Hello everyone!
Since returning to Starmade after a year or so break, ive come to the conclusion that the game needs something more to keep new and returning players interested. Ive heard a lot of people complain about Starmade losing players, old and new. And i think my following points might help to keep players interested in actually playing the game while development continues. After all it would suck if the game finally got released, but no one is playing...
1. Official Starmade servers. This is probably the most important point, i think Starmade should have a few official servers that have different game types. So for example, we can have a few different servers:
A. Straight up survival mode server, players are on their own (unless they team up of course) and pirates (or other NPC factions) are out to get everyone. This would be like the default server.
B. Creative mode server, all players are set in creative mode and they can build all sorts of things till their heart is content. Pretty straight forward.
C. PVP server, contains no NPC factions/ pirates, its just the players vs the players. Also straight forward.
These are just some examples of what we could have for official servers. Now you might be wondering: why not just play on a community server? The answer is simple, players like myself and new players especially, cant be fucked going through the community server list and trialing a bunch of random servers with random rules until we find one that we like. Furthermore, i'm sure there are a lot of players who arn't interested in said rules and modifications, like 10x gather and whatnot.
It would be VERY easy and straight forward for a new player whos interested in playing multiplayer to quickly connect to an official server (which should also have a decent player base due to being an official server) and start playing with others.
2. Ok, now that thats out of the way, ill move on to single player improvements. Now while im sure there are heaps of players who love playing multiplayer on whatever servers, there are also a lot of players who enjoy playing single player, in their own private world. However, single player needs some improvements.
AI! Single player is lacking control over complicated AI options. All you can really alter is the amount of simulations that can run at the same time in the universe, and the time period in which pirates can spawn. After that, there's not much else we can do to control the pirates. Every single player game ive played, i dont see any pirates until like a few hours in. The other day i played for around 5-6 hrs without a single pirate. This can get very boring and makes me CBF playing.
Now i know i can go around and try to find pirate stations, but theres a huge fun factor in not feeling safe in your home base/ station, and that fun factor doesnt really exist at the moment. With my 5-6 hr game after not encountering any pirates, i almost stopped playing, until SUDDENLY i got attacked (FINALLY!), and it was a HUGE buzz! I even got wiped out cause i wasn't prepared enough.
So my point is, we need more AI functionality like:
A. Pirates hunting down players to destroy them
B. Bigger pirate ships spawning as time goes on, or as you explore further out.
C. Pirates taking over shops to prevent players from buying their until they liberate it.
D. Pirates colonizing planets/ asteroids and building empires.
Now i realize that a lot of the things ive mentioned today might have already been brought up, or is even planned in the future, but i felt like i needed to stress these points further, because these are the kind of features that will keep players playing Starmade while development can continue.
These are my thoughts, please discuss.
Since returning to Starmade after a year or so break, ive come to the conclusion that the game needs something more to keep new and returning players interested. Ive heard a lot of people complain about Starmade losing players, old and new. And i think my following points might help to keep players interested in actually playing the game while development continues. After all it would suck if the game finally got released, but no one is playing...
1. Official Starmade servers. This is probably the most important point, i think Starmade should have a few official servers that have different game types. So for example, we can have a few different servers:
A. Straight up survival mode server, players are on their own (unless they team up of course) and pirates (or other NPC factions) are out to get everyone. This would be like the default server.
B. Creative mode server, all players are set in creative mode and they can build all sorts of things till their heart is content. Pretty straight forward.
C. PVP server, contains no NPC factions/ pirates, its just the players vs the players. Also straight forward.
These are just some examples of what we could have for official servers. Now you might be wondering: why not just play on a community server? The answer is simple, players like myself and new players especially, cant be fucked going through the community server list and trialing a bunch of random servers with random rules until we find one that we like. Furthermore, i'm sure there are a lot of players who arn't interested in said rules and modifications, like 10x gather and whatnot.
It would be VERY easy and straight forward for a new player whos interested in playing multiplayer to quickly connect to an official server (which should also have a decent player base due to being an official server) and start playing with others.
2. Ok, now that thats out of the way, ill move on to single player improvements. Now while im sure there are heaps of players who love playing multiplayer on whatever servers, there are also a lot of players who enjoy playing single player, in their own private world. However, single player needs some improvements.
AI! Single player is lacking control over complicated AI options. All you can really alter is the amount of simulations that can run at the same time in the universe, and the time period in which pirates can spawn. After that, there's not much else we can do to control the pirates. Every single player game ive played, i dont see any pirates until like a few hours in. The other day i played for around 5-6 hrs without a single pirate. This can get very boring and makes me CBF playing.
Now i know i can go around and try to find pirate stations, but theres a huge fun factor in not feeling safe in your home base/ station, and that fun factor doesnt really exist at the moment. With my 5-6 hr game after not encountering any pirates, i almost stopped playing, until SUDDENLY i got attacked (FINALLY!), and it was a HUGE buzz! I even got wiped out cause i wasn't prepared enough.
So my point is, we need more AI functionality like:
A. Pirates hunting down players to destroy them
B. Bigger pirate ships spawning as time goes on, or as you explore further out.
C. Pirates taking over shops to prevent players from buying their until they liberate it.
D. Pirates colonizing planets/ asteroids and building empires.
Now i realize that a lot of the things ive mentioned today might have already been brought up, or is even planned in the future, but i felt like i needed to stress these points further, because these are the kind of features that will keep players playing Starmade while development can continue.
These are my thoughts, please discuss.
