Steam

[Ikkir Isth]

We are at the very least getting partial resets:
Old cities and old ships.

Steam probably would more like things to be a full reset than not, but having a backdrop of existing civilization could also be interesting.
Other than that, I mean, you could wipe currency and city / ship inventories to even the playing field and delete obsolete items, not that it really matters too much in the long run, as a sort of compromise.

[AnrDaemon]

There's literally no benefit from anything mentioned.
Even more, the existing relic cities would provide new players with necessary impression of the depth and history of the game. In absence of other memorable monuments.

[expert700]

There's literally no benefit from anything mentioned.
Even more, the existing relic cities would provide new players with necessary impression of the depth and history of the game. In absence of other memorable monuments.

You seem to have an interesting definition of "literally no benefit", Anr. There are actually two possible benefits from resetting the game universe:

1. It would level the playing field. There is hopefully going to be an influx of new players with the Steam release, and they won't be very happy if there are a bunch of established empires going around noobstomping, with no real hope for them to compete.
   
2. It would also likely raise the player count. We all want more people to be playing Hazeron, and the only proven way to bring lots of old players back to the game at once is with a reset of the universe. Whenever it is reset, we always see a spike in the player counts in the months following the reset. People like playing after a reset precisely because of that even playing field. It's competitive again, and everyone is advancing at the same time.
   

As for those arguing that Hazeron is not and should never become a session game, I urge you to look at the examples similar games have set. MMOs that never reset like WOW or Eve are simply not comparable, as they have massive player bases and the players in those respective games have relatively little effect on the world. In Hazeron, the entire universe is built by the players. I think that at this point the closest comparison to the dynamics in Shores of Hazeron is servers in games like ARK or Rust which have chosen to never reset. At the start, there is excitement with intense competition for resources. Later in the game, there are only a few large groups left in control of everything. They slowly become inactive, while new players cycle in and out with relatively few staying. When all that's left in the universe is a bunch of decaying empires and a few people begrudgingly hanging onto them, it's not a very vibrant universe to play in. I'm not saying that we should be resetting monthly, or even yearly. But I would think that three years is definitely a sufficient period. 

The exciting parts of the current universe were mostly over by the end of 2015, and I think we can all see that everyone since then has just been bored. We have a path that we know would bring even more players back to the game, so why not take it?

[Minty]

When we talk about 'levelling the playing field', we're talking about one empire, really.

Weltreich. The second-largest empire has a tenth of the worlds.

If you're so scared of Weltreich, then go defeat them yourself! Make a quest out of it! Band together in a great, glorious rebellion against the fascist menace!*


It's true that there aren't many currently-active empires right now, and resetting would get rid of a lot of left-over gaff. But I also think that it would destroy the history of this universe, like it or not. The universe is huge, and as I've said in the discord, most of it is still untouched beyond being scanned. If you go to another galaxy, you'll never even know it wasn't reset. We could easily get the best of both worlds just by Haxus moving the Default galaxy to be a different one.

And even if we DO reset, there's still nothing stopping another veteran player from getting up to Weltreich-levels of power in a few weeks, due to the aforementioned balance issues. Weltreich has a monopoly on the universe because there simply isn't anyone else as devoted to expanding as he is. More players will come regardless of whether we reset or not. And anyway, where's the fun in starting over again? The idea of a permanent universe is that it is permanent. If we reset again, we continue the tradition of resetting every couple years, ensuring that the next time it'll be 'easier' to reset, we will. Most of the people saying they'd come back for a reset would have no different of an experience if they just came back now  and started over now, ESPECIALLY if they could start in a different galaxy!




* -- In my experience, by the way, Mortius has been nothing but a helpful person. Maybe back in the days where he had competition he was more of a warmonger (from what I've heard, since I wasn't really around then), but he's genuinely a cool dude. I don't get where all this stuff about 'stomping newbies' comes from. The only time he killed me was when he accidentally broke my life support while we were hanging out, and, like, I ended up crashing maybe seven more of my own ships that same day, so it wasn't exactly an impactful death.

I DO see him cleaning up after empires that have left, but that's... not noobstomping.

[expert700]

When we talk about 'levelling the playing field', we're talking about one empire, really.

Weltreich. The second-largest empire has a tenth of the worlds.

If you're so scared of Weltreich, then go defeat them yourself! Make a quest out of it! Band together in a great, glorious rebellion against the fascist menace!*


It's true that there aren't many currently-active empires right now, and resetting would get rid of a lot of left-over gaff. But I also think that it would destroy the history of this universe, like it or not. The universe is huge, and as I've said in the discord, most of it is still untouched beyond being scanned. If you go to another galaxy, you'll never even know it wasn't reset. We could easily get the best of both worlds just by Haxus moving the Default galaxy to be a different one.

-snip-


* -- In my experience, by the way, Mortius has been nothing but a helpful person. Maybe back in the days where he had competition he was more of a warmonger (from what I've heard, since I wasn't really around then), but he's genuinely a cool dude. I don't get where all this stuff about 'stomping newbies' comes from. The only time he killed me was when he accidentally broke my life support while we were hanging out, and, like, I ended up crashing maybe seven more of my own ships that same day, so it wasn't exactly an impactful death.

I DO see him cleaning up after empires that have left, but that's... not noobstomping.

I'm aligned with Mortius, it's not really the threat of Weltreich that has me here shilling for a reset. He is vicious though. I saw him bring that great big cylindrical ship the size of a moon down on tackeart's city before setting it on fire! And then he stalked tackeart to the northern cluster, did it again, then curbstomped some other empire and forced them to become tackeart's vassal! Oh, and I just don't understand how he could be so cruel to Fasgort. He just wanted to play the game, yet Mortius pursued him to the end of the earth so that he could mount his head on a wall!

On a more serious note, you are right that the universe has history. That history, though, isn't all it's cracked up to be. Let's take glory control as an example. When we all think of glory control, we imagine some grand syndicate metropolis. In reality, it's just an incredibly laggy system with the former syndicate cities always on the verge of decaying, rendered useless by the new buildings, and a few founded by Black Wave to provide a source of (PAAA?) super soldiers. What is there really to preserve? The history lies in the stories of what happened there, and those aren't going to disappear with a reset.

What would disappear is three years of garbage piled on top of that poor eastern cluster. Here's what it looks like on the largest starmap I have access to.

That's hardly a dynamic and exciting universe. Deantwo sits off on the side, occasionally visiting new players. Mortius is scattered all over, but mostly uninvolved in the operations of individual locations. No one really knows what the French do... In the gaps inbetween, there are either the remnants of old empires that no one has bothered to take over yet, or some poor new player, clueless to what's going on around them. And that's the most populated part of the galaxy! There's hardly any interaction anymore with the player count so low, and it's just painful to see. If Haxus just moved the spawn locations to a different galaxy, that would only serve to further fragment the player base. I understand that built up empires (bar Weltreich) would be frustrated by a reset, but they would probably all keep playing. It's rarely frustration with the mechanics or performance anymore than has people leaving the game—now, it's mostly just boredom.

I'm concerned, like I think everyone else here is too, about what would happen if the Steam release flew under the radar and had very little effect on the player counts. As I've said before, we have a clear option that has proven in the past to bring back old players and will again. We need the universe to be as vibrant and exciting during the Steam release is possible, because there is no second chance. Haxus has made clear that he doesn't want to place the game in early access, so Hazeron will only get the one release. The way I see it, the player count is what is most important to the player experience in Hazeron. Personally, I follow a regular cycle: get bored of playing Hazeron because of extremely low player counts, stop playing, then eventually get drawn back in for one reason or another. Rinse and repeat. I notice that a lot of us follow that same cycle, but far more players got bored and left permanently.

Anything that increases the player count is worth it, because interacting with players is what makes Hazeron worth playing! When I think of the most memorable and exciting moments I've experienced in Hazeron, it's not building cities that comes to mind. I think of that time that I successfully tracked someone (tackeart) down in a matter of hours after they left the area to try and hide, or the time that me and Mortius lured a certain Fasgort in with false promises to discover his location and prevent him from escaping the galaxy. I want to have more experiences like that, because that's what keeps me interested in the game. Too many people treat Hazeron like a singleplayer game with irc, but that's not what it was meant to be.

[Minty]

-- snip --

-- the rare and difficult double snip move! --

...

...Yeah, you know what?

I agree with your points, you've swayed me, I'm changing my vote to 'reset'. I guess it really is just buggy junk systems at this point. Nobody is going to fly through all those cities full of defunct old-style worlds and be like, 'oh yeah, this place has the musk of history!'

The only remaining reason I didn't want the reset was because I know some people have worked really hard on their new-style cities and I'd feel bad seeing them be lost. Especially Vectorus, that dude's worked extra hard lining up planet-specific buildings, and I know setting up new-style cities can take hours. If Haxus could just, like... port over the few cities that people worked really hard on in the last year - the beautiful works of art of Vectorus and Martianant and a few others - I don't see any reason not to reset. I wouldn't want a reset to piss off the couple people actually making the really beautiful stuff, because then we'd be left with nothing but grey cubes! If we could find some kind of workaround for them (that the other players find fair, of course, since they'd technically be getting a head start), I'd be cool with it.

I didn't mention that point earlier because, well, it's not a very rational point. I know we'll have more cool new-style creations in the future. I just genuinely feel bad seeing that stuff go down the drain.

[Vectorus]

I think we are now beginning to go round in circles. I'm with AnrDaemon on this. There are no real benefits to a reset. Considering that system generation has been squarely improved and that all old-style stuff is getting recycled anyway, that leaves a reset with two points in its favour. Both are spurious. The onus is on those who want a change to prove that it considerably outweighs the presumption in favour of not deleting paying players' stuff, and they'll need a lot more than this.

1. A level playing field. Equal opportunities, because everyone starts with 0, right? But not equal outcomes: does anyone really think that while MrSteamNewbie is watching designer tutorial videos on YouTube and browsing peacefully through the exchange, Mr. Mortius will not be using his immaculate spreadsheet and already optimized doomboxes to set up infrastructure which, given his current reliance on old cities, will very probably exceed his current infrastructure capacity within a few weeks? Do you think he will be more or less motivated to do so after a reset, more or less paranoid about potential threats? I and the other veterans will be doing same thing, though not perhaps with the same zeal. The field will never be level. 

Also note that the next guy after Mortius has 100 or so cities, most of which will now be deleted anyway. Literally hundreds, probably 90%+ of Weltreich's will go the same way, together with the entirety of inactive empires like PAAA or Black Wave. Is that not enough? On top of that, you will be asking for a full reset of everyone's work for the sake, probably, of the few dozen NuCities which remain, most of which are test sites or newbies' firsts anyway. Given that the playing field will never be more than thoroughly slanted, the coming old city nerf is a big enough nod in that direction. In terms of the amount which will be deleted, this "partial reset" will still probably be among the biggest data deletions Hazeron has ever undergone: everything between 2015 and mid 2018 will go. We need to stay long-sighted. Given what is already slated to change, will the game look fundamentally different one year from now, two years from now, because of a full rather than a partial reset?

2. A new player influx. Every reset has been accompanied by a mass return. A few months later, every reset has seen an equally massive exodus. Only exception is the F2P to P2P change, which lost many permanently. People realize that the game is fundamentally the same, and what turned them off then still turns them off now: limbo, lack of progression, grind, whatever it may be. The veterans saying they'd come back know this perfectly well. The only way a reset can become more than a band-aid is if Hazeron becomes a session game. 

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.

[pizzasgood]

At the start, there is excitement with intense competition for resources. Later in the game, there are only a few large groups left in control of everything. They slowly become inactive, while new players cycle in and out with relatively few staying. When all that's left in the universe is a bunch of decaying empires and a few people begrudgingly hanging onto them, it's not a very vibrant universe to play in. I'm not saying that we should be resetting monthly, or even yearly. But I would think that three years is definitely a sufficient period. 

If all that's left is decay, then there's nothing stopping new people from coming along and building new things.  The reason these cycles happen has nothing to do with needing to wipe stuff out and reset the playing field.  It's not the reset itself that brings people back; they return because a reset is a defined moment that's easy for everybody to synchronize around.  In lieu of resets or some other big noteworthy event, we all trickle back in at our own pace and miss each other.

Guess what else is a big noteworthy event that's easy to synchronize around and sure to pull people out of the woodwork?  Steam release.  :)

[Vectorus]

I think pizzasgood made my point rather more elegantly than I did here. I agree.

An interesting point that raised is whether we can have some kinds of big event, non-destructive, which might draw people back all together at regular intervals. The way a lot of MMOs have special weekends or seasons.

[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.