Restart DH1?

In contemplating the future of the game, if you would vote for a 4th option: restarting DH1, post here.

**UPDATE**
While critique of DH1 is useful, I'd like to request that this thread just be a tally of those in favor. Thanks!

Yes please.

I'll be honest and say that my first vote went to passing DH2 on to new admins. Thing would need a lot of changes and good, focused people to bring about needed changes, but...this isn't that thread, is it?

Truthfully, I'd rather see DH1 restarted with slight tweaks. Some of the things from DH2 would be salvagable and great to see in the old game (new +level system, possibly combat, etc). Old reliable DH1 with DH2 shineys, and any tweaks that might be needed to update it. There'd be a lot more questions, but unneeded ones for the moment.

Bringing back the atmosphere of fun from the early DH1 days would be epic. I think a lot of us miss that.

No longer having much of a stake in the game, I am indifferent to any outcome. But, DH1's greatest strength was also its greatest weakness. You had the freedom to do anything. Therefore, you also had the freedom to screw everything up, if you were so inclined. Player leaders could fall off the map -- and there'd be no back-up. No way to carry on the story. The players were the tracks, and there was no foresight in bringing back-up tracks in case we needed to steer the plot along.

If DH1 was the epitome of player freedom, DH2 was probably the opposite. Neither, as proven, is very healthy or fun for the player-base. If you were to restart DH1 with much of the same system and degree of freedom, you'd better be sure as hell to put power in the hands of players that deserve it. Such judgment is arbitrary, and hey, I'd have no clue who'd take over -- so that's up in the air. You'd probably have to do a lot of player base circumcision if the old player-base of DH1 came back. No offense to anyone, but no amount of rules are going to completely curb the twink. They'll find loopholes if they're determined to. Same with trolls and the like. Draw a line and stick to your guns. We failed in both DH1 and DH2 in that regard.

I think people are looking back on DH1 through the color of rose. Things in the past look much better. Remember the chaos of DH1? REmember how pissed off you were when someone showed up and just randomly attacked you? Or sniped you from afar? Or swarmed in with their fleet? Or they got higher level than you and smoked you?

Remember how DH1 actually worked?

Paradox wrote:

I think people are looking back on DH1 through the color of rose. Things in the past look much better. Remember the chaos of DH1? REmember how pissed off you were when someone showed up and just randomly attacked you? Or sniped you from afar? Or swarmed in with their fleet? Or they got higher level than you and smoked you?

Let me qualify that some. DH2 was pretty much broken from its inception. It was a single planet without any real ability to travel, where combat wasn't fully implemented, where you had no freedom whatsoever and people were expecting a game with the capability and freedom of DH1. It was an unmitigated disaster and failed in a month.

Let me repeat that: it failed in a month. A MONTH.

DH1 lasted for quite a long time. It was going for several months before I joined, and it lasted for at least a year after. It only died because DH2 was being put up--if DH2 was never announced, DH1 would, to this very day, still be chugging along. Left to its own devices it probably would have continued. The biggest debates were about things which are minor annoyances--you can be sniped randomly or attacked randomly. People can spy on you. None of these were game-crippling.

Granted, the biggest complaint, about massive monster death fleets, was legitimate, and would have required some intervention at some point. It spawned, essentially, from property investments, and a few other means, by which massive amounts of money were injected into the economy--and the more money you had the more money you could subsequently make. To match the deflating value of the credit, the admins increased the cost of military hardware, making it inaccessible to anyone but these mega-millionaires. Upkeep was introduced. Any future individual building a monster death fleet would have been largely prevented.

This is the only serious, game-crippling problem the game faced. It could have been fixed. And it only became a problem after over a year--and people continued playing despite this problem. There was just a decreased emphasis on political and military machinations.

DH1 worked. Before you start talking about rose-tinted glasses, remember that. Remember which game, between DH1 and DH2, failed inside of a month. It is instructive.

So let's not say that DH1 had the equivalent amount of problems as DH2. It did not. It had its share of issues and problems, as could be expected. But they were the sort of problems that you could generally deal with until staff got around to fixing them. They were the sort of problems you could ignore if necessary. They were the sort of problems you could fix eventually.

Not so, DH2.

DH2 failed because barely anything was ready when we launched. We set an ambitious deadline, and we failed. DH1 would've spiraled into death eventually. Why? No plot direction. Would it still have ran awhile even though our storyline was in a ditch? Maybe. But I don't call that "living". That's why one only lived for a month, and the other for about two years. DH1 had at least a year of preparation. Even about two. Gulp will have to vouch on exact numbers. DH2 had about a quarter of a year, more or less. Preparation is half the battle, if not more.

I'd have to argue that DH1 economy wasn't the only major problem we faced. You can only go on so long until you realize your actions don't mean jack, because there's no storyline to contribute to. Either way, you get the same result. DH2 -- no Staff direction, no action. DH1 -- too much player control, no action.

In theory, restarting DH1 isn't a bad idea. Tah is right, its eventual end was brought about by lack of direction and the free-form style of play, but that can be fixed.

However, we've all played DH1. It's going to take a lot of work to make the theme fresh and different enough to be enjoyable.

Tah wrote:

I'd have to argue that DH1 economy wasn't the only major problem we faced. You can only go on so long until you realize your actions don't mean jack, because there's no storyline to contribute to. Either way, you get the same result. DH2 -- no Staff direction, no action. DH1 -- too much player control, no action.

See, for the most part, the worst parts of DH were the parts when staff was trying to create a story. It always felt so contrived. It was never organic. Most of the best elements of story happened because players decided they wanted to do something, not because staff told the players what they wanted to do.

Dash, Effie, and Pesiro forming their little triumvirate? That was interesting. That wasn't Staff Story. Ditto for when Alistair Bellamy basically overthrew the Republic--that was interesting. It's just a shame DH2's announcement killed any interest in roleplay. Indeed, the only staff story that really held my attention was Episode I, and that was only barely staff-directed: it was 'okay, the Blacks can attack now.' Everything that happened from there was player-driven.

So, no, I think you are entirely wrong in that regards. Staff didn't need to provide direction. The beauty of DH1 was that the story was in the players' hands. All staff needed to do for the story was occasionally poke the balance of power if it got too stagnant. Anything more just got in the way. I was continually disappointed in nearly everything about staff events.

Truly, I think it comes down to a matter of preference. Obviously, the Wizards' preference might not flow with yours. For the most part, from everyone I talked to, the wide-scale opinion was that DH1 lacked a sense of direction. It's difficult to hand the players the reins when you haven't exactly defined what the horse is. What results is that every player has a different perspective on what the "horse" is, and decides to pull it in different directions. That means no player falls short or close to the actual Staff definition of the "horse", and subsequently, that means that none of the players truly matter. They might matter in their own minds, but it surely isn't conducive to a game in which you're corporately weaving a storyline.

Everyone needs to be relatively on the same page to create a coherent and relevant story. Pesiro, Effie, and Dash forming their own triumverate? Good. But the big question to ask is, "So what? How do their actions have anything to do with the story?" And the next question someone might ask is, "What in the bloody hell is the story?" If Pesiro, Effie, and Dash decided to sit their asses down on their planets and do nothing at all, there's not much to be done about it. And if you "poke" them, we get OOC complaints that we aren't allowing players enough freedom.

Either way, the general concept is to make a game fun. If you think allowing players full rein of the storyline is an awesome concept, I'm surely not going to stop you. And if you make it the epitome of fun? I'll say kudos.

EDIT: Sorry, I just saw your edit, Ni. I don't care about the outcome of DH1 or DH2, so I'll keep quiet on this thread. I wish you the best of luck if you do in fact get approval from Gulp to restart DH1.

I would definitely come back and give it another go if DH1 were to restart. I've given a lot of thought to what I would have done in the beginning if I had known then what I know now.

I am for it, with few tweaks here and there...

Some of DH2 i agree should be put into DH1, but i liked it. And i only got to play it for a month.