Why are things so slow in StarPort?

[WeGotDeathStar]

Seems nobody uses the forums anymore....why is that? Have we lost a lot of regular players or are the new players unaware of the forums.

Toonces, can you add a feature to the game where someone can directly be linked to the forums while playing the game? Or make some sort of announcement in the game that the forums exist. Maybe give someone a few tokens for successfully registering a forum account and posting constructive ideas.

Just wanna help the game get active again, flame away

[SiN]

We all left.

[JesusRocks765]

Ore patch knocked off quite a few, basically all the changes the game has had are a final kick for players who were getting bored of the game where you can have the best ship in 5 minutes.

[JuliusCaesar]

Yea....

[WeGotDeathStar]

Kinda a silly idea but here goes. Ive noticed a lot of players stop playing some servers anymore cause of having too much exp...many wont invade or fight because of the exp.

What about some sort of option where you could sell a determined amount of exp to a base or port for tokens? It would be like buying deaths and i think it would stimulate the game, think of it like this....people would be more inclined to build more to get more exp and then get the option of selling exp back to the star-bases. Then toonces can create a Tri-Quan like game using tokens to play instead of cash and if you win you get a percentage of the exp pool that has been sold to the star-bases.

It's a win win situation for toonces because he will get token sales from playing Tri-Quan, more people will play to get exp and it would be a little more fun for everyone. Exp in a perma would actually be useful for once. Make it so you can sell 25%,50% and 75% exp for tokens.

Even if the top 5 players got paid tokens for the monthly rankings would be a start, it would give people more of a reason to play.

If anyone else cares to comment and further expand this idea fell free.

[JesusRocks765]

yea, that is a good idea, that or an EXP Bank

[Caia]

People come and people go. Over the last few years it seems like more have left than come in. Toonces needs to pick a direction and go with it.

[megiddo]

No new players because the game seems dead (and it really is) and there are no changes. The old players that cling on are disturbed by any tiny change. The result is that the game loses players when it changes, loses players when it doesn't change, and just loses players as time goes on. Plus, this game won't receive as much attention anymore, in terms of code and time. It is only kept alive to bring in revenue, liked an old caged chicken.

Edit* grammar

[JesusRocks765]

No new players because the game seems dead (and it really is) and there are no changes. The old players that cling on are disturbed by any tiny change. The result is that changing the game loses players when it changes, loses players when it doesn't change, and just loses players as time goes on. Plus, this game won't receive as much attention anymore, in terms of code and time. It is only kept alive to bring in revenue, liked an old caged chicken.

I think that sums it up.

[gamanche]

nothing interesting to talk about, half the post turn into politics or religion and no one wants to see any of the BBQ

[KingDemon]

It doesn't seem that Toonces is interested in what the Starport Community yet he is making the bad choices and losing valuable players that keep Starport alive, i have noticed since the Ore Patch that Starport is starting to become very very boring and this is just not my opinion it is several other people have said.

I think Toonces should give the Starport Community on what Patches goes on, like make a forum thread somewhere listing idea's that Toonces himself has though of and ask us what patches we would like or ones that we don't want, if this happened im sure the Ore Patch wouldn't be here and more of the players would come back and make Starport more interesting once again.

[WeGotDeathStar]

The ore patch was needed, anyone that played prior to the refinery slider patch understands this. After the slider patch everything became 10/120, greenhouses...waters, earths...etc. The game became very unbalanced.

As much as everyone cried about the ore patch, and for good reason..we had huge empires that needed to be adjusted balance has been restored to colonies. You have to have easy 3 shot colonies for the newer players to learn on and invade.

The art of sliding and torping cols was lost with the slider patch, now cols have become fun to invade and don't take 2 hours to invade solo. Combine that with the adjustments to the speed of the ships we have a pretty close version of the game before the slider patch.

Only problem is we need more players..lets face it many of us have been playing for years..the kids that play grow up and find girls and cars...older people have life changes that don't include time for startport or just lose interest. Whats needed is a influx of new players that will actually take the time to learn the game and stick with it.

[Major]

The art of sliding and torping cols was lost with the slider patch, now cols have become fun to invade and don't take 2 hours to invade solo. Combine that with the adjustments to the speed of the ships we have a pretty close version of the game before the slider patch

"Invading isn't fun like it used to be, its all about the satisfaction of taking a good col now."
-Papa.John

The "solar damage patch" negated everything kango said in /quote

[Saber-Fury]

The art of sliding and torping cols was lost with the slider patch, now cols have become fun to invade and don't take 2 hours to invade solo. Combine that with the adjustments to the speed of the ships we have a pretty close version of the game before the slider patch

"Invading isn't fun like it used to be, its all about the satisfaction of taking a good col now."
-Papa.John

The "solar damage patch" negated everything kango said in /quote

Yea, invading is fun now because you are getting a good col, not necessarily because the process itself is enjoyable like it used to be. And as major said the solar damaged hugged up the ore patch. It worsened the divide toonces made with the ore patch. The weaker cols are even weaker and the strong cols are even stronger

and more on topic yea games basically dead. 10 people is the daily high im seeing on the server list, with the occasional 15. I remember when I started GA it ALWAYS had AT LEAST 10 people on no matter what time of day and would soar to 25-30 during its busiest hours. And I started playing GA late. I believe there were more than that in the beginning.

[Saber-Fury]

Kango's also right tho the game needs a new generation. And preferably a good one. No more little kids plz. ppl that want to learn the game.

And people use the forums less and less. theres tons of people with several hundred k followers on every server that none of us have ever heard of. But because the game no longer has any sense of community, (half the threads are about or turn into stupid debates on religion, the other half are random polls, pleas for a server to be made or deleted, quitting threads, and complaints) the 'pulse' of the game that was evident from older forum threads is gone completely. the few new players that do stay don't seem to make it to the forums.

[JesusRocks765]

Ingame Forums!

[Major]

Kango's also right tho the game needs a new generation. And preferably a good one. No more little kids plz. ppl that want to learn the game.

And people use the forums less and less. theres tons of people with several hundred k followers on every server that none of us have ever heard of. But because the game no longer has any sense of community, (half the threads are about or turn into stupid debates on religion, the other half are random polls, pleas for a server to be made or deleted, quitting threads, and complaints) the 'pulse' of the game that was evident from older forum threads is gone completely. the few new players that do stay don't seem to make it to the forums.

ban the obvious trolls. intimidation factor lowers, new players post = less lurkers.

[JesusRocks765]

Imagine how many people would be on the forums if they were in-game

Or just keep them dull and unexiting

[Mel'Kaven]

Why things are so slow in Starport?

'Cause if fails.

[WeGotDeathStar]

Honestly I can say this, did a little invading after not playing for 2 months and the solar patch is stupid. If it was done to make up for the colonies being weaker because of the ore patch then that's just a step backwards. What was the point of the ore patch? To balance out the military on colonies again so not everyone was 10/120 and the newer/weaker players could invade.

Now with the solar strength being upped it just makes it like they were all 10/120 again yet making the legit 10/120 cols that much harder to invade. Makes absolutely no sense to me.

I can't say what could be done to get more people playing but patches like this only give players another reason to quit. In my almost 5 years playing I have never seen this game with so few players.

[JesusRocks765]

Honestly I can say this, did a little invading after not playing for 2 months and the solar patch is stupid. If it was done to make up for the colonies being weaker because of the ore patch then that's just a step backwards. What was the point of the ore patch? To balance out the military on colonies again so not everyone was 10/120 and the newer/weaker players could invade.

Now with the solar strength being upped it just makes it like they were all 10/120 again yet making the legit 10/120 cols that much harder to invade. Makes absolutely no sense to me.

I can't say what could be done to get more people playing but patches like this only give players another reason to quit. In my almost 5 years playing I have never seen this game with so few players.

Yep, Starport is dying.

[D-Tox1]

The basic Foundations for a mesmerising game was laid in the beginning, sadly though what used to be fairly " balanced " between Invading and Building became ... for a better word " Irritating " and also a Joke..
For too long now a segment of the Community has stood together trying to genuinely give insight into what we think would improve the game on so many levels - without killing the fundamentals of what MADE Starport so great in the beginning.
If truth be known it cant be easy to justify what direction the game should go, nor who's ideas Toonces should listen too - fact is decisions have been made throughout the past 3 years that has made the game decline in appeal and playability.
Problem is ... far too many people dismiss the truth.
Starport had stability in the beginning - but through what appeared to be useless patches and gazillions of glitches - no matter how many times we mentioned about trying it out on ONE server - they threw it into all servers and created a bumbling mess.
Improved Graphics, subtle tweaks and gameplay variety would have helped, but instead of that they altered the Physics of the game - making it unbalanced without even thinking of what they were doing, every addition to the game appeared to be " Invader friendly " not realising that 50% of the community played because they enjoyed building !.
Rewind the Clock .... i promise you this... if the creators of Starport could choose to have what they had 3 years ago they would in an instance.
Starport isn't Runescape, EVE Online or Navyfield, but it could have tried to inherit some of the ideas that made these games so addictive - but they failed to do so, instead they became greedy with Token sales when they didn't even have a Customer base.
If the Product is unblemished and works perfectly - fine charge a buck or 2, but if the product aint finished and keeps breakin' down - how the hell are you supposed to charge people for it ?
I've always loved this game - had some great times and have some great friends on here - logged in the other night and there was 8 people on all servers - WTF ?.
Doesnt take a big man to admit you got it wrong - all ya need to do is rewind the clock a little, remember most of the people that " quit " the game still login to see whos about - therefore show them you listen and you never know - they may come back.
Make invading challenging and harder - by that i dont mean 20 shot solars - i mean time consuming and effort required, try and stabilize the gap between building and invading ie : make it as rewarding to build as it is for invading, and try to create a variety of different Galaxies - Fog Of War is a great addition and cheap to implement.
Sad thing is now so many have left that that new Permas bound to look like its failed.

[WeGotDeathStar]

I have to agree with D-Tox on the majority of his points but don't be so hard on Toonces, yes many mistakes were made but I don't think he did it to destroy the game. he was being influenced by the wrong people as to the direction the game should go. He has recently been listening to us about making the game closer to the original product and with the exception of the recent solar patch it's pretty close.

The problem has been that new players don't stick around long enough to fully understand the dynamics of this game and the fun it can be. You can not expect the same people that have played for years to keep playing forever, players grow up and have changes in their lives. This is why new players are needed, if we can fix why new players don't stay then the game player base will improve. Until then Starport will continue to be stagnant.

As far as the fog of war, cool idea but it only applies to builders. The days of getting 5-10 ppl to go onto a built perma and having some fun invading and player kills do not apply on a fog of war server. Reason is nobody is going to spend a week exploring the map for cols to invade or people to kill/ The instant fun factor is not there and never will be. I have observed many players that don't like the conflicts of a traditional perma play on the fog of war because they don't have to worry about a gang of players coming over and in a few days decimating their empire. And that's fine, leave it as a builders server but that's as far as it will ever go.

If the remainder of the player base ends up on the fog of war server then that is a serious problem, for all intensive purposes the game has truly died if only builders play. We need fighters, invaders and builders. If all three of those types are not available then the game is in it's twilight, enjoy whats left while you can.

It's this simple, if we do not get a influx of new players or have a come back of many older players then the games done. Nobody wants to see that happen but it in my opinion is getting pretty close.

[D-Tox1]

I
As far as the fog of war, cool idea but it only applies to builders. The days of getting 5-10 ppl to go onto a built perma and having some fun invading and player kills do not apply on a fog of war server. Reason is nobody is going to spend a week exploring the map for cols to invade or people to kill/ The instant fun factor is not there and never will be. I have observed many players that don't like the conflicts of a traditional perma play on the fog of war because they don't have to worry about a gang of players coming over and in a few days decimating their empire. And that's fine, leave it as a builders server but that's as far as it will ever go.

If the remainder of the player base ends up on the fog of war server then that is a serious problem, for all intensive purposes the game has truly died if only builders play. We need fighters, invaders and builders. If all three of those types are not available then the game is in it's twilight, enjoy whats left while you can.

In part i agree, however if somebody requires help - but doesnt want it ( or ask ) then how can you help them ?
My personal opinion is that Toonces requires genuine help from level headed Players, but in order to achieve that he also needs to listen. ( and ask ).
Lets push Tokens to the side for a minute...
The addictability of Starport used to be immense - yet in those days you had to work harder in order to wipe another corp - by this i mean building in system cols to build Nukes to invade with - or worse case scenario - gettin them barged...this involved immense loyalty between groups of talented Players and also commitment and Time consumption, but the end result was the just reward.
Agree or not - that aspect of Starport has been demolished ..regardless of who's fault it is.
It wasnt so much how difficult the actual Invasion of the colony was - it was the effort involved to enable the Invading that made it so special.
Now its too easy for a single Player to Invade a colony alone - because of Ship mods. admit it - theres very little risk.
Any criticisms i have and voice on here are purely because i truly believe these resulted in the decline of Playerbase.
Thing is i understand that Starport needed to " go with the times " etc, but disagree in the way its gone, i understand Toonces requires Tokens to pay for the running of the game - but dont think hes really in a position to make that the priority - building the Playerbase is the primary goal.
I have to be honest - i dont think he needed to do 80% of the changes he did in the past 3 years - i think its bitten him on the donkey and gone sceptic.
Add that to the " Rollbacks " that used to happen ( without any notification ) and Solar Ore changes which messed everyones Solars up - you cant blame them for being unhappy and leaving because they had near to no notification and he lost a lot of long serving Players over that one decision.
I truly hope he is listening to you about bringing it closer to the original spec, because believe it or not hes a great guy and deserves a break .

Just remember.....

A group of Builders can Build, Invade each other and Fight - But a group of Invaders cant Invade if theres no Builders to Build

D-Tox Chapter 3
Verse 4

[WeGotDeathStar]

Just remember.....

A group of Builders can Build, Invade each other and Fight - But a group of Invaders cant Invade if theres no Builders to Build

D-Tox Chapter 3
Verse 4

Agreed....But when there are not enough builders then invaders will pick up the slack and build. I did this on Golden Age, been primarily a invader but changed tactics in the beginning and built some pretty sick nuke colonies based on the experience learned from invading. And I never really built anything prior to playing for years. Invaders that build colonies are some of the toughest to invade.

But remember whether we like it or not, Toonces can take his ball and go home anytime he wants regardless what we say. There will always be people to buy tokens no matter what he does. Plenty of die hard Starport players still around.

[MadAce]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... The only way to save SGE is through Starport 2.

[JesusRocks765]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... The only way to save SGE is through Starport 2.

Lol pretty much

[Major]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... The only way to save SGE is through Starport 2.

You going to volunteer? Cause i seriously doubt ambition is still a part of the marketing plan.

[MadAce]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... The only way to save SGE is through Starport 2.

You going to volunteer? Cause i seriously doubt ambition is still a part of the marketing plan.

Considering Toonces' abilities I wouldn't say that Starport 2 is ambitious. It's more like it's the only way Toonces is gong to continue to make money from this thing.

And yes, of course I'm volunteering. Hell, if I could program I would've made te damn game myself. But only place where I could be of use is making 3D graphics... And the game design, of course. I probably have S2 more thought out than Toonces has.

But Toonces still needs to do this.