That's incredible, finally a useful comment!
I agree with most of your points, I'll only answer when I have things to point out.
Oh no we aren't saying he's choosing those guys, it was mainly to say that he should listen and even look for critics. People always saying "it's perfect" doesn't help. It was also a way to introduce that wall of text which is mainly composed of.. critics ^^
Well I think there are already a ton of resources for new players, the problem is mainly to get up to date content (and also for new players to know if the content they're currently looking at is up to date or not). It's another argument for the fact it doesn't help to refactor everything that was working nicely before. For the lack of players my guess is it's mainly due to the way the website looks, and all the (breaking) bugs. It's also due to the learning cliff as you say indeed, but I think the reasons I just named are doing the most damage here.
Of course bugs are inevitable. But too many bugs are a problem, that's what we meant. Haxus should really try his best to ship less bugs, to make the game less buggy. Because it's what it is currently, and has been for years. And it seems to be getting worse - and it is driving away players.
Well yeah, Haxus can do whatever he want with his game obviously. But we wanted to point out we had more fun before. OnePercent feels the same, I would love to hear other old players about that (even Anr seemed to agree, I guess it's a huge clue there lol)
That's the part I agree the least with you (I totally agree about the limbo part btw). The fact people need to add systems to their land and keep paying is a pain in the ass to a multiplayer empire. Because people can forget, and people can stop paying for a few months to come back later. Before we just had to visit systems, and we had enough time to see when it was needed before decay occuring, so we could keep the stuff of inactive players. Now it's just pressing a button, and if you forget your city is lost within a few days (for example if you are still building it and need to do things for a few days and can't get ingame, it can be enough to lose it). And btw is that functionnality clear for a new player? My guess is it's not, and again it's way too quick so people doesn't have enough time to react/learn.
The least Haxus could do is asking to add to land or not >when creating a city< in a uncolonized system, something like that. So it's not hidden somewhere.
It was also another way to ask "why this change" I guess, why change this when the previous ways were fine. Why do this, while not fixing far greater issues first?
And no, now you'll find nothing since the game is huge and there's like 10 active players :P
Ghost cities were fun and helped to hide that fact.
It is quite. I've always heard it was an issue. There is server lag sometimes, and there were at the restart (we think, we may be wrong here). It can be a problem because it's costing him money, maybe more than needed. The 2014 shutdown happened because he couldn't pay for them any more while the game was free (IIRC).
Yup warp is nice and its new functionalities are nice too. But waiting for 2 entire months to get warp 8 is total bullshit here. We should have ways to reduce the time required I dunno. Maybe these patents should cost a huge amount of money intead of a huge amount of time. Waiting for a process to finish is not fun. Creating cities to get enough money is a little more (though not that fun too x))
I may have not phrased that correctly. The idea was to point his troubles at priorizing. Creating nice entry conditions for new players (like a free try period) should come first, before refactoring the designer for example.
Just helping new players won't be enough. The issue here is at the root of Haxus planning and "product ownership". As long as this is not fixed, this game will have a hard time getting anywhere and attracting new players. Thus being in danger of disappearing. I guess this was kinda the purpose of that wall of text, I should have put what I just said in there. It's not really we want the old SoH back, it's we think the old one was better and as such we have concerns about the current direction. Of course Haxus may not agree with us here but it's worth a try.
Can someone link this thread to him the next time he's online? It has been more than a week now... By the way if I might add, I'd say this is another example of the issue here. It's not normal that it's that hard to reach Haxus (we can't phone him obviously).
I agree with most of your points, I'll only answer when I have things to point out.
(05-22-2020, 11:20 PM)Vhwatgoes Wrote: 1. You need critics, not yes men.
- I don't think Haxus intentionally surrounds himself with people who always agree with him. If you feel there is a lack of criticism, you should be the first to step up and deliver some. This post is a start.
Oh no we aren't saying he's choosing those guys, it was mainly to say that he should listen and even look for critics. People always saying "it's perfect" doesn't help. It was also a way to introduce that wall of text which is mainly composed of.. critics ^^
Quote:2. Community
- In terms of player count, this universe is definitely pretty weak. I can tell you players old and new are dropping off like flies over freezes and limbo. The game is just not stable yet, and it generates a lot of frustration when you finally make the time to sit down and play some Hazeron only for your only avatar to become disconnected 10 minutes into your session, you have an asteroid that destroys your world in a matter of hours, and there is nothing you can do but wait for Haxus to personally attend to you. I have thankfully not encountered too much of this, but I can guarantee every single player experiences it several times in their first week. That is substantially higher than your standard video game where it should be a one in a million occurrence.
- To your point about "This game is breaking apart and loosing everyone's interest." how about we look at that. The lack of new players is due to the ridiculous learning cliff. The game is easy once you have a grasp, but there are not a lot of resources or support for new players. We could all be helping with this if we want to play with more people.
Well I think there are already a ton of resources for new players, the problem is mainly to get up to date content (and also for new players to know if the content they're currently looking at is up to date or not). It's another argument for the fact it doesn't help to refactor everything that was working nicely before. For the lack of players my guess is it's mainly due to the way the website looks, and all the (breaking) bugs. It's also due to the learning cliff as you say indeed, but I think the reasons I just named are doing the most damage here.
Quote:
- It's pointless to complain about there being bugs. Unfortunately we have to accept that this one-man project will have bugs. He doesn't have a QA team at his side, and this game is too complex for him to run through for every patch. The difference between this, Minecraft and Rimworld, is Haxus is the only one-man team in the world trying to develop a totally persistent MMO, which many would say is a stupidly unrealistic project. We are facing those reasons why it is so.
Of course bugs are inevitable. But too many bugs are a problem, that's what we meant. Haxus should really try his best to ship less bugs, to make the game less buggy. Because it's what it is currently, and has been for years. And it seems to be getting worse - and it is driving away players.
Quote:
- I would like to open up this topic more. I suspect Hazeron might be becoming a different game than you expected. Haxus eluded in his "When will hazeron be done?" post that what the game is now is not the same vision he had decades ago for the game. I just came from a terrible Warframe binge, a game that just added multicrew spaceships after starting out as a run and gun ninja shooter. The game is nothing like they envisioned it to be 7 years ago. My point is that it's not unusual for games that run this long to change very much over their lifetime.
Well yeah, Haxus can do whatever he want with his game obviously. But we wanted to point out we had more fun before. OnePercent feels the same, I would love to hear other old players about that (even Anr seemed to agree, I guess it's a huge clue there lol)
Quote:7. Harder Decay
- I must stress that as a player of a small empire, I will argue it is actually way easier. The Land system gives empires a suitable expansion limit that is super easy to manage within, but an empire such as yours should have no problem acquiring thousands of systems with so many players. The land system however reduces the value of scoring empires by system count. It never really represented empires well, and imo should be some significant objective such as a ringworld count instead or special research, another discussion for later. I don't think the reasons would be limited server resources, I find it to be a an equalizer between large empires and newer empires. Did you see Weltreich in U5? That was the largest empire ever made, the vast majority by a single player that actively crushed newcomers. Nobody was ever going to match up to that. The tighter expansion limits are harder on those that seriously want to expand, and you still can, but it's far easier for those that expand within their means. My account alone could double your empire's score on the leaderboard in a day, but that would be it. I don't want 60 systems because that's stupid. Combined with the removal of ship and crew size gates, the game is more fair towards new players, which we all want.
- The loss of ghost cities is a bit sad, I do remember those being cool, but I think this is a net positive change. Now the cities you find will be of active players instead.
That's the part I agree the least with you (I totally agree about the limbo part btw). The fact people need to add systems to their land and keep paying is a pain in the ass to a multiplayer empire. Because people can forget, and people can stop paying for a few months to come back later. Before we just had to visit systems, and we had enough time to see when it was needed before decay occuring, so we could keep the stuff of inactive players. Now it's just pressing a button, and if you forget your city is lost within a few days (for example if you are still building it and need to do things for a few days and can't get ingame, it can be enough to lose it). And btw is that functionnality clear for a new player? My guess is it's not, and again it's way too quick so people doesn't have enough time to react/learn.
The least Haxus could do is asking to add to land or not >when creating a city< in a uncolonized system, something like that. So it's not hidden somewhere.
It was also another way to ask "why this change" I guess, why change this when the previous ways were fine. Why do this, while not fixing far greater issues first?
And no, now you'll find nothing since the game is huge and there's like 10 active players :P
Ghost cities were fun and helped to hide that fact.
Quote:It's also not really our problem to speculate on if the hardware can handle the universe, it hasn't been an issue ever.
It is quite. I've always heard it was an issue. There is server lag sometimes, and there were at the restart (we think, we may be wrong here). It can be a problem because it's costing him money, maybe more than needed. The 2014 shutdown happened because he couldn't pay for them any more while the game was free (IIRC).
Quote:
- The last gate. Warp has a lot of value now, it always sort of has. It produces emissions even from ships, which is awesome, but also helps detect and find empires. It is a whole era of an empire's gameplay. Each level of warp opens them up to more and more of the galaxy, and in the meantime you can be playing around the smaller spaces of sectors you have.
- Progression has always been a problem with the game. The patent system was an attempt to flatten it versus the rng of the TL system, and we know the attempts after that. I think it is best that it be playable for new empires, otherwise regular galaxy resets can be used to repeatedly level the field.
Yup warp is nice and its new functionalities are nice too. But waiting for 2 entire months to get warp 8 is total bullshit here. We should have ways to reduce the time required I dunno. Maybe these patents should cost a huge amount of money intead of a huge amount of time. Waiting for a process to finish is not fun. Creating cities to get enough money is a little more (though not that fun too x))
Quote:11. Final complaints
- It's useless to complain about a fix coming too late. He fixed it, and it should be celebrated. You're just complaining about stuff he added that you've wanted for a while. What do you really want? It's too late, maybe he shouldn't have bothered? It's not constructive, I think your frustration is just coming through strong in your final words.
I may have not phrased that correctly. The idea was to point his troubles at priorizing. Creating nice entry conditions for new players (like a free try period) should come first, before refactoring the designer for example.
Quote:12. My take on the game and what we should do.
- I think you need to step back and ask yourself what you want from the game, and constructively work with Haxus in achieving that. I too wish the conquest gameplay could be good, but I just don't think it's possible with one man. The game has other unique qualities that still sets it apart from all other games, and I'm certain there is a market for, such as it's numerous role-playing mechanics and emergent gameplay with other players, plus player designed empires and starships. The conquest should be a side feature of that and not the center, because it will sink.Being constructive means being open about what you want, with good intentions. Most of us want the game to succeed and to play the game we want. It's can be frustratingly slow to watch, but If you want to play old hazeron, that time has past. It's a new Hazeron now with new strengths and it's still changing. We need to be realistic that Haxus is one dude and he also wants a certain game, but despite that I believe that the game is still groundbreaking and will greatly improve.Help report bugs, tell Haxus what you like, make suggestions that you think he can feasibly add. Just motivating him will develop the game faster. Otherwise, enjoy the game and helping new players will solidify the playerbase.
Just helping new players won't be enough. The issue here is at the root of Haxus planning and "product ownership". As long as this is not fixed, this game will have a hard time getting anywhere and attracting new players. Thus being in danger of disappearing. I guess this was kinda the purpose of that wall of text, I should have put what I just said in there. It's not really we want the old SoH back, it's we think the old one was better and as such we have concerns about the current direction. Of course Haxus may not agree with us here but it's worth a try.
Can someone link this thread to him the next time he's online? It has been more than a week now... By the way if I might add, I'd say this is another example of the issue here. It's not normal that it's that hard to reach Haxus (we can't phone him obviously).