After taking over from the old regime, I truly feel in my heart of hearts that the current Dev team is doing all they can to improve everything with the staff they have. We have seen incremental improvements and good changes. I tip my hat for trying and the progress that's been made since I started. That being said, my concerns (also as a beta tester) are as follows:
(Caveat - Everyone plays differently and these are my personal thoughts only. I may be wrong on my analysis, which I admit ahead of time. Also, I'm not a mission runner. I don't find mission running enjoyable. I've heard it's a good money maker, but it's not what I'm interested in and not what I do.)
Mining - The safe zone asteroids are treated like meat to piranhas. They will be mined out completely within hours, even the T1. You have to discover them in that stage to have a chance, and even then there are 6 to 8 ships on them when you're about to land. Flying out there only for it to be empty is a huge waste of time and not fun. With the territory mining so dang expensive to maintain, this is really hard for new players to overcome. My recommendation is to have even more ore than there is now on these safe zone roids. I get that the higher tier ores you have to venture into the pvp zone or buy it, and that's fine - not asking that to be changed. Those roids are actually amazing. Open the T1 and T2 up a bit in the safe zone. More ore please.
Ore Consumption - This will probably be highly debated but to run a standard factory, it takes so much ore! I don't have a complicated set up and I spend over 85% of my time just mining to break even. It's not fun and that's not what I want to do all the time. If that's the game play loop for this game, it's dead, and I'm serious. Now you say "join an org" . I'm already in an amazing one and I contribute to the mining best I can, and take what I can when it allows. If it weren't for this group sharing, I'm not sure where I'd be. If this could be scaled a little bit to provide more product for less ore, I think it'd be a step in the right direction. If you don't believe me on this, just pay attention to the help and general chat in game.
Economy - I understand why you went to the schematic system you have now. However, the fact of the matter is with the economy the way it is, the price of schem's to what you can make and sell is just gross. Remember that we want to keep new players, not drive them away. I often see elements on the market that are just breaking even on schem cost. No profit for ore. You're using these fees for schematics and territories to slow everything down, but what's really happening is a grind that's not fun. The player is under an extreme amount of pressure to make money...just to get by! Not profit. My recommendation is to scale back the fees for both schems and territories by a large margin. If you need to increase time, do that, but the quanta sink is egregious. I played in beta. I knew "how things worked'. I "recruited" a player, and spent several days and hundreds of text messages just to explain him very basic things that the tutorials didn't explain. He played demo twice but still hasn't went to live yet. I can't convey how behind a non-beta player is just to figure things out. The learning curve is real.
Content - We need more than mining and missions. I'd like to see you work within the constraints of what you have to create some more content. There's a fine balance between fun and grind. Right now the grind is egregious. I just feel like the ore I work so hard to get vaporizes within hours. I could be creating / building / et al but the ore is being used so fast.
PvP - How fun is PvP really? Camping pvp asteroids helps no one in the long run. It's not a great game play model. Plus you have players sitting at the asteroid, then deploying just a core and guns when a miner comes into range. I can't believe this is what you envisioned for "PvP". This is shallow and probably not intended anyways. The alien cores were a good first step, but there could be more. Could there possibly be hot spots that would draw pvp players, with rewards for a winner? Ship elements perhaps that showed a declared pvp'er where this hotspot was, and best man wins the prize? Rare ore, rare weapons, etc?
Many of my org mates and I sit around and talk about how we want this game to succeed. If you add a few more pieces with actual content, you will be successful, I have no doubt of that. We need to see a little more balance and content though, imo.
I do get you. It's just it seems everybody else is only interested in numbers and figures (Excel) and not fun.
Game loop is this: you mine (grind) to maybe sell ore and make money, or create stuff (elements) and make money.
Then you can mine more and make more money.
And that's it.
Whoever thinks this is "fun" ought to question his psyche.
Also, that people seriously do not see the problem with a SPACE GAME, which has SPACE and PLANETS, but which are completely unnecessary (for the current game loop you do not need any of those) - is beyond me.
It is a sad state of affairs when in the forum of a SPACE GAME all topics you can read are as follows:
- "How can I link the machine XY to factory element ABC?"
- "Which Tier of ore is on planet XY?"
- "Do I need an XXL container to haul ore from ABC?"
- "How can I improve refinery efficiency?"
- "Can someone give me the coords to Asteroid ABC which has T3 ore?"
- "How many charges do I need to calibrate the Autominder Tier 69!?"
- "Come take part in this weeks PVP EVENT! SCHEDULED FOR HH:MM" ..... SCHEDULED .... FFS
It is indubitably obvious that this game was planned and designed by PROGRAMMERS and NOT GAME DESIGNERS.
These people have NO FREAKING IDEA what entertainment is, what fun is, what a GAME is. No wonder the original Founder has a background in Robotics -- because the bloody game plays as if it was developed by and for robots, and not actual human beings.
I can see them when they were planning to create this: "Let's make a SPACE GAME ... And in this game, let's then make a bunch of planets - preferably as bland as possible, and let's make it possible for players to make ships - which they will use to transport ore or maybe steal ore from a poor sap - of course ore, what else is there?, and let's make the players learn a programming language so that they can program stuff and make stuff more EFFICIENT .... mmmm NUMBERRRRRRRRS - that will be fun!"
"But, Sir, people might not find such a game entertaining ... what about NPCs, Quests, Aliens, Lore, A PURPOSE TO ANYTHING?"
"Ah, blablabla ... who cares -- let's put some grand sentences in the game description, like, SPACE EXPLORATION, DISTANT SOLAR SYSTEM, NEW CIVILIZATION, BUILDING, VOXELS, MILLIONS OF PLAYERS ON ONE SERVER - how does that sound?"
"I must admit Sir, that sounds superb .... but, none of us is a game designer ... how can we achieve all that?"
"Ahhh, don't worry Jean-Pierre, players will do our job!"
"Sir, you truly are a genius!"
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InertFurry got a reaction from GraXXoR in Absolute Biggest Bang for Your Buck things NQ could do in the short-term to improve DU