What I think the game needs before any wipe is done

[Xennon]

Ok, so first this isn't a discussion about whether there will or will not be a wipe. Just my ideas for what I think the game needs (and it becomes especially true if there is to be a wipe).

 

So there are two things.

 

Number 1

 

The thing the game lacks for me overall, is a universe wide purpose, so my idea is thus.

 

Introduce the concept of research and production of schematics by players. T1 requires none and is available to anyone, so new players can come in, mine, start a factory and start building components or ships or whatever and get in the game. T2 and above require some kind of schematic mechanic (not necessarily what there is today) but these are researched and produced by players.

 

The resources to research and produce these are something that people have to go out and get, maybe some kind of alien tech that explorers/scavengers go out and acquire. This produces the following loop:

 

1. Ship builders build ships (for safe and unsafe space) for explorers so they can go and get tech

2. Explorers go out and get tech (higher techs/more of it in unsafe space) because it's valuable

3. Researchers use the tech to research and produce schematics for higher tier technologies that they supply to the ship builders

4. Ship builders build better ships (for safe and unsafe space) for explorers so they can go and get more tech

5. Rinse repeat.

 

This gives a loop of interaction for players, but also has them all partaking in the maturity of the universe. The universe doesn't 'tech up' until the players make it so. So to start with, no warp drives, shields etc etc etc and it will take the universe a while to get them, with the necessity to do things 'the harder way' for a while to get there.

 

It doesn't have to work this way, but there needs to be SOMETHING that stops the universe being fully mature within a month. Think Eve and Titans, it was a long time until people even saw one of those things, let alone the many there are now.

 

Number 2

 

This is just a simple one. Bring back meganodes. Not regular mining, just meganodes. Meganodes were GREAT. They created an entire little economy and role all of their own. Specialist scanners went out and sold the scan locations. Scan ships were a thing. The mining locator LUA came out of it. It will also give people who like the manual mining something to do more than asteroids.

 

I know there is the storage concern of regular mining on the planets, but if it was ONLY meganodes, that would be a VAST reduction in the amount of holes dug. You could also make territory scans pinpoint the node, so people dig straight to them. Also, make them disappear after a while. If someone mines one out, then just fill it in if there is no activity on that hex for X days, or its unclaimed for X days. Then regenerate that node elsewhere on the planet so there is a constant supply for people to go out and find. There are plenty of technical ways to keep the costs down but still get all of the good gameplay back that meganodes bought.

 

Done

 

So yeh, really Number 1 is the most important thing. SOMETHING that gives the game purpose. I just think number 2 would be a sensible gameplay step 🙂

 

Thanks for reading my rambles!

[blundertwink]

Well...Athena is the last major update and they don't have time to make deep changes before release...even if release is 6-7 months away, they unfortunately don't have time to squeeze in major changes along with the (sorely needed) optimizations and bug fixes.

 

If advancement is even slower...what we'd have is a game where people stand around waiting for AMs, and I think that would reduce engagement especially for new players. 

 

IMO The game is shallow enough without having to wait for people to grind research.

 

There's so little progression overall that "gating" the limited content wouldn't make sense to me.

 

The game needs more feature depth overall -- new mechanics and not just changing how existing mechanics work. 

[Endstar]

We keep asking that they add Mega nodes to asteroids. Seems like a good balance.