You Have Failed Us

[ZektorSK]

Maybe if you tried to play it without shitposting then in a month or 2, Schine would actually start listening to you... I believe they are in a big stress right now, the game that no one really had a problem with just recieved a big shitstorm of negative response, and this is a new experience for Schine. But not just negative response, it was an absolute tornado of shitposting...

 

[kikaha]

CyberTao said: ↑
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.

I believe that's exactly what they've done...

 

[Mr. Morague]

Maybe if you tried to play it without shitposting then in a month or 2, Schine would actually start listening to you... I believe they are in a big stress right now, the game that no one really had a problem with just recieved a big shitstorm of negative response, and this is a new experience for Schine. But now just negative response, it was an absolute tornado of shitposting...

This is hardly the first time they received a "shitstorm" of negative response. Other times they received similar responses or had extreme negativeness on these forums were: When 2.0 was released as plans for us to criticize, when people got fed up with Alterintel/Mods/Other staff (multiple times), Schine teasing features such as new planets and crew year(s) ago, The Faction Wars on the forums, when Red Alert got fed up with Vaygr and released their exploit, I believe there was some pushback to rails at first or backlash to rail related issues, etc.

It's not uncommon, something "big" regarding problems the community has has happened at least once every year, barring ~1-2 year and the old forums as when I began to observe.

 

[ObiShawnKenobi]

To those of you who believe it is the community's fault that this game's progression is hindering...

You're restricted.

There is a reason why many of us are complaining and leaving. We care about this game. We've played it for years and have enjoyed it since. With the recent changes, despite our concerns and statements to change it, it was still released. This is all backlash of Schine's failure to keep in contact with this community and address the concerns of many veterans who have seen its progression. Do not blame the community for anything.
This is the response.

To those of you who enjoy this game...

I'm glad you do and I hope you keep playing. That is the purpose of a game after all: to enjoy it.

 

[Nosajimiki]

This community has gotten so toxic these last months... Why not just play the older version of Starmade and stop whining about the new power update?

Because the old game is not a supported product. It is unstable with no hope of ever being any better. Sure, it's better than 2.0 is right now, but it's still a broken alpha game.

Civil discussion? Reporting bugs? Feedback? :D Only thing this community offered as a feedback was months of flaming and dramatic threads about how they are leaving...

And I am not telling anyone to get out... There is a difference between "play older version" and "get out"

You clearly did not follow the fact that it was an escalating problem. All that "flaming" was the result of an unwillingness to listen. The clear and helpful feedback of the community not only fell on deaf ears, but was meet with highly biased moderation against people who questioned moving forward with an inherently flawed system.

Here's the thing: It was not that 100% of the community was against the update. It was that 100% of the community who understand the mechanics well enough to recognize the inherent design flaws were against it, and we were all dismissed out of hand. Some people flamed, and others who kept level heads where pigeonholed as forum trolls for agreeing with them even when listing our own completely separate ideas that came to the same conclusions.

 

[Az14el]

Maybe if you tried to play it without shitposting then in a month or 2, Schine would actually start listening to you... I believe they are in a big stress right now, the game that no one really had a problem with just recieved a big shitstorm of negative response, and this is a new experience for Schine. But not just negative response, it was an absolute tornado of shitposting...

this was probably just a general response since you didnt quote anyone, but for what its worth i didn't mention anything about schine listening to us, just keeping us in the loop via a news post update for the release builds so far missing one & confirming if major bugs are being fixed as we speak, at a later time or just left until a rework of the relevant system (scanning for example)

 

[CyberTao]

You know mods, you really aren't helping when you go back over a month to edit a post thats already "offended" everyone that would have been "offended".

I mean really. Good job. You "protected" no one and only served to draw attention back to the thread where you were being condemned.

 

[Coyote27]

I think the general sentiment of this thread was justified at the time, but now that things are actually happening and are known to be happening, it's not really a failure anymore. Hang in there, everyone, the ride will be moving again soon.

 

[Crashmaster]

 

[Nosajimiki]

I think the general sentiment of this thread was justified at the time, but now that things are actually happening and are known to be happening, it's not really a failure anymore. Hang in there, everyone, the ride will be moving again soon.

They are doing a better job of talking, this is good, but listening? I dunno. There is a mountain of issues that they reply "we are working on it", but they do not say what that means. Before power 2.0 was released, we took in good faith that that meant they were making informed choices, but then we got stab lines, bubble shields, cubic systems, integrity, etc that just plain make the game more tedious and less fun.

I really hope that the weapons update will address some of the garbage that came with the last round of patches and try to actually add depth to the game, but so far all I've heard is that complex armor will be replaced with boring solid hunks of armor which will also mean that weapons that favor complex output combos will be useless for breaking said armor so you will need to replace them with giant, simple, single output weapons, and intricate mines and which used to require complex engineering and dedicated testing to make effective are now a weapon primitive.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the game being playable for inexperienced builders, but with everything handed to you on a silver platter, I'm concerned that this is quickly turning into a game that will be fun for a few months then become too boring and repetitive to keep players going instead of offering thousands of hours of exploration and discovery like it used to.

 

[Valiant70]

TBQH, I'm still laughing at the fact that this thread hasn't been locked. And people call the mods abusive. Kind of ironic really...

They are doing a better job of talking, this is good, but listening? I dunno. There is a mountain of issues that they reply "we are working on it", but they do not say what that means. Before power 2.0 was released, we took in good faith that that meant they were making informed choices, but then we got stab lines, bubble shields, cubic systems, integrity, etc that just plain make the game more tedious and less fun.

To be fair, Schema actually had a discussion with us in Discord yesterday about upcoming weapon stuff. There's a mechanic for beam targeting that some of us think will cause an imbalance. I don't think we really got the point through to him, but he did at least dialog with us, and I can appreciate that. If he can take some of our concerns and improve the final product, that will be a big win for everyone.

 

[Nosajimiki]

I did not list beam tracking because it is actually a necessary evil in my opinion. Speed tanking needs a hard counter and missiles and cannons are mechanically not well suited for it. With the new DoT nerf on long ranged beams, improved accuracy will be offset by lower damage. If my understanding of new armor and targeting is correct, it should balance out to Armor counters beam meta, and speed counters cannon meta. If he balances the new Armor system well, there should still be room for complex armors to be effective, and continue to encourage complexity.

I don't mean to sound negative about everything, and I did try to acknowledge that schine has been doing better about communicating with us, but it still feels like "Here's the new features I spent months working on and am now very attached to, discuss!" instead of "Here's what I think will work, would it be a waist to spend months doing this?"

Of course, most of the people who used to be around to say, "that would be a problem because..." have already left the community anyway, so hard to say how much that would help.

 

[Dire Venom]

I did not list beam tracking because it is actually a necessary evil in my opinion. Speed tanking needs a hard counter and missiles and cannons are mechanically not well suited for it. With the new DoT nerf on long ranged beams, improved accuracy will be offset by lower damage. If my understanding of new armor and targeting is correct, it should balance out to Armor counters beam meta, and speed counters cannon meta. If he balances the new Armor system well, there should still be room for complex armors to be effective, and continue to encourage complexity.

I don't mean to sound negative about everything, and I did try to acknowledge that schine has been doing better about communicating with us, but it still feels like "Here's the new features I spent months working on and am now very attached to, discuss!" instead of "Here's what I think will work, would it be a waist to spend months doing this?"

Of course, most of the people who used to be around to say, "that would be a problem because..." have already left the community anyway, so hard to say how much that would help.

Great insight thanks, I hadn't heard ,uch about beams vs cannons role to come.
That does sound quite promising if Schema can get it working :3 Hopefully missiles will get a look at too.

 

[Apollo Tyrannos]

Does anyone here remember those guys who said that Power 2.0 would revive the community and bring back all the players who left?

Well it seems they were right, community members did come back and promptly left within 2 months, they also took others with them leaving the game with less players then before.

 

[Mr_Irksome]

Wow! I think those numbers actually show us the truth of the matter. I have actually gone through and read all 10 pages of this thread. A lot of thing have been said and argued for and against the power 2.0 update, but those numbers are telling us how players are responding.

Personally, I was very excited for the new power system. I thought it would improve the game. I was worried that it would negate all the time and effort that I spent on my projects though. But they said the old power systems would still work and I felt relived about it, and I thought I could still play and have time to update my ships and stations at my leisure.

What makes me most angry about the new power system is the second update to it where they added structural integrity and changed how the shields work. This they did telling us "it's OK, the old power systems still work" knowing full well that that the old power systems encouraged ship designs which will give everyone using the old power system a negative integrity value. This breaks every design which has ever been submitted to the community up to that point, and to me it just feels like a big "F YOU!" in the face of every player.

I don't understand why they want only cube ships now. Which is what we get with the new game mechanics if we want a structurally sound ship or station. I hate the idea of the new shield systems. Speaking in a role playing sense, no sane engineer would build a partially shielded ship. It's maddening! I loved artfully fitting all the systems into the sleek designs of my ships it was a fun challenge. So far, power 2.0 ruins that, and demands everything be cubes.

I haven't been able to bring myself to update my game. I'm not going to update to the new system which breaks every one of my ships and stations, where one shot from a pistol will have them practically blowing up in my face!

 

[Inspired2150]

The reason I am so upset with Starmade is that for 3 years there was no progress. Not really. 3 years ago it was a wonky sandbox with nothing to do but build things you have nothing to do with.

In fact, previously you could build fairly complex stuff with docked entities to surpass game limitations. Now we have a more limited way of building ships that are nothing but decorations.

The only changes that really made a difference were new turrets and rails. Both are solid systems that "add" to the game. Crafting is "okay", I guess.
But then we have crew that does nothing, fleets that don't work for a year now. This actually doesn't even make me excited for yet another weapon remake, even if it ends up working there is nothing to shoot with them.

And then we have combat. Combat is a seperate layer of shit. It looks bad and it feels bad. Ships teleporting all over the place because of crossing sectors, ships and turrets shooting sideways, lasers consistently missing their target by the same margin, missiles jittering all over the place. And that's even if you find someone to fight, which most of the time you can't.

I really want this game to succeed, but at this rate Star Citizen will release before Starmade becomes playable, and that's kinda sad.

 

[Mork2]

With the steam statistics, I think part of the slow down in user count is waiting for the power 2.0 release and now the people waiting on the weapon release. I only really got back into designing things well after the power update and I'm avoiding building anything with major weapons. So I'm designing cargo ships, mining ships, stations etc where most of it is just AMS or turret weapons I can install later.

A lot of the older starmade players probably don't go through steam at all, though the majority of players probably do. In my case the dev release goes through steam and the release version doesn't.

 

[CyberTao]

With the steam statistics, I think part of the slow down in user count is waiting for the power 2.0 release and now the people waiting on the weapon release. I only really got back into designing things well after the power update and I'm avoiding building anything with major weapons. So I'm designing cargo ships, mining ships, stations etc where most of it is just AMS or turret weapons I can install later.

A lot of the older starmade players probably don't go through steam at all, though the majority of players probably do. In my case the dev release goes through steam and the release version doesn't.

I mean, there was a pretty decent downturn in player count before weapon changes were even announced.

 

[OmegaGame]

Welp, stepping in for my once a month look at the game to see if there has been any update or change, only to find that it is the third month and still nothing.. See you guys again in the merry, merry month of may i guess ... zzz ZZZ!!!

 

[Nosajimiki]

The weapons update should not be more than a couple of days at this point... so we are told