[Smegit]

My view and mine only.....

Back in the day we had:-

Miners..
Haulers..
Artie hunters..
The PVP people..
(incluced iin the above)
Factionalists
Pirates
Numpties (stat kill *hores)


And whatever else you want to add to the above.

Now, if you equip every station with every commod or equipment everyone ever needs you end up with a space sim shooter. At least 4 of the above catagories above die out. All the influx of the EU players vanished, you have to wonder why? Surely death in any game should have a consequance, not least a massively multiplayer (ha!) online persistent game.

Also the game needs a mining based model, but only if enough miners are playing. Where does all this come from otherwise, magic?

Here is how it should work..

Miners mine. Commods got from mining are processed and make stuff. Stuff is moved where it needs to be (at a profit). Peeps buy said stuff. Ad infiniteum (granted this takes a lot of players).

Its like this in RL, the plastic on your shiney new PC case didnt come from fairies you know. I know a few former players (traders/miners etc) who like the idea of the game but refuse to come back because they dont have a part to play.

Also we talk about PVP in the "one person shooting another" sense, but every player who has played the game was PVP. It didn't matter that you simply wanted to have more cash than another player, more arties, a better equipped POS, whatever, it was still PVP. My point? Very few people who have played this game played it as single player. Just becuase we didn't shoot each other it was no less a valid way of playing.

I could go on and on, but I wont. If you want a space sim first person shooter then go ahead, I just dont think thats the way many people thought it would be....

Smeg

[WileE]

Jumpgate has had the same problem it has had for...how long has it been now...6 years?!? Everything that happens in/to Jumpgate is a day late and a dollar short. The current econ setup would have worked fantasticly 4 years ago as a counter to farming. Now, with just a few players left, it is nothing but a hinderance. There is such a long list of problems that should have been priorities, but because of the way Netdevil decided to do things, and the way things were developed originally, they were only recently taken care of, if at all.

Nix hitbox
Missles
Ship balance
Econ
GM issues
Playstyle balance

Just to name a few. It is unfortunate for Istvan, as he is doing all he can, but he is the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke. ND does not have the skill or the where-with-all to fix things IMO, so in the end the only thing that will change is the playerbase.

I know...I am cynical.

[king0815]

Nix-hitbox has been fixed a long time ago...

(v.1.0084 - February 11, 2004- i think it has been this patch, even if its not mentioned in the patch-notes...)


king0815

[SingleShot]

I would hesitate to put the nix hitbox in a list of "game killers", as well.

[xerout]

The two guys in this thread with the best understanding of what made Jumpgate fun and what could make it fun again are Wild_Bill and Algore. If Isty reads this I hope he pays attention to what they've said.

Smaggler wrote, "Arguably time has spoken." and it has. The number of people that have tried to return but couldn't stomach the aweful supply situation and ugly economy is high. Amost every player I know has attempted to return but left after a month in frustration. Trash the mining based economy....hauling for good profits and fighting are fun....mining is not.

Xerout

[WileE]

Originally Posted by SingleShot

I would hesitate to put the nix hitbox in a list of "game killers", as well.

I know it was fixed...I was still playing when it was.

SS, I suppose my point is not clear. I am not saying the hitbox issue was a game killer, rather it demonstrates the lack of attention to detail and ability/desire to fix problems in Jumpgate. The hitbox was a known problem from beta untill it was resolved by Istvan. The entire time, the problem was known and ignored.

It demonstrates how Netdevil works. That was my point.

[Zaltys]

Heh. Remember when the nix hitbox was fixed? Liet was hilarious on :chat .

Mining wise, I didn't too much like either the CP or the mining econ, although I find the mining one worse. I've never been much of an econ guy (I mean, I understand how it works, but there are a lot of people who care about it much more than me), but I have to say that I didn't enjoy the sheer level of scarcity enforced by the mining regime, unless you wanted to mine...which to me is by far the most boring mechanic in the game. A mining supported econ is a good idea conceptually, but unfortunately it's just too dull to do the mining. In general, I thought the CP economy was _really_ good, except for the cost. It would cost upwards of a million per death, and there was no way for someone who primarily PvPed to support that. I'd guess I died less than most, but I certainly recall being reliant on Algore to give me money. I also recall when JITW came to EU, being up until 7am on several occasions just making kit, because with the cost of death so high, we just couldn't afford to buy from POSes (which was, surely, the big idea). Most people seemed to survive on big money they'd made in the past.

Things that caused me to leave...hm. Firstly, I felt like I'd used up most of the bits of the game that I was interested in. I'd got about as good as I was ever going to get at PvP, barring the occasional small incremental improvement. I felt like I had the game pretty much worked out. I had a nice diversion in testing for a while - I found ship balance intensely interesting, and spending my time on the test server balancing the ships, missiles, etc was a great fun experience for me, and really sustained my interest. I certainly got a kick out of the fact that people felt that the new balance was decent. I also enjoyed working out how to dodge a purg with a turning circle a tenth of its current size...works up a sweat

Secondly, it all got too personal. I don't enjoy the feeling of starting to OOCly dislike my IC enemies, and for the vast majority of the time, I didn't. Towards the end of my Jumpgate career i started to feel a fairly intense dislike towards the people I was fighting. I think this was in many ways an artifact of the lack of people playing the game.

Thirdly, I had more going on in my life outside Jumpgate. I didn't have as much time, I couldn't keep up the quality of PvP skill that I achieved when I was at my best and spending all my time in game. That was frustrating. And, I had new things to experience outside the game world.

Foruthly, GM intervention. Themis never seemed to understand that Jumpgate wasn't like other MMOs. It had a small, tightly knit community, who weren't just paying customers - they were *loyal* people who put a lot of themselves into the game. It isn't the same as a giant, faceless MMO community. When the community is interfered with or dictated to, people want to know why, and they want a say in it. Sure, the community isn't *legally entitled* to that, but there's a difference between what GMs are allowed to do, and what they *should* do for the good of the game. I found many Themis GMs to be arrogant, and assuming that they always knew best. If they'd interacted more, and dictated less, I'd have been a more satisfied customer.

Fifthly, people. Less people is less fun. It's not just about finding someone around to fight, because I understand you can do that even now. It's about the diversity of characters, and the greater interaction.

So, I guess, at this stage, I wouldn't ever see myself coming back to the game. At least, my relationship would have to go down the tubes, and there'd have to be a load of people online. Don't see it ever happening, to be honest.

[Ridmann]

Well I came back earlier this week, its not fun when you have space to yourself, I hauled about 22500 iron to hyperial with no incident , then I flipped our Sol Beacons the rest of the time to keep the tax's down. but it was nice to see at least some players on <18 yesterday but, I wish some more guys would reactivate and haul with me cause I'm Bored

[Ambrosius]

Originally Posted by Ambrosius

The near-perfect Jumpgate econ was proposed a few years back by Duodecimal -- but it was probably far too complex to ever be put into place. It included a semi-fixed money supply -- which you need for a true economy. I don't have the llink handy. If I dig ip up, I'll post it.

FOUND IT!

[vorlon31]

Fighting games are everywhere on the web, Jumpgate's biggest pull was that it wasnt just fighting - it had more.

But that 'more' has been dumbed down and diluted to ballance pvp and the game just isnt the special one that it was - its just another fighting game now - yawn.

IMO
Tow speeds need adjusting back up.
Transports need a speed boost upward too.
True civilian trade/econ ships need more missile slots for defence (HM, Fr8r, Transport, FT)
Swarms need purpose http://forums.jossh.com/showthread.p...threadid=27162
Hive globules/turrets need faster firing mortars at least or novas.
Mortar rounds need smacker like trails when fired.
Vantage ammo counts need to match peelers (and no peelers dont need a reduction!)
Hive destruction should last for a day
Missile stats need adjusting inc purchase cost and payouts for nuke vs hives to undo pvp nurfing.
Combat ships need effective missile protection - pwd adjustments (lighter, no fuel consumption - just capacitor charge giving faster fireoff rates.)
AI shipping in planetary sectors
More planets/moons/BIG roids
Suns
lense flares
Spawn adjustments on daily/weekly basis - no more c6 sectors, you have to go to where the flux are attacking.
RP GM's
Netdevil to allow GM's to do RP by reducing red tape.
An intellegent economy
In built teamspeak
Civ labeling as enemy to be removed.
The killer of a civilian ship pays the insurance of the ship(s) downed and if credits dont exist they loose their own ship and equipment to pay, leaving them in a shuttle.
AI civilian security force, patrols in (some?) regulated sectors - attacking bountied ships inc pirates if encountered - military tagged un bountied ships ignored.
Military function destroyable buildings.
Deffence turrets on military buildings set to attack bounties and or enemy military ships that stray near.
Flux space to be regulated.
More entrances to flux space.
etc..

[Wild_Bill]

Ambro, I tried real hard to read Duo's stuff. Made me feel like I was back in high school with all the formulas. From what I could grasp, it was as you said, complicated, perhaps to the point it could not be integrated without a complete re-write of the game. But it did look like a major improvment on what we currently have or ever have had. Shame ND can't/won't hire Duo to do an econ re-write.

[Algore]

I had to wait a week to let my eyes stop bleeding.
Nice idea, but it's mining reliant so it wouldn't work.
You can have all the mathematics in the world, but if there is a fundamental flaw in the theory it still won't work.

Regards
Al