#11 Golden Skull Level

[Faye]

A cause du crash serveur du 10/11, je ne suis plus division 4, plus de score de guerre, et je recommence en entrée division. Certes on est tous au début... mais avoir autant tapé et farmé pour etre reset...

Thank you for your report.

We are currently investigating what exactly might have happened.
We will inform you as soon as we know more.

Greetings Faye

 

[Steel_Blue]

On solaria right now, there's 2 people who have generated warscore this week, but the ladder seems to say that they will be pushed from division 3 to division 4. If my calculations are correct, if the ladder would finish this very minute, this week's 21 player strong division 3 will become a 7 player division 3, comprised of 2 players from last week's div 3 and 5 players risen from div 4. I hope that the dropping divisions is not so harsh such that you can be active and forced out of a division when that division is shrinking. Or is there a greater than 0 threshold now?

 

[dr.claw]

View attachment 54852

Basically you will have multiple channels where you can gather warscore. We try to balance it that not a single channel dominates the others and instead its best to try to play things where you can combine them. For example play missons where you can rank up pve as well as warscore for the quest completion itself. Same for Reactor challenge where you can also play safer without the risk of getting into PVP. You will get points here for PVE kills as well for the final ranking position. But here is more skill required to be at a top position with your squad. And thats only for the Player Ladder. You can also play conquest each day ~1h to get many skulls through you clan if you like the PVP competition. Hopefully that gives everyone a good way to earn skulls.



Yes it is planned that all items installed in slot 9 have a general weakness that will affect all the item in the same way. There will be a info in the game about that for sure.



As Sirius quests give good cryonite they also should give nice warscore based on it. You need to try out to find the best actions to do to maximize Warscore.



Jup they follow the same structure like the Ancient variants. You get them from differnt type of Skull Item Carriers you need to search for on all the story planets. There is not a fixed farm spot for them and you can find the same skull item in vega and the next time it is in tau ceti.




The old golden skulls where converted into "leagacy skulls" in the time the ladder was still beta and buggy. Players got them added into their player profile so we could reset the ladder with the fixed ladder system. This time though there will be no reset and the golden skulls are kept for all players. We only might every player back to the entry division though as the warscore values will change.



With the planned changes we hope there will be alot more movement towards enabling the pirate mode and also by this get a few pvp battles going on. Risk reward mechanic that hopefully works and is fun for most people.



Players that are able to unlock the 9th slot items will have a lower warscore boost as they already have a high skill level. That mechanic should help players to catch up easier. Sure on direct PVP competition for CQ it can make a difference. Still the 9th skill use will also come with downsides that should help to balance it out a bit.



Not directly but as you need to search these carrier ships first and they are spread around all story planets on all systems it will be difficult for clans to claim them all for their own. We surly will look on how things evolve once it goes live for sure.


1. See answers above or initial post closely
2. & 3. & 5.Who said that the variants are ancient items?
4. Nahh no need to have such thing. Indirectly the current boosters already help to get WS quicker.



Yes most likely all go back to entry division as we change the structe of divisions and also the warscore values. Golden skulls are kept though.

For what ive seen Only ppl in the server time zone Benefits of otb ppl outside the servertime otb can not keep up with the warscore made from otb.So i suggest this:

2 otb a day . 1 in the server time zone ( example solaria) as is it now and add a 2nd for ppl outside the US timezone with a cooldown of 24 hrs from moment your selected for the otb. So everyone gets a fair oppertunity to do a otb.

 

[Highway]

On solaria right now, there's 2 people who have generated warscore this week, but the ladder seems to say that they will be pushed from division 3 to division 4. If my calculations are correct, if the ladder would finish this very minute, this week's 21 player strong division 3 will become a 7 player division 3, comprised of 2 players from last week's div 3 and 5 players risen from div 4. I hope that the dropping divisions is not so harsh such that you can be active and forced out of a division when that division is shrinking. Or is there a greater than 0 threshold now?

Every division has a desired size it tries to fill and will add dynamic promition positions (green arror icon) to move more users up the division to keep its size. The promotion positions are currrently higher as there are divisions that are yet empty above.
Each division also has a fixed amount of relegation positions ( red arrow icon) in addition to dynamic ones for players that did not make any warscore.

On the case you looked into on Solaria you can see that division 3 has 4 fixed relegaion positions and the two players did not manage to raise their WS yet to get out of these relegation positions. They need to fight their way back up.



And in Div4 usually would be more players promoted but as they have 0 warscore they are not. This can lead that the Div3 will be smaller that it should be. This will open more promotion positions from the the entry division and so on.



Still we will look into readjusting the ladder based the user participation on the ladder per server.

 

[Dresnov]

Esto es lo que te encuentras en Colossus todos los sábados, así que la puntuación de batalla solo es para quienes forman escuadrones allí. ¿Esa es la intención? Deberían permitir escuadrones desde la órbita, porque ¿qué sentido tiene bajar a un planeta para que un grupito de siete personas venga y te mate gratis? De los que conozco, ninguno va ya a ese evento; lo echaron precisamente por eso. La crionita y la puntuación semanal solo son para los mismos que siempre están en escuadrones. ¿Cómo piensan controlarlo? ¿O van a dejar que los jugadores sigan perdiendo la fe en Colossus? Las conquistas gratuitas suelen tener más de 50 jugadores, pero Colossus no llega ni a 25. Deberían replantearse la dinámica de lo que se hace en ese planeta.

 

[NGSpeed]

Question related to the upcoming "9th-Slot":
Will it be in every star system ?
Or only Mizar and above?
Will there be a Vega 7th slot?
Antares 8th slot?

 

[leo]

Esto es lo que te encuentras en Colossus todos los sábados, así que la puntuación de batalla solo es para quienes forman escuadrones allí. ¿Esa es la intención? Deberían permitir escuadrones desde la órbita, porque ¿qué sentido tiene bajar a un planeta para que un grupito de siete personas venga y te mate gratis? De los que conozco, ninguno va ya a ese evento; lo echaron precisamente por eso. La crionita y la puntuación semanal solo son para los mismos que siempre están en escuadrones. ¿Cómo piensan controlarlo? ¿O van a dejar que los jugadores sigan perdiendo la fe en Colossus? Las conquistas gratuitas suelen tener más de 50 jugadores, pero Colossus no llega ni a 25. Deberían replantearse la dinámica de lo que se hace en ese planeta.
View attachment 54992

i feel u brother dont worry we'll get through this together

 

[dr.claw]

Hello Highway,

I made last week 430+ k ws and was on spot 1 in div 4 on solaria.
Today after reset ladder i checked and was left behind in Div 4, So i lost 1 weeks work in ws work for being left behind in Div 4. While the only Div what did change was Div 2 and 1.
Whats then the point of making ws if your simply be left behind while you had to being moved up.

 

[Steel_Blue]

I can't help myself, I'm going to ask for The Moon, Saturn, and a fresh pair of socks.

What if the tech variants rewarded in part 2 provided significant alternatives to ship gameplay? Ancient tech variants are fairly simple, providing what seems to be a pve or pvp experience in long v strong. I don't think I've ever seen anyone on my server equip and use rapid rockets, for instance, because the opportunity of having a rocket crit someone for half their health is too good to pass up. This is the same for all damaging techs, strong is king. Instead of re-introducing the strong tech to TC combat, what if techs provide alternative functions instead?

Imagine a chromium not having a placeable magnet trap, but instead has a ra-styled trap around it's self, allowing the chromium to catch people repeatedly in chase, by offering themself as super front line?

What about a variable-strength blaster, a 3-hit combo blaster? This upgraded blaster is the same as a regular blaster for the first 2 shots, but on the third consecutive shot in combat mode it shoots a strong variant damaging blaster with the strong variant cooldown? Players get less effectiveness out of the blaster than the strong, but still get the ability every 3 shots to add another tech in the extended cooldown time, giving players a stricter time table to weave their tech between blasters while keeping optimal dps.

Charge-based repairdroid. Activate to use repair, re-activate to put it on early cooldown based on the active repair time. Players now get the choice to do a partial repair cycle, but have the opportunity cost of wasting a blaster shot if they are in the middle of combat.

Attack droid applies a 2.5 second 50% strength stuncharge once every 10 seconds instead of dealing damage. You get this on your ship to tilt enemy players.

Sacraficial materialiser: When you successfully cast this, you pod and what you resurrected comes back at 100% health and a random bonus (4 second invulnerability? free Iodine Graviton effect? 50% speed boost for 10 seconds?).

Aggrobeacon -> Mindflayer. Instead of a 2.5 minute cooldown aggrobeacon, apply a standard mindflayer to players in a stundome range of target for 12 seconds on a 30 second cd.

Scope shifter -> Scope maxer. Apply the positive scope shifter buff to target ally.

Speed actuator -> Fleet of engines. Apply 15% movespeed buff instead of ability haste.

 

[NinjaFlow]

Why the promos on this game always the same? 10-20% on boosters, 20% on gravs, etc. Why isn't there a promotion above 30% up to at least 50% off?
It's been a few years since the Opal and Sable came out, but only Sable the is coming out from mantis in this event, why?
* The Harpy also, but it's ready to be bought with gold again with the same 25%

 

[Z0ckt]

What are the plans for the game's development this year? Any concrete plans? New content? New star systems, planets, and missions? Or perhaps a focus on attracting new players to the game? Unfortunately, the lower star systems are still inactive... Perhaps you could create a roadmap for both Pirate Galaxy and Dino Storm. Transparency has never hurt anyone. I hope we won't have another year of inactivity here...More variety in the events would also be desirable. Please come up with new events instead of just copying and pasting the same ones over and over again.

 

[Alinoe]

Or perhaps a focus on attracting new players to the game?

Let's be honnest, it's a old game with high time retention and low reward for invested time, I saw so much players just give up because the game is boring on too much aspects (I'm essentially here for CQ). And you add the issues of separated servers that divide the existent playerbase even more...

How do you want to advertise a outdated game, that most player keep playing either by nostalgia, because they invested too much to give up or because they make friends on it? Why choose PG instead of another F2P game?

Please come up with new events instead of just copying and pasting the same ones over and over again.

Oh yes, please remove or rework this shitty Halloween event that burns eyes every year...

 

[Z0ckt]

Boring? I don't share that opinion. When I started playing the game back then, Gemini was the last system in the game. So I experienced the releases of Mizar, Sol, and Draconis live, and I still believe that the story campaign up to Draconis is very exciting and by no means boring. Only the side quests could be a little more varied. I still think the idea of being able to explore entire planets, follow the story, and continuously upgrade your own ship is great. That's why I started playing the game in the first place! What other games offer the same thing? Most of the time, the differences are far too great and the gameplay is completely different. That's why I think Pirate Galaxy is still unique in its own way. But you could get a lot more out of the game because, unfortunately, the developers have not yet fully exploited its potential.

Sirius isn't boring either. The idea of venturing further and further into dangerous zones with randomly generated planets was something completely new for Pirate Galaxy at the time, and I like the basic concept. It would be nice if you could achieve all the goals in Sirius as a pair, and if they were a little more generous with the generation of blueprints so that you don't have to wait too long for new (right) planets. And that there are places in Sirius where the jump ship cannot be destroyed, so that you can take a break. Unless it has been integrated into the game since then (I haven't played in a long time), this is a feature that is still missing today.

Unfortunately, development for Tau Ceti took far too long, and the developers' inactivity caused many players to quit. But that can be changed if you want to. No Man's Sky proves that it is possible to successfully bring games back. The new PVP update is a good thing overall, even if it needs optimization. After that, however, new content must be added. PVE content, PVP content, or perhaps a mixture of both. You should start with the events. Compared to entire new star systems, these should be the easiest to redesign. However, I fear that the developers will disappear again for a long time after the PVP update. That's not good for this game.

A roadmap is required, with clear objectives for the games they are developing. More communication! Preferably in parallel with Dino Storm. If you start adding more content to the game, and above all more frequently, and revising things, then you can also advertise this and make the game more popular again. It doesn't have to be something big, lots of little things can also have a positive effect. It would be smart to then try to release the game on Steam or, alternatively, enter into a partnership with Epic Games. It cannot be in the developers' interest to create stagnation in their games. Even if you rely on existing players (purchases), this can also break down at some point.

 

[Alinoe]

Boring? I don't share that opinion.

You've seen the game developping over years, so in your case it's nostalgia. Every addition felt exciting because it was the new "endgame" at this time, but new players must progress trough the game without the same effect of excitment.

Sirius is just skipped to R5 by HL in their clan for the vast majority of players, they don't discover it like you did and for them it's just a boring time barrier that prevent upgrade through TauCeti aka the current end-game stuff where the friend who invited them to play is.

No Man's Sky is not a forgotten game from the past like PG, it's a game the missed his launch because it was on a early access stage, overhyped, at full price... Instead of giving up the devs keep working to implement everything promised and players gave it another chance, and it turn to be a good game at the end, when finished. Your example make no sense here because both sitation are really differents...

The core issue with Pirate Galaxy? The game is invisible.

• It's not on a known game store like Steam, who allow players to see the game, their friend playing the game and get curious, and don't look like a strange sus software with his launcher. I don't know if it's because of Steam commission on transactions or if there is a technical reason for that,
• Don't consider Epic, the launcher happy to announce that they added gift... 10 years after everyone... And their launcher is a graveyard considered as a death sentence if your game is not called Fortnite,
• The game has 0 communication, no ads, no sponsoring ("this video is brought to you by [insert product name here]"),
• Graphic part of the game is really outdated and not attractive, and that's a engine issue,
• People have job and a limited time to play, and that the part where other game offer ways to skip the farm to have fun, I was surprised when some people where ready to pay 180$ for a ship on StarConflict, but now I understand why.
• And the global issue, the game rely on current playerbase that play by nostalgia or because they made friends, to inject money by buying boosters, bring new players (what I did, and most of them just dropped because the gameplay loop is too boring for them), and generally when we see a new player on our server is generally someone coming from another server.
• Even if the game is unique, the concurence for spaceships games... exist for potential players, even as a full P2W game, you know these game exist,

I would be curious to have statistics data about how people discover the game in the first place, it could highlight the issues even more.

Adding new content wont resolve the core issue of attracting news players.
It will just give to endgame player another thing to do to maintain their playerbase on the game instead of looking for news players.

 

[Zylo M]

After that, however, new content must be added. PVE content, PVP content, or perhaps a mixture of both. You should start with the events. Compared to entire new star systems, these should be the easiest to redesign.

Here's a few ideas:

Something that a game like Guild Wars 2 does - which I think would bring PG to life, are map events that repeat on a 1-2 hour timer with some light (and occasionally heavy) story-related stuff going on. Sometimes there is a sequence of such events (they play kinda like story missions in PG except anyone can join in) that eventually lead to a final boss. Sometimes, multiple teams of players need to be on different parts of the map before their events eventually converge. Failing some of them causes a different story/event path to follow and sometimes cancels it entirely. Rallying players to them is often unnecessary because there are usually plenty around to participate. Rewards scale with your level of participation, and you get bits of story you won't get anywhere else. Almost all of their maps have this functionality. The closest thing PG has to this is the R5 CM. Maybe start with Erebos, or a subsequent planet in the story?

They also have a version of this (their World Vs World maps) where players and their guild are all part of a bigger "team" (world/server) that fights other teams for domination of 3 different maps. Sometimes one team absolutely dominates for hours, before the other logs on to turn the tide. It's running constantly and there are always players fighting.

Getting enough players in the game for something like that to be feasible on more than a couple planets would require further development and some kind of plan to advertise the game again. If y'all can make the game more dynamic, I think the cost would be worth it for the team. PG can be fun and challenging, but there's still something missing - learning from the successes of other games isn't unwise.

Daily achievements and rewarding people for achievement points might make players log in more. GW2 rewards players for reaching achievement point tiers (e.g. 2500, 5000, etc.) with skins, temporary consumables, and a permanent 2% increase to gold dropped from enemies. Dailies and repeatable achievements ensure that there is technically no cap.

I love the golden skull idea. A 9th item would be epic on my Harpy, even if I have to get to the current end of the game for it. Some of the proposed features earlier in this thread (such as hunting for certain enemies and structures on planets throughout the game) don't sound too dissimilar from the aforementioned dynamic events. Maybe that hunt can be the next part of the story?

 

[Gon]

First, sorry for a long rant. This is a general post and not really a reply to certain posts, but a discussion here made me think about all of the PG and I came up with that wall of text.

You've seen the game developping over years, so in your case it's nostalgia. Every addition felt exciting because it was the new "endgame" at this time, but new players must progress trough the game without the same effect of excitment.

Sirius is just skipped to R5 by HL in their clan for the vast majority of players, they don't discover it like you did and for them it's just a boring time barrier that prevent upgrade through TauCeti aka the current end-game stuff where the friend who invited them to play is.

(...)

Adding new content wont resolve the core issue of attracting news players.

It will just give to endgame player another thing to do to maintain their playerbase on the game instead of looking for news players.

And this is extremely important to remember and forgetting about that was one of the biggest reasons why the game is how it currently looks like. People often look at everything from a perpective of a veteran player who is alredy at latest system or already finished it. New systems as a "new content" only alienated new players and actually gave only some time before vets were bored again. There is no single issue with the game or feature that would turn this around and trying to fix that would pracically mean rebalancing and recreating from scratch entire progression of the game, which will not happen.

I played years ago so I don't know the exact current state of the game but I see new player enjoyment is bad as it was. I'm still surprised how many players are playing(however almost all are 99lvl anyway). So if anything below was already fixed, I would be happy for anyone mentioning what was changed. This is how it looked like for me years ago:

- System progression. For new players to catch up it needs tons and tons of time. Everything below TC is just boring time barrier to be able to play together. When a friend joined the game, that new person was basically carried all the way by stronger players, it was the only way a new guy could catch up and still it took dozens of hours for all players who invested time for that new player. Often new player skipped ships or tech when being carried to be able to progress faster later. It wasn't doing a good image of the game. Otherwise, new player wasted time in dead systems and quit around Antares. So either someone being carried by their high level friends or someone begging for help and quitting. There is nothing in between.

- Solo play for progression, or rather lack of it. In later stages of the game the story progression is impossible for solo play. When lower systems are dead, new player either quits because the difficulty becomes unbearable solo or is carried all the time by friends, nothing in between as I wrote in previous point. Only someone who already have high level friends in the game when joining it has a chance to progress. To finish many story missions you need people and I saw many people, especially in Sol, get demotivated and then quit because their gameplay was about waiting for higher level friend to log in and being carried. And these people who decide to help are most often over that mission already, meaning they will have to redo it with you for zero reward. It's a chore for both players. New player will only get help from your friends because for a stranger helping only wastes the time.
And this is not something exclusive to low level play, it's basically all the way until finishing entire story in PG and it gets worse and worse the higher system you are in. And it will be the same when they add a new system. This only creates a huge frustration for someone who doesn't have friends in PG and wants to play the game. I saw people like that in the past, begging for help, basically getting locked from the game and finally quitting. When a mission that progress the player needs a squad, it's wrong. It's even more wrong if outside cover is needed too. Simple progression should never be tied to having to ask others for help, especially not in a game like with small playerbase like that. There are so many story missions that even with hundreds active players over all systems it would be difficult to progress by going to orbit and instantly joining just random squad doing the same mission. And even with random squads not forget that some missions almost require outside cover. Story missions need to be balanced around solo players, not around squads. And of course there's a Sirius which is rotten concept to the core, balanced around keeping veterans to play as long a possible after Draconis and keeping grind as long as possible. Now it's just skipped by high level players for their low level friends because Sirius wasn't created around fun, it was a second job. Entire concept of progressing only by story missions that need squads and outside cover needs to be reworked entirely, it only brings frustration. This is one of the reasons why newer players or players without tons of friends can't enjoy and can't keep playing this game. When I played PG I mostly had contact with people from my country only and I've never met a single person that enjoyed these story missions. Everyone treated them as chores to do to get to the next system.

- Another thing that PG lacks what other online games have is the impossible to "jump in and jump out". Mostly it's related to the issue above. Story progression or Sirius needed multiple people being ready at a certain time. In most modern games, you can jump in any time, play half of hour, have some meaningful progress and jump out. In PG you can't.

- Grind. This is the only "content" you could do solo. One advantage of game being dead were free harvester spots at least. Shooting for who knew how much at one the same spot was boring and grind was the only content that was "enjoyable" solo. Cryo gain was extremely unbalanced and most often it was just harvester grind. Flying around the planet and shooting everything around is time wasting. It doesn't help than when you reach new system, the old one basically becomes useless except for harvester grind. Entire cryo gain would need to be reworked, introducing also cryo scaling for for high level players to give them additional ways of gaining cryo better using the respective ship in the system. It doesn't help that cryo grinding in TC is basically reserved for squads.
New players would have to spend ages to be able to get to the same point in game as current players.

- Pod cryo and ancient BPs in CQs. Before Ancient tech low level players could at least get toe-to-toe on CQs. When Sirius came and Ancient tech started dominating CQs low level players had their chances extremely reduced, especially since some rapid/strong variants are much better for PvP than regular ones. It was fun for new players to be able to get 2-3 gold BPs for Antares and be able to really matter during CQ. However with Ancient BPs, a new player cannot stand a chance.
Also cryo loss in CQ demotivated people from going into it and made players who didn't pay basically ignore it if they knew that there will be an even fight and lots of pods. Cryo loss in CQs was supposed to be disabled in the time when I stopped playing, I don't remember if that happened. I remember times when cryo drop was tied to ship level and in Dywizjon 303 we had fun in Vega even when losing, because dying in Vega or Antares ship when you were in Mizar was almost free. After cryo drop was changed to player level, the amount of frustration and hours of grinding lost on CQs were a reason for me and many others to stop doing that at all. I had tons of fun in CQ but the cryo loss in CQ was a slap in the face for any non-paying players and that killed CQs for me completely. I think that pod cryo was even worse than ancient BPs for CQs.

- Practically mandatory microtransactions. Removed energy consumption from top Membership is a game changer that felt mandatory at later stages. Lack of energy mid-mission could mean a fail. Lack of energy during CQ could mean a lost position. People with no energy loss could just shoot constantly without even thinking about that while especially non paying ones had to focus their gameplay around energy refills, heavily slowing down gameplay, limiting how flexible they can be and in many cases this made game much harder for non paying users. Not to mention wasting time on energy collection. I remember that PvE maps for defending a tower, basically not having infinite energy meant less chance of success and having squad full of non-paying people made that map much more difficult.
I checked the current item shop and saw that 50% membership was reduced to 30%, and 75% one to 50%. I guess this is all to make it look useless for players and go straight to expensive 100% membership.
Rework of entire energy system would be needed.

- Content and goal, or rather lack of goal. After so many years I now see that new systems were a band-aid on lack of any endgame gameplay content to keep veterans playing and spending money. The "endgame" was just newest system like you wrote and anyone not in it was just behind, only increasing the "System progression" problem. In my eyes Gemini was doing the biggest "wow", it was the peak of PG. We had access to all 8 items for the first time, we saw DSes and planets were the most unique in the game. After that the game was more or less the same. The difference between Gemini and any other next system is just more player ships and more enemy types denser filling the map, everything else is the same. People were grinding to have best eq, however once they got fully golded many people stopped having a reason to continue because there was no real endgame. We grinded to buy more things, which allowed us to grind more efficient or have that dopamine rush after clicking "buy" on expensive ship. More and more parsecs were added to satisfy people who were grinding to give them more and more money sinks. While having more ships being added is interesting, limiting them just to parsecs and making BPs time limited is insanely pathological idea and again this is just content for old veterans, while low level players are limited to old 4 classes up to Draconis that has additional variant. Parsecs for non-top tech players are in reality unobtainable. In old times it was a prize ship with 20% more armor. Now it's basically necessity if you want anything more than the same few classes. Sirius and TC introduced new classes instead of old 4 ones, but in reality most Sirius and TC classes suffer from poor item combinations, limiting the actual choice for less than 4 ships, especially in TC where the only choice is basically Thunderbird and if you want to play tank or support you are forced to grind for parsec ships. How a game can expect new players coming anyway if new content and more variation is only reserved for top-tech players, is time limited and behind insane grind?
But anyway, other than grinding there was no real content. People wanted more and more systems because we knew nothing else. Honestly after all these years I think it was a mistake and adding "new" systems was only making the existing problems even worse. New players had deserted systems to complete to be able to play with friends. We shot harvesters on Mizar to grind, then after few systems we still shot harvesters in Draconis to grind, and in TC it's even worse because you need a squad to do the same because of other mobs now being in harvester spots. Now there are too many useless systems in the game that currently serve just as an obstacle for new player to reach newest one where everyone else play. Sirius was a lazy variation of the same, just slapped insane HP on mobs and time limits on planets and force people to treat the game even more as a job. Sirius was just a chore to keep players play. Sirius only "worked" because at that point of the game anyone who managed to reach it had friends, and time with friends was what kept people playing. Not the actual game. But when friends were logged out and someone tried even with a capable ship like Granite to shoot solo, it was the most boring gameplay PG ever had. Bosses should be instead part of regular systems, on planets, to give some variation, where random players can join. Ancient EQ in lower systems were interesting concept but unbalanced and destroyed CQs for low level players as something available in Sirius-only, instead these should be available to get in these lower systems and also by players not having access to higher systems. Years ago MMOs were about grind, but these times passed away many years ago and people don't want that anymore. PG in the meantime did not evolve at all. As you wrote, only nostalgia and friends keep people playing the game. Many of us played this game because of friends.

The game was made when we as children back then had tons of time after school and were able to invest lots of time. Many MMOs back then had similar . Today children don't want to grind dozens of hours first to mayyyybe start enjoying the game. Current online games are the opposite.
But older people also changed. People don't want their games to be a second job. People want play games where their time matters not games where their time feels wasted.

(...)
They also have a version of this (their World Vs World maps) where players and their guild are all part of a bigger "team" (world/server) that fights other teams for domination of 3 different maps. Sometimes one team absolutely dominates for hours, before the other logs on to turn the tide. It's running constantly and there are always players fighting.



Getting enough players in the game for something like that to be feasible on more than a couple planets would require further development and some kind of plan to advertise the game again. If y'all can make the game more dynamic, I think the cost would be worth it for the team. PG can be fun and challenging, but there's still something missing - learning from the successes of other games isn't unwise.
(...)

Something like that was in Nostale, where each person in a server needed to choose their side and it was a server-wide fight, without negative consequences for dying. There was a "Killed X, Died Y" number at your profile that resetted periodically and it was just there to boast about it. As a reward for "participation", raids were available later for either of side, but both side gained a progress into it, without caring who was winning. And it worked. It was the only reason for many to play, that much fun it gave. The problem is, PG does not allow for something like that. Difference between power of best and worst items in TC, which is just one system, is 2x and PG does not have anything that allow players to outsmart their opponent if the gap is too big. You would still encounter a problem where everyone below TC is basically a meat for TC players, meaning zero reasons for, for example, Draconis guy to jump in, even if reaching Draconis is tons of work, it's still useless against top TC eq. Any form of PVP like that would be reserved for current veterans only and would further fragment the playerbase, giving zero new players because they would still need to have that pointless time wasting progression all the way to Tau Ceti. And also pod cryo drop would have to be disabled. If we balance the ships in battle like that around the ship's tech(Gemini tech as strong as Sirius ancient tech etc.) then again we hit the problem, why even having all these different systems in the first place?

PvP arenas, daily bonuses, some skull levels and 9th item slots won't change anything when the core of the game is rotten. This won't win any new players. It will give max level players just some more reasons to spend some more time and money into the game, until they get the content and then it will be all the same again. The game needs a total rework, anything less is just putting lipstick on a pig. The game needs more varied gameplay, more varied and balanced ways of progressing, but that gameplay also needs to be accessible and valid for lower level players, without changing progression it won't change much. Entire planet system need to be more compressed, story missions entirely reworked. Mizar, Sol, Draconis, Sirius, all these were the "cool new content" when were released, today they are boring obstacles for new players. However it's easier to keep maintaining the game and give content for veterans to give them a reason to pay more, even if it's a cash grab. Someone who spend hundreds or thousands of hours on this game is less likely to quit and will likely to accept more cash-grab focused content. But reworking the game to get the new players is a risk. What if current management and devs aren't up to task like that? If the rework is made badly it might not get as many new players after this as they want. That's why it's easier to give another time and money sink for veterans, slap another time limited RDX, barely any effort from devs, tons of money flowing from veterans. Until they all have it, then another one. And another. Then new player joins the game and see that they need months of constant daily playtime to reach all of that and leave the dead systems to arrive to what is the newest system, sometimes with help of ~7-8 people for a single story mission. That's why I think that PG will never be able to bring new players that aren't the friends of current veterans who get power-carried into the TC.

• Graphic part of the game is really outdated and not attractive, and that's a engine issue,

I think this is not really an issue, especially in current times where games stylized to look outdated are very popular. PG has unique style, both artistic and sound. I actually hate TC soundtrack because of that because it's completely unfitting the PG style.
There were F2P games that had great graphics and they flopped. Black Prophecy for example had stunning graphics, for a F2P. It also had a great soundtrack. The entire prologue section was jaw dropping, but then you finished that and you got an as extremely unbalanced and grindy mess as possible. Dreadnought was also beautiful but then devs completely screwed the game for release version and it died too.

And the global issue, the game rely on current playerbase that play by nostalgia or because they made friends, to inject money by buying boosters, bring new players (what I did, and most of them just dropped because the gameplay loop is too boring for them), and generally when we see a new player on our server is generally someone coming from another server.

It makes me sad to know that I don't even need to keep playing the game to see that the only thing that the Splitscreen Studios is doing is exactly that. Milking the veterans is all devs are doing. Just more content for veterans, as time consuming as possible. Another time and cryo sink for veterans. Time limited as a bonus to use FOMO or with a focus on people unable to play solo as another bonus. Things like RDX events are prime example of that and the fact that they still exist shows that milking old players is all what Splitscreen cares about. And unfortunately this won't change as long as that small extremely loyal playerbase keeps playing and paying for the game. But the question is, would Splitscreen then close the game or finally rework it to make it playable and enjoyable for everyone else and not just for the selected few?
Any kind of content being added for giving more reasons to grind for vets and squad play is only prolonging the inevitable. The game needs a rework of systems, progression, story missions, cryo, parsec ships... basically everything to start having any chance of getting new people playing the game. Currently it gives zero reason to start playing it if you don't have tons of friends with 99lvl playing it already.


I wish that PG would be a great game worth playing again one day but I see that it won't happen. It's really a game with tons of potential but devs did nothing over the years to improve the situation, so I don't expect anything to change for better.