What happened to Starmade?

[TheDerpGamerX]

Your entire post is a toxic rant...
I am not trying to prove anything, you seem to misunderstand something, (I have nothing to prove here).
On a consistant basis: I have been labeled as a whiney RPer from the start (you included).
What I did is simple: Hate is the Norm here, if you do not conform.
Your post is distractive and argumentative, I will not indulge it any further.

To my knowledge: no GameDev has been able to completely eliminate exploits, META, and bugs... ever.
Expecting it from StarMade is unrealistic and a waste of time (which would have been better spent developing the game).

As far as exploity/META/PvPers go...
anyone is free to battle exploity/META versus exploity/META on any of the "no Rules" anarchy-servers available, but forcing this custom-PvP-config on the entire community as default, is from a business perspective: a mistake for the game and its success in general.
... but hey, thats just my opinion, and I'm entitled to it, XO.

I am very glad to see MODs, but sadly they can not save StarMade either, a stable (finished or close to it)base game with minimal bugs is needed.

It also does not take a genius to see that there is truth in my words.
Please try to stay "on topic"

There is no truth in your words. The ONLY large dip was after the "Yogswarm", since then the game has been on a downwards trend in player count. Blaming the downwards trend on QF - which may I remind you has only existed for a fraction of the game's life - is completely bs and is just toxic towards the team who worked hard on it.

You didn't clearly didn't read my post past the third sentence, because in it I explained the real reason why starmade has a lack of players. Let me sum it up for you: The game has been bleeding players since 2014 (according to steam charts) due to a lack of engaging content and lack of regular updates to add more content. Tearing out an existing system and replacing it with an inferior, more restricting, and buggy system does not count as new content.

QF is not a pvp config, nor was it made by pvp players. QF is a balancing config. By your definition, any ship that isnt an empty shell is a pvp ship. Power 2.0 and Weapons 3 had been demonstrated to be horrendously unbalanced and buggy, and QF was an attempt to fix it. They were not fully successful due to the lack of feedback early on and limitations caused by configs. You again are implying that QF was a bad idea for the game and killed it, which is simply not true and not supported by the facts. QF was originally designed to be a custom config, not necessarily default, however Schine agreed that the game was horrendously balanced and it needed fixing. QF was not the full solution, but it was a first step. If QF was not implemented, game balance would still be just as broken as it was before.

My problem is not your opinion, you can have whatever opinion you want. My problem is your continued bashing of QF and its team. They worked hard to fix problems that the vast majority of the community agreed on, and you continued toxicity and spreading of false information towards them is bullshit.

 

[DrTarDIS]

There is no truth in your words. The ONLY large dip was after the "Yogswarm", since then the game has been on a downwards trend in player count. Blaming the downwards trend on QF - which may I remind you has only existed for a fraction of the game's life - is completely bs and is just toxic towards the team who worked hard on it.
...

My problem is not your opinion, you can have whatever opinion you want. My problem is your continued bashing of QF and its team. They worked hard to fix problems that the vast majority of the community agreed on, and you continued toxicity and spreading of false information towards them is bullshit.

I dropped A RANT a while ago that will fill in the pre power 2 part of your graph. Click the spoler button to read it. Compare the troughs and valleys to what was done around those times.

 

[DukeofRealms]

I dropped A RANT a while ago that will fill in the pre power 2 part of your graph. Click the spoler button to read it. Compare the troughs and valleys to what was done around those times.

What was your previous account's username you lost access to?

 

[Tsnonak]

There is no truth in your words. The ONLY large dip was after the "Yogswarm", since then the game has been on a downwards trend in player count. Blaming the downwards trend on QF - which may I remind you has only existed for a fraction of the game's life - is completely bs and is just toxic towards the team who worked hard on it.

You didn't clearly didn't read my post past the third sentence, because in it I explained the real reason why starmade has a lack of players. Let me sum it up for you: The game has been bleeding players since 2014 (according to steam charts) due to a lack of engaging content and lack of regular updates to add more content. Tearing out an existing system and replacing it with an inferior, more restricting, and buggy system does not count as new content.

QF is not a pvp config, nor was it made by pvp players. QF is a balancing config. By your definition, any ship that isnt an empty shell is a pvp ship. Power 2.0 and Weapons 3 had been demonstrated to be horrendously unbalanced and buggy, and QF was an attempt to fix it. They were not fully successful due to the lack of feedback early on and limitations caused by configs. You again are implying that QF was a bad idea for the game and killed it, which is simply not true and not supported by the facts. QF was originally designed to be a custom config, not necessarily default, however Schine agreed that the game was horrendously balanced and it needed fixing. QF was not the full solution, but it was a first step. If QF was not implemented, game balance would still be just as broken as it was before.

My problem is not your opinion, you can have whatever opinion you want. My problem is your continued bashing of QF and its team. They worked hard to fix problems that the vast majority of the community agreed on, and you continued toxicity and spreading of false information towards them is bullshit.

You are doing what you do... distractive posts making claims that simply are not true.

I never blamed "the downward trend" on Quickfire.
Your graph shows: the playerbase is still declining = QF did not help.
The number of Players has declined (noticeably) even more since its release, that is the only claim I made.

The reasons StarMade lacks players are many, too many, I will only mention two which I consider most important:
1. most good Servers bailed due too untamable bugs making server administration a nightmare (exploity META PvPers did not help).
2. StarMade has been spiralling in a battle against META fueled from complaints impeading developement.

There have been plenty of Updates, if they are inferior is a matter of opinion and you are basically complaining P 2.0 /W 3.0 (whatever) is garbage, which I can not endorse, I think Schine did a good job.

Which gives me an idea:
What if, everyone started being supportive, instead of constant complaining that everything Schine does is wrong...
because that simply isn't true.

Qf is a PvP-config, there is no denying that.
QF did not want any non-conformant feedback, common knowledge.
I never implied QF "killed" StarMade, more lies.
yeah sure, you're not manipulative at all...

Finally:
My only hope is that the original vision for StarMade is revived, (which seems to have been lost in all the complaining around here).
EDIT: obviously the "vast majority of the community" is happy with the way things are around here...
Appologies for wasting everyones time.

 

[Nauvran]

You are doing what you do... distractive posts making claims that simply are not true.

I never blamed "the downward trend" on Quickfire.
Your graph shows: the playerbase is still declining = QF did not help.
The number of Players has declined (noticeably) even more since its release, that is the only claim I made.

The reasons StarMade lacks players are many, too many, I will only mention two which I consider most important:
1. most good Servers bailed due too untamable bugs making server administration a nightmare (exploity META PvPers did not help).
2. StarMade has been spiralling in a battle against META fueled from complaints impeading developement.

There have been plenty of Updates, if they are inferior is a matter of opinion and you are basically complaining P 2.0 /W 3.0 (whatever) is garbage, which I can not endorse, I think Schine did a good job.

Which gives me an idea:
What if, everyone started being supportive, instead of constant complaining that everything Schine does is wrong...
because that simply isn't true.

Qf is a PvP-config, there is no denying that.
QF did not want any non-conformant feedback, common knowledge.
I never implied QF "killed" StarMade, more lies.
yeah sure, you're not manipulative at all...

Finally:
My only hope is that the original vision for StarMade is revived, (which seems to have been lost in all the complaining around here).
Appologies for wasting everyones time.

no new content in over a year is one big reason, game is just boring as is right now, QF didnt help much but it didnt make it any worse either

META pvp'ers have always been a thing, they are not the issue
so Schine has had their focus on a wrong thing? thats what Im getting from this. Focus should have been on adding more content and have had a thing like QF earlier to help and balance things somewhate

there have but not any with any particularly interesting content other than a few fixes or useless blocks like repulsors, weapons 3 and power 2 did bring back a lot of people but they left quickly again as those two updates wherent any good

we are all supportive in our own ways, otherwise we wouldnt be here having this discussion, we are still here because we care.
complaints are unavoidable, Schine isnt doing everything wrong but they certainly arent doing everything right either, so complaints are fair.

QF is an attempt to balance combat, combat is pvp so yes? but combat is also a part of pve and as pve and pvp is basically the same except with more stupid enemies then it's just a general attempt at a combat balance.
QF wanted feedback, they got a lot of complaints, rude comments, useless feedback, and so on, so obviously everything was taken with a grain of salt without any data to backup up the feedback

Thats just silly, you cant kill whats already dead

everyone are manupaltive to some degree

I do not believe we are anywhere near the original vision for starmade anymore, it's become a lot more than what Schemas original idea was, at least from my understanding. Either way going back to the original vision isnt necessarily a good thing but that really depends on what it was

apology not accepted

 

[Tsnonak]

I do not believe we are anywhere near the original vision for starmade anymore, it's become a lot more than what Schemas original idea was, at least from my understanding. Either way going back to the original vision isnt necessarily a good thing but that really depends on what it was

Damage done, and if it continues on this path; StarMade will likely never be completed.
Of course there is a chance I am wrong and it is easy to take what I posted out of context.

I do not mean return to 2014...
I believe stripping planned features and focusing on the base-game / "original vision" can save StarMade and even lead to its success.
Too many planned features and the endless META/balance - spiral requires a full devteam working overtime...
somebody want to argue that too?

 

[Nauvran]

Damage done, and if it continues on this path; StarMade will likely never be completed.
Of course there is a chance I am wrong and it is easy to take what I posted out of context.

I do not mean return to 2014...
I believe stripping planned features and focusing on the base-game / "original vision" can save StarMade and even lead to its success.
Too many planned features and the endless META/balance - spiral requires a full devteam working overtime...
somebody want to argue that too?

Honestly I dont think anyone ever thought it would be finished, it's one of those types of projects that are never done, just like Minecraft.

Like which features? what base game? the base game is currently just building, there is no original version of starmade in the way you mean.
What needs to be done is to finish all the current features that are currently ingame, get someone to help make a better AI, fix the most critical balancing issues and make sure the new universe update actually delivers something worthwhile.
People want a game like starmade, but starmade doesnt deliver anymore. It takes too long between updates an the updates doesnt really contain anything interesting, power and weapons where for example a complete failure.

Too many planned features? more like not enough planned features. The issue has never been that there has been too many ideas, the issue is that the ideas have never been finished.
why? because suddenly people want something different instead, or maybe they want something else to come first. hell maybe the game just isnt ready for that one neat idea.

Oh no the game is unbalanced while it's in alpha
This could have been "fixed" by introducing something like quickfire at a much earlier state, a community lead balancing program that has all the great pvp people throw their heads together to try and figure out whats wrong with the balance, why one tactic is better than the others and which exploits are ruining the game, then just write it down send it to a dev and it gets fixed.

it's all just poor planning really, and Schema being a bit overprotective on his code(which I clearly understand).

 

[Tsnonak]

Minecraft (the base-game) was finished "released" a long time ago and was bought by microsoft for 2.5 billion
... and is still being expanded upon, (updated+mods).

Too many planned features ("ideas") has always been the problem, (Indie or not).

" just write it down send it to a dev and it gets fixed. "

...you seem to completely ignore facts:
Every game has exploits, META and bugs...
" no GameDev has been able to completely eliminate exploits, META, and bugs... ever. "
The amount of vested time is astronomically unrealistic, (is it even possible?).

I find your post to also be distractive / manipulative... like most here and I'm done with the endless arguing, It will never end, there is no point.
"poor planning" is the only thing we seem to agree upon, (which was also the inspiration for the post).

Fun Fact: most would rather die clinging to their beliefs than accept reality, (well documented natural phenomena*).
I believe in reality...

StarMade will likely never trump MineCraft, but it could be doing so much better if it just stayed true to its origin.

 

[Alphajim]

I love watching pointless arguing started by "I knew it" kind of posts.
Someone else want some popcorn ?

 

[The_Owl]

Minecraft (the base-game) was finished a long time ago and was bought by microsoft for 2.5 billion
... and is still being expanded upon, (updated+mods).

So it's not yet finished?


Fact they're still adding content suggests it ain't finished yet my man.

 

[Nauvran]

Minecraft (the base-game) was finished a long time ago and was bought by microsoft for 2.5 billion
... and is still being expanded upon, (updated+mods).

Too many planned features ("ideas") has always been the problem, (Indie or not).

" just write it down send it to a dev and it gets fixed. "

...you seem to completely ignore facts:
Every game has exploits, META and bugs...
" no GameDev has been able to completely eliminate exploits, META, and bugs... ever. "
The amount of vested time is astronomically unrealistic, (is it even possible?).

I find your post to also be distractive / manipulative... like most here and I'm done with the endless arguing, It will never end, there is no point.
"poor planning" is the only thing we seem to agree upon, (which was also the inspiration for the post).

Fun Fact: most would rather die clinging to their beliefs than accept reality, (well documented natural phenomena*).
I believe in reality...

StarMade will likely never trump MineCraft, but it could be doing so much better if it just stayed true to its origin.

I really doubt Notch finished all his ideas for the game before giving up on it

Really depends on how they are handled

Well yes bug reports, it's the best we can do as a community

oh yeah I know but they need to be as minimal as possible
I know it's impossible, I didnt say it was a feasible to remove any and all meta or bugs but they should be minimized.
META is always going to be a thing, like flanking, attacking in larger groups and so on
It should honestly only be done in beta as alpha is for adding new features, so EA games kinda shoot themselves in the foot with this

I was not trying to be distractive nor manipulative.
Well poor planning is the main reason most games fail. That and poor decisions like the first cast of power 2

yes? so look in a mirror? Im not trying to cling onto any beliefs, Im just stating the facts that I know and what I know about game development

 

[Nauvran]

I love watching pointless arguing started by "I knew it" kind of posts.
Someone else want some popcorn ?

As long as it's just salted popcorn and not any of the weird american variants!

 

[Fugari2]

Alright so I’m very confused as this is the first pre alpha game I have actually cared about. What does open sourcing mean?? And is the end of Starmade or does it mean that starmade will finally start to make some ground regarding the planned features.

 

[Mr_Irksome]

I've read all five pages on this post, and there has been so much arguing about what killed the game. So I just wanted log in and share my experience and what killed game for me.
First off, I want to say that I absolutely love Starmade! In my opinion it is still the best space based voxel game there is, and I want to play it again. The only thing that comes close in excitement to me, is Skywanderers. But that game is still going through development madness where they keep changing functions like Starmade did, and as far as I can tell, there is no build mode. I've been burned by Starmade too hard. I'm not even going to touch that game till I see some stability in it's development.
1. So, the biggest thing that killed the game for me was optimization, or lack of it. I guess this hasn't been a problem for the general community, but I just couldn't play the game. I couldn't play on a server cause the game would just lag up and freeze. So I would just play single player. I had a shipyard, and would just build ships, or update old ones. In general, my ships were just smaller than the largest AI ships. I would finish a ship, and fly a couple sectors away to test it against pirates, and when the testing was done I'd head back. Then the lag would start. When I finally made it back to my shipyard, huge chunks of the station wouldn't render. I had to bonk into those chunks with my ship before they would show up. I couldn't even think about going near a planet, or my game would freeze up and crash! I did everything I could to improve performance, but nothing worked. All my friends had the same issues, and they quit playing years before me. Every update claimed that there were optimization improvements, but I never saw any improvement in the game performance. I guess guess I got sick of dealing with the lag, and rendering issues, and quit playing.
2. I quit playing some time before the power 2.0 update, but I'll say, that update sure kept me away! I had been away for a while but I still really wanted to play. I hoped that all the latest optimizations would finally work for me. I knew they changed the power system, so I decided to log onto starmade.org so I could read the update logs and see what I was getting into. I read the first power update, and thought: "This doesn't seem so bad, I can deal with this. I don't know what everyone is complaining about." Then I read the second power update, which added structural integrity, and I was PISSED! I was NOT going update my game to a system that would have all my old builds exploding, and forcing me to make cube ships just cause of some stupid arbitrary structural integrity calculation. So I stayed away, and apathy grew.
3. I don't care for the weapons 3.0 update either. I want more weapons, not less. I had some interesting ship designs that I can't build anymore with the new weapons. Even more reason for me to stay away.

Many of you have suggested that lack of new content drove people away. That was never an issue for me. I had so many ship designs, that I could keep myself busy for years (if I could play)

I checked in hoping for good news. I guess I read that they've laxed the structural integrity requirements. I'm just not feeling like the time is right to try and jump into it again.

 

[DukeofRealms]

What does open sourcing mean?? And is the end of Starmade or does it mean that starmade will finally start to make some ground regarding the planned features.

Well, open source is where a program is licensed under the condition that anyone can use, modify and redistribute the code (sometimes under certain conditions). The extent of this depends on what license is being used.

For StarMade, the purpose of open source would be to achieve the following goals:

• Encourage contributions to StarMade’s code.
• Ensure that if we (Schine) are no longer able to continue development, some form of StarMade can continue on.
• Foster a positive environment for community modding.
• Permit non-commercial forks/spinoffs.

Now, we are currently undecided on whether open source is possible for us at this time and is the best step forward. We are taking legal advice, talking with open source game developers and doing our own research to ascertain its viability.

Another option is making the game source available and allowing developers to contribute to StarMade's code if they so wished. The difference between source available and open source, is that the licensing does not change. Redistribution would not be permitted, but we would allow modifications and have the source available for anyone to view. Developers would then license us their contributions in a way where we would be able to use them in StarMade.

I talk more about all of this here: Thoughts and research on StarMade open source

We plan to continue StarMade's development, with schema as it has been in the past. This is a step that would possibly help with bugfixing, optimisations and potentially feature additions. At the very least, this will further lower the barrier for our modding community.

 

[Olosch]

I said it in the other thread, I don’t think open sourcing will help.
After going over your google doc I fear your goal of retaining the possibility to commercial distribute Starmade and also get free code from an open source community will not work out, or get you in a licensing hell no sane developer would want to touch.
I think the scope of the game is too big.
You should think of scaling back and build something more casual on the existing engine which could get funds from Film-Fernseh-Fonds Bayern, or check if you can get into some other COVID relief funds.

 

[DukeofRealms]

I said it in the other thread, I don’t think open sourcing will help.
After going over your google doc I fear your goal of retaining the possibility to commercial distribute Starmade and also get free code from an open source community will not work out, or get you in a licensing hell no sane developer would want to touch.
I think the scope of the game is too big.
You should think of scaling back and build something more casual on the existing engine which could get funds from Film-Fernseh-Fonds Bayern, or check if you can get into some other COVID relief funds.

Commercialising open-source software is quite common, dual-licensing commercial software under GPLv3 for the community and under a separate commercial license for those who pay for it is a standard practice. There are plenty of successful commercial applications that have achieved this. It's not new.

Qt development kit is dual-licensed under GPLv2/v3/LGPL for free usage and is also under the Qt Commercial License for those who have purchased licensing for it. This is a very successful example. Among others are Oracle's MySQL and MongoDB. There is nothing stopping us from employing those same dual-licensing terms and ONLY licensing those commercial rights to us. This is not a licensing hell, it's a common practice.

For an example of a successful GPLv3, commercial game, see Mindustry.

It's not supposed to be a silver bullet, simply the realisation that it's not going to harm us commercially (if setup correctly) and improve our chances for furthering the game's development. We're not relying on this, it's just a positive step forward we can take now, with our limited resources.

Also, keep in mind that StarMade is currently free, yet the majority of our users at any point in time did purchase the game. That was never a hindrance for us.

 

[Kelpaz]

Here comes another text wall from someone who stayed silent for a long time.

Before power 2.0 came and broke all that I knew I was just waiting for the AI to be fixed and fleets to work better.
I had worked very long on a line of ships and was about to finish my stations.

At this point all that were needed was: Make AI actually fight (instead of flying away 100's of sectors away)
Expand the fleet mechanics and make it less buggy, general optimizations.
Fixing bugs as usual and making loosely implemented features stable.
In my mind the game was really close to having stable enough ground to stand on but was great building in.

Then Schema mentioned an idea, the idea for power 2.0, at that moment it was all open for discussion, but it scared a lot of people to stop their projects including me.
Almost a year passed or more, can't remember exactly and now the power update is coming whether we liked it or not.

I tried out the early implementations, it was a massive step back, but I kept on testing either way discovering more breaks in creativity and fun factor.

Quickfire did nothing to make it feel in fact it broke my ships further and nothing could undo the damage of having shield "bubbles" no power sharing and so fourth.

Shield bubbles forced ship designs even harder and made it more painful than ever to make shields.
Modular stations were completely killed due to the fact that I wanted to have a main "Anchor" station with long corridors attached to various other parts like docking modules and such. The station would have to have a single giant bubble to cover all of this which is impossible.
Attach some modules and they wouldn't be covered by shields and they would drain all power if a ship docked.
I could go into deeper detail but that would make this post way too long.

All I wanted to see was bug fixes and better AI but instead we went backwards and sure yes I could always make a "pre power 2 server", but the AI and fleets mechanics would still be broken along with other features, like shipyards.

 

[Nauvran]

Here comes another text wall from someone who stayed silent for a long time.

Before power 2.0 came and broke all that I knew I was just waiting for the AI to be fixed and fleets to work better.
I had worked very long on a line of ships and was about to finish my stations.

At this point all that were needed was: Make AI actually fight (instead of flying away 100's of sectors away)
Expand the fleet mechanics and make it less buggy, general optimizations.
Fixing bugs as usual and making loosely implemented features stable.
In my mind the game was really close to having stable enough ground to stand on but was great building in.

Then Schema mentioned an idea, the idea for power 2.0, at that moment it was all open for discussion, but it scared a lot of people to stop their projects including me.
Almost a year passed or more, can't remember exactly and now the power update is coming whether we liked it or not.

I tried out the early implementations, it was a massive step back, but I kept on testing either way discovering more breaks in creativity and fun factor.

Quickfire did nothing to make it feel in fact it broke my ships further and nothing could undo the damage of having shield "bubbles" no power sharing and so fourth.

Shield bubbles forced ship designs even harder and made it more painful than ever to make shields.
Modular stations were completely killed due to the fact that I wanted to have a main "Anchor" station with long corridors attached to various other parts like docking modules and such. The station would have to have a single giant bubble to cover all of this which is impossible.
Attach some modules and they wouldn't be covered by shields and they would drain all power if a ship docked.
I could go into deeper detail but that would make this post way too long.

All I wanted to see was bug fixes and better AI but instead we went backwards and sure yes I could always make a "pre power 2 server", but the AI and fleets mechanics would still be broken along with other features, like shipyards.

All the changes to power 2 including QF has made it a lot better compared to what we got when it was new
I do agree with the rest of your points, although you're wrong about shield bubbles, you can easily have more than one bubble. Does sound a bit like you misunderstood how it works
Docks not being able to do shit other than provide thrust is a big letdown, that I totally agree on

 

[RabidBat]

Been a while. Good to see nothing has changed around here since I stopped playing. Not the remaining playerbase, or StarMade.

I could tell you why everything is like it is, have tried in the past. Heck one of my most watched on and commented videos is about many of the problems.

But as usual, it's the same screeching autsitic fanboys doing the same autistic screeching making the same old arguments and going around in circles chasing each others tales. (Apologies to the few here who can communicate and express their thoughts like calm adults.)
Then again, maybe you folks like being autistically toxic towards each other and scaring everyone away so you can have your precious all to yourselves, even if it means the thing you love dying.

Any wonder this game is dead in the water?

You people every try some compromise and flexibility? Meet in the middle. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

But yeah you used to try and make sensible suggestions on this forum and you just got shouted down. You couldn't have a logical discussion with the loudest screeching fanboys. Couldn't bounce ideas around. It was always there way or no way and I am still seeing it happen years later.

Maybe it's simply because English isn't your first languages? Maybe there is a break down in communication due to it. I dunno.

Like the whole PVP vs PVE argument. There's an easy fix. Like most games have. You host or play on a server that suits you.
PVE server for PVE, PVP servers for PVP, and PVE+PVE servers for those who want a bit of both.

Why does it have to be one or the other?

Of course it would of been easier had we been given better admin/mod tools.

Pretty easy considering back in the day nearly every damn server was player hosted and set their own rules. Servers I adminned we adminned well. Trouble makers were swiftly dealt with. We set rules.
We had some of the largest popular servers because everyone was allowed to play as they liked, as long as their fun wasn't ruining others.

EARLY ACCESS...... FFS... How long you fanboys going to keep spouting that one? You were using that excuse in 2013, you're still using it 7 years later? It was a piss poor comeback to every argument in 2017, it's an even weaker piss poor argument in 2020.

To put it into simple terms. Schine dropped the ball. It made many players leave. The forum monkeys schreesching and flinging their turds at each other made everyone else leave.

After 7 or 8 years in early access with basically zero changes to 'GAMEPLAY' people got bored. Even big budget AAA titles, players leave for newer shinier shores after a while.

Now think what you will about StarMade being unique, having the best 'builder' in it. Look at it from an outsiders POV. In the same time StarMade has been stagnating with no new gameplay, and just constant retweaking and rebalancing of what is already in there and SFA else, a hundred other 'ship builders' have come, been finished, and gone in less time.

If you never played StarMade and saw something shiny and polished looking like Empyrion, or Space Engineers etc. Games that are not only 'Ship Builders' games that have gameplay, like missions, NPC's and more, that were made and released within SM's launch until today.
Games that are fun, games that are more than just 'mine, build, twiddle thumbs waiting for update..... have everything broken, wash rinse repeat'
What would you honestly think of StarMade? Would you honestly buy it?

What makes me laugh is running a server we saw how many people bought the game. It clearly told admins who was free and who was paid.
And I can tell you now some of StarMades biggest fans, biggest schreechers, biggest whiners had never even bought the game. Especially the cheaters and exploiters who loved trying to destroy communities and servers........

You give the full product away for free, don't be surprised when 98% don't pay for it, especially the horrible humans who love destroying things.

I even suggested making a cut down demo at some point. Even in 'early access' said sell the game. Give us admins an option to set servers to 'paid players only'. That would of got rid of the vast majority of turds in this community.
And if people loved the game enough they would of paid for it. But even good people won't pay if they do not have to, turds especially won't pay.

But nope, you just get screeched down. Probably by the squeaky wheels who never bought the game and think they own this forum.

Any ways I'm just rambling. I mean what would a former Admin of at least 2 of StarMades most popular servers in the world know hey? Not as much as the screeching players obviously......

Until those of you living on the forums, and official discord (where the majority of SM players do not.) pull your heads in, doesn't matter what Schine does. This game is dead.

And I haven't even touched on the majority of reasons the game died. Give you a clue though, it wasn't crappy tweaks to power, it wasn't even the toxic autistic monkeys on these forums, it wasn't even releasing broken updates that broke the game more. It was something that starts with a "B" and rhymes with "YOU'RE DUMB". See if you can work it out.

Who the fuck wants to play a game with no game play for 7 years? Not me. Not anyone I have spoken to. Not anyone with a lick of sense anyway, which is thankfully not many. Then again I don't visit these forums much anymore so that's probably why.

Schine should do themselves a favour and stop listening to the lot of you. Maybe if they had 3 years ago, and Schema decided to stick to his original vision of the game instead of pandering to all the screeching little monkeys on this forum StarMade wouldn't be where it is.

Hell even told Schine this would happen, that they'd end up going broke and never finish the game, but oh no, they hired an analyst, they expected the game to die. But they had enough money, they had planned for this...... yeah, and here we are.

I would of loved to have seen StarMade finished, but I can tell you now, I and many many others wish it would just die already.
It missed the boat. The devs have all gone and got jobs, part time or otherwise.
Cannot recall the last time I saw an indie game come back after the staff got jobs. Not to mention talks of speaking to lawyers and open sourcing it. Not something you do if you're gonna keep a commercial project going.

Maybe open source can save it. (Maybe if modding had better official support years ago...but diva's gonna diva.) Maybe not.
But this game will never stay alive as long as every person in this community is still screeching at each other like autistic monkeys.

Maybe some of you greasy wheels will just shut up for once in your lives and let everyone else speak. (oh wait, too late, we all left....)

Good luck to Schema, Duke and all the members of Schine. Go enjoy your lives, you gave it your best. Alas your best wasn't good enough
Walk away, don't waste another 7 years of your life in a dead end "EARLY ACCESS". You all deserve better than that. Go do something for yourselves. Thanks for the hours of fun while it was fun.

And just one more thing for the 'IT'S EARLY ACCESS' defenders. Learn how words work.

early
adjective: early; comparative adjective: earlier; superlative adjective: earliest

1.
happening or done before the usual or expected time.
"we ate an early lunch"
2.
belonging or happening near the beginning of a particular period.
"an early goal secured victory"

adverb
adverb: early; comparative adverb: earlier; superlative adverb: earliest

1.
before the usual or expected time.
"I was planning to finish work early today"
2.
near the beginning of a particular time or period.
"we lost a couple of games early in the season"

IT'S LONG PAST EARLY. StarMAde is NOT early access anymore. It's quite LATE.

I'll keep an eye on the game, but I aint holding my breathe. Shit needs to seriously change. As long as it stays as it always has there is no moving forward. As long as you arguers keep arguing you are and always will be a turn off to new players.

Peace out.