I love the concept for this game, and it's awesome to see how far its come over the years.
And whilst I've spent many hours since I came back last Thursday in the designer creating a ship which I did enjoy (up until its quirks REALLY started to irk me), I've essentially been unable to play this game.
Over the last week, due to server crashes, limbo, or client crashes or whatever, I've only been able to play <50% of the time.
Last Friday evening my character went into limbo. That whole weekend I was unable to play the game until Tuesday afternoon.
Mere hours later my character returned to limbo on Wednesday morning (just after midnight).
Servers went back up on Thursday I believe but with a massive roll-back and any progress I'd made that week to date was completely gone and had to redo it (including a 14-hour tech research so I can go explore)
Managed to finally get it going again, and even setup an out-of-system colony today, but there was a scheduled reset (fair enough)...but since then everytime I try to even login to my account the entire client crashes.
All this while of course the asteroid is coming. I suspect it was also rolled back with the roll back the other day, but at the same time having to rebuild a colony in the same place with no new experience etc isn't enjoyable to me, its just a chore I need to do to get to the new stuff. Same with tech, idm waiting for the techs to happen, but having to do it twice because of a roll back is just a chore.
Course right now my client won't respond at all so I can't even progress my empire or setup defences against the asteroid to protect the city I spent hours trying to make kinda nice.
All these issues I just can't keep going. If the game was free that would be one thing, but this is now a paid service, and when you can't access a service for <50% of the time (to date) I honestly don't think its acceptable.
I'll leave a couple issues (with possible solutions) that I think need to be addressed before any steam release is considered, and even if thats not on the table anymore then going forward in general;
1. First and foremost I believe this whole "you can't play the game you are paying for because we have to wait for manual attention on a server that probably crashed" needs to be addressed ASAP.
-- Any other paid MMO, a server going down for a few hours would be considered unaccptable. Let alone an entire weekend, and lets not mention the frequency this happens.
-- As this is now a paid service, I feel there needs to be attention on the backend infrastructure. I understand the idea of "I want to find the cause and fix it to prevent it happening again", but surely there has to be a way to compromise so players aren't blocked from playing a game, but the crash-cause can still be investigated. Whether this is a daily server restart, auto-restart if issues are detected (with log dumps etc), or a more complex solution such as transferring all solar systems / players / assets to a working server until the broken one can be looked at.
2. The designer. Its impressive, theres no denying that. However it is incredibly complex. I feel that removing the old designer with the new one in it's current state was far too premature. The current one needs additional tools created for it to help designers use it more easily
-- I'd right away suggest re-adding the old one back for the time being. Being able to design your own stuff is a HUGE selling point of the game I thought. Heck its why I actually came back. But only a handful of players can use the new one from what I can tell (and some of them even struggle a lot of the time), so immediately a large amount of the playerbase has been gated out of a major selling point of the game. Add it back in so everyone can design what they want until the new designer is in a state more or less anyone can use.
-- The new designer needs a lot of work, and tools! I suggested in discord the other day (during encountering a LOT of frustration) was more modes to separate out the commands. When you're designing the hull or rooms of a ship do you really need to be able to access stations, landscapes, pathing, details etc? Split it out into their own modes, it will reduce clutter and make the UI a lot less intimidating I feel.
-- One mode I think is necessary, or maybe not a mode but a tool in particular, is an AI Mode/AI Debugging tool. And I don't mean a preview->preview people. I'm on about an out-of-previewer debugger tool. I suggested this in discord the other day also (I was becoming VERY frustrated with the AI). Basically the idea was to click the grid as the 'Origin'. Click the grid a second time as the 'Destination'. The designer will then cast down from those two points to the first ROOM floors it can find (if any). In designer it will then show you the full path the AI would normally take. If for whatever reason the AI doesn't think it can get to the destination, it will draw the path right up to the point it fails and colour code it amber for example (Valid Start/End points, but incomplete path). If the AI will NEVER be able to get to either point (IE one point is out in the void of space) it will colour code the invalid point red. If the AI can get to the destination it will colour the path green. I was facing this exact issue with my ship, still no idea why, but basically my AI weren't able to get to my bridge from down the hall, they would be able to walk around their room and after I told them to move somewhere inside the room first they'd then be able to get to the bridge, but it took me a while to narrow down the point of failure because I had to keep grabbing new AI to test that one room (and I've not even tested every room yet). But I feel more debugging tools like these will help designing ships become a lot faster and less frustrating.
-- The tutorial videos could do with some updating, or were slightly misleading (notably the AI again, I followed the tutorial video, and whilst I had a fairly simple to follow corridor to the bridge, and the bridge was near identical to the tutorial ship, the AI wouldn't work until I added path nodes EVERYWHERE, contrary to waht the video said about only needing them at doors)
Thank you everyone for the help you provided me in discord etc when I asked. And sorry again for getting rather grumpy in there that one time. But I won't be playing anymore. If I cba when I can get back into my account I might publish the few designs for global edit if anyone wants to fiddle around with them (The US Capitol building, A Washington Monument, and my 4-5Deck ship design I posted in the Pictures thread)
And whilst I've spent many hours since I came back last Thursday in the designer creating a ship which I did enjoy (up until its quirks REALLY started to irk me), I've essentially been unable to play this game.
Over the last week, due to server crashes, limbo, or client crashes or whatever, I've only been able to play <50% of the time.
Last Friday evening my character went into limbo. That whole weekend I was unable to play the game until Tuesday afternoon.
Mere hours later my character returned to limbo on Wednesday morning (just after midnight).
Servers went back up on Thursday I believe but with a massive roll-back and any progress I'd made that week to date was completely gone and had to redo it (including a 14-hour tech research so I can go explore)
Managed to finally get it going again, and even setup an out-of-system colony today, but there was a scheduled reset (fair enough)...but since then everytime I try to even login to my account the entire client crashes.
All this while of course the asteroid is coming. I suspect it was also rolled back with the roll back the other day, but at the same time having to rebuild a colony in the same place with no new experience etc isn't enjoyable to me, its just a chore I need to do to get to the new stuff. Same with tech, idm waiting for the techs to happen, but having to do it twice because of a roll back is just a chore.
Course right now my client won't respond at all so I can't even progress my empire or setup defences against the asteroid to protect the city I spent hours trying to make kinda nice.
All these issues I just can't keep going. If the game was free that would be one thing, but this is now a paid service, and when you can't access a service for <50% of the time (to date) I honestly don't think its acceptable.
I'll leave a couple issues (with possible solutions) that I think need to be addressed before any steam release is considered, and even if thats not on the table anymore then going forward in general;
1. First and foremost I believe this whole "you can't play the game you are paying for because we have to wait for manual attention on a server that probably crashed" needs to be addressed ASAP.
-- Any other paid MMO, a server going down for a few hours would be considered unaccptable. Let alone an entire weekend, and lets not mention the frequency this happens.
-- As this is now a paid service, I feel there needs to be attention on the backend infrastructure. I understand the idea of "I want to find the cause and fix it to prevent it happening again", but surely there has to be a way to compromise so players aren't blocked from playing a game, but the crash-cause can still be investigated. Whether this is a daily server restart, auto-restart if issues are detected (with log dumps etc), or a more complex solution such as transferring all solar systems / players / assets to a working server until the broken one can be looked at.
2. The designer. Its impressive, theres no denying that. However it is incredibly complex. I feel that removing the old designer with the new one in it's current state was far too premature. The current one needs additional tools created for it to help designers use it more easily
-- I'd right away suggest re-adding the old one back for the time being. Being able to design your own stuff is a HUGE selling point of the game I thought. Heck its why I actually came back. But only a handful of players can use the new one from what I can tell (and some of them even struggle a lot of the time), so immediately a large amount of the playerbase has been gated out of a major selling point of the game. Add it back in so everyone can design what they want until the new designer is in a state more or less anyone can use.
-- The new designer needs a lot of work, and tools! I suggested in discord the other day (during encountering a LOT of frustration) was more modes to separate out the commands. When you're designing the hull or rooms of a ship do you really need to be able to access stations, landscapes, pathing, details etc? Split it out into their own modes, it will reduce clutter and make the UI a lot less intimidating I feel.
-- One mode I think is necessary, or maybe not a mode but a tool in particular, is an AI Mode/AI Debugging tool. And I don't mean a preview->preview people. I'm on about an out-of-previewer debugger tool. I suggested this in discord the other day also (I was becoming VERY frustrated with the AI). Basically the idea was to click the grid as the 'Origin'. Click the grid a second time as the 'Destination'. The designer will then cast down from those two points to the first ROOM floors it can find (if any). In designer it will then show you the full path the AI would normally take. If for whatever reason the AI doesn't think it can get to the destination, it will draw the path right up to the point it fails and colour code it amber for example (Valid Start/End points, but incomplete path). If the AI will NEVER be able to get to either point (IE one point is out in the void of space) it will colour code the invalid point red. If the AI can get to the destination it will colour the path green. I was facing this exact issue with my ship, still no idea why, but basically my AI weren't able to get to my bridge from down the hall, they would be able to walk around their room and after I told them to move somewhere inside the room first they'd then be able to get to the bridge, but it took me a while to narrow down the point of failure because I had to keep grabbing new AI to test that one room (and I've not even tested every room yet). But I feel more debugging tools like these will help designing ships become a lot faster and less frustrating.
-- The tutorial videos could do with some updating, or were slightly misleading (notably the AI again, I followed the tutorial video, and whilst I had a fairly simple to follow corridor to the bridge, and the bridge was near identical to the tutorial ship, the AI wouldn't work until I added path nodes EVERYWHERE, contrary to waht the video said about only needing them at doors)
Thank you everyone for the help you provided me in discord etc when I asked. And sorry again for getting rather grumpy in there that one time. But I won't be playing anymore. If I cba when I can get back into my account I might publish the few designs for global edit if anyone wants to fiddle around with them (The US Capitol building, A Washington Monument, and my 4-5Deck ship design I posted in the Pictures thread)