Ripspace played all through the summer of 2007, one advert on the internet pulling in a few players, but most left, leaving a core of avid space empire builders fighting to the death.
This was fun, but I think RipSpace is a great game, it just needs the spice of one last thing.
After much thought and toying with construct ideas I hit upon Epic Blooms and a redesign of Epic Levels. This makes combat in Open System far more vital, territorial and objective based. Suddenly battles were sharpened and the need to win focused into a short 14 tides.
I then restricted trade gates to one per system and the entire game is now 'nastier'. The need to win and gain Epic Ships is a good enough reason to stay and fight, no need for empire building at all. It also means the Epic levels and DarkLight are finally able to come into their own.
Now it's time to invest a bit more money on advertising and hope to grow the player base from it's current 6 to 8 players.
Jonathan
Faraway Games
November 2007