Home World Forum
Stars! AutoHost web forums

Jump to Stars! AutoHost


 
 
Home » Stars! Clones, Extensions, Modding » FreeStars » Don't Let the Stars Fade Away
Re: Don't Let the Stars Fade Away Mon, 20 July 2009 20:49 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
gible

 
Commander

Messages: 1343
Registered: November 2002
Location: Wellington, New Zealand

Phenoca wrote on Tue, 21 July 2009 10:28

Iconian wrote on Sat, 27 January 2007 21:59

I think we need to answer three questions:

1. Where is Stars! right now, and where is it going? Specifically, is it dying?
2. If it is dying, what can we do to prevent that?
3. What can we learn from the past to prevent the mistakes, disagreements, and other problems that contributed to disunity?

1. I think Stars! is dying.
2. Join the game, advertise amongst friends, or speak with the developers.
3. Stars!... Isn't a game you can pick-up and just start playing. The game takes a lot of time to learn, and excel at. I dislike being held-back by schedules, or slow tick-times, when playing against others. I do not feel the need to join the Autohost.org community, when there are already better games out there, that are more fast-paced yet share the same tactical-elements.

Stars! Does not appeal to Socializers and Killers (see: Bartle).
The steep learning-curve and tick-based nature of the game makes Stars! lose its appeal over MMOGs which are specifically designed to reach a multiplayer-audience.

Please PM me if you respond to any of my points, as this is my first and only post on these forums.

1. Slowly yes, there is a widespread group of us that play it and keep coming back to it who are slowly getting older (and starting to literally die off)...younger/new players arrive, but aren't retained as much I think.
2. Stars! fan-base is among the most loyal, a finished clone would go a long way.
3. And the learning curve is made steeper by the fact that so much of the mechanics of Stars! has been analysed and is now vital knowledge to compete. I don't think is was an issue when Stars! was newer. Not to self, if I make a clone, make the underlying math either dead simple, explain it enough to be dead simple, or so insanely complex that even JC can't over analyse it.

Bartle... very interesting. You can take the test here. I would be curious to know what the average Stars! player gets. Myself, I scored Explorer:80% Achiever:65% Social:35% Killer:20%. The only summary of results I found were for everquest players(hardly the same gamestyle tho)

The scale of Stars! is what makes the tick nature necessary I think, what could be done easily at the beginning would become impossible once a large empire is established...tho I could be wrong, even the limited routing that stars has might make up for that. Blitz players would know better. Oddly enough, the SAH community is something of a middle ground - we generally only play small-medium games the blitz players tend to gather on IRC(or at least they did) and while every so often someone proposes large-very large scale games - and there are players who prefer that, they seem to collect...elsewhere. Tho that may simple be that the large games take so long that it only seems they're elsewhere when they're in fact just playing.

I do concede your point tho, as (eg) civilsation and other turnbased games (also) lend themselves much more the single player than muliplayer simply because swapping turn-files and seeming to do so little of the game as a whole in each turn draws the game out unpleasantly. I've attempted PBEM Civ once and we abandoned it. Hotseat is...ok but as with Star! the game takes longer to finish than one session and people logistics becomes an issue.

MMOG neatly solve this, but the persistence, start-at-any-time and single-player-among-thousands come with their own issues and I think Stars! players like the board-game aspect that a Stars! game has limits, an end and a winner(s) and can be started a afresh each time.

Report message to a moderator

 
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message icon7.gif
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message icon14.gif
Read Message icon5.gif
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message icon9.gif
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message icon7.gif
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message icon7.gif
Read Message icon14.gif
Read Message icon7.gif
Read Message icon4.gif
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message icon7.gif
Read Message
Read Message icon7.gif
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message icon7.gif
Read Message icon9.gif
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message icon7.gif
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message icon5.gif
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message icon14.gif
Read Message icon5.gif
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message icon12.gif
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message trophy.gif
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Previous Topic: FAQ
Goto Forum:
  


Current Time: Mon Apr 29 06:21:26 EDT 2024