I recently started playing Hazeron again, and as I've been rebuilding my empire, I've realized that there is barely any progression in Hazeron anymore. There are patents, but those take insignificant amounts of time to create and are entirely passive. Not every resource is available in every system, but it's now trivial to set a basic shipyard up and go out to find them. It seems to me like a group of experienced players could go from nothing to Warp 9 ships in a matter of days at this point, and that is a problem.
To that end I am suggesting, as you may have guessed from the title, that we put the old tech level system back in. Expert, you might ask, why put that system that we all thought was an inadequate progression system back into the game? Well, reader, because when we were hating on it through the years, the general assumption was that something else would be instituted in its place! What we got was the even more passive year long wait to reach max quality, and then that was removed, with nothing at all put in its place! Most of us that discuss Hazeron's mechanics on these forums already have established empires, and we rarely hear from people who are only just establishing their empires. Because of that, I feel like we've overlooked the progression of the game too much as of late.
I think we all acknowledge that some level of gating is necessary, but have disagreed on the level. I hope we can all agree that patents are not a good form of progression. In other games, built up groups that have been around for years have not only the advantage of being spread out and experienced with the game, but are also protected by progression systems that impose constraints on new players. In Hazeron, at the moment, the only two differences between well-established empires and brand new ones are their patents and the number of systems they're spread out across. With the highest quality effect being 2.5x, the biggest gap separating old empires from new ones is really just that the older empires have hidden shipyards in the middle of nowhere that allow them to wage war without concern for their industrial base.
Was the old 32 tech level system perfect? No, it was by no means a perfect solution, and we all know that. It was, however, better than nothing. Most importantly, it prevented brand new players from rapidly acquiring ships capable of everything that a ship made by a well-established empire was. We all know that it was often circumvented by gifts of money and technology from friendly empires, but other empires could at least try to threaten people into not giving technology away to new players. I'm not suggesting that we bring tech levels back to stay, but rather as a stop-gap solution. Right now, Hazeron's progression is simply far too shallow. We could do nothing about it, with the Steam release rapidly approaching, or we could put a band-aid on it, something to tangibly improve the game experience until a better and more permanent progression system can be implemented.
I recognize that there's probably a very slim chance of this actually happening, but if nothing else I hope we can get a discussion on a proper progression system going again.
Running List of Supporters:
Running List of Opponents:
To that end I am suggesting, as you may have guessed from the title, that we put the old tech level system back in. Expert, you might ask, why put that system that we all thought was an inadequate progression system back into the game? Well, reader, because when we were hating on it through the years, the general assumption was that something else would be instituted in its place! What we got was the even more passive year long wait to reach max quality, and then that was removed, with nothing at all put in its place! Most of us that discuss Hazeron's mechanics on these forums already have established empires, and we rarely hear from people who are only just establishing their empires. Because of that, I feel like we've overlooked the progression of the game too much as of late.
I think we all acknowledge that some level of gating is necessary, but have disagreed on the level. I hope we can all agree that patents are not a good form of progression. In other games, built up groups that have been around for years have not only the advantage of being spread out and experienced with the game, but are also protected by progression systems that impose constraints on new players. In Hazeron, at the moment, the only two differences between well-established empires and brand new ones are their patents and the number of systems they're spread out across. With the highest quality effect being 2.5x, the biggest gap separating old empires from new ones is really just that the older empires have hidden shipyards in the middle of nowhere that allow them to wage war without concern for their industrial base.
Was the old 32 tech level system perfect? No, it was by no means a perfect solution, and we all know that. It was, however, better than nothing. Most importantly, it prevented brand new players from rapidly acquiring ships capable of everything that a ship made by a well-established empire was. We all know that it was often circumvented by gifts of money and technology from friendly empires, but other empires could at least try to threaten people into not giving technology away to new players. I'm not suggesting that we bring tech levels back to stay, but rather as a stop-gap solution. Right now, Hazeron's progression is simply far too shallow. We could do nothing about it, with the Steam release rapidly approaching, or we could put a band-aid on it, something to tangibly improve the game experience until a better and more permanent progression system can be implemented.
I recognize that there's probably a very slim chance of this actually happening, but if nothing else I hope we can get a discussion on a proper progression system going again.
Running List of Supporters:
- Myself
- Celarious
- nightslay
- Mortius
- VhwatGoes
- Minty
Running List of Opponents:
- Anr
- Deantwo
- Ikkir
- pizzasgood
- Resonkinetic
- martianant
- Phenoix
- Spacegeek
- Norway174