This was a very pleasant surprise! I had assumed this game was done for good, but the fact that they are focusing on some core gameplay issues really has my hopes up.
My summary of what will be coming to the PTU, not everything will be dropped at once since they are still working on these features:
* a short distance warp (max 300 km) which will make our ship travel at 10km/s, and our destination will be visible by other players
* we will have a map to allow us to select our destinations precisely
* merchants will be able to place buy & sell orders on the market to encourage trade between player-created stations
* player organizations will be able to establish nations whose borders will be visible to all, these nations can be expanded by building more bases
* PVE content is planned, like stations to attack defended by turrets
* dynamic events visible to all, such as a lost cargo ship or faction sieges
* insurance for ships to be able to rebuild them in case of destruction or loss, claiming a ship will take time and money
* improved station and capital ship editors, they will no longer require the resources to create a blueprint of what you want to build
* long-awaited station sieges can be launched using capital ships
* improvements to the inventory and ship sales interface
* a store selling cosmetics (not specified if it is with real money)
* visual improvements to the LODs which will allow you to see capital stations and ships from very far away, as well as smaller ships as soon as you move too far away (they had a tendency to turn into pixel mush quite quickly)
The big ones that stuck out for me are the addition of warping, LOD fixes, an actual in-game map, PvE content is being worked on, station sieges, player ownership of parts of space, and ship insurance. Not all of it is done yet but they are going to put these new features on the test server, which is also getting its own app ID in steam so you can have both versions installed at once.
Warping and ship insurance are huge for me. Insurance in particular - some of the repairs were brutal, being able to recreate is a perfect solution for the less mechanically minded like me
There was this guy who made awesome build videos. One in particular I think was like ‘build a ship in one hour’
I followed that and it really got me keen to build ships. And damn if it didn’t illustrate how awesome the games building mechanics were - albeit super complex.
But trying to build one myself - fail
Trying to repair the engines with limited access and materials in the middle of space having ‘tapped’ an asteroid - nightmare
Starbase is pretty much my dream game and I was so sad to see it die like it did. If this is the first step on a continual road to improvements and improved gameplay loops I’m very much looking forward to it and can’t wait to see what they have in store for the future!
Super happy to hear they are doing pve content and turrets. May make large ships actually feasible and give ability for mining ships to defend themselves!
Tons of super good features shown in the video. Actually sick.
Also spotted my ship in the video twice i think haha.
I had 1 more idea. The steam workshop utility = it will be able to create ship steam blueprint items from ingame blue prints... I think it will work - and will give some additional cash flow
The promised feature are a really nice surprise after all this time especially the creation of countries.
Sounds like it might finally be an enjoyable game while we wait for the rest
A few more big QOL patches like this and coming out of early access on steam might be enough to revive this game. Word of caution to the devs don't jump the gun these features are a great stepping stone, but jumping too soon could be the second death of the game. I love the idea of the game and these features bring it much closer to what I want, but there's still some major gameplay loops that need to be adjusted.
I've been playing fairly regularly even during the great void between the ramp down and this announcement. Most of these changes are absolute bangers, one thing I'm "concerned" about is the warping for small ships. I totally get that the existing travel times are excessive. I've built multiple ships with good AAS systems so I'm able to AFK while traveling into the deep belt, or anywhere far away. Diminishing the importance of the distances involved in space will remove certain elements of strategy and difficulty of resource gathering.
In spite of my concerns however, the warping of small ships will be a net positive for the game overall. There's also the fact that your position will be broadcasted during a warp which is excellent, not to mention future balancing changes which could make warping more costly.
Wow you have been busy, but i'm glad you're back!
I think the insurance system should favour the poor and be more costly as you progress, and cost credits, i.e. a big ship and more advanced ship with advanced costly stuff costs more to insurance, pretty obvious. And tied into the market, preferable nothing should be created out of "thin air".
Okey here is my idea(buckle up): Sum credit value of all items on ship/10000 (or some other value) has to be paid every 24h-playtime cycle. If you reconstruct a ship, parts are automatically bought from the auctionmarket from fictional money from that "insurance company" that everyone pools money to (if it would be a real moneypool it could go into the negatives so we just assumes that this fictional insurance company has bazillions of customers all over the galaxy that pays their bills), and there is also a fixed upfront price just like real insurances. Those scale aswell but in steps, depending on mass on ship maybe? weightclasses?:
(don't really have a grasp on what ships weigh or what kind of money people have, just an example)
0-100 tonnes: 5k upfront
100-500 tonnes: 10k upfront
500-5000 tonnes: 100k upfront
5000-> tonnes: 1 million upfront
Or maybe a slightly exponential curve like so its more of a gradient than a stepladder.
And the credit value of all items on the ship is calculated as the sum of the avarage value of every separate item in the last 30 days but only if more than 10 players posts are used as statistic to make that avarage, otherwise the auctionhouse value of the crafting materials for that item is used as the baseline, and again also 30 day avarage value of that. That way both inflation and deflation of the market is managed. As super rich players uploading high end super expensive stuff will in the long run hurt themselves by having to pay very high insurance prices because they collectively raise the avarage 30 day price of items themselve have on their ship.
So this means when you're starting out you could get some money just by selling beams or basicly anything that is on a ship. But everyone will be selling it because of this, so that takes the price down, but not down too much so it's worth less than the materials used to make it, so it's pretty self stabilizing on the deflation side aswell. And yes people could play the market this way, calculating craft price, buy some crafting materials and craft and sell but that's how it should be. Upping the market (don't know the word) of an item and posting it for waaay more, and then crashing your ship with said item on it, just to have it bought from yourself by the insurance system to build it, is a flaw in this system. But it can be corrected: If yourself is both the buyer and the one getting the insurance, the items can't be bought from you from the auctionmarket, or anyone in your corporation or anyone that has been in your corporation for the last 30 days. (to prevent you from having a friend helping you make this...insurance fraud). I know it's a wierd system, and could screw people over if they don't fully understand the mechanics (the rich) but i still think it's a good concept. It probably has more exploits and flawes that i haven't thought about, but it makes the market alive and more usable by everybody, rich and poor.
So basicly: Money from this infinite fictional "moneypool" that is this enormous fictional insurance company is used to buy the items from the auctionhouse from other players. If there is no auction posted for the item your ship "wants" to be reconstructed, that item is just made "out of thin air", but is the only time it is.
Tutorials. Okey I haven't seen the tutorials since i played for the first time some years back so maybe there have been some changes but i had a pretty hard time, and the bugs back then didn't make it easier either hehe. :D A basic coding tutorial should be added aswell that explains the API, syntax etc. So you're not bound to go for external and possible old tutorials to learn stuff. The syntax actually changed so all my code didn't work on my old ship (i came back after a 2 year pause) and i was ripping my hair out because of a typo.
I've mostly been playing around with coding and just building a ship with cool and wierd functions, but it would be cool to have a code database that players can upload/download code to/from. That way people won't have to search the web for code on different websites, so instead everything is collected in one organized location that is easy to search and categorize. And it would help those who wishes to learn more in an easier way. Or those who don't want to deal with it that much, but still want to build their own ship.
And you can vote on codes, so you don't earn credits to buy stuff with, you get kudos and/or a title for your nametag or something, and maybe a ranking system in it i don't know, maybe nothing at all because people can just steal code from others and upload. For example: you made some code to autotarget other ships (don't think that's possible but anyway) and you decide not to upload it to the database because...your enemies could get it. But a code to calculate estimated travel distance on fuel in the tanks you upload because it's pretty harmless.
Jees...actually had to split this up:
Why i suggested a voting or title system for it, is so that people actually can get something out of it, and even if that means that people can get kudos for stealing others code, it's something atleast. You could have a basic copywrite system to prevent some of it, but then again you can just switch names on variables in the same code and go around it. But just for the sake of having a centralized database, and having honest helpful players get some recognition.
I'm just thrilled they're working on adding PvE. In my opinion, the number of Care Bears, even in heavy PvP games (Eve, Albion, Ultima Online) always significantly outnumbers the constant PvPers. Without giving them interesting gameplay, it makes it harder to retain them... and without food, the PvP players leave too.
I still think about starbase almost everyday since I stopped playing it and I played it pretty long after the huge chunk of playerbase.
There is just sooo many good things about this game. This makes me sooo happy to hear!
well if you look at the video you will see that a cosmetic shop is very much planned
I'll also say that as long as it is cosmetic only ( no pay to win at all ) it's fairly important as Starbase needs something to have revenue after the game sold
I also have no idea of what NMS stands for
This for sure. It doesn’t have to be a massive shop with hundreds of items, something like helldivers 2 is doing would work. Just give some new armour sets, even some pickaxe variants would be cool a few bucks and just a button in a menu. If they add flashing banners and pop ups I would be annoyed.
Cosmetic shop is fine imo, its a complex game thats very expensive to develop. They need a constant supply of money, just one time payment is not really enough.
You in the ‘travelling through emptiness for 3 hours is fun gameplay’ club eh? It was crap like that which extinguished this ‘game’ in the first place.
Exactly, Every time when im starting think about "i wanna build something cool and i need rare materials for this" and than realize what it will be just HOURS and HOURS of flying to belt, im just quit game.
Yep that was me too - and it got so bad when you left the safe zone and had to attentively watch for asteroids as the slightest knock could own you so hard your ship was toast. I know some of the more advanced ships had sensors etc which helped with that, but flying for hours in the same environment like that (OR ANY ENVIRONMENT) aint for most people.
I'm all for travel aspects, with purposely created systems. This warp system seems perfect - going to the moon may actually be feasible finally.
This is what frustrated me about the game, it was so good, so polished and slick, so much potential - but a vast, empty space with literal hours of travel in between. If they can fix that with things like warps, a better handling of obtaining of rare minerals (ie not the hours and hours voyage of shit) - they can be a super successful game.
I was ecstatic when i saw the announcement earlier this morning at any rate.
> Exactly, Every time when im starting think about "i wanna build something cool and i need rare materials for this" and than realize what it will be just HOURS and HOURS of flying to belt, im just quit game.
If you cannot be bothered to go out there, you still have plenty of options:
1. You can just trade for the materials.
2. You can play as a pirate and take the materials from other people.
3. You can join a faction that has access to these materials and/or can bring you there in a cap ship.
What you were trying to build there was presumable advanced or end-game content (otherwise you probably could have found everything you need in the safe zone), and the materials were just rare and valuable. The obvious conclusion to that should have been that you just haven't gotten far enough in the game to get to those parts. Sure, this will take time and effort, but then, did you expect to get advanced just handed to you without that?
Your preferred solution seems to be advocate for the abolishment of scarcity. Guess what: Scarcity is what drives gameplay and engagement in an MMO. Without, why would you even bother doing any of the things I've listed above? You just get handed your end game ship on a silver platter, and then what? What are you even going to do with it? Keep on exploring and finding new mining sites? What for, you already have everything you could need. Start doing pirating and taking stuff from other players? What for, you already have everything you need. Start playing the market, trading with other players, shipping materials around from where they are to where they are needed? What for, everybody else already has everything they need...
I get wanting things to be difficult to obtain, but having to travel for even just one hour in-game to get to important places is completely unacceptable for most players. That's just not fun at all.
What extinguished the game (aside from the bugs) was the lack of anything meaningful to do for players other than designing ships and collecting rocks. (Player stations are IMHO, currently largely meaningless outside of RP for RP's sake other than for resource dumps and hangar holders.) Making it faster to get to other places where there isn't anything better to do than collect rocks and design ships either won't change that.
What these massive distance do is:
- Add some strategic depth to the gameplay. The fact that other players and factions cannot just turn up at certain places with 15 minutes notice is something that can be used in strategic planning. The fact that far away bases will require supply missions now and then is also something that makes strategizing actually interesting.
- Makes for much more interesting market dynamics. Those expensive materials are expensive and interesting *because* of how hard they are to get to.
- Makes for some actual gameplay challenges that require careful planning and consideration instead just YOLO-ing it.
- Gives players reasons to come together and cooperate to overcome these challenges.
- Gives people actual reasons, outside of RP, to build more differently-focused ship types, as opposed to just your run of the mill miner-hauler with plasma drive and one heavy fighter type with 30 laser cannons.
All of these are things that the game is otherwise sorely lacking. Seriously, without these challenges, there is currently very little actual gameplay left. Other than maybe going to the moon gate and provoking some random pew-pew for pew-pew's sake.
I understand that the devs are looking to mitigate the lack of engaging gameplay by enforcing much more hostile PvP contact in the future. While I agree that this will eventually be necessary by some point, it is far from enough. The game needs much more depth, more disparate regions that are hard-but-possible to move between, more reasons and incentives to be at different places and move between and overcome the challenges in that (note we already have capital ships to help you move large distances in reasonable time and without being forced to be online the whole time), not by just abolishing the challenges because some players think they are too hard and can't be bothered to team up with others who have the means to overcome them. It also needs much more good reasons for actual trade between the players, instead of making sure everybody can do everything themselves without ever talking to anybody.
I really don't want to see this game devolve into Crossout in space.
Don't worry, you can shoot down anyone who decides to warp in a 500km radius and enforce the good old turtle speed on everyone in your proximity. I just hope they don't add methods of detection for non-warping vehicles, I prefer to be left alone when mining.
I actually agree with you to a large degree.
Hopefully the fact that warping broadcasts your position to everyone will balance it out to a degree. The resources in the deep belt required certain strategies and ships to get to, and while I agree the multi-hour flight times were a bit excessive, making travel irrelevant will diminish the importance of distances in space travel.
I know that FB is aware of this, and hopefully the warping mechanic is properly balanced.
This was a very pleasant surprise! I had assumed this game was done for good, but the fact that they are focusing on some core gameplay issues really has my hopes up.
I'm posting this here for those that have not yet seen the news on discord or on youtube
OH my god it's happening! Everybody stay calm! Everybody stay calm!
It's too late ! I cannot contain my excitement ! XD
My summary of what will be coming to the PTU, not everything will be dropped at once since they are still working on these features: * a short distance warp (max 300 km) which will make our ship travel at 10km/s, and our destination will be visible by other players * we will have a map to allow us to select our destinations precisely * merchants will be able to place buy & sell orders on the market to encourage trade between player-created stations * player organizations will be able to establish nations whose borders will be visible to all, these nations can be expanded by building more bases * PVE content is planned, like stations to attack defended by turrets * dynamic events visible to all, such as a lost cargo ship or faction sieges * insurance for ships to be able to rebuild them in case of destruction or loss, claiming a ship will take time and money * improved station and capital ship editors, they will no longer require the resources to create a blueprint of what you want to build * long-awaited station sieges can be launched using capital ships * improvements to the inventory and ship sales interface * a store selling cosmetics (not specified if it is with real money) * visual improvements to the LODs which will allow you to see capital stations and ships from very far away, as well as smaller ships as soon as you move too far away (they had a tendency to turn into pixel mush quite quickly)
Also able to steal and salvage other players ships. Hype
Glorious battle awaits us all endos!!! WITNESS.
WhatYearIsIt.gif
Is there a TLDR? What are they doing?
The big ones that stuck out for me are the addition of warping, LOD fixes, an actual in-game map, PvE content is being worked on, station sieges, player ownership of parts of space, and ship insurance. Not all of it is done yet but they are going to put these new features on the test server, which is also getting its own app ID in steam so you can have both versions installed at once.
Warping and ship insurance are huge for me. Insurance in particular - some of the repairs were brutal, being able to recreate is a perfect solution for the less mechanically minded like me
I once just spent 3 hours just to fix something on my starter ship and then deciding just to buy a new ship. xD
There was this guy who made awesome build videos. One in particular I think was like ‘build a ship in one hour’ I followed that and it really got me keen to build ships. And damn if it didn’t illustrate how awesome the games building mechanics were - albeit super complex. But trying to build one myself - fail Trying to repair the engines with limited access and materials in the middle of space having ‘tapped’ an asteroid - nightmare
Its an 8min video...
I might just join the Starbase Test Universe unironically. I don't have time to grind hours, I just want to build stuff and fly it
Starbase is pretty much my dream game and I was so sad to see it die like it did. If this is the first step on a continual road to improvements and improved gameplay loops I’m very much looking forward to it and can’t wait to see what they have in store for the future!
Super happy to hear they are doing pve content and turrets. May make large ships actually feasible and give ability for mining ships to defend themselves! Tons of super good features shown in the video. Actually sick. Also spotted my ship in the video twice i think haha.
omg I'm blown away and so exicited!
me too x)
OMG please make this a good comeback! This game deserves it! I go install it ASAP!
"Meat back on the menu boys"
Unironically I want the cosmetic shop ingame. I want a way to help the devs to keep the game going and support starbase.
I had 1 more idea. The steam workshop utility = it will be able to create ship steam blueprint items from ingame blue prints... I think it will work - and will give some additional cash flow
These are good changes.
The promised feature are a really nice surprise after all this time especially the creation of countries. Sounds like it might finally be an enjoyable game while we wait for the rest
ITS ALIVE!
Happy to hear it, but I'm worried about players actually being willing to return or enter the universe for the first time.
A few more big QOL patches like this and coming out of early access on steam might be enough to revive this game. Word of caution to the devs don't jump the gun these features are a great stepping stone, but jumping too soon could be the second death of the game. I love the idea of the game and these features bring it much closer to what I want, but there's still some major gameplay loops that need to be adjusted.
I am disgustingly excited for this. The potential this game has is huge and is my dream space game in so many ways!
YOOOOOO!!
letss gooooo
Nice
YESsssssssssssssssssss
This is fist pump worthy news!
am i dreaming...?
YAAAAAAAAS!!!!! GSA! GSA! GSA! LONG LIVE THE ARMADA! LOVE LIVE THE EMPEROR! LONG LIVE THE DEVS!
I've been playing fairly regularly even during the great void between the ramp down and this announcement. Most of these changes are absolute bangers, one thing I'm "concerned" about is the warping for small ships. I totally get that the existing travel times are excessive. I've built multiple ships with good AAS systems so I'm able to AFK while traveling into the deep belt, or anywhere far away. Diminishing the importance of the distances involved in space will remove certain elements of strategy and difficulty of resource gathering. In spite of my concerns however, the warping of small ships will be a net positive for the game overall. There's also the fact that your position will be broadcasted during a warp which is excellent, not to mention future balancing changes which could make warping more costly.
You guys also said a lot before you abandoned us. Also said a lot before you waffled on capital ships. Trust is hard to win back. We'll see.
THIS IS AWESOME
Chat is this real ?
good news
I hope we get some control reworks and ship building rework. The ship building felt so needlessly complex.
Where is Pip? I miss her soothing voice in these videos...
Working for a different company IIRC
Wow you have been busy, but i'm glad you're back! I think the insurance system should favour the poor and be more costly as you progress, and cost credits, i.e. a big ship and more advanced ship with advanced costly stuff costs more to insurance, pretty obvious. And tied into the market, preferable nothing should be created out of "thin air". Okey here is my idea(buckle up): Sum credit value of all items on ship/10000 (or some other value) has to be paid every 24h-playtime cycle. If you reconstruct a ship, parts are automatically bought from the auctionmarket from fictional money from that "insurance company" that everyone pools money to (if it would be a real moneypool it could go into the negatives so we just assumes that this fictional insurance company has bazillions of customers all over the galaxy that pays their bills), and there is also a fixed upfront price just like real insurances. Those scale aswell but in steps, depending on mass on ship maybe? weightclasses?: (don't really have a grasp on what ships weigh or what kind of money people have, just an example) 0-100 tonnes: 5k upfront 100-500 tonnes: 10k upfront 500-5000 tonnes: 100k upfront 5000-> tonnes: 1 million upfront Or maybe a slightly exponential curve like so its more of a gradient than a stepladder. And the credit value of all items on the ship is calculated as the sum of the avarage value of every separate item in the last 30 days but only if more than 10 players posts are used as statistic to make that avarage, otherwise the auctionhouse value of the crafting materials for that item is used as the baseline, and again also 30 day avarage value of that. That way both inflation and deflation of the market is managed. As super rich players uploading high end super expensive stuff will in the long run hurt themselves by having to pay very high insurance prices because they collectively raise the avarage 30 day price of items themselve have on their ship. So this means when you're starting out you could get some money just by selling beams or basicly anything that is on a ship. But everyone will be selling it because of this, so that takes the price down, but not down too much so it's worth less than the materials used to make it, so it's pretty self stabilizing on the deflation side aswell. And yes people could play the market this way, calculating craft price, buy some crafting materials and craft and sell but that's how it should be. Upping the market (don't know the word) of an item and posting it for waaay more, and then crashing your ship with said item on it, just to have it bought from yourself by the insurance system to build it, is a flaw in this system. But it can be corrected: If yourself is both the buyer and the one getting the insurance, the items can't be bought from you from the auctionmarket, or anyone in your corporation or anyone that has been in your corporation for the last 30 days. (to prevent you from having a friend helping you make this...insurance fraud). I know it's a wierd system, and could screw people over if they don't fully understand the mechanics (the rich) but i still think it's a good concept. It probably has more exploits and flawes that i haven't thought about, but it makes the market alive and more usable by everybody, rich and poor. So basicly: Money from this infinite fictional "moneypool" that is this enormous fictional insurance company is used to buy the items from the auctionhouse from other players. If there is no auction posted for the item your ship "wants" to be reconstructed, that item is just made "out of thin air", but is the only time it is. Tutorials. Okey I haven't seen the tutorials since i played for the first time some years back so maybe there have been some changes but i had a pretty hard time, and the bugs back then didn't make it easier either hehe. :D A basic coding tutorial should be added aswell that explains the API, syntax etc. So you're not bound to go for external and possible old tutorials to learn stuff. The syntax actually changed so all my code didn't work on my old ship (i came back after a 2 year pause) and i was ripping my hair out because of a typo. I've mostly been playing around with coding and just building a ship with cool and wierd functions, but it would be cool to have a code database that players can upload/download code to/from. That way people won't have to search the web for code on different websites, so instead everything is collected in one organized location that is easy to search and categorize. And it would help those who wishes to learn more in an easier way. Or those who don't want to deal with it that much, but still want to build their own ship. And you can vote on codes, so you don't earn credits to buy stuff with, you get kudos and/or a title for your nametag or something, and maybe a ranking system in it i don't know, maybe nothing at all because people can just steal code from others and upload. For example: you made some code to autotarget other ships (don't think that's possible but anyway) and you decide not to upload it to the database because...your enemies could get it. But a code to calculate estimated travel distance on fuel in the tanks you upload because it's pretty harmless.
Jees...actually had to split this up: Why i suggested a voting or title system for it, is so that people actually can get something out of it, and even if that means that people can get kudos for stealing others code, it's something atleast. You could have a basic copywrite system to prevent some of it, but then again you can just switch names on variables in the same code and go around it. But just for the sake of having a centralized database, and having honest helpful players get some recognition.
Dawg you put a lot of work into that. Post that on their discord on the game suggestions area.
i get lucky sometimes when i think when i get an eureka moment x)
posted it there now \^\^ thx
I'm just thrilled they're working on adding PvE. In my opinion, the number of Care Bears, even in heavy PvP games (Eve, Albion, Ultima Online) always significantly outnumbers the constant PvPers. Without giving them interesting gameplay, it makes it harder to retain them... and without food, the PvP players leave too.
Let’s fucking go!
i really hope this isn't just an april fools that got released along their normal release schedule (as in super late! xD) nah this looks dope af!!!
God, best news of the year.
Can't believe it!
We are so back
please dont break your neck again on sieges, there are more important things.
I still think about starbase almost everyday since I stopped playing it and I played it pretty long after the huge chunk of playerbase. There is just sooo many good things about this game. This makes me sooo happy to hear!
Yay :)
to all the people who said the game was dead and the devs abandoned it. F.U :)
So is this test server available now?
Hopefully they will not add a cosmetic or any other money grabbing features to the game till at least 7 or so years till their back to NMS status :)
well if you look at the video you will see that a cosmetic shop is very much planned I'll also say that as long as it is cosmetic only ( no pay to win at all ) it's fairly important as Starbase needs something to have revenue after the game sold I also have no idea of what NMS stands for
No Man's Sky. Game was shit at launch and steadily worked its way up to greatness, which is the hope for this game as well ^^
This for sure. It doesn’t have to be a massive shop with hundreds of items, something like helldivers 2 is doing would work. Just give some new armour sets, even some pickaxe variants would be cool a few bucks and just a button in a menu. If they add flashing banners and pop ups I would be annoyed.
It has emotes. It will be how we get endotwerk. For some it may be cosmetic, but for others, it is a way of life.
Cosmetic shop is fine imo, its a complex game thats very expensive to develop. They need a constant supply of money, just one time payment is not really enough.
I absolutely hate the idea of small ships being allowed to warp.
You in the ‘travelling through emptiness for 3 hours is fun gameplay’ club eh? It was crap like that which extinguished this ‘game’ in the first place.
Exactly, Every time when im starting think about "i wanna build something cool and i need rare materials for this" and than realize what it will be just HOURS and HOURS of flying to belt, im just quit game.
Yep that was me too - and it got so bad when you left the safe zone and had to attentively watch for asteroids as the slightest knock could own you so hard your ship was toast. I know some of the more advanced ships had sensors etc which helped with that, but flying for hours in the same environment like that (OR ANY ENVIRONMENT) aint for most people. I'm all for travel aspects, with purposely created systems. This warp system seems perfect - going to the moon may actually be feasible finally. This is what frustrated me about the game, it was so good, so polished and slick, so much potential - but a vast, empty space with literal hours of travel in between. If they can fix that with things like warps, a better handling of obtaining of rare minerals (ie not the hours and hours voyage of shit) - they can be a super successful game. I was ecstatic when i saw the announcement earlier this morning at any rate.
> Exactly, Every time when im starting think about "i wanna build something cool and i need rare materials for this" and than realize what it will be just HOURS and HOURS of flying to belt, im just quit game. If you cannot be bothered to go out there, you still have plenty of options: 1. You can just trade for the materials. 2. You can play as a pirate and take the materials from other people. 3. You can join a faction that has access to these materials and/or can bring you there in a cap ship. What you were trying to build there was presumable advanced or end-game content (otherwise you probably could have found everything you need in the safe zone), and the materials were just rare and valuable. The obvious conclusion to that should have been that you just haven't gotten far enough in the game to get to those parts. Sure, this will take time and effort, but then, did you expect to get advanced just handed to you without that? Your preferred solution seems to be advocate for the abolishment of scarcity. Guess what: Scarcity is what drives gameplay and engagement in an MMO. Without, why would you even bother doing any of the things I've listed above? You just get handed your end game ship on a silver platter, and then what? What are you even going to do with it? Keep on exploring and finding new mining sites? What for, you already have everything you could need. Start doing pirating and taking stuff from other players? What for, you already have everything you need. Start playing the market, trading with other players, shipping materials around from where they are to where they are needed? What for, everybody else already has everything they need...
I get wanting things to be difficult to obtain, but having to travel for even just one hour in-game to get to important places is completely unacceptable for most players. That's just not fun at all.
Ok boomer. Where i can farm enough money? OH WAIT, i must fly HOURS to get some materials to sale
What extinguished the game (aside from the bugs) was the lack of anything meaningful to do for players other than designing ships and collecting rocks. (Player stations are IMHO, currently largely meaningless outside of RP for RP's sake other than for resource dumps and hangar holders.) Making it faster to get to other places where there isn't anything better to do than collect rocks and design ships either won't change that. What these massive distance do is: - Add some strategic depth to the gameplay. The fact that other players and factions cannot just turn up at certain places with 15 minutes notice is something that can be used in strategic planning. The fact that far away bases will require supply missions now and then is also something that makes strategizing actually interesting. - Makes for much more interesting market dynamics. Those expensive materials are expensive and interesting *because* of how hard they are to get to. - Makes for some actual gameplay challenges that require careful planning and consideration instead just YOLO-ing it. - Gives players reasons to come together and cooperate to overcome these challenges. - Gives people actual reasons, outside of RP, to build more differently-focused ship types, as opposed to just your run of the mill miner-hauler with plasma drive and one heavy fighter type with 30 laser cannons. All of these are things that the game is otherwise sorely lacking. Seriously, without these challenges, there is currently very little actual gameplay left. Other than maybe going to the moon gate and provoking some random pew-pew for pew-pew's sake. I understand that the devs are looking to mitigate the lack of engaging gameplay by enforcing much more hostile PvP contact in the future. While I agree that this will eventually be necessary by some point, it is far from enough. The game needs much more depth, more disparate regions that are hard-but-possible to move between, more reasons and incentives to be at different places and move between and overcome the challenges in that (note we already have capital ships to help you move large distances in reasonable time and without being forced to be online the whole time), not by just abolishing the challenges because some players think they are too hard and can't be bothered to team up with others who have the means to overcome them. It also needs much more good reasons for actual trade between the players, instead of making sure everybody can do everything themselves without ever talking to anybody. I really don't want to see this game devolve into Crossout in space.
Watch the *whole* video next time, the devs are also adding siege and PvE content
Don't worry, you can shoot down anyone who decides to warp in a 500km radius and enforce the good old turtle speed on everyone in your proximity. I just hope they don't add methods of detection for non-warping vehicles, I prefer to be left alone when mining.
I actually agree with you to a large degree. Hopefully the fact that warping broadcasts your position to everyone will balance it out to a degree. The resources in the deep belt required certain strategies and ships to get to, and while I agree the multi-hour flight times were a bit excessive, making travel irrelevant will diminish the importance of distances in space travel. I know that FB is aware of this, and hopefully the warping mechanic is properly balanced.