devs would be moving towards a different release cycle. Basically, after big updates the next update will be focused on bug fixing (since let's face it, the community is way more effective at finding bugs than the understaffed tester team). Last update was an example of that, it fixed all the major issues with fleets and now we have a working feature instead of the semi-usable thing we got the update before.

If the tendency keeps up it means that feature-breaking bugs will be crushed in a reasonable amount of time, instead of being ignored for months and months before being fixed (looking at you, shipyard bugs).