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StaticAstraeus

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Everything posted by StaticAstraeus

  1. The scanner was introduced/created for the old mining system and it made sense back then: scans told you what and how much was in a tile; scanning over time showed depletion status; it was useful and made sense, even the time it took to scan was acceptable (to me) since you got something out of it every time. However, the feature was repurposed with little thought: you still get a scan data stamp even though it completely meaningless (values never change) The irony of it all, and what really makes me laugh, is that the ore distribution appears to follow a "heat map" style distribution that is suspiciously similar to the mining minigame, but you don't have the tools to hunt down the right location with the scanner. Silly, isn't it? The mining minigame is not all that engaging on the extractors, but it would be an actual play loop on the scanner. Of course that would make it to easy, since the resources don't shift over time... at least on a planetary scale; and yet they jump around like demented rabbits on every tile every 24 hours... go figure But hey, what do I know? I stopped playing after the first month ended. Don't get me wrong though, I still want to see the game succeed, but as the saying goes "grab a chair; you'll get tired if you wait standing up"
  2. It sounds fairly realistic to me: You spend a fair amount of time trying to get things done in a semi-fun way, realise there's not enough hours in the day to actually do what you want to do because everything is time-gated to oblivion and then you lose all your progress. You have to appreciate the irony
  3. So, that was the "Exciting News" we were supposed to look forward to? Two things that by all rights should have been in during beta, and a whole bunch of fluff (emotes, suit skins and pets?) And this will happen in 2 months? One has to wonder just how dull things are around the NQ office when this is considered "Exciting" But hey, good on you for the grid snapping and the scrap thing. Better late than never and all that. Guess I'll try again in another year.
  4. Right, right... "Emergent Gameplay" was it? There are many things I could say to that, but this is not the place, and the time has long since passed. @DU: Good luck with that, you'll need it.
  5. A week into the two weeks free trial and a few things spring to mind: - I miss the old mining system (planet side), but I quite like the mining units. - The Voxel precision tool is great: so many nagging bits in my old designs that I had given up on can now be fixed; big thumbs up on this one - Schematics still don't make much sense from a lore point of view and it adds yet another time gate, but the ability to trade them is nice. - Haven is a "butt-ugly" moon... I miss my Sanctuary tile (seriously though, was this moon designed with the express intent to make people want to venture out to the other planets? Because it certainly gives me that vibe) - Building still rocks (the voxel side of it anyway, for everything else the game is lagging its competitors quite badly; some more effort on this front will be necessary if you want to stay relevant in the market) - Can't comment on the PvP side. DU's oversimplified approach to it has never appealed to me. - The new/updated tutorials are well done... but you might want to guide new players to them a bit more vigorously. I've seen the same questions pop up on the help channel so many times over the last week it's actually amusing by this point (soon to become annoying and then exasperating) Can't say I'll stick with it after the 2 weeks are done. There are too many time gates and not enough content when compared with other titles that do not have recurring subscription fees. This is not meant as an attack or a call for action, it is merely an observation. In conclusion, I would say the game has (or is) a solid foundation. The question is: "What do you plan on building on top of it?"
  6. A slight rebrand would certainly not hurt the game's odds. Granted, I haven't played since 0.23, but my Steam Wishlist has been updated recently. This game doesn't have much going on when compared to other titles (sad, but unfortunately true): The building is very nice. The mining is functional after the changes, but it's nothing special (the old system was better in my opinion; I quite enjoyed it) The economy is "insert opinion here". Industry is passable, but hardly inspiring in its current form. There are no survival style aspects to the game at all (no, I'm not counting pvp) And PvP is not particularly interesting; before people go on a rampage after this comment I'm referring to the inability to create ships with proper teeth to let you rip into your enemies without multi-crew in a latency dominated environment. Also, the clunky nature of the interface and how combat works in general is just plain off-putting. Jumpgate got PvP right back in 2001, it can't be that difficult to do it these days. I'm not sure what DU has, but it's not PvP; it's just frustration with extra steps (in my opinion). And before people brand me a "carebear", let me build a proper ship without flight/fight restrictions and you can drop all safezones for all I care. Give me a chance to fight back against gankers/griefers and not just be their "content" and I'm all good. Lose the safezones with the current game mechanics and you can kiss any chances of success goodbye.
  7. Oh good lord, is this change for real? Schematics are data, why would they be consumed? Limited use Copyright enforced by the AI overlord? That's just plain silly. This is what we (in the business of actually developing schematics for a living) would usually call an "over-engineered solution"... and no, that's not a compliment. You want to limit the amount of stuff a player can make in a set period of time? Add power requirements to the damned machinery! you want to make 100 screws? that will cost you 1kWh (random figure) you want to assemble an engine? that will cost you 10kWh (another random figure) you want to smelt several tons of ore? that will cost you 100kWh (random again, but higher than assembly since it is a energy intensive process in real life) Get a generator in game that produces a set amount of energy, gate how many you can have/deploy with skills. There you go, job done. A simple idea inspired by real life that opens up no end of possibilities for further expansion: energy trade; energy storage; energy harvesting... and so on.
  8. The reason is quite simple (at least from where I sit): perception People like rewards, not punishments, and you would need a ludicrous supply of "suspension of disbelief" to ever see paying taxes as a rewarding experience. Just think about it. If energy system were in place, it would still be borderline work. And yet, that would be deemed acceptable by many. It's the difference between a rewarding activity and a punishing one. The irony here is that if they had a spun a tale (lore) around it and given an in-game justification for the system, the fallout would have been much smaller. The idea of taxation makes sense on the main planet, as long as it goes towards supporting some service that provides value/fun, and yet it makes little sense on the fringe areas where law may not even apply. A "problem" is an opportunity to develop a system further, not a dust-mite to be bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer
  9. And this is where your argument falls apart, at least as far as I'm concerned. The only limits on "what you can become" in real life, is your ambition, hard work and determination. Every time you tell yourself "I could never do that", you create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Disclaimer: this obviously does not extent to achievements that are not within your biological abilities, but anything other than that is fair game.
  10. It could do, I'm honestly not sure. The first time I came across the term was during the EVE beta, so you should take my definition with a "pinch of salt" It's almost like trying to figure out where "lol" first came from
  11. That's just how PvP works though. You can't paint a bullseye on your backside and expect not to get shot. There are plenty of people out there that get their jollies from hunting/hurting others, especially those who can't fight back. If you think this is unfair, you would have loved Jumpgate
  12. It's a term that originated in the early Eve days (as far as I'm aware). Where you go out and blow the stuffing out of npc pirate ships. Ratting was the act of destroying ships that were in the act of piRatting. Personally, it always sounded weird to me.
  13. While I would not class myself as a pure programmer/developer, it is one of the tasks I often have to delve into. As such, I do not believe the endeavour is beyond the capabilities of developers that work for NQ. Is it beyond managerial aspirations? More than likely, but it could be done. At the end of the day, in the engineering world, anything is possible... as long as the person in control wants to put in the effort.
  14. It would have a better chance against Empyrion, and I'm afraid even that would be a losing proposition at this point in time. Against SC? The words "statistically insignificant" would be a major understatement.
  15. You could make an entire game around the R&D aspect of stuff... but here's my simplified suggestion. You build/buy a "research" unit/station. This unit is tied to the Ark ship's mainframe (for lore purposes) You can run research jobs that take a set amount of time and resources plus require access to the mainframe (this access can be monetised, since you are using a service) To research the more exotic stuff you need existing tech to already be known. And as a stretch goal, you can run projects to try and improve the statistics of the parts at the cost of something else (I'm thinking SWG crafting system now, that was ace)
  16. They could just add a power supply mechanism (which has been suggested before add nauseum). It's weird how everything just magically works. Not only would this add to the realism, and limit how much you can support before you add more generating capacity, you could tie in the reactor fuel to use some "catalyst" that is only sold by our AI overlord: As in, you can craft your own fuel, but you need this "special" add on. Basic reactors could run on standard fuel, but you can only have so many. You want a full on power plant to support your mega factory/strip-mining operation? Pay up! That would drain some quanta from the economy, and introduce something new for a change.
  17. Let me design and build a ship I can have fun PVping in and I'll go PvP all the way (my first online game was Jumpgate - hello to anyone that knows what that is) Unfortunately, what we have here is a mockery of PvP. I can't built a single decent small ship without having to resort to using the remote control, and that has always felt like a cheat to me. A standard seat should be able to support at least 2 guns, radar(s) and whatever other basic systems are needed. Add more seats for more stuff, by all means. But let me build at least a basic ship. Also, it would be nice to have booster modules to give more processing capacity to ships; wants more weapons (or whatever) add more tech to support it. It's not like the game can't support it. It's just a weird design decision. What exists at the moment is too restrictive. Not everyone wants or has the benefit of multi-crewing a ship. The feature is nice to have, but it should not be the default option.
  18. I was talking more from a technical stand point (like the tunnel issues), but yes I can see how having old inactive accounts hogging tiles is an issue. It's more about gameplay than infrastructure? Taxation seems like an uninspired way to go about it though: anyone that's been at it long enough won't even notice it (deep pockets) and it isn't very lore friendly (not that there is a lot of that to go around) Adding a cap to how many territories you can hold would be easier. You could play it off as some sort of administration "skill" that only lets you handle so much bureaucracy. You want more tiles past a certain number? Pay up for the training to increase your cap. Cost rises exponentially, or something like that. Now the fun bit would be if you had power mechanics associated with the TCU's. (a long standing dream at this point) Loss of power due to inactivity doesn't lose the territory, but the protection. So wildcat miners can swoop in.
  19. I started up a month before 0.23 hit... I had a blast, but then I had to walk away; looking at my workshop and knowing how much effort it would take to get the blueprints needed to do my designs was just heart-breaking. But that's in the past. My sub stopped that day, but I've kept an eye on the forums since. When I saw the announcement about the changes there was one thought that went through my head: so they fixed one issue that spelled doom for the long term prosperity of the game (resource depletion) and replaced it with a new problem that threatens the short term life of the game? (taxation... now don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed in principle, but it doesn't make much sense lore wise, especially on the fringe planets) The bit about the massive overhead of all the tunnels made me chuckle a little; I figured that one out 5 minutes into the game; It must have been a facepalm moment when the realisation finally hit home, but they could have fixed it easily by just having a process that runs at set intervals on the dataset and "collapses" tunnels. After all, you wouldn't open up a mineshaft in real life and expect it to stay open without reinforcing the tunnel system, it would just collapse. The rules are simple: "x" distance from surface collapses after certain time; If a player construct is close by then do not collapse. I don't really understand what the taxation is supposed to fix, so I won't comment further on that. Most of my stuff was on sanctuary anyway. I did build a house on a nice beach property that I'll miss if it goes. the tile was hollowed out before I ever got there, but the view was fantastic ? /Just another observer... for now
  20. Edit failure, meh... Additional point: any server intensive checks during the editing process could, in theory, be scheduled to run only at the end, when one "compiles" the design. Any errors would be highlighted before you can complete the process. Potentially alleviating any ongoing server strain the design process inflicts. Though this last point is speculative since I don't know what checks are carried out in real time.
  21. We have those pods that let us play tourist. Could just be a spin-off from that to start with. It should not be a separate game mode though. I'm certainly not advocating for anything of the sort. Ideally it would be launched and managed from within the normal game session. Furthermore, it will be an absolute requirement if/when the concept of structural integrity is introduced and ships stop being a collection of parts stuck together with spit and good intentions. Floating voxels may be fine in a simulated design environment, but its down right immersion breaking to see that when gravity is supposed to be a thing
  22. Q: What do you need for any economy to flourish? A: Product, and lots of it. And I mean diversity, not just quantity. The more people that can design stuff, the better the economy will be. Depending on where the designers are, you even end up forcing trade to happen, because people will either need to get their backside to the market selling stuff or have it shipped. You don't design an economy solely around the supply of parts, you design it around end products that people want/need to buy, even if they already have something that does the same thing. You want the economy to succeed? You need designers wiling to put in the time to create stuff you will want to buy. Do you really think everyone who can do that (and do it well) will want to grind so that you can feel better about yourself? Or, will they want to immerse themselves in the creative process as much as possible? I can't speak for anyone else, but personally I can lose entire days/weeks while in "the creative zone"... and mining or other activities are not in my creative zone. Just because a designer is not flying around does [not mean] he/she does not contribute... unless they have no interest in selling their creations, in which case they still pay a sub, so no loss there as far as NQ is concerned (not optimal in any way, but not the end of the world either).
  23. As someone who designs stuff for a living (using a plethora or very expensive design and simulation tools) I support the idea of creative mode. In fact, at this point it's probably the only thing that will bring me back to the game. People who enjoy to play creatively (and only creatively) will not pay to play this game, period. So, not adding it simply deprives the game of subscribers. It's similar to the piracy argument, that if you stop people pirating, they will buy the product instead... they won't. People who enjoy a mix of playstyles (raises hand) need a good mixture of balanced game system (which are currently missing), so this makes little [difference] and is only a bonus for them. You get more selection of stuff to play with without burning through scarce resources during the design phase, and you don't have to mine until you are ready to build it. Sounds great to me.
  24. To be clear, I have no issue with buying access to schematics: historically, people have paid great prices to get access to information they didn't have. However, I don't believe it should be the only path. One should be able to "research" and unlock access. By extension, some high level item schematics should not be purchasable at all, and should only be obtained through research (though that's just the engineer in me speaking) I do take issue with forcing people to group in order to overcome the game system: people should want to group to enjoy the game system. The first option is work, the second is leisure: Identifying were the first one ends and the second begins is an art form.
  25. You mean, they didn't? it's amazing just how much like Empyrion DU is. Truly. Heck if I know who copied of who, but someone did. It's hard to justify that many system design overlaps otherwise. Now if only DU "developed" similar power and CPU constraints, a lot of the issues would simply go away. Fingers crossed.
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