Even if there is a market, how do I know there is a market? Like, if I wanted perfect PZHTs...but no one has set up their shop or posted a buying message anywhere for noobs to build PZHTs and sell to me. So noobs don't build it.

There would have to be noobs as a basic premise to that statement.

Things arent quite as dire as the OP suggests, and some of his examples seem exaggerated. Agree though on 3 things:

-Exploits can ruin the game and seems like they pop up too easy at times. They also literally hurt the game financially. I've known paying players quit SS permanently after being the victim of major exploits that cost them a lot.

-The Zimbabwe-like levels of hyperinflation need to be addressed somehow. Seems very imbalanced credit generation to credit sink dynamics.

-PVP needs some form of justice system for asshats. Outside of team based BvB ive never seen a game that just allows rampant killing of newbs thousands of levels lower than you with no consequences at all. This will drive off a lot of players with Steam launch. This should be pretty simple to do. Basically if you are not at /war with someone, and take off weapons lock (flag yourself for pvp) and initiate an attack on someone who has their weapons lock on still (not flagged for pvp) you should get some crime points or something. Then after 10 points or so EF police kills you on site, and the points decay slowly over time. So if you want to live the life of a pirate you can, but you will be living just like real pirates, in remote outposts away from civilized areas.

Eve Online allows you to slaughter noobs fresh out of their gate. However, noobs can be mostly safe in High Security.

->Aggressing a neutral player (not on a corp/alliance/coalition at war with yours) allows the neutral player to attack you for some time; veterans sometimes trick noobs into aggressing them, though.

->Players with low enough security status can be freely attacked even in Hi Sec.

->Attacking a neutral player that hasn't aggressed you will cause NPC Ships to come to them and attack you. There is some delay, enough time to kill some people. Players in BC/BB are generally safe from suicide ganks, though.

you cant do something about hyperinflation apart from make the demand for money high again, people see it as toilet paper. There are no middle class citizens. Reduce the money supply, increase the supply of fancy consumer goods, tax the shit out of everything, increase number market participants to build the middle class.

I just started playing star sonata 2. I played Star Sonata 1 over ten years ago with my brothers. We would switch between Star Wars Galaxies and Star Sonata every few days and it was one of the best summers of my life.

I am really happy to see how much of the game has stayed the same (the really good parts, like the skill system, the server resets, the depth of trading and bots, ect). I've been enjoying flying around and hearing the screams when you level up a skill again.

I've already started getting pretty daunted with the fact that players with levels in the thousands with gear and money and skills that i will never be able to even approach fly around and are the real movers and shakers in the game. My brother wants to play with me, but when i told him server resets don't reset money or skills he almost instantly lost the wind from his sails and didnt want to join. It seems hopeless to us.

I started looking around on the forums and see over and over people arguing for a server wipe and then devs saying, somewhat arrogantly, that a wipe will never happen so the players should just get over it. This i can understand, the fear of losing the faithful player base that is the only thing keeping Star Sonata alive is valid.

What i am confused about is why there is such resistance to making a new server. Another server, perhaps with the Steam release or perhaps not, would let new players feel like they have a chance at being top dog without having to scrape for crumbs from teams long established with billions and trillions of credits and more skill points than they will ever be able to get. The old players can stay on the server with all their hard-fought skills, gear, and credits, and they'll keep doing whatever it is that people do at level 4000.

In every MMO i have ever played new servers attract players and revitalize interest in the game. Is it too expensive to open a new server? Are there not enough employees to manage another? What is the main problem?

We don't have a large enough community to support two active servers.

Hmm, a real "chicken or the egg" scenario.

Has it ever been tried? The old players keep saying they don't want a wipe because they'll lose their stuff and stop playing. So they all stay on the first server, no splitting of the cummunity there. The new server gets a few ads to promote it, a little video in the steam store saying "join an old and established server and prove you worth against veteran players, or pioneer a fresh universe with others starting new!" and viola, half the new players from Steam join the new server and stick around because they dont feel useless.

Starting a new server in this way would be a big PR problem with the existing community. If wiping established players' assets is completely unacceptable, siphoning all the players off of their server would be just about as bad in a few uni's time.

Every time this conversation comes up, someone eventually taps in to point out that there will always be elite players, no matter how many times you reset the server. I think people tend to dramatically overestimate the power of wealth in this game. We have leveled the power curve to the point that it's not difficult to obtain gear that's either endgame or close to endgame, and with this gear you can easily begin to farm endgame zones. Activity is and has always been much stronger than wealth in Star Sonata.

This is not an isolated issue to Star Sonata. As you have pointed out, the "elite" players that have hit level cap or gotten the best gear possible steadily grows as a server ages, this happens in every MMO.

However, most MMOs have new servers opening on a fairly consistent schedule to counter this. EVE is the largest exception, but is an exception in basically every sense of the word when it comes to MMOs. Most other MMOrpgs introduce a new server every few years at a minimum, based on how many players they have flowing into the game or how quickly "level cap" or its equivalent is reached.

Other MMOs do this because on a fundamental level you have two types of players. Ones that enjoy the leveling, the challenge of progression, and exploration, and then those that enjoy having hit max and duking it out with others who have also hit max. Occasional new servers lets those that enjoy the journey start over (or join for the first time), while those that want to keep fighting it out stay on the older ones.

The flip side for you is that players like you , if you're active can get very high very quickly as there's little competition at the moment and plenty money to take off established players.

Yeah, i can see that, but at the same time that means there is no one to group with, fight with, or explore with.

My point is that the gamers who like to be the first in, to be the first to get somewhere and explore, or that enjoy the race to the end will never be satisfied with one server already full of high levels, gear, and money. Their only incentive is when the universe resets and there is a chance to chart the new map. Even then though, if you are new you are useless and left behind in this endeavor by those with massive ships and nigh-infinite funds who can just go wherever.

Star Sonata will not even get new blood of the other kind of player, who enjoys the end game, because they will feel outclassed and forever behind.

Its not really comforting that someone can effectively get to "almost as good" as the max levels right now because its been streamlined to help newbies get good gear or w/e. The fact of the matter is that if i tried, every day, and played and played, those who are already 3000 levels ahead of me who do the same will always be 3000 levels worth of experience and credits ahead of me.

As you say, the big problem is not having enough people to group with. This would be resolved by a decent influx of new players. That is what we all really need. Resetting the server or creating a new server would be pointless without such an influx because old players are either pretty inactive (with no interest in redoing old content with new players) or else well established in their own cliques (same issue).



That's not really how it works. Activity is (almost) everything in this game, and levels and resources are only good until you have enough to afford what you need. This also presumes that veteran players continue to grind with the same level of activity as they had in the past. In reality, most endgame players are content to make incremental improvements to their gear. It's not that hard to catch up.