Desanguination
(2440 total words in this text)
(3177 Reads) 
Desanguination
A
game can lose its life in several ways. Some ways are loud, some are
never heard. Some are not even noticed, until its too late.
How is Jumpgate bleeding to death?
Shortlist.
1. Boredom - a lack of creativity and lack of effort.
2. Misconceptions - a vicious cycle born of recurring viewpoint differences
3. Disconnection - NetDevil can't hit their target audiences
4. Bugs/Delays - self-explanatory, but not a major problem - just an easy target.
5. Good ideas gone bad - implementations that don't have the effect they are supposed to.
6.
Frustration with no outlet - Everyone knows there ARE problems - and
even advance ideas to work on those problems - but the lynch mobs that
instantly form at every "event" are quite enough to squelch any attempt
at problem solution that arises. The result? In-game frustration
relief means problems also.
7. Extremism: Apathy/Crusading ;
Carebearism/Griefism ; Might makes right/Traders make the world go
round - Amplified by powers of ten.
8. Fear. To say anything,
to regulate the overly vocal, to argue, to agree. To bother logging
in. Something will make you want to quit.
9. Anger. Cheated, maligned, robbed of great expectations.
10. Add some.
Expanded discussion - writing as I think of it. So bear with the rambling, please. I write better this way.
1.
Boredom. What happens when you finally realize that, contrary to the
ads, there ARE things you can't do. You have so many cool ideas, so
many awesome ways you'd like to do things - and you find out it's
impossible. You can only do so much, then you hit the brick wall of
the game engine, and find yourself unable to surpass it with
imagination. That one feature you counted on being the salvation of
your gaming experience turns out to be a shadow of what you thought it
would be. That mainstay of your character's self-image turns out to be
just another treadmill. Or it gets changed, or nerfed. Your RP
suddenly is forced into a 180 by game events, or the actions of others,
and you find yourself doing exactly what you thought you'd never find
yourself doing. You know why you're doing it, but you HATE it. It
stops being fun, the cycle is endless, and you finally give up. Or,
you've done something so long you only do it out of habit anymore, and
not out of love or enjoyment. "Fun" seems a foreign concept. But you
can't let your friends down! Then they leave over something you've
been frustrated about too... you start to wonder...is it worth it
anymore? Or, they just... disappear. Your squad is so big you can't
always notice when they quietly slip away like that. And on the net,
you can't go knock on their door and talk to them.
2. Misconceptions. Keep in mind that yes, I am generalizing for effect.
Everyone has a different idea of what is "fun" to do.
Pirates
want to make money, be cool, be bad, and swashbuckle. The pirates life
isn't a bed of roses, they discover. Their's limitations in the game
engine for it, a lot of people genuinely hate you, you realize that
your "good time" is actually making people quit, and some of your
friends are quitting too. The fun isn't so fun, now.
Traders
want to make a profit, make the economy grow through their efforts, be
recognized as tycoons and powerbrokers, help out their faction, or all
the factions. They want a company, a name brand, a day in the sun.
They get shot at, stolen from, ridiculed for their gains, accused of
profiteering, targetted as the "ones who need to be brought low", find
they can't make a big difference in the economy. Limitations make or
break you.
Factionalists want supremacy, good fights, massive
fleet engagements that bring tears to your eyes at the sheer glory of
battle - to fight for god and government, be recognized for their
valor, their glorious dedication, and advance the causes they espouse.
They find that favoritism is rampant, causes are never clear, peopel
always have their own agendas, people switch squads and factions at
whim, they all work at cross purposes, and the day is always lost, no
matter what you do. Pretty soon, they only fight to fight some more.
Why bother with anything else?
Personal observations:
Fluxers
want to make some headway in their war. We're out there to kick some
pink tail, revel in our skill, enjoy the comraderie, improve our
standing, win some battles, and do some damage to the opposition. We
aren't getting it.
Disconnection:
Episode 2 was titled
"Attack of the Conflux". The overwhelming comment when it was released
was that it was directly targeted for New Dawn. If they thought it
was, they missed the target. By a mile. I'm not trying to be a whiner
- I'm trying to be a catalyst. No, we didn't want it to be easy. We
also did not want it to be such a discouraging fight that someone
numbed to the state of shock by killing the old flux would be shocked
into complete outrage by the introduction of such *radically* more
difficult flux. It is well-nigh physically impossible to kill 3 krill
at the same time. They are INSANE. 620-645v speed. Acceleration
that makes anything else in the game look like a brick. Even a phoc.
Manueverability that defies sanity. Yes, they are weak-hulled and
shielded. But you'd have to be just this side of inhuman to ever
possibly kill 3 at once. Nauts were good steps up from the old flux.
Krill are insanity personified. Put it in perspective, for the new
flux, overall, versus the old flux. Every single fighter could cruise
faster than kraken. Mantas too ka bit of afterburner, but it wasn't
bad. Every single fighter could outrun even an eel, even at
afterburner. Slowly, for a nix, but it was possible. Phocs made it a
bit more difficult, and they were a very challenging breed. Only nauts
are even in the same class as any of the older flux. 4/5 of the new
flux CRUISE over 600v. A 100v jump. Don't get me wrong. All of them
die 1 vs 1. I can kill any one of them solo. Two of some of them. I
can kill 2 stingray, 2 prawn (with difficulty), 2 krill (with extreme
difficulty and only occasonal success). But 3? You gotta be kidding.
As every pilot spawns, and spawns multiples, that's a recipe for
disaster. You can't tow them. They are WAY too fast. You can't
teamflux - you have multiples of your own. Every pilot is effectively
fighting at *very* least 1 flux, mostly 2, sometimes 3-5 flux of his
own. These flux are hard to kill. Everyone is on their own until
someone who luckily only spawned one kills theirs, has to flashfire to
catch a 600v + flux, pull them off of someone else, assuming they
didn't get the dump of the person who spawned 3-5 and assuredly died,
then spend another agonizing few minutes hoping that noone ELSE dies
before you kill that flux you pulled, so you can burn another flashfire
to pull yet another flux off. That's fluxing in EP2. The amount
of people that have done enough fluxing to be able to effectively do
that with multiple spawns per pilot, with the kind of flux we see now -
I can count on one, maybe two hands. If there's even that many
anymore.
Bothering to try...
Not only do the flux just
*keep on coming*, there's MORE than there was 2 years ago. Not only
are there MORE, they're *better*. Not only are they better, they're
invading in swarms that only a massive group of pilots can kill, if
there's anything high-level in them. Not only are they swarming,
they're infesting us in and destroying our station stocks. Not only
are they doing that, their sentients keep coming too, and only leave
when they're good and ready. Not only that, but they've taken over the
heroes of TRI. Not only that, but their Queen is still going to come
for us. Not only that, but TRI has DROPPED the rewards for killing
them, even though it's even MORE important to kill them! WHY. EP2 is
"The Attack of the Conflux" - yes. But a defender has no tangible
evidence that his efforts do ANYTHING to further the progress of the
war. Nothing whatsoever. They keep coming, and they keep coming, and
they keep coming. 230,000 kills later - THEY ARE STILL COMING. That's
not including all the kills from former members, not including the
kills every other squad has, not including every inactive account that
no longer shows. So what effec has this mindless slaughter had on the
Conflux? Nothing! At all! People wonder why we're frustrated, and
laugh when they hear us tick off these points. Go for it. But
remember that NetDevil makes approximately 350-400 dollars less
per month because of this issue alone. If the squad that has killing
flux as its purpose feels this way - if the squad that's killed between
1/2 to 3/4 of a MILLION flux in it's history feels this way... there's
something wrong with how the cornerstone of EP2 was implemented. The
sad part is - the two people who WROTE THE STINKING CONFLUX HUNTING
GUIDE no... longer... flux. They left New Dawn, partly because of how
they felt about the EP2 conflux implementations, and partly because of
the other implementations they also felt were poorly done. Something
is wrong. Very wrong.
There are other subgroups. I know. I
used a few for a cross-section, and said more about some than others.
But like I said, I'm not going for a strictured outline. Moving on.
That was cathartic, by the way. 
4. Bugs and Delays.
Delays:
Hyperdrive, Huge Roids, Advanced Fighter, Squad Wars... there's probably more, but those are some well-known ones.
Bugs:
Squad Wars
POS
Ships (Raptor, Nix hitbox, Wyvern, Thunder, Phoon...)
There's
more, but some people left over these, too. It happens, I know. But a
lot of people were not happy. I'll let others talk about this one, but
I brought it up as a topic.
5. Good ideas/Unimagined effect.
Sector claiming was cool. When it's unbugged, it adds a lot. Good call ND.
Piracy.
Hoo boy. While I still maintain piracy was not the chief reason we
lost so many people - I WILL say it was the last straw for quite a
few. You saw all the arguments. You saw the results. You didn't see
the goodbye posts. Honestly... neither did we, on the most part. They
just faded away. Piracy was supported too heavily, and they started
out too large and too organized for the server population back then to
weather well. The joke of a response we got to counter piracy was a
complete waste of time, too. But I won't bother going on about it. I
don't blame Synergy for wanting to make the most out of their freedom
to pirate. I blame bad timing, bad circumstances, and a tragic lack of
understanding concerning the feeling that it would engender in a very
large portion of the playerbase. Synergy was only the unlucky tool of
the game engine. I also think they misjudged the effects they would
have, too. I don't see them logging on much anymore either. Who is
there to pirate?
Flux: I had my say. But it also fits in here, I think.
POS:
They should have been a ton more expensive, and a ton bigger for that
expense. Add in a 12 point, 16 point, 20, and a 24 - POS would have
rocked. Squads could use them viably then. Add in the ability to set
buy prices/whether to buy, a POS *fund* rather than the owner's credit
account receiving payments... they ended up being nothing more than a
big strip-proof storage facility. No mission modules, no factory
modules.. my second is still in retirement waiting for mission modules.
Ships: Those were good additions. Kudos again. Though others may disagree.
Moving on.
6.
Frustration. You can see it in forum posts in f2 chat. Every time you
log in. Every time you log out you feel it. It's just... not the
same. You expected more, you wish...
Friends are gone, reasons
to log in are shrinking, the number of things that are going wrong are
mounting up. It snowballs... suddenly, some event that could have been
weathered not too long ago, is suddenly THE MOST IMPORTANT CRISIS
EVER.
And it goes on from there. And on. And on. More
people leave. Even if you stay, you're all still worse off
regardless. There's now even less of you. and once again, you feel...
Frustrated.
7.
With that frustration, comes extremism. Moderates thrive in a world
with little conflict, or little contact. Conflict in deadly earnest
leaves you with little left but the extremes. Moderates still exist,
but mostly the remainder has polarized further. The more serious,
earnest conflict in the community, the more the polarization proceeds,
until the extremes are spread around the server in all 360 degrees, but
the middle of the circle is getting very, very thin. The moderate is a
dying breed. Without the moderates, you now are short on moderators.
Without moderators, you rely on an extremist who merely doesn't care
about your specific issue to arbitrate - and now you have one extreme
moderating for two other extremes. Some of you have said you've always
wanted to see a faction war. You might just see a full server war, the
more the polarization continues. And imagine one with only a ghost of
a MACK, UMEC almost gone, GOD relegated to history, and only start-up
truckers trying to fill the holes... How's the picture I'm paintin?
Hope you still have some farm money left, or it'll be a short war.
8.
With the above, comes fear. The few moderates left don't want to go
against the flow. The rabid forum beasts will eat them alive. They
will kill them in game, and most likely have no fun whatsoever in JG
for a while. So unless they're feeling particularly courageous,
they're powerful already, or just don't care about the consequences,
they won't weigh in. That's bad, folks. Rabid animals are put down
for a reason.
9. Anger.
At the EP2 delay, at the bugs
to follow, at the half-implementation of EP2, at the expectations they
had before it, and what didn't measure up to thier expectations... it
goes on and on, most likely. But I think it has something to do with
it, yeah.
Anyway, I'm tired and that's enough for tonight.
GAME ON. Debate, discuss, brainstorm. Cause it's lookin *pretty* ugly out there, sports fans. |
