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+--- Thread: Petition to Re-Add Tech Level (/showthread.php?tid=458)
Petition to Re-Add Tech Level - expert700 - 12-23-2018
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:
- Myself
- Celarious
- nightslay
- Mortius
- VhwatGoes
- Minty
Running List of Opponents:
- Anr
- Deantwo
- Ikkir
- pizzasgood
- Resonkinetic
- martianant
- Phenoix
- Spacegeek
- Norway174
RE: Petition to Re-Add Tech Level - Minty - 12-24-2018
Add me to the supporters list! :D
(By the way, I LOVE the idea of having a supporters list at all. I fear that every list may end up being the same ~10 of us in Discord, though...)
RE: Petition to Re-Add Tech Level - AnrDaemon - 12-24-2018
Tech level system, being finite, is inadequate for a sandbox universe which is SoH.
Your "group of experienced players" could do the same with TL32, just pulling the ready set of disks out of their coffers.
The presence or absence of "TL system" changes nothing for "experienced players" you're so afraid of, but it makes an artificial deterrent to new players. The key word is "artificial", not "deterrent", as you might have guessed.
RE: Petition to Re-Add Tech Level - Ikkir Isth - 12-24-2018
Definitely against; any tech solution needs to be some continuous effort with a product that directly gets used in manufacture. No reason to re-implement old broken solutions.
RE: Petition to Re-Add Tech Level - Mr. Mortius - 12-24-2018
I think the key points of any system should be no upper limit, exponentially increasing costs the more things improve, and providing a sink for money and resources, which are both effectively unlimited right now.
RE: Petition to Re-Add Tech Level - expert700 - 12-24-2018
(12-24-2018, 03:50 AM)Ikkir Isth Wrote: Definitely against; any tech solution needs to be some continuous effort with a product that directly gets used in manufacture. No reason to re-implement old broken solutions.
So you would rather have no solution at all than an imperfect solution? Because right now we have no solution at all. There is no progresion, patents are a minor distraction that's only good for a day or two. This is the same thing that happens whenever a discussion of the progression in Hazeron comes up. "That idea is bad. We need something that does [insert criteria here]. What that is, I don't know". That's how we ended up where we are right now, everyone hated on the TL system but no one suggested any viable improvements, then we ended up with the QL tech system. Everyone hated on that too, but still no one suggested any possible improvements. They just said no, we don't want that system, it's bad. And in the end, Haxus listened to the people hating on those systems and gave us what no one wanted, by removing them altogether with no replacement.
The reason we keep ending up in these shitty situations with the game getting shallower and shallower is because everyone is all too eager to hate on parts of the game they don't like, but they have no idea what to do to fix it!
(12-24-2018, 03:27 AM)AnrDaemon Wrote: Tech level system, being finite, is inadequate for a sandbox universe which is SoH.
Your "group of experienced players" could do the same with TL32, just pulling the ready set of disks out of their coffers.
The presence or absence of "TL system" changes nothing for "experienced players" you're so afraid of, but it makes an artificial deterrent to new players. The key word is "artificial", not "deterrent", as you might have guessed.
Ok big man, you're always so keen to shoot down any suggestions, so what would you do? How would you fix the game's shallow progression? I trust that with all the negative opinions you have about other people's suggestions, surely you've worked out a perfect solution to every problem the game is facing by now?
RE: Petition to Re-Add Tech Level - AnrDaemon - 12-24-2018
I'm not that easily baited. Besides, this is not my game.
On top of that, I'm not in the mood of reposting everything I did yet again.
RE: Petition to Re-Add Tech Level - expert700 - 12-24-2018
(12-24-2018, 05:44 AM)AnrDaemon Wrote: I'm not that easily baited. Besides, this is not my game.
On top of that, I'm not in the mood of reposting everything I did yet again.
Thank you for being such an active member of the forums, Anr. I admire your incredible ability to pump out a massive amount of criticism without ever saying anything constructive, even by accident. You're remarkably consistent; anyone suggests any change to the game other than fixing a bug, and you're bound to dislike it.
RE: Petition to Re-Add Tech Level - Minty - 12-24-2018
...so how bout them knicks, huh?
:s
RE: Petition to Re-Add Tech Level - pizzasgood - 12-24-2018
Imperfect solutions aren't inherently better than nothing. In some cases, imperfect solutions are worse than nothing, creating more issues than they solve. That is the case for TL. Getting tech nowadays feels less special than before, but it's so much less annoying that it's worth the trade of abandoning TL.
My thinking is that progression should involve more "doing" of stuff, like how the material harvesting patents require you to go out and harvest samples by hand. Maybe some patents should need us to go out and do things like taking relevant measurements or testing recently developed tech (e.g. no rocket powered spacecraft until you successfully fly around in a space rocket).
Note that I do not see any need to "protect" established empires from new ones by slowing the new ones down. That's silly nonsense. This shouldn't be about old empires at all. It's about helping to lead new players into the game at a comprehensible pace, while nudging them to go on little adventures and giving them a sense of progression and accomplishment. We shouldn't hold them back from the real game unnecessarily, but we absolutely should make the process of learning and acclimating to the game as fun and interactive as possible.