I think we are now beginning to go round in circles. I'm with AnrDaemon on this. There are no real benefits to a reset. Considering that system generation has been squarely improved and that all old-style stuff is getting recycled anyway, that leaves a reset with two points in its favour. Both are spurious. The onus is on those who want a change to prove that it considerably outweighs the presumption in favour of not deleting paying players' stuff, and they'll need a lot more than this.
1. A level playing field. Equal opportunities, because everyone starts with 0, right? But not equal outcomes: does anyone really think that while MrSteamNewbie is watching designer tutorial videos on YouTube and browsing peacefully through the exchange, Mr. Mortius will not be using his immaculate spreadsheet and already optimized doomboxes to set up infrastructure which, given his current reliance on old cities, will very probably exceed his current infrastructure capacity within a few weeks? Do you think he will be more or less motivated to do so after a reset, more or less paranoid about potential threats? I and the other veterans will be doing same thing, though not perhaps with the same zeal. The field will never be level.
Also note that the next guy after Mortius has 100 or so cities, most of which will now be deleted anyway. Literally hundreds, probably 90%+ of Weltreich's will go the same way, together with the entirety of inactive empires like PAAA or Black Wave. Is that not enough? On top of that, you will be asking for a full reset of everyone's work for the sake, probably, of the few dozen NuCities which remain, most of which are test sites or newbies' firsts anyway. Given that the playing field will never be more than thoroughly slanted, the coming old city nerf is a big enough nod in that direction. In terms of the amount which will be deleted, this "partial reset" will still probably be among the biggest data deletions Hazeron has ever undergone: everything between 2015 and mid 2018 will go. We need to stay long-sighted. Given what is already slated to change, will the game look fundamentally different one year from now, two years from now, because of a full rather than a partial reset?
2. A new player influx. Every reset has been accompanied by a mass return. A few months later, every reset has seen an equally massive exodus. Only exception is the F2P to P2P change, which lost many permanently. People realize that the game is fundamentally the same, and what turned them off then still turns them off now: limbo, lack of progression, grind, whatever it may be. The veterans saying they'd come back know this perfectly well. The only way a reset can become more than a band-aid is if Hazeron becomes a session game.
It can't, because almost every session game has a win condition. Hazeron doesn't: it has a leaderboard, sure, but what about the guy whose personal win condition is to build an amazing space station and hide on it, collecting zoological samples from around the galaxy with his UFO? Or the guy whose personal win condition is to cover an entire planet with a city? Or the girl whose personal win condition is to colonize an entire sector with nothing but statues of herself? There is no reason inherent within these people's playstyles to submit to a recurrent reset: they would periodically be forfeiting their own playstyle and all their work to people who think that conquest and the leaderboards are the sole reasons to play - and for zero benefit to themselves! In a game as open-ended as this, that is simply unfair. An "I play to win" mentality simply does not deserve to be forced on a playerbase as diverse as Hazeron's. WW2 Online resets because every so often, someone conquers all of Europe. Eve does not reset, because why should someone who's perfectly happy polishing his ship in obscurity and couldn't care less about territory be forced to start from scratch every two years? Ultimately, session play will lose you the players who play for other reasons.
The more I hear about it, the more I suspect the reset is requested for purely personal reasons rather than real and lasting improvements to Hazeron's infrastructure: ones which will hold new players for years to come. Those veterans who know why they left, I suspect, understand fully that Hazeron is still the same game, and that if they wouldn't play right now, they won't be playing a year after a reset, either. Veterans want to come back for a bit of a party, a free-for-all deathmatch where they can have lots of no-consequences fun for a few months, conquer the galaxy then leave again: something which Weltreich currently stops them from doing. And Weltreich itself wants a reset because it will have more fun when fighting for its life, and its stomps will feel more meaningful and necessary. Now, I don't call either of those bad reasons per se. But they are not for the good of the game or for the benefit of Steam players, let's be honest here. That stuff has already been promised, now, without The only benefit there is that Steam players will see is more people on the active list when they log on. I'm not sure that that effect is going to snowball as much as we are being told.
Now, the arguments against a reset are also largely personal: except the very serious argument against Hazeron permanently becoming a session game. But where arguments are purely personal, and where there is no objective and lasting gameplay benefit, I trust more weight should be given (a) to the Status Quo (b) to people who have something to lose, rather than to people asking for other people's to be taken away.
1. A level playing field. Equal opportunities, because everyone starts with 0, right? But not equal outcomes: does anyone really think that while MrSteamNewbie is watching designer tutorial videos on YouTube and browsing peacefully through the exchange, Mr. Mortius will not be using his immaculate spreadsheet and already optimized doomboxes to set up infrastructure which, given his current reliance on old cities, will very probably exceed his current infrastructure capacity within a few weeks? Do you think he will be more or less motivated to do so after a reset, more or less paranoid about potential threats? I and the other veterans will be doing same thing, though not perhaps with the same zeal. The field will never be level.
Also note that the next guy after Mortius has 100 or so cities, most of which will now be deleted anyway. Literally hundreds, probably 90%+ of Weltreich's will go the same way, together with the entirety of inactive empires like PAAA or Black Wave. Is that not enough? On top of that, you will be asking for a full reset of everyone's work for the sake, probably, of the few dozen NuCities which remain, most of which are test sites or newbies' firsts anyway. Given that the playing field will never be more than thoroughly slanted, the coming old city nerf is a big enough nod in that direction. In terms of the amount which will be deleted, this "partial reset" will still probably be among the biggest data deletions Hazeron has ever undergone: everything between 2015 and mid 2018 will go. We need to stay long-sighted. Given what is already slated to change, will the game look fundamentally different one year from now, two years from now, because of a full rather than a partial reset?
2. A new player influx. Every reset has been accompanied by a mass return. A few months later, every reset has seen an equally massive exodus. Only exception is the F2P to P2P change, which lost many permanently. People realize that the game is fundamentally the same, and what turned them off then still turns them off now: limbo, lack of progression, grind, whatever it may be. The veterans saying they'd come back know this perfectly well. The only way a reset can become more than a band-aid is if Hazeron becomes a session game.
It can't, because almost every session game has a win condition. Hazeron doesn't: it has a leaderboard, sure, but what about the guy whose personal win condition is to build an amazing space station and hide on it, collecting zoological samples from around the galaxy with his UFO? Or the guy whose personal win condition is to cover an entire planet with a city? Or the girl whose personal win condition is to colonize an entire sector with nothing but statues of herself? There is no reason inherent within these people's playstyles to submit to a recurrent reset: they would periodically be forfeiting their own playstyle and all their work to people who think that conquest and the leaderboards are the sole reasons to play - and for zero benefit to themselves! In a game as open-ended as this, that is simply unfair. An "I play to win" mentality simply does not deserve to be forced on a playerbase as diverse as Hazeron's. WW2 Online resets because every so often, someone conquers all of Europe. Eve does not reset, because why should someone who's perfectly happy polishing his ship in obscurity and couldn't care less about territory be forced to start from scratch every two years? Ultimately, session play will lose you the players who play for other reasons.
The more I hear about it, the more I suspect the reset is requested for purely personal reasons rather than real and lasting improvements to Hazeron's infrastructure: ones which will hold new players for years to come. Those veterans who know why they left, I suspect, understand fully that Hazeron is still the same game, and that if they wouldn't play right now, they won't be playing a year after a reset, either. Veterans want to come back for a bit of a party, a free-for-all deathmatch where they can have lots of no-consequences fun for a few months, conquer the galaxy then leave again: something which Weltreich currently stops them from doing. And Weltreich itself wants a reset because it will have more fun when fighting for its life, and its stomps will feel more meaningful and necessary. Now, I don't call either of those bad reasons per se. But they are not for the good of the game or for the benefit of Steam players, let's be honest here. That stuff has already been promised, now, without The only benefit there is that Steam players will see is more people on the active list when they log on. I'm not sure that that effect is going to snowball as much as we are being told.
Now, the arguments against a reset are also largely personal: except the very serious argument against Hazeron permanently becoming a session game. But where arguments are purely personal, and where there is no objective and lasting gameplay benefit, I trust more weight should be given (a) to the Status Quo (b) to people who have something to lose, rather than to people asking for other people's to be taken away.