Power 1.0 was hella difficult and counter-intuitive. The only people who thought it was easy was the people who had already been using it for months/years and had fully learned the system inside and out.
The only thing difficult about it was fitting a bunch of power lines in a small ship. Build large enough and suddenly it was super easy. Could have been solved by simply making reactor power scale by volume, like power capacitors did.
Now the reactor can indeed be a brick but has a bunch of other, in my opinion considerably worse requirements that tie your hand to design your ships very specifically.
If you can't have freedom you might as well play with a non-voxel space sim.
As it currently stands though, the game is for all intents and purposes, a dead game. I saw upwards of 60 players on a single server before the power 2.0 update dropped... Now? You're lucky if you see 10 people on a single server. Until the devs either A: completely rollback the power 2.0 update ob B: remake the way the power works again, the game will not be noob-friendly... And server owners like me who have fond memories spanning years on the game will have to learn how to code basically jsut so they can make our servers noob-friendly to bring in new players.
There's truth there.
Power 2.0 was indeed the trigger that started it all.
Is noob-friendliness the problem though?
I don't think so. I'm perfectly able to understand how the 2.0 systems work and so can anyone else after some time- I still don't like using them, because it's a bad system.
It's tedious to build and fly with.
Did you know that when you have a hull you want to fill up, you'll have to rip out all the system blocks a couple of times, and completely rebuild the reactor several times from the ground up to get the ratios right? The way you have to work around the available room just doesn't let you "add a little more" to something.
Some players will never encounter this issue because they start by laying down system blocks and later cover it with some hull.
Try to build a replica vessel and you'll be screaming from rage.
Why must the shields be kept in groups? Do you know what a chore it is to make sure everything connects?
You'd think "Hey, you're not supposed to do that, just place one big solid block down somewhere" - Except you'd never get enough shield capacity that way, unless your ship is a solid brick without interior. There's just no room.
Why make cannons jerk the whole ship around if it was already nigh impossible to hit targets with them? - This time even select-fire docked entities are screwed because the recoil will twist them through walls they were never supposed to cross, and lag out the game.
Why can a ship only be destroyed by damaging it's reactor? Has anyone seen how ridiculious it is when the enemy literally has more holes than blocks remaining but still flies and fights?
Why must a ship's capacity for 2.0's sub-systems be static? It could scale with ship-to-reactor ratio for simpler or more advanced builds!
Why must said sub-system's size requirements scale with the reactor's size and not the ship's? They take up disproportionately high amounts of space.
Why must weapon ranges be static? Small fighters won't see more than a target icon when dueling from kilometers apart, while large ships must fly comically close to each other. The whole big cannons vs small ship problem could have been solved by making it harder for the big guns to aim at small, fast moving targets (traverse speed, problems with lock-on etc.)
Why instead of the fanciful big ideas was no work done to develop a way to recalculate the core's position, or to add extra control blocks the ship can be piloted from, or to let you use your weapons in select fire mode without building them as docked entities, or teaching the ship AI to guide select fire turrets on it's target, or the turret AI to select targets it can actually aim at?
Then comes the "
Wear your shoes on your hands and use your eyebrows to crawl forward and call it walking" kind of immersion breaking nonsense;
Who puts reactor parts far away from a reactor?
Who calls a brick a chamber?
Who'd think booster rockets, jump drives, scanners, stealth systems and what not are parts of a reactor? Some of those are usually best kept rather far apart, lest the interference would render them non-functional.
Why waste a bunch of internal space on a type of block that doesn't do anything except fulfilling an abstract requirement?
Why is it that despite being announced to do so, projectiles still don't scale visually and noone gives a damn? Can you not see the 1x1 bullets popping out of 11x11 cannon barrels?!
Why do I need both missile launchers and missile storage; What is in the launchers if not missiles?
Why did the textures of advanced armor revert to bathroom tiles? We've been through this mistake once, it was fixed, and looked great until the day 2.0 came.
Was it the toxic community?
No. I've been trudging through the filth of various online communities for more than a decade by now. This one was no different, and there was no drastic change in attitudes after the update - They were always bad. At the time, they merely happened to touch a sensitive subject and were violently silenced. The relative peace we're having now is fake; We just got banned if we said something mean - Even if it was to speak out against ill-meaning, manipulative individuals, because the admins in charge couldn't tell good from evil.
Treating your community like enemies is a sure way of losing them. I myself was on the verge of turning my back completely, but despite everything I still hope this heap of mess can be turned into a decent game.
Sure, those who sparked strife for strife's sake are mostly gone, but so are a lot of people who actually gave a damn and was passionate about steering the game in the right direction.
.... And some assholes are still at large, they merely altered their tactics.
In the end, it still doesn't matter; When I play, I play alone, or with an actual friend or two; I might run into interesting people online, or outright vermin, that's just online gaming. Everywhere, all the time.
Was it because change is difficult?
Please. I'm learning how to play a completely new game at least once a month.
Last weekend I got into Deep Rock Galactic and it's friggin' great. Make mining work like that. Game of the century.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In conclusion, or TLDR if you prefer;
-No such thing as too toxic, too different, too difficult.
What keeps at least me, personally from playing is;
- Systems are bad to build with.
-Systems are bad to play with.
End. Perhaps it applies to others as well.
Textwaaall, glorious textwaaall, oh teeeeeeextwaaaaaaaalllll!!!!!
