Main update is taking way too long...

[Archer6621]

Why am I worried?

This is typically one of those games that thrives on updates because the gameplay mechanics aren't super-interesting yet... Infact, the best thing you can do in this game right now is build, and if you stop giving people new things to enjoy/tinker with for a very long time, people will get bored and play something else.

Every day schema waits longer with releasing an update, a dozen of players stop playing. If you'd look at forum activity 2 months ago, you'd notice now how much of a drop has occured. Then also look at the serverlists, and notice how the average playercount of the list in total has dropped, to such an extent that servers with 1 player on them can appear on the first page...

Ontop of that, the promise of a new website seems to be taking overly long as well... The current website is extremely crude for building a large community and has no single bit of appeal besides the handy live chat function, which is this website's life-saver, as it tightens the community. How about already releasing the new site and adding content while people use it? Anything better than this site in my eyes.



The core issues in my eyes

Just understand that with each update activity will receive a notable burst, but the benefit of this burst will shrink rapidly if you wait a very long time with updating.

Before anybody starts talking... The reason why a game like Minecraft could wait it out for a long time before releasing updates was because it had already plenty to do besides building: the monsters were functional and starting out was not hard for totally new players: it was a fun experience. Multiplayer was also very interesting and if people got bored they could resort to mods.

Here, on starting a new single player game, new people instantly get raped by pirates that can shoot with 100% accuaracy, the default block config is a terrible mess and planets/stations are dull and empty as of right now. It is preventing the community from growing because it is stuck on this version... Even I got frustrated when I tried a bit of stock single player... The people that stay tried multiplayer first on good servers, or decided to put effort into modifying their config, so the other 50% of people just walks away and buys "Space Engineers" instead... That game might soon catch up with starmade.

People do not have much incentive to mod the game either because the community isn't large enough to have plenty of bright individuals that can collaborate to "crack the code". It's always a select few trying and giving up then. Of course, this game is still in alpha and subject to a lot of change, but I'm just pointing out another flaw that should be mitigated with a different solution, such as below at the conclusion.



Some side-note

I was really pleased though when I saw Calibri posting news about the game (or when Omni came with a new playermodel), it shows activity and it shows that schema is willing to lift some weight off his shoulders to speed up development, which is great ofc.



Conclusion

Not trying to start a war here by the way, and I'm not expecing schema to read my wall of text... I am just worried that things are going too slow atm, I think releasing more rapid and smaller updates will keep this community hooked a lot better than right now, so this might be a really good future consideration.



Does anybody share a similar view, or am I being unreasonable?



EDIT: To make it clear: I was just sharing my view from my perspective, I don't know jack about what's going on behind the scenes, but then again becoming a little bit more transparent so people know what's up wouldn't hurt either, it keeps them interested and informed, and less likely to post threads like these.

 

[xandervm]

Just have patience. schema is working on NPC, an uber cool weapon system and a bunch of other important stuff. dont worry, the community WILL grow when there is more to do.

 

[Zyrr]

-snip-

 

[Archer6621]

Perhaps if you read one of my last sentences (or maybe just the entire thread at all), you would have noticed that I am not looking for a war.


Not trying to start a war here by the way,


I just wrote down what I noticed the last two months, and how it can be improved in the future, you have no single reason to rant at me or to tell me to get out.

But just to comfort you... I\'m already on the verge of leaving.

 

[ImperialDonut]

But rest assured that there\'s a ton going on behind the scenes. And no offense of course, but you really don\'t (and can\'t) know what you\'re talking about. Schema is a one man dev machine that works his ass off for this game, this is a major update that has a ton of work poured into it.

The issues you bring up are fair, but also well known and not a huge priority right now. At the moment the main goal is not really to make Starmade into an overnight financial success, but to slowly build up and the rest will eventually follow when the time is ripe.

Please remember that Starmade is in early alpha, everything can and will change several times over in time.



P.S: please excuse Zyrr, but I believe he took it as a direct attack towards Schema, and while this thread does prove partially unsubstantiated, I do believe you don\'t mean harm and are simply trying to help.

 

[Zeveryn]

And i know several other that lost interest in the game too. Im moving to Space engineers more atm since they got update every thursday.(not saying i wont play SM its a great game) I\'ve been waiting for this \"Awesome\" update for soon 3 months or something, But why add more combat based systems? When moving between sectors are still broken and when in combat TP your enemy and yourself around like a pingpong ball. I tested this with MRFURB and he recorded this and posted to schema according to him.

Things like that needs to be fixed, and not to say why add more NPCs when the Trading guild and pirates needs way more work to even make them interesting. This game is losing its appeal.

And yes. Its a great game with tons of potential. But what use is that when part of the community that is bored of waiting for an update, And even more bored when you recive 3 News of it in so many weeks. the last thing you could do as a dev was to at least release some Pics and news on the update...
Now im not saying there hasnt been any, i got really happy when i saw this new weapon system.


But yea my point is there is not enough news on how the latest update will be and therefor alot of people lose interest.

 

[Archer6621]

Alright, I\'ll take your word for it then. It\'s just that some of these issues are as simple as changing the default config values, things that even non-coders could do with ease.

But if community building is no priority right now, all this that I posted won\'t matter. You misunderstood me about that btw, I\'m not talking about financial succes, I\'m talking about keeping a large and supportive community around :P

I rest my case though.

 

[ImperialDonut]

Either way, a lot of these things are very subjective, you may think pirates are hard, but a lot of folks complained about them being too weak before that. So their spawnrate was increased, and now we get the opposite complaint (aswell as the first still).

So in short, until more advanced systems are in place to better manage these variables and accomodate everyone\'s wishes, we all just have to make the best of it till\' our favourite issue moves far enough down the massive list of things to do.

 

[MrNature72]

While I understand that there is a lot of work going on, I would have really like to been fed a couple treats while I wait it out for the main course. Even things like giving us a couple of new color blocks to choose from (we all love colors), or adding some purely aesthetic blocks would give the community a little burst of life.

However, right now, it\'s honestly the factions keeping this game alive. The factions are almost a game unto itself, created by the players and using the StarMade world simply as a table to play on, since it\'s really not good for anything else right now.

And I too worry about Space Engineers. They are getting a multiplayer update soon, and they have fairly consistent updates. It worries me.

 

[Zeveryn]

Well you cant change it to everyones wishes. Then this game will never be finished. Pirates isnt hard. its when New players come to this game and start making their ships and the Pirates use their ships etc etc, It has nothing to do with pirates. They NEED to be hard, Since the combat system in this game is shit overall because of how moving between sectors is a nightmare while fighting then the pirates at least give you a FUN aspect of the game since they dont run away from you.

 

[Zeveryn]

you are right. 100%. Its mostly the factions that makes this game right now and even then its just forum/chat warriors who do the action. There isnt much fighting because of the above said statement i put in there.



and Space engineers got their MP yeasterday as glitchy it is its an amazing game and at the moment it gives me more amusement then this game.


and yes. Give us more smaller updates. Give us Wedge plexdoor! That is something that cant be hard to make ? Since u already got code for the whole block, its just graphical? but then again i dont know coding.


New color. an antenna ? A new hull type that actually has more HP and armor then the current ones? Idk.. Something small that you can slap together in 2 hours?

Things that makes building more fun, A pillar block. Stuff and things.

 

[Archer6621]

You probably heard this before, but pirates are like a brick wall. Imagine being a complete noob, being obliberated by pirates several times in a row is not going to please you at all. Then again, if you disable pirates, build a huge ship, and enable them again, they are hilariously weak, but what new player will do this? Also the accuaracy settings are broken, as you probably knew already.

So if pirates are -broken-, why not turn them off by default for this version till they get fixed? It would save you hundreds of rage-quiters, and this game is really really going to need its community with all these space sims coming out.

I am not speaking for myself by the way, I have been listening to various users, watching various threads, and I\'ve heard my own players complain about things. The information/experience I have gathered doesn\'t only come from what I think, but also from what a fairly large group of other people think.

I yet have to see a player entirely new to starmade that likes the pirates in this current version, if you want me to find rage-thread of a new player for you I can go ahead, these are from the current update:

http://star-made.org/content/disable-pirate-spawning-x-time-when-starting-new-game

http://star-made.org/content/pirate-spawn-rate

http://star-made.org/content/pirates-2

It\'s funny that almost none of the people commenting the opposite on those threads can relate to the newcomers that practically don\'t know jack about the game.



There\'s honestly no single way around it, you get different complaints from different groups of people obviously. One thing is certain though: making them impossible won\'t make more people like the game, you\'d be better off by disabling them (by default!), so people can still have the pirate experience in multiplayer, but won\'t be completely punished for trying out the game first.

 

[Zeveryn]

yea you are right about pirates didnt think of it that way but you make a good point.

Thing is you could balance pirates with more Trading guild too. There isnt only hostiles out there.

something many new players might do is think trading guild as easy prey and they get owned thinking they are pirates or something.

 

[Archer6621]

This is true what you say, but those are good ideas for later.

I\'m trying to keep the amount of effort to a minimum to temporarily solve the issue, then fancy solutions like yours that do a little bit more than postponing the issue will take care of it in the future

 

[Calbiri]

Having played this game as long as i have, and using the forum as well, I\'d like to give you my perspective. I have no interest in this thread becoming a flame war, as in the end, the OP just wants this game to do well, keep that in mind before hating him for trying to discuss his concerns.

• 
  The issue mentioned about the lack of updates. I understand your concern, but there HAVE been updates, schema has simply chosen to release these as dev builds (which anyone can access btw) instead of placing buggy updates in the main download.
• Players may leave for various reasons, including boredom from a lack of updates, but everyone i talk to is always exstatic about this game... i beleive they have every intention of returning in time, consider their absense a sabatical.
• It\'s true that we have been looking at making a new site for over a year. At first Schema was content to let community volunteers try crafting one. This has failed several times as those volunteers have never completed a project site. (I\'ve seen a few, but sadly they never got past basic homepage builds.)

So a while back, Schema was put in contact with a professional site builder. This means that the \"new site\" timeline (for the current site) is only a month old.

Wedtm, our guru for the new Star-made.org website, is also one of the 3 founders of the Minecraft Forum website. He is doing an amazing job on the new website, and you should see the results of that soon. (He\'s already teased links in the public chat.)

• A note about the desire to have more content and mod compatibility. Both of these aspects are somewhat dependant on the games core engine coding to be fairly stable. Adding more content now, means not working on the game-engine itself, which increases the time until Mod support can be added (and it is planned to have support, schema has always said this.) The community has had trouble with making Mods because schema has intentionally obfuscated his code for now. Making a mod now, it could break every time schema releases an update, and we\'re talking mod-project killing types of breaks (think what my new weapon system would do to a weapon mod)
• Distribution of work is already happening, theres several people handling things for schema at the moment, not just myself.
• Starmade is not MC or SE, we dont feel a need to compete with these games, they focus on different aspects of gameplay. Dont think of them as enemies who our players might convert to, they are just more games with a few similar features. By all means, try them out, I myself own all sorts of games

The main point I\'d like to make, is that there IS progress, people will come and go and come back again, and Starmade will continue to improve.

 

[Zeveryn]

Starmade is not MC or SE, we dont feel a need to compete with these games, they focus on different aspects of gameplay. Dont think of them as enemies who our players might convert to, they are just more games with a few similar features.


id like to point out that Sm is VERY similar to these games because of the one and only reason its a voxelbased game. and any other spacesim or other successful Voxel game will steal your audiance. But yes SM is different in gameplay and many other aspects.

but what you are saying is correct. many will come back later when the game has progressed abit. I might not own the game but i support this game by playing it and be a part of the Alpha game and finding bugs etc etc.

But again, Id prefer if there were news about stuff like this, or do what schema does sometimes with these Tournaments, it doesnt have to be a money reward on steam, it could be as easy as getting a qoute in the loading screen or get your name in the credits list or etc etc. countless things u can do as a reward.

 

[MrNature72]

I have a solution.

Change the Launcher to download the Dev version and the Normal version, each one with separate buttons and separate save files.

Bam.

See, a lot of people dont know about the Dev or it\'s just too much work for them to do. Making that simple, however, would be pretty fun to be honest.

 

[Archer6621]

Thank you for your reply, I\'m aware that there are more people helping out, such as the guy that has been working on models and the new website crew.

Your second point has truth. Even though I may have sounded a little bit disappointed, I still think this game is going to become something really great in the future, and it still doesn\'t take away the fun I had with it so far.

Also, the minecraft thing I mentioned just in case somebody would say \"hey that game has slow updates too why does everybody play it!\", I\'m not comparing the two, they are indeed completely different games.



Your idea for the new weapon system is what caught my attention in the first place to browse the news/site again from time to time, so keep up the great work





EDIT:


But again, Id prefer if there were news about stuff like this, or do what schema does sometimes with these Tournaments, it doesnt have to be a money reward on steam, it could be as easy as getting a qoute in the loading screen or get your name in the credits list or etc etc. countless things u can do as a reward.


This guy has a firm point, somebody suitable should perhaps be appointed as community manager to post interesting competitions and hold events from time to time, to keep people interested and busy

 

[Archer6621]

This is not a bad idea at all, it would encourage servers to use dev builds as well, since people can easily get them then :P

 

[Calbiri]

Cant hurt to mention it to schema, if we plaster a big red warning on it. I dont know that he will like the idea, but hey why not try right?

**update, i asked about this, and apparently its already planned with the new website :D