2020-10-06 Shores of Hazeron Moving to Steam

[Vooker525]

HAXUS, DUDE, HOLD ON A SEC. Make game F2P on Steam and keep patreon for income. Come on, project gets more income than ever. Financial success on steam is hard, especially for long term. There are good games that noone knows about, and bullshit one-week dev games that get a lot of attention. Steam in financial way will most likely fail with no time to react and adapt.
You CAN'T compare hazeron to no man's sky. This game uses different multiplayer model (players share most info with eachother and servers act as overlords). Closes game you can compare with in my opinion is EVE online. And look at it, it has subscription model. Elite Dangerous (P2P player interaction too and relatively low cost server maintenance) has an initial pricetag with some paid DLC's and microtransactions inside to keep project going.
Look, project reached 500$ per month from patreon. Its a milestone

[OnePercent]

Fwiw Astartes on Patreon made a series of CGI short clips which totals to a short film of a group of supersoldiers clearing a ship. The videos ranked in huge amount of views on youtube shown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoCcpMW8fSs


https://www.patreon.com/astartesfilm

That's the creators patreon, he has around near 8.5 thousand patrons and before Patreon removed the income amount he was raking in nearly 19 thousand dollars USD per month, JUST from 5 short videos of CGI (though absolutely beautiful) that this CGI effects artist made. 

Now imagine if we as a community can try hook your game up with a big time youtuber like Sseth, who will review your game in a way and attract potentially millions of views, I do not for one second think that Patreon isn't an 'unrealistic' long term solution, it will just require a little bit more community involvement on your part haxus, like weekly or monthly dev blogs etc, that's all it takes, what does that astartes guy do? he just makes artwork for his patrons or teasers for his next CGI works. 

Just to re-iterate, he rakes in near 19 thousand USD per month, because his videos went viral and people want to throw money at him and he is one of thousands of other patreon creators who are financially successful. FWIW ofc, it is as you say Haxus, you do not require permission from anyone and I applaud that attitude anyway... 

[Deantwo]

would suggest adding the poll here too?
Then just add it all together or whatever.

My thoughts on a reset are... well conflicted.

First of all, we really really need to get rid of this idea of a universe reset fixing anything at all. Without major changes to follow with the reset, it won't change anything. We don't want everyone in the game to keep thinking that a reset could happen at any time. We don't want people to think they can win the universe. People shouldn't have to worry about some majority poll wiping everything they have made with little warning.

Second reason would be the public blueprints. We both don't want to lose them, and wouldn't want to have to reupload them all again. Maybe some of the blueprints aren't working and the public blueprints probably could use some cleaning up, but most of them are good. Resetting the universe would remove avatars, which would remove the ownership of blueprints so they can't be updated/removed when needed.

If you really want a reset, and I am not asking everyone else here. Then I would suggest it is because you want to make some major changes:

• For example to change the universe to be smaller or otherwise different. It is easy to make the universe bigger than it is to make it smaller, so best to start small.
  
• Other than that, things like major changes to the building/city systems could require a reset. I have talked on length about how I think the current volume allocation system is too complex for building blueprints.
  See: Building Blueprint Simplification
  

[Haxus]

I also did not want to lose the public blueprints.

The one change that might necessitate a restart would be changing which dimension some of the galaxies are in. It really just changes the intergalactic wormhole network and a few other minor things. The change could leave some buildings on the "other side", from where they are now.

I will make this change fairly soon to work out any problems. If everyone is ok with the result, then there's no need to restart. I have no other changes in mind that would otherwise force a database reset.

[Haxus]

too complex

Lol. That is the story of Shores of Hazeron.

[Haxus]

film of a group of supersoldiers clearing a ship

The film was incredibly awesome.

I wish I had that kind of talent for visual artistry.

We all have a niche to fill. It's just a matter of finding it.

I'd like to fill the niche I have undertaken but I'm not convinced a niche is there.

[Vooker525]

One more thing. Imagine an artist that thinks he is a business man. I think its you. I treat this game as an art, programmer's paradise where you can do whatever you want. And you try to put it inside (old fashion) business frame, telling about game like in commercials. Thing is, Hazeron from art perspective is a gem, from business perspective its garbage. But lone artists can get more income than some companies. Personally i support project because its art and i can close eyes on many things. If treat Hazeron as source of business income and business project then there are many flaws that cant be fixed.
I understand its hard. Using Steam release as "last resort" and hope for a miracle. There wont be miracles.
But hey, patreon does good, you have loyal playerbase for years that will support you at most dark times with whatever it has (good and bad things). And selling it for steam short influx?

Or you could just tell us that you are tired completely and just throw project in steam just for lolz and shut it down

[Haxus]

I guess I'm not seeing it as that big of a change, except for a larger potential audience.

My development environment won't change. I will probably reduce the frequency of client updates. Once per month might be more appropriate. The current release package can be updated on Steam at any time, and easily reverted back to any previous release. It is a very nice system.

I think Shores of Hazeron will gain credibility with some people, when it is available on a mainstream platform like Steam. I know there are people who won't touch it because it is not available on a platform like Steam.

Will there be more or less players? Likely more.

Will there be bad reviews? Probably. There might be some good reviews too. I've done this long enough to have a pretty thick skin. I also know that the reactions to Shores of Hazeron are mixed. Some people hate it immediately and some people fall in head first.

[Haxus]

thinks he is a business man

Haha. I gave up on that thought a long time ago.

I'm just looking for a way through the maze.

[Vooker525]

So why not go with F2P steam version and keep patreon? You will get benefit from steam environment and patreon subscription model.
I think that was said multiple times. People wont lose anything from trying the game. If they fall in love, they will most likely donate, else they will play occasionally or just drop it. But if people pay for it and wont like they will more likely get upset and not recommend the game. Two hours or week is not enough to feel the core of the game.

Such paywall on steam not only blocks minor group of griefers, it also blocks major group of potential loyal customers.