You Have Failed Us

[jstenholt]

SM's singleplayer has always been in a sad state, and a lot of what kept the game afloat was the community and servers. With the system changes and lack of update to the npc ships (I dont even need to boot the game to know they didnt update them), SP has gone from bad to worse, and the MP scene seems to have also taken a hearty blow.

Oh my god, seriously, dude. Alpha Test, look up what that means and stop talking about the game being "dead" or "afloat" or the scene being dealt a "hearty blow."

 

[CyberTao]

Oh my god, seriously, dude. Alpha Test, look up what that means and stop talking about the game being "dead" or "afloat" or the scene being dealt a "hearty blow."

I never said it was dead. And Alpha is a state, not a defense. Starmade might be a small indie game with 1 dev, but in the same time they have failed to get to beta, other indies have already fully released, some of which I consider more complex.

"Hur dur it's alpha" is not a valid counter arguement

 

[aytoms29]

Another game you might enjoy is Interstellar Rift. It's more limited than Starmade but still fun.

Come back and check out Starmade again sometime.

I'd like to come back but honestly I don't think I'll enjoy it. The community who kept this game interesting has left. The discord within the community has escalated. The time since I was last active was about 6 months. I know it's stupid to come back just to say you're leaving, but this community was one of the best things I was apart of, and unless something actually changes I don't think I'll come back.

(yeah I do really enjoy the base game with construction but honestly it makes no sense anymore)
(edit: also the game's been in alpha for far too long imo)
(edit 2 because i suck: just to clarify, i'm leaving this game not because it's bad, but because the game's community has ended up leaving because of how many instances have been handled, especially since what happened in the council)

 

[FlyingDebris]

This game has been in 'alpha' for longer than most games are in development, with a number of changes not befitting an 'alpha' game. It's a label that a good number of people hide behind as an excuse for poor performance.

 

[CyberTao]

The 2.0 changes are to address fundamental issues underlying 'everything', Many fundamental structures underlying game-calculation result in highly detrimental lag (or other varieties of weirdness) - This is particularly ruinous to enjoyable Multiplayer/Server play, whatever the state of the community.

Small things such as Efficient-Calculations-Of-Many-Kinds, especially during heavy combat;things like AI decision-trees, with individual ships, and how a group might react to damage (for example) - but also how NPC behavior scales on a strategic level. Let alone the basic grinding-lag that we all know and love about online-SM

Using less blocks per se was not (as I understand it) the goal of 2.0 at all.

You do raise a point but remember that Starmade has the AI of a newborn baby, and some people have found MP less stable since the update. Buts thats a part of early access we can more or less grumble and live with.

Whether or not you think 2.0 was about using less blocks or not, conversations with lancake says it is. Empty space doesnt actually left reduce lag, it increases it. More exposed faces means more needs to be processed, where as a solid block just needs to know what block is where and doesnt worry about what face to render.

I'm no code genie but I'm pretty sure that once you load a chunk/segment into memory, it uses more or less the same amount of memory, regardless of how full it is, so just the presence of more or less blocks doesn't make much difference, its the number of exposed sides. But this is based on my meagre and shitty understand of how things work, so ask Lancook or someone

 

[YamiHikari]

I never said it was dead. And Alpha is a state, not a defense. Starmade might be a small indie game with 1 dev, but in the same time they have failed to get to beta, other indies have already fully released, some of which I consider more complex.

"Hur dur it's alpha" is not a valid counter arguement

I hate to break it to you, but you can't compare one game's development timeline to another's. There are just too many individual differences between each and every game, from the dev team size to the intended features to the game type to literally anything else that plays a part in the development of the game. Game development timelines are incredibly diverse, from being as short as 2 months to being as long as 7 years. Considering the size and complexity of this game, and taking into account the small size of the dev team, I'd almost feel compelled to say that this game is moving faster than it normally would. You can't really judge the ripeness of an apple by how ripe the apple sitting next to it is.

 

[Sachys]

I'm no code genie but I'm pretty sure that once you load a chunk/segment into memory, it uses more or less the same amount of memory, regardless of how full it is, so just the presence of more or less blocks doesn't make much difference, its the number of exposed sides. But this is based on my meagre and shitty understand of how things work, so ask Lancook or someone

Thats pretty much my understanding of it from posts around the time of the performance update.

As to the game, if they can make stations even as remotely viable as they were before, I'll still build, but right now I'm not updating to power 2.0 again.
I'm actually wondering if any worthwhile servers are avoiding updating (for now at least).

 

[Reilly Reese]

Riperonni gameronni

 

[jstenholt]

This game has been in 'alpha' for longer than most games are in development, with a number of changes not befitting an 'alpha' game. It's a label that a good number of people hide behind as an excuse for poor performance.

I never said it was dead. And Alpha is a state, not a defense. Starmade might be a small indie game with 1 dev, but in the same time they have failed to get to beta, other indies have already fully released, some of which I consider more complex.

"Hur dur it's alpha" is not a valid counter arguement

Yes, it is, because nobody asked you to purchase or play the game and whether or not you do has little effect on its success. What does have an effect on success is the ability of the pool of alpha testers to withstand constant changes, buggy/incomplete implementation of new/controversial features in order to provide feedback that that will improve the game.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Yes, it is, because nobody asked you to purchase or play the game and whether or not you do has little effect on its success. What does have an effect on success is the ability of the pool of alpha testers to withstand constant changes, buggy/incomplete implementation of new/controversial features in order to provide feedback that that will improve the game.

Sooo "No one asked you to play so your opinion is invalid" is a correct summarization?

 

[jstenholt]

Sooo "No one asked you to play so your opinion is invalid" is a correct summarization?

Mate, did you even read my entire post there? You can provide feedback and complain about things you feel are wrong until the cows roost, but the second you start pontificating on the Starmade end-times you've outlived your usefulness as a community member.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Mate, did you even read my entire post there? You can provide feedback and complain about things you feel are wrong until the cows roost, but the second you start pontificating on the Starmade end-times you've outlived your usefulness as a community member.

I did, also i'm not here to be "useful" not as some drone anyways.

We have given our feedback and were ignored so apparently no one here is actually "useful" to them.

 

[jstenholt]

I did also i'm not here to be "useful" not as some drone anyways.

We have given our feedback and were ignored so apparently no one here is actually "useful" to them.

Whether or not we've been ignored cannot possibly be proven yet. Have the devs been as engaged as we'd like them to be? Absolutely not. Does that mean we've been ignored? Demonstrably: no.

Look at all the after release changes Power 2.0 has gotten in the past month. They know it doesn't work as well as they want it to yet. They keep changing shit, don't pretend we've been ignored.

 

[FlyingDebris]

Whether or not we've been ignored cannot possibly be proven yet. Have the devs been as engaged as we'd like them to be? Absolutely not. Does that mean we've been ignored? Demonstrably: no.

Look at all the after release changes Power 2.0 has gotten in the past month. They know it doesn't work as well as they want it to yet. They keep changing shit, don't pretend we've been ignored.

Hi Jstenholt;

As an elected member of the now-defunct Council which was created as a liaison between the players and the devs,

They didn't give a rat's ass about you, me, or anyone else here; and still don't.

 

[Calhoun]

jstenholt

Even alpha games work towards a goal. That goal may shift as development goes on, but rarely is there a regression that annuls over six years of development. Starmade has made that regression. Despite claims of "vision" and "development goals", in the 5+ years I've been playing and following Starmade's development I've only seen one period where the game seemed to be gaining steam and developing. There's no vision, no goals. It's a flavour of the week chop and change, and goes around in more circles than an argument with redalert.

It's come to a head now because this is easily the biggest regression in Starmade history. There are more things not working at the moment then things working. Things that were reported in dev builds still made it through to the laughably titled "release" build. Yet people still claim "everything is fine, it's an alpha game".

Here's a fact that people like yourself seem to be ignoring: the game is dying. Before you say "doesn't matter, alpha", It does matter. Schine is a small studio, as everyone is fond of saying. What this means is that they can't afford the 100+ testers needed to ensure quality, so they rely of the players. According to other "it's Alpha" people it's why we have alpha access anyway. However, the game has been steadily losing players for a couple of years now, to a low of less than 100 active players on steam. Most of the experienced veterans are now leaving. This reduces the amount of "testers" and results in a lower quality product. You only have to look at the amount of major game breaking issues in the "release" version for power 2.0 to see that. No one really wants to be an unpaid tester for a game that's nearly unplayable, so you lose more players and so on and so on. This was a critical time in Starmade's development where Schine could not afford to lose any more players. And yet, despite a metric ton of community interactions, bug reports, and warnings, the 2.0 update was pushed through and fell flat on it's face.

The game is dying, and it sure as hell does matter.

 

[aceface]

They didn't give a rat's ass about

?

 

[Dire Venom]

-snip-

Just like to say that was well said.

I have also not noticed a consistant plan or development cycle from the devs.

That being said they have set fourth a huge task in front of themselves, and thus it would make sense that they would nibble off small bits at a time (hence the flavour of the month).

However future goals set have been very idealistic, non-concrete and vauge. Limited use has been made of the hoard of experianced players who have been clammering to share their ideas.

Many of them are rejected due to not meeting Schemas criteria, however since he never shares it we can only guess :/

It always feels to me like the whole process could be streamlined and made more effcient by directly involving the community.

2 other small dev teams I am involved with have done this to immense success, now having an overwhelmingly positive rating (95-100% on steam) despite still being in Early access as well.

Players there are appreciated and involved in the development process, while the developers still can put their foot down they let their community know why and remain open to feedback.

Honestly is key to these devs, and they reap what they sow (a loyal playerbase, dozens of voulenter staff and near 100% steam ratings)

Where as with Starmade contact with 90% of the devs is extremly limited, and the community seems to only become involved with the devs for a short period of time during each update release.

TLDR: The Devs reap what they Sow

 

[SkaireKrough]

Importantly: The pretty-builds and the power-builds both seem functional within their respective class and relative to the degree of their respective min-maxing (as far as i can see from brief testing anyway). THIS IS A SUCCESS ! , based on the Goals of the original 2.0 Dev Team.

So how do these "pretty-builds" compare to the "power-builds" at near equal mass? If one or the other has a clear advantage over the other then we have to conclude that just like power 1.0, power 2.0 is a failure at unifying the player base.

I may very well be wrong but I had assumed that one of the main reasons for reworking the base mechanics of the game was to even out the playing field between the RP builders, Aesthetic builders, PVP builders and those that don't fit into those classifications.

As for my opinion of power 2.0, if you have to add stuff like the power beams to prevent island and spagetti builds, the very restrictive integrity system to prevent spaghetti ships then that should have been a big (huge, massive, gianourmous) clue that the underlying mechanic was fatally flawed.

With power 1.0 ship power didn't scale very well, ships became so much stronger per mass as they got bigger up to a certain point due to the volume to surface area favoring larger ships. And due to design choices RP builds were usually at a disadvantage to pure PVP ships of equal mass. When you consider that the traditional 'fighter' has only enough 'interior' empty space for just the 1 or 2 pilots and most bigger ships realistically should have room for much large crew compliments then the fighter. This could be used to the advantage of decent game mechaincs.

This could have been fixed by
1. getting rid of the dimensional bonus for power regen
2. Decide what max size a fighter should be ( can be a server setting) then find the ratio of system blocks to non-system blocks.
3. Set that ratio as the minimum number of non-system blocks needed for each system block for all ships and possibly even stations

 

[CyberTao]

I hate to break it to you, but you can't compare one game's development timeline to another's. There are just too many individual differences between each and every game, from the dev team size to the intended features to the game type to literally anything else that plays a part in the development of the game. Game development timelines are incredibly diverse, from being as short as 2 months to being as long as 7 years. Considering the size and complexity of this game, and taking into account the small size of the dev team, I'd almost feel compelled to say that this game is moving faster than it normally would. You can't really judge the ripeness of an apple by how ripe the apple sitting next to it is.

I hate to break it to you, but you can.
Games are compared all the time, and for good reason; no one wants to spend money on something when they can get a superior product within the same price range. Starmade is no longer a niche game, there are many block based space games with planets and mining. Starmade is not the only game with a small dev team. People compare games all the time, and with the push to get people to research games in early access before trying them, the state of the community and game matter more than people like Jsten claim.

The only thing Starmade had going for it, was the block based solutions they had (few menus, everything adjusted with blocks) which apparently they just dropped. Starmade does have its own custom engine, but right now my house is in a better condition than that.


We aren't here to dance and praise Schema's game. None of us came here to do that. We came here because we liked the game, saw potential, and wanted to see it grow and improve. Years ago I would have argued "It's Schema's game, he can do what he wants with it", but it's become painfully clear that I don't Schemas game, I want "our" game, the game built and improved by Schema and the community. You can't even argue that Schema is making the game for himselve, cause he's elevated community members to Dev positions to get more insight. This is why it was painful when the council shut down, and why its troubling when some devs outright refuse to listen or consider what people are saying.

If they really wanted to make a game according to what they wanted, closed alphas are a thing. They could have easily walled themselves off and done things however they wanted. Instead we get this.

 

[Mered4]

Ender here.

1. Forced design choices
2. Lack of complexity
3. Too many blocks involved (number, not types)
4. Focused on regen

^Schema's original problems with the old power system, for reference.

From a rational perspective, Power 2.0 fails in its mission dramatically. First, the system adds unnecessary complexity. We have at least 8 individual systems to worry about as ship builders. The complexity should arise from the interactions between them, not from one alone. It's simply a strain on our time to increase the difficulty in building ships. This isn't to say building a new power system is a bad idea in general, but that the one they implemented is close to the worst possible example of a new system.

Second, it forces design choices and encourages hilariously irrational but incredibly dull min-max builds. RP ships will most definitely never, ever be able to compete with a similarly sized PvP ship now, and even ships with a large mass advantage will be rendered useless by this system.
Despite the multi-dimensional stabilizer fix, this is still an issue.

Third, Schine is YET AGAIN reverting to the sunk cost fallacy to justify the existence of a system, instead of accepting rational criticism or even RESPONDING TO IT. Instead, they post explanations that feel disconnected from the community, which makes it even more apparent that they aren't listening to us. Or that they even play the same game.

I love how all the people claiming power 2.0 isn't something to worry about are all newbies. Sorry, pal, I've been here for 6 years. This is probably the seventh or eighth time Schema and his crew have pulled something EXACTLY like this. I'm done being duped.

I've got a Star Destroyer to finish, but after that? See ya.