Moderator: JC Denton
by icycalm » 15 Dec 2020 18:34
by icycalm » 18 May 2021 21:58
by icycalm » 30 May 2021 23:48
by icycalm » 31 May 2021 00:28
OmegaOne wrote:You can build a station by placing a foundation blueprint down and build it up and once done building the foundation it will have its own safezone which will expand as you expand your station. There are currently no mechanics ingame yet to siege stations, so it is currently unraidable.
If you want to know the world size inside the game:
1. The asteroid belt is 600 km high and 2000 km wide. (have forgotten the radius, but really big)
2. There are 10 moons and the closest is around 3 days (RL) continuous travel at max speed which is 150 meters per second.
by icycalm » 31 May 2021 18:24
Hello, my name is Alex Kierkegaard and I've been writing books on videogames for 16 years, including a book that explains that the genre of Starbase—first-person 4X—is not only the best videogame genre ever but also the best artform ever (because it is the genre of the universe: the universe is a first-person 4X game). I have numerous links to my books and essays to give you if you want to read more about this, but for the purposes of the current communication I will only give you one link: https://patreon.com/posts/51317891 The reason I am writing you is to warn you about the imminent release of Starbase, and the grave danger your game is in if it follows on the footsteps of previous games in the genre. ALL previous games—Life is Feudal, Atlas and Last Oasis—have been commercial failures because they leave their servers running 24/7, which means that only unhealthy players without a life end up dominating, which means healthy players with a life stop playing the game soon after release. This means that ALL these games end up with ever-dwindling playerbases and sales, until the developers end up shutting down updates and eventually the game. This will happen to Starbase too, 100%, unless you take some radical steps that I would like to discuss with your director. I have analyzed these issues for years in many essays and understand them inside and out. I can help you deal with this. Your game is awesome and deserves better than to die in a few months like all the rest of the games in the genre. Leaving servers on 24/7 is a holdover from the days of MMORPGs when it didn't matter since players couldn't really interact beyond some chatting. In games like Starbase on the other hand interaction is BRUTAL, and so it makes ZERO sense to expect the players to put up with it 24/7. I don't care what safety features you have built in your capital ships or whatever: the no-life players will grind 24/7 and utterly overwhelm the players who have a life, and thus kick them out of the game, and you will lose not only the BIGGEST demographic—including me and my clan—but also the BEST demographic (because the best players have lives). There are very simple and easy ways to fix all this, and please everyone. All you have to do to retain the players with lives is to run the servers only on the weekend, or even better only on Saturday, for say 5-6 hours. This is what I call REAL "episodic gaming". It will be like a TV show: an interactive TV show. And if you want to also please the players without lives, you can still leave a separate server running 24/7 for them. So let's talk about this. You have it in your power to make Starbase the most popular game in the genre instead of just another ghost game that only losers will play long-term. I am ready to help you at any time. Let's talk about this.
I don't expect anything to come out of this, or even a reply. Game directors, I have found, are a very narrow-minded bunch: they mostly just copy-paste other people's designs, and reskin them. That's what 99% of game directors do, and when you get an exception, when you get the 1% who actually try new stuff, they aren't interested in hearing anyone else's views as they just seem utterly incapable of grasping analysis and theory. These guys are TINKERERS, which is to say extremely PRACTICAL PEOPLE, so when you talk to them about theory, it all goes over their heads. They have ONE or TWO ideas in their heads that they want to try, and they are so deeply engaged in getting them to ACTUALLY WORK, that they have no time to think at length about anything, and even feel insulted if you insinuate to them that you ALREADY KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN, and that THEY NEED TO ADJUST THEIR COURSE ASAP. So basically game directors as a whole just stumble blindly in the dark until by sheer hard work and luck they come upon a genuinely great design that surprises even them lol. "I had no idea it'd get this popular!" (which means I had no idea what I was doing) is the hilarious refrain of innovative game directors since the beginning of time. Because they've no idea what they are doing, and they arrive at everything randomly, like infinite monkeys banging on infinite typewriters. And not a single one of them wants to hear that not everyone is a brainless monkey, and a few people CAN ACTUALLY THINK AND THINK AHEAD. I remember writing to Factorio's director years ago, telling him to hire me to help make Factorio 2 be Factorio + Planetary Annihilation. He wasn't interested, and wasn't even aware that PA is a good game, since he had only read the laughable 1/5 journalist reviews of PA. So he thought it was a bad game lol. And then, a couple years later, five Chinese guys launched Dyson Sphere Program [ > ] and made millions of dollars on Steam (and earning an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating) with precisely the blueprint I gave the Factorio dude, only without the multiplayer and the fighting. Then I contacted the Dyson Sphere Program dudes to put in multiplayer and fighting, and of course they didn't bother responding. But they DID ban me from their Steam forum after I made a thread making fun of Chinese people for not eating meat and being stick-thin, which I connected to the lack of war in their game. So, you know, no one listens to me. Eat your fucking red meat, and listen to fucking icycalm! Is that really so hard to do? That's all you need to blaze new trails in game design. Don't be a brainless monkey!
Oh well. What else is new. At least I tried, and I am still trying. But no one is listening.
by icycalm » 31 May 2021 18:34
by icycalm » 31 May 2021 18:55
There are two main novel features that make me hopeful about the balance. One is that the universe will be infinitely expanding. It's not like previous games that have a fixed size map. This, to me, means that no matter how puny your group, and how little you play, you should always be able to retreat to the farthest reaches of the current universe and find a spot where you can be alone to build in peace, and then, when you are ready, venture inwards to fight with other small groups in the fringes, while letting the massive clans and the dudes who have no life duke it out 24/7 in the center of the universe. If this plays as I imagine it, it will be a game-changer for the genre. It still won't be as cool as my episodic gaming idea, where the server is only ran on Saturdays for a few hours, but it will be the next best thing, and Starbase may well deliver it.
by icycalm » 31 May 2021 19:07
by icycalm » 31 May 2021 19:12
by icycalm » 31 May 2021 19:45
by icycalm » 01 Jun 2021 00:17
by icycalm » 01 Jun 2021 00:21
by icycalm » 02 Jun 2021 21:02
by icycalm » 09 Jun 2021 09:26
by icycalm » 22 Jun 2021 19:27
by icycalm » 22 Jun 2021 19:40
by icycalm » 05 Jul 2021 16:28
by icycalm » 12 Jul 2021 16:35
by icycalm » 20 Jul 2021 02:50
I wrote:There's no such thing as griefing. Unless you mean leaving the servers on 24/7. That's the real griefing here.
It's a war game. People are supposed to fight. Griefing is just a stupid word for war. All of war is about grief. Grow up.
The problem with these games is not griefing. Griefing is the whole reason we play these games. The problem with these games is that the devs can't seem to grasp the simple fact that people have lives and can't be available to play 24/7. So the solution is to simply run the server say every Saturday for 5-6 hours, like a TV show. No one wants to fight in the middle of the week while at work or at school. We want to fight in the weekend, and not even the entire weekend, because we have lives. We want to fight for a few hours on Friday or Saturday.
The only reason servers in MMOs are run 24/7 is because we inherited this from MMORPGs where there is no interaction between players, so it doesn't matter if the server is left on all day. But in a full loot PVP such as this, it is MADNESS to leave the server on 24/7! THAT is what griefing is: the DEVELOPERS are griefing US, by expecting us to be available to play their damn game 24/7! It is the ultimate troll, and no self-respecting person would fall for it. I would rather not play their game than abandon my life for it.
Of course I will play the game on release for a few days with my friends, until we are exhausted. And then we'll just drop out. And perhaps if it wipes again in a year, we'll play another week at that time. And the only people who'll keep playing it the whole time in between are those without lives.
The genre needs to smarten up if it's gonna survive. LiF, Atlas, Last Oasis: they all had the same problem. People just quit playing them very fast because it is INHUMAN to expect the players to give up their lives for them. And Starbase is making the same mistake. And of course developers can't understand any of this, because they don't play games. Not playing games is the typical fault of developers, and it is understandable: they spend all day in front of a screen, after all, so in their free time the last thing they want to do is play games. But this means they can't UNDERSTAND games, and need to rely on critics and playtesters. But lots of devs don't grasp this, and they thus rely on their own warped instincts (warped due to not playing games, which basically means they aren't gamers).
Anyone who's played this type of game to any depth would understand immediately what I am talking about. Anyone who DOESN'T play this type of game, would have no idea what the fuss is about.
I hope these devs wise up before the game dies like all the rest of them. I've tried warning them but they aren't listening. Simple solution: run the server a limited number of hours on the weekend. The first good FP4X game to do this will win the genre.
P.S. Every measure taken to counter "griefing" reduces the interactivity and thus the immersion of the world. Ultimately you could turn the game into an MMORPG and have zero griefing, but then you would have killed the game. The solution is NOT to devise complex ways to counter "griefing", the solution is TO STOP GRIEFING YOUR CUSTOMERS BY ASSUMING THAT THEY HAVE NO LIVES. Allow your players to do ANYTHING, but only on a few specific hours on the weekend. THAT'S how you make the ultimate game.
by icycalm » 20 Jul 2021 03:27
Captain Riker wrote:To be honest, I'm not a fan of these features.
For one, you are in no way going to be able to manage the overflow of reports and stuff coming in. Best you can do is try to prevent cheating, and I sometimes have doubts about that. You mention having ingame moderators? I will assume these come from the playerbase like the discord mods. Bringing in the community as mods is not a good decision, and is ripe for abuse. Especially considering these mods already have their own biases and will undoubtedly use their powers unfairly. I will not say names, but we have direct quotes from SB moderators saying they will make sure specific players get banned from the game. Also what powers do these mods have? Kicking from the game? Chat muting? Temp banning? I've been dealing with bad moderation for years. Once a rumor starts spreading by one of your enemies that you hack or cheat it's always guilty until proven innocent. Even considering there is zero evidence of something like that.
Second, this game is advertised as player driven. What is being shown is not player driven. It's just limiting how the game can be played.
The rules also make no sense. It all works around keeping new players safe. Which tbh is a flawed method of doing things. Like it implies that killing noobs even outside the safezone is a bad thing. Just in general it's not a bad thing. Even the idea of luring players out of the safezone is not a bad thing. It's all in the concept of risk vs reward. They risk trusting you and they may or may not get a reward. Tons and tons of successful games work with this method. In most cases, it doesn't scare off any players. All it does is teach them to be better at the game. If the risk is to great for the rewards as a new player, as developers you should increase the reward to make it easier to get new players out there flying again. Do that instead of creating hard to enforce rules that are over complicated.
Also, how do you define new player, and how is the regular player supposed to be able to tell who is new or not.
All you have to do is make sure it's obvious you have a greater chance of being killed outside the safezone. And people should automatically know this include things such as scamming. The playerbase isn't 9 years old. The majority are all over the age of 16, and they can read, think, and weigh risk vs reward on their own. You do not need to coddle them. They are not children. If they don't want to die, then don't leave the safezone.
by icycalm » 22 Jul 2021 19:58
Frozenbyte wrote:
Starbase Early Access - Release Time, Pricing & Updated Roadmap Details Revealed
After a long wait, Early Access is finally starting next week on Thursday, July 29th at 6PM EEST / 8AM PT / 3PM UTC. Starbase will be priced at 32.99€ / $34.99 / £27.99, and kicks off with a weeklong 10% launch discount.
When Early Access begins, the Starbase universe will be a blank canvas ready to be populated. While many new core gameplay features such as the tech tree, crafting, ship easy build mode and station easy build mode will be available on release day, we want to be clear about the state of the game at launch. Starbase launches into Early Access in a clear alpha stage, however the core features are well established and there's fun to be had for sure. Now is the time to finally open up Starbase to a bigger population and see how everything comes together. The scale and scope of the game will quickly start to show as we update more massive features to the game every two weeks in August and September, like Capital Ships and Station Siege mechanics!
Many important gameplay loops are coming to Starbase shortly after launch. The idea behind the major content updates is to ease players into the big new features, and by introducing them a few weeks apart with planned dates announced, everyone will have time to prepare for their arrival.
Details about the August and September updates, as well as the whole 2021 Roadmap can be found below.
The Next Major Updates
After a short period of tranquil mining, ship and station designing and building, as well as relatively small scale pvp engagements, the post-launch period will quickly start to heat up. The August updates will introduce Moon Bases & Mining and the massive-sized Capital Ships, while the September update that introduces Siege Mechanics will send the world into full-scale calamity, as player stations will become fully destructible and capturable.
Complete 2021 Roadmap
Full sized (4k) version available here: http://cloud.frozenbyte.fi/index.php/s/ ... w/download
We hope to see you next week!
by icycalm » 29 Jul 2021 12:32
by icycalm » 29 Jul 2021 21:20
by icycalm » 31 Jul 2021 02:00
by icycalm » 31 Jul 2021 02:54