Copy and pasted this from dev notes, seemed more appropriate to have here. In response to the Calypso Update 4.15.14.

The recent The Nexus changes by Calypso are great and a step in the right direction, but whilst this may increase the amount of new players which leave The Nexus, the next segment of their journey is going to turn them off. As it currently stands, level 50 - 200 is an absolute nightmare for new players. It's extremely hard, and isn't tailored in the slightest to what new players want out of a game like Star Sonata. There's a few reasons for this:

The change from C1 to C2 saw an increase in the amount of Skill Points needed to advance core skills such as Piloting. To put it into perspective, Piloting 8 costs 20 SP now as opposed to what it was in C1, which was 8. That's 12 SP extra that a player needs to get. Other core skills need more, and whilst they may not have as big an impact when levelling up skills later on, at the beginning they hit very hard and very soon - there is significantly less SP to be spent. This is attempted to be counter-balanced by the missions which give 2 levels, or 10 SP, for reaching certain 'milestone' skill levels, however it still leaves players about 10 SP less per skill. So, essentially a level 50 in the current game would have the skills of what a level 35~ had in C1.

Building on upon the first point, it's worth considering the change of SP, and how it impacts a player's ability to effective combat AI. In C1, it was arguable that, especially at lower levels (20 - 100) it was rather hard to level. At the moment, because players are essentially several levels below where they were previously, it becomes significantly harder to level because these AI that were previously only slightly too difficult are a substantial amount harder to kill, for the players don't have access to the gear they would have previously had. In other words, the balance between player and AI at the lower levels was rather balanced in C1, however the shift to C2 has also shifted this balance in favour of the AI, as it is harder to kill them.

The restriction of Remote Control to Piloting has also impacted the levelling ability for newer players. Several years ago, it was simpler to set a new player on their way by telling them about Remote Control and how slaves worked. It allowed for these new players to get some slaves, think it's really 'cool' and then go out and start levelling rather well. Whilst this was strong, it wasn't completely effective - without the gear of a player who knows what they're doing these pax slave swarms would still be killed, on occasion, by the AI which the players were fighting. By restricting this players have less slaves to do what they could reasonably well before. This results in an increase in the difficulty of the levelling experience for the player, and when they're constantly being thrown into stasis by AI that several years would have been more than easily killed, it puts them off the game.

Now, before other players start calling me a noob for not being able to level a low-level character, remember the concept of knowledge. If a new player had the knowledge that a veteran had, then yes they would be able to level quickly and yes they would be able to get the gear they need. The fact is, though, a new player knows nothing. They don't know about Remote Control or Drone Deployment. They don't know the most efficient and effective places to level. They don't know about all the different skills and the best way to balance them. They can learn these by asking, but no one wants to do that. Unfortunately, recent games have essentially made gamers need to be walked through the concepts and beginnings of a game, and that is something Star Sonata doesn't do overly well. There needs to be more knowledge available for new players, that doesn't rely on them asking for help, for as I wrote previously not everyone will.

So, how do we solve this? Unfortunately this question isn't particularly simple, however the following are some examples/ideas which I came up with, feel free to critique them at your own peril;

• Reduce or lower the SP cost for skills. Especially Piloting. New players want to pilot new, more powerful higher tech ships. They don't new a new shield, or an energy or a radar. They want a ship. By increasing the SP you're essentially punishing them for doing what they want to do, for by advancing Piloting they don't have the SP to get the shields and energies they actually require to level and to remain competitive. It may also be worth reworking the way which skills are learned at these levels. It could be more prudent to make them all mission based to ensure that players don't try to put all their SP into Piloting or Weapons and then find themselves incapable of killing anything which gives them the experience they require to level up.
  
• Reduce the damage of AI, especially at lower levels. I hate to use the word, but especially at lower levels AI like Monochrome Tints need to be easy. A new player needs to be able to essentially steamroll through them so they get the whole 'I'm powerful' feeling. We don't need to tweak AI like SBGammas, just the ones at lower levels. Oh, and please either increase the level of, or decrease the shield and damage of the Flyswatter Flyboy. It's far too strong to be level 30. It's a lot harder than level 50 AI, and doesn't provide the same level of experience which they do.
  
• Players need to be made aware of Remote Control and Drone Deployment at an early level. Similarly to how there are missions for core skills in Sol, there should be some for RC and DD. These are VITAL, especially for levelling.
  
• Remove the restriction of Remote Control to Piloting. I think it would be better to have a bit more of an emphasis of RC on lower levels and not restrict it via piloting. I'm not saying don't restrict it at all, I'm saying do it a different way. It makes it far too difficult to level without having the slaves you need.
  
• While we're at it, remove the Focus missions from Janitor's Outpost. Players at that level aren't informed enough to make a rational decision and aren't aware of the consequences of choosing a focus which sounds better than it is practical.

Whilst changes to The Nexus are a great way forward and a very welcome change, it's worth noting that this won't immediately bring in new players just because The Nexus is easier and more forgiving. The next part of their campaign needs to be looked at. Currently, it's far too difficult and punishing for new players with SP increases, unbalanced AI and a less of an emphasis on RC and DD. By hopefully re-examining and subsequently changing the way this part of a player's Star Sonata experience works, we can help them become more long term players, for that's the way that the game will grow.

tl;dr read the last paragraph (above this one)

Calypso and I will probably look through this later, as we have spent a lot time in the last few months adressing problems and issues with the low level content.

Calypso and Jeff are right now working on The Nexus, and from before we have two new zones ready to go, those are called Vulcan and Arctia. Those are primarily zones aimed for new players from level 20-50 and 30-100, and we can easily tweak the strength of the AI in these zones if players find them too hard.

And the idea has been to add more zones, or revamp current zones such as Tortuga, Infernal Tempest, Graveyard and so on

A general comment towards your notes on remote control is that we feel that it is better to tone down remote control and try to balance out drones, missiles, fighters and slaves at low level Previously it was only really drones and slaves that was dominating the low level gameplay, now we plan on making all these four aspects of the game available from level 0, with a good chunk of options available for several tech levels as you progress up to the mid game

We also have super special secondaries that almost every single low level ship in game now have, and these items have given a pretty large boost to any low level player

I do believe that less of an emphasis on RC is the correct approach, especially when considering how strong it was several years it, I feel it may have been done slightly too much. How exactly this is going to be solved I don't know, but I feel like it needs another pass at it. I'm not saying that we should reverse any beefs or tweaks to missiles or fighters, what I'm saying is that, comparably, RC might have been overnerfed slightly. These other methods of leveling at a low level also have very little use unless the player is made aware of them. I touched on this briefly in my first post in regards to RC and DD, but there's no point in having the option there if the player isn't going to be made aware of it in the first place. There needs to be more of an exchange of knowledge to the player so they can decide how they want to level. They need to be essentially told each and every one, have them spelt out in almost every way, because unfortunately you cannot rely on players to figure them out by themselves.

In order to grasp how these changes, including the ones I mentioned in my opening post affect a new player, I started a new character prior to writing the wall of text you see above you. It started off well, but even with already knowing a decent amount about the game and how it works, I couldn't get past level 25 without basically needing extra help. The game is very expensive to a new player, and the amount of credits they can get as a result of drops and selling looted gear is incomparable to the amount of money needed to properly gear a good ship or a few slaves. You cannot get the gear, as well as the skills, which you need to properly and competitively level beyond this point. Levelling in this region (20 - 100) should be as easy as it is to level up in The Nexus, and at the moment it isn't. It's significantly disproportionate.

Even with these super secondaries, it's difficult to be able to take out a single ship without being annihilated by a fleet of them. You'll find that especially in the W0/W1 regions AI will swarm the player and kill them without much difficulty. It's difficult to single out an enemy without having a whole group of them jump you and then kill you. Until you actually try to forget everything you know or take a break for a couple years and start a new character, you don't realise the difficulty which a new player goes through when starting the game - it is too much and, in my opinion, definitely needs to be looked at.

It's nice to see some new zones, especially for new players, but I still have some concerns about them. I'm going to presume these have been addressed as the zone is intended to be catered toward newer players, but I would still like to go over them nonetheless.

Currently, most high-end runs rely on being organised by teams with a variety of different roles. You have your ShMs, your Sniper/Gunner/Zerker DPS and a host of support classes. You cannot have these at the low levels - you can only have players in ships which deal damage. Likewise, you cannot expect players to be able to afford gear to be able to participate in the run in a certain role. The knowledge needed to be able to realise that if you use this augmenter and this augmenter, then it makes you very tank and you can attempt to be a damage sponge so that other players can focus on dealing out high DPS. If these areas need a ShM of sorts, then it's not going to particularly work, simply because the players which will be focusing their efforts on these areas won't be able to fulfill this defined role. If you need to bring a player from a higher skill level in order to assist in the run, then the area defeats it's own purpose.

With this in mind, the zone is also going to have to be mostly solo-able. New players don't have teams or don't have players they know who they can use to help out with the runs ins these areas. This means the player needs to be able to not rely on teammates and/or squadmates to do these instances, because at this point in the game these options are not yet available to them. This subsequently presents the idea of difficulty. It's going to be extremely difficult to balance the areas in such a way that makes them doable for players of the level which they are intended. They cannot be too easy, whilst they cannot be too hard. If they are too easy, then they also defeat their own purpose in a way, for I presume one of the other ideas behind this concept is to provide an avenue for new players to experience a somewhat difficult, yet possible fight.

Without reading properly through your post, remember that the current state of the game is affected by a bug with AI spawners, so the spawn amounts you see in game right now is way too high

And the way we organized the new zones is that we made a model that allows players to do level appropriate content on their own, meaning they fight one and one AI (AI are not auto-aggro or teamed) and they can do one and one boss at a time, and if they team up with another player they can do content that is intended for players with a higher level than themselves, so all zones have several bosses and stages to build around this idea

So a simple reconstruction of the model looks like this:

Stage 1: Level 10 content
Boss 1: Level 10 boss
Stage 2: Level 20 content
Boss 2: Level 20 boss

If a level 10 attempts all of the content he will most likely succeed the level 10 content, but he may or may not succeed the level 20 content on his own, but he will most likely succeed if he teams up with another level 10 player, or he will simply have to level up to do the level 20 boss when he is appropriate level to do this one his own. We call this the Powder Keg model as it is based on the structure of that custom DG

This is a model we will most likely use for most of our revamped low level content, and we might also build on it for revamping DGs, or make a use of other mechanics to make more solo oriented and squad oriented content

I will see if I write down a longer post later today when I have more time.

Well, I hope it works out as it is very much needed for new players.

bug with AI spawners? I don't suppose this has anything to do with the swarms of like 40 Rosemaries in peri space? I mean it is perilous space but their spawns seem absurdly high...

The bug both affects spawner locations and spawn amount, yes. Which is why you can find absurd amount of one type of AI in a galaxy, and also why you can find AI such as Earthforce Dreadnoughts in Subspace, Parsleys in Perilous Space and so on



It is a bug. Please don't go around and spread incorrect information on purpose, or you will be banned from this forum, as simple as that

Perilous finally felt pretty cool. Please don't ruin it again...

While this is a bug that we need to fix, there is always a chance that we're going to tweak the spawners up again after we have fixed the bug This is in fact something a few of us in the developer team have discussed

Its so awesome being able to go into perilous for like 10 min and coming back with enough commods to finish your build. As oppose to 1 hour + and barely having anything to show for it. Such tedious things take away from the enjoyment of building and killing things.

Yeah, I like perilous Perilous as well.

Moderately Perilous Space is more appropriate.

We can always use feedback on how players feel Perilous Space is now, and use that in a possible revamp of spawners for Perilous Space. But of course we need to fix the current bug first

An interesting note is the aggressive alien ships in Perilous Space. I have seen quite a few players getting upset about those Would it be better to have aggressive Nightfuries, Hives, Delquadrikamdons and so on, and remove the aliens? Or do people want swarms, but only some of the AI set as auto aggressive, such as Big Greens, Icepicks, Forgones, Vultures, Wattages and Green Battleships?