IvanGrozniy

Well.. as a start, don't build an MMO on cloudfront.
 
Someone here said they shouldn't have worked on PvP. Well.... The first thing NQ (JC) said when after they finished their prototype is that they will be working on atmo pvp. They didn't of course.
 
The whole idea of the game, making cities, making a civilization, emergent sandbox blah blah blah... 
 
Why does a city get built?
1) protection against outside dangers
2) quick access to resources / commodities 
3) trading is easier and safer
4) social rules
5) a city is a bastion and safe haven that controls the surrounding lands
 
I can go on... The point is there are social / political / evolutionary pressures that cause people to get together to create trading hubs, towns, cities. The city exists because it has to, it has a vital organizational purpose, it doesn't just appear because someone wants to make a pretty building.
 
DU pvp is basically optional, there is no danger from anything. There's no pressure of any kind. People don't have social interactions that are complex enough to force them to start thinking about cities — because cities don't matter. 
 
Plenty of people have built fancy hubs. Some people have used them because they were fancy or somewhat convenient. But at the end of the day they are all empty voxel art, they do not matter, they do not affect anything. Every person in the game can build their own castle / city without consequence. The game is devoid of any necessary preconditions that makes social organization emergent enough so as to make cities necessary.
 
There's no pvp danger to hide from, there's nothing in pve to defend against. Resources are plenty, no one needs to rent a house at some voxel city, they can always build their own.
 
In short focus on pve elements, voxelmancy, making sure everyone gets what they want immediately... It devalues the sandbox and devalues what is made in the sandbox. Because it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
 
Ow... And don't build an mmo on cloudfront.

Well.. as a start, don't build an MMO on cloudfront.
 
Someone here said they shouldn't have worked on PvP. Well.... The first thing NQ (JC) said when after they finished their prototype is that they will be working on atmo pvp. They didn't of course.
 
The whole idea of the game, making cities, making a civilization, emergent sandbox blah blah blah... 
 
Why does a city get built?
1) protection against outside dangers
2) quick access to resources / commodities 
3) trading is easier and safer
4) social rules
5) a city is a bastion and safe haven that controls the surrounding lands
 
I can go on... The point is there are social / political / evolutionary pressures that cause people to get together to create trading hubs, towns, cities. The city exists because it has to, it has a vital organizational purpose, it doesn't just appear because someone wants to make a pretty building.
 
DU pvp is basically optional, there is no danger from anything. There's no pressure of any kind. People don't have social interactions that are complex enough to force them to start thinking about cities — because cities don't matter. 
 
Plenty of people have built fancy hubs. Some people have used them because they were fancy or somewhat convenient. But at the end of the day they are all empty voxel art, they do not matter, they do not affect anything. Every person in the game can build their own castle / city without consequence. The game is devoid of any necessary preconditions that makes social organization emergent enough so as to make cities necessary.
 
There's no pvp danger to hide from, there's nothing in pve to defend against. Resources are plenty, no one needs to rent a house at some voxel city, they can always build their own.
 
In short focus on pve elements, voxelmancy, making sure everyone gets what they want immediately... It devalues the sandbox and devalues what is made in the sandbox. Because it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
 
Ow... And don't build an mmo on cloudfront.

Well.. as a start, don't build an MMO on cloudfront.
 
Someone here said they shouldn't have worked on PvP. Well.... The first thing NQ (JC) said when after they finished their prototype is that they will be working on atmo pvp. They didn't of course.
 
The whole idea of the game, making cities, making a civilization, emergent sandbox blah blah blah... 
 
Why does a city get built?
1) protection against outside dangers
2) quick access to resources / commodities 
3) trading is easier and safer
4) social rules
5) a city is a bastion and safe haven that controls the surrounding lands
 
I can go on... The point is there are social / political / evolutionary pressures that cause people to get together to create trading hubs, towns, cities. The city exists because it has to, it has a vital organizational purpose, it doesn't just appear because someone wants to make a pretty building.
 
DU pvp is basically optional, there is no danger from anything. There's no pressure of any kind. People don't have social interactions that are complex enough to force them to start thinking about cities — because cities don't matter. 
 
Plenty of people have built fancy hubs. Some people have used them because they were fancy or somewhat convenient. But at the end of the day they are all empty voxel art, they do not matter, they do not affect anything. Every person in the game can build their own castle / city without consequence. The game is devoid of any necessary preconditions that makes social organization emergent enough so as to make cities necessary.
 
There's no pvp danger to hide from, there's nothing in pve to defend against. Resources are plenty, no one needs to rent a house at some voxel city, they can always build their own.
 
In short focus on pve elements, voxelmancy, making sure everyone gets what they want immediately... It devalues the sandbox and devalues what is made in the sandbox. Because it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
 
Ow... And don't build an mmo on cloudfront.

Exotic screw specialist... 

Exotic screw specialist... 

It's really sad to see you go, Arch, but I can understand the feeling. After today's whole shit show on Discord and having an NQ employee running circles around the subject, making fun of my question and muting me for 4 hours instead of giving a final answer that addressed not only the 2km airspace rule, but the 2km screens rule one too, I also felt quite tired.
 
I know I did my part trying to improve this game and having it succeed, but I also give up trying. I'll just keep playing until I can't afford the subscription anymore and leave, just like you, because there isn't point in trying to sympathise with a game developer that clearly has no respect to their player base and can't even follow their own rules.
 
See you around the pond, Arch! I'm sure we'll meet again.

Except for added crazy amount of tedium and nonsensical mechanics for "gameplay" reasons. If you had a hard limit on factories per account it would amount to the same thing you were alluding to: people would create manufacturing lines dedicated to only specific parts or very small production chains, actually forcing them to interact with other people and buy/share their production lines. The benefit there is any new person can come into the game without having to be burdened with the schematic system and its high costs for building anything worthwhile. Instead the player would have to make connections with people in order to buy the parts needed due to their dedicated production chains.

In some respects limiting production units per account is also a nonsensical mechanic for "gameplay" reasons, but arguably a more elegant and much simpler solution than a system that does not value your time at all.

If all you want is specialization from players, the actual simple solution to the problem is limiting the amount of factory units a player can own.
 
You can also limit the amount of factory units an org can own. And there you have it, the net effect is that organizations are now forced to specialize as well.

I realize this is heavy handed and ultimately you'll need to undo so many things you've already done, but that seems simple enough.

One may say that this gives power to people who have a bunch of alts. Well... we're already there, have been since before beta started. The whole talent system encourages that so there's more to be concerned about here.

Simple solution but effective, and there's so little to do in order to implement it (other than... undoing what has already been done of course).
 
Proposed numbers:
 
Each account has a max limit of 20 or 25 factory units. This is not a lot of factory units. It will force specialization just like you want it to without cumbersome and awfully tedious mechanics.
 
If an account is in an org, that account adds 8-10 factory units to the org limit. An account can create factory units under the org or under their own account and share their units with the org. The idea here is to have a push and pull between accounts contributing to the org pool but not excessively, they still will likely sacrifice their own account unit limit for the org. This will prevent orgs being bloated with big factory unit pools and it will also force orgs to specialize.
 
All in all, schematics don't make sense, They break immersion quite heavily (why would you buy them when it would be more practical to clone them... why is there only one schem for one production unit, etc...). They add immense tedium. They just don't make much sense on so many levels. You'd be better off with just limiting factory units per account.

If all you want is specialization from players, the actual simple solution to the problem is limiting the amount of factory units a player can own.
 
You can also limit the amount of factory units an org can own. And there you have it, the net effect is that organizations are now forced to specialize as well.

I realize this is heavy handed and ultimately you'll need to undo so many things you've already done, but that seems simple enough.

One may say that this gives power to people who have a bunch of alts. Well... we're already there, have been since before beta started. The whole talent system encourages that so there's more to be concerned about here.

Simple solution but effective, and there's so little to do in order to implement it (other than... undoing what has already been done of course).
 
Proposed numbers:
 
Each account has a max limit of 20 or 25 factory units. This is not a lot of factory units. It will force specialization just like you want it to without cumbersome and awfully tedious mechanics.
 
If an account is in an org, that account adds 8-10 factory units to the org limit. An account can create factory units under the org or under their own account and share their units with the org. The idea here is to have a push and pull between accounts contributing to the org pool but not excessively, they still will likely sacrifice their own account unit limit for the org. This will prevent orgs being bloated with big factory unit pools and it will also force orgs to specialize.
 
All in all, schematics don't make sense, They break immersion quite heavily (why would you buy them when it would be more practical to clone them... why is there only one schem for one production unit, etc...). They add immense tedium. They just don't make much sense on so many levels. You'd be better off with just limiting factory units per account.

This game was supposed to be about building civilization... not an update to Landmark.

This game was supposed to be about building civilization... not an update to Landmark.

Remove emission from rocks.
Remove that nebula.
Leave space alone.
 
Give @Eternal his landscaping business back. I worry about his commute.

Remove emission from rocks.
Remove that nebula.
Leave space alone.
 
Give @Eternal his landscaping business back. I worry about his commute.

Remove emission from rocks.
Remove that nebula.
Leave space alone.
 
Give @Eternal his landscaping business back. I worry about his commute.

Remove emission from rocks.
Remove that nebula.
Leave space alone.
 
Give @Eternal his landscaping business back. I worry about his commute.

Remove emission from rocks.
Remove that nebula.
Leave space alone.
 
Give @Eternal his landscaping business back. I worry about his commute.

Nice post overall, some of us were talking about removing planet voxels / digging altogether 6 months / a year ago. Believe it or not we have lost a lot of really impressive devs from this community due to .... stuff... some of them are way more qualified than NQ. DB iops are super expensive for what NQ was trying to go for. Additionally they scaled way too early (who needed that many planets at start of beta?). They are dealing with scaling / cost problems while trying to develop new features, which throws the development cycle into a loop of late-come optimization on a lot of the backend code.
 
The main kicker is... atmo pvp combat was removed from the roadmap.. it simply does not exist. Will it ever be added again? Who knows. I think not. Mind you, this game was supposed to have avatar vs avatar pvp first, JC (the starter of this project) said exactly this in one of his development videos. The focus shifted completely somewhere else (Landmark playerbase, building building building). AVA is now only a pipe dream, and sad to say, atmo pvp as well.

Nice post overall, some of us were talking about removing planet voxels / digging altogether 6 months / a year ago. Believe it or not we have lost a lot of really impressive devs from this community due to .... stuff... some of them are way more qualified than NQ. DB iops are super expensive for what NQ was trying to go for. Additionally they scaled way too early (who needed that many planets at start of beta?). They are dealing with scaling / cost problems while trying to develop new features, which throws the development cycle into a loop of late-come optimization on a lot of the backend code.
 
The main kicker is... atmo pvp combat was removed from the roadmap.. it simply does not exist. Will it ever be added again? Who knows. I think not. Mind you, this game was supposed to have avatar vs avatar pvp first, JC (the starter of this project) said exactly this in one of his development videos. The focus shifted completely somewhere else (Landmark playerbase, building building building). AVA is now only a pipe dream, and sad to say, atmo pvp as well.

.

Player number dwindle, pie get smaller, infighting begins.

Well... I actually agree with this... 
 
Not streamable. Not ergonomic. Most importantly, not fun.

Well... I actually agree with this... 
 
Not streamable. Not ergonomic. Most importantly, not fun.

Like, how do we measure the fun level experienced by a gunner? 
Task 1 press reload
Task 2 press identify
Task 3 press lock
Task 4 press fire. 
Task 5 watch the battle happen as a total spectator that was not needed in anyway for this battle....
 
And you think someone will pay a subscription to spectate battle? Ppl already know the existence of youtube.... 
 
Just calculate how big will be the frustration of a lost battle for the gunner, having no input what so ever in the battle, seeing things unfold before his eyes powerless to do even a small effort to change the outcome. 
 
Now compare that with the joy he will experience having no part on the victory. 
 
Do you think this is sustainable? 
I dont....