To What Extent Has DarkOrbit Changed?

Well we have all seen the updates between August and March, which were a nice turn for the better and they did improve the game.

But can a leopard change its spots?

I am not complaining about the updates until March. I much enjoyed the new DarkOrbit Reloaded (even if the reloaded bit was a bit on the small side), it was a good improvement in terms of new quests, more to do and less cheats. I put many praises in other threads about the improvements bigpoint have made to the game.

However, I am complaining about what has happened since. ESPECIALLY with what we have seen this Easter with the Spring Event and the LoW Gate.

In case you don't know, the Spring Event (if you can call it that) has been a major disappointment this year and it has been one of the most dull, boring and useless events in the history of the game, if not the most. I would complain about the useless rockets and credits in the event bonus boxes, but this time the boxes don't even exist!

Secondly, the group gate - it was updated a few days ago and feedback for the update was good and many people started doing it again. It was a good way to make Uridium. What's more, a mod confirmed that the update was on purpose. They then found out about people farming the new group gate with kami and they removed the update, but NOT ONLY was the update removed, but it was also made so that the falcon chases you forever. Just like the Kami Cooldown and the Bray, they have ruined this for us players.

I am not trying to flame here. I have clearly given two sides to the argument as I believe bigpoint made a big step forward up until March. I was playing the game again, and enjoying it. Then it was ruined, once again. And I can only hope they won't continue to ruin it, once again. Especially with the fact that these disappointments arrived within the same week of each other.

So, speak your thoughts.

Have BigPoint changed?

Has DarkOrbit changed?

By how much?

Will we see a rise in player numbers and general fun, or a decline?

Do you think the updates will continue as they were until March, or will there be a point where the game goes backwards again?

Mods if someone flames etc. please delete their post instead of closing the thread it is not how this thread was intended.

 

No matter what bigpoint does to try and improve this game it is never going to grow as long as there is a certain group of moaning and constantly complaining certain bunch of individuals on this forum .
The people from the old client who keep coming on this forum and whining all the time that the game is not what it used to be like are the people who are preventing this game from progressing , people like pacman who do nothing but continuously compare it to the old DO are simply contributing to the downfall of this game .
New players who come on the forum out of curiosity are simply seeing loads of trashy threads going on about how this game is dieing !!
If people like pacman for example simply stopped posting all the completely useless crap that they post (that never leads to any conclusion at all ) and instead went off and found a new game to play then the forum would be a better place and if the forum has less negativity then the game itself will have less negativity !
If you dont like the new dark orbit then simply go away and find a new game instead of wasting your life away moaning about it .

Every single new player that registers has no idea about the old client or what this game used to be like !! they simply play it because they enjoy it .
The only people moaning about it are the old players who dont like change , this game to new registers is probably really good but when they come on forum and read a load of crap that people like pacman have posted well i would imagine they give up as they are lead to believe the game is dieing !!

I have a feeling that pacman has wasted so many years of his life playing this game that he would rather see it come to an end then it progress and other people come to enjoy it .

 

I agree with you pretty much all across the board on this Roadrunner, good updates in general until the last few weeks in which some odd decisions seem to have been made.

On a whole I think DO is changing their mindset more than anything. Maybe it's just me but I feel like the developers do listen to the community and interact more, sure they might not come into players threads but the whole dev blog and the roadmaps is a really big change in mindset.
As much as a nice guy Sephiroth was we never saw that level of interaction and actually telling us what their plans are for future updates, maybe that was down to the structure of the team rather than the community manager since he did seem to be genuinely want to be involved with the community.
On that note, I think a new road map is needed. We have been given hints of things such as 3D mode and big community competitions but there is also a large amount of players who want update on past things said, such as the ammo limit being removed.

As for active players, I don't think we will see any big changed until huge updates are released. The impact the 3D mode will have on the game could be that update DO need.

 

I agree with everything above. I feel that by making the developers "part of the game" in a sense, it would make people want to spend money, because it would make people realize that this person really wants to try and make a good game, and I want to enjoy that game. Rick said a couple of months ago that all these new changes were coming. However, not all of the changes have gone into effect, even the ones that he said would take a month or two to take effect (ammo capacity limit).

I understand that people have different opinions, and that possibly a majority of the developers said "Hey, ammo capacity is an important part of the game to balance things out", but if someone in a high position says something, we expect him to either follow through, or make a simple post in the forums saying, "Sorry about the delay for this update, we have done research and found it won't work out very well. Sorry." Even though it isn't great news for the players, it gives us a chance to see that the developers are thinking about our wants and actually took the time to discuss them.

 

The more things change, the more they really stay the same.Yes there have
been good updates, yes they maybe working on getting rid of the cheaters
but the fact remains that a lot of old timers have seen the depths at which
DO/BP can reach. So it's gonna take more than a few updates or Reloaded
stamp across the face to turn this game around. I few fundamental changes
in the way they view this game and it's community would get things moving in
the right direction.


Has DO changed? On the surface somewhat. Genuine change, No I don't think
so. They are still motivated by greed. Just look at the subtle updates that no
one really talks about. To me it says everything. It says hey Look we did this.
Hey we just did that, instead of addressing the real issue in the game. I hope
the numbers will get better but I guess I'm still having trust issues.


Funny thing, With everything happing You can still have fun, just not to lengths
you once could. I do think the 3D update will be a turning point for everyone. It
could be the update that kills off most people left from old client.So SpudnicK you
may actually get what your calling for.

 

In the interest of disclosure I'm doing this just to annoy Spudnick

Cosmetic changes

few new Quests here and there

Free repairs

Ships in trade

(did i forget something,feel free to add)

all of the above still doesn't address what ails this game


What exactly has been underlying reason that game went from being hugely enjoyable experience to quite boring chore ....

Chance/half arsed attempts to punish cheaters/boters/multitude of gates that you had to do over and over with no reward

They still haven't addressed that so no amount of cosmetic changes or changes that should have been done long time ago are going to repopulate servers

Were bots bad ?

Not as much as bug abusers /script users and so on

Bots (bless their little cheating hearts) were in majority players that were once honest players (old school FE's) that were overnight left behind with ill thought update after update after update.and lets face it ...majority of boters with all their ill gotten uri and ammo were just as easy to kill as if they fired X1 at you ,bot doesn't make player more skilled ...just sad excuse of a player

When they released bio they allowed players to cheat even though they had scripts in place to detect them ,players who destroyed their own ships 100's of times to get seprom to upgrade bio ....

What did drive players away ...hmm lets see

Once upon a time player like myself and countless others (in their thousands) could sink 35 quid on MHH and sort himself up with RSB/EMP/Boosters/Designs when they came out,drones and so on and then go out and use Bonus Box Doubler and box to build gates ..

To be effective at boxing you had to go to B maps where you would use all that rsb you bought for cash to defend yourself ...you all remember those days ...golden days of dark Orbit...when with money + lots of hard work you could actually compete with those that didn't have lots of time but poured money with buckets into BP's coffers...even 100% free player could hold his own with lots of time put in game..

Then came pet and we all thought "Hmmm great ..BP are thinking of us " so many of us went out and sunk 300-400 pounds into pet just for it to be butchered by BP ,reasons they gave were laughable as we all remember

Then one night there was brainstorming session at BP HQ and they though of ways to make lorry loads of cash ...somebody had bright idea about LF 4...formations...drone covers and 3000 new gates ...bosses said "yay ..great here is 300 euros raise"

If just one person who was in that meeting stood up and said ....hmmm why don't we forget LF 4 and instead give players option to upgrade LF 3 ,why instead of new gates we make gamma and delta cost more but give out better rewards .....

There is no point now giving players designs in trade as long as LF 4 ruls the roost and is rarer than honest politician,no point trying to make game fair when boters kept everything....no point trying to fix game when 90 % of team that is "fixing it" are same ones that broke it in first place ..

If Big Point would like to know how to fix their game they should visit Eve Online forums to see what real Producers dialog looks like...

Using a hammer to fix what you broke with hammer ...that will work in month of sundays.

 

For me some things have changed for the better, getting rid of bots I had hoped would be a turning point for this game and to a certain extent it was. Autolock is back however and as always at the detriment of fair gameplay. New ships on trade ok update afaic as its given me a target to work towards.

However there is still a huge disparity between new players and UFE players with little chance of new players ever getting the kit required to really compete at the top level without spending huge amounts of cash.

A lot of new players that have joined my clan over the last 18 months have got to around level 12 or level 16 then realised the game demands huge amounts of cash if you really want to progress as a player. Then they quit never to return.

The new quests have not done anything to allow newer players to compete or levelled the playing field in any shape or form, indeed they are the opposite as they give so little uri in rewards the majority of the quests are nothing more than time or money sinks and the only reward being EP. The old quests although not giving huge amounts of uri certainly gave a lot more uri than the current line up. People will only grind away with quests/NPC if the rewards are worthwhile with the time/effort/ammo/money invested to complete them.

As for the 3D aspect of DO that may or may not be in the pipeline I would suggest BP ensure their graphics engine scales really well for people with low end systems or they will most definitely alienate players that do not have the hardware to run the game. DO used to be a game that all ages could play for free and have some fun, the updates over the last few years has simply increased the graphics engine load (and player costs) considerably causing a lot of players much frustration with low frame rates and lagg making the game unplayable for the majority of younger audiences that have borrowed their parents laptop to play.

Even now the graphics load increases over time until the flash player ram takes over 500mb or 700mb or so with a huge performance hit that makes the game unplayable for a lot of people. This is also the same for me to some extent even with a 4ghz quad cpu, 24GB ram and a mid to high end graphics card with 4GB or Vram.

Right now I have sacked premium as a waste of money and just spend the odd bit on ammo for a bit of a blast now an again and instead of paying uri to build gates I just collect palladium as I refuse to spend £15 or so to build a kappa for a 'chance' of an upgrade item.

 

I will go back and read the other post above, but for now I will give my 2 pence worth:-

I would say the Drivers have not changed, just the ability to get a wolf looking like a sheep for some, is getting better.

I might pop back and list all the changes that were purely wolfs in sheep clothing.

The lack of Easter eggs just reflect that DO only cares about a handful of UWW.

I guess because The Dev team are little better than puppets and the string pullers only want short term gain, being too short sighted to see the bigger picture.

Big up to the few that spend enough Uber cash to keep the strings being pulled, to stroke your pitiful egos.

I was trying to find a post that I made in the old forum back in 2011 called " how do has changed" but I came across this which will do:-

11.06.2011

In this thread

PS
I've just found my post "How DO has changed" from 2011.
For anyone that was not lucky enough to experience DO at its best, where skill, effort and honest tactics ruled, >here< it is.

 

My god you go on about the old client a lot your like a broken record !! Soon as i see a post with orange writing i know straight away without needing to read it that its going to be a moaning post by pacman that includes a million references to the old client and the only purpose of the post is to try and bring more people round to your way of thinking .
For someone who is so fed up with everything you spend a heck of a lot of your life monitoring this game , you even said you monitor something like 55 servers i mean come on don't you think you have some kind of mental disorder to be doing something like that on a game you clearly do not even enjoy ?
You are obviously not happy with anything about this game so why don't you simply find a new game to play ? That way you wont need to spend you life monitoring the active players across 55 servers and making those strange charts that to this day have never actually come to any other conclusion that we could not find out for ourselves by simply flying around the maps !!

You know that if you tell someone enough times that white is black they will eventually start to believe you .Do you realise you have been moaning for like the last 5 years ? what a waste of a life !!

I dare you to say something positive using words such as 'nice' , 'exciting' , 'fun' , 'enjoyable' but without referring to the old client .

Or better still i dare you to tell a joke just to give us some indication that you do actually have a personality of some kind that does not revolve around constant moaning .

I await you 5 million word essay where you highlight every single sentence of my post and make a 5 paragraph response to each one , or maybe you will try and play it cool and make out you wont rise to the challenge by just completely ignoring this post lol .

 

I am the only person who is allowed to moan on this forum the rest are all just faking their moans to get attention and more post counts .

 

Of all the thread that you could have chosen to comment on the fact that I compare the game before BIO , to the sad excuse of a space war game it is today.( just to note. I rarely even mention or talk bout the old client, as the client change was not significant in relation to what killed the game. So you can't even get that bit right.)

I post what I post because that is my opinion, I do not try or wish others to change their opinion because of what I write.

Just to remind you the title of this thread is :-

To What Extent Has DarkOrbit Changed?

I spend very little time monitoring the game and hardly ever play it these days.

To be precise there are 58 servers that we have access to and I collect data from them all 2 or 3 times per year.
A few server I collect data more than that and GB1 normally once a week.

When the game was at its best;
I like many spent thousands of hour on the game.

I even held onto 1st alien rank for well over a year for all but a few week of that time until 3 bots took the top 3 spots back in 2010 ( back then DO actual banned botters and removed them from the rank listings even if it took 6 months for them to be removed.)

I have moved on;
I only log onto my account to send sep ( I have over 25mil sep atm) get the daily bonus and do the odd gates eventually.

As I have said above I do not wish to change anyone's opinion.

I just post my opinion.
( You have a choice to read it or not read it. After all there are not many that post in Orange text, so it is not difficult to notice it is me.)

However as you say it is so ("You know that if you tell someone enough times that white is black they will eventually start to believe you") and you have been following my forum activities for the last 5 years ( noting that I have only been posting negative feedback for the last 3-4 years and have been posting in the forum for 6 years) I guess you must agree with everything I say.

Ok Just for you:-
Once a week a couple of my friends and I have a sort of come dine with me night. We all at time create fantastic restaurant quality food, but on rare occasions some of the food is just nice.

When I look out of my front windows, or stand in my front garden, I always appreciate the amazing panoramic views across the bay. Even more when a few time a year with a clear nights sky and full moon, the moons rays shine across the sea. So just for you I will say that is enjoyable, but in reality that is an understatement.

As far as exciting goes, where do I start;
Water skiing in the bay, scuba diving in the bay ( both of which I do on summer holidays abroad.) Snow skiing in a few countries in Europe, I even did paragliding while on one skiing holiday,

but I would say the more exciting things were like, doing my first enduro race having only drive the trials bike for half an hour beforehand, going 0-90mph in a 100cc go-kart that I had just bought racing and overtaking the guy who sold it to me in his new £3k go-Kart,
but I guess the more exhilarating was probable sky diving.

So as you can see I far from waste my life, however being all but an insomniac, I still have plenty of time to pop in here to offer a view from a player that was lucky enough to have found DO before it was destroyed.

I have a great joke;
DO these days...

Just encase that was too dry for you and you did not get it.
Once upon a time there was a great game called DarkOrbit ... The End.

I have an old joke, but its not as funny these days ( or maybe it is, as at least DO did something right, even if it was for the wrong reasons);

How many UFE ships does it take to pop a streuner ... Don't know cas an enemy peanut is sitting next to them at port.

There once was a chap called SpudnicK

who wanted to here a good joke,

He thought he'd be clever,

Have a go at whoever,

and stupidly picked the wrong block.

Sorry it wasn't a 5 million word essay.

For anyone that has ready this far;
pretend you haven't read any of the above^.

 

Hi my old game name is cyberspace from nue clan on gb1 server iv been away now for over 4years but do log on now and again to chat on darkorbit ,,so you all want to know how darkorbit as changed over the years ,,this video is taken from battle maps when darkorbit started was great fun the best days ,,heres the video link leave comments hope you enjoy it

 

Although that can be true when people go overboard with moaning, it is important to get your thoughts across so that the game can improve. If only bigpoint took more of our advice (including pacman's) since 2011, we wouldn't have had threads like this in the first place. Just look at the video above and you will see what I mean. I play the game now because of the people I met back then. Bigpoint make it difficult to do so but I try to play when I can/want to.

The d.o back then was my favourite game of all time, and there is no problem in remembering it since it was obviously run well back then, then some changes happened and it went downhill.

Also would like to add this thread as I said at the top was not intended for flaming and that includes throwing out random insults at other forum contributors. We all have an opinion.

I agree there has been more communication from higher up, I would say it still needs some improvement, primarily with this speaker's corner being the place where most people like to vent their ideas and opinions, it would be nice to see the *occasional* reply from someone like Rick who could shed a little light on our discussions. The reason why I say this is because a different game I play ^^ is like this and it is often very nice to see the devs openly replying to the players on a regular basis. There were even 3 devs in chat at the same time the other day on that game which is impressive. I know darkorbit is nowhere near as big but something smaller along these lines would help.

Trust issues are one of their biggest setbacks at the moment because of what the game was like before last August. And you are right, they are only small changes and I can only hope they continue to change things for the better, unlike EVERY single update this month.

3D will be interesting update and it will decide the fate of the game. Bigpoint have been quite desperate to revive d.o as they left it to rot for so long, so something so drastic could be exactly what we need, or yes it could be the nail in the coffin.

Well that just shows how long they left this for, which is the whole reason the game is in this mess. If they fixed the problems back then or just stopped updating it we would have been much better off. Some changes are good, the majority (including every major update since 2011 - major being LF4 drone designs etc. etc.) were for short-term gain and now they are seeing the consequences.

I just find it annoying that we sit there warning them for 3-4 years and they only decide to do something now when we are all on the verge of quitting.

 

I guess it is difficult for player that started playing DO after it started going down hill, to understand;

how much fun we had back then,

how many friends we met from playing DO, when ( for the majority ) it truly was a community of like minded players,

How 1v1s, small group battles and mass wars took skill and tactics to do well in and we had the time to enjoy them. ( I guess an UFE ship can, at some level still experiences this, but the vast majority can not in any stretch of the imagination.)

The Video so clearly show the volume of players that were on at the same time back then. It was exciting to be involved in those mass battle;

back then the vast majority of player would abide by even the unwritten rules and work together most of the time for the benefit of their company.

I would also say back then GB1 had some of the best skilled / tactical players. Even the feed back from the early mod v player event suggested that.

I almost want to post a mass battle today as a comparison, but it difficult to find more that a handful of players fighting against each other.

 

Now that shows 86,000,000 million registered users on a server or spredout 50+ servers.

 

No harm in trying.

If a time was set for something like that and if I was available (not got loads of time) I would definitely come it would be great.

We tend to get a fair amount of people together on GB1 for flybys so who's to say we couldn't do it for something intended to have fun.

 

The trouble is these days;
you would not know which side you was on because of all the clan wars and the lack of respect, so you would be more like to be popped by an opportunist from warring clans, than the other company you was having a battle with.

A flyby anyone can join in and most will make it to the end without being popped. A mass battle these days most would be a 1 or 2 shot pop.

It is a nice thought though, more out of nostalgia than reality.

 

Old client game was the best even thou the graphics were a bit rubbish.

Back then you could have a lot of great fights etc and chat was even better you could have some good clean banter and fun.

These days game has just been filled with egos,bullies with bought/botted accounts etc and just look at chat cant even have a decent banter now.

The disrespect from players is upsetting and shameful and not many follow the unwritten rules these days which is sad.

Today players struggle to get help from others cause now its a look out for number one.

All games have to progress but tbh this game hasn't the graphics might look nicer but that's it and BP hasnt addressed the most important issues and don't think they ever will.

BP can do so many things with this game if they choose to but instead they choose a quick buck as they say.

CONS:
Game got loads of cheats/bought accounts etc.
Game gone way expensive for normal players cause you don't get money worth with uri.
Same boring maps/npcs.
Chance factor is really bad.
Players attitudes are something to be desired for.
Could go on but the list would be to long and boring to read.

PROS:
Graphics are better.
Umm just thinking what else to put lol.

Would you really invite people to play this game my personal opinion would be "stay clear and no".

 

I would be too embarrassed to even tell people I play this game

 

I remember back in the good old days, many of my real life friends was worried that I was addicted to Darkorbit, I would talk about the game quite a lot and even log in on their pc's for a quick chat, or to just play for bit.

Back then if there was a reward for inviting friends, I would have had that maxed out from genuine real friend invites of players that had never played before, but DO didn't need gimmicks trying to get new real players back then.
I never talk to my real life friends about the game any more and would absolutely not invite a real life friend to start playing even if I got an UFE ship for doing it.