You Have Failed Us

[MacThule]

it seems youre attempting to dismiss peoples concerns as simply being resistant to change,

This is one of the problems demonstrated. I have repeatedly stated above that I don't object to any concerns or critiques about the systems, but you want to re-frame it as that...

My issue (again) is with people claiming and implying that the update shows disrespect or lack of concern on the part of staff, people trying to make popularity claims (most/majority of X group thinks Y), and people claiming that this update kills the game.

If that isn't you, and you are just constructively expressing concerns then I am not talking about you in that. I have no problem with critique or even ranting and raving. The character attacks against Schine staff go too far though, as do repeated claims that this is disrespect of players and the end of the game, and claims about what the 'majority' of veterans or PvPs or the community feel because that is not concern or critique, that isn't feedback, that is framing the discussion and speaking for others in a very negative way. And that is what is actually killing this community, that bile and mis-representation.

If people have concerns, let them speak in their own voices and stop making fallacious claims that hurt this community.

As evidenced here, people are leaving Starmade purely on the basis of reading this overhyped invective.

Stop defending it as concern and feedback. It is not that.

 

[kulbolen]

Schine's alleged ignorance does not preclude your own.


There are many reasons why this system could have made it past the drawing board despite your concerns being heard. One possibility is they simply didn't agree with what they heard. Another could be that the solutions presented ignored limits of the engine architecture. Etc, etc.


This is fantastic news! I'm looking forward to reading about all the exploit fixes in the next update notes!

i sense the sarcasm, but its been discussed and most of it wont be looked into until the weapons update.
[doublepost=1518557763,1518556718][/doublepost]

This is one of the problems demonstrated. I have repeatedly stated above that I don't object to any concerns or critiques about the systems, but you want to re-frame it as that...

My issue (again) is with people claiming and implying that the update shows disrespect or lack of concern on the part of staff, people trying to make popularity claims (most/majority of X group thinks Y), and people claiming that this update kills the game.

If that isn't you, and you are just constructively expressing concerns then I am not talking about you in that. I have no problem with critique or even ranting and raving. The character attacks against Schine staff go too far though, as do repeated claims that this is disrespect of players and the end of the game, and claims about what the 'majority' of veterans or PvPs or the community feel because that is not concern or critique, that isn't feedback, that is framing the discussion and speaking for others in a very negative way. And that is what is actually killing this community, that bile and mis-representation.

If people have concerns, let them speak in their own voices and stop making fallacious claims that hurt this community.

As evidenced here, people are leaving Starmade purely on the basis of reading this overhyped invective.

Stop defending it as concern and feedback. It is not that.

you may or may not be adressing me, but i am adressing you. you dont get to decide for others what their concerns are and whether or not theyre valid. feedback doesnt have to be pretty, and people dont have to be polite about their concerns, and yet thats still what they are. emotionally invested people arent always logical and calm no matter how bad you try to force them to be.

as far as veteran pvp crowd goes, yes, its undeniable that the majority of them have left. the server they played on is now basically dead, and there is no pvp presence in either of the 2 remaining active servers. im not picking their reasons for them; but you can read for yourself what people are saying. you already have, ive seen you arguing with them.

you said it yourself, why wouldnt long time players be upset about the change? some of them undoubtedly left because of that, and some new players undoubtedly left because they dont like the system, or have found it full of stuff that doesnt work yet and got discouraged.

to be fair, some people have probably left after reading community arguments...

consider this though, you are contributing to the very arguments you have such an issue with. your perspective isnt obective or absolute any more than anyone elses, and you commonly make false representations of stuff to support your agenda. (hi im a competitor game developer and all the angry vets are alts etc) youre literally perpetuating the thing you claim to hate just like the rest of us.

 

[jstenholt]

Amazing.
Everything you just said is wrong.

We HAVE been ignored. Lancake literally spent three posts earlier today trying to explain to some guy what he was missing with the new system. To no ones surprise, his own knowledge of ship systems was LEAGUES behind that of an experienced PVPer like Non

If our concerns had not been ignored, this system would never have made it past the drawing board. It doesn't even work without an insane amount of artificial limits and menu sliders.

Seriously man. You aren't even trying. Quit trying to pull this moral high ground bull crap.

I've been here for six YEARS. This isn't my first rodeo with Schema's forced distancing from the community.

Firstly, I've been playing and actively involved in this community since 2013, and I have no fucking idea what you're talking about. So, if you want to provide some evidence, do that. If not, please shelf that argument because nobody cares how long you or I have been playing.

Secondly, I am demonstrably not wrong. Even if Schine isn't actively responding to your individual threads, they been putting out quick fixes and patches that have significantly changed Power 2.0 since its launch. I'm going to link the patches notes here in case you missed the changes implemented since launch or forgot somehow.

StarMade News - StarMade v0.200.332 - Reactor System Enhancement and Fixes

This refutes the whole "we've been ignored," argument. Full stop, exit stage left. If you think this isn't enough, or that the game sucks now, that's a whole matter of opinion and you can hold that, but quit pretending you've been ignored.

I'm not exactly sure how you all managed to miss this, but whatever, the outrage machine is as unstoppably strong is it is futilely silly.

 

[kulbolen]

Firstly, I've been playing and actively involved in this community since 2013, and I have no fucking idea what you're talking about. So, if you want to provide some evidence, do that. If not, please shelf that argument because nobody cares how long you or I have been playing.

Secondly, I am demonstrably not wrong. Even if Schine isn't actively responding to your individual threads, they been putting out quick fixes and patches that have significantly changed Power 2.0 since its launch. I'm going to link the patches notes here in case you missed the changes implemented since launch or forgot somehow.

StarMade News - StarMade v0.200.332 - Reactor System Enhancement and Fixes

This refutes the whole "we've been ignored," argument. Full stop, exit stage left. If you think this isn't enough, or that the game sucks now, that's a whole matter of opinion and you can hold that, but quit pretending you've been ignored.

I'm not exactly sure how you all managed to miss this, but whatever, the outrage machine is as unstoppably strong is it is futilely silly.

its entirely possible that you have different interpretations of being ignored. he can rightfully say he was ignored if he said "dont do power 2, its bad" and you can rightfully say he wasnt ignored if you say "well theyve teaked and changed power 2 in response to your whining"

in reality its probably somewhere in the middle. im betting they tweaked and changed power 2 more in response to observation of the community environment than the loud whining, because they had plenty of time to make those changes before releasing instead of waiting to verify that people did, in fact, hate it.

 

[Mered4]

Schine's alleged ignorance does not preclude your own.

I've been playing early access games for almost a decade now. Pretty sure I have a handle on what alpha does and DOESN'T mean.

There are many reasons why this system could have made it past the drawing board despite your concerns being heard. One possibility is they simply didn't agree with what they heard. Another could be that the solutions presented ignored limits of the engine architecture. Etc, etc.

You can't disagree with experimental results. Players experimented with the new system, both rationally and physically, and came to the same conclusion time and again. Schine's only recourse is to accept their conclusions and modify / remove the system, or ignore them altogether. It should be obvious by now which one was chosen.

This is fantastic news! I'm looking forward to reading about all the exploit fixes in the next update notes!

Quite a few of the exploits and edge cases folks have reported on in a few SM discord channels have yet to be fixed or addressed in any fashion. This is normal, and is yet more evidence that the testing team is understaffed or not given the resources to properly do their jobs.

 

[jstenholt]

I've been playing early access games for almost a decade now. Pretty sure I have a handle on what alpha does and DOESN'T mean.

Doing something for a long time doesn't mean you understand it. NEXT.

 

[CyberTao]

It seems this argument boils down to; What the PvP-Meta wanted to see happen, and what the average player wanted to see.

As it stands now 100% of all past ships have to undergo complete overhauls of everything. With the upcoming weapons changes, even those refits are on hold. So what happens? The casual PvE designer/player makes shells and has fun building, where as the hard-core PvP player is stuck doing next to nothing, as their current BiS ship amounts to a glorious heap of scrap.

Power 2.0, gave ship builders/designers new tools to make even better and more interesting ships. Yes there are some issues that are being ironed out even not (Integrity, Stabilization..etc.), but SM is still in Alpha, and these kinds of massive changes are to be expected. The Devs are not required to listen to anything the players have to say regarding the development of the game, or where the creator wants to take it. This is a fact of life.

So if the OP wants to move on, then by all means move on, there is nothing anyone here could say or do to change the OP's mind. However, power 2.0 is not the death knell of SM, many of the added features, and UI tweaks have made even the refitting easier than before. Power was not the only change, Shields and Thrust were altered too, there are things we as ship builders can do now that we could not do before.

I'm going to stop you there because you make it sound like Pvpers even care if systems change. Personally I would say this update hit the RPs hardest. A pvp ship is a ship designed with efficiency in mind, and several pvpers make empty shells and save them before adding systems. It's not a case of "boo hoo" and people crying over old builds.

PvPers like to fight, they like depth, they like to have to think. A lot of people default to Joelbrisco when they think of pvp but honestly he's closer to a griefer than a pvper (compared to those in this conversation anyways). People are mad because they can't make a ship stand out, they're mad cause no one can fight (for a system that's supposed to be simpler, its surprisingly difficult it seems).

Why even bother fighting when there is no edge, no differences between fighty ships. It's literally a he who shoots first win scenario. Which is double bullshit because the game at least had complimentary pvp before the update. Alpha is Alpha, things will change, and that is expected. What no one expects, aside from the spanish inquisition, is for the game to regress to a worsen state, a loss of otherwise working features, and being told they need to wait to play again.

Pvpers will adapt, and they've been trying to innovate and some even exploit since Dev. Some of the exploits are still there, others were patched with the various "features" of the update like shields and integrity.

 

[Calhoun]

This is fantastic news! I'm looking forward to reading about all the exploit fixes in the next update notes!

Most of the exploits and combat bugs were found and reported during early dev. They're still present in the "release" build.

 

[Mered4]

Doing something for a long time doesn't mean you understand it. NEXT.

Technically, yes, but having said experience does have a high correlation with an understanding of the definition and its applications. In this case, I've seen both sides, argued both sides, and watched the results evolve over time.

 

[GDPR 302420]

From what I've seen, I can pretty much count the number of people who've pronounced Starmade dead post-bonus on one, maaaaybe two, hands.

Most of em have already fucked off SMD by this point, what you are counting are the ones who still stick around the SMD forums for whatever reason.

Power 2.0, gave ship builders/designers new tools to make even better and more interesting ships.

Power 2.0 created forced design choices and restrictions were none were necessary and introduced game breaking balance issues that are not even a result of bugs but the core mechanics of power 2.0 allow you to make a ship that you can spawn within 10-20 minutes of joining a server and can 1 hit kill any ship up to around 600-700k

And that is what is actually killing this community, that bile and mis-representation.

What is killing this game is people are starting to dislike this game and realise better games are out there.

Firstly, I've been playing and actively involved in this community since 2013, and I have no fucking idea what you're talking about.

Gonna throw your own words against you here.

Doing something for a long time doesn't mean you understand it. NEXT.

Secondly, I am demonstrably not wrong. Even if Schine isn't actively responding to your individual threads, they been putting out quick fixes and patches that have significantly changed Power 2.0 since its launch.

These patches are proof that Schine is NOT listening, our original complaints about stabilisers, internal power capacity and so forth have not been addresses. Schine is just making bandaid patches to a much larger wound.

 

[Blakpik]

The fact that they're still here poking the fire and reading such posts pretty much means they either already came back or never left. And if neither of these things are true, their obsession with remaining involved in the forum still pretty much says, in plain terminator terms, "I'll be back."

Or they enjoy shitposting. But hey, it's not like we're all Australians... Oh, wait.

 

[FlyingDebris]

As someone who's always kind of been in a middle ground between the meta PvPers and the RP crowd, I still maintain that this update is going in the wrong direction for the most part.


As an RP player, this update completely trashed my ability to make good looking ships. I simply can't create a decent looking hull with the right dimensions to fit any respectable amount of power and/or systems. Not to mention the fact that integrity destroyed a lot of my interior designing because I used system blocks for some areas (thruster columns and the like, for instance).

As a PVP player, this update completely trashed my ability to enjoy combat. For one, combat is far laggier given that it simply isn't practical to fill your ship all the way anymore. This only gets worse as mass increases. Second, the weapons buffs and changes to shields (like removing combat regen) have made all combat between moderately competent players a matter of who fires first since any decent weapons array can instantly zap a ship many times its size in one go.

Chambers are an interesting feature, and show considerable potential. That said, the RC limit is far too low to be interesting and the system lacks the interesting little quirks that could be found in the percentage based system with the old effects. Along with this, removing jump drives (chaindrives especially) is really messing with my sense of immersion. Having high tech systems like the chaindrive really added to the game and gave logic a real purpose, and now it's gone and we're back to all-or-nothing chambers with no cool logic bits.

AI targeting is also trashed right now, and while I'm certainly not a fan of turrets half the size of your ship, turrets as a whole are nearly useless now given that they don't know what to track.

On top of this, there are still numerous gamebreaking or generally irritating bugs present in the release build, even after the patch.

 

[MacThule]

better games are out there.

Then go.

Play them.

Don't linger here attacking the mods, attacking the devs, attacking any players who say they like the game as "white knights" and "fanbois"... doing everything in your power to make casual forum readers and the public in general believe that Starmade has failed, and Schine is failed... and then bring up competing games.

These are not constructive criticisms or earnest concerns, Red. Stop pretending they are.

Go. And good hunting.

Or... I guess... stay and steadfastly deride every person who does like it, try really hard to convince people who do like the game that most other people generally "dislike" it so they probably should too, that everyone is leaving and they are backing the wrong horse (and maybe should get on the winning team by supporting an "other game"). Show some more player base graphs about how failed Starmade is while claiming you are making useful criticisms. Hang out and disparage the devs and disparage the forum mods some more I guess. If that's what makes you happy - follow your love.

It won't change what happens when this reboot - which we were all forewarned would be very disruptive - is finished.

 

[GDPR 302420]

Then go.

Play them.

Don't linger here attacking the mods, attacking the devs, attacking any players who say they like the game as "white knights" and "fanbois"... doing everything in your power to make casual forum readers and the public in general believe that Starmade has failed, and Schine is failed... and then bring up competing games.

Responding to criticism of this game with "just leave" only makes the dwindling population problem worse, I paid for this product and I have put more time into this game then most and if I have concerns for a game I am passionate about then I will voice them whenever fanboys like it or not.

Contrary to the narrative of the "Grr veteran players" portions of this community, the reason I still hang around these forums even after I have stopped playing this game is because I want to see this game become successful.

Which is why I criticise the game, which is why I involve myself in callout threads regarding controversial actions of individuals within this community and which is why I push the game to its very limit and discover issues with balance and discover game breaking exploits to be reported to the developers.

Posts like this are the very reason why this community in not going to grow, not after any update, not after it hits beta, not after they start advertising and not after they release the game out of beta.

I can't dictate or force how schema develops his game but I can criticise it and I sure as hell make a decision whether to play it, and my decision the same decision that over 200,000 other people have made.

 

[Dire Venom]

Is it just me or have the forums dried up recently? Specificly since the forum lock I have missed a lot of players, and the threads are pretty stagnent
(Except for the Critsism vs Acceptance debate with the same few people).

Atm all of the old dev roadmaps were overturned and all we have to go on is "sc-fi weapon update" and "hopeful armour update" as well as "comming soon Tm Universe update.

I hope they can deliver, but all they have shown their most loyal supporters is fluff so idk.
From that I would guess they only have basic concept ideas on a notepad at the most.

 

[Mered4]

Responding to criticism of this game with "just leave" only makes the dwindling population problem worse, I paid for this product and I have put more time into this game then most and if I have concerns for a game I am passionate about then I will voice them whenever fanboys like it or not.

Contrary to the narrative of the "Grr veteran players" portions of this community, the reason I still hang around these forums even after I have stopped playing this game is because I want to see this game become successful.

Which is why I criticise the game, which is why I involve myself in callout threads regarding controversial actions of individuals within this community and which is why I push the game to its very limit and discover issues with balance and discover game breaking exploits to be reported to the developers.

Posts like this are the very reason why this community in not going to grow, not after any update, not after it hits beta, not after they start advertising and not after they release the game out of beta.

I can't dictate or force how schema develops his game but I can criticise it and I sure as hell make a decision whether to play it, and my decision the same decision that over 200,000 other people have made.

Not sure if this opinion is shared by too many of the folks I usually meme at on discord, but I don't think Starmade is going to survive six more months, and am hoping we can save the players it still has its claws into so we can build a better world somewhere.
Lol.

 

[GDPR 302420]

Not sure if this opinion is shared by too many of the folks I usually meme at on discord, but I don't think Starmade is going to survive six more months, and am hoping we can save the players it still has its claws into so we can build a better world somewhere.
Lol.

As much as I would hope so, you have the right idea, this game isnt gonna last much longer.

 

[CyberTao]

It won't change what happens when this reboot - which we were all forewarned would be very disruptive - is finished.

[edit]

It's been said time and time again, that isn't even a factor. People are willing to refit, and have been for over a year. Fuck even half the pvp crowd was preparing shells and empty ships for the update. No one is upset over having to refit ships. They are upset because there is no longer a reason to, nor is it fun to build.

If no one, not even the testers are playing the game, then how is balance to be found. How are exploits to be found. The size of the community is finite, it will not suddenly surge tomorrow. The more people leave, the less feedback there is, and the worse the end product will become.

When you put your game up for early access on steam, you are asking for play-testers, not bug-testers. The people who come to play your game do so because they want to have fun, not a second job. When players are no longer content to play the game, then play-testing has failed and that's a very worrying thing.

 

[GDPR 302420]

It's been said time and time again, that isn't even a factor. People are willing to refit, and have been for over a year. Fuck even half the pvp crowd was preparing shells and empty ships for the update. No one is upset over having to refit ships. They are upset because there is no longer a reason to, nor is it fun to build.

Not just shells, it took less then a day of the devbuild coming out for the minmaxers to discover the new meta

 

[Mr. Morague]

Is it just me or have the forums dried up recently? Specificly since the forum lock I have missed a lot of players, and the threads are pretty stagnent
(Except for the Critsism vs Acceptance debate with the same few people).

Atm all of the old dev roadmaps were overturned and all we have to go on is "sc-fi weapon update" and "hopeful armour update" as well as "comming soon Tm Universe update.

I hope they can deliver, but all they have shown their most loyal supporters is fluff so idk.
From that I would guess they only have basic concept ideas on a notepad at the most.

There is absolutely nothing going on anywhere I am. This forum has essentially not had much meaningful activity since around the time the thread calling for Alterintel to resign stopped being posted on. (Which has, notably, been removed and mostly ignored.)

The Trello road map is still (seemingly) on track and not much out of date, though Bench's Development Timeline does appear to be out of date. (By about a year and a half.) Somewhere they stated that people who they have coding do different things by themselves, and that is reflected in the Trello Map with 7 things in development at the same time, though I believe it would be easier if they all just focused on one thing and actively did their coding on something like Google Docs so that they can do it at the same time to get it done faster.

The best working thing thus far, from what I've been hearing at least, is the repulsor block, but that's absolutely useless to core gaming.