The guild based aequalibrium change sounds awesome. Does it have a lower limit? Like if I have a guild with just me and maybe 2 other friends?

There's no lower limit, so you can even be alone in your guild, so that no-one besides you can move the Aequilibrium.

Let me quote myself:

"The plot is deliberatedly not explicit in many ways...
Someone in the studio once told me Spacelords' lore should feel like entering your dad's basement and finding some old, discontinued comic books. Since some of the books are missing, you're invited to imagine what happened in between them.
The new lore injected in the game should feel more like discovering a new comic book in the series, pushing the story forward, instead of someone validating/rejecting the theories you already created while reading the previous ones."

I guess we could say Hans's business is one of those missing books in the collection.

I would be inclined to aggree, but... If they're going to go through the trouble of putting it in, they're not going to take it out. If it changes things in a bad way, we're stuck with it.

IMO the lack of minimap and radar is a key feature that goes towards making this game unique. I don't think I would have familiarized myself with the arenas as organically if I was compelled to rely on a HUD element to assess my environment.

Also it gives the player's a whole additional "Sense" (for lack of a better word). It's going to have an impact on the core interaction.

I think the gameplay, as is, is solid. The problems are all quality of life. The stuff that makes new players lose interest. What we need in the next patch is to cut down trolls, timesinks and encourage cooperative play.

Make voice chat default or prompt players to use it.
Make cutscenes skip based on votes.
Make the rewards screens skippable or parred down.
Allow people to surrender without penalty if the half or more disconnect and/or the match has gone on for over 45 mins.
Don't end matches when the antag disconnects.

These are all serious barriers to this game being widely adopted. Most gamers will just quit out the first or second time they lose 15 minutes getting thrashed or doing nothing. This feature just isn't a worthwhile addition when there are real gains to be had.

When approaching the development of new content for Spacelords we focus on two big "themes", so to speak.

The first is all about polishing the already existing playable experience, by fixing bugs, improxing players' quality of life.
The second one is all about adding new content or playable options to the game. That includes new missions, characters, weapons or things such as The Radar.

What I get from your original post is you are more concerned about or interested in the first kind of improvements over the second one.

The only thing I'd like to point is none of both are inherently wrong or irrelevant: we feel they are equally important and we at MSE are working in both directions at the same time, since people in the team working on one of those aren't necessarily involved in the other.

So, one day we may be speaking about The Radar (new content, https://spacelordsthegame.com/news/road-to-spaceguilds-1) and the day after we may be speaking about the Cortez family (quality of life improvement, https://spacelordsthegame.com/news/road-to-spaceguilds-3), so there's happiness delivered to all kind of players.

We'll be adding some short character tutorial videos in  upcoming updates, so that new players can get a first glimpse of each Raider's role + special ability + basic weapon.

I hope that helps.

Quote from: MSE_KarenHB on November 27, 2018, 12:28:32 PM

Hi everyone!

Our intention when we created this new system was being honest with the player. We want to first show him or her the nature of Spacelords. That means cooperate together using all your resources to complete a mission and defeating the Antagonist.

Once the player understands the mechanics, he/she can enjoy the training mode and practice to improve his/her stats. I know we have said this many times, but the core of Spacelords is the Antagonist feature and we would love for all the players to experience it, at least once.

You really expect players to stick around until they understand the mechanics to fully enjoy the game when it is nothing but infuriating with an antag invasion that leads to absolute hopelessness and then noobs in mentor matches who cant even dent an enemy due to their low level. Seriously?
Since i joined this game about a month back, almost every antagonist match the raider team was wiped out. When an antag joins its either solely focus on the antag to stand a chance or get annihilated trying to complete mission objective. That is not fun. I dont see where the developers are getting their data that the antag system is actually balanced. I find the game overwhelmingly favours antags and you dont even need to be good to defeat a team of raiders. Melee is so ridiculously overpowered to the point that my experience of antag matches is that most solely rely on that and it works. My experience has been nothing but negative anytime an antag joins. If anything you the developers will spout about how great your antag system is but if so why not add optional antag invasion with increased rewards?. Thats right you wont because barely anyone would actually opt for an antag invasion. Ive been in countless lame antag matches and mid-high level players completely give up just wanting the match to end by surrendering so they can play a PVE match with a team of raiders. I feel as if you guys are completely out of touch. The core gameplay is great but even that cant overcome the frustrations that i have with this game. Theres a reason a game with great gameplay like this is not doing as well as it could. Lastly you are driving away countless amount of beginners because you dont make the mentor matches easier. 75%  of the time the noob quits midway cause the mobs are too difficult for them.

You have to realize that while you might make the excuse that if 4 raiders stick together they can overpower an antag and win that doesnt actually happen. Youve based the antag system on 4 raiders banding together to fight the antag with support of his AI companions and at times mission objectives with time limits that further complicate things and expect the team of 4 raiders to manage it? You forgot the most important problem. Players dont stick together and sure as hell dont work together consisting of a bunch of randoms. If friendly fire was on they would probably kill each other regularly.

Hey there, My name's is Hernan and I'm a technical game designer working on the game.

What Karen commented--putting new players into real co-op matches instead of single player matches--, is a decision we made taking into account data we've been gathering from players' matches over the last year.

Just like you, we believe players' first matches are really important, but one must not forget they should also work as an honest display of what the game's about, including its assymetric semi-competitive nature.

About the whole Antagonist issue, we will be releasing a new State of the Game soon. We'll be sharing some of the data we've been collecting, and explaining to you guys some of the whys and hows of the system. I hope that clears some of your concerns.

Quote from: MSE_Ojuel on October 03, 2018, 01:40:43 PM

Quote from: B30 on October 03, 2018, 12:56:53 PM

Quote from: MSE_Ojuel on October 03, 2018, 12:24:06 PM

… We felt the old "insta-use" levers incentivated doing suicidal maneuvers a bit too much. With this new changes introduced in the game, we tried to incentivate a safer & slower approach in order to solve the situation. …

Why should it be helpful, if you need MORE time now to switch the levers, than before the patch. You know there is a timer running and Kuzmann, soldiers, snipers and an antag are lurking around nearby???

Of course, you're totally right!

What I meant is that, whenever the new patch kicks in, there will be a vast amount of time to press the levers, letting the players do the task in a more calm way, thus not requiring a suicidal approach at all.

Will you also be lowering the time it takes to activate the switches? I fear antagonists will still be able to kill the raiders while they are helpless pressing the switch unless there's a mikah or lycus on the team. Things like this are why it's so difficult to balance pvp into a pve scenario. Thank you for giving us more info on the subject and I appreciate all your responses.

Yes, that value will be lowered too.

Both time values (Shae's survival time & lever interaction time) are being changed in the next patch release. Also, both values will be tweaked differently depending on whether there's an Antagonist in the match or not.

Antagonists are actually supposed to be able to cancel the Raiders' lever interaction if they are fast enough, but of course it's not supposed to be trivial thing either. 

Quote from: MSE_Ojuel on October 03, 2018, 12:24:06 PM

… We felt the old "insta-use" levers incentivated doing suicidal maneuvers a bit too much. With this new changes introduced in the game, we tried to incentivate a safer & slower approach in order to solve the situation. …

Why should it be helpful, if you need MORE time now to switch the levers, than before the patch. You know there is a timer running and Kuzmann, soldiers, snipers and an antag are lurking around nearby???

Of course, you're totally right!

What I meant is that, whenever the new patch kicks in, there will be a vast amount of time to press the levers, letting the players do the task in a more calm way, thus not requiring a suicidal approach at all.

Hey guys, how are you doing!

I'm one of the devs in charge of the logic & structure for the missions of the game, and watching the videos and reading your feedback on this issue has been extremely useful and interesting to me. Thank you so much for being so active when it comes to giving feedback on the new stuff put into the game! 

As you all pointed out, there is indeed some extra tweaking needed for the lever-pressing moment during Kuzzman's combat. We changed the amount of time required to press the levers in order to deincentivate players doing suicidal maneuvers. The new timing is meant to incentivate taking a slower & safer approach in order to succeed. But, because of Shae's survival time limit being so tight, I'm afraid the whole thing may have become a bit excruciating.

We'll be fixing this issue as soon as possible!