DevTracker

Grummz

$6k package
Community Manager
Ember Dev
Jul 25, 2016
809
6,724
93
#23
Unless the player zone idea is a clear win and easy to explain, it's not going to be worth doing. So far I don't think the idea is easy to explain and the negatives worries seem to outweigh any coolness factor the idea might have.

Right now there I see a lot of people posting concern and there is only 41% for and 59% the reset undecided or no.

Again I want to stress that no actual development is going into this, as it's "just talk" and not really taking up much of anyone's time or energy. I brought the idea to you *very early* as if you guys were devs in the same office with us, and I was walking around canvasing people's opinion on a "what if" idea. Please don't read too much into it. It's more of a casual pitch we would make around a water cooler in the office. This is also an experiment to see how early we can engage community for ideas, which gamers never get to see.
 

Grummz

$6k package
Community Manager
Ember Dev
Jul 25, 2016
809
6,724
93
#1
Today on Discord, I approached the community with a new idea for Em8ER.

Em-8ER is made up of a serious of zones in terraforming bubbles. You travel zone to zone with your personal dropship. The world isn't seamless, but rather a serious of interconnected servers. This is background info.

The idea came from a lot of people talking about game longevity and the popularity of private servers and mod servers in other games. For a long time I knew that as an online game with a controlled economy, it would be difficult to offer such standalone servers.

Still, the idea is popular, with many people renting ARK or Conan servers for around a dollar a player slot. For example, a 32 player ARK server is $31.85. Example:

https://server.nitrado.net/usa/offers/ark-survival-evolved

However Ark servers and Conan servers aren't connected. Players aren't allowed to travel freely between servers in most cases for one simple reason...non standard gameplay.

One server could have a rapid rate of XP or loot, while another might be an austerity model. Players coming from loot rich servers would tank the economy of the other server.

But what if we found a way to let players run their own server for an 8km x 8km zone, but to prevent cheating the company would host the servers, and the ruleset would be standardized.

What players would get is the abiltity to customize the zone biome, name it, and host their own base on it. Perhaps the cost could even be split between a guild?

While servers could be marked private, there would be great incentives to make them open to others. Other players would be able to contribute to a player-run servers' bases and tech up their bases to gain the same acceleration of research and resource scanning as company run zones. Owners of zones might even be able to create their own missions for players, offering rewards from guild resources or from an xp/resource drip that is part of the ruleset and carefully constrained.

I discussed this at length at the chief chat and suggested I would put it to a poll. We don't have to have this feature, but it was one way we thought we could offer player run servers in a way that didn't fragment players or create custom servers that are too inconsistent with the core game rules or rewards.

During the discussion, I will admit the idea did not seem to garner a lot of interest and instead created worry. This was a big feature, so it made sense to bring it to the community to judge reaction and get input. This is your chance to explain why and vote yes or no on interest.

This isn't something we've decided to do. It was an early idea we wanted to share with the community. If it's not desired, we won't be implementing it.

Thanks for you time and let us know your thoughts!
 
Last edited:

Ronyn

Commander
Staff member
Community Manager
Director of Marketing and Community
Jul 26, 2016
724
2,706
93
#1
Greetings Reapers,

Are your ears ready for the smooth voice of the main man himself? That's right, it's time for a Chief Chat. Today at 1 pm PST, Grummz will be on Em-8er discord discussing some ideas on player run servers and the base building economy. Come get some new info and be ready to share your feedback.

As usual, I'll be on as well to back him up and help get the community questions heard. So don't miss it, and don't be shy.

It's been a while Reapers, we are glad to be back!
- Ronyn