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Astrophil

Alpha Team Vanguard
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Posts posted by Astrophil

    Starting Off

    in Idea Box

    Posted

    You are proposing, essentially, that there be 10,000 (which is a modest number of players) planets, or Arkships, or Secure Areas, one for every player. Well then, what happens when a new player joins? A new Arkship just magically pops up? In my humble opinion, this isn't a very viable solution :D

     

    Sure there may be malicious players, but if it's PVP restricted, there's no real harm (if there is, then I'm just blindly unaware and please feel free to point anything out).

    Wheels and Rails

    in Idea Box

    Posted

    I feel like at the very least wheels are going to be a necessity, for taxiing maybe, or just normal ground vehicles. Rails hopefully will be another feature at some point. I mean, I would not want to be riding a hovertrain and suddenly have it lose power. Could end quite badly.

    Prisoners/Slaves and Ransoms?

    in The Gameplay Mechanics Assembly

    Posted

     

    Me personally i would hate the idea of being captured and forced to either sit in a jail or to just wait until someone killed me so i could respawn and continue playing. What am i supposed to do in the mean time, i want to play this game but this other person has captured me (for no reason) and won't let me play.

     

    I'm sorry but i hope they don't put this in as i can see this being used to greif people and annoy them to the point of quitting.

     

     

    It's true. One of the frustrating things about roleplay and with such an immersive game like this is the fact that you're playing with other players - real people behind computers that want to play and enjoy this game just as much as anybody else. That is terrible for roleplay, because people are not going to be willing to spend their time as a stationary guard or a slave...but it's completely understandable as much as I don't like it :)

    Subscription should not be its pay model

    in General Discussions

    Posted

     

    Can anyone name me a memorable free to play / cash shop game that they have stuck with and played for any length of time? They don't exist.

     

    Sorry to be the Devil's Advocate here, but still, I have to stand by Warframe here. Free to play, enormously popular, and almost a purely cosmetic cash shop (in that everything else can be acquired by playing). There is definitely a ridiculous grind here, which is why I quit, but it still remains a good game.

    Subscription should not be its pay model

    in General Discussions

    Posted

    No one likes pay to play i like the gameplay but the fact its going to be subscription based turns me off the game completely, ill be very sad if this stays-i wanna pay to keep a game not have to keep buying it :(

     

    That first part was a bit of an overstatement, and actually overwhelmingly untrue. The subscription model certainly has some problems, but it does not, as you say, force you to keep buying a game. Ferran's points are true...with a subscription model, developers have incentive to further update the game, or else players will simply stop paying and playing. Players continue to have access to better content, and developers have a steady stream of funds to further improve content. With buy-to-play, developers see a huge influx of money at first, but that soon runs out and players are left with the game as it is, or worse, even more expensive DLC and expansion packs.

     

    Take Netflix - you pay monthly for access to its library of titles, not buying all of the TV shows and movies themselves - that would be enormously expensive. Dual Universe is similar - you don't pay for the entire game and all of its content upfront - you pay periodically for access to a constantly evolving and constantly improving system.

    TRANSLATE IT INTO SPANISH

    in General Discussions

    Posted

    Surely with time, more translations will become available. Currently, the largest playerbase speaks English, and French translation is also provided (because NQ is based in France). Another huge portion of the potential playerbase is Spanish-speaking of course, so I feel that Spanish will be high up on the list of translation priorities.

     

    Also in the future, if I were you, I would not post thread titles that are all-caps and/or append multiple exclamation marks to the end of it. Helps to stay classy :)

    Character Customisation

    in The Gameplay Mechanics Assembly

    Posted

    On the topic of character customization there are two things I would *really* like to see that very few games actually use:  Transparent visors and customizable space suits.  I don't know how whether players will typically spend much time outside of their space suits but it seems that a lot of games completely remove any individuality as soon as you put on a space suit regardless of how deep the customization is otherwise.  A transparent visor can go a long way towards making those options mean something and changing colors, parts or base models on the suit itself can add more options.

     

    Decals are another option I would like to see.  Ideally I would want to see multiple decal slots on a given outfit (and on ships).  One example I was talking about with AlexWright set one logo for the Cerberus Expeditionary Fleet and one logo for individual ships or players, so any individual in the organization might have a Cerberus patch on the right shoulder and a ship-specific patch on the left shoulder.

     

    Ah yes - similar to Warframe's clan and alliance emblems. The emblems were completely editable and importable by clan leaders and you could puchase and display these emblems on the shoulders as a hologram. 

    DevBlog - Rights & Duty Management System (RDMS)

    in DevBlog Feedback

    Posted

    @CodeGlitch0

    I don't think you'll need a DPU to lock the renter out of the ship - the tag grants the player the right to operate the ship and once it expires, the power to operate the controls is gone with it.  Look at the tag like the keys to a car.

     

    That's very true. Went right over my head :) Again, no programmer brains up in here.

    A rant about games like this

    in General Discussions

    Posted

    Hello, and welcome! Nothing like a rant for a first post  :D

     

    You've brought up some excellent points that many are probably wondering about, but as much as you don't want to, it is really quite a necessity to read and browse through all of the Devblogs to gain a more holistic view of the game rather than, say, oh look, there's Organizations, or a player-driven economy: This can't work because of X or I've seen Y in other games before and it flopped.

     

    But that's not how the devblog, or DU for that matter, is set up, because whatever is discussed in Devblog X could be closely tied with Devblog Y, and one can't function without the other.

     

     

    So let’s get going with a rather light-hearted topic: Guilds, Clans, Nations, Factions, or, how the Dev’s call them, Organizations.

     

    To be honest, I read a bit into this one in the Dev-Log, but quickly decided to leave in order for this to stay unbiased.

    Now, what happens quiet often in MMO’s is, that the amount of Ranks inside an Organization are limited, a prime example here would be Planetside 2, where you are only given 5 usable ranks, which, in larger player-communities, is a ridiculously small diversity to have. What I have also noticed is that often the Rights and Privileges are pre-given, an example here would be “Tribal Wars” a free browser game obsessively played by many, where you have some 10 different rights and privileges which could be given to different ranks within a clan. Now I understand that some rights need to be pre-given, such as the alteration of the organization itself or the ability to hire and fire members, however it shouldn’t be limited to those, as the head of an organization I want to be able to say that no, the guy scrubbing the toilets on my battlecruiser does not have access to my military coms, period. Or the receptionist at my 5-Star hotel cannot use one of the rooms to go ‘afk’ for a few minutes.

    So here is a solution, I doubt it’s perfect, far from it probably, but perhaps worth a thought:

    Instead of limiting the organizations to ranks or some such, giving a player two “designations” to describe his position within the organization would be far more effective, which is why some military’s in reality use it.

    Ok so let’s take Dude Dudsen as our example. Dude has the rank of Officer in his organization, which gives him the ability to promote players under him up to the Position right below him. He also has the function of Navigator, which gives him access to the bridge since his Job is to navigate.

    The con for using this method would be that the player has to set up to entire systems in order to make his Organization work. The pro is that it gives him flexibility when giving privileges, instead of having to make up an entirely new rank, whenever the others don’t quite fit he has these bundles of privileges that he can give to someone.

    Now in order for this to work properly one would have to be tied to the other, it would make sense to tie the functions to certain ranks, since a Janitor General wouldn’t make much sense.

    If you didn’t get that last part, you can hope that I find enough time to make a small sketch of what I mean and upload it (it would be named Fig. 1)

     

    Alright, that took longer than anticipated, sadly I’m not done.

     

     

    So to take your example on organizations: The way orgs are designed in DU is not based on ranks. The actual "forming an organization" mechanic itself is probably the most basic and the simplest template for any group, to allow for complete customization. There's legates and there's members. Legates own the organization and keep the structure collapsing. Members actually run the organization and its operations.

     

    So how does that accomplish anything. Through the Rights and Duties Management System (RDMS). This is essentially the "designation" function you were talking about. Through the use of "tags", players can give other players Rights (the ability to access or do something, such as accessing console X or opening container Y) and Duties (a player's job or role). I cannot explain it in its entirety here, so here is the link. But essentially, this removes the need for pre-defined ranks and takes the limit off of how organizations can be organized. Yes, this means that new organizations will have to set up a whole system of Rights and Duties and tag distributions, but they can do it however they want.

     

    And again, welcome to DU.

    Hello, and welcome! Nothing like a rant for a first post  :D

     

    You've brought up some excellent points that many are probably wondering about, but as much as you don't want to, it is really quite a necessity to read and browse through all of the Devblogs to gain a more holistic view of the game rather than, say, oh look, there's Organizations, or a player-driven economy: This can't work because of X or I've seen Y in other games before and it flopped.

     

    But that's not how the devblog, or DU for that matter, is set up, because whatever is discussed in Devblog X could be closely tied with Devblog Y, and one can't function without the other.

    DevBlog - Rights & Duty Management System (RDMS)

    in DevBlog Feedback

    Posted

    Let's say I want to operate a spaceship rental business in-game for newer players that can't afford their own ships.  I would want to implement some sort of Rental DPU / construct to assist with automated rentals (so that I don't have to be there in person to babysit the ship rental business).  

     

    You mention in the DevBlog about expiring tags, but will it be possible to get tag expiry events on the Rental DPU?  

     

    For example: Player Joe walks up to SpaceFighter953, which I currently have available for rental.  Joe then deposits XX currency into the Rental DPU and it issues a "SpaceFighter953_rental_token" tag to Joe, which will expire in 24 hours (or however long depending on how much currency deposited via the rental DPU).  Once the tag expires, Joe will be locked out from controlling the ship, unless he deposits more currency into the Rental DPU.  And finally...  15 minutes after the last expiry, have the ship autopilot back to my shipyard to become available to the next renter.

     

    Will it be possible for the Rental DPU to get a notification when the rental tag expires, or would I be required to track the time events in the DPU itself within the Lua code?  If I can process a tag expiry event, then I could issue tags to allies to allow them to use my fleet temporarily and arbitrarily based on the tag itself.

     

     

    PS: Yes, I am currently envisioning those coin operated airplanes/rocket ships for children outside of your corner store pharmacy.

     

    Wow. That was a very specific example. Coin-operated spaceships :D

     

    Well a tag giving the right to operate the rental ship would certainly work. I believe you can have time-based tags as well, so 24-hour expiration should be no problem. To have the ship autopilot back to the shipyard after expiration could be a bit trickier - it would definitely have to be coded into the ship's script, but since time-based tags would be temporary, you couldn't have it permanently coded.

     

    Unless: there would be some way for the ship to detect the presence or existence of the tag (or token).

    Example:

     

    If "SpaceFighter953_rental_token" = True, "SpaceFighter953_controls" = True. Else, "SpaceFighter953_controls" = False and "SpaceFighter953_Return" = On

     

    Or something to that effect. I am by no means a programmer. As for the DPU's ability to log tag expirations, I'm clueless.

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