Star Sonata
http://forum.starsonata.com/

It's time to wipe the server
http://forum.starsonata.com/viewtopic.php?f=107&t=63210
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Author:  Masterful [ Sat Jul 08, 2017 8:14 am ]
Post subject:  It's time to wipe the server

As some of you know, this has been something I've been 100% opposed to in the past, however the last few months have slowly changed my mind. The game has gone from being fun to downright sad and depressing. Player numbers are going down the toilet, the economy is fucked and the game has some stupid balance issues. Over a decade of bugs and exploits has ruined many aspects of the game, and despite attempts to attempt to fix these problems, they're futile. Not just because they don't really work, but because maybe 1 new player coming in from steam will actually reach the endgame. The reason for doing this is for new players and steam: the future of Star Sonata.

So let's look at the benefits of wiping the server clean.

Completely reset economy
Decades of exploits and bugs will be undone. The economy will be in a proper and manageable state again. It'll be much easier to keep track of any bugs or exploits when any bugs or exploits give you 10x more money than every other player in the game. This gives new players an even footing, and not having to contend with years of problems.

Overpowered gear gone
Years of bindomite exploits and/or stupid lucky rolls are gone. Items that even with a new modification system will probably never be surpassed. This immediately puts new players on an even footing.

Balance issues
Since no players will be immediately able to reach T21/T22 content, it gives the development team a long time to properly fix and balance everything.

Reduced effectiveness of Multiclienting
Multiclienting will have significantly reduced effectiveness since characters won't be fully geared, and the processes which allow players to build up alts aren't possible, since these rely on already having powerful characters. Additionally, with all players at similar levels it'll be much easier to find people to play with. If steam is going to bring in as many new players as the developers say it will, then the loss of income shouldn't be that big an issue.

Monetisation method & abilities
With everyone wiped, it's then possible to explore new methods of monetising the game. XP boosts, memberships, DLC, other boosts, skins. Integrated properly these can all be highly monetised, but for maximum effectiveness as many players as possible need to be able to benefit from them. This is incredibly important for the future of SS. For current players and accounts, purchased skins and SP would obviously have to carry over. Should also find a way to carry over holoprojectors/other trophy items.

New players won't be put off by endgame players and developer teams
With the massive disparity in wealth and ability enjoyed by veterans, new players have no chance of competing, despite the changes that work toward fixing this. It's just not possible. It's much more encouraging for newer players if they can see a reachable goal, instead of an unreachable goal multiplied by 10 accounts and 5 characters. Especially when these accounts are owned by developers... it's not a good look at all.

The current direction the game is taking is a death spiral. With the current direction, steam is not going to be a saviour, and putting so much reliance on it without enough serious thought is going to lead to the game's demise. As much as it does pain me to say, it does seem that the only way to fix the game is to completely wipe it. It will breathe significant new life into the game and encourage new players to stay on. I know many players would be seriously interested in playing again if the server was reset. I've invested years, thousands of dollars and countless hours into this game, but I now see it's really the only realistic option at saving the game long term. If we're all serious about saving the game, then it's a discussion that seriously needs to be had.

Author:  thecrazygamemaster [ Sat Jul 08, 2017 8:27 am ]
Post subject:  Re: It's time to wipe the server

Instead of wiping, a new server instance is more preferable. The new one is the only one that gets updates and new content, but the old server still exists so that veteran players don't scream their heads off. All new players go to the new server, no matter what, and you let the 'old' SS die off slowly as veterans leave and/or voluntarily start over on the new one.

Author:  Masterful [ Sat Jul 08, 2017 8:31 am ]
Post subject:  Re: It's time to wipe the server

thecrazygamemaster wrote:
Instead of wiping, a new server instance is more preferable. The new one is the only one that gets updates and new content, but the old server still exists so that veteran players don't scream their heads off. All new players go to the new server,
no matter what, and you let the 'old' SS die off slowly as veterans leave and/or voluntarily start over on the new one.

I did think about that. The problem is whether the server can handle 2 instances. I highly doubt that a new server would be too taxing at the start. You wouldn't have to generate half the universe for a uni or two, and as more players migrate over you can slowly allocate it more resources. If there's a way to run both smoothly then absolutely.

Author:  Septagon [ Sat Jul 08, 2017 8:42 am ]
Post subject:  Re: It's time to wipe the server

I agree 100%. A new server alongside the old one would be preferable, but something needs to happen. There's no fixing the economy at this point, certain people have trillions upon trillions of credits that they've gained from either exploting, scamming, or just colony pumping for a decade. This isn't even counting resources/gear/commods that might have been gained through other methods. I don't think it's reasonable to expect anyone new to be able to catch up to that, and that kind of wealth will always give those people an advantage over everyone else. This was kinda the straw that broke the camels back for me, I subbed because I thought it was actually close to a Steam release, but whatever quick fix Jey is able to do in two or three days won't stop anything. Feelgood was right about hackers and exploiters on Steam being much more skilled than he is.

I'm poor as dirt in terms of currency in game, but have around 100-200 billion worth of stuff storage from running DGs while I was F2P, just so you know that I don't really advocate a wipe or new server being made lightly. That stuff might not amount to being worth much in the awful current economy, but I grinded and earned it over years, so it's not something I'd just want to abandon unless I saw no other choice.

It's really hard to put into words how sad this crap happening made me, I feel like the biggest fool around for going premium a day before this all came out. The game just isn't ready for Steam in its current state.

Author:  anilv [ Sat Jul 08, 2017 9:06 am ]
Post subject:  Re: It's time to wipe the server

FYI we don't have a monetization problem in SS. Our player retention stats are sky-high compared to industry standard.

Author:  Masterful [ Sat Jul 08, 2017 9:21 am ]
Post subject:  Re: It's time to wipe the server

anilv wrote:
FYI we don't have a monetization problem in SS. Our player retention stats are sky-high compared to industry standard.

If you compare the ways SS is monetised compared to other MMOs, you'll see massive disparity. Also player retention is very misleading. We need to know how you're defining player rentention, and whether things unique to SS (like multiclienting) are accounted for in that figure. Also with a playerbase the size of SS player retention is a completely useless stat when compared to the industry. Of course a game with a tiny playerbase is going to have significantly higher player retention than massive MMOs with hundreds of thousands of players. Those games don't need a high %. SS has had 19 new accounts in the last month. Of those 19 only 5 visited the forums at least 3 days after their account was created.

Author:  anilv [ Sat Jul 08, 2017 10:45 am ]
Post subject:  Re: It's time to wipe the server

Player retention = monetization. We don't need help figuring out how to get money from our player base. We just need a better pipeline to get people trying the game.

Author:  Masterful [ Sat Jul 08, 2017 10:50 am ]
Post subject:  Re: It's time to wipe the server

anilv wrote:
Player retention = monetization.

These can be correlated but are by no means the same thing.

Player retention is your ability to hold on to players, monetisation is the way in which you get income. An increase in monetisation doesn't necessarily correlate with an increase in player retention. DLC, cosmetics and other things are a form of monetisation which don't necessarily see player retention rise accordingly.

Author:  anilv [ Sat Jul 08, 2017 11:03 am ]
Post subject:  Re: It's time to wipe the server

Masterful wrote:
anilv wrote:
Player retention = monetization.

These can be correlated but are by no means the same thing.

Player retention is your ability to hold on to players, monetisation is the way in which you get income. An increase in monetisation doesn't necessarily correlate with an increase in player retention. DLC, cosmetics and other things are a form of monetisation which don't necessarily see player retention rise accordingly.


Sure, but retention is still monetization since we work on a subscription model. We are aware there are other ways to monetize players and we will indeed be pursuing some of them when Steam launches (the new store interface is tied up in Steam code).

You listed monetization as a possible advantage of wiping the server. This is irrelevant to us because we don't have a monetization problem. The current monetization system is working perfectly well for the player base we have.

Author:  Masterful [ Sat Jul 08, 2017 11:08 am ]
Post subject:  Re: It's time to wipe the server

anilv wrote:
Masterful wrote:
anilv wrote:
Player retention = monetization.

These can be correlated but are by no means the same thing.

Player retention is your ability to hold on to players, monetisation is the way in which you get income. An increase in monetisation doesn't necessarily correlate with an increase in player retention. DLC, cosmetics and other things are a form of monetisation which don't necessarily see player retention rise accordingly.


Sure, but retention is still monetization since we work on a subscription model. We are aware there are other ways to monetize players and we will indeed be pursuing some of them when Steam launches (the new store interface is tied up in Steam code).

You listed monetization as a possible advantage of wiping the server. This is irrelevant to us because we don't have a monetization problem. The current monetization system is working perfectly well for the player base we have.

Sure, but that doesn't mean that a wipe can't open up more monetisation options. XP boosts aren't useful to players who don't need XP anymore. I also never said SS has a monetisation problem, I said it could be improved and that wiping would open more options. As I said in the first post, for maximum efficiency you need as many players as possible who can benefit from them.

Author:  chronos [ Sat Jul 08, 2017 11:43 am ]
Post subject:  Re: It's time to wipe the server

Or we create a effective tax system for this game.

Tax grades. Income/Outcome being taxed. Taxing the High Net Wealth Indviduals.

Think about this guys.

Author:  thecrazygamemaster [ Sat Jul 08, 2017 12:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: It's time to wipe the server

Enk, $5 for a mediocre ship skin isn't effective monetization. SS does not have the graphical fidelity to make $5 skins a good idea.

EDIT: Not to mention how pricey other SP-based things are. They're called micro
transactions.

Author:  star [ Sat Jul 08, 2017 1:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: It's time to wipe the server

#MakeSSGreatAgain2005

Author:  anilv [ Sat Jul 08, 2017 2:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: It's time to wipe the server

thecrazygamemaster wrote:
Enk, $5 for a mediocre ship skin isn't effective monetization. SS does not have the graphical fidelity to make $5 skins a good idea.

EDIT: Not to mention how pricey other SP-based things are. They're called micro
transactions.


We aren't attempting to pay the bills through this kind of micro-transaction. It's there as a little extra because the players desire cosmetic options. We aren't overly worried about monetization of players. The sub model has worked really well for SS in that respect.

Author:  MasterTrader [ Sat Jul 08, 2017 7:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: It's time to wipe the server

Hey I'm all for wiping the game, the arguments you gave about why are the same I've given for a long time. But it's almost certainly not going to happen, no matter how I personally feel about it. The potential to lose massive amounts of players by doing so is a huge risk imo. I'd prefer a wipe, but I don't believe it's realistic.

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