Keeping the new players playing

[Sky Fox]

Hi All

I have been playing for a while now and have watched players start playing and quitting after they loose there first ship.

I feel were loosing some of the player stream due to the overwhelming start of the game.

Players could start with 2 x blueprints preloaded
1 x Combat
1 x Miner
ready to go, giving the player a chance to look at ship designs from the very beginning. Not everybody is as creative as others and get frustrated.

Sky

 

[MossyStone48]

Our very own lovely and talented Calbiri is working on that right now!

Tho Cal's starter ship will likely be unarmed and unshielded. More of a "Climb in with your buddies and T-Minus the heck out of Dodge" sort of ship. I'm trying to find a pic of his ship now.. It's in my friggin history I know it is. Ok he linked us this in chat so I'm fairly certain it's safe to share: Starter Ship
It even has a cool name but I can't recall it just now. You'd have to fit weapons and salvage systems to it manually.

Good luck and good hunting, starmate.

 

[Jake_Lancia]

Starter Ship

Wow! This is not only a very nice starter ship, it's also a brilliant way for new players to get around! This would help immensely with new players on servers to get the basics nailed down. I look forwards to seeing this in game!

 

[Criss]

I would have liked another contest for this really. I don't think it's hard to arrange them, and make some rules up. Easiest way to do it would to define it's mass. Nothing brings this community together like that station contest did.

But seriously, if 3 guys can set up a two day tournament that garners over 100 viewers on livestream, I think the devs could arrange more of these contests. Especially so if there are plans to do them in the first place. Why waste the opportunity?

 

[MossyStone48]

to have something right away i suppose. the isanth was the result of a contest and its creator is who knows where but we still use it in some form. i suspect a contest might already be in the planning stage but something needed to be a place holder. just like the old stations. we have our place holder, the contest could happen anytime between now and beta.

 

[Criss]

to have something right away i suppose. the isanth was the result of a contest and its creator is who knows where but we still use it in some form. i suspect a contest might already be in the planning stage but something needed to be a place holder. just like the old stations. we have our place holder, the contest could happen anytime between now and beta.

I believe that person is Zer0-sen on the MF server. Not sure though.

 

[Jake_Lancia]

I would have liked another contest for this really.

Couldn't agree more, however what they have is pretty good for a couple days' work.. The starter ship idea is brilliant. Just a bit of community interaction would have been the icing on the cake. mmm, cake.

At least I know what ship type to make next though

 

[MossyStone48]

Zero made the zero series isanth I'm talking about the original.

 

[Saxopi]

I'm leaning to the suggestion that all players start at the center of the galaxy, where new players mine cheap minerals and battle against very easy AI. As they expand and travel further away, the AI grows more difficult to battle, but comes more expensive and valuable resources to mine.

 

[Lecic]

I believe that person is Zer0-sen on the MF server. Not sure though.

He made the Type-0 Isanth (thus the 0 in the name), but someone else made the original IV.

 

[Ithirahad]

We're getting a starter ship? Noice!

...This won't be a complete fix to this issue, though. When players enter a game, they expect some kind of quest system, or at least tech progression like Minecraft. I think that the whole tech-tiers concept needs to be pulled out of deep freeze and looked over again. Sooner than later. And I mean sooner, like, months ago. Before the (premature) Steam release. And other things are needed too, I'd say - looking through steam reviews, one of the major problems (besides technical issues and people being dumb) is that people can easily steal each other's ships. The Faction Permission Module needs to be remade into a Personal Permissions Module, with options for personal or faction permission, as well as whitelisting players.

(The only other major issue I could find is that people have trouble properly categorizing this game - "Minecraft in space" is the closest anyone's come, but most people agree that it's incredibly inaccurate and inadequate. :p )

It also might be helpful to increase the default maximum speed to 100. 75 speed is just sluggish as all heck; if I hadn't found out about the config I'd have gotten bored of trying to fly at that speed and left the game.

 

[MossyStone48]

Sci-fi inspired sandbox.

 

[Ithirahad]

Sci-fi inspired sandbox.

...Open-world sci-fi voxel sandbox? ("Sci-fi inspired sandbox" could describe pretty much anything sci-fi that doesn't have a set end goal. Even EvE.)

 

[CyberTao]

...Open-world sci-fi voxel sandbox? ("Sci-fi inspired sandbox" could describe pretty much anything sci-fi that doesn't have a set end goal. Even EvE.)

Thing is, the game is suppose to end up open ended, with relativity easy variables to tweak. You can't narrow down the definition of Starmade if it potentially could become any other game. Someday anyways, not quite enough variables yet.

 

[jorgekorke]

We need to take a look on elements that take players away from the game before investigating how to make things to catch them up. What happen to the Steam users newcomers, now that they are all gone?

From my experience as Illusive's owner and long-time player, I'd list those :

1 - Game Instability

After talking to some old and new people, I've realized that us, veterans, are a real patient people. Of course this problem has been slightly eased now due to optimizations, but this was a potential cause that made a lot of players go away. Starmade's best potential are still inside heavy-populated server concepts, in order to perform an EvE-esque feeling of interaction, which is not really viable, since no server can hold and keep on it's feet after passing 20-members online.

We may have patience with the "Server is not responding" thing, but that causes newcomers to instaquit. Again, another reason for not having the steam release yet. They will never come back again, no matter how good the game perform on the future.



2 - Lack of a third play-zone

There must be another play-zone in order to be as relevant as building and PvPing. This could be presented in some features that are incoming, such as the adittion of alien creatures and an improvement of the "Astronaut" section of the game. Currently there is no point in exploring, since there is rarely something new to see.



3 - Gigantism

Of course, only us veterans may have patience to deal with flying bricks, and this problem gets doubled up when we are talking about EE, when brick builders get to 1mil, 2mil mass. First, if the newcomer does not have a top-of-the-line PC, he will get 1 FPS and be pissed off, instaquitting at the fact that he was killed with a brick that rendered no effort at all.

 

[nightwalker_007]

Well.. speaking for myself, after the rails update and finding I couldn't dock my existing ships in the same way, I stopped playing after the update... I only started playing again this weekend.

There needs to be default ship dimension and mass limits, and bonuses for non-combat ships (eg, ones that only have salvage and astrotech beams, and no weapon computers).

 

[Rokiyo]

I think the biggest issue is that new players start homeless: If they lose their first ship before they settle on a station or planet, then it ends up feeling like they lost everything they had (yes, I know the inventory stays, but there is no guarantee that they've actually done any decent amount of mining by this stage).

I think new players should be spawned on a planet (with a small shop on it!), and taught to hand-mine and use a capsule refinery before they venture off into space and start encountering pirate NPCs. That should at least ensure they end up respawning somewhere that feels like home.

 

[nightwalker_007]

I think new players should be spawned on a planet

Funny you should say that... I've been saying this over and over again. I want to see a new play mode in which players are spawned on a random unvisited world, along with their crashed ship (which wouldn't have a core, and would consist of damaged blocks, but could be used as a structure--I think this is better than my original idea of only being able to salvage the "crashed ship" for scrap alloy and crystal), and an undeathinator inside of their ship. This would be their starting location, and their first home. It also adds to a role-playing element. Sheehs, I'd love the logbook to get populated with some text "crashed ship in sector bla, on xx/xx/xx. on way to core sector xx/xx/xx", and then have another logbook entry with server rules and lore (I think log books should be 16k in size, and can be populated with other shared books on the server). Players can then have a structure to use their heal beam with, and also see a design for a basic ship, even if it's broken with chunks missing.

Salvaging with salvage cannons should then be disabled (not the astronaut's salvage beam, mind you) on planets to prevent someone's homeworld and structure from getting zapped by a planet stripper in orbit. From a role play standpoint, we could say that salvage beams can't be used due to atmospheric interference (we could add some interesting animation to show that something is wrong, like an inonizing shell, along with a warning message. If you want to mine a planet, you'll have to get out of your ship.

 

[Rokiyo]

Salvaging with salvage cannons should then be disabled (not the astronaut's salvage beam, mind you) on planets to prevent someone's homeworld and structure from getting zapped by a planet stripper in orbit.

Hrm... A "quick and dirty" way to achieve that would be to automatically start newbies in their own faction, and make that starting planet their faction home base.

 

[nightwalker_007]

Hrm... A "quick and dirty" way to achieve that would be to automatically start newbies in their own faction, and make that starting planet their faction home base.

Players already start in their own faction. Besides, this does nothing for single player games. Also, some players enjoy being lone wolfs and not in factions. Starting on a planet is a far better idea, and adds a roleplay element. rather than "poof! I'm in spaaaaceee!"