How should respawning work in Starbase?
While I agree gameplay > realism, it's a bit of a bridge too far for me. And I think it's more problematic for gameplay than vexus' solution. It seems like it would heavily favor the attacking side in a siege, because they could just park their respawn ships outside of the enemy interference zone while the defender can't move their respawn capability outside of the zone. If it doesn't affect station respawn for some weird reason it'd be more workable, but in that case I'm not sure is has much effectiveness.
Another method to limit respawn could be to perhaps have basically a "robot body building module" that you can put onto a ship, but it takes resources and several minutes to build a new robot body. And on top of that only one player can be bound to any one module, for reasons of program size. Unless you have their head or something and can manually upload their data into the body. Which should take longer to respawn than a pre-loaded program respawn.
Another method to limit respawn could be to perhaps have basically a "robot body building module" that you can put onto a ship, but it takes resources and several minutes to build a new robot body. And on top of that only one player can be bound to any one module, for reasons of program size. Unless you have their head or something and can manually upload their data into the body. Which should take longer to respawn than a pre-loaded program respawn.
This is not true. EVE for example shows that meaningful respawns help the game, they do not hurt the game. Making it painful when you die is a GOOD thing, as evidenced recently by the return of WoW Classic where even a same-level mob is dangerous to you as a solo player, and dying might end up in a 5-10m run back to your corpse. This brings meaning and value to all your gameplay, because you know if you do die, it's a big risk. Likewise, it is not imbalanced that you can have healers resurrect you, since it is limited, takes time, and takes another person to do it, making you appreciate that other player more.
EVE shows station respawn is just fine for a game. It's the default option of any game. Die -> return to a starting position. Almost every FPS game uses this. It's ingrained into gaming actually. Pretty much all games have you returning to some initial state after a loss; it's one of the most fundamental aspects of gaming, where developers then try to find ways to affect that through gameplay - for example in Overwatch, Mercy can revive teammates mid-combat as an ultimate ability. Keep that in mind - reviving to the battlefield is an ultimate ability. It's not the default. It should not be common. If every player in Overwatch could just revive in-place a few meters from where they died, it would devalue the meaning in the gameplay. The whole point of killing an enemy in Overwatch is they have to return to their spawn point. With 'free' or cost-based respawns, your enemy would come at you in the same meaningless waves of bodies just like in Overwatch.
The most pure form of respawns would be station-only respawns. It would be a fine gameplay mechanic, but no one would be able to explore the universe. Likewise, a cost-based mechanic where you carry 1 or 2 respawns on your ship - what happens when you're 50 hours away from the nearest station and you run out of respawns? The next time you die, you're completely done, and you lose everything. So some compromise that allows respawns in-place needs to be in the game to facilitate the vast playable space of the game. Otherwise, like WoW Classic, you have to run back to your corpse - except it's a 50 hour run, not a 5-minute run.
This is why the revive mechanic works, but only because of the uniqueness of Starbase where we have YOLOL and we're robots and other factors which make it make sense. This way a solo ship in the middle of nowhere, the solo can revive as many times as he is prepared for using his ship or some revival drones he bought/built, and the same mechanic does not give a large group an exponential value in simply stockpiling respawns before any conflict (which, since station respawns will be resource-based as well I hope, they could stock station respawns, which is good, because that means the station is very valuable and worth attacking!).
Like other ideas, this seems like a reasonable suggestion. After all, it still costs time after you die - this idea is simply making the 'respawn timer' more interactive and limited to one-module per person, but basically you're saying, for example, "Give players a 60 second respawn timer." It sounds reasonable, but provides all the same problems as other free or cost-based respawn mechanics in that you know you have, for example, 20 respawns on your ship, and can throw away any single life you have in scouting the enemy or pushing a position and any defender who kills you off, it didn't really matter. After all, your 20 respawns on your ship, are 200,000 respawns to a large organized group who have backup ships and backup modules ready to go if yours ever stops working. Your death did not matter to the defender, you just had to wait 60 seconds each death to get back into the action and throw another body at the enemy. It sounds reasonable but does not avoid this very common thing many games do and get wrong.
Again, looking at games that worked, WoW can be a 5-minute run back to your corpse or a 10-second spell cast from your friend who revives you, and EVE only has station-respawn available. One of my crew mentioned how in EVE, they would sometimes hold up an enemy ship for ransom, because if the enemy pod was killed off, it could often be most costly to lose the pod than to just pay the ransom. When people paid the ransom, they let the person go, because if they didn't let the person go, then their reputation would be tarnished and no one would trust them going forward. This was because death mattered in EVE, and because each life had value. If someone holds you up in Atlas for example, you don't care, you fight to the death because if you die you just respawn for free with nothing lost except a gear set. However, in Atlas, ship combat did have some pirating, because you could in fact hold up an enemy ship and pirate them - because the ship was one life and was not easy to remake - and this led to good gameplay when it came down to ship-to-ship pirating and so on. Ship combat had meaning in Atlas because ships were not free respawns. Yet players had free respawns, and that devalued gameplay is enough to sour the rest of the game.
Some games get it right, and many others get it so wrong. In Frozenbyte's new game Boreal Blade, when you die, you're out of the match (in most cases). You don't get a free respawn. Your life has meaning while you're facing off against your enemy. One of their game modes, you can respawn right away after a death, and combat in that mode feels much less satisfying and more 'spammy' than defeating the other team in other modes where there's tension in your actions and every move you make matters.
This seems like a very simple thing that gets ignored and isn't too big of a deal, but it does cascade meaning (or lack of meaning) throughout the entire game world. It's a very big deal which is why I'm posting so much about it. We have evidence from other games what works, and need something that adapts to Starbase's unique environment to make it work here, while still preserving the meaning behind the gameplay.
EVE shows station respawn is just fine for a game. It's the default option of any game. Die -> return to a starting position. Almost every FPS game uses this. It's ingrained into gaming actually. Pretty much all games have you returning to some initial state after a loss; it's one of the most fundamental aspects of gaming, where developers then try to find ways to affect that through gameplay - for example in Overwatch, Mercy can revive teammates mid-combat as an ultimate ability. Keep that in mind - reviving to the battlefield is an ultimate ability. It's not the default. It should not be common. If every player in Overwatch could just revive in-place a few meters from where they died, it would devalue the meaning in the gameplay. The whole point of killing an enemy in Overwatch is they have to return to their spawn point. With 'free' or cost-based respawns, your enemy would come at you in the same meaningless waves of bodies just like in Overwatch.
The most pure form of respawns would be station-only respawns. It would be a fine gameplay mechanic, but no one would be able to explore the universe. Likewise, a cost-based mechanic where you carry 1 or 2 respawns on your ship - what happens when you're 50 hours away from the nearest station and you run out of respawns? The next time you die, you're completely done, and you lose everything. So some compromise that allows respawns in-place needs to be in the game to facilitate the vast playable space of the game. Otherwise, like WoW Classic, you have to run back to your corpse - except it's a 50 hour run, not a 5-minute run.
This is why the revive mechanic works, but only because of the uniqueness of Starbase where we have YOLOL and we're robots and other factors which make it make sense. This way a solo ship in the middle of nowhere, the solo can revive as many times as he is prepared for using his ship or some revival drones he bought/built, and the same mechanic does not give a large group an exponential value in simply stockpiling respawns before any conflict (which, since station respawns will be resource-based as well I hope, they could stock station respawns, which is good, because that means the station is very valuable and worth attacking!).
Like other ideas, this seems like a reasonable suggestion. After all, it still costs time after you die - this idea is simply making the 'respawn timer' more interactive and limited to one-module per person, but basically you're saying, for example, "Give players a 60 second respawn timer." It sounds reasonable, but provides all the same problems as other free or cost-based respawn mechanics in that you know you have, for example, 20 respawns on your ship, and can throw away any single life you have in scouting the enemy or pushing a position and any defender who kills you off, it didn't really matter. After all, your 20 respawns on your ship, are 200,000 respawns to a large organized group who have backup ships and backup modules ready to go if yours ever stops working. Your death did not matter to the defender, you just had to wait 60 seconds each death to get back into the action and throw another body at the enemy. It sounds reasonable but does not avoid this very common thing many games do and get wrong.
Again, looking at games that worked, WoW can be a 5-minute run back to your corpse or a 10-second spell cast from your friend who revives you, and EVE only has station-respawn available. One of my crew mentioned how in EVE, they would sometimes hold up an enemy ship for ransom, because if the enemy pod was killed off, it could often be most costly to lose the pod than to just pay the ransom. When people paid the ransom, they let the person go, because if they didn't let the person go, then their reputation would be tarnished and no one would trust them going forward. This was because death mattered in EVE, and because each life had value. If someone holds you up in Atlas for example, you don't care, you fight to the death because if you die you just respawn for free with nothing lost except a gear set. However, in Atlas, ship combat did have some pirating, because you could in fact hold up an enemy ship and pirate them - because the ship was one life and was not easy to remake - and this led to good gameplay when it came down to ship-to-ship pirating and so on. Ship combat had meaning in Atlas because ships were not free respawns. Yet players had free respawns, and that devalued gameplay is enough to sour the rest of the game.
Some games get it right, and many others get it so wrong. In Frozenbyte's new game Boreal Blade, when you die, you're out of the match (in most cases). You don't get a free respawn. Your life has meaning while you're facing off against your enemy. One of their game modes, you can respawn right away after a death, and combat in that mode feels much less satisfying and more 'spammy' than defeating the other team in other modes where there's tension in your actions and every move you make matters.
This seems like a very simple thing that gets ignored and isn't too big of a deal, but it does cascade meaning (or lack of meaning) throughout the entire game world. It's a very big deal which is why I'm posting so much about it. We have evidence from other games what works, and need something that adapts to Starbase's unique environment to make it work here, while still preserving the meaning behind the gameplay.
"It's worse" as in even more artificial then timer. What magical power make it possible to spawn at permanently immobile station but blocks from spawning at temporary immobile ship?
How does it prevent big factions from just sending dedicated engineering team and building small respawn station 6km away from the battlefield? Or just bolt carrier to an station core and use it for respawn? Eve doesn't have such option probably.
If the disruption field from the biggest generator is big enough (i.e. 100km), attackers have just as big problem spawning as defenders. And defenders also have the ability to park the carrier outside disruption field, then send reinforcement via shuttles (min 12min flight time). Fair game.
We agree on making combat respawn impossible, in favour of reviving. I just think that distance is better limitation (harder to go around) than craft type.
How does it prevent big factions from just sending dedicated engineering team and building small respawn station 6km away from the battlefield? Or just bolt carrier to an station core and use it for respawn? Eve doesn't have such option probably.
If the disruption field from the biggest generator is big enough (i.e. 100km), attackers have just as big problem spawning as defenders. And defenders also have the ability to park the carrier outside disruption field, then send reinforcement via shuttles (min 12min flight time). Fair game.
We agree on making combat respawn impossible, in favour of reviving. I just think that distance is better limitation (harder to go around) than craft type.
Nothing except the fact for every game, there is some point you enter the game at, that you first began in the game, your 'start position'. This mechanic is the same for pretty much every single game in existence, from Chess to Pong to WoW to EVE. The start position is the default position to revert to when you "lose". Games such as MMOs generally want to pick a dynamic way to do this, because hardcore permadeath PvP MMOs are not common and definitely not successful games.
I think your next point goes into more detail; why can you spawn at a station but not a ship? If players can build stations, then why can they not put that technology on a ship, too? For this, there is no good reason, it is just a game design decision at that point. You either want players to be able to respawn infinite times 1 minute away from the battle, or force players to build small outpost respawn stations towards their enemies - respawn stations which can be destroyed, are static (don't move position) and require some time and infrastructure to set up. Whereas 5 minutes could pass and all of a sudden a large force of ships and a bunch of respawn ships can appear in your area (if a ship respawner was allowed), instead due to the 200km - 1000km view distance of stations, you will see the enemy building for potentially hours before their station is operational as a respawn point. As such, you will have time to attempt to shut down the enemy trying to build closer to you. If you let them build 6km away from you, then yeah, you've kind of already lost. That's also the point about respawn ships. Allowing a mobile, 5km view distance respawn ship to get close to you is already a loss, since a large group will just out-respawn you. You have no counter play. You have no way to make it hurt for them to attack you. It's just instantly 'over'.
I know I already touched on this point above; but imagine the creep of war, as enemies build these small outposts closer and closer to each other, and that is how they control territory - not by some arbitrary "flag" or "beacon" but actual, literal application of force as it is in the real world. This means as a player, you don't ever enter into "BigFaction Owned Territory" on your UI. No empty, undefended stations that no one bothers playing at (leading to a dead-feeling world) because of some arbitrary safety timer. Instead, everything you see is alive, means something, and groups are incentivized to maintain their territory. As large groups build towards each other, stocking their small outposts with resources, fuel and so on, pirate groups and small fighters poke at these outposts constantly for the rich resources. So much gameplay comes from this creep of war, which is completely removed if we have ship respawn, where only a 5km view distance respawn ship is needed to show up to begin an assault on an enemy.
I think anyone can see how the many outposts being built, and the no-man's-land where two enemy territories meet, would lead to intense, meaningful gameplay, as long as the respawn mechanic isn't 'free' or cost-based to either side. If players look out and see 50 enemy stations, and know each one of those stations is being defended, and each one is working to fight against them, and yet, every meaningful play matters. It's amazing to think about. It all falls apart if a few bad game design decisions get through.
I think your next point goes into more detail; why can you spawn at a station but not a ship? If players can build stations, then why can they not put that technology on a ship, too? For this, there is no good reason, it is just a game design decision at that point. You either want players to be able to respawn infinite times 1 minute away from the battle, or force players to build small outpost respawn stations towards their enemies - respawn stations which can be destroyed, are static (don't move position) and require some time and infrastructure to set up. Whereas 5 minutes could pass and all of a sudden a large force of ships and a bunch of respawn ships can appear in your area (if a ship respawner was allowed), instead due to the 200km - 1000km view distance of stations, you will see the enemy building for potentially hours before their station is operational as a respawn point. As such, you will have time to attempt to shut down the enemy trying to build closer to you. If you let them build 6km away from you, then yeah, you've kind of already lost. That's also the point about respawn ships. Allowing a mobile, 5km view distance respawn ship to get close to you is already a loss, since a large group will just out-respawn you. You have no counter play. You have no way to make it hurt for them to attack you. It's just instantly 'over'.
I know I already touched on this point above; but imagine the creep of war, as enemies build these small outposts closer and closer to each other, and that is how they control territory - not by some arbitrary "flag" or "beacon" but actual, literal application of force as it is in the real world. This means as a player, you don't ever enter into "BigFaction Owned Territory" on your UI. No empty, undefended stations that no one bothers playing at (leading to a dead-feeling world) because of some arbitrary safety timer. Instead, everything you see is alive, means something, and groups are incentivized to maintain their territory. As large groups build towards each other, stocking their small outposts with resources, fuel and so on, pirate groups and small fighters poke at these outposts constantly for the rich resources. So much gameplay comes from this creep of war, which is completely removed if we have ship respawn, where only a 5km view distance respawn ship is needed to show up to begin an assault on an enemy.
I think anyone can see how the many outposts being built, and the no-man's-land where two enemy territories meet, would lead to intense, meaningful gameplay, as long as the respawn mechanic isn't 'free' or cost-based to either side. If players look out and see 50 enemy stations, and know each one of those stations is being defended, and each one is working to fight against them, and yet, every meaningful play matters. It's amazing to think about. It all falls apart if a few bad game design decisions get through.
I agree that a 60 second timer would be meaningless. I meant something more like 10-15 minutes to rebuild a robot body. At that point I imagine you would start to feel it. I don't have particularly strong opinions about the idea though, it was just supposed to be a bridge between no respawn on ship and yes respawn on ship. I definitely would be disappointed if easy respawn on ship was a thing. Especially for fighter craft and the like. If fighters were able to be spawned from a ship I would hope there would be significant drawbacks, like no insurance and a long lockout from respawning the ship again. Or some other meaningfully impactful mechanic so you can't just crush people with numbers. I get the feeling that the devs are designing the system with a bit of a nod towards making it easier to defend than similar games, so I'm cautiously optimistic.
Calen - your method still gives the larger group an advantage even if it's 100km, because then no one gets reinforcements and you can't out-attrition them. I think a minimum requirement of the respawn system should be to not actively give advantage to the biggest group in a fight, to make you have to think whether it's really worth fighting.
Calen - your method still gives the larger group an advantage even if it's 100km, because then no one gets reinforcements and you can't out-attrition them. I think a minimum requirement of the respawn system should be to not actively give advantage to the biggest group in a fight, to make you have to think whether it's really worth fighting.
I know what you mean, and at this point, you die 2x in a row, and have to sit at a 10-15 minute respawn screen. Even if you had the option to respawn at station, it's more efficient to wait out that timer, so you're always sitting there waiting 15 minutes, "feeling" the pain of not being able to play the game - because it's more efficient to wait the 15m than to spawn at station. Putting the player in the middle here, with two very bad choices to make (spawn at station, or wait 15m for the module to rebuild a body) is something to avoid. It's not fun to have a 10s respawn timer, a 15m timer would be playerbase-destroying.
I'm just trying to point out all these details, so I'm not attacking you; these are the common solutions that, for Starbase, being a single-universe MMO, a lot of care needs to be taken in every little mechanic. I'm just adamant about revealing all those little ways something with good intentions can end up in devaluing gameplay. I do really appreciate all the ideas and counters to my ideas because it helps refine those ideas into better forms. Some of these ideas would work well for many other games - and in addition many games have used similar respawn-timer systems - so it's not like these are bad ideas, I feel they just have a negative effect if they were used in Starbase.
Side note, I know you were replying to Calen, but regarding advantage - a large group already has a large advantage. But they also worked hard to organize all those players and establish real, game-world communities that really matter. So valuing their gameplay by giving them meaningful choices behind their actions is just as important as giving solo and small group players meaning behind their own actions. That's my goal, because each and every player needs to be valued for the MMO to grow in success and playerbase and be the game we know it can be.
I'm just trying to point out all these details, so I'm not attacking you; these are the common solutions that, for Starbase, being a single-universe MMO, a lot of care needs to be taken in every little mechanic. I'm just adamant about revealing all those little ways something with good intentions can end up in devaluing gameplay. I do really appreciate all the ideas and counters to my ideas because it helps refine those ideas into better forms. Some of these ideas would work well for many other games - and in addition many games have used similar respawn-timer systems - so it's not like these are bad ideas, I feel they just have a negative effect if they were used in Starbase.
Side note, I know you were replying to Calen, but regarding advantage - a large group already has a large advantage. But they also worked hard to organize all those players and establish real, game-world communities that really matter. So valuing their gameplay by giving them meaningful choices behind their actions is just as important as giving solo and small group players meaning behind their own actions. That's my goal, because each and every player needs to be valued for the MMO to grow in success and playerbase and be the game we know it can be.
I am not a fan of the "revived on battlefield or respawn at station only" idea.
You are sent back to starter bench when you lose your life.
Whereas in a typical "respawn on ship" context, you are sent back to starter bench when you lose your ship.
I think starbase would benefit more of a gameplay revolving around ships preservation rather than endoskeletons preservation. If people can lose everything if they die once, it will have an adverse effect on ship creativity and development. Thats why I would rely more on a player respawn-in-ship mechanics, carefully balanced as we discussed earlier on the post.
That said, making life more meaningful is a very interesting and refreshing angle. Imagine that losing your equipment becomes dramatic, and that you are deeply incentivized to "wait to be revived" or to get back on the battlefield in order to scavenge your previous body, or anyone else body. That would be my gamedesign approach... the hybrid system
edit- typo
You are sent back to starter bench when you lose your life.
Whereas in a typical "respawn on ship" context, you are sent back to starter bench when you lose your ship.
I think starbase would benefit more of a gameplay revolving around ships preservation rather than endoskeletons preservation. If people can lose everything if they die once, it will have an adverse effect on ship creativity and development. Thats why I would rely more on a player respawn-in-ship mechanics, carefully balanced as we discussed earlier on the post.
That said, making life more meaningful is a very interesting and refreshing angle. Imagine that losing your equipment becomes dramatic, and that you are deeply incentivized to "wait to be revived" or to get back on the battlefield in order to scavenge your previous body, or anyone else body. That would be my gamedesign approach... the hybrid system
edit- typo
Last edited:
It is an absolute requirement that any player can respawn from absolutely any circumstance. I have warmed up to Vexus' idea. The process for reviving players would be similar to reviving ships. You repair your ship, your ship repairs you. However it is still possible to imagine a scenario where your avatar is destroyed but you cannot hope to wait for another player nor an automated revival mechanism to come to your rescue. It is possible for a player to have zero ships and zero friends in Starbase. In fact it is quite likely because that is how every player starts. If you are defeated in battle you will probably find that any friends or friendly ships in the area are also dead. A player or automated ship back at home might have to travel an extreme distance, even if your dead body emits a beacon there is no guarantee that they will every reach you. Neither YOLOL scripts nor other players can provide anything close to a guarantee. Computer code is inherently buggy, this defintely applies to YOLOL, even if the Starbase developers create it themselves; an automated YOLOL driven mechanism will eventually encounter some weird situation where it fails. Players will inevitable have perfectly human reasons why they can't revive you at the moment. You cannot guarantee that every player will make the proper preparations. Even if they have additional ships, maybe the forgot to install a working revival mechanism in all of them. No system is fool proof. Some people will say "I didn't realize I could die from that" or simply have nothing or no one that could revive them and fail to see the problem until it is too late, and they still have the right to respawn somehow.
Even if you found a way to guarantee this method of revival it could still degrade the game experience. A game feature that somehow forced every player to take the proper preparations or install a proper revival mechanism could feel very oppresive. Like anything, revival mechanisms are not fool proof. It isn't a matter of how complicated it actually is, it isn't completely fool proof. I assume punishing fools isn't the purpose. Many players will hate waiting for revival for the same reason they would hate a 1-hour respawn timer. They might even prefer the 1-hour respawn timer because at least they know how long it is, where as waiting to be revived is extremely variable. As much as I hate to say it, convenience needs to be prioritized in video game design. The revival system could be abused somehow. It potentially discourage boarding. Imagine you board a ship, the defender stands in place but has regenerating health and can even resurrect as long as he stays in place, and of course that one spot has line of sight to the entire interior. I guess the player repair/revive tool would need to work far slower than any of the weapons.
Thus, Vexus' revival system cannot be the ONLY way for a player to come back to life. Needless to say, with a single persistent world you NEED some sort of way for players to come back to life, to come back into the game world after death, under absolutely any circumstance. I don't think comparisons to battle-royale games are very valid. That particular kind of tensions in battle is good, but it cannot be prioritized over other things. It would be better if the game embraced the fact that it will feature respawning rather than avoiding it. Many games feature easy respawns and are still great games, they just have to build the fact that people will die and respawn into the rest of the game play.
There should be station based respawn points. You build a large expensive, station only structure. When you die you can immediately re-appear at your designated home station. If you don't have a home station, the game will select the nearest friendly station instead. If the game cannot identify anything, it will select the starting NPC megastation. You can do this up to once per minute. After you choose to respawn this way, you can select one of several load-outs of back packs and handheld weapons and tools. Most of the selections will cost a number of credits. Generally the cost in credits will be much greater than creating the back pack, tools, weapons yourself or buying from another player. (Yes, the developers might have to adjust those numbers depending on player economy inflation.) The default options will feature absolutely no weapons or tools but will cost nothing.
The effect on player warfare is that a faction will have an advantage the closer the fighting is to their base. This will usually mean an advantage for the defender, who in turn will usually be the smaller, weaker faction. With the singular persistent universe it should be extremely difficult to exterminate an enemy faction. If the universe is persistent, the factions should usually persist. Giving advantages to the defenders helps with that persistence, and gives players the sense that the things they worked so hard to create will not easily disappear and are thus more meaningful. Though this could cost more aggressive players who somehow care more about hurting other people than protecting anything. Rivalries between balanced or somewhat imbalanced factions will continue to provide opportunities for PVP battles for a long time, though it would favor skirmishes over large apocalyptic battles. It probably woudn't mean much for extremely unbalanced rivalries though. In that case you really just need methods of avoiding overwhelming player factions (a discussion for another time).
As a side note Vexus claimed "There are very close to free resources - human labor." It is worth pointing out that technically human labor is the only resource with value. Generating anything in the game (that isn't there on day 1) ultimately requires human labor. Fun fact: The labor theory of economic value was favored by both Adam Smith "The Father of Capitalism" and later by Karl Marx "The Father of Communism". Then it is no wonder a faction with 1000 players can oppress a faction with 10 players. As long as a faction with 1000 players cannot oppress 100 different 10 player factions the game is okay.
Even if you found a way to guarantee this method of revival it could still degrade the game experience. A game feature that somehow forced every player to take the proper preparations or install a proper revival mechanism could feel very oppresive. Like anything, revival mechanisms are not fool proof. It isn't a matter of how complicated it actually is, it isn't completely fool proof. I assume punishing fools isn't the purpose. Many players will hate waiting for revival for the same reason they would hate a 1-hour respawn timer. They might even prefer the 1-hour respawn timer because at least they know how long it is, where as waiting to be revived is extremely variable. As much as I hate to say it, convenience needs to be prioritized in video game design. The revival system could be abused somehow. It potentially discourage boarding. Imagine you board a ship, the defender stands in place but has regenerating health and can even resurrect as long as he stays in place, and of course that one spot has line of sight to the entire interior. I guess the player repair/revive tool would need to work far slower than any of the weapons.
Thus, Vexus' revival system cannot be the ONLY way for a player to come back to life. Needless to say, with a single persistent world you NEED some sort of way for players to come back to life, to come back into the game world after death, under absolutely any circumstance. I don't think comparisons to battle-royale games are very valid. That particular kind of tensions in battle is good, but it cannot be prioritized over other things. It would be better if the game embraced the fact that it will feature respawning rather than avoiding it. Many games feature easy respawns and are still great games, they just have to build the fact that people will die and respawn into the rest of the game play.
There should be station based respawn points. You build a large expensive, station only structure. When you die you can immediately re-appear at your designated home station. If you don't have a home station, the game will select the nearest friendly station instead. If the game cannot identify anything, it will select the starting NPC megastation. You can do this up to once per minute. After you choose to respawn this way, you can select one of several load-outs of back packs and handheld weapons and tools. Most of the selections will cost a number of credits. Generally the cost in credits will be much greater than creating the back pack, tools, weapons yourself or buying from another player. (Yes, the developers might have to adjust those numbers depending on player economy inflation.) The default options will feature absolutely no weapons or tools but will cost nothing.
The effect on player warfare is that a faction will have an advantage the closer the fighting is to their base. This will usually mean an advantage for the defender, who in turn will usually be the smaller, weaker faction. With the singular persistent universe it should be extremely difficult to exterminate an enemy faction. If the universe is persistent, the factions should usually persist. Giving advantages to the defenders helps with that persistence, and gives players the sense that the things they worked so hard to create will not easily disappear and are thus more meaningful. Though this could cost more aggressive players who somehow care more about hurting other people than protecting anything. Rivalries between balanced or somewhat imbalanced factions will continue to provide opportunities for PVP battles for a long time, though it would favor skirmishes over large apocalyptic battles. It probably woudn't mean much for extremely unbalanced rivalries though. In that case you really just need methods of avoiding overwhelming player factions (a discussion for another time).
As a side note Vexus claimed "There are very close to free resources - human labor." It is worth pointing out that technically human labor is the only resource with value. Generating anything in the game (that isn't there on day 1) ultimately requires human labor. Fun fact: The labor theory of economic value was favored by both Adam Smith "The Father of Capitalism" and later by Karl Marx "The Father of Communism". Then it is no wonder a faction with 1000 players can oppress a faction with 10 players. As long as a faction with 1000 players cannot oppress 100 different 10 player factions the game is okay.
I like this quote. It's something unique to Starbase due to the theme of the game, robots and what not. Couldn't have this make sense otherwise.
+
Yes, well said; the effect will be station building and claiming territory, naturally without the need for a user interface or awkward claiming system, towards your opponent. Or, if you have no opponent and are peaceful, you simply expand so that your weakest structures are your most remote just in case someone gets violent in the future, and so your peaceful empire grows. Expanding these stations out into space in all directions, which also allow revival, means players are incentivized to build and grow and populate the game world with real, meaningful player built stations - no single one of which requires the emotional attachment of say a Rust base where you have your "one" base with everything in it, so you avoid that feeling of loss when a station dies - and likewise combat and fighting over these stations can absorb the full application of warfare; making any real fight against an enemy have solid gains and solid losses as you conquer an enemy's holdings, absorb the resources of their station, dismantle their station or make it your own. On a side note; all these actions take time.
I was discussing with others and explained, and maybe said it somewhere here but the thread is long; in Minecraft, in the initial state of the game world, the initial dirt blocks have zero value. It is when the player digs up a dirt block, and places that dirt block to build a house (for example) that the block goes from having close to absolute zero value, to now being very valuable. The application of human labor is the only resource with value, and is also a force multiplier when multiple humans come together to do something. Human labor is valuable, and multiple humans performing labor is exponentially valuable.
Likewise in Starbase, in the initial state, nothing beyond already-created assets has much value. Players will go out and create value by interacting with the game world. If we can find ways to make sure all their application of human labor (gaming is an expenditure of energy, and can be considered labor as you work for shared goals for a group, or work towards just your own goals), if we can make sure their application of human labor remains meaningful as much as possible, Starbase becomes more dynamic and more potentially meaningful than Minecraft, which does not have an MMO component. As people are the value, and as multiple people doing things together is exponentially valuable, having a large amount of people in a meaningful game universe creates a nuclear reaction of explosive player activity that will skyrocket the game into a "must play" state for almost every gamer.
With even a few sour game mechanics that devalue gameplay, we lose out on that critical mass of players who will self-sustain content going forward, which was one of my arguments regarding the thread about keeping the game online-only. The baseline consideration is: does the player's gameplay matter. If it does matter, they will stick around indefinitely. Other games give player actions meaning, from Rust to League of Legends, to DOTA2, any ranked game pretty much like Overwatch, to WoW where your group needs you for a raid, to all the good games that ever existed; the reason they last is because of meaningful gameplay. The key is to get it right, right out of the gate. WoW for example began devaluing the meaning behind gameplay with releasing expansions and making it easier to form groups and so on - this drove away the playerbase even though more content was added into the game and even though the game was made easier to play (making it easier, is bad). It was the loss of meaningful gameplay, that the gear you got last month was not worth anything now after the next expansion, that drove people away. And here, 15 years later, they release the Classic WoW experience and see a resurgence of people wanting that initial meaningful gameplay which ended up securing the game's longevity for 15+ years. I want Starbase to reach this kind of success and so any threat which can potentially ruin this potential, which removes meaningful gameplay, I am looking at seriously and critically and hope the information reaches the right people.
Sure, a game doesn't need everything to be meaningful - too much is bad, and like I said, games which simply only have a 'ranked' mode are good enough to generate lots of content. But we've never had this potential level of meaningful gameplay as we're seeing possible in Starbase, where it's still just fine to fly a ship at an enemy, shoot a few guns and blow up and die, log off for the day, know you made some dent in your enemy's forces, and just go to sleep. In other words, with all this meaningful potential, it still isn't that serious and can be played like a game if the right systems are considered to allow that. We can have unlimited potential and enough flexibility in session-based gameplay where anyone can come in and feel like their actions mattered in a game. This will keep them coming back for more. If, however, no attack you apply to your enemy matters, because they will just respawn right away nearby, or the resources you damaged from the enemy meant nothing because there's some 'free' way to get resources (another topic)... this diminishes the desire to log in and play for a short session and 'do what you can' in those few moments. But again, if we can make even the shortest amount of gameplay valuable, people who want to log in for an hour here and there still come for that meaningful gameplay, just like some log in for a quick MOBA match, while avoiding some of the pitfalls of other games which punish you for not being online 24/7. There is balance and it can be revealed in Starbase.
+
Yes, well said; the effect will be station building and claiming territory, naturally without the need for a user interface or awkward claiming system, towards your opponent. Or, if you have no opponent and are peaceful, you simply expand so that your weakest structures are your most remote just in case someone gets violent in the future, and so your peaceful empire grows. Expanding these stations out into space in all directions, which also allow revival, means players are incentivized to build and grow and populate the game world with real, meaningful player built stations - no single one of which requires the emotional attachment of say a Rust base where you have your "one" base with everything in it, so you avoid that feeling of loss when a station dies - and likewise combat and fighting over these stations can absorb the full application of warfare; making any real fight against an enemy have solid gains and solid losses as you conquer an enemy's holdings, absorb the resources of their station, dismantle their station or make it your own. On a side note; all these actions take time.
I was discussing with others and explained, and maybe said it somewhere here but the thread is long; in Minecraft, in the initial state of the game world, the initial dirt blocks have zero value. It is when the player digs up a dirt block, and places that dirt block to build a house (for example) that the block goes from having close to absolute zero value, to now being very valuable. The application of human labor is the only resource with value, and is also a force multiplier when multiple humans come together to do something. Human labor is valuable, and multiple humans performing labor is exponentially valuable.
Likewise in Starbase, in the initial state, nothing beyond already-created assets has much value. Players will go out and create value by interacting with the game world. If we can find ways to make sure all their application of human labor (gaming is an expenditure of energy, and can be considered labor as you work for shared goals for a group, or work towards just your own goals), if we can make sure their application of human labor remains meaningful as much as possible, Starbase becomes more dynamic and more potentially meaningful than Minecraft, which does not have an MMO component. As people are the value, and as multiple people doing things together is exponentially valuable, having a large amount of people in a meaningful game universe creates a nuclear reaction of explosive player activity that will skyrocket the game into a "must play" state for almost every gamer.
With even a few sour game mechanics that devalue gameplay, we lose out on that critical mass of players who will self-sustain content going forward, which was one of my arguments regarding the thread about keeping the game online-only. The baseline consideration is: does the player's gameplay matter. If it does matter, they will stick around indefinitely. Other games give player actions meaning, from Rust to League of Legends, to DOTA2, any ranked game pretty much like Overwatch, to WoW where your group needs you for a raid, to all the good games that ever existed; the reason they last is because of meaningful gameplay. The key is to get it right, right out of the gate. WoW for example began devaluing the meaning behind gameplay with releasing expansions and making it easier to form groups and so on - this drove away the playerbase even though more content was added into the game and even though the game was made easier to play (making it easier, is bad). It was the loss of meaningful gameplay, that the gear you got last month was not worth anything now after the next expansion, that drove people away. And here, 15 years later, they release the Classic WoW experience and see a resurgence of people wanting that initial meaningful gameplay which ended up securing the game's longevity for 15+ years. I want Starbase to reach this kind of success and so any threat which can potentially ruin this potential, which removes meaningful gameplay, I am looking at seriously and critically and hope the information reaches the right people.
Sure, a game doesn't need everything to be meaningful - too much is bad, and like I said, games which simply only have a 'ranked' mode are good enough to generate lots of content. But we've never had this potential level of meaningful gameplay as we're seeing possible in Starbase, where it's still just fine to fly a ship at an enemy, shoot a few guns and blow up and die, log off for the day, know you made some dent in your enemy's forces, and just go to sleep. In other words, with all this meaningful potential, it still isn't that serious and can be played like a game if the right systems are considered to allow that. We can have unlimited potential and enough flexibility in session-based gameplay where anyone can come in and feel like their actions mattered in a game. This will keep them coming back for more. If, however, no attack you apply to your enemy matters, because they will just respawn right away nearby, or the resources you damaged from the enemy meant nothing because there's some 'free' way to get resources (another topic)... this diminishes the desire to log in and play for a short session and 'do what you can' in those few moments. But again, if we can make even the shortest amount of gameplay valuable, people who want to log in for an hour here and there still come for that meaningful gameplay, just like some log in for a quick MOBA match, while avoiding some of the pitfalls of other games which punish you for not being online 24/7. There is balance and it can be revealed in Starbase.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2019
- Messages
- 110
Um... i know this isnt such a important thing for respawning but still... since when was this already implemented?
"Insurance terminals can also be used as a means of transportation, as it is possible to activate another endoskeleton at a different location."
"Insurance terminals can also be used as a means of transportation, as it is possible to activate another endoskeleton at a different location."