Steam

[expert700]

-snip-

It can't, because almost every session game has a win condition. Hazeron doesn't: it has a leaderboard, sure, but what about the guy whose personal win condition is to build an amazing space station and hide on it, collecting zoological samples from around the galaxy with his UFO? Or the guy whose personal win condition is to cover an entire planet with a city? Or the girl whose personal win condition is to colonize an entire sector with nothing but statues of herself? There is no reason inherent within these people's playstyles to submit to a recurrent reset: they would periodically be forfeiting their own playstyle and all their work to people who think that conquest and the leaderboards are the sole reasons to play - and for zero benefit to themselves! In a game as open-ended as this, that is simply unfair. An "I play to win" mentality simply does not deserve to be forced on a playerbase as diverse as Hazeron's. WW2 Online resets because every so often, someone conquers all of Europe. Eve does not reset, because why should someone who's perfectly happy polishing his ship in obscurity and couldn't care less about territory be forced to start from scratch every two years? Ultimately, session play will lose you the players who play for other reasons.

The more I hear about it, the more I suspect the reset is requested for purely personal reasons rather than real and lasting improvements to Hazeron's infrastructure: ones which will hold new players for years to come. Those veterans who know why they left, I suspect, understand fully that Hazeron is still the same game, and that if they wouldn't play right now, they won't be playing a year after a reset, either. Veterans want to come back for a bit of a party, a free-for-all deathmatch where they can have lots of no-consequences fun for a few months, conquer the galaxy then leave again: something which Weltreich currently stops them from doing. And Weltreich itself wants a reset because it will have more fun when fighting for its life, and its stomps will feel more meaningful and necessary. Now, I don't call either of those bad reasons per se. But they are not for the good of the game or for the benefit of Steam players, let's be honest here. That stuff has already been promised, now, without  The only benefit there is that Steam players will see is more people on the active list when they log on. I'm not sure that that effect is going to snowball as much as we are being told.

Now, the arguments against a reset are also largely personal: except the very serious argument against Hazeron permanently becoming a session game. But where arguments are purely personal, and where there is no objective and lasting gameplay benefit, I trust more weight should be given (a) to the Status Quo (b) to people who have something to lose, rather than to people asking for other people's to be taken away.

To quote Haxus' original welcome page, "This is a real game, the kind that can be won and lost. You develop an empire and interact with other players. Your empire can expand and win or be crushed out of existence." You listed off a number of personal win conditions that people might have, but they all had one thing in common: they are very singleplayer oriented. Those goals might be enjoyable to individual players, but they don't contribute much to player interaction. Also, the "I play to win" mindset is exactly what players in the conflict zone are supposed to have—it's called the conflict zone because conflict is supposed to be a significant part of the player experience! It seems to me like there are a lot of players in the conflict zone that don't actually want to fight anyone, but just didn't go to the Veil of Targoss because there's no one there.

As for Weltreich, I don't know about the others but I'm not personally supporting a reset because of a fear of Weltreich. I can also tell you that the Syndicate guys are not just afraid to come back because of Mortius. The last time I talked to Staines he thought it was hilarious that Mortius was on top, because apparently Mortius used to be more of a carebear :P . Your second point about why Weltreich wants a reset is entirely accurate, but that's also the reason people like me want the reset. I would love the excitement of someone coming and trying to burn down my cities while I frantically try to build up a shipyard after a reset! I'm also fairly certain that Mortius would not stay on top if Syndicate came back. The game may have changed a lot by this point, but Syndicate's sheer numbers of experienced players would obliterate everyone.

I think our disagreement here is really about how Hazeron should be played: mostly isolated with occasional visits to other players, or with lots of player interaction and warfare happening constantly. To that end, I propose a solution:

• Current systems whose owners want to keep them are moved to the Veil of Targoss, provided Haxus is capable of doing that.
  
• The Veil of Targoss will never reset unless there are major changes to the game that require it.
  
• If possible, allow ships with no weapons to transit from the Veil of Targoss to the conflict zone, but prevent them from being refit. That way, players from the Veil of Targoss can explore the conflict zone and interact with other players without being able to use it as a staging ground for an invasion.
  
• The conflict zone resets on a cycle of a generous length, somewhere between one and two years.
  

I would like to try to come to an agreement here, because if we all can come to an agreement then we can likely convince Haxus to implement it. Please, if any of you are even slightly open to the ideas above, suggest any modifications to them that you think would make them better.