Where did all the playerbase and faction fun go?

[Master_Artificer]

Oh

Will you folks ever let me get past that :|
<----- the reason the late EE reset.
It's been awhile so Im getting that out there.

yeah that was you wasn't it... XD

 

[Leanson]

I think that there are simply better games out there that people play. One strong pull for SM was the community that drew alot of people in and made people come back even if they left for a bit. The conflict and differences that each player and faction had made the SM community more diverse and made it exciting to be apart of. The fighting talking, and in game battles all made people play the game and work with each other to accomplish goals and have fun. I would say the liberal nature of the mods and community is what killed it and drove people away. I would say the separation of the factions did help in it isolation and increased boredness made people leave. The game isn't fun without an dynamic community, content, and social interaction that people can experience.

 

[Winterhome]

I think that there are simply better games out there that people play. One strong pull for SM was the community that drew alot of people in and made people come back even if they left for a bit. The conflict and differences that each player and faction had made the SM community more diverse and made it exciting to be apart of. The fighting talking, and in game battles all made people play the game and work with each other to accomplish goals and have fun. I would say the liberal nature of the mods and community is what killed it and drove people away. I would say the separation of the factions did help in it isolation and increased boredness made people leave. The game isn't fun without an dynamic community, content, and social interaction that people can experience.

I would say just the opposite. People were actively driven away from StarmadeDock by such conflict, and often ended up quitting the game permanently because of it. The game's slowed down and the faction scene has died down because the people who didn't leave have gotten very, very tired of the constant flaming, shit flinging, and out-of-game attacks.

The reason why SM has fallen apart in general, though (as opposed to SMD), is the lack of decent interaction-based content. There's nothing that brings players together except for spawn shops and insults. There are too many places to go in a single galaxy that offer too little - much less than sitting at your homebase, babysitting a factory, or mining in your home system can offer, that's for certain. People spread out, build shit alone, mine alone, and then when they get attacked, they take it personally, because the attacker specifically had to pick their name out of the player list and track them down to kill them. It's not "expected" that you run into other players online, and the game doesn't encourage interaction - it actively discourages it.

 

[FlyingDebris]

A solution to that problem would be to find a way to make single areas in the universe that players would want to go to more common. Take spawn for example. Centralized, easy to get to, everybody knows where it is, and on many servers the shop there is restocked often, providing a resource-rich single sector. The stellar phenomena update has the potential to pull this off by adding small (2-3 sectors) areas of extremely high density materials that are exceedingly rare, spawning maybe once or twice per galaxy at most.

 

[karkinosz]

A solution to that problem would be to find a way to make single areas in the universe that players would want to go to more common. Take spawn for example. Centralized, easy to get to, everybody knows where it is, and on many servers the shop there is restocked often, providing a resource-rich single sector. The stellar phenomena update has the potential to pull this off by adding small (2-3 sectors) areas of extremely high density materials that are exceedingly rare, spawning maybe once or twice per galaxy at most.

Ie super large larimar asteroid spawns. Anyone?!

 

[FlyingDebris]

Well there you go. *maybe* a single system per galaxy that is a protoplanetary disk, filled with only a single type of asteroid, and much larger asteroids at that. Have one of these systems per asteroid type in the galaxy and boom, you've got multiple hotspots for mining and opportunistic pirates. (Incidentally, this might handle the AFK mining problem, the planet mining problem, and the lack of player-pirates in the game in one fell swoop.)

 

[Reilly Reese]

Well there you go. *maybe* a single system per galaxy that is a protoplanetary disk, filled with only a single type of asteroid, and much larger asteroids at that. Have one of these systems per asteroid type in the galaxy and boom, you've got multiple hotspots for mining and opportunistic pirates. (Incidentally, this might handle the AFK mining problem, the planet mining problem, and the lack of player-pirates in the game in one fell swoop.)

Why not just have a random ultra rare thing. 100% working capital warship spawned here go fight for it

 

[Leanson]

I would say just the opposite. People were actively driven away from StarmadeDock by such conflict, and often ended up quitting the game permanently because of it. The game's slowed down and the faction scene has died down because the people who didn't leave have gotten very, very tired of the constant flaming, shit flinging, and out-of-game attacks.

The reason why SM has fallen apart in general, though (as opposed to SMD), is the lack of decent interaction-based content. There's nothing that brings players together except for spawn shops and insults. There are too many places to go in a single galaxy that offer too little - much less than sitting at your homebase, babysitting a factory, or mining in your home system can offer, that's for certain. People spread out, build shit alone, mine alone, and then when they get attacked, they take it personally, because the attacker specifically had to pick their name out of the player list and track them down to kill them. It's not "expected" that you run into other players online, and the game doesn't encourage interaction - it actively discourages it.

I respect your perception and outlook, but i would disagree. Players normally come back when a faction comes back when a faction is active, participating in some conflict or engage in the community. How a faction communicates with each other plays a huge role in a factions ability to organize and last. But i would say another faction or player starts a conflict will do more to rally a faction and it members then discourage them. I did nor have I supported attacking new players. But i do support conflict and wars as a means to engage factions and it's players. To interact with each other. And when one side losses they do not become sore losses and create more bullshit and animosity. Now how you talk to others should be at a level or respect that is reflective of a grown person maturity. But in a server where you can kill and kill others, if you play on it, like rust, ARK, or minecraft. If you can kill, don't complain if you get bested.

Now the amount of public factions have declined, mainly I think because of the need to not make factions public. We don't know how many people privately play or how big other factions are in other servers. They have no reason to be on the forums, mainly because it's a bit toxic.

SM itself needs more, and the suggestion threads reflect the want and need for more. I honestly think that plays more of a role than the forum bullshit. People get bored with the game.

Odium can only server wide affect a small portion of the community when many public factions are separated and unable to attack each other. I believe and please do the math. math more people quit the game because of these reasons more than past odium actions
1. Pirates... some regular and custom
2. Dead faction.. all there friends quit..
3 they get bored of the game.
4 no challenge and external conflict
5.Sun killed and ate their ship.
Does anyone have any more.

How does other games die. Believe me it's easier to blame someone you don't like. Lol
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Why not just have a random ultra rare thing. 100% working capital warship spawned here go fight for it

A solution to that problem would be to find a way to make single areas in the universe that players would want to go to more common. Take spawn for example. Centralized, easy to get to, everybody knows where it is, and on many servers the shop there is restocked often, providing a resource-rich single sector. The stellar phenomena update has the potential to pull this off by adding small (2-3 sectors) areas of extremely high density materials that are exceedingly rare, spawning maybe once or twice per galaxy at most.

How long would that keep people's interest? When you can just and claim a galaxy, there is no need to fight. Unlimited is sometimes to big.

 

[Designerman011]

I have an idea that could create ways to bring people together in both peace and conflict.

The basis of it is to have multiple "tiers" of structures in which are randomly generated in which a faction can claim.
The lowest tier will have low to no visibility on the galaxy map and has to be found by exploring, these can be relatively common, say 10-30 per galaxy.
The middle tier would be visible on the galaxy map if you were for instance, 30 sectors or less away from it, there could be about 3 per galaxy of these.
The top tier would be detectable within about a 3 galaxy range, and have a low chance to spawn.

The low tier could have effects like boosted shields, weapon damage, etc, within a sector range from it
Mid tier could be items like long distance gates (intergalatic), or something else
Top tier could have a large effect like allowing the faction which controls it to use technology in which others cannot, such as weapon systems, advanced jump drives, etc etc

I would like to expand on this further, however I believe it should be move to a collective suggestions post

 

[Lecic]

I have an idea that could create ways to bring people together in both peace and conflict.

The basis of it is to have multiple "tiers" of structures in which are randomly generated in which a faction can claim.
The lowest tier will have low to no visibility on the galaxy map and has to be found by exploring, these can be relatively common, say 10-30 per galaxy.
The middle tier would be visible on the galaxy map if you were for instance, 30 sectors or less away from it, there could be about 3 per galaxy of these.
The top tier would be detectable within about a 3 galaxy range, and have a low chance to spawn.

The low tier could have effects like boosted shields, weapon damage, etc, within a sector range from it
Mid tier could be items like long distance gates (intergalatic), or something else
Top tier could have a large effect like allowing the faction which controls it to use technology in which others cannot, such as weapon systems, advanced jump drives, etc etc

I would like to expand on this further, however I believe it should be move to a collective suggestions post

No. This is really not the way to go about encouraging interaction.

 

[Designerman011]

No. This is really not the way to go about encouraging interaction.

Maybe it isnt, I just wanted to throw my idea out, as to not just be sitting around complaining about being bored without accomplishing anything

 

[jorgekorke]

Another thing that makes interaction even more difficult to happen, are the multiple galaxies. There is a lot of people who goes on those way distant areas to sandbox alone, killing the purpose of multiplayer.

 

[Lightning312]

I tend to play alone on single-player these days, but I started playing on public servers. There are a number of reasons why I quit servers and I think they are widely applicable.

1) Server stability: There is nothing that pisses me off more than doing hard work... only for a server glitch to destroy my progress. Even if it's only a few minutes or seconds, it is maddening. Same for when I get disconnected and my ship flies 20km away and I have to spend time looking for it.
2) Server resets: On survival servers, it takes a long time and a lot of effort to build up to the point where you can build whatever you want, whenever you want. When servers do a full reset or deactivate, it feels like all that progress was for nothing. This is a criticism I level at servers, not the game.
2a) Admin/elite privilege: As a secondary note, on the servers I played, the admins and their friends had unlimited power and resources while the rest of us slaved away. This both pissed me off and meant that server resets meant nothing to them. Either give everyone unlimited resources and create a build-only server, or don't give people special privilege.
3) Servers are too big: Even on major servers, you can stay within 30 systems of the center and rarely if ever run into an actual player. IMO, warpgates and warpdrives only made this problem worse. It's too easy for a player to run to an uninhabited system and remain anonymous. Hell, even within commonly-traveled systems, it's pretty easy to hide or just get lucky and not get found. It is too easy to hide and too difficult to hunt.
4) Lack of PvE content: Is there ever a reason to hunt pirates or stations with other players? Not that I've seen. So when there's nobody out there to fight, either because you can't find anyone or because everyone is hiding in a home system, there's not much else to do on an online server that can't be done on a single-player server then imported.

Recommendations for both servers and the game:
1) Increase server persistence: If there's no compelling reason to reset the server (meaning "the server won't work at all, I have to reset it!"), then don't reset the server. Certainly, don't reset it just because it's "that time of the year" or "because we feel like it".
2) Reduce server size and warp/jump distance: If someone doesn't want to be found, they should have to spend hours and hours flying away. I have nothing against people who play on public servers and don't want to be bothered or shot--I'm usually one of those people--but I acknowledge that the effort I put into hiding should be comparable to the effort it takes to hunt me.
3) Make scaled-difficulty PvE viable: Starmade lacks multiplayer end-game PvE. I know that this exists in a weak format on some servers, but frankly it's poorly done. In order for endgame content to work, it must exist (duh) and drops/loot must make those activities worth it. An implied task there is scaling loot drops so that killing a massive ship/spawn with your friends is more rewarding than killing a few random small ships.
4) Eliminate home systems, but keep home stations: I'm a fan of having some sort of safe-zone for each faction to deter harassment. However, that safe-zone must be limited. If you are going to keep the home station though, make all things attached to that home station (such as turrets and docked ships) vulnerable to enemy fire. This will prevent home stations from having invulnerable insta-death turrets.
5) Reduce turret movement speed based on turret size: Most people agree that huge insta-death turrets are game-breaking. To solve that, adjust turret movement speed so that the bigger the turret, the slower it tracks targets. This allows small ships to be viable, is actually more realistic, yet keeps capital-class turrets viable.

What are your thoughts?

 

[FlyingDebris]

Yes.

If you'd like a server where you don't lose stuff and don't have to deal with slaving away to get resources, I'm co-owner of the NFD server, which grants creative mode and limited admin abilities such as /change_sector to all our players. Feel free to apply there if you'd like.

 

[Ithirahad]

The problem with the faction drama is that it got out of hand, people started making things personal and doing things like revealing enemies' RL personal information (doxxing), at which point someone had to put a stop to it. Let's face it, if all this had gone on even more people would have quit, new players would be repelled, legal issues may have arisen, and there may not have been a community to speak of after all of that.

"This is why we cannot have nice things."

There is also a massive gameplay lack of incentive to fight in addition to it now being expensive to fight too. I think I've said this at least five times already: before, war was cheap and pointless, but fun, so people did it. Now war is expensive and pointless, and not fun because it takes forever to make up for lost ships, so nobody does it. In a year or so, there should be incentive to fight again... I just hope there are people left to do it. Theoretically, at that point, it will remain expensive but there will be a point to it AND it will be fun - so people will do it again, and hopefully without all of the forum-warrior nonsense that has arisen from current gameplay mechanics.

Ever wonder why people say "well, school, work, etc. got in the way"? Because with the new economy system and the constant balance changes, investing enough time into the game to actually maintain a fighting fleet became impractical. Thankfully the balance changes will more or less stop now, and shipyards make things a lot easier now that they aren't completely bugged, but that still leaves us down a bunch of players and with a grindy economy system that actively promotes not fighting anything you aren't guaranteed to beat.

 

[TwoNiner]

This is pretty much the result of your strict moderation of "harmful/offensive content". How do you expect people to want to log on everyday and spend their time building up fleets for war if you enforce everyone to be emotionless and circle jerk each other off when the main drive for conflict is the feeling of hatred towards your enemy. How do you expect friction to build between factions if every time one side says something which remotely insulting towards another party they receive warning points and have their posts deleted. You enforce the entire community to shun upon even the slightest verbal conflict, and now you wonder "where did all the battles and wars go" You want the community to be an emotionless "Drama-free" space? Then how do you expect people to continue playing this game. Without drama and politics, why would I choose to play this game over more established games like EVE Online, World of Warships , Space Engineers or CS GO, which are FAR more developed, fleshed out with way better mechanics?

With Faction Politics:
1. Faction builds up strength
2.Factions decide to create a forums thread
3. Factions interact with one another
4. Factions argue on the forums <----This is where Politics come in
5. Factions go to war
6. Factions trial their ships in combat
7. Factions keep building new ship to best their opponents
8. After the war repeat steps 3-8

Without Faction Politics:
1. Faction builds up strength
2.Factions decide to create a forums thread
3. Factions interact with one another
4. Factions have zero conflict <---- Due to disallowed Drama
5. People get bored and stop playing

I've said so many times before that this would kill the faction scene in StarMade, and my view still stands. Without the forums factions would never make contact, however with the current forums, factions veteran enough to actually engage in forumside friction with other factions usually have their representatives banned, or have just flat out given up on stiring up drama which leads to battle.

We need a 'bad guy' to cause a stir and push the community along. A peaceful world is a boring world.

This is what the community needs, but how do you expect a villain to emerge when the moderators disallow even the slightest amount of drama. Look at Vaygr the main aggravators of conflict. They didn't die out, they are still active, they've just been completely banned form the forums. Why? because they are the bad guys and stir up conflict. You want proof of what I'm saying? http://oldsite.star-made.org/ Look at the moderation free faction scene on the old site and compare it with your excessively moderated faction scene of the current site. The best example of how conflict starts is the Vaygr thread on the old site: http://oldsite.star-made.org/content/vaygr-empire-member-pact This is the greatest example of how wars between factions start, read it and compare it with your current faction thread. I'll take a shot for everyone who tells me they prefer the drama-less factions of today over the emotion filled factions of the past.

Personally the reason why I've played StarMade all these years is because of the forums. Ever since Cirdanorth dragged me to start a faction thread of the CR back on the old site ( original thread was deleted after the CR's first fall so you wont find it on the old site) I felt like my faction was connected to the entire community, and every other faction in existence. Even though some of us played on different servers we had that sense that we were not the only ones. There is always someone out there bigger than you who could pose a threat if they declared war on your faction, and out of paranoia comes the drive for an arms race, followed by propaganda as a show of might, to ward off potential aggressors. Once in awhile we would challenge eachother's might by finding petty reasons to go to war ( this part is where flaming comes in), but most importantly we always had the big picture of what was going on between faction. THIS to me is what makes StarMade the best Voxel building, Sandbox, Political War stimulator I'd played in my life.

I've stopped playing StarMade today, not because I think gameplay has gone stale, we've endured much longer waits between substantial updates in the past, but because I feel this new moderation system has taken away one of my most favorite aspects of the game, politics. I tried to fight it at first, but resistance is futile when the people you oppose can simply censor anything you say that they don't like. Ever since I've given up. And even though I agree that policing should be carried out for people who have taken things too far as to include Doxxing, overly strict policing is doing it just as much harm, and this game will never be as great as it was until this issue is resolved.

 

[Lecic]

Space Engineers

FAR more developed, fleshed out with way better mechanics?

lol

they've just been completely banned form the forums. Why?

Doxxing? Commenting on their own posts as an alt? That's Zoro and RedAlert. Are there any other banned Vaygr members I'm forgetting about? I'd hardly call two "completely banned."

 

[Master_Artificer]

"lol"

could you at least provide something more constructive than to simply dismiss his post as "lol"? I thought two niner raised some valid points, if you disagree, refute them with points and examples of your own, not a "lol" please.

 

[Lecic]

could you at least provide something more constructive than to simply dismiss his post as "lol"? I thought two niner raised some valid points, if you disagree, refute them with points and examples of your own, not a "lol" please.

I was only laughing at the idea of Space Engineers being "FAR more developed, fleshed out with way better mechanics?"...

I mean, I even agreed with his post. I'm obviously not opposed to the idea that we need some sort of conflict within this game that doesn't suck.

 

[Master_Artificer]

I was only laughing at the idea of Space Engineers being "FAR more developed, fleshed out with way better mechanics?"...

I mean, I even agreed with his post. I'm obviously not opposed to the idea that we need some sort of conflict within this game that doesn't suck.

Oh, okay, sorry didn't understand what you meant.