The combined effort of all of the endgamers who want to see SS survive has been the only driving force keep us afloat for years and years now.

I may have an endgame character, but honestly. I want to play like a noob. I don't like playing like a lot of the tryhard endgamers on here. I want to play like a noob, build like a noob, and be left in peace. If I get curbstomped because I picked a fight, alright. But I don't feel like it's possible to A) be left alone and keep to myself and B) get anywhere

I'm really sorry to the endgame tryhards who think that's not okay.

I don't have the daily time to devote to being a goddamn tryhard. Don't penalize me for it when I'd be paying the SAME monthly subscription as someone who does.

I really have wanted to try playing SS again. But these nuances always made me ask myself "why bother?"

And I'm not trying to discredit all the work the volunteer devs have been putting in recently. The combined effort of all of the endgamers who want to see SS survive has been the only driving force keep us afloat for years and years now. But bits and pieces and bandaid fixes obviously haven't been working. This massive rebalance of the endgame should have been happening six fucking years ago before Olympus started powercreeping the game, not now as we're months away from finally being on Steam. Back when we had an actual playerbase to test things with. Or play with, for that matter.

... and it's now reached the point where the majority of us are giving up and throwing in the towel. What hurts most is that many of us waited out the years hoping the game wasn't just going to keep going down the toilet. That's pretty much exactly what it's done. A good portion of RE have pretty much given up and are quitting, pretty much just completely done with the game.

When I first started SS, I saw it as cool casual arcade version of Eve online and that really sparked my interest. Slowly it all changed when new endgame gear was made harder and harder to acquire to the point where new players were required to join top team and get massive donations from legacy players in order to get their hands on decent gear. Gene pool of legacy players certainly didn't help with the problem of SS becoming way too hardcore for it's target audience.

As you know, I 100% agree that the game suffered from years of unchecked power creep that took it away from some of the great principles it was founded on. We are currently trying to rip off some of those old bandaids, with about as much player approval as you'd expect. All I can say is it's the best we can do at this point. I don't know if our work this year will be enough to make the game a hit on Steam, but we definitely have done our best.

PvP has never been "worth it" economically. BvB costs too much. It's not about that, it's about the fun of it. And fighting noobs is not what I'm referring to. Our bloody rampage was an attempt to find a challenge in the game, and it ended up making many people quit. Sucks for the game, and for us.

That being said, the playerbase used to be able to sustain those level of rage quits, but enough of them over the years combined with Bageese leaving, lack of communication from the dev team, no real direction from Jeff himself, and what, 4 years spent trying to get on Steam?

It might be too late to save us. If Steam doesn't revive the game's playerbase, I don't think SS will be around much longer. And that actually hurts to say out loud but I think we've all been noticing the decline.

The rageposts, the anger at the devs, people quitting for whatever reason, it's not because the game sucks. It's not because people are OP, or because things are too hard. It's because the community is gone. SS feels like a game where you will literally never encounter another player while playing the game. As an MMO, that's not a good thing. I used to play SS for the social interaction, to meet people and hang out with the crazy personalities we had going on. But all of those people have quit for whatever reason. Real life, bannings, game breaking exploits, bugs, pvp, wars, whatever. And we have no real incoming new players that survive past the first few hours.

I don't really know where I'm going with this other than I fucking love this game. And for over 10 years I've been playing, 9 years supporting with my subscriptions, and probably 8 years trying to make suggestions and help the devs test shit, make the game better via teaching any way I could. I also spent a good portion of the last 3-4 years making Youtube content so that I could somehow help the game anyway I could.

But we're still dying. And every time one of these posts comes up, I see the same anger echoed across the playerbase. We all want the game to survive. We all disagree on how to make that happen, but I see it as a failure on Jeff's part to direct the game. To manage SS as a business, not as a fucking college plaything. This game has infinite potential, if it were marketed and managed correctly in today's gaming world it would be fucking huge. But instead our playerbase is less than a few hundred and rapidly declining as the uni's go by.

EDIT: And I'm not trying to discredit all the work the volunteer devs have been putting in recently. The combined effort of all of the endgamers who want to see SS survive has been the only driving force keep us afloat for years and years now. But bits and pieces and bandaid fixes obviously haven't been working. This massive rebalance of the endgame should have been happening six fucking years ago before Olympus started powercreeping the game, not now as we're months away from finally being on Steam. Back when we had an actual playerbase to test things with. Or play with, for that matter.

What made myself quit was me, with tech 21 gear, getting my ass handed to me on a plate by some random stranger in ps.

Power gap is a thing, and pvp is very annoying when you loose billions in drone repairs couse youre getting outranged and outdamaged by splash weapons.

I was by no means an endgame player, but getting stomped on by people who could afford to MC multiple full tech 22 gear with no chance to retaliate whatsoever, made me feel powerless, and that was unfun.

It is fun to play the game, but its hard to compete for space and power when 90% of all the currency is in the hands of 5% of the playerbase.

Some people say to never try to lay bases on galaxies that might be contested by stronger people, but said stronger players often destroyed bases that were on underappreciated galaxies too, just for the hell of it.

Most people on this thread are hypocrites, saying they want more players to play the game, but all they want are more noobs to bully.

Also: Players should NEVER be able to kill bases without the help of bases.

PS: Im still waiting for my 2014 xmas letter competition reward.

I'm wondering though if the tutorial area can handle loads of players, maybe it should be instanced (if it's not already I'm not completely sure)?