Andromeda

by D4RK3 54B3R
Andromeda
Blast your friends away, trade your way to riches, and build your fame in this sandbox space game!
ID:1355018
 
I want to discuss persistant character progression for Andromeda.

The game is currently sandbox, in that you can pretty much do whatever you want, but it's also only round based, so whatever upgrades you may have purchased or new ships or your bounty all disappear when the game round ends.

Pretty much, everyone's telling me that they're more motivated to develop their character and their ships and such than they are to win the game round.

Working towards upgrading your ship and your ship parts is simply more fun, I guess, and the current game design doesn't cater to that.

Additionally, people want me to increase the # of players per server

My take on it: If I get rid of the round based format, and just make it a sandbox game, then I could add savefiles (perhaps as a subscriber feature??) and persistant characters. Should I do this?

# of players per server is the bottleneck on both CPU and network atm. The client gui processing is literally what slows down the game the most, and while it's not a big deal if you're by yourself, it becomes a huge deal in multiplayer.

What do you guys think?

[EDIT]: Also, if I make the character progression persistant, does this mean I should do away with the randomly generated world, and make the game world persistant?
+1 for world persistence.

It's laid out better if missions had a better indication of where you are supposed to go.
Also, in a persistent world, it's fine if stronger enemies are in the area, considering you have the space cops around.
Yes i love customization games this could be my next DU :).
Flame Sage, the mission destination is highlighted on your map.
I just tried it out a bit. It seems a bit like Escape Velocity.

I think if you really wanted to go the 'persistent' route you'd have to be able to expand the game to around at least 8 or more players.

I also don't feel that you 'have' to get rid of randomly generated maps. You could do a number of things:

1) Make it so that in game sectors supernova over time, and regenerate.

2) Make 'long rounds' possibly weeks, months, or however long the host decides it for their server.


I however do not feel that you should have persistent characters a subscriber only feature, it seems to me like that would completely turn off players who were going to try your game, and thus remove potential for them to subscribe.

I feel games on Byond probably need to go the route of Nestalgia where they offer you to play for free but if you want to try out a certain class then you need to subscribe or purchase it.
How about if I require certain licenses for some ships and outfits, like in EV Nova, and then some of these licenses requires subscription? Like Exotic Ships license and Capital Ships license, for example?
Several routes to go there, depends on your long term goals with the game.

I honestly haven't played it enough yet to see what content is there, but it does look like it has a lot of potential to grow.

Some options:

- Go with subscription for exotic ships / capital ships.

- Allow only subscribers or (item mall esque purchasers) to have custom ship skinning. I don't think that is possible now but it'd be neat to have.

- Allow players to have all classes of ships, even capitals with hard work but allow subscribers / item mallers easier access.

- Add special variants of ships for subscriber / item mallers

Lots of different ways to go about it really. I'm a bit more of a fan of the allowing players to have access to all ship classes, but be more difficult to obtain unless you're premium, or buy it with cash.
To get to the amount of content that players seem to want me to develop for this game, I think the RSC size could grow to >50mb. It's currently sitting at 25mb. Is this okay?
I am fine with that. I just spent an hour downloading Burnout Paradise: Ultimate Pack. 50MB is fine.