Project Anabasis Development Diary #0 - The Future of Aurora

[Girdio]

Been away for about a year, but had been thinking about Aurora and spied this.

On the whole this looks like a really interesting change of pace. The server has for the last decade, and despite lore changes, overall been "megacorp focused". As mentioned elsewhere, I don't think the current setting lines up with the attitude or beliefs I've seen IC regarding the corporations. There has been a significant detachment of "this is a pretty bad setting to live in" from the lore, to how characters interact with the setting. Making the lore and gameplay interwoven hopefully will fix that significantly. The twenty-or-so year time skip seems pretty short for something of this impact, but I understand the necessity to avoid a complete reboot of the setting, and to let people keep their characters if wanted.

Personally, I believe that the lack of new players is a difficult-to-fix situation. It's been going on for years. I feel like it was a discussion even back in 2014-2015, with F_Sphere and everyone. The primary (or only) people know about the server is through word of mouth, for example. As much as I love the idea of an Aurora YouTube channel or Tiktok, I also know that's pretty unrealistic, as is paying for ad space without donations (and avoiding attracting TOO many people). That said, I'm hopeful that this will fix a significant portion of the issues of cliques/chair-RP that has established itself again. I can see a more engaging game mode being a good way to have established characters naturally interact with new players. It would incentive for established players to talk to new players as well.

My biggest concern is that with everything being persistent, new players won't be getting the same experience as players here for the initial change. While obviously the setting being largely "the same" gets stale, it does prevent players feeling like they've missed crucial points. Like yes, the events are always fun and rewarding but you can survive not seeing them.

From what's described here, it seems like everyone is working towards a goal of improving their lot in life. Making the ship look better, their overall situation better or whatever. How long does it take for that to go from the "we're struggling together" aesthetic to "we are comfortable and can relax". I feel like if there's no meaningful change to life on the ship, we're right back here talking about how everything is stale and nothing canon.

But then, a new player joins and they've missed out on all this. Sure, they have the goal of "you see what we've done, we can do even more!" and that's fun itself. How long would it be until new players were coming into a setting they couldn't influence anymore though?

My overarching question is that,  I think. Are there plans to address both letting the ship improve and change with time, but also preventing a situation where new players don't feel like they've missed out for not joining at an arbitrary date? Outside of "oopsie an asteroid crashed into the ship and now everything you worked for is moot, rebuild it, hehe"?

Also, I didn't see anything in regards to a timeline. I wasn't active when the server went from the Aurora Station to Horizon, so I don't know if a timeline was presented there. I see mentions of this being a several-years-in-the-making situation. Is there a current rough estimate of when everything would begin shifting over? 

Edited Thursday at 11:31 by Girdio

[Shimmer]

9 hours ago, Girdio said:

Personally, I believe that the lack of new players is a difficult-to-fix situation. It's been going on for years. I feel like it was a discussion even back in 2014-2015, with F_Sphere and everyone. The primary (or only) people know about the server is through word of mouth, for example. As much as I love the idea of an Aurora YouTube channel or Tiktok, I also know that's pretty unrealistic, as is paying for ad space without donations (and avoiding attracting TOO many people). That said, I'm hopeful that this will fix a significant portion of the issues of cliques/chair-RP that has established itself again. I can see a more engaging game mode being a good way to have established characters naturally interact with new players. It would incentive for established players to talk to new players as well.

Word of mouth is not necessarily a bad way to spread and attract new players - the issue with word of mouth is about retention and keeping a good enough chain where that kind of stuff spreads and keeps players engaged. Plenty of SS13 servers work exclusively by spreading through word of mouth, by attracting players from similar settings and keeping them engaged.

 

The issue with Aurora is that it's difficult to retain long term interest when the primary gameplay loop is just so fundamentally shit. Once the game itself is in a state where it's more fun and engaging, growing wouldn't be the issue it is right now.