[SC] How Dark Orbit has changed for the worse for me [My own perspective]

Before I start this discussion based on my butthurt feelings of the game. May I just state that this is purely my own opinion and I would like everyone who reads to respect my opinion, and vice versa I shall respect yours.

Here is my honest review of Dark Orbit from my perspective. This game was launched in late 2008 and to my knowledge, it became vastly popular between the years 2009-2010 (when the game reached its pinnacle) as this was when I started playing. I actually first discovered this game in early 2010 through a cheap advert on a website and decided to see it through, to what actually amazed me when I first experienced the gameplay. The game at the time was very simple yet very fun; its a spaceship sci-fi experience – you have to use a ship, equip it with weapons and equipment, upgrade your ship to bigger ones, destroy aliens and other players from other companies and farm alien experience and in-game currency. You can hunt other company players as a group (I still remember the mass raiding parties when a congregation of players would stick together and all move to the battle maps 4-x and there would just be a massive company war). You can work together to take down bosses and powerful aliens. You can create/join clans, form alliances in this real-time strategy browser game. However my time on Dark Orbit was not very active back in those days, and only logged on mostly on weekends, very rarely it would have been any other day of the week, which you could say, hindered my overall progress.

Now, you may be asking at this point, where is the change that has affected me so badly? Well, the answer is simply that, the game back then was not so much a P2W system (Pay to win). Free players in a free browser game could actually become FE (Full elite) without having to spend excessive amounts of cash. Using your own money would just speed up the process, but there was nothing over-powered that would give you such a poor disadvantage. Given by this information, you now know I am a butthurt player who is unwilling to spend money. But hear me out.. In 2016, the graphics have changed for the better, that makes this space adventure more realistic and more enjoyable to play as well as all these new added items. Of course, many other players and I miss the nostalgic memories of the once great 'Old D.O. days' and to be fair, those days were much better. But, the detail of the space maps now are brilliant and so are the animations. But prior to updates post 2012; the game has now turned into a massive P2W game. If you want to get anywhere, you are going to need to spend excessive amounts of cash to be in a ‘decent’ position. I’m not saying you don’t have to spend anything – but it will not be fun in the slightest and anyone who is just a causal player such as myself, will soon come to realise that all the new added weapons, ships and level upgrades and new toys in the game requires a lot of cash to be spent. Keep in mind, that I have surpassed FE, but not progressed enough to be regarded as semi-UFE. Personally, now I think Bigpoint gives little interest for the free players whom play solely for leisure and such as a fun game, the way it is meant to be. Don't get me wrong, business is business and the game needs to expand and bring in profits. The game needs to update to bring in new features and items for the other players. I can understand that. But, Bigpoint has now turned to the ‘wallet warriors’ interests and in their favour, keep them occupied with new toys, which means that the free players like myself, are left behind. For all those in a better position in the game: well of course it is still fun for you! You would be considered ‘decent’ or even ‘respectable' in your global chats, notoriously known for the guy with the big guns. But I ask, what fun do we, as free players, have in this post-2016 game? When others and I are constantly getting destroyed by the UFE (Uber-Full Elite) players and we don’t stand a chance to defend ourselves. It simply takes the fun out of it. Now, before you jump out your chair and say, "Oh, but we also pop in the same way in seconds as well, it doesn't matter whether you are UFE or not". That is not the point. My point is, you can probably still have fun with big guns and pop other players whom are semi or full UFE. I play in the server GB1, since 2012, the total population of players has reduced dramatically. What is left now? 90% of all the big guns in the server. I'm sure as hell not going to be popping anyone soon, so whats the point in PvP for me? Losing every fight. Can't even get away from players nowadays, ships faster than me, dealing 150k damage in one second. I personally don't want to play this game to just farm aliens. I want in on the action as well! But that's not happening anytime soon.. I just feel like the developers have not fixed the game in terms of the functions for all types of players, the disproportionate cost of some items and the massive imbalance of free players to wallet warrior players. In all honesty, I believe these reasons are the main causes for the exacerbation of decline in the total player-base. Its completely fine to call out another reason or if you think my reason is stupid. But, everyone else who is semi-UFE or higher can find fun out of playing this game. I don't expect to find myself at the top of the leader boards, and i certainly don't regard myself as a pro-player committing these notorious acts. I just have no enjoyment playing the game for what it used to be. It cannot be regarded as ‘fun’ unless you are willing to constantly pull out your wallet to make that happen. Also, before the scummy players who who will just comment "quit then" "don't play if you don't like it", I'd like to point out those players with that mindset as ignorant, are completely missing the point of what I'm trying to convey. I would happily return to the game should they fix the severe gap between us free players and the wallet warrior players. An example of this is the system of extracting ways of earning the LF-4 laser cannon, and the upgrade system which requires so much uridium to upgrade to level 16 for every main piece of equipment that is deemed necessarily which is everything.. Trust me, I have seen the difference one set of level 16 equipment has to my set of level 6 equipment. It is honestly so expensive to keep up with. Furthermore, I would see to it if Bigpoint could either merge close servers as an idea ( Take the UK as an example, GB1 and GB2), as one or simply be able to transfer accounts over to a different server (with a hefty cost of uridium or actual money no doubt, obviously). Because, I like this game, despite what you have witnessed me rant on about, I do like it. It is fun, but it can be improved for some of our experiences. I'm also aware that my server which is particularly, not extremely active, does not speak for all servers. We basically have a civil war in my server due to an All-Company clan that has gone to war to every known clan. So on top of dealing with enemy company players, we have to deal with our own company shooting us. There is no justice in the world.. I'm sure i'm not the only one that feels this way about this topic. So please, its a general discussion, please feel free to comment and make conversation, politely, and not in some ill-mannered way.

Do you think something could be implemented to help improve the experience for players like me?

 

Hard to be free user in this game

 

This game was never a get strong over night type of game. It has always taken time to build your ship and your skills. And now players that came along 6 or 7 yrs into the game want to be just as strong as the players that have put in many hours over the past 6+yrs without having to take the time that we took 6 yrs ago. Just like everything else in life you get back, what you put in. If you dont want to take the time money can help somewhat, but you still have to put in time playing the game to build your ship.

IMO there are a lot of whiners that want to be full UFE in a month or less, whereas it took longer than that for most of us to get to FE and years to get to UFE.

 

The biggest issue is we used to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel and be able to have a defend-able (FE) ship in 2-3 months and now as a FE Ship we are fodder again. There is no balance to how long or how many gates or booty keys you will use to be able to get close to UFE. Even those who are making Galaxy Gates for UFE Equipment are not being awarded them unless they are BUYING them.

 

as you said yourself, this game is 10 years old this year. and believe it or not, there is a alot of things improved in the game now, to back then, that we didnt have as a beginner. fair enough, our goal then wasnt to be UFE, but to be just a basic FE with only promerium as the best on offer for our lasers, however, back then, servers were way more populated, leading to continual raids, making it near on impossible to kill 1 large npc before you was killed and even a bigger struggle, at best, to maybe make 5-10k uri a day, and by that i mean at least 6-8 hrs game time, auction was excessively high, and if you lost a bid, all your credits were gone and you had to grind again to try another bid, and believe me, that sucked. there were no pilot bios that gave you extra strength, and also, everytime you died , you had to make sure you always had at least 500 uri in the bank if you wasnt premium, to repair your ship or else lose that ship and end up back in a phoenix . we didnt have the new beginner quests explaining everything, and giving you some decent equipment back then either. as COWBOY-FROM-HELL mentioned already, this game is meant to be kept consistently alive. it isnt like a typical console game where it can be completed in just a few hours or maybe days, its engineered to keep going for years. while your spending all this time working to be strong, and dying alot, and coming back to grind, die and again repeat the cycle, you are also gaining ingame experience, new tactics, and everyday you get that little bit stronger, that little bit more experienced. heck, ive been playing since mid 2009, and im still learning new ways to kill or evade . sometimes i win, but sometimes a die to. its all part and parcel of the whole experience. so instead of looking at the negative, hard as it maybe, try and look at how much better you get each day, or every other day, seeing as you said your time is limited. you do not need to be a big spender, or even spend on this game to get ahead. i dont palli, i spent a little till i got a bit bigger, but now im where i want to be, i can farm enough, solo or with my clan, just on bks and bbks in x7. i dont even cube. yet i still manage to make enough uri to save for spamming out gates during the new double GG event. just change your mindset, and have fun . good luck.

 

Back in the day the difference between free and premium players was the CD of rockets and they didnt do much. Now premium players also have 3 quick slot bars (compared to 1 for free players). This is 2nd disadvantage after the rocket DPS dmg. The 3rd advantage is the free pet repairs. Sorry, but a free player has much lower DPS to kill aliens and advance compared just to a premium player. As a premium player your rocket DPS is doubled + 75k dmg to everything around you every 30 seconds. This is the grindning I am looking at when I compare those 2 things alone. The effort of a free player is much more bigger than that on a paying/premium players. PVP battles are also much harder. So yes, I believe what you call moaning from the free players is well deserved.

There are a few people that are doing dark orbit projects starting with new accounts and playing for free player to UFE. However every single one of them is lieing on his intentions - they say they are not buying uridium, but only prem and rebate. Those 2 are huge advantages! I challenge those that speak of us, free players, as the moaning type of people - start a new account and play in completely for free - no premium, no rebate. When you get to ufe in 3-4 years time, than we can talk again! If you are still here.

 

maybe free players could say why they choose to be free players .. why they decide they do not want to invest in even the smallest amount of money for the month premium ? btw, im not wishing to gain indepth personal reasons, but just wondered , eg: country wont allow it , or just dont want to or to young etc. im just curious. most i spend is weekly rebate and month prem. i dont like using my bank card online , so usually buy with cell phone credit . small amount for fun in my spare time. what i lose out on ? ditched every weekend out drinking. saved me quite a lot of cash over the yrs. everyone , other than countries banned from payments, has a choice to spend or not to spend. why should those who invest always be critisised for spending to get the max fun out of what bigpoint have implemented into their game and have an upper advantage over those who dont spend with what they have to play with as a free player? premium buys the few extras it has left to offer .. after all , its not like non premium now have to pay for ship repairs like they once had to do. that in itself is 1 thing BP improved and gave free players. for the majority, spend or not to spend. its all a matter of choice.

 

I quit spending when I was no longer able to play more than 30 minutes before the game lagged to a point where I could be killed by a Lordakia. I used to buy ANNUAL Premium and the occasional Rebate if I was going to do Upgrade Bonus Hour but now I don't do any of that.

 

Premium is what $2.49/ month? I guess some people would rather whine about how rough they got it, than spend $2.49 to get all the benefits the paying player has.

 

Get prem and....then when rebate stuff is viable $$$ DO

 

That was the weekly rate. It is currently $1.99 weekly, $5.99 monthly, $29.99 semi annually, or $49.99 annually and it is all a waste if you can not enjoy playing the game because of LAG or chat going down.

 

I am living in the poorest country in the EU. The salary that they pay in any town rather than the capital is the minimal one, which is 215 Euro per month. In some regions it goes even below that minimum - I know a place where you just can't find a job that will give u more than 160 euro per month.

Also Euro is not the official currency of my country. Yet the prices in euro are the same for all countries so I am have to face the prices they pay in Germany, but the money they get are much more.

1m uri on mhh is 100 Euro. Some people buy more uri on mhh than a month salary in my country. And because the difference is that big for me and any1 playing from my country for 10 years that DO will celebrate in just a few weeks they NEVER have opened a server particularly for my country and probably they never will.

 

free play is done, just click on the bulls eyes in the shop and almost all of them are payment, and mot are cosmetics. I used to be able to balance time with a bit of money, now I hardly log in to the game at all

 

Because it just isn't worth spending money on this game when the climb to survivability is STEEP. Why would you haul out your wallet for dead maps and OP bullies and endless boxing? No .... thank.... you. If I was starting new, I wouldn't waste a dime either.

I've gotten by with premium and an occasional box doubler and rebate. Spent less than $100 most years but I would love to have that back. Game is not much fun but the more frequent events helps a bit.

 

you DO realize that all the current "peasant scraps" systems we have today were slowly tweaked without the need of massive p2w right? devs often listened to the playerbase but also kept a small decency on their work, hard times we had, but they slowly progressed to even things for everyone, must i remind you that Outfit (party) system was applied on the old client? SLO4 CPU as well, i still remember the CPU-spinning gif they added when it launched... many many things that today help newbies (and some plebs) were brought from old client, better yet, ancient client (before any two-bit player starts thinking i am talking about the pilot bio client), they changed repair behaviour because people were turning into the cancerous MCC, and newbies didn't had a chance to farm repair credits, they even added to daily login mind you...

also back in the days, the farm was hell but it was bearable, bigpoint tired to update it for FE players but ended bothering even wallet warriors for once! (rarely a p2w game do that!!) instead of months, to become "godlike" you need waste years, even the super-crowded GA1-2 didn't need much time for you to gather decent equips, specially late in 2010.

many many many players see the negative bits of the game and point it out, the problem is there is folks saying that is the best part of the game. surely it's a opinion, but then you would not ask for the opinion of a racist elder on national TV would you? things change, darkorbit did, but the change can be bad or good, and darkorbit only kept making bad changes lately, and to folks that theorize that bp is dying or some other thing, keep in mind that bp is looking foward into alienating some players and that is enough, 100 people buying the mobile uridium pack pack every week is better than a guy wasting 1000$ on a year, it's a damn easy logic that a monkey can do it.


truth is that DO was a great game and the new darkorbit is not what it used to be, at least its not charging uridium from us every portal jump (example of a game i played), well, not yet... i also remind you folks that bp removed the "online now: X" counter from the main webpage AND server page, must be because the 50.000.000 registered players they were bragging about have only 15% online and ingame....

they also forget to metion what programs they use.... if you know what i mean.

still, the full free challenge i can tell ya it's more than 3-4 years, to become ufe on a crowded server (if we can still use the crowded word for a server that has about 2 players on portal and 10 afk (*looks at ga3*)) it's hard and takes alot of time, usually folks quit when they get bigboy or piranha, because they already wasted too much time farming alot and the clan help is not enough, 1T cred for a low level player? gotta be his alt, members getting near 500M creds is too much already.

 

There have been many good points made so far, a good thread.

Making progress has been made MUCH easier since 2009-2010 when I started, maybe 2-3 times faster progress, and initial benefits to newbs with the first quests.... HOWEVER...

The Bar has been raised from FE to UFE... and then to UFE with many ships / hangars etc... I'd say by a factor of 10 (or more).

SO YES you progress 2X faster, but the road has been made 10X longer.....it is frustrating. (especially to me since I reached full bio FE JUST as Lf-4, pet, and upgrades came out -_- ).

The game IS different now, mainly due to the lack of players.

What people are seeing now is a game stripped of the fun (interaction with many other people), and are left thinking "What am I really paying for?" ......Good question.

Progressing in an almost empty universe is kinda lonely, and not much fun.

PS ....The road to UFE should be long, its part of the fun. I do think Ammo and other consumables should be made cheaper. ONCE you get to UFE, you have the privilege of constant boxing for GG to spam gates for X4, buy URI for RSB and Hell storms and EMP's and all the rest....Full on battles are VERY expensive now.

 

Well, if they dont wanna put aliens that give more uri to the players and keep the prices of the uri items than I have to say 1 thing:

x2 ammo for credits!!!

 

No it isn't if you play it smart and efficiently trust me

 

If you are spending your uri on gates like you should be you will have millions of x2. It is worth buying rebate when gg spins are on sale. Just do zetas until you are below about 80k uri and do alpha beta game repeatedly. Always gate on double rewards and cheap spins these days while building your account and you're good to go. 11m x2 never bought uri and almost ufe (if I bought upgrades instead of rsb I could be)

 

If you are playing in a good social clan on a friendly server, and know how to build your account, or maintain it when you do finally get ufe, it is a fun and cheap game to play.