2022-01-13 FYI

[Booterror]

The quality of Hazeron's multiplayer gameplay is inherently tied to the quality of the playerbase.

Oh man, have we already gotten to elitist sentiment? That's neat.

Wild. Never saw that coming at all. It's completely out of left field. Mind-boggling. I'm stupified.

Not only is the future of Hazeron still uncertain to the point that a monthly payment is actually suicidal, why would I play a game that I have to share with someone who thinks like this? Anyone who has more than two hours a day to put into their empire just roleplays as The Great Filter.

All of my excursions into Hazeron have ended at the pointy end of The Syndicate's spear while I was offline.

They're literally the reason the game won't ever take off.

I wonder how many Syndicate members will play the game solo. Very unlikely any of them have the patience to play the game in a way that doesn't involve actively  removing the fun of others.

You telling me that the Syndicate is singlehandedly the only reason that Hazeron wont take off?

I mean, I must say... I'm almost kind of proud of that. That someone thinks we alone are holding the gun to the head of this game, safety off, ready to prevent its success. I don't know if I can cope with the pressure in the spotlight. My hand sweaty from shitposting, slick on the grip, shaking from the excitement.

Oooooooooor, I'm doubting we hold as much power as you think.

Additionally: Sieg Syndicate, I guess.

[Duane]

You telling me that the Syndicate is singlehandedly the only reason that Hazeron wont take off?

Additionally: Sieg Syndicate, I guess.

Forum sentiment definitely seems to frequently be "I got killed by The Syndicate/one of their side-empires again." Maybe it's not halting the entire game, but it's definitely halted my entire experience with it, and the experience of anyone I've tried to play with, too. I guess it's kind of hard to extrapolate beyond my own collected data. Considering that I would absolutely continually play this game with friends if I could, you aren't just ripping off leaves. Syndicate actively kills entire trees of people that could potentially play the game. If you stomp out everything growing in the garden, the only thing you're left with is the dirt. The concept that you all very, very obviously revel in doing it doesn't help.
 
Doesn't matter how much power you think you have if "I got wiped by Syndicate" is my, and others' entire experience with the game. I get wiped, I stop playing. Why bother doing it again?

Considering Haxus' vision for the game includes the ability to just be a person who owns a ship, has a crew, and travels between empires doing missions running supplies and killing pirates, the Syndicate is conceptually the biggest barrier between the projected and actual trajectory of the game's development.

Sieg Syndicate. Enjoy your dirt.

[Deantwo]

All of my excursions into Hazeron have ended at the pointy end of The Syndicate's spear while I was offline.

They're literally the reason the game won't ever take off.

I don't see how Syndicate can be the sole reason.
Syndicate as it once was hasn't actually played Hazeron is a long time, most of them left sone time after The Box which was a long time ago now. I know for a fact more Syndicate players are active on the forum than there are Syndicate players who want to play nowadays. They have simply gone off to play other games.

The end of the 5th universe clearly showed that even a one-man empire like Weltreich can hold the universe in an iron fist. All it takes is time, dedication and no competition.

But all this just proves that war in Hazeron is too fast and mostly happens while people are offline. Even the war between Rome and French Empire show it was mostly just capture worlds while enemy is offline, re-capture what was captured, then the enemy repeats it once they are online and you aren't.

Conquest of cities and territory kinda got even faster with the new-style cities, since they can be destroyed right away without any capture mechanic. Which is why it has been an interesting topic to discuss in the idea section of the forum over the last few weeks. Of course, like with most things, the community can't quite agree on what would be best.
See: (Idea thread) Conquest of Solar Systems

Haxus is also working on some solutions with the new noncombatant mechanic which will be interesting to see how that plays out.

Not only is the future of Hazeron still uncertain to the point that a monthly payment is actually suicidal, why would I play a game that I have to share with someone who thinks like this?

Everyone has voiced their concerns about pay-to-play monthly fee, and Haxus has yet to actually comment on it. We are waiting to hear what Haxus actually think about alternatives, but even so it can always change later if it doesn't work out.

I didn't see anything in outrageous in part you quoted, so please keep it civilized.

[xxqpxx--PMW]

I would have to disagree with the opinion that syndicate players ruin the game. For me, their wipe of my solo empire was a wakeup call to not get too comfortable. Mid attack I was able to sneak into my capital, load a ship and escape, albeit with a tail. It was some of the most exciting gameplay I've had. Realising I was being followed, I proceeded to zig-zag from system to system, occasionally broadcasting on galchat before heading off in another direction. As I was leaving town for two weeks on a work trip, I set my ship on a beeline for the opposite edge of the galaxy with harvest fuel orders to keep them going. Two weeks in a warp 7 ship got me out of harms way to build back an empire capable of practicing black hole transition to other galaxies. All because I was a friendly neighbor and shared technology with a player who ended up losing ships to them with my disks onboard. F*cking awesome!


Sieg Syndicate, I guess.

[Neils Iyssada]

As I was leaving town for two weeks on a work trip, I set my ship on a beeline for the opposite edge of the galaxy with harvest fuel orders to keep them going. Two weeks in a warp 7 ship got me out of harms way to build back an empire capable of practicing black hole transition to other galaxies

Wow, it might be old because nowadays you can't go to unexplored systems without an online avatar onboard.
Even if you actually had your avatar online, you were lucky to not sundive or atmodive.

[Booterror]

As I was leaving town for two weeks on a work trip, I set my ship on a beeline for the opposite edge of the galaxy with harvest fuel orders to keep them going. Two weeks in a warp 7 ship got me out of harms way to build back an empire capable of practicing black hole transition to other galaxies

Wow, it might be old because nowadays you can't go to unexplored systems without an online avatar onboard.
Even if you actually had your avatar online, you were lucky to not sundive or atmodive.

Back in my day we had to deadhead manually and had to walk uphill both ways to spend weeks in limbo, And we liked it! 

[Greydog]

I've been playing since early U3, can't say I've ever even encountered anyone from Syndicate in game. Some of their posts over the years have been fun reads though.

I did have Mortius take 5 empires (1 main, 4 alt) from me in U4 ...lol

[xxqpxx--PMW]

As I was leaving town for two weeks on a work trip, I set my ship on a beeline for the opposite edge of the galaxy with harvest fuel orders to keep them going. Two weeks in a warp 7 ship got me out of harms way to build back an empire capable of practicing black hole transition to other galaxies

Wow, it might be old because nowadays you can't go to unexplored systems without an online avatar onboard.
Even if you actually had your avatar online, you were lucky to not sundive or atmodive.

My home pc was left on with my avatar online. I was lucky I guess, but didn't have much to lose really.

[OriginalGangstaStaines]

Going to be 100% open here as a member of Syndicate here.

Very rarely were we just outright horrible to people.


When we played as Syndicate in U3, most of what we did was stop noobstompers, or fight in Pan-Galactic War 2 with our allies, and then recruit all parties in the war after we'd intervened to stop it - this resulted in a very interesting playerbase because almost every player had been at war with each other in the past couple of years. It was a great melting pot of all kinds of players.

When we played as Harvesters in U3, we straight up roleplayed the light PVP and tried to cause as much drama and excitement as possible with the minimum of damage. The entire purpose was simply to get an exploit fixed as fast as possible by inflicting it on the galaxy in a silly, exciting way (the mothership) as emergent content. Virtually the minute the bug was fixed we stopped. It was entirely kayfabe except for a couple of people who were abnormally prideful, that we did kick a couple of times due to being nasty in chat to our members.

When we played as Exiles in U4, it was pretty brutal. We did our regular action of sweeping/recruiting the systems within 2 hours lightspeed around us so we could utilise the full economic yield of everything within a sector range of the capital. Fun fact, when syndicate used to claim the 15 parsec zone around our spawn capital, we'd actually recruit the people who spawned in near us, or we'd supply them with a colony ship with enough supplies to flatpack an entire planet and a moonbase, plus a couple of players to assist). Unfortunately due to the anonymous empire name (people's morale dropped immediately if they found out they were at war with syndicate), we ended up in an immediate war with the french, which resulted in a few small empires getting trampled after aligning with our enemies during the very violent fighting. None of it was out of malice, it was just a very full scale war that ended up with a few people getting very battered due to their positions on the wormhole network, and their faction alignment. Overall, fantastic war, very high intensity.

When we played as Syndicate at the start of U5, "the box", we never actually destroyed anyone in a particularly unjustifiable way? We declared war on the entire galaxy at once, with the option of "vassal or die" (something that was essentially meaningless in gameplay terms)... that was literally an inbuilt out-button to disengage from any PVP with Syndicate. Eventually, the only people we actually fought were the rebel alliance and a few players who were literally too prideful to exist in a multiplayer environment. I don't regret that at all, and on the contrary, I think it created really one of the absolute high points of Hazeron, where people on both sides had great memories of the interactions and the fun. There was very little real drama in that time that wasn't just a bit of kayfabe fun.


Basically...
Syndicate has always been a rational, reasonable, merciful, and inexorable force for fun in Hazeron. If someone harbors genuine ire for Syndicate, it's because either they don't understand the true nature of Syndicate, or they were mad about Pan-Galactic War 2 upending the power balance in U3, mad at being stopped from noobstomping, or they were too prideful to simply hit the "PVP-OFF" button during U5. The only other time we've shot at people is when they've been genuinely nasty, bitter, isolationist hermit weirdos, that abused our members. Oddly, encountering those people was more common than I would have liked, maybe Hazeron attracts them.


Even Syndicates odd catchphrase, "Sieg Syndicate, I guess?" is generally confusion, and entertained acceptance, of the fact that people considered us violent thugs, despite being one of the few legitimate real cultures in a universe of one-man-empires.

[Rockinsince87]

When we played as Harvesters in U3, we straight up roleplayed the light PVP and tried to cause as much drama and excitement as possible with the minimum of damage. The entire purpose was simply to get an exploit fixed as fast as possible by inflicting it on the galaxy in a silly, exciting way (the mothership) as emergent content. Virtually the minute the bug was fixed we stopped. It was entirely kayfabe except for a couple of people who were abnormally prideful, that we did kick a couple of times due to being nasty in chat to our members.

Yep. Harvesters was rather interesting and did stir things up a bit. The mothership exploit was actually cool and did have good entertainment value. 

Syndicate has always been a rational, reasonable, merciful, and inexorable force for fun in Hazeron. If someone harbors genuine ire for Syndicate, it's because either they don't understand the true nature of Syndicate, or they were mad about Pan-Galactic War 2 upending the power balance in U3, mad at being stopped from noobstomping, or they were too prideful to simply hit the "PVP-OFF" button during U5.

Well said.