Redo the entire Nexus and the introduction to the game.

Either remove Pirate/Earthforce Affliation, or make it actually affect how the game starts.

Rework the voice tutorial, it's annoying as shit and I don't think anyone actually wants to listen to someone tell them how to play the game.

Most missions need trimmed down, wall of text-wise.

Make a bunch of LINEAR mission paths, that will lead you to level 500 or so, maybe even 1k.

Story-line would be great.

Secure trade interface.

Some sort of mail/messaging system

Better low level class balance so seers can function, FC/Gunner arnt overpowerd.

Low level classes need to feel different and exciting, more of what gunners and zerkers have with there immediate multifiring bonuses.

The radar range circle should be fixed asap.

Some cut scenes would be epic.

Cut scenes are nice but please be serious it isn't what SS needs the most of.

The midgame has been gutted due to power creep and the stagnation of PvP has not helped. Focus on making it easier for players to level and ensure that there is actually some sort of meaningful conflict to participate in. The former is hard but the latter is nigh impossible.

Start with the level progression and make sure players are properly infomed about core game mechanics. Reinvigorating PvP and emp runs will not be easy and will require a steady influx of new players to help bring life back into the game. A bunch of old grizzly vets aren't about to relive the glory days on their own as we have seen. Ensuring a small but steady influx of new players reach the endgame; will help significantly with the games overall atmosphere. As for the specifics I cannot offer much since I can't point out exactly what went wrong where. What I can say is we need new players.

I would like to point out that the vast majority of MMO's fail to properly address power creep and waning player enthusiasm. If SS succeeds in this task it will be only a handful that have managed to pull it off. Cooperating with the development team and giving useful feedback is required to even have a shot at this. It just so happens this particular dev team doesn't have its head up its ass and actually posts on the forums. I wouldn't bother posting otherwise and I'm very interested to see what others have to say.

Lots of players like knowing exactly what they need to do in order to progress. I think that's one of the biggest barriers for some players, just the fact that they don't know what to do after leaving the nexus. I'm not sure of the best way to remedy this in-game, but what I can contribute personally would be some kind of infographic for the various storyline missions that start in EF space. Basically, I don't know if there's enough direction for many players to be hooked right off the bat.

I am already working on improving skill training by splitting it into two types, one that is more handholding themed with missions (that gives you all the information you need, we are also using this to direct players to level appropriate content etc.) and one that is more sandbox type where the player needs to find out most of the information on his own

This will not be done for the universe reset, but when it is done we should be able to patch it in during an existing universe

The best way to solve this imo would be:

Open up your skills panel, click on a skill. It shows you the closest known galaxy that has that skill available as well as the limit that it offers. If it takes any required commods, it would also list those bolded and in a different color.

If there isn't a place that you've discovered that has it, maybe have that based on exploration? Or you can ask in all chat I guess. I'm not too sure honestly because I think exploration is important. However, I don't think it should be a 100% hindrance to progression.

I think something like that would be the best short-term solution while still retaining some mystery about the game.

Just a few things:

Definitely in there with Biggee. After level 100 or so I don't know where to progress. There's no mission chain to show me to an area that has AI within my level area. Instead I have to go out and find very few AI's that roam certain areas and kill them, maybe only 10 or so an hour if I killed off all the spawn. Basically having a mission chain that goes from ~100 or so to somewhere close to W3 ai levels would be great, even if it does have much or a story, but a dedicated area where I can find groups of AI at my level. (Even just galaxies where there are AIs centered around a certain level would be good. Like 100-200 ais in a galaxy cluster, level 175-300 in a cluster, 250-350 in a cluster, etc., with a few themed AI bases to those ais so that it looks like it has a story to it. I'm thinking like the Paxians had control of this area but some Urqa took over and the two sides are just fighting. Urqa spawn pretty consistently all over and one or two Paxians spawn near the AI bases that are leveled under the Urqa. But only the Paxians are teamed so the Urqa don't swarm. Nothing major, just like a mission to get to each new cluster to show you where it is and then maybe missions to kill a few of the Urqa, I know there's roaming Urqa ships that could be used and Paxians have enough already, it shouldn't be much) Sorry for the huge suggestion at this point

As for not knowing where skills are, I do have that problem sometime, only because the missions that tell me to get Piloting up or something tell me a galaxy that I have not yet found, or a commod that I cannot get. Instead I travel all over to random AI stations to upgrade my skills.

With the intro of C2 and the skill changes, I also don't know how to do a lot anymore and so I'm going to list all I can think of while still at work:

Slaves:
* Honestly don't know restrictions on these. At one point I thought it was changed so that the tech level of the slave ship was the restriction on tech gear allowed but I've found that isn't the case.
* Where to get combat controlbots is never told. I just knew to try Copper
* Slave stasis gens? Yes/No? Do I need them?
* Can they use missiles and fighters? Drones? Drone factories/superitems?

Drones:
* Without knowing the stats of the weapon they use, I have no idea what drones are useful toward what AI. This includes weapon type (heat, rad, laser, etc), shield, energy.
* I had no idea what would happen after the timespan or if they died, having an explanation of them timing out and becoming deactivated or when they died that they would still be there.

Missiles/Fighters:
* Explanation on use/what you need for these would be great. I still don't know where to get the stuff for them.
* Buying the weaker ammo crates from AI bases
* Are there weaker fighters in AI bases as well?
- Side note: The point of missiles and fighters are that any class can use them, but the specific focus/class gets a HUGE upgrade to them. from what I know, the ammo crates and missile/fighter bays are sold in Lyceum at a class-locked base. These items should be open to all players, the same as drones, but have a few (much better) class locked items.

SPACEPOINTS!!!:
* The website kind of does a shit job explaining these. They can be used to pay for a sub. But also name changes too. Then there's TWO items that can be bought in game (Somewhere? - I have no idea where as I'm only on a F2P account now) .
* What is the SP cost of those two items? I am tempted to go onto this account, pay a sub and item form and aug reset a few of my ships and send them to my F2P account, but I don't know how much it is and my guess from everything I've heard, its nowhere near worth it.

Wiki:
This needs a huge upgrade. I'm assuming that most of the gear ingame is listed in a database somewhere. If that is the case the wiki could be redone so that all in game items are categorized by the tags on items and displayed on the wiki with up-to-date stats. I've done the work before and it shouldn't be terrible, but it would take someone with access to that database to setup a read-only permission account to the item tables and then write some code to format everything properly. The game does the same thing, it just would need a bit of work. I know MediaWiki (The base system used for the wiki) allows this type of system and it would really help people look through and find what gear they could use. Then all they need to do is /mc on the itemname and they can find where to get it if it is sold or ask someone in all chat who knows.

That was a lot longer than I expected for writing at work...

EDIT: I have no idea what *denotes no discount means

This is something The Vert and I have been making a big push on -- dedicated content zones that players get directed to that offer AI to level on. Arctia (20-50) and Vulcan (20-100) are the first 2 instances of this, but there will definitely be more in the future (an UrQa / Paxian zone was actually planned!). Some other examples are Blue Outpost, Blanco and the Auric Sector. But definitely keep looking for more zones like this



The entire Nexus was just redone. Changes mostly focused on increasing the tempo of the Nexus and better explaining the most important aspects of the game. We also trimmed a LOT of text from the Nexus. Most mission descriptions are down to a few lines max.

We've also trimmed a lot of the Tutorial out (and might just scrap it entirely). I definitely agree it's clunky and kind of annoying at times.

Also, there are linear mission paths to level 500 now (I reworked all the existing mission content and supplemented it where needed on the pirate front). Maybe they're not obvious enough though?

Continued feedback on all of this would definitely be appreciated though.



We have some very big plans on low level class balance that hopefully we can get working on ASAP. Class Super Items were a part of this, but they're definitely not helping enough.

I am pretty sure we did have a secure trade interface in the works at one point, I'm not too sure what happened to it. I agree it would be extremely useful.

I really like all the feedback in this thread. It's positive and constructive. Keep it up!

Calypso

Story line with Animated cut Scenes?