EA Might be Premature

[Bob Dole]

First I want to say I am really looking forward to EA and lots more people joining.

The game is really fun, and the shipbuilding has a lot of depth(and I enjoyed spending many hours designing ships), but at the point where I have a 260 crate ship and lots of money and ore, without some goals to strive towards I find myself out of things to do. (such as a money sink) While just mining more ore and making more money is fine for some, I'm more concerned people will drop the game once reaching this point.
I personally couldn't stop playing until this point, but now I log in less often, but I have no intention of quitting.

I understand you have lots of hooks in the works that will give people something to strive towards, but if those hooks are implemented months after the EA launches the damage of not having those implemented now(when EA launches) (could) in the worst case lead to the game's doom if people don't find things to keep them striving towards.

Even if months later the game gets these money sinks and progression goals added, the momentum from the early access launch and hype might never come back no matter how good the game gets months/years down the line.

I'm not saying anything for certain and I could certainly be wrong, but these are my worries, and I want nothing more than for the game to be a smash hit.

 

[RobbenDuMarsch]

Yes, I agree that station building loop needs to be fully implemented with a WELL TESTED siege system and PvP system prior to EA.

 

[LauriFB]

I agree fully! Rather than listing my hopes and dreams I would like to hear what end game goals, money sinks and other acvtivities you guys would like to see to be there in EA launch?

 

[Bob Dole]

I agree fully! Rather than listing my hopes and dreams I would like to hear what end game goals, money sinks and other acvtivities you guys would like to see to be there in EA launch?

If I may be so presumptuous, these are my thoughts:

Space MMO's like eve didn't have to try very hard to create their own main sink, because no matter how much money you get, there's never enough money to purchase all skills via skill injections, and this acts as an endless treadmill.

Starbase on the other hand is a bit unprecedented in many ways, such as it's no skill system and freeform shipbuilding. I really don't envy you, because trying to find the treadmill that works for Starbase is going to be a mammoth task.

Every idea I can think of is lacking, for example:

1: Making new ships lighter/stronger by using only very rare asteroid parts. This could be counted as a sink, but ships already fulfill their roles even without expensive resources, and not everyone is going to want to make a "gold plated" ship just for a bit more efficiency, and considering ships can be destroyed, this can never be the main sink.

2: Making your own base is another sink that could possibly be endless, but not everyone has the time for it, and many people would prefer to not be tied down... but considering how different Starbase is, it's not impossible. (It's not simple at a glance to see if it can be the main sink if it can even be at all, so it's a possibility at best)

3: Territory control could act as another sink, but like with eve, your average player might not be interested in political struggle, and in eve's case these side sinks all act as avenues to fuel the main sink which is the endless skills treadmill, and no matter how many side sinks you add, they will have no main goal that ties them together without the main sink.

MMO's like wow achieve their main sink with equipment. If you take that away, then all the minor sinks such as quests/raids/gold, no matter how fun they are, no matter how well put together, without equipment they are all dead ends.

Runescape has a different main sink, you can die in pvp and lose all your stuff, but you still have something that can never be taken away, which is the endless grind known as getting all skills to 99. If you take away the skill system, then the only remaining thing that can act as the main sink is equipment, but considering how easy that is to get, then that means the whole game would have to be reworked.

This is why I said I don't envy you. Finding the treadmill for starbase in which to tie all the sinks together and give them a common purpose is going to be truly brutal, and I have absolutely no clue how you are going to do it under the current parameters of no levels/no skill systems and freeform building, and as far as I know, no persistent/skillless/no level sandbox MMOs have ever created a true main sink. I will say though, if you can pull it off it would be truly groundbreaking.

 

[Bob Dole]

I agree fully! Rather than listing my hopes and dreams I would like to hear what end game goals, money sinks and other acvtivities you guys would like to see to be there in EA launch?

As a side note, i don't think anyone will blame you if you use a skill system like eve, or an equipment system like wow.

There's a good reason why all mainstream popular mmos have a main sink, it's because without it, it becomes very difficult to retain players, meaning you may find it hard to become anything more than niche despite how amazing the game is.

Runescape is the greatest example of this, there is almost no game and only grind, and it is not exactly innovative or unique, but who would say it wasn't a massive success? This is because they made it take you years and years to raise skills to 99.

If runescape changed it so that it took you only a week to raise your skills to 99, sure, maybe players would be happy about it and applaud runescape, but when they quit the game after a while because they have nothing to grind, who's going to be left holding the bag? not the players, and they all enjoy getting a tiny bit stronger with each new skill point they gain whether they admit it or not.

So, that is one thing you may want to not listen to the players on.
*Exhibit B*, the players say "they don't like the endless grind for better equipment" but the years and years they have been hooked on a wow subscription doing exactly that says otherwise.


Starbase has AMAZING gameplay and in-depth free building, and I personally love the game to death, but without having a main sink like equipment grind/long skill grind, all your innovation and uniqueness might not matter. Runescape might be proof that having a good main sink in an mmo is far more important than the gameplay itself.

I'm not saying an equipment system is a good main sink for this game, and in fact, I think it wouldn't fit well for Starbase, I'm just using it as an example.

I'm also not saying the reason the game is emptier and emptier despite more alpha invites going out is because there is no main sink, but it may be cause for alarm, because this might mirror what will happen a few weeks/months after Early Access launches.

----
Sink is short for time sink, it's you trading lifespan for gameplay.
There can only be one "main sink" at any one point in time, but you can have unlimited "sinks"

To clarify what a "sink" is, and what a "main sink" is, a sink is anything you do inside a mmo, such as travelling, killing monsters, quests, literally everything you do in the game is a sink, while a "main sink" is the treadmill where all sinks intersect.

(Let's say equipment is the "main sink" in this example) Doing quests and just killing monsters over and over are two separate sinks, and could be called completely separate things on their own, but they both have common purpose, and the main sink (equipment in this case)is what gives it that purpose.

Just like in Starbase, when you first start the game, your purpose is to gather asteroids to get more crates on your ship, and you are very happy to do it, after that you are no longer satisfied, you want to get a ship that can hold more ore, so logically you grind for the next ship, and the next, until you eventually have a 300 crate ship with many lasers, and can annihilate an asteroid in a few seconds, now you've achieved what you set out to do, and your purpose and desire for what you've just so readily spent a couple of weeks doing is now gone-

-(if this process somehow took years, then you just found yourself an AMAZING main sink, however, ships can be destroyed, and they are more external than personal) ( I also don't think grinding for ships would be as fun as slowly improving your character in some tangible way)


So, in my personal opinion(not saying this is a fact): The main sink in a mmo is supposed to be personal to the player, and rarely ever be fully completed(and can't be lost(like in pvp), and you are supposed to be introduced to it the moment you start up the game. The main sink needs to intersect ALL other sinks, (not only a few), and should act as a reminder that everything you've done until now has made your character grow.

If an mmo let's even the most casual players complete the main sink, and then tries to switch the easily completed main sink to something else partway through the game, from building ships to something just as impersonal and achievable like "making bases" that mmo might be niche forever.

 

[DivineEvil]

The main Sink of Starbase is spaceships. Everything that is done ultimately pays into designing, constructing, upgrading, repairing, and supporting ships. Ships are constantly being created, traded, and improved upon. However, at this stage of development, there are very few opportunities to lose a ship, therefore it's pretty easy to arrive at a point, where earning more value is the only gameplay avenue left.

The rate of gain for both materials and credits is unbound and likely inflated for easier testing, compared to what the release version of the game will allow. One should expect that it may be harder to obtain a mining ship of the same size, and with the addition of detection devices and other relevant mechanics, it will be easier to lose that ship with the same degree of negligence that is currently prevalent. To sum it up:
- Getting a new ship even with a free starter ship given will be harder.
- Mined materials will have to be refined to use them for building anything. Unrefined ores will offer lower returns.
- Ore deposits in the belt will differ in purity, meaning that rich regions will become a separate kind of valuable asset.
- Most deposits in the safe zone will be poor and will be exhausted over long periods of time, incentivizing mining operations outside of it.
- Outside of the safe zone, it will be much easier to fall prey to pirates and environmental hazards.
- The flying barebone crate blocks will be unable to survive any environmental hazards.
- The massive and lumbering mining ships will be easy pickings for pirates, where smaller miners would be capable to escape.
- Ore crates, as well as other modular crate types, might require uncommon materials, forcing the players to use less sophisticated or efficient technologies and principles of obtaining and carrying resources.
- New technologies and devices will broaden the possibility of acquiring the rarest materials, which implies taking risks that no "generic" ship will be able to handle.

In general, Starbase seems to grow into a social MMO, meaning that it will deliberately limit what a single person will be able to do without major risks and associated setbacks. This is not something you're bound to consider "when you're level 100" - it is something that you should think about from the very beginning. Being a part of a team not only provides better efficiency for earning money but also can offer additional security and give the potential for late-game advances. Even though there are plans for smaller outposts in favor of solo players, the actual stations are just too massive to manage without teammates. Even now there are barely a few stations with just one or two modules completed - imagine a station that has its own power supply, storage facilities, markets, refineries, ship-shops, etc. Don't get me started on the warp gates. The number of resources that will be needed for all of it is immense, so there certainly will be a demand.

In the end, players are the ones who decide on their goals in an MMO - the game cannot really enforce it. If the player does not progress beyond grinding the credits for himself and then loses interest, there's very little a developer can do about it. Indeed, there's no leveling and there are no raids - there's only large-scale faction PvP and everything from regular starting miners to industrial corporations and mercenary companies will likely revolve around that. Which part of it the players want to partake in is their own decision, and if they do not want any of it then it is hard to imagine what can change their mind.

 

[Bob Dole]

The main Sink of Starbase is spaceships. Everything that is done ultimately pays into designing, constructing, upgrading, repairing, and supporting ships. Ships are constantly being created, traded, and improved upon. However, at this stage of development, there are very few opportunities to lose a ship, therefore it's pretty easy to arrive at a point, where earning more value is the only gameplay avenue left.

The rate of gain for both materials and credits is unbound and likely inflated for easier testing, compared to what the release version of the game will allow. One should expect that it may be harder to obtain a mining ship of the same size, and with the addition of detection devices and other relevant mechanics, it will be easier to lose that ship with the same degree of negligence that is currently prevalent. To sum it up:
- Getting a new ship even with a free starter ship given will be harder.
- Mined materials will have to be refined to use them for building anything. Unrefined ores will offer lower returns.
- Ore deposits in the belt will differ in purity, meaning that rich regions will become a separate kind of valuable asset.
- Most deposits in the safe zone will be poor and will be exhausted over long periods of time, incentivizing mining operations outside of it.
- Outside of the safe zone, it will be much easier to fall prey to pirates and environmental hazards.
- The flying barebone crate blocks will be unable to survive any environmental hazards.
- The massive and lumbering mining ships will be easy pickings for pirates, where smaller miners would be capable to escape.
- Ore crates, as well as other modular crate types, might require uncommon materials, forcing the players to use less sophisticated or efficient technologies and principles of obtaining and carrying resources.
- New technologies and devices will broaden the possibility of acquiring the rarest materials, which implies taking risks that no "generic" ship will be able to handle.

In general, Starbase seems to grow into a social MMO, meaning that it will deliberately limit what a single person will be able to do without major risks and associated setbacks. This is not something you're bound to consider "when you're level 100" - it is something that you should think about from the very beginning. Being a part of a team not only provides better efficiency for earning money but also can offer additional security and give the potential for late-game advances. Even though there are plans for smaller outposts in favor of solo players, the actual stations are just too massive to manage without teammates. Even now there are barely a few stations with just one or two modules completed - imagine a station that has its own power supply, storage facilities, markets, refineries, ship-shops, etc. Don't get me started on the warp gates. The number of resources that will be needed for all of it is immense, so there certainly will be a demand.

In the end, players are the ones who decide on their goals in an MMO - the game cannot really enforce it. If the player does not progress beyond grinding the credits for himself and then loses interest, there's very little a developer can do about it. Indeed, there's no leveling and there are no raids - there's only large-scale faction PvP and everything from regular starting miners to industrial corporations and mercenary companies will likely revolve around that. Which part of it the players want to partake in is their own decision, and if they do not want any of it then it is hard to imagine what can change their mind.

Well, if it stays as is, then I suppose a few months after Starbase goes into EA, we will both get to compare our theories and see what happens to a persistent world MMO with an easily attainable impersonal main sink.

While I can't think of any commercially successful persistent world mmo's that don't have a difficult to obtain personal main sink, perhaps Starbase can be the first of it's kind to succeed where 100% have so far failed.