Steam

[Vectorus]

I'm glad you're prepared, Haxus. As long as you're happy and have no illusions about people's charity, let's go ahead - I trust the game will speak for itself, in the end: even No Man's Sky is starting to manage that, simply because the developers were thick-skinned enough to keep at it. We certainly won't have a hype problem. If one game survives from this generation for archaeologists to discover, I hope it's Hazeron: this is what 21st century man dared to dream.

I don't know enough about the culture to explain the desire for blood. Perhaps the advertising cycle presents a great many franchises as things we are now supposed to like by default, and people are pushing back. We're expected to go buy the new Fallout because it's Fallout, not because it was pitched to us in an engaging and intelligent way. it feels a little insulting.

You've previously said you'd be against a reset unless the playerbase was more or less unanimous. Well, I don't want to be that guy from Up! standing between his little old house and the bulldozers. But I don't want a reset. My reasons are selfish, but I hope not unreasonable: I've put a lot of time and money into the game, developed emotional affections for certain places and things. I enjoy playing immensely and pay my subscription. A lot of people who want a reset don't enjoy the game as it stands and don't currently subscribe. I understand it's good business to try to appeal to them - as the energy companies try to do - but it can also feel a little like you're being penalized for loyalty. I had a huge amount of work wiped when the blueprint restrictions were introduced. I sucked it up and rebuilt on the often stated understanding that no reset was envisaged - I'm getting too old for the old one-two. 

What are the main reasons for a reset?

-Some empires are too powerful, no free competition. Not that important: you can always start remote. There's enough unused space for ten Weltreichs out there. Mortius is bored with his stuff anyway. If he surrenders 90% to pirates or deletes it, the next biggest empires only have a 100 planets. Nowadays you can colonize that much in a couple of weeks. A free-for-all early game will only reveal the unbalanced combat, conquest and territory systems currently in place, anyway. Personally, I think you want to keep Steam players away from combat as much as possible until it's had another pass. It's one of our least polished systems.
-Old designer stuff looks ugly. But old cities decay and spacecraft die. A reset accelerates that process by maybe a few months. So what? Old vehicles and old items are going to get their foot in the reset door, anyway. Creatures and plants will be more difficult phase out without a total reset - they'll be bound to existing planets. If it's neatness you're after, better to wait until the whole generation cycle we're currently in to be finished, rather than resetting halfway between buildings and vehicles.
-System generation etc. These are the important things. But for anyone not right in the heart of the Eastern Cluster, they bother you maybe once per year, if that. It's worth changing, sure, but most people, certainly most new players, will never notice. Slap on a warning that Easter Cluster systems are more volatile, and you've given it due consideration. All the player needs to do is build a shed...

If I'm outvoted, then I'm outvoted, no hard feelings, but I'm not going to change my vote unless the people who want a reset are willing to club together and buy me out for all the time I spent scanning, measuring, modelling and colonizing to get where I am now. You guys got a couple of hundred dollars lying around? I bought an extra account, that's how much I'm enjoying this round...I understand the position of those who want this, but for myself I rely on Haxus' undertaking that he will only reset with effective unanimity. I'm digging my heels in this time.

If we can reach a compromise: there are so many galaxies, why not take a few -even the majority - of the barely used ones and make them into a new discontinuity, taking advantage of the recent advances and as a clean slate for new and returning players? That would give the best deal to new players without prejudice to the old ones who like things the way they are now. We could talk about merging them further down the line..

---

I took so long to post that I missed some of the rest of the discussion. Going through it now. 

Lots of us are willing to help without compensation, just as we would be willing to donate without receiving a particular benefit, if you let us.

You think of yourself as a businessman, and you are, for sure. But you are also an artist (even if not a graphical one). Hazeron is an artwork that stands on a par with Asimov's best stories. Your lines of code elicit an emotional reaction just as Dante's lines of poetry do. We are your friends first and your customers second, but we are also your patrons. We are paying you because we believe your art deserves to exist, not only in recompense for your labour and materials. We are willing to help you for free not because you stand to profit, but because it is ultimately better that Hazeron should exist than that it shouldn't: and when we are all dead, it will be better that Hazeron once existed than that it didn't. That will always be the case, please don't forget it!