Shadow

Ok guys, stop now. This is not going anywhere.
Kind reminder: all time spent on moderating and reading trolls is time not spent on communication and game.
Feeding the trolls is not the smartest idea.
 
Please leave it and find something more useful to do.
 
Regards,
Shadow

Being in the community discord is a privilege, not a right. 

There are over 900 people in Discord right now, and everyone knows to treat each other with mutual respect despite arguments that arise when talking about the game. "Be Nice to Each Other" is the core rule of the server rules that everybody has to read before joining the rest of the channels. We have done a lot of work to ensure that it stays that way.
 
I get that people are not 100% happy with the way that moderation decisions are carried out all the time, but we didn't get to be this large by letting everyone run around mistreating each other without any consequences. We try to foster an environment where people can be comfortable talking about the game without fear of being attacked.
 
I highly doubt that the harassment your brother displayed would be well taken if he did the same thing on the forums. Like I said before, if you want a different type of discord where you are free to openly harass people, you are free to create your own. 
 
If your motivation here is to try and get me in trouble, well... I'll let my own record stand as my defense. 
 
Regardless, your actions on Discord, here and (probably most importantly) the threats in private messages you have sent me have shown that neither of you are willing to contribute in a positive way to the discussions taking place on the Unofficial Community Discord. 
 
I have reported this thread for breaking the forum rules (Section 3.E) and the threats you sent me privately accordingly.
 
That is all I have to say about this matter. 
 
 

Ok guys, stop now. This is not going anywhere.
Kind reminder: all time spent on moderating and reading trolls is time not spent on communication and game.
Feeding the trolls is not the smartest idea.
 
Please leave it and find something more useful to do.
 
Regards,
Shadow

Hi everyone,
 
Here is a (small) overdue update about the Lore:
 
Lore Update (2 Oct. 2017):
 
UMF (United Mankind Federation) becomes UEF (United Earth Federation).  From a Lore point of view, the testing phases including Alpha and Beta stages are considered in the Lore as virtual simulation run by Aphelia while the Alpha Team members are asleep (note: Pre-Alpha stage is not considered as part of the Lore) The in-game money will the “Quanta” (one Quanta, several Quantas). “Novean” is the term to name a passenger of the Arkship “Novark”.  
P.S: regarding potential inconsistency between Nanopack rarity and the way a Player Character is resurrected, it's possible we will go with the solution "By naked, we mean, everything else than what you had before you leaving the Arkship". However, this is still in discussion. We'll keep you informed about the final decision
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

Without breaking NDA, I think you can use several "keyboards" unit and assign some doors to each one.
Not 100% sure if you can activate all keyboard at the same time, but it's what the July dev. diary looks like.
 
Regards,
SHadow

Sounds like a bunch of kids that can't wait for x-mas to come, not even joking. (That scares me for the NDA and im sure it does NQ also, just fyi)

You can find all info regarding pre-alpha tests here : 
 
The "redacted" messages are just auto-censure due to NDA. We cannot share any info regarding last test.
 
Regards,
Shadow

Hello,
 
Unfortunately, NovaQuark is bound to French law which is very strict in regard to week-end and night work.
It's not their own decision.
 
@NQ-Nyzaltar will probably give you a longer explanation (but it's NDA for me).
 
Regards,
Shadow
 

Hacking your email account (used to reset your password) is more likely than hacking your password. 2-factor would help in that event, but you really want to make sure your email is secure and maybe use 2 factor on it, if available. Just in case you mess up and fall for a phishing scam.

agreed, but definitely not a priority

With the bounty system being the next stretch goal, I thought it was high time we take a look at what it could mean to "set the bounty and put a price on somebody's head".
For me at least, there are three factors that are important in a bounty system:
Fun: That bounty hunting *feels* like bounty hunting, not an unlucrative fetch quest.  That it is challenging to succeed at collecting a bounty and the bounty provides a suitable reward. Fair: The average player is (relatively) safe.  The system should ensure that the game does not devolve into a gank fest. Less abusable: Ideally a system should *not* be abusable at all, but in an MMO setting where alt's are cheap, this is very difficult to achieve.  So minimizing abuse is the goal here. First, I will go through how MMO's in the past, present and future will have done their bounty system and then give a suggestion of one that could work in Dual Universe.  This might get a little long, so strap in or just skip to the suggested system at the end.
 
 
Past: Ultima Online
I have fond memories of my years spent in this fantasy MMORPG in the early 2000's.  PvP was changed multiple times over the course of the game and a bounty system was one aspect of PvP.  
 
This was "justice system" which could be triggered when a player was murdered by a player killer. Usually after a number of murders, a bounty from the victims own pocket could be placed on the murderers head.  A list of bounties could be looked up at a nearest bank.  If the murder could be found, killed, butchered and his head returned to a guard, the full bounty would be awarded.  
 
In some cases the head could be ransomed back to the murder or the murder would suffer a stat decrease for a defined period. In other cases, the murderer would lose his own money from the bank and it would be placed on his head as a bounty.  In yet other cases the murderer would suffer stat penalties for dying at the hands of a "blue" player.
 
In short, there were many different variations, but most revolved around the concept of a justice system specifically targeting perpetual player killers.
 
 
Present: EVE Online
There is no justice here: only money.  
 
Bounties in EVE can by placed on anyone, by anyone. And everyone can see all the bounties.  But a player having a bounty does not give all other players the right to kill that player anywhere, for example a bounty hunter attempting to collect in high-sec will still be attacked by the ever vigilant defenders, CONCORD. Although any where else, all bets are off.
 
The bounty is not paid to the bounty hunter in full, but is instead based on the value of the bounty targets destroyed ship starting at 20% of the actual bounty value. While this system reduces collusion to split the bounty between the bounty hunter and target, it also reduces the potential earnings of a bounty hunter, making bounty hunting less viable.
 
 
Future: Star Citizen
I say "future" because the game is not technically released yet.  The idea is that the bounty system is a justice system: bad guys (both PC and NPC) could have a bounty and good guys attempt to collect it.  That's it. Moving on.
 
But wait, you say, surely there is more?  Well yes.  But at this point it is conjecture.  For example some bounties may be "capture alive" some may be "dead or alive" perhaps depending on their misdeeds.  Star Citizen plans to have a legacy system where, after a random amount of lives , characters are permanently killed and replaced with their offspring. The offspring do get a bit of inheritance (and/or debt) and there is a slight neutralizing of reputation.  The bounties will probably simply disappear on death.
 
The take home point here is that this is a justice system.
 
 
A note on abusing bounty systems
The simplest way to abuse a bounty system in a free trade game is to have the bounty target and the bounty hunter collude.  The bounty hunter brings in the target and they split the bounty 50/50.
In Ultima Online, there was an inherent loss of skills at death and skills are really difficult to increase. 
In EVE the target must lose more than the bounty but bounties are so unlucrative that they no longer feel like bounty hunting.
In Star Citizen, a character will have limited number of lives (for that character at least), so death may mean losing that incarnation of your character.
But why collusion is not an issue is that it requires trust.  Trust that the bounty hunter will not just take all the money after the bounty target rolls over.
I am sure there are other ways to abuse a bounty system but these I leave for another post.
Suggestion for Dual Universe
Dual Universe is about giving players tools to run systems, not to have systems run the players.  That said, none of the above example bounty systems really tick all the boxes. So a suggestion is as follows:
Create a bounty: A bounty can be placed on anyone by anyone (minimum amounts on the bounty apply).  This moves the bounty system away from being a justice system tied to reputation and makes it another useful tool in the DU belt.  This, on its own, does break the "fair" goal, since anyone can be targeted but a single point does not a system make. Read on.
  Get the contract: A bounty contract can only be picked up at a special terminal and is chosen from a randomly generated list of say 10 nameless bounties with a last known location (with a possibility of a reroll within a set time frame). Only those with the correct bounty contract can claim the bounty.  This means a list of bounties may be optionally published, but they will have no effect since only allowed bounty hunters with the correct contracts will be able to collect.  This makes investing into bounty hunting skills viable as it would be possible to tier bounties.
But why contracts?  This means the game won't devolve into a griefer gank-fest.
  Accept the contract: Once a contract is accepted, the bounty's name is revealed can track the target, the name remains unknown. A bounty hunter can only have a set number of bounty contracts active at one time and this does not preclude others from gaining the same contract. There should be some potential for competition after all. Also there is no auto tracking built in at best a proximity beep.
  Completing the bounty: The bounty hunter kills the target and gains the full bounty amount.  A bounty should be completed within a time frame (say a month) of being accepted or the bounty hunter will suffer a penalty (e.g. monetary loss and/or temporary loss of skills). Likewise the target could suffer a temporary loss of skills. This is a broad outline of a system and definitely still needs details filled in, but as you can see from the earlier examples, a bounty system is far from easy and straight forward.
 
Do you like what you see here? Do you have ideas for a bounty system? Feel free to discuss.
 
P.S. A further insightful video on the subject.

No wheeled vehicles. Hovercraft will be the ground vehicles. Wheeled vehicles could be possible in a later expansion after release.

With strong authentication, you indeed cannot brut-force the password.
Though, even the largest botnet won't find a 22 chars password before a very long time:
-> Combinations amount for a 22 long password with numbers, lower and uppercase characters are about (10+26+26)^22
-> Divide by 60*60*24*365 and you obtain something like 9 x 10^30 years (at ten requests per second).
-> Even with thousands of machines, it will take ages... and that's not even counting special chars.
-> Anyway, you will DDOS the game faster than you will find a correct password.
 
2FA (two factors authentication) does prevent you from phishing attempts and is a good security practice.
However, 2FA or not, you should never give your password to anyone, even if a verified NQ employee requests it.
The only exception is if a US customs officer asks you to unlock your account (you may refuse, but it is probably not a good idea). In this case, make sure to change all your passwords whenever possible (yes, I said "ALL").
 
Regards,
Shadow

I would like to point out that the alpha version which will be available in September is a testing phase and will not be a complete version of the game. If you want to help test the game then you'll enjoy it, but if you're looking for the finalized, finished product that won't be out till the end of 2018

Hi everyone,
 
Here is the official stance of Novaquark regarding the wiki made on Gamepedia. We launched the wiki on this platform with the goal in mind to let the Community fill/improve/complete it. we really thank  all those who have already participated in it. However, the wiki was never meant to reference player-created content (hence organization descriptions). It's made to describe official content, game mechanics and possible emergent gameplay.
 
Here are the reasons for our stance:
 
1) To keep some meaning for each website.
- The wiki is there for the gameplay and the game mechanics and the official content.
- The community portal is the place for all the community-created content (as it will evolve a lot with the arrival of a dedicated web developer joining the team soon).
 
2) If we start to include Organizations description, we will have to do it for every organization or none of them.
Referencing a few organizations will raise a ton of issues while referencing will gave the wiki contributors an unreasonable amount of work.
 
3) To keep a certain neutrality and peace on the wiki.
We aren't blind or naive. The moment some player-created content (especially organizations description or history) is included on the wiki, it will become a battlefield and we don't want that. The wiki is not made nor designed for that. Remember what happened recently on the Community Portal with a system not (yet) fully implemented to take into account attempts of sabotage.
 
So for all these reasons, we don't want to see Organization pages appearing on the Gamepedia wiki.
 
Other wiki mentioned in this topic are, in our opinion, not relevant examples:
- World of Warcraft is a theme park MMORPG where Guilds are not in direct competition (sure, there are Battlegrounds and Arenas for PVP, but there is no reason to reduce the visibility of any guild, while there can be in sandbox MMORPGs like EVE Online or Dual Universe).
- No Man’s Sky is not a MMORPG. Not even Multiplayer, so there are even less reasons for this case to go wrong.
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

Hello beautiful people I just published a new article on Outpost Zebra. This week I decided to demonstrate my work flow for concepting a space ship. 
 
I go over some useful tools and a few tips. And I hope it might be of use to someone. ?
 
From concept to final model, designing a space ship.

Hi Blog4life,
 
Last public statement from NQ about alpha is in this post :
Note that it's a "closed" alpha as only ATV and some backers will join first. More information in this post :
Regards,
Shadow
 
 

I don't know how everyone else feels about this, but I would like the ability to start purchasing DAC's now to help with the fundraising. 
 
I'm one of the people who has a high pledge already (Boosted Emerald) and so going to the next level will set me back ~$4000.
 
Instead of doing that, or having to open a second account to pledge, I think it would be useful to be able to pledge in smaller increments by purchasing DAC's now ahead of release.
 
In addition to that, I would love to be able to purchase pledges to give away. I know that technically you're not "buying" Alpha access with a pledge, it's more of a perk and a thank-you for pledging at all. However, I also know there are plenty of people out there who just don't have the financial means to be able to get into Alpha but would be valuable members of the community if they could provide feedback and help to get the word out a bit more.
 
Opening these options up would allow me (and others in my position) to continue to help the fundraising efforts, and to also help bring more people into the community. 
 
 
tl;dr : 

- I want to be able to purchase DAC's now to help with Fundraising
- I want to be able to purchase pledges as gifts to give away to help with Fundraising and to bring more people into the community. 

Update: 8/3/17
I added a "No Text" option and a "3-monitor size" option as well!
Added GREEN version.
Added RED version.


CHECK OUT THIS AWESOME WALLPAPER I MADE FOR FUN!  Go ahead and download it and stuff.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xPywE

Here's a preview (very low res).  Let me know what you think and if I can improve it in anyway, thanks peeps.
 
 

"Image Deleted"

We may have not gotten along, but that's no reason for me not to wish you farewell (unlike some here) and gl on your endeavors in both; your personal and gaming life, mmtheboss...
 
 
Godspeed, mate!
 
Cheers,
Comrademoco

Could we just agree to leave this topic alone? He made his statement, that's enough.
 
We really don't need every other person jumping in here to comment and starting yet another toxic fight on the forums.
 
It's not healthy looking to new people coming into the game.
 
There are plenty of other places to discuss this whole fiasco, creating more drama here isn't going to reflect well on anyone. 

html5 and JavaScript are a lot better and easier without the need to install any plugin.
Java applets were also used but are likely to disappear like Flash.
 
Regards,
Shadow

FAQ
 
 
If there are no Aliens, who are the "Elarians"?
- I didn't want to use any groups that currently exist in the community portal so as to not upset anyone or to make people feel like I singled them out for any particular reason. For that reason you will find that I make up many groups in the stories that follow. They may sound like Alien names, but think of them as Org names or Alliance names.
  What does "proceed Alpha Whiskey Papa Tango at Five Point Impulse" mean?
- It is my take on ATC lingo in space when docking at a very large station. Alpha Whiskey Papa Tango would be the path that the New Dawn was given as a course to follow towards their assigned bay.
  What is "Meru?"
- All I'm going to say now is that Mt Meru is the center of all the universes (physical, spiritual, metaphysical) in Hindu Cosmology. 
  Why should I join Meru in the game?
- I'll be honest - RP. I'm trying to develop a background for the religion, so that not just Meru can take from it, but so that maybe others will find something they like about it to be inspired from.
  Why does this take place in the future? How does that set the background for a current-day organization?
- You'll have to wait for the future posts to find out.
  Will these stories only be about Meruism? 
- No.
   Help! I don't understand what -insert word here- means
- Please refer to the glossary in the next post. If you don't find what you're looking for, let me know and I'll add it
  Your story sucks.
- Okay
  This is all becoming a little encyclopedic
- Sorry?
  You shouldn't have taken up so many posts for this thread!
- I foresee needing the space. I apologize.
  I'm in Meru, now what? 
- Follow along as the updates come out and you'll see.
  Is there a discord for Meru? 
- Yes. 
  Can I be in Meru?
- Of course, anyone is welcome to join the organization. If you're asking if you can be in the story, sure but I feel weird about writing other peoples backgrounds.
  How can I help?
- Just kidding, nobody ever asks that.

Hello there,
 
I've written a short fan fiction about ATV that I would like to share: https://goo.gl/QaDnT4.
I tried to keep things in line with all the lore and with ATV discussions while still pushing a bit of  my own imagination in it.
I hope you will like it :).
 
Special thanks to Comrademoco, Lethys, Kurock and Halo381 for their inestimable help in proof reading the different versions of the story. Your suggestions were really appreciated.
 
Regards,
Shadow