philux

Indeed! The concept of "spell-casting and rolling the dice" by clicking on enemy ships has been done for over 10 years in EVE. Simply reusing those archaic mechanics takes away much of the novelty and appeal of the otherwise fantastic concept of DU.

Every few months I look for a single shard space sim MMO that is a player-driven sandbox without predefined factions. For a while I thought DU could be this dream coming true, but I had to learn it falls short on the sim part with EVE-style tab targeting and timer-bar-"skills". If they don't reconsider these decisions, I guess I will have to go on googling every few months.

Good graphics, promising video. I am slightly worried though: Building and stuff is great, but you also need interesting and challenging gameplay, otherwise you end up with something like Second Life. Like, why must docking be automated? It should require some actual piloting skills, where you have to consider the weight of your ship depending on cargo (inertia, breaking distance) - interesting gameplay right there.
 
Also transit into orbit was way too fast. In the finished game, one should have to have an eye on the temperature from friction with the atmosphere, in space one should have the option to switch off computer aided flight to experience real Newtonian physics (which is beautiful), etc.
 
If flying is too easy and too unrealistic, this integral part of a space game becomes dull, you don't develop a "connection" with your ship, etc. Please Novaquark, make this also a decent simulation and don't just focus on the building. Thank you.

Concerning size of planets: I want them in realistic size! There will be fast vehicles and ships, and radar, so you will find things also on a realistically big planet. At least way bigger then just 30 km! Concerning performance: Only details of the planet that are seen by players must be rendered.

Indeed! The concept of "spell-casting and rolling the dice" by clicking on enemy ships has been done for over 10 years in EVE. Simply reusing those archaic mechanics takes away much of the novelty and appeal of the otherwise fantastic concept of DU.

I understand the motivation behind it, but the lockon mechanics take much of the immersion away from actually experiencing the game as a first-person avatar.
It would be IMHO better if Novaquark would compromise by scaling down the size of players in an instance to allow for manual aiming and real-time projectiles during combat.

And Dual Universe isn't in a niche market? I mean we're talking about a game that uses a time based skill system like Eve Online, will take weeks or months for the first players to even leave the starting planet, and will take real life months for probes to reach new star systems before players can travel to them through stargates. 
 
On that same note, are you really going to suggest that WoW, the most profitable and successful MMORPG ever created, is in a niche market? Most of the complaints about WoW come down to it being "dumbed down" to cater to as many people as possible, which is kind of the opposite of going for a niche market...
 
 
I'm just going to suggest that you read the AMA thread, the devblog, and perhaps read or watch one of the numerous interviews with NovaQuark about Dual Universe before complaining about the subscription model. Once you understand what it is they are actually building, the necessity for a subscription model is much more clear. 
 
 

Indeed! The concept of "spell-casting and rolling the dice" by clicking on enemy ships has been done for over 10 years in EVE. Simply reusing those archaic mechanics takes away much of the novelty and appeal of the otherwise fantastic concept of DU.

Jumpgate was 1 shard and delivered great fps experience for about 30 pilots in the same sector with the technology of 15 years ago. Today battles between 100 ships shouldn't be a problem. I don't need bigger battles.

Sorry for my imperfect English, I'm not a native speaker.

This is so strange to me. While there have been one-shard space sim MMOs with skill based targeting even 15 years ago despite the old hardware and dial up connections, nowadays it should be impossible? I don't buy that for a second.

A game as old as Jumpgate is still the benchmark then which all of the new space games miss. Surely it was not as massive as WoW or EVE, and the devs did probably not become millionaires, but it worked very well and was profitable for more than a decade. It is such a fine niche game that I am yearning for today.

Nowadays there are only instancing hells like Elite or Star Citizen, games that claim to be multiplayer but put ridiculous distances between players to avoid interaction like No Man's Sky, or games that sacrifice something as crucial for immersion in a space game as manual piloting and fighting for the rather silly goal of having "hundreds or thousands of players in one battle", as EVE or DU.

I tried EVE, and coming from the highly immersive Jumpgate, couldn't believe the success of this boring eye candy interface to a spread sheet program.

It would be so easy with the giant procedurally generated game worlds that are possible nowadays to hit the sweet spot of distributing players in a way that avoids loneliness as well as overcrowding.

Instead of cramming hundreds or even thousands of players in the same place, why does no game come up with intelligent game mechanics to spread people before overcrowding up to the server limits takes place?

You can make use of the vast game worlds to spawn new players not too close and not too far away from each other, have a nav computer offering alternative similar destinations if the first destination is becoming crowded, a dynamic mission system to lure players away from places that are in danger to get filled up, have a readout of ship density in the map, you can have random hits in battles at distances at which even skilled pilots can't hit other than randomly instead of precise tracking and calculating, and avoid unique attractions in the game that everyone wants to visit, like planet Earth.

Just a few ideas to avoid instancing even without mind-blowing new server technology or sacrificing highly immersive game mechanics. I am sure if dedicated game devs would just decide to think in this direction, a real one-shard space sim MMO can be achieved easily with the technology of today.

It is especially strange to me that a game as ambitious as DU in many fields throws in the towel so quickly when it comes to the basic quality of a space sim - piloting your own ship and fighting in a way that is fun.

I don't want to be a tiny cog in a monstrous machine like a "battle of thousands", I don't want to build a gigantomaniac bloody death star - my prime objective is to simply FLY my ship in a an open world without dreadful instancing again before I die. :-(

I'm glad I'm not alone on this. This game looks great but giving players the option to manually fire their own guns if they choose to will make this game the best MMO voxel base game out there in my opinion. It will be no denying it.  The only knock on Eve has been flights controls (which now you can fly a EVE ship manually) and the weapons systems. 

i agree with you, and i think you will find that a lot of us here agree with you. im hoping to see it be an optional thing for turrets but for dogfights be treated like a fps. especially since we can make guns and such given that our nano arm thing can be used like a ranged weapon as well i feel like its possible to have both or choose which to use in ships. hopefully they will see the error in the alpha and beta

I've been reading a lot of the information on this game and everything seems fine but I would like to suggest finding a better weapons mechanics  than EVE online.  Although EVE has it's fans, the whole lock on weapons takes away from the battle in my opinion.  I guess it's fun for some but for a game like DUAL Universe it takes away from the freedom idea.   So many other  Sci FI voxel base games allow you to manually fire your own weapons and even games like Emyprion allows you to take control of your turret and manually fire your turret if you choose to. One of the most entertaining parts of building a ship is having full control over your ship and its weapons.  I think using a EVE online  weapons lock on system will be a step back for such forward thinking game such as Dual Universe ..   Smaller ships dog fights will not be as entertaining and since you're planning on doing multi crew capital ships.  If I'm a gunner in a turret then me just locking on and letting my weapons auto aim and shoot will be kind of boring for me. 
 
 Again I'm not saying that there aren't tons of players that love to point at something and let the game aim and shoot for them  but a weapons system like that doesn't bring  the Star Citizen or Elite Dangerous fans.  They need full control over their weapons. 
 
I don't know if this suggestion will be taking seriously because EVE is a popular game but I think for this style of game a EVE combat style of game play will take a lot away from a game like this. 

Concerning 2D I was referring to ground combat which you brought up. There is considerably fewer movement in the third dimension on the ground compared to space. But I'm afraid with EVE-style combat, it really would be EVE 2.0, even to the point of making three dimensions in space rather pointless, since there would be no need to be a skilled pilot making effective use of them during battles.
 
Ship size is quite irrelevant for the server load, it is the complexity and speed of movements in combination with the amount of ships taking part in a battle that determines the strain. You did not read this thread, did you? There was quite some detailed discussion about it already.
 
Again, not at all relevant for the server load.
 
I already adressed that: "Neither in a movie or TV series nor in a game the fight mechanics should be realistic, but immersive and fun. I agree having the computer fighting the battle and the pilot leaning back - or rather having unmanned drones - will be the most realistic form of air or space fight in the far future. But it won't make a satisfying game."
 
That's right. I was talking about small and agile fighter crafts. In Jumpgate, big freighters carrying heavy cargo had an enormous inertia (breaking distance), which, because of full-blown manual control, required specific skill and experience to handle - which was great and fun, and allowed pilots to specialize in space trucking since not everyone could handle it.
 
I am 48 and I want to play with my reflexes involved as long as I have them. But full-blown nanual space flight and battles are not so much about reflexes, more about a steady hand, situation awareness, and, would you believe, a lot of tactics: chosing the primary targets wisely, chosing the effective weapon and movement pattern depending on speed, armor and distance of the enemies, estimating the amount of missiles and afterburner fuel they have left, etc; a lot more tactical decisions must be made when not flying solo but in a squad: what combination of different ship types is most effective, be aware who needs urgent support to allow him to back off to regenerate the shields, be aware not to "steal a kill", is there time to dock / repair / refuel or is it better to sacrifice a ship and return to the battle in a new one, etc.

Thank you for all of your responses..   I'm sure this game will do very well but as for me the combat system is a deal breaker.   I've played EVE online and in my personally opinion their battles are boring by today's world standards.   In my personal opinion I rather have a limit on the number of players in one game with a fun combat style vs playing with 100s of players with a boring combat style.     I know people love EVE so they will flock to this game but it just isn't for me. I will stay with Space Engineers buggy and laggy  but fun combat style. lol  I do see this game being a much better version of EVE and maybe taking all of their fan base but to sell this combat style to Star Citzen or Elite Dangerous fan boys isn't something I see happening. Combat styles matter and FPS is the standard in that world.