"The game world itself is too big, too empty and too boring", and other stories about how sieges and capitals themselves ain't the saving grace.

Joined
Nov 12, 2019
Messages
576
#42
This is a game sold as PvP focused and player driven. How you guys think that jives with WoW-esque content is beyond me.

No one says that caps and seiges are a saving grace. This entire thread was based upon a false premise.

So far I've read proposals that revamp the game to a clone of other games, drop everything but the build mode, and then want the game to play itself for you.



It's like watching people promote duty officer mechanics in STO all over again. Literally a few button clicks and a timer. How is that fun? And yes I will shame anyone who thinks waiting on a timer is fun.

I also don't get why you think forcing people to need to log in daily is a desirable trait. I go to work every day. Like hell am I making any game that sort of a priority. Make the game fun, not a job. Seeing so many people looking for a second job in games.

This is a one time buy game. There is literally no incentive for the devs to gear this game towards making you log in daily.
 

kiiyo

Veteran endo
Joined
Jul 11, 2020
Messages
136
#43
This is a game sold as PvP focused and player driven. How you guys think that jives with WoW-esque content is beyond me.

No one says that caps and seiges are a saving grace. This entire thread was based upon a false premise.

So far I've read proposals that revamp the game to a clone of other games, drop everything but the build mode, and then want the game to play itself for you.
I'm going to dump a couple of kilos of pure NaCl on this before trying to look at it, because I assume no sane human would comprehend "we want more pve content" as "I want the game to play itself". We (okay, I- can't speak for others) really do not want anything similar to "the game plays itself" - and I don't see how PvE could be interpreted as such, either.

It's like watching people promote duty officer mechanics in STO all over again. Literally a few button clicks and a timer. How is that fun? And yes I will shame anyone who thinks waiting on a timer is fun.
Can't speak on this since I've never tried STO, I apologize if this is an important argument.

I also don't get why you think forcing people to need to log in daily is a desirable trait. I go to work every day. Like hell am I making any game that sort of a priority. Make the game fun, not a job. Seeing so many people looking for a second job in games.
That is correct! People should be able to hop in onto Starbase at some point during their busy lives and ALWAYS have something to do! I am so glad we have finally come to an agreement, my dear friend! This is great. I'm glad that we can both agree that you should just be able to jump in and always have stuff to do. Like group up with a friend or two and then go shoot up a local Rogue Drone nest. Or maybe if the local Progenitor Mine is open, you could go try to score some loot, either on your own or with a couple people you found? Hell, if it just closed, you could go to the nearest big station and buy up some of the materials. You can sell them off later during the day for a small profit, as the cheapest sell offers will be gone by then.

Isn't that good? You can hop on any time and have something that you can do that would let you interact with others in various ways. Team up, shoot things, build things, manipulate markets! Fun for everyone, anytime they want, without a necessity for other players to be there to create content. After all, the Rogue Drones won't get upset if you shoot them at 2am, or at 6 in the morning, or at 4 in the evening, because they really don't care. They're just happy you can relieve them of being alive, whenever your schedule allows you to do so.
 

TERACOOL

Learned-to-sprint endo
Joined
Jul 16, 2021
Messages
21
#44
Yeah, because nothing says fun like designing a single spaceship for 2 weeks, losing it, and then having to design the same ship over again.
This means you haven't played the game or are inattentively reading what I'm writing.
One mechanic is hardcore, so every single mechanic must be hardcore? Even when 90% of that mechanic's use boils down to "tell lever to make thruster go harder" or "tell button to make light go on" by copy-pasting some names into fields and turning a 0 into a 1?
Again, this means that you haven't played the game. Try to develop, at least, a simple navigation system or calculate Sin (13) on a Basic chip and you will understand everything. YOLOL is a marker that tells newcomers: "don't come here, go to Eve Online or ED" (where all management is reduced to ASWD + LMB, and there is no engineering as a class, so just mine and trade, and fight as you earn... end of the algorithm). Many people are attracted by its simplicity and lack of need to develop something. Play with these projects, maybe they will suit you better.
Yeah, because nothing says "hardcore" like pushing the forward lever to max and sitting there for 3 weeks. That'll definitely bring back the dwindling playerbase. All because a single game doing well because it is hard means that there must be a principle that hard games are just better than all the others, right? And because that's the only way Starbase can beat such fierce and thriving competition as Space Engineers and Dual Universe, right? Yeah, this definitely can't backfire. Let's just scrap the last, what, 6 to 8 months at least of development time spent on designing, programming, creating assets for, implementing, and bug-testing things like capital ships, ship repair, and build mode, so we can make the game harder by padding out the most time-consuming parts, because if there's one thing all these months since EA launch have taught us it's that everyone loves Starbase's long drawn out mechanics like research and flight time.
That's right. I don't understand your sarcasm. We really like it. We like to take risks, because there can be no adventures without risk. What is the risk if you can return everything without loss at any time? Or pay for the ore, which you can dig up in 2 days as much as you need. In general, I have said everything, I don't want to repeat myself.
 

TERACOOL

Learned-to-sprint endo
Joined
Jul 16, 2021
Messages
21
#46
I think a game that's trying to build a living, breathing, player-driven world should be welcoming and inviting players into it, not alienating them away.
Any game will repel someone, and attract someone. It all depends on the size of the community. There are games with a potentially large community, and there are games with a potentially small community. In terms of size, these are different markets. Absolutely. So the popular space "simulators" have already taken the main market with a large community for today. I think it's useless to argue here. There is a small community of more serious players who are waiting for more hardcore gameplay. And here the main mistake would be to believe that you need to bend towards a large community (the main market) trying to lure players from there to this project. In fact, it is necessary not to listen to anyone and change, you need to build your own line. The game, no matter how hardcore it is, will find its fans in any case. But as soon as the developers begin to bend under the players trying to please everyone in order to earn more money (greed), then this is the first bell that it is better not to enter the project, because this will soon become a decoupling.
 
Joined
Nov 12, 2019
Messages
576
#47
I think a game that's trying to build a living, breathing, player-driven world should be welcoming and inviting players into it, not alienating them away.
You have to pick your target market. "Everyone" is not a viable market to target. That's why games have a synopsis when you go to buy it. That synopsis is meant to attract a certain kind of player. If that player is not you, that's on you, not the developers or marketers.
 

TERACOOL

Learned-to-sprint endo
Joined
Jul 16, 2021
Messages
21
#48
You have to pick your target market. "Everyone" is not a viable market to target. That's why games have a synopsis when you go to buy it. That synopsis is meant to attract a certain kind of player. If that player is not you, that's on you, not the developers or marketers.
It's good that you understand this. Unfortunately, the description for Starbase does not reflect the whole essence of the game, which can be misleading. But there is this forum where you can get more detailed information from developers and a more experienced community.
 

kiiyo

Veteran endo
Joined
Jul 11, 2020
Messages
136
#49
Digging into a niche of nerds as your audience for an MMO is a risky idea since you're betting on those nerds filling your world - especially if you guys so stubbornly refute ideas of PvE elements - so what one may end up with is an empty world filled with a playerbase too small for the space they have. I think that YOLOL's simplicity is a restriction for creators and a blessing for devs; The former have more limits within which to shine their giga brains, the latter have less "oh god the player isn't supposed to be able to do that" moments (if you say that the devs shouldn't care about people do with their systems, they did remove attplates just as people started abusing them out of their "intended" use and we have yet to get a replacement)
 

pavvvel

Veteran endo
Joined
Aug 31, 2021
Messages
222
#50
A player named Calenloki has proposed a warp drive system that I would support. I think it performs the function well.
This is a very very bad idea and I wrote about it. Because it will be impossible to intercept such ships. This will only be a way to evade pvp. Pvp is the main content of the MMO.
If you offer something, it should not break the pvp. If you propose to do a "cruise" With high speed, then suggest how to intercept such ships. People should not lose pvp content because someone wants to fly fast.
 
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Agonarch

Active endo
Joined
Aug 10, 2021
Messages
42
#51
On the topic of speed I really like the travel gates in Freelancer (seen in tons of other scifi too, even Cowboy Bebop!) for that kind of thing, gates which accelerate you towards the next gate, but you need a chain of them from A to B and if one on the route gets shot up enough it disrupts the chain there (so travelling ships drop out and have to either fight the pirates or rush to the next gate). You can only enter the chain at a gate, but you can drop out at will.

It bottlenecks travel to routes which is better for pirates, but it's faster so it's better for any travellers too. The current way gate travel works is pretty non-interactive, and a change like that would still allow players to avoid trouble if they really wanted by simply abandoning the trip, turning around and going back through the last undisrupted gate (which would work the same as it is now).
 

kiiyo

Veteran endo
Joined
Jul 11, 2020
Messages
136
#52
On the topic of speed I really like the travel gates in Freelancer (seen in tons of other scifi too, even Cowboy Bebop!) for that kind of thing, gates which accelerate you towards the next gate, but you need a chain of them from A to B and if one on the route gets shot up enough it disrupts the chain there (so travelling ships drop out and have to either fight the pirates or rush to the next gate). You can only enter the chain at a gate, but you can drop out at will.

It bottlenecks travel to routes which is better for pirates, but it's faster so it's better for any travellers too. The current way gate travel works is pretty non-interactive, and a change like that would still allow players to avoid trouble if they really wanted by simply abandoning the trip, turning around and going back through the last undisrupted gate (which would work the same as it is now).
Would make setting up new gates quite a pain in the rear though. Devs said the plan was for gate infrastructure to eventually be a thing players can set up.
 

Recatek

Meat Popsicle
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
286
#53
I do think gate/fixed-path fast travel is preferable to anywhere-to-anywhere warps. Space games have very few ways to give the world meaningful or strategic terrain value, and fixed travel paths are one of them. Designing the game to bypass that is a loss, IMO.
 
Joined
Jan 21, 2022
Messages
18
#54
How I see them being implemented now is that they'll make stations and tramp freighters obsolete. Unless they make the charge time obnoxious, or the fuel requirements larger than the smaller ships by proportion, its just plain cheaper to do everything with a cap. And they're linking every major feature to cap use.

So guys like me who want to fly their ship, not ride along as the game plays itself (imo) are made less viable in playtime.
But wont you need a nav ship to goto distant locations come back to your home location most.
Companies will probably be exploring so they will need people like you i dont think everyone is going to rush for capital ships just the pirates.
 

DivineEvil

Well-known endo
Joined
Nov 9, 2020
Messages
63
#55
Don't forget that:
- You need stations before you even have the opportunity to build a capital.
- Stations are vastly easier to setup with the material requirements.
- Stations may or may not get exclusive functionality, such as high-efficiency refining and smelting that capitals might not get.
- Capitals do not have conventional movement, meaning they cannot transport goods to and from stations, and also won't be able to enter the atmosphere.
- Capital cannot use gate travel meaning they cannot quickly transport goods between gate-connected areas.

The very idea that someone would think its cheaper to run a capital that is like 3-4 magnitudes heavier than the largest conventional ship is silly.
 
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