ostris

I would disagree completely on your thoughts for procedural generation. Your argument is all about millions or billions of planets. I agree that is not a great selling point. Bur procedural generation is 100% needed in a game of this size and most be done well. Even just a single planet the size of the one shown in the demo would have takes months or possibly years to make without procedural generation. All the elements and resource would have to be placed by hand over the whole surface and according to the last dev blog up to 1km deep just to have one planet that fits their vision. Also with the idea that you can shape and change the environment lends itself to procedural generation. If it can be taken apart piece by piece it should be build that way as well. Also not sure what you mean when you refer to avoid pvp. PvP was second on my list because i feel like its the second most important aspect of the game. I will be PvPing a lot and feel like it should not be avoidable. The issue that i have is not about avoiding pvp but rather if the pvp and combat is done poorly it will greatly hurt all aspects of the game.

Very much agreed!

I have been on the forums for a little while now and have been trying to spend a lot of time in game play mechanics and idea box areas. I noticed that a lot of people seem to have a different focus on some ideas then me. Such as complex inventory management systems or complex building systems. I figured might be a good idea to rank the top 3-5 core game play concepts you want from DU and in turn the amount of dev time dedicated to them. Also include a short explanation on how complex you want them to be or how detailed they should or shouldn't be. You can be as specific or as generally as you want. I chose mostly to stay on the concepts that the DU dev team has pushed as important via their media but don't feel restricted by that and feel free to include anything here. If having 6 legged creatures, or an extremely realistic physics engine is a top priority for you then make that your number 1. Ranked by importance to me: 1) The large procedural generated universe the allows to emergent game play. I kinda feel like this is THE core item for the game. A world that enables the player made content DU wants. I have no real comments or worries about this. I like the star probe system, size of planets and the universe as we have been told it will be. 2) PVP. This is actually my biggest worry about the game. In many interviews they seem to downplay the PVP, yet in every interview and dev blog its mentioned. You want to build the death star, but you have to protect you build site. You want a territory control unit, you have to protect it or people could destroy it, etc etc. The reason I am worried is because if there is PVP it will be mostly forced on everyone. If you want to be a builder someone can knock down your tower, if you want to be a trader someone can steal your stuff. From the current dev blog the only non pvp zone will be a very small area(considering the size of the universe) around the ark ship and possibly a very difficult path to create small non pvp zones. That means that pvp will be forced on you if you play this game. Because of this I feel like combat systems should be the most fleshed out and well done portion of the game outside of the universe itself. I worry because they vocally downplay it when talking about the game. Usually saying its a Building game first. If they neglect the pvp and combat systems it has a chance to very negatively impact every aspect of the game. If someone want to be a trader and gets all their stuff stolen because the combat mechanics are not well thought out, they may just stop playing the game. 3/4 Building and territory control. I have combined these because i think combining them are required for gameplay. Games that allow you to build anymore with no restriction usually end up having barren server and abused mechanics(looking at you Ark). I feel like the territory control allows for a much more well thought out building mechanic. As far as building mechanics I feel like they should be simple, with most things shared through any single object. Storage power fuel weapons etc should simply be able to be controlled by panels anywhere on the object and by simply attaching things to the object they will have the power. The restrictions are based on the amount of power needed and resources, not so much on the tedious assembly and connection of elements. 5) Economics and trade. I have a lot of questions about the economy and have mentioned them in several other topics. Simply put I want to know how money will leave and enter the economy. Other then that the idea of localized trade and transporting goods seems pretty fun. I feel like the info we have on DU's idea for trade is good enough for me as this is a lower priority.

E3 is when the game hit my radar. The meh release of No Man's Sky is what reminded me to check up on this game. I really wanted to like No Mans Sky but hesitated on buying it because of the lack of actual game play. When it launched and a lack of game play seemed to be a primary issue, I remember thinking at E3 that DU has all the game play I would like in a space game and now here I am.

I think that is a very large assumption. The container is labeled personal container. Implying that it is not a ship cargo hold or container. And just because these containers exist doesn't really mean much about how they function. These could very well just be unmovable elements placed on terrain acting as a more standard storage box that you find in any number of games, minecraft, ark etc. None of those containers have anything to do with how you move inventory from a to b.

I like inventory systems that are simple and easy to use. The idea I have thought of is two types of containers. Personal containers that sit on elements or terrain and can be opened by a player by going up to it and clicking. The other would be a cargo hold style container that is accessed from a panel. All cargo hold elements attached to the ship(or w/e object you made) are combined when accessing via a panel and items can be transferred to and from the cargo hold via the panel interface. I suppose that since pvp is a factor you could either always grant access via the panel(via hacking or a skill perhaps) or maintain that the cargo hold elements can be opened manually just like a personal storage they just don't have to be opened that way.

Agreed once you commit to lock on and tab targeting it opens the door for combat because the cost of combat is lower. You don't need crazy high update rates and the resource cost for even large combat gets reduced so much.

True, but eve online(and every other mmo with a currency that i know of) is a game that has npc money sinks built in. These systems can work when you have proper ways to draw money out of the economy. Since the devs have stated there will be a currency, but also stated there will be little to no non player resources, how will money be removed from the market. As you said eve has some inflation issues, it would be far worse if there was zero ways to remove money from the economy. This is what worries me about DU.

I asked this question in a similar topic in the general forums and it seems like on one really knows the long term plan for money. I see a lot of issues with using currency. As you mentioned many games suffer from inflation and that is with a non player drain on money. Even with these measures the game market will always inflate, with no methods to drain money via npc inflation will become a huge problem very quickly. Some games get around this by using a common crafting material or highly used material as currency. Generic metal bar is currency and generic metal bar is used in all ammo, building things and crafting elements in the game. This keeps back inflation because the currency leaves the market by crafting. I am very interested in how they plan on using currency. In the real world currency only works because of hundreds or thousands of years of faith in the system. Protection in that system by government and a large amount of regulation. If everyone can "print money" by killing a monster or harvesting it out of the ground I dont think the system will work. I hope they clarify this seeing as how economy and trade is one of the core pillars on which this game is going to be founded.

We can hope.

Basic melee at most in my eyes. The devs already have a hugely ambitious game and this should be a low priority in my eyes.

I'm not really sure what you mean by instant. Here a decent video that talks about netcode in an fps done by blizzard for the release of overwatch. The tldr is you need to update A LOT to have a true fps. Now overwatch is a competitive fps game so this game probably doesn't need to have nearly the update rate that overwatch has. But in the video done by DU(thread topic here: https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/1225-devdiary-massively-multiplayer-server-technology-video/) about their servers he mentions that the update rate is highly variable. At around 3:12 in the video he mentions how they "dynamically play with frequency to maintain reasonable load." Also, people that were very far away had update rates of less then 5 a second. If this type of event would also occur when enough players were around you and the server has "dynamically play with frequency" to slow update rates to not overload it would make a traditional fps style feel very clunky. In lock on systems this isn't an issue because your chance to hit isn't based on where you were aiming but a skill or some other variable that contributes to or takes away from your hit chance on the target. This allows for more fluid and fun combat with a lower update rate. One very unique aspect to this game that i haven't heard of before is dynamically playing with frequencies. Maybe there is a combat friendly way to update frequency on relevant targets that would allow for a traditional fps. Such as targets your lock on to will always have 20 or 60 updates per second instead of whatever the server thinks it should be based on distance/load. I guess we will have to wait and see what their technology brings but for the most part its highly unlikely a classic fps style will be able to function well in this game.

I would agree aws is most likely, possibly google or microsoft. Unless they have a completely custom setup for their servers. Whatever the situation would be very cool to hear.

Also noticed there is a stat called jet pack energy in the upper left corner. So jet packs confirmed heh.

Hmmm thats really interesting cause from the sound of it their game servers may not have been on AWS. He says they spin up servers on aws to act as clients. I assume they are probably using AWS for their game server if they are using it to spin up virtual clients but it would be nice to get a confirmation. Good find either way, thanks.

I would love the game to have both traditional fps and lock on mechanics in the game for both ship and person to person combat. Missiles would be lock and and traditional guns would more fps. However, it seems like the restrictions on technology will force all combat to be lock on. Unless they find a way to make a large amount of players in a very small area stable and have fps quality update frequency. From the video released recently it seems that updates to the clients will be load balanced based on the number of people around you. I assume this would make a traditional fps style aim very frustrating as updates will not occur fast enough. I hope they do more demonstrations of the update frequency and its relation to distance and number of people around you in future videos.

I agree with this and support it. I am ok with food and growing things to craft items(food could be one of them) but not a huge fan of the you must eat x food every y min or you die. I feel like this game is going to be about space and travel so you already have the logistics of fuel and/or energy and defense from attack. Having to add on another set of items to worry about seems to be a bit much and not really central to the core game concepts of building, exploring, trading and pvp. All of which have limiting factors already.

Awesome info will read. Thanks. Edit: "It was very hard however to find good Scala developers...." I lol'ed

I would love an in depth version of this into how they split the load. I assume they are using some type of virtualization. But the size and depth and how those machines communicate with each other will be amazing to learn.

Ugh that is really disappointing if it is EXCLUSIVELY time based. The exclusive time based system was something I disliked a lot about eve. In my eyes there are much better ways to make sure people are not masters of all. Personally I think the hybrid solution talked about earlier in the thread is the best. I always thought something like training guns takes 8 hours. But if you shoot a lot of guns in that time it can take 4 or 6 instead. Some way to actual reward a player for playing the game and doing the thing they are training. I also feel like strictly time based systems make people feel less open to exploring other aspects of the game. I invested 100 day in small fighter but i really wanna try medium fighter, but then I'd have to invest another 100 days in medium fighter, so just say screw it and stay small fighter. If they maybe implemented a path system as well as skill. Such as piloting, the more piloting skills you have the easier it is to learn other piloting skills. Obviously controlled in some way so that it doesn't make it easy. In my eyes if I know I'm investing 100 days into small fighter but that will also make learning medium fighter take 70 days instead of 100 it doesn't feel like such a harsh punishment for investing in a path I ended up not enjoying as much as I thought.

I think large capital class ships in atmosphere is probably how mining will go someday. It really depends on how they choose to implement mining elements into the game. They seem to be all about very few restrictions in what you can do. They will probably have some limit in what can enter a planets atmosphere but my guess it will be very large. Things like gravity will only be an issue if the devs choose to make it an issue. In the videos we saw a ship with incredibly small engines, very small fuel storage leave the atmosphere implying realism may be less important then functionality and fun. It is a game after all.

I pretty much agree with this. When you log out, your character passes out and your ship does w/e it was doing. If you are the current pilot of the ship maybe stop the ship. I see no reason to kill the player for logging out unless they would have died staying logged in. Basically logged in or out the worlds interaction with your character doesn't change. Something like a stasis pod should be optionally used to make it harder for you to be killed. Just a high armor shell that people have to destroy to get to you.

I think for the most part I agree depending on what your definition of a physical connection is. I think you should have containers/ship container elements. There must be a connection to move resources from one to the other but I think that interaction should be mostly done via physical interaction or a panel. If i want to move stuff from my inventory to my ship I should have to touch my ship. However, if I land my ship on my station I should be able to access a panel on the station/in my ship that allows me to transfer from my ship inventory to my station inventory or place items on the market (depending on how market storage works). I do not think you should have to touch one container and carry it to another. This should be controlled by an element that allows a linked inventory, be it a docking element or some very short range teleporter. In general I don't think inventory management is something that needs to be heavily modified. The inventory systems in other games do a good enough job for DU's needs. Making inventory management too cumbersome and tedious is very bad in my eyes and will drive people away from the game. The system needs to be easily used and simple while still maintaining the physical connection that puts resources at risk and adds a dimension of danger to transporting inventory.

Well is for sure seems like there will be a currency in the game. I hope they take some time to explain the entry and control of that currency in the future.

Personally I don't mind the concept of a sub based model game as long as the experience the game provides calls for it. I see early MMOs as having a sub fee because at that time the hardware and servers they provided required that investment, but provided an experience that was very unique. Simply put without the sub fee early MMOs wouldn't have been possible. If this game is able to implement the technologies and experience they are talking about I do not mind a sub based model. DU has tech requirements that simply require a lot of the money to create the experience they have in mind.