April has been a very busy month for us. It seemed like it passed in the blink of an eye! Here’s the features and improvements we’ve implemented in April that we are the most proud of:
- Station Missions have gone through several stages of improvement and refinement, with more on the way.
- Our very first round of classleads have been approved and implemented.
- We’ve refined and improved commodity generation.
- We’ve introduced a way for factions to generate income via taxation.
- Kidnappings and Ry’nari revolts have sent ripples through the apparent peace in the galaxy.
- A new questline has been unveiled in Mir.
- A Black Market has opened up for those with shadier business inclinations.
- A brand new Ship Customization system has been released.
- Hundreds of bugs have been joyfully squished.
- Quality of life improvements have been implemented to make the experience of both staff and players a little easier and smoother.
May promises to be even busier – we’re keeping ourselves occupied with several awesome new things! Keep reading for a preview of what we’re up to and what we’re planning for the coming weeks.
- Cosmpiercers – we hear you, and we’re hard at work looking at solving some of the issues we have with the current Cosmpiercer system. We hope to present you with a better experience in the following days!
- We’ve done some work on the economy, and we’re going to do more. We have some storefront improvements in the works, changes and fixes for some of our existing tradeskills, and more!
- Speaking of tradeskills, our overhaul of WeaponModding and ArmorModding is almost ready – we’re very excited to see the changes released!
- Our Storytellers are hard at work with some interesting events on the horizon. I want to tell you more about them, but I’d be spoiling the surprise…
- We’re working on new content in the form of daily missions, a new system that aims to reward both you and the faction you are a part of with bonuses and temporary boosts.
- More classleads
- And as always, we’re continuing to squish bugs with a vengeance.
Starmourn is a unique game in the Iron Realms ecosystem, and a unique game in the world of muds in general. As a science fiction text game with an active, hardworking development team, it is important to us that it be a standout example of the genre – and quite frankly, it is! But we have plans to take it even farther.
A few of the features we are the most proud of are:
- An intricate economy system
- An engaging, fun hacking system
- The magic of space and everything about it
- Ship piloting, ship battles, ship resource gathering
- New innovations in our unique PvE experience
- A PvP system that is quite different from the other IRE games
Over the coming weeks, months, and years of development, we want to double down on these features and make sure they reach the level of polish and stability they deserve. Transparency is important, so we would like to make sure the playerbase of our game is fully aware of what we’ve been planning!
One of our main goals is system integration. We want our unique systems to feel less like distinct entities, and more like a seamless whole that works together like a well-oiled machine. It is important to us that the playerbase, whatever their main areas of interest (be it exploring, fighting, spaceships, etc) feels as though they can participate in the “whole Starmourn experience” without worrying that they are missing out on anything the game has to offer.
As a standout example, we eventually want all areas of performance to link back towards what we understand as the game’s economy. Colonizing an asteroid and setting up a refinery there would give you significant manufacturing boosts, but might also draw the attention of your competitors. Performing certain PvE tasks for your faction might give you mining bonuses for a while. Getting involved in PvP events that require you to hack into a corporation’s servers might allow you to funnel resources out of their accounts and into your own.
The above is just an example, one of many such concepts the development team has been discussing and experimenting with avidly since Starmourn’s launch. These features, however, are not something that can be accomplished in a day or a month, but will grow over time as we update our existing systems and implement new ones. The development team strives for steady forward progress, while constantly tuning the existing game and adjusting things based on player feedback.
The goals in the categories below are not in any particular order of importance, but we have determined that they are the things we would like to accomplish to provide a solid, CORE experience to the game. If something isn’t listed here, it doesn’t mean we aren’t thinking about it, discussing it, or planning it, but it would be impossible to put everything we have discussed or thought about into a “Development Roadmap” – there would be no end in sight!
So, without further ado, here are the “outstanding” development goals on our radar.
PVE
- Make cover more appealing and useful
- Improve evasion
- A focus on social play (better crew/group dynamics, dynamic scaling)
- Expansions to the main story line
- Dynamically scaling instances and zones
- Quest reward expansions
- Daily quests/collaborative activities with factional implications (generally, ways to engage max/high level players who want an alternative to bashing but still want to remain within the PvE sphere.)
- LEVEL UNCAPPING!!
- Naturally, an ongoing expansion of areas and visitable planets
PVP
- Cosmpiercer improvements
- On-demand PvP areas/games – starting factional/individual conflict without the need of setting up/coordinating a large team to do so.
- Open PK high-reward incursions
- “Cargo mule” missions that allow piracy
- Class improvements that would allow for more diverse stat setups
- General WW improvements
ECONOMY
- More uses for commodities
- Improvements to the way you gather and availability of comms to better reward the time you spend doing those activities
- Improvements to the MARKET
- Better Faction strength and relevance in the economy of the world through activities that bolster/facilitate crafting and manufacturing
- Improvements to the Economies of the world to make them more appealing and diverse and encourage you to leave the safety of the Omni processing area
TRADESKILLS
- Shipmodding (for real!)
- Modding in general to be revamped into a fun/useable system
- Storefront improvements
- Extra tradeskills based on what a lot of you have requested
CUSTOMIZATIONS
- Ship customizations – really put your personal touch on how your ship looks and show it off to others
- Weapon/Armor customizations
SHIPS
- Space grouping and fleet systems for players
- Extra ship modding and variety
- More flexible PK rules
- Economy-based NPC ships and police forces
- Possible social elements for ship usage
HACKING
- Level uncapping
- More challenging hacking games – extra encounters, multi word passwords
- Hacking being involved in factional conflict (see OnDemand PvP)
- Hacking being involved in discovering the world’s lore and obtaining information
- Hacker vs hacker PvP
COLONIZATION
- Colonization of asteroids/planets for player worldbuilding
- Bonuses offered to holding certain aspects of economical life on said colonies/establishments
- Involved activities for colony expansion/maintenance
- Conflict options for colonized space (takeovers, raids, hacks)
Starmourn will never stop evolving. We are aware some of the systems and improvements we are planning may turn out to look very different from what we originally envisioned based on your feedback as we develop them. However, it is important to us that you know we have goals we wish to achieve and a solid roadmap towards the future of the game. Ultimately, Starmourn is the player’s game. We want it to take the shap6e which the majority of you will enjoy. We know it would be nothing without you contributing to making Starmourn a unique experience!
We’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback on everything we just
Thanks for reading, Starmourners. We’ll see you all in space!
Forums Link:
https://forums.starmourn.com/discussion/907/starmourn-roadmap
Starmourn has officially hired our new producer, Ioan Sima!
Ioan has been an avid player of IRE games for 11 years. He has enthusiastically played Starmourn since release, and even helped build some of the game before it launched. He boasts a high level of familiarity with both the world and the game systems in Starmourn, which made him a standout candidate, and one which all of us have been happy to welcome as the new lead producer. He will work alongside Eukelade, Garryn, and our team of Storytellers to guide the direction of the game. In fact, in our discussions with him it became very apparent how intimate he was with existing systems and how much his ideas of improvement aligned with our own.
Ioan has worked professionally as a Unity3D game programmer. His engineering background helped to make him the perfect man to jump into the Starmourn code and come in guns blazing. Ioan lives in Romania.
We will be posting more news later this week, detailing the development roadmap, what you can expect in each of those updates, and a basic timeline leading the game out of beta.
If you have any questions you can email Ioan at ioan@starmourn.com or message Ilyos in the game.
Development on Starmourn continues at a furious pace, as the team works to refine, improve, and add to the game on a daily basis! Haven’t been watching the news? Here’s a quick rundown on just a small fraction of the changes that have come out recently:
Ships and the Captaincy skill have all had massive updates:
- Ship classes are now more distinct, each with their own features and drawbacks.
- Building ships in the Shipforge is now a lot more user-friendly.
- Ship weapons and ammo effects have been updated to provide a new level of depth to space combat!
- Space incursions all got tweaked to take advantage of the new changes.
- Captaincy received a bunch of improvements yesterday, making your piloting maneuvers more powerful and useful.
The Player-driven economy continues to be a major development priority, with many improvements
- Vast improvements to the availability of gas clouds and asteroids, and updates to make it easier to find them (especially for our screen reader users) and refine.
- Refinery and Autofactory updates to make them more profitable for our entrepreneurs of industry.
- Cargo market orders are now generally more varied and profitable.
New content has been added throughout the game!
- Explore new areas like Tranquility Deepness, and Windishu Biotech Facilities.
- A series of 21 new dynamic content areas tied into our Hacking system have been added.
- Many areas of the game continue to get improvements to their denizens, quests, and rewards!
PVP and Cosmpiercers continue to be refined and improved!
- All classes have received passes from the dev team, improving balance and adding quality-of-life improvements
- We’ve just closed our first classlead season (where you, the player, can submit ideas and changes for improvements to your class), and coding will get underway shortly to get those into the game!
- Cosmpiercers received big updates, allowing more fluid and fun faction vs. faction conflict.
Bounty Hunters have been added to the game! These mercs for hire thrive on combat, and carry out the dirty work for other players. Bounty hunters gain access to some very powerful tools to help them carry out these jobs with lethal efficiency.
Retirement is open! Up until April 15th, you can transfer retirement credits to existing characters! After that date, you will only be able to transfer them onto new characters (under 30 days old).
Log in every day in March to help assist Crazy Jerry, CEO of the Darkstar Parcel Delivery service, recover some lost mail, for a free prize!
Tecton just posted up a preview of the upcoming updates to ship weapons, shields, and other space combat-related changes. Head over to the Starmourn forums to check them out.
We’ve just unveiled a massive batch of ship changes, giving space ships a whole bunch of additional fit-out customisation, as well as paving the way for a bunch of upcoming ship changes! Check out the Updates post #133 for all of the information!
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