01-23-2022, 08:44 AM
What I loved most about my time in SoH.
Building. It was awesome going from a stick to an Empire. We always play as a group so we would spread out across a planet at the time creating several cities. I think at the time everything was a "square" you just placed on the map.
You could enter buildings! I remember some even had machines you could actually use inside of them... it was very unique. Some of those buildings were many stories tall.
Vehicles. Having vehicles we could drive/fly, armor, boats was absolutely astonishing. To be able to drive threw a city you created.
Trying to land that damn rocket. We had so many laughs trying to get that thing landed, so many deaths. We played for hours fighting that thing, it was great.
Ship building. First ship we ever had was given to us by another group. We flew in -0- gravity, made our way to the bridge set down and began powering on the systems via buttons on the panel, we were totally lost. (This, this right here is what hooked us.) it wasn't much longer after this we were building our own. Like... minecraft blocks. Spent so many hours in that room building ships. Oh and you actually park your vehicles in the ship! Would even spin them around for you! I can't even tell you how many hours we lost in that game, so many.
Things we did not like.
Last time we played before all the updates an Empire had arrived.. Klingon's? don't bank me on that it's been sometime ago. We were not that old... week, maybe two? We had built what we could up to that point in defense and when they arrived, I guess a show of force they simply swept our defenses off them map in a matter of minutes. They landed in a ship almost as large as our city. They gave us two choices, die, or join. Needless to say it wasn't really a choice. After we accepted they gave us tech way beyond our ability and left us a couple ships far beyond anything we had. It was just confusing and unfun at that point, so we quit.
We decided to come back (we rotate games this is normal for us) so much had changed. The buildings at this point were some pink/purple squares with no interiors/exteriors. The unique easy to use minecraft like ship design studio had been replaced by some odd Blender style 3d program, we played with it for a bit but honestly we want to play a game not learn Blender 2.0. It honestly didn't even feel like SoH anymore. Half the game felt dumbed-down, and the other half felt overly complicated. I dunno, not sure what happened there. Needless to say we only stayed around for a few days and moved on.
My Suggestions..
Take another look at ship design. This should be a relatively easy process without any real major learning curves. This is a very large part of the game and should be open to everyone of all levels of experience. Blender is complicated and clumsy, Minecraft is not.
I think at the time the only one that had to Pay was the Empire leader? Everyone else played for free under a monthly sub paid by the Empire leader. I like this design. It keeps the empires in check. It makes the leaders of empires invested. It opens up a form of free to play for those who wish to play without pay. It keeps a form of income incoming so the burden of pay in not on any one person. It's a fair plan, and works with the game, not against it.
This may have changed already, but the last many times we started an Empire it took about 30 minutes to an hour to actually get friends in the Empire to play. Umm... was it the Capitol that had to be built? I don't remember. This needs to change. Friends need the ability to join in immediately together to play. I recall talking about playing this and passing it up more than once just because we didn't want wait to actually get in and play.
PvP. All I can say is this... If you force PvE to play PvP, PvE will leave, simple as that. Even if they attempt, as soon as it happens, they will leave. No offense, but I see a lot of the same old names with the same old ideas and quite honestly it hasn't seemed to work out very well so far. If this game is going to grow, this needs to be addressed. It makes little sense to cut out a large portion of the player base in an MMo. ~ My opinion
When you post the return of SoH I got immediate copy and paste in Discord. We can't wait to jump in again.
Building. It was awesome going from a stick to an Empire. We always play as a group so we would spread out across a planet at the time creating several cities. I think at the time everything was a "square" you just placed on the map.
You could enter buildings! I remember some even had machines you could actually use inside of them... it was very unique. Some of those buildings were many stories tall.
Vehicles. Having vehicles we could drive/fly, armor, boats was absolutely astonishing. To be able to drive threw a city you created.
Trying to land that damn rocket. We had so many laughs trying to get that thing landed, so many deaths. We played for hours fighting that thing, it was great.
Ship building. First ship we ever had was given to us by another group. We flew in -0- gravity, made our way to the bridge set down and began powering on the systems via buttons on the panel, we were totally lost. (This, this right here is what hooked us.) it wasn't much longer after this we were building our own. Like... minecraft blocks. Spent so many hours in that room building ships. Oh and you actually park your vehicles in the ship! Would even spin them around for you! I can't even tell you how many hours we lost in that game, so many.
Things we did not like.
Last time we played before all the updates an Empire had arrived.. Klingon's? don't bank me on that it's been sometime ago. We were not that old... week, maybe two? We had built what we could up to that point in defense and when they arrived, I guess a show of force they simply swept our defenses off them map in a matter of minutes. They landed in a ship almost as large as our city. They gave us two choices, die, or join. Needless to say it wasn't really a choice. After we accepted they gave us tech way beyond our ability and left us a couple ships far beyond anything we had. It was just confusing and unfun at that point, so we quit.
We decided to come back (we rotate games this is normal for us) so much had changed. The buildings at this point were some pink/purple squares with no interiors/exteriors. The unique easy to use minecraft like ship design studio had been replaced by some odd Blender style 3d program, we played with it for a bit but honestly we want to play a game not learn Blender 2.0. It honestly didn't even feel like SoH anymore. Half the game felt dumbed-down, and the other half felt overly complicated. I dunno, not sure what happened there. Needless to say we only stayed around for a few days and moved on.
My Suggestions..
Take another look at ship design. This should be a relatively easy process without any real major learning curves. This is a very large part of the game and should be open to everyone of all levels of experience. Blender is complicated and clumsy, Minecraft is not.
I think at the time the only one that had to Pay was the Empire leader? Everyone else played for free under a monthly sub paid by the Empire leader. I like this design. It keeps the empires in check. It makes the leaders of empires invested. It opens up a form of free to play for those who wish to play without pay. It keeps a form of income incoming so the burden of pay in not on any one person. It's a fair plan, and works with the game, not against it.
This may have changed already, but the last many times we started an Empire it took about 30 minutes to an hour to actually get friends in the Empire to play. Umm... was it the Capitol that had to be built? I don't remember. This needs to change. Friends need the ability to join in immediately together to play. I recall talking about playing this and passing it up more than once just because we didn't want wait to actually get in and play.
PvP. All I can say is this... If you force PvE to play PvP, PvE will leave, simple as that. Even if they attempt, as soon as it happens, they will leave. No offense, but I see a lot of the same old names with the same old ideas and quite honestly it hasn't seemed to work out very well so far. If this game is going to grow, this needs to be addressed. It makes little sense to cut out a large portion of the player base in an MMo. ~ My opinion
When you post the return of SoH I got immediate copy and paste in Discord. We can't wait to jump in again.