We would like to thank you for your patience during the past few weeks as we have been incredibly focused on getting you all into the game. While we know there are still a few edge cases out there, we hope you’ve been enjoying your time in Dual Universe!
A burning topic is known bugs surrounding duping, and their exploitation. We’d like to offer some clarifications on this.
We are aware of some bugs that were allowing players to dupe items and resources, and we are actively investigating these. The process is however slow and labor intensive. Given how much time is involved, and how severe the outcome is, we want to make it clear that we are taking all exploits very seriously and they will carry heavy sanctions for abuse cases up to and including removal of player accounts and permanent bans.
We have a zero tolerance policy towards cheating and exploiting, as is clearly laid out in our Code of Conduct.
For those who have encountered these bugs and already reported them, we thank you. There will be no sanctions on those accounts. We may balance gains if deemed necessary.
For those who have been knowingly abusing bugs, you have 48 hours to report your activities via a ticket here: support.dualthegame.com - your duped proceeds will be removed, but no further action will be taken. Please select Gameplay in the first form drop-down, select the “Rules & Policies” > “Exploits” category and use the subject “Self Report”
For those who continue to exploit, and do not report it, your account will be banned without notice upon completion of our investigations.
While every person has their own sense of fun, it is important to remember that this is an MMO and that rules must be enforced to keep play fair and even.
We thank you for being a part of the Dual Universe beta and for helping us keep the game fair and entertaining.
This is actually really important, so you may already have a plan for it, but if not, it is an important thing to consider.
after the game has been running for years the terrain will be chewed up with tunnels and ditches, and buildings abandoned no longer used will scatter the landscape.
It happens in every game like this that is a persistent world, and it is easy to handled, but rarely is handled other then with server resets, that always get someone upset.
Also since worlds are algo generated, the size of the change file on top of the generated terrain will continue to grow to 'difficult to layer over' algo generation sizes.
All that has to happen is for each change to the environment to have a durability, and stamp of last time it was maintained.
For tree squares, and ditch squares it is easy, any 'changed terrain' next to algo terrain(unchanged) begins to change back. Different for each type, sand faster then soil, soil faster then rock. And trees grow back. All you have to do is look at the time stamp of the change voxel that shows its date of change or last maintenance, and if it is next to a unchanged square and every x amount of time move its durability. As durability goes down, land gets smoothed, when it reaches 0 durability the change to that voxel is removed. The removal happens from unchanged territory towards changed territory, so it is like the original land organically grows back over time (and is realistic actually)
This means that if a person digs a tunnel, 1 voxel wide, it will go away say in 2 days, unless they add to the voxel a 'support item' (made from wood and/or rock/cement, giving reason for those items.)
so if someone is tunneling to get dirt, or to get to some location they won't return to, they don't care about keeping it open, and they don't spend the time to reinforce tunnel, and it closes, if they have it as an entrance to a base, they must put up timber or masonary walls to support a tunnel, and easy crafting item, but some extra work. This is so you don't have ditches everywhere, if they put a frame in the ditch it stays open, and actually looks nicer with a texture that covers walls, then the ditch or tunnel wont shrink in as fast because it won't be sand time, or soil regeneration time, it will be frame supported sand regeneration time.
It is really easy to do, simply remove changes, if they reach durability 0, and paint them with different texture if they at 75 50 or 25.
The time scale to revert back is design decision, but it will keep the terrain looking good, and keep weird stacks of sand from littering the landscape.
Also any player made structure should require a maintenance bot machine that uses fuel, and can be connected to fuel tanks. The base bot would be a unit that covers some area dimensions. A tunnel version would also exist that would be put in an alcove. (animation would be optional) Device would report areas it keeps up to date, and fuel cost based on number of items in the area.
As long as a player wants to provide fuel, the repair bot keeps his base from deteriorating, but if he doesn't fuel it, pieces start to deteriorate, when they reach 0 they disappear.
that gives both a resource sink, and makes it so that players that move on to other locations on other planets don't leave hundreds of buildings unused across the landscape,
and if they want to use some building they have to at least supply it with fuel, a low cost but basically gives player the decision to keep or let decay a building.
It really solves the clutter that will have to happen when thousands of players for years are digging up terrain, or if some group decides to cut down every tree in some area or dig up every beach.
without this mechanism, one days game play of a beach digger can remove the landscape beauty for years, and that is not balanced, and is why you see many games reset there servers. This method puts the reset into a simple algo that is checked a few times a day, and changes the terrain automatically simply by running through the changed terrain file and modifing a value, or removing the changed terrain making the voxel have its original algo determined look.
Change removal would be put on a que, and would only occur when no players are within a certain distance, there is no rush, it is not time critical, and could even be a simple worker thread, since if it reverts an hour late because someone around there thats fine, but if it is that close, the walls would show it with cracks and discoloration, and same with sand or soil walls in tunnel, the texture at 25% would have large cracks in it. The mechanism to remove a change is to both remove the previous item from the 'change file for an area' and the notification to be a 'change' order that is also removed, as an add of a new change object that does exactly that, so it removes it from client, when downloaded, and is not added in next time server updates the area for client. That should make sense.
The selection of the texture based on durability would be client side.
This should make sense, and it really is much benefit for a little added mechanism.
Just thought I would share the idea after seeing so many persistent MMOs with large areas that looked great for three months that were ridiculous when they needed to continue to build a client base going into 6 months and a year since release. If you add change to terrain, there has to be a slow change back mechanism, and persistent MMOs been missing that part for years.
