I left the game for two years, if not more, and I find it rather disappointing that so little has changed. Perhaps it changed for people over level 1000 but I doubt it. The truth is, in order to keep players playing the game needs to have a way of appeasing the players even if it doesn't make everyone happy. And just like in the real world, there is a really easy way to do this.

Voting. If players feel that they can somehow control how the game evolves then they will become happy, even if the game doesn't evolve in the way they want it to, they want to feel like they have some say. Vote on the next implementation into the game.

Now, I know that this game is Dan's livelihood, and that he relies on this game to pay his bills. But the truth of the matter is if you can't get the old players to keep playing and the new players to keep joining then you're going to go out of business. The training feature is good for the new players. But eventually the new player base is going to shrink into oblivion, and voting on new mechanics or features is what is going to make the game last.

Again, I know that businesswise you have to see if the cost outweighs the benefits. So what you do is very simple. Say people want new planets, you open up a contest on planet types. You choose the top 3, top 5, top 10 whatever planets and allow people to vote on what they like best. You offer the winning artist or top 10 artists 50 gp. Nothing as far as the dev team is concerned because its in game currency so it doesn't cost them anything. Now you have the art and didn't have to pay real money for it. The same works for ship designs, mission chains, techs, new gp items, new NPCs, etc. etc.

I don't see why this isn't in the game yet. But it will offer a golden age into this game which hasn't been seen since the first two years of its development. This will cause the old players to continue playing, and the new players to keep joining because of recommendations. Literally aside from some basic coding, the only real work that would have to be payed for is if some new mechanic or feature required an entire new section of the game so the programmers would have to be payed. Maybe artists if it was as expansive as the legion base addition.

If there were a way to get the developer involved with this, it would be awesome. 90% of the suggestions we see are just plain awful, but in the not-plain-awful 10%, there are ideas ranging from contentious-but-interesting tweaks to no-brainers that virtually everybody would love to see. Distilling the good ideas, having a back-and-forth with the developer, and eventually seeing changes implemented would be great for the game.

Of course, you'd have to find a way to convince him to participate in the discussions

I'm usually all for the democratic process, but... Who gets to vote? Everyone? Because I sure don't want the Rank 30 who has no clue what he's doing voting on improvements to the game. Nor the 4th year slow ranker who's barely made it to Rank 200. Nor the Rank 1000 that collects his resources then goes and plays Candy Crush. Nor anyone that has no idea of the true mechanics of the game but will "Yeah Boi!" any idea that sounds even remotely "cool."

I'd say MAYBE 5% of the current players would be able to make a QUALIFIED judgement on an idea.

yes and atleast 50% of those doesnt want the game to chance in a way that doesnt benefit theire own ships

so put it to a vote, and we will proberly end up with Dan wasting his time on sugestions like Custom titles
(viewtopic.php?f=6&t=41476)
that more or less everyone thinks would be cool, but have no real effect in game

They all offer different views of gameplay. We get to hear all different perspectives of the argument.

Anyone who doesn't understand how the game works shouldn't be making any ideas of improvement. I agree with you here.


Again, I agree.

The voting wouldn't be on improvements per se every time. Everyone would vote. Add a new tab if you like in game for literally everyone or just make something on the forums for players who care about the game. The initial voting process would be like new planets, new ships, new missions, etc. etc. and then improvements to mechanics. If improvements to mechanics are selected, then the dev has a list of options. People vote on perspective improvements dan was already going to put into the game. Like training. I'm sure the noobs love that idea. I see it as a waste of time. But with the voting process then we could have voted on something else instead of being at the whim of what dan thinks the game needs and gives us what players want. After all, this is a service job. And if your customers aren't happy, then they leave. The artistic stuff and group suggestions would only come into play if its something that dosn't matter. New planet graphics don't matter. New ship avatars don't matter. So if we vote on the top 10 options that are player created, then players get to see something they made in the game and it doesn't matter as far as mechanics.

The nice thing about everyone voting is while some people think only a handful of people are qualified, that only gives a handful of the games populations opinion. If everyone votes, then we get the gamewide opinion. Even if its something not everyone wants to see put in right away. Thats why we vote. It allows the majority of people to get what they want, and then the improvements that the minority want to see will get done later.

there was already a vote that had gone on that was created by 1 of the mod's and training legion's was 1 of the things that was voted on.

i would like to see new stuff added to the game not for the lower ranks but for us who are over rank 2200 more npcs bring back the stryll seekers for us higher ranks and all that sort of stuff heck it be more enjoyment with newer npcs and all that sort of stuff i really enjoyed the new seasonal's we got got me interested in being more active again but since they gone the bane event i barely paid attention and went and played on my ps4 for most of the event.

or even have dan do what most games do and run contests that pay gp and other artifacts. contests can run as pvp to bring that back and not have 95% of the people hiding under a halc trap and the 1's who are not are killed before some of the others start to look to do our pvp runs lol.

another contest is npc contest most npcs killed within a certain time frame. and so on reward on another game i used to play was 100$ worth of goods for 1st place 50$ for 2nd place 20$ for the 3rd place and then there decent artifacts to there worse for the top 100 people all ranks are involved no signing up. that was for that game for dan he could have it as 50$ then 25$ then 10$ and then down all transformed into gp as the award for the cash prize's this brought in allot of players for the other game it is on its 6th year running and strong.

And if an idea that you came up with gets implemented, Dan awards you 50 or 100 gp.

Personally i like the in game voting option we got a couple of times for missions. This at least gives all people logging in to play a chance to see it and vote. The forum seems more like a bulletin board for those of us with extra time who love the game and like debating.

As far as who gets to vote, i think anyone who logs in. Much like how once you hit 18 you can vote no matter how much of an idiot you are...same applies here. You play at all, you are part of the community and good or bad your voice should have a vote. I even think perhaps sometimes having what seems like a less 'logical' mass opinion might lead to an interesting game course of events.

This game shouldn't have to be all 'best choices' , but rather fun choices. Otherwise it would be so homogenous and then what's the point.

IMHO

Custom titles are literally the easiest thing Dan could ever dream of coding and implementing.
Add another checkbox in the titles and ship design settings. Then accept user input and assign it to a string
My god "wasting his time" it is just copy pasta all the code he would need has already been written

I dont realy care how easy you think this might be to make
as I see it, NO real ingame effect = wast of time, when theire are critical problems that actualy need to be fixed


and, no it not a simple coppy paste....
you basickly also need a small programe that block certain words from beeing used in titles
unless you want someone to manualy have to check that....

I wonder how Dan lets you enter your own ship name at the beginning of the game hmmmmmm.......
Copy pasta m8 copy pasta
As for a small program for blocking certain words, more like a couple lines of code
Don't forget about the Ingame report feature
Your argument is invalid

you realy dont get it ShadowsPoison...
what takes time isnt making a funktion that lets you input a custom title

what takes time is
making sure that it also displayed right in all screns that show your title
making sure it stored corectly on the server
making sure that the variables you picked doesnt confilic with something else in the game

that you cant do with a simple coppy paste.....


as for the report feature, sure let Dan wast 30 min, every time 10 to 20 new players join the game and pick a title like, d###head, motherf#####, P####lover etc etc etc
and 30 min is a low estimate, as he proberly also have to answer mails from a few of them to explain why they was baned

I'd rather he spent time on anything other than custom titles. Like a filter in the abilities panel. That'd be useful.

1)copy pasta just changing variables, which should have been obvious, don't deny it
2)apparently you don't realize that a custom title and a custom ship name are in fact exactly the same thing done exactly the same way
Common sense fail


Would not take long at all. But for unknown reasons Dan can and will not be bothered to do certain things

your ign is pretty much a custom tag...titles are earned in game

NO they are not
we dont know how the data is strored on the server....atm your title could actualy just be a number from 0 = no title, to x, where x is the total number of difrent titles you can pick - and the system then imports the text for the title from an open data base when you request the pages where ship title is actualy used, to save space and system recurces

if it is programed that way, adding custom titles = you might have to change standart titles as well or make a case of, if custom title do that, if standart title do something else
also storing 20.000+ custom titles on the server (or how many ships we actualy have) takes time and space on the server = more lag....

but as we dont know how things are actualy programed, you cant say for sure how dificult anything might be to actualy make, and what it might conflict with

so unless you can actualy post the programe Dan made for titles and ship names here
it your own argument of "it is just copy pasta all the code he would need has already been written" that is invalid

One big gross over exaggeration

WHAT 'new aspects of the game?' We've been suggesting and suggesting and suggesting and he hasn't bloody added any. Voting will do about as much good.