Yep Yep

Definately look at the dark.

Ok, here's my view of the problems. (Kinda long - sry - so I added color for the attention impaired. Ooh, pretty!)

There is a dedicated core base of players who have been around for quite some time. They have at least one uber char and likely have many alts. There isn't much that these folks havent figured out and with the creds and connections they've got there isn't really much they can't do.

There's also the desire to bring in more people and make the game appealing to a wider player base.

The problem is that as the universe is now there is no way to serve both groups. The devs I am sure are slamming up against this every time they try to make a move.

One aspect of the problem is shared by all games. Uber player characters unbalance the dynamics of the game. The typical method for game designers to limit that is to put level caps on the characters. As SS has none this would not work. Plus, it would likely really piss-off the core, dedicated group of players to have that put in place now.

Messing with the dynamics of the old content I don't think is the solution. It is highly irritating to the vast majority of players, as far as I can tell from the postings. The stable predictible environment of that content is necessary for people to get a feel for the game and to advance nicely. (No, I don't think Nexus does that as there is a huge skill jump between that system and the rest of the universe.)

Perhaps a lesson from Runescape (shiver, hiss). They brought back PvP but confined it to specific worlds for those who wished to participate. To sweeten the appeal they also developed uber drop tables so that ultra rare, neurobound drops could fall from player characters (stuff they didn't necessarily have equipped).

As frustrating and annoying as octo and reaver could be they added an element to the game that kept it fresh. Relatively safe PvP regions may be one answer. Relatively safe in that uber gear perhaps isn't at stake and wars couldn't be started by fighting there. Appealing because of rewards. While there are some benefits to being emperor its only compelling for the super ubers and is a universe ender. The glory system is essentially useless. Perhaps tying benefits to glory levels and PvP wins in special areas would be appealing. Somewhat like capture the flag this could give some special bonus during the current uni as long as the team or individual held and kept the flag.

Of course this would be extremely complicated to implement, but thankfully that isn't my problem.

Of course we realize that all bosses are now much easier than they were around the time when having piloting 20 meant you were in the top and w20 was an unattainable luxury for 95% of the player base. We are not planning to empower the bosses enough for them to be relatively as strong as they used to be, say, 2 years ago.

No, the problem is that the rebalance screwed some of them over and we want to bring them back to their pre-rebalance levels. I promise that I'll try to restrict myself from going completely nuts with the XMLs, but their difficulty right now is laughable. I've seen knight spawns tougher than Prince. And don't get me started on Anaconda

So do expect most of the bosses to get a beef to shields (and may be some nasty addons if I feel particularly spiteful that day ), but I emphasize that all content will still be very much doable, even if you'll have to bring a buddy on your weekly boss soloing run.

Instead of just doubling their damage and tripling their shield bank, they should be made more interesting. The special roaming Undead Tobal was great, with his rat spawns, PWI, funny chat (even if it did get boring, having him say the same 3 or 4 things a dozen+ times), ect. Copper was supposed to be like that, but he is also rather pathetic atm, easily soloed by a decent SD.

That's fine. Beefing them to fix problems that occured with the rebalance is fine. Beefing them to keep up with endgame players isn't So I'm happy to hear that that's not what's happening.

We are actually discussing these sorts of changes in the admin forums. Increasing the stats of weak ubers is but a temporary measure while we work out the details of other more complicated changes to them.

Like [censored] modified the tracking code, why don't you guys just make the AI a bunch smarter?

Thank you for looking into my suggestions about destoryed bases and abandoned time, and the spriit/pods with player ships. Its much appreciate for the quick responce . When changing it, please make it more expensive AND time consuming however, not just more time needed.

Great job.

rule of thumb. you will learn this as you experience many games and compare/contrast them.

AI dont GET smarter..they get CHEAPER. yet to see a game where the ai actually had an increased ability rather then a huge boost to something well over what the player has to try and span the gap between intelligence of a human and that of the pre-coded actions.

but i have to agree with many of the posters here. fix it, then LEAVE it and go on to bigger better things.

as far as pvp is concerned, here is an idea that just kind of poped in there with little or no warning like that headache the next morning after the all-night bar binge..

once the difficulty is changed this last time, leave it be and produce new content and introduce new tech levels, wile you are at it introduce a token system as an item sink to cut down on random crap, and then we take it a step at a time.

I see this doing one of two things, old "uber" gear gets cheaper as new content comes out or they become readily available, this makes PVP cheaper so the costs are not so painful.

The other is if the token system is applied gear that is not used, or that there is a huge surplus of can be traded in for other gear. making items valued in times when there is no demand.IF you can keep your hands out of the cookie jar and into development (–noun-the act or process of developing; growth; progress: child development; economic development.) the stability itself will attract many.

I think the rebalance was a bit too much too fast, the guest system MAY help a little with this but what people look for in a game is not a game where work is useless every 3 months and you start nearly from scratch.(as anyone who has spent a year or more can tell you, this is SS's baleful(Adjective
harmful, menacing, or vindictive) habit. its where you actually progress and the action of trying to make progress in the game leads you to play it longer.

I play because i am stubborn as hell, and await challenges that allow me to test my prowess on the battlefield and with comrades. I don't pay every month so you can rebalance it time and time again because people accomplish exactly what you set before them.

To summarize, the entire goal of Star Sonata should not be tweaking existing content as people rise to the occasion and accumulate player items, it should be creating new interesting ways to get yourself killed,kill things and make an environment that nurtures the curiosity of the people you are trying to attract.

Sorry Goldy but you are wrong . Rebalance is precisely what this game needed - Im saying that cos i believe what Jeff told us -" We need the balance sheets cos now we can introduce new content without overpowering anything " . With just a little nerf to SD ( i dont think it should be a big now - it can kill most of the things but only thing it can scoop is dem frags and little to UZ SS can finally continue forward .
That is what im trying to remind them now what we have is what is here you cant change it or balance it more ( cos if you do balance it for 5% of the ppl that can solo UZ youll destroy it for 95% of players that dont have mercurian / primal gear !) .
So in short i think my as well as most of the player base message is : Dont even think of redoing old - go do something new ( you said c2 is going faster and faster do that or bribe UZ2 maker with drugs and words like " you dont need education you need SS and SS needs you and UZ2"

all of the rebalances were necessary. but i have seen a total of THREE rebalances in my time on SS. admins on SS spend more time tweaking in game content then making new content. and that is the sad truth.

and i also said that it was too much too fast, many people left because it destroyed their work. stability is needed for this game to progress.

if admins can make this rebalance stick, then this was worth it. content is hard to balance and much tweaking is still being done because you have to take into account rarity of items and difficulty to produce.

I expect to see another huge rebalance in another 4months to a year. but thats just because that seems to be the pattern i have seen from Star Sonata. rebalancing this game is a gold plated bitch because there is so much diversity and what is balanced for one class is broken for another.

but one admin should deal with in-game balancing. wile the others deal with new content and meet with the in-game balance dude to figure out whats to be done. if pip is working on game balance, thats time taken away from C2. which we were told was to come out last spring..

without stability you have a dangerous structure that threatens to topple at any moment. I have seen an MMOG die because of changes being made too frequently to the same gear. I just don't want to see that happen here.

I never have nor probably ever will touch the balance/item sheets. Its not my thing.