Well on my way to Fifty, I still want to save the videogame that I fed most of my life. It’s the first MMORPG that I ever really played, but still the only videogame that actually has combat that leaves my heart pounding in my chest.
As I imagine surviving into Nursing Home age (if I can dodge the MAiDs) in the VR world that is rising up around us, I suppose my hope is that in saving it - it will be the VR my declining mind ends up getting plugged into.
This piece might be too much insider-baseball for someone unfamiliar, but what follows is a post I’m writing for the Facebook Alumni Group of the game, and the risk of typing most of it and losing it before I hit post has led me to type it up here. I’ll try to consider the uninitiated enough for the rest of you to follow along.
If you are interesting in getting a taste of it, a fella naming himself Peng who came back around during my last return to the game has a written a lot to help you out:
When the Russian Pirate Server of the game came online ten years ago, I missed the window. There was a private message waiting for me in the Facebook account I made for my online/in-game self, but when they shut down the official game server I had switched over to my legal fiction Facebook account, and by the time I found out about the new server’s existence the majority of pilots that did return had already left again for video-game fun that wasn’t facing a future of little-to-no future development.
The website where one can still download the game (now fancy enough you may have deleted the ‘s’ from https to get your browser to load it) called the shutdown of the main server the second great collapse. I agree with them that the calling may be ‘beyond reason’, and that a third collapse will be necessary to keep the game alive long enough to resuscitate it.
Though I missed the ensuing drama after the launch of the server, I understand that one of the problems the reconstruction faced after launch was an economic loophole that allowed pilots to generate ridiculous wealth by moving pilot owned station-building kits around. This ridiculous wealth was eventually addressed by limiting their purchase, but the damage had been done. With free accounts and unlimited wealth, those that had taken advantage of the situation had little reason to fly and grind, and those that didn’t would never be able to compete.
The ‘station upkeep’ that had been attempted while the game was ‘officially’ maintained had been buggy and turned off before the shutdown - and so the stations built with the ill-gotten gain remain to this day. The free accounts and the low in-game price of 10-million for a two-point station left many sectors (particularly Amananth) full of Two-point Tombstone stations of players long gone we have to radar cycle through dishearteningly.
MGMT & THE GM
These last 10 years, Management - the people running the server has been what appears to be a Russian-Language native person or group who selected an English-speaking player and granted them limited powers to maintain the non-player storyline and limited support. I am often at odds with the decisions of said GM, though appreciate of the commitment ten years of unpaid labor they’ve devoted to the game.
The decision I’m most at odds with is the decision to maintain the same structure of interface between the community and those running things, what I call ‘the Themis model’ - with a strict separate of player/pilot and fictional characters making the decisions about what happens in the galaxy. The Decisions, which items are produced at which stations, which space buildings are constructed where and whether or not they’re destroyable - are veiled in secrecy and are not open to debate. Many of them make zero sense to me. For example, Fuel Cells - required in the production of all missiles are produced at a single Quantar station, while Proximity Fuses - required in the production of only one missile (the Cutlass) are produced at four stations.
To Save the Galaxy
In order for JumpGate to survive, it must continue to exist long enough for motivated parties to essentially rewrite the source code. Peng has gone above and beyond to determine what a monumental task that Reconstruction Initiative will be:
The Third Collapse
It is my belief that in order to keep and attract the players to support that Reconstruction Initiative, the Galaxy needs to survive another collapse - One in which the Community gets to have a voice in what buildings are constructed where, and what commodities and equipment are produced and where, and what follows is how I’d do it - which I have little faith I can communicate to current MGMT.
Solving the POS problem
I see the POS problem as two-fold. First, one can start a new account and build a two-point station after about 20 hours of play and then set it to private-access and never log in again, leaving essentially space debris everyone else has to target in perpetuity.
Second, the perhaps two-dozen or so that continue to play might well stop if the Universe Collapses and everything they’ve built over the last 10 years is wiped away to nothing.
Here is my suggestion to solve those issues:
After 6-months without logging in, a pilot-owned station becomes “Public Access” and the /dump setting is set to ‘true’ (letting any player place things on the station market).
After 12-months without logging in, all custom prices of a POS are cleared and reset to default prices.
After 18-months without logging in, any POS without 20 units of Iridium on the station market, the POS is destroyed and the credits for the station and module are refunded to the pilot account.
Pilot owned Stations with 20 units of Iridium remain after galactic collapse.
With the caveat of #4, not only can active pilots insure their efforts over the last 10 years aren’t washed away with a galactic reset, but those pilots who are no longer with us can have their stations preserved if living pilots bring the Iridium to their station to honor them. It doesn’t have to be Iridium, and the commodity in question can be changed for each subsequent collapse - but since their absence will have allowed other pilots to put the commodity on their station, it can be preserved.
For what it’s worth, I’ve asked current management if they can build a web interface for pilot own stations changes (access, /dump setting, etc.) and they didn’t say it was impossible.
A Community Server
While little can be changed in the current state of affairs, it seems such things as which commodities are produced where and various the existence of various space buildings (Nano-Assemblers, Custom Producers, Science Factories and possibly even the Naval Yards that allow certain ships to purchased at nearby faction stations) are on the table. I think the players should have a voice in these decisions, at least in the case of the players who achieve Optimus, the highest possible rank in a faction.
I envision an Optimus Council for each faction, where said players argue over and decide which buildings are built where would make the Galaxy after the Third Collapse would be a great way to go about making the galaxy a living and dynamic place again. This would be particularly true if each faction were allowed to appoint/elect a representative to the GM level, where a triumvirate could implement storyline on behalf of their Optimus Council. For example, if the Octavius Optimus Council wanted to target a specific Quantar space building, the Triumvirate could determine what hoops the players would have to jump through to create a window of time in which that building’s damage-ability would be turned on - as well as the hoops necessary for the Quantar players to catch wind of the plot and prevent it.
Meanwhile, the current GM has used a retired player account as an NPC of a station Governor. I’d love to see actual players be allowed to be voted into station governor position, and have to negotiate production contracts with the GM Triumvirate representing the fictional equipment manufacturing corporations.
In fact, I think we could go as far as to have those fictional corporations represented by cryptocurrency tokens - so that one could invest in them and their production performance yield dividends (that players could influence by flying around and blowing things up) - but that’s a dream that would have to wait until after the decompiled and reconstructed source code…
incel. shit writing. wonky dick.
Thanks for the callout. I too would like to see in-universe development that are more directly centered around the players actions. It was interesting to see the last Hyperial press release about the lack of interest in the faction mission. In my opinion, the answer to the question being asked is formulated in the question itself. Since the Amananth mission delivers nothing of value to anybody as far as we can tell, why would players go out of their way to complete another faraway mission of doubtful usefulness? I will temper this observation by seconding your remark that for anyone to have supported the game voluntarily for a decade is worthy of commendation!