pretty much every player over level 2k knows, the best aspect of SS isnt getting a new ship, or being the first to get something, its the team aspect.

the PvP. the interaction with players.

and as it stands, currently, the difficulty in obtaining "endgame" ships and setups does nothing more than act as a boundary to new players wanting to be part of the PvP and team play

forcing new players to climb the "mountain" of ingame skills and techs really only excaserbates the "elitism" prevalent at the top, and reduces the number of players who reach the top, and become "part of SS"

despite this, many players will strongly oppose this, as it would devalue their acheivements, but they need to ask themselves, "do i want the best ship in the game with the best gear but noone to play with?" or "do i want to do PvP, with my teammates, against healthy competition?"

because there is no way of denying it, having it so time-costly and difficult to reach the endgame does nothing but restrict new players from participating in it, and reducing the supply of new recruits to teams which are constantly losing players (ironically, or perhaps not ironically at all, because those players get bored with all their acheivements, after having reached a point where acheivements become meaningless, and the only aspect of the game they still enjoy is the teamwork and PvP)

condensing the skill levels, ship levels and gear tech levels down might be one way to reduce this problem

TL 1-4 would become TL 1

TL 5-10 would become TL 2

TL 11-15 would become TL 3

TL 15-19 would become TL 4

TL 20 would become TL 5

TL 21 would become TL 6

the levels required, and skill points required, would all need to be adjusted down, and the costs of skill increases would need to be higher, but overall, decreasing the difficulty of "getting in the ring" would ultimately have the effect of increasing the number of players who "get in the ring"

which would be overwhelmingly a good thing for SS.

the rigorous "filtering" of new players would be good if SS was something which needed dedicated professional players, but it doesnt. SS needs players who will socialise with other players, do runs with each other, and consistently log on, keeping their teams alive, and keeping SS active, and paid for.

and the same applies for missions for class based gear, aug tweaking and numerous other things. player versus player competition for stuff is good. forcing players to put in hours of effort to get "class essential gear" is really just "boot camp" that thins out the herd of players who reach the endgame and participate and pay subs.

it doesnt "ensure" a level of quality of players, it just reduces their overall number, and that is a bad thing for SS.


and however many people may say that im only suggesting this because im lazy, regardless of how true that is, it doesnt make what im saying not true.

rigorous "filtering" of who gets to reach the endgame serves only to reduce the amount of players who could potentially be long term players. the admins should be trying to maximise the number of new players who stay on, and the current system works counter to that goal. therefore it should be changed. (not immediately, but as a long term goal, 1-2 years, it should definetly be a priority. just because players dont have the stomach for "grinding" their way to 2k and getting all the tedious labor intensive skills they need for PvP, doesnt mean that their money is worthless.)

I agree it's hard for new players to reach endgame in SS. Low levels are very hard and many new players quit for frustation. I think early and midgame should be made a bit easier. However I don't understand why tech levels should be streamlined to T0-6. I would rather fix the problem with other methods such as adjusting levels of early game ai or simply nerfing them.

This is probably DBs best idea ever. Should definitely discussed. Also - what is the point of levels? We have no ceiling, and most people over level 2000 are decidedly equal (bar a few SP-heavy skills).

If you want to play CoD or MW3, which require little effort and create little community, go buy those games and play them. Don't for one second believe that reducing the amount of work it takes to consume all the content - because that's what "endgame" means- would make the game better. It would not.

This is especially a foolish suggestion in light of the current state of PvP, which is nonexistant.

I suggest you learn what genera of game everyone who enjoys SS thinks they're playing before you suggest this game isn't enough like CoD. (I'll give you a hint: its an RPG, with bits of SimCity mixed in)

The current style of game that SS is currently comes from WoW and the majority of fantasy games. Theres a clear difference between a high level and a low level. An equal fight between 10 lowbies and 10 ubers is a surefire victory to the latter.

This is very unfair to a game that is trying to promote group oriented strategic pvp, as it means that a lower level team, such that of M.A.D. (no mad+) has a constant uphill battle against LC. The team that existed longer with long term veteran players will win no matter what.





The polar opposite of games is made up of EVE, Infinity, and Guild Wars. PvP is encouraged from the start, and tactical conflicts are common. New players can easily jump right into the fight and stand a pretty good chance of winning or helping to win for their side.

These games are not based on who has the better gear, but rather who is smarter and wittier. The most dominant player organizations here constantly shift strategies and use black ops as a major component of their overall campaigns.

In EVE, time and time again has shown (with plenty of Youtube vids to prove it) that Tech 1 Corps and Players can use strategy in dealing with the often more numerous Tech 2 Corps. 5 Players can lose all 5 ships to destroy a single Tech 2 player, but because the T2 costs 5x as much as all 5 T1 players, the war was lost for the T2 player.


Who won?

GroupA lost 5 ships totaling 200m isk.
GroupB lost 1 ship totaling 2000m isk.

Star Sonata will NEVER reach the goal of having plenty of pvp and a very pvp minded playerbase. All the people who want pvp in SS, but are unwilling to leave their teams to pirate or are restricted by their team upon pvp should just leave Star Sonata and play another game because, while JeffL will pretend to believe otherwise, Star Sonata is far too far along the Fantasy-mold.

You may ask what will have to happen to convert Star Sonata to a very pvp minded game. Well, it's pretty drastic. It is easily another "Client 2 sized update", which means there is a very low, if any chance to be done.





The first thing that needs to be done is a complete and total overhaul of the actual pvp system of losses and aggro. You need to physically be able to gain money through pvp kills, and make the enemy lose money. The amount of money gained must also be less than what the enemy loses, to force the enemy to be damaged, team wise. It should not be deducted from funds, but rather a passive loss when the enemy team repairs their ships.

Sooner or later, the enemy must repair their ships, or suffer the loss of stats when their ships reach 50% and 5% respectively. Therefore, sooner or later, the enemy must lose money.

The "other" solution is to make ships actually blow up when they die, which is a very big incentive to attack teams you'd not be able to normally. And as a counter, all BP's be vastly reduced in costs and build times to keep up with insane amounts of pvp and wars that would happen when you realize you'd be able to permanently destroy that sexy Heph Machine+ on the enemy team.




The second thing that is needed to be done is vastly reducing the total number of techs in game and impacts of those techs. 22 different techs (Tech 0 is one) makes the uber players look like gods, and in reality, they are. We want people to attack and war each other and right now, if you don't look like you have any chance, you don't attack, even if the reward would benefit your team immensely.

The impact of each tech is also a problem. T21 is vastly greater than T20, likewise for T20 versus T19. A team thats unable to match tech with any potential enemy will have a constant uphill battle, which can easy end up with them sliding downhill as the torrential rains of the monsoon flood the valley.

The best number is 3 techs. It is very low so it superficially makes endgame teams look less immortal to newer teams. Also making each tech less and less of a big (massively big) deal compared to the previous will help incite wars. Yes, a Tech 3 ship is a considerable difference compared to a Tech 1, but a good squad of Tech 1's should be able to counter and win. The Tech 3 cost more to field than 2x the Tech 1 squad's building costs.




The third thing that is needed to be done is localizing uber resources and AI base functions. One of the biggest obstacles to causing wars to happen is that 98% of all progression is done via bases building gear and only but the absolute best can keep their production bases untouched with a war with a team or teams larger than they.

This can be easily fixed by allowing certain AI Bases (we'll call them AI Hubs) to build gear at a 25% hike in credit costs. For those credit intensive builds, it can be annoying, but at least your team can have a place to build at that cannot be destroyed by enemy teams.

Localizing uber resources is a bit more difficult. It means that there would be more than one source of any particular piece of loot. In simpler terms, you could find 5 Serengeti zones in game, 4 of them being situated in wild space. The reason is to discourage content blockades as you'd not be able to camp one place because your enemy has no where else to go to get this stuff. Doing a KKK run in an alternative Wild Space UZ would lock you from all of them to prevent lockout abuse.




The forth thing that needs to be done is making Active Income always greater than Passive Income. The advantage of Passive is to have a steady source. However the Active should always easily out pay the Passive over time and in single payouts. The Active also includes DG's for loot. The Passive will never have any kind of loot distribution.

The idea is to discourage colonies and long term extraction. Heavily defended galaxies is fine, but don't expect to be 100% sure nothing moves during the course of a universe.

Missions should also be a common income source and tons of repeatable and faction based missions will help immensely in bring income to those not willing or able to keep a galaxy constantly locked down for a whole universe. Like those in wars for whatever reasons against larger teams.

I thought LC gained money from capping your gal when you were on TFC.

It's possible to be a successful pirate and profit from PvP (or actually from PvB and/or BvB). The fact no one does it at the moment doesn't prove it's not doable.



Active income is already greater than passive income for smart players. I am a colony whore. I have several accounts for base slots and this uni I have 17 colonies. If I want to concentrate on making money I can easily get MUCH greater active income than passive income.

Blizz1:
Blizz, I didn't mean that. I meant a person that doesn't start with bases. How do you make money off of him? He's just going to keep all his money in team funds and laugh as get bored of killing him. So what if you waste that character's time, he has 5 more to play with in 5 different places.

You'll never be able to camp him, never be able to hurt him. This is the kind of player that avoids wars. The ones without bases. We want these guys to be in wars too.



Blizz2:
Active income is CURRENTLY DEPENDENT on passive income, Blizz. Yes, I can go kill emp and get an empwand**** and sell it for a nice 2tril. But where did the 2 tril come from? No one is going to camp dgs to raise 2 tril. It's going to come from colonies.

So no, active income is not even close to passive income because the majority of active income IS passive income that changed hands.



Enk1:
Hey, you can look like a god all you want, but in the new player's eyes, gods are immortal. How does immortality look for a game thatw ants newer teams to attempt to kill the older teams? Not a good thing. Just like in RL, you cannot kill Yahweh, you cannot kill Allah, you cannot kill Zeus, Thor, Ra, Istar, or any god in any mythology.

Will you try knowing you have 0% chance for decades?




Enk2:
Skirmishing is fine. But this is problematic when it comes to T21 ships. Say I'm a newb on a newb team thats just starting to do UZ missions. Our team is mostly T16-T19 ships. I'm the best player on team with titans in my Astro.

My second trip to the UZ ended up with the entire team in spirits. 8 Traders and SBP Oly+ ships just annihilated us. We didn't have any chance to do any damage.

Because this is the only UZ and we know Traders and SBP is always going to be there waiting for us, we have a very big problem for the rest of our days. T16 cannot compete with T21. Even Entry T20 cannot compete with T21.

AND THAT, is what I'm worried about. Any team thats higher tech or older will win any and all conflicts against weaker or newer teams, and with exactly one of each uber in game, the newer teams HAVE TO come to the older teams. It's Basta's hallway suggestion applied to ubers instead of sol.

You just cannot fight with gods. Which goes back to Enk1.

Where are you getting this? I am not aware of any initiative on the dev team's part to foster this behavior.



Once again, don't piss someone off if you can't take them in a fair fight. There are plenty of players who don't have Oly ships who could still make a lot of trouble for my PvAI squads. I have a standing invitation for them to do so and have as yet not found any takers.

If you can't fight the gods, then become one. The content is there, you just have to work your fucking ass off to get it. (which is what us "gods" did). We are no different from the rest of you, so why should the people who actually put effort into playing this game be punished for it?

6-7 months ago i was in a zebra zerker with 2caz mastery, from that time of dging my ass off 10 hours a day, upgrading my setup as I sold augmentors in bulk to the players who have passive income, I now have multiple characters all in t21 ships. And I think it is self explanatory that this game is functioning as it should be. For me yes it was a grind, but for others it's not. People can make star sonata anything they want it to be, and we all have different goals.

I never said you had to piss off the T21 teams. I said any conflict, doesn't matter who started it, will end in defeat for newer teams. It obviously means the higher end teams can start the fight. And they will finish it.


@Paxx, you just described a condensed reason on why theres no pvp. Star Sonata is a grindfest game. Look into EVE, Infinity, and BP. All three games may have grind elements, but they are not grindfest games.

It takes about a year to go from T0 Zebucart to Olympus Ship. 90% of that time unable to even threaten a "god" of the same class.


All the more pvp oriented games allows the player to threaten or kill the god within a week of starting out. The "god" is much more experienced and will have much better gear, but it isn't a clear "I win" button for the veteran.

Churchill, while you make extremely valid points for an MMO, I don't believe SS2 aims to cater to the mainstream gamer. I may be wrong, but I think Jeff wants to aim a game towards players like Paxx - getting gamers hooked on the content and vast array of options on offer.

The playerbase is the biggest contribution to the lack of pvp, simply all the "famous" pvpers/aggressive leaders have left this game. The remaining ones are all tied to SBP. SBP don't want to wage unholy war over the universe, they merely play to retain their dominance and share turns at emperor. If Traders and TFC were to ally to aggressively try break up the SBP monopoly, we could have some of the best wars in SS history.

The simple fact is the playerbase lacks the motivation to challenge each other, some kind of incentive is probably needed?

Also to the point of the "rise to the top", it doesn't really need to be streamlined, the players have all the facilities available. Traders could develop "farm" teams and ensure dominance for "generations" of players, securing the players of the future and gearing them along the way - while letting them progress and explore the game naturally.

I tried this approach with Sparta, but I lacked the resources to do it myself and the influence to attract others to the cause. The game is completely open, the players can influence it however they like, it just takes people in a position to make a difference to WANT to make a difference.

While my opinion in this case might not represent the opinion of the SS team as awhole, I think that "endgame" should actually be "endgame" difficulty. It should be hard to reach the same level as someone who has been playing for 2+ years for new players.