IvanGrozniy

Eve is a good example of what I'm talking about here.  In eve every (properly fit) ship is a min/max optimised setup for doing one particular thing.  So if you want to PvP you need a PvP optimised setup and if you don't have that you basically want to avoid getting into PvP at all costs.  It's one of the things people learn early when playing.  The imbalance between being PvP and non-PvP fit is so big that on several occasions I've solo'ed non-PvP battleships with PvP fitted frigates.
 
But because everyone is either PvP fit or wants to avoid PvP at all costs, PvP becomes either arranged fights, stratiegic battles or cat+mouse hunts of non-PvP ships which bolt and run at the first sign of trouble.  Nobody wants to be an easy target so the vast majority of non-PvP ships stay in places where they are safe -- 85% of players stay in hisec and most of the ones which venture outside join the huge nullsec blocks where they have lots of warning about incoming threats.  The usual response when presented with PvP is to dock up and wait it out.  When people can't stay safe they literally stop playing the game -- try doing hisec wardecs and you'll see that most hisec players just log off for a week until you're gone.  The way the numbers dropped during the blackout (where the devs took away the safety people had and made them risk being an easy target in order to do non-PvP things) shows it's not just the hisec players who are like this.
 
I think DU will be just the same -- if you force people to either fly PvP only ships or become easy targets then everyone who is an easy target will avoid any area where PvP might happen unless they have a fairly reliable way to run and avoid the PvP.  Because nobody wants to make themselves an easy target.  Change the game so some activity makes people take risks and most of them will change their activities or just log off if they can't have fun without becoming a target.
 
I just think it would be cool if DU went a different way from eve and tried to make a game where there isn't such a hard 'PvPer / target' distinction and people might actually fight you when you interrupt them mining an asteroid ...
 

I sometimes envy NQ twitter man how such low-effort work still getting him monthly paycheck.

look man, AvA is not going to happen, pvp doesn't matter man, all that matters is twitter posts of hardworking builders creating creations man
 

Well I actually agree with you in a lot of respects here. But I don't think we need more mechanics to solve the solo non-viability issue, we need less restrictions. I mean, better mechanics would be nice, but if we were lazily working with only what we have:
 
Why can't a solo pilot operate any guns larger than xs? What is the reasoning behind this? To encourage teamwork? Seems silly to me, in pvp big battles multicrew ships would still have a lot more advantages over solo ships anyway because engineers could repair ships and restock ammo containers while solo players have much more limited abilities, although if they had L weapons they could still pack a punch. But limiting solo players to only xs guns exasperates gameplay issues rather than solving them. Why are there restrictions on sizes on cores? One of the arguments for this was to make other ship designs besides borg cubes viable. This is false. The Boo L core gold ships were made prior to that limitation and they kicked ass. But the result of the demands for limiting weapons sizes to core sizes was this: XS, S, and almost all M ships are non-viable against the meta L ships. Consequently, you might as well delete XS, S, and M weapons from the game because they are rubbish compared to L weapon stats. But now for a bird's eye perspective: 
 
When a company sets out to make a sandbox where "you can do anything", and creates mechanics and building modes that offer various customizations and changes, what inevitably happens is the emergence of meta, and best case scenario, 2 or 3 metas. But it's usually one. And that makes all of the customization and cool designs and doodads irrelevant and useless. Customization and freebuilding is cool and all but utterly useless when you ty to accomplish anything, especially in PVP, when you are not building around the meta. Mortal Online 2 will suffer from this, Starbase will suffer from this, Space Engineers suffers from this, Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen,  countless games suffer from this phenomenon. The net effect of this phenomenon is that the devs are then forced to counter the emergent meta builds with more restrictions and limiting mechanics to the point where the restrictions become absolutely absurd. Imagine creating a sandbox where you can do anything and then proceed to fight your own sandbox that you created in order to govern fairness while the kids in the sandbox refuse to learn the meta. It's a losing battle, by default it's a sunk cost with diminishing returns. DU suffers from this to a great extent and will never achieve balance. If it does, it will either be the balance of Eve or it will not be a sanbox.

.

It is beyond all logic and reason how some "ship builders" (I'm being so.... so.... generous right now) have no clue what a pvp ship is in this game, or at least what armor is. What exactly do you mean by giving them more of a chance? No... if people actually learn to read they'd realize that you don't make haulers with no armor.. you don't want to use fancy voxelmamcy that does nothing to protect against bullets...  you don't fly in the pipe. I mean... just this last bit, in all my flying with naked haulers I never once encountered anyone simply because I never fly in the pipe. I know, just a personal example but... there are builders who have been in this game for way longer than me and they still have no clue. I don't get it.
 
Also not saying this system is perfect. Frankly it's a shit show. But... nah... giving them more chances is like trying to improve on stupidity.

At this point it would not surprise me if this is all just matter of optics, so that NQ can point to districts and say "look at all those constructs, this game is thriving and has stock available hint, hint". On the other hand if the parking impound feature was implemented, it would quickly become apparent in a very visible way if there are any active players left..

Well.. If I use my tinfoil hat...
 
1) NQ won't remove safezones because of carebears.  And I don't mean builders or industry players or haulers... I mean carebears. It's a state of mind.
 
 
2) NQ won't remove safezones because they can't. We have never seen pvp on planets. Not in any video ever. Why is that? Considering they don't even have raycasting obstruction, pvp would be asanine on planets. I reiterate. We have not ever seen even a dev screenshot of atmo pvp. At all. Space pvp Is a shitfest. Because it was cobbled together half hazardly to tick the roadmap pvp box. It's not even designed for atmo pvp. It's an engineering abomination at its current state. The reason we have such large no pvp zones around planets is likely to do with performance reasons first. The reason every planet is a safezone is because the current pvp system only sorta kinda works in open space. Safezones are a way to restrict the lackluster unperformant  pvp mechanics to only open space.

Well.. If I use my tinfoil hat...
 
1) NQ won't remove safezones because of carebears.  And I don't mean builders or industry players or haulers... I mean carebears. It's a state of mind.
 
 
2) NQ won't remove safezones because they can't. We have never seen pvp on planets. Not in any video ever. Why is that? Considering they don't even have raycasting obstruction, pvp would be asanine on planets. I reiterate. We have not ever seen even a dev screenshot of atmo pvp. At all. Space pvp Is a shitfest. Because it was cobbled together half hazardly to tick the roadmap pvp box. It's not even designed for atmo pvp. It's an engineering abomination at its current state. The reason we have such large no pvp zones around planets is likely to do with performance reasons first. The reason every planet is a safezone is because the current pvp system only sorta kinda works in open space. Safezones are a way to restrict the lackluster unperformant  pvp mechanics to only open space.

Cease this heresy! No good ideas are allowed.
 
Too much.... Stop! This is not an mmo! This is a single player mining sim in a single shard!

Don't be ridiculous, there are other social platforms for this.

Cease this heresy! No good ideas are allowed.
 
Too much.... Stop! This is not an mmo! This is a single player mining sim in a single shard!

Yep.
There are like Empires with hundreds of thousands of players that are currently fighting over delve to have that precious farming spot and news sites covering every week fights etc. What we have in DU ? ATOM trying to create content and have to helplessly watch at people warping back and forth. "Fleet fights" are like 5 vs 5 max lol. Another stupid idea like "madis battleground" in that other thread where people just want "to battle" button at the top of the screen etc. Ha, and of course some stupid "PVP EVENT" like another starwars thingy in "emergent gameplay" game.
 

They are a problem because there is only 1 game loop: mine, refine, produce, sell/use.
 
You can't "balance" when there is only 1 thing, you can't move anything as there is nowhere to move.
 
If we have NPC missions that give quanta as reward (and remove all the bot buy orders) the problem will be fixed. The ore price will settle wherever it should settle per player market.
 
NPC missions will inject quanta the same way other games inject quanta by you farming mobs or doing quests or whatever else PVE activity. This will not affect market that much as bot buy orders.
 
NPC haul missions can have a risk vs reward too, it's pretty simple actually:
 
Transport 10kt of stuff from Alioth to Madis. Reward = 2mil (low risk low reward).
Transport 10kt of stuff from Alioth to Locobus. Reward = 10mil (high risk high reward).
500k "colleteral". If you break the box you get like sand or something that doesn't even worth 500k.
 

NQ at Kickstarter to get money from players: There will be PVP everywhere other than sanct moon
Players: Throwing money at NQ to fund the game
 
NQ at beta start: PVP will be "limited", Madis/Alioth/Thades will be safe forever, no idea what we need sanct for. In practice, you don't ever PVP as there is no reason to.
Players: Frack this
 
NQ: Hmm, why player numbers are falling, didn't they want to rebuild their Star destroyer for the 123rd time with 2 left voxels painted with the new tool now ? That's content !

did you say game 

Dear NQ,
 
I was having a wander through PVP space the other day and casually thinking about all the weird and wonderful things you might find in space; alas the odds of getting anything blip on my radar left me feeling sad and defeated. 
 
But suddenly I had a epiphany.
 
How cool would it to be able to overload your radar to long range mode,

This mode may:
- only give you a 20su2 area of another radar signal within a 100SU radius of your position 
- however, it also pick up abandoned / destroyed constructs (salvaging gameplay loop)
- it may only last for a set period of time, or better yet, drain warp cells to use?? (this is the part where i pat myself on the back)
 
My brilliant idea was followed with an immense sense of dread that no one would ever know how smart I was. 
 
Well, now you all know. 
 
Sincerely,
Wadiss 

Very interesting. 
Pareto efficiency - Wikipedia
It reminds me the Monopoly which was "an educational tool to highlight the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies."
Does someone knows a more boring game ? (I mean Monopoly, not DU)

I like how people defend their "there's plenty to do in the game right now" with market stuff and building. I see that only as settling for less and just a workaround around the current lack of game content. "I mined only once and never again"... sure you can do that but your gameplay then revolves around min-maxing market tables. There are way too many niche justifications for the current "game loop". And they all suck.
 
"Just build something and sell it", "Just start an org that does x or y", etc etc... that's it... that's the whole game. Meanwhile someone has to mine the mats for the ships and buildings... What is happening here is what happens in the real world... not everyone is a business man who doesn't have to mine for money. The people who "don't mine" in DU are riding the pareto distribution wave  on the top end and fail to see the actual boring grind of the game... all they say is "there's plenty to do, you don't have to mine if you don't want to, markets are easy". Mmmkay. This is it.. this is the whole game.

I like how people defend their "there's plenty to do in the game right now" with market stuff and building. I see that only as settling for less and just a workaround around the current lack of game content. "I mined only once and never again"... sure you can do that but your gameplay then revolves around min-maxing market tables. There are way too many niche justifications for the current "game loop". And they all suck.
 
"Just build something and sell it", "Just start an org that does x or y", etc etc... that's it... that's the whole game. Meanwhile someone has to mine the mats for the ships and buildings... What is happening here is what happens in the real world... not everyone is a business man who doesn't have to mine for money. The people who "don't mine" in DU are riding the pareto distribution wave  on the top end and fail to see the actual boring grind of the game... all they say is "there's plenty to do, you don't have to mine if you don't want to, markets are easy". Mmmkay. This is it.. this is the whole game.

I like how people defend their "there's plenty to do in the game right now" with market stuff and building. I see that only as settling for less and just a workaround around the current lack of game content. "I mined only once and never again"... sure you can do that but your gameplay then revolves around min-maxing market tables. There are way too many niche justifications for the current "game loop". And they all suck.
 
"Just build something and sell it", "Just start an org that does x or y", etc etc... that's it... that's the whole game. Meanwhile someone has to mine the mats for the ships and buildings... What is happening here is what happens in the real world... not everyone is a business man who doesn't have to mine for money. The people who "don't mine" in DU are riding the pareto distribution wave  on the top end and fail to see the actual boring grind of the game... all they say is "there's plenty to do, you don't have to mine if you don't want to, markets are easy". Mmmkay. This is it.. this is the whole game.

You're saying the community magically changed when beta hit? How is that possible? After beta, it became too toxic... well... I do eat seeds as a pastime activity but... what actually changed is NQ communication, not the community. Alpha had at least a modicum amount of feedback and communication between NQ and community. That disappeared after beta dropped. Someone at NQ, likely at the tippity-top, decided it was a brilliant idea to push out patch .23 despite pages and pages of ATV feedback saying this is the wrong move. NQ goes silent. Tidbits of communication are vague. For some weird reason they decide to create public testing server and scarp ATV completely.. Imagine a game that is a beta which is actually an alpha with a test server and a live server... there are more ironies there than in a wet paper bag I'm sure. The community hasn't changed. NQ has. Naunet left. Game designer left. Stephane D'Astous left... there's actually quite a list of people who have left... all within the last few months, latter end of 2020. NQ never talks about what's actually going on in the company, they only make vague statements and brace for impact when they could just be clear as to wtf is actually going on. But no... "everything's fine". Game is heading in the "right direction". Meanwhile the community gets screwed over again and again. Yeah.. it's the community that has changed. Clearly.

are you advertising a different game on Du forums? Please be careful and don't advertise if that's what you're doing. Just keep this in mind.

are you advertising a different game on Du forums? Please be careful and don't advertise if that's what you're doing. Just keep this in mind.

No, that's not what is commonly understood by "engine" -- engine means the game engine itself, which they didn't write. it's an industry-standard term that's well-understood -- "voxel engine" is a server-side component that they created, but not even close to the same level of complexity as a game engine.