Lethys

To me PvP is one of the most important themes of the game. Be it the market, PvP, CvC. I'm fine with only having PvP at release, we KNOW that CvC comes at some point. I'm not one of those morons, trying a game and start a flamewar because some shit is not in the game I would want to have. If it comes at some point, no objections.
 
Edit: they said all along that CbC would not make it in the release but was a stretch goal, that's good. They are honest. They need to keep the playerbase updated and they need to be frank with us

I'm from eve, mostly.
 
I do in eve: Explore and kill, keep the balance. You know, remind the bears of the dangers, having fun, messing around.
 
I'll quote a special snowflake with what I will do in DU:
"Same principle here, just without the dick."

To me PvP is one of the most important themes of the game. Be it the market, PvP, CvC. I'm fine with only having PvP at release, we KNOW that CvC comes at some point. I'm not one of those morons, trying a game and start a flamewar because some shit is not in the game I would want to have. If it comes at some point, no objections.
 
Edit: they said all along that CbC would not make it in the release but was a stretch goal, that's good. They are honest. They need to keep the playerbase updated and they need to be frank with us

Like it.
 
It should be hard to do stuff. Lone wolves have to live with the fact that they can't just build a space station. And the reward for doing so as a community/org will be much greater. Nothing to add here, like your thoughts

I am also very skeptical about this game and if they really manage to pull this off. I don't believe right out anything they say and I thought long about backing (did Ruby though)
 
BUT
 
- The devs punch out new videos nearly every week
- They do interviews as often as possible (and coherently explain the same things)
- They LISTEN to the community (we have now a private discussion running with 26 participants) and ask them for their opinion
- They just had a meeting with 75 people coming to Paris and play the game
 
That meeting was just now, so you have to wait until people get home, edit their videos, upload them. They will come. Waiting you must learn, young padawan.

[Dontgiveafuck]

At first I thought this was some post about the general respect and manners people should behave on discord / forum, but then I read that you meant DU with that.
You need admins there (and in DU) who ban inappropriate language and harassments. Some people really overshoot the thin line between in-game mocking, griefing and a real, true harassment. I mock people for fun in-game, grief them and have fun with them - but all IN character because I'm a pirate. This should be endorsed by the EULA, because it adds metagame. I can't stand people though who get personal. Like you know, memes/harassments about the government in Germany from 1940. Living in Austria where such statements are banned and under strict prosecution, I think those should also be banned in-game because, surprise surprise, it's a game.
 
So here we go:
 
I, LETHYS, will track the goal of harassing, griefing and mocking around with players in-game on a more or less friendly basis where no fucks are given. I will never mock them because of their race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. If offered a chance, I will have slaves, burn down cities and kill people as I see fit.

At first I thought this was some post about the general respect and manners people should behave on discord / forum, but then I read that you meant DU with that.
You need admins there (and in DU) who ban inappropriate language and harassments. Some people really overshoot the thin line between in-game mocking, griefing and a real, true harassment. I mock people for fun in-game, grief them and have fun with them - but all IN character because I'm a pirate. This should be endorsed by the EULA, because it adds metagame. I can't stand people though who get personal. Like you know, memes/harassments about the government in Germany from 1940. Living in Austria where such statements are banned and under strict prosecution, I think those should also be banned in-game because, surprise surprise, it's a game.
 
So here we go:
 
I, LETHYS, will track the goal of harassing, griefing and mocking around with players in-game on a more or less friendly basis where no fucks are given. I will never mock them because of their race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. If offered a chance, I will have slaves, burn down cities and kill people as I see fit.

Yeah well if the 'good guys' let the scammer be then there will be anarchy. So in fact it's up to YOU to stop scammers and show them, that they shouldn't mess with you. You really should see both sides and not always cry about bad boyz

Austria here, so maybe I start an organization followed by germans....oh wait

I would give you a like, but I'm out of likes.

I believe the Kickstarter DAC protection suggestion + The mechanics of PLEX from Eve Online for DAC's purchased after launch == A Good Compromise

Okay. 

In-game money are not physical , unlootable = Currency

DACs are not physical , unlootable = Premium Currency.

What kind of subscription game gives out Premium Currency? None, as PAY2WIN is the realm of Free-to-Play games.

 

I can see both sides to this debate, but I am having a hard time trying to verbalize a reason for why I think DAC's should be stealable. 
 
I think my concern lies more with the effect this could have in the future. I am concerned that this may lead to a situation further down the road where more items are can't be stolen, and it creates a secondary market of items that can be used as a store of value without risk of theft. 
 
If the intention in the future is to be able to allow for player-run banks, doing that would of course mean opening up the risk of banks defaulting and players losing all of their money. It's part of the inherent risk in a player operated bank. But if a player operated bank decided to store its value in something like a DAC, they could be reasonably sure that they could maintain a certain store of value backing up their business, and also operate without fear of losing that store of value. That would be a negative impact to the sandbox nature of running a business like that in game.
 
On the other hand, I can see why people would prefer to not risk DAC's being stolen.
 
I think that Eve Online handles this problem quite well, in that PLEX don't have to be redeemed into a character account when they are bought, you can redeem them into any station that you're docked in. Also PLEX can be activated remotely, so you never really have a reason for needing to transport it. Thus, PLEX can be stolen, but there aren't a whole lot of good reasons why you should ever be in the situation where your PLEX could be stolen from you. 
 
I suppose this decision hints at a larger feature, as I'm getting the impression that this decision was made due in part to the nature of the way that Markets work ingame. I'm presuming that this means that Markets can be stolen from, seeing as how their inventories are physically stored locally. Thus if markets can be "robbed", then it would making selling DAC's on markets extremely dangerous, and in a way not really worth it for the sellers. They'd be taking on most (if not all) of the risk.
 
 
I guess I'll finish this with a question for Novaquark:
 
- Can markets be stolen from? Robbed, destroyed, attacked, etc?
 
 
If that is a planned feature, then stopping the theft of DAC's was a smart decision overall I think. If it's not a planned feature, I'm having a hard time seeing why this decision was made, seeing as how DAC's could otherwise be stored safely in markets just like in Eve. 
 
I'll withhold my judgement until we hear more about that aspect of gameplay. 

We do have now. DACs not physical items. Let'a see how soon before piracy becomes obsolete and the game dies

I guess Archonius doesn't want to use his brain then -shrug-

Do contracts for others
Gain money
Go to market hub
Buy ship
Profit (at least for the seller)

You get ONE to move around freely and one is on the arkship

That's how you roll it baby

Tie the item loss upon death with the distance of the player's "dead" avatar to the nearest Resurrection Node.


You die near a Resurrection Node? Very small chance of dropping an item, or possibly none. This will negate spawn camping. This also makes carrier ships carrying Resurrection Nodes a thing, as you don't want your fighter pilots losing their equipment in a battle. Ergo, the distance determined as "near", should be in the collective clusters of a star system.


You die very very far from a Resurrection Node? High chance of losing all your items. Will make even small, single-seater couriers careful, as even they will lose items they carry on their person upon death.


The boundaries should be the nearest possible distance to a Resurrection Node and the Maximum Distance the equation takes into account. Everything between, is a statistical adaptation between those boundaries.

The equation, may look something like this :


( iV / MIV ) x ( R / MR )


iV = item Volume.
MIV = Maximum Inventory Volume.
R = Distance from Resurrection Node
MR = Maximum Distance (Point of 100% chance of losing an item at its full chance to drop)

The formula above, tells us a few things. The bigger the item, the higher the chance of it being lost, BUT, the closer you are to the Resurrection Node, the smaller the inherit chance of losing said item.


Example :

DISCLAIMER :

(Numbers are speculatory and kept round for simplicity's sake, if you can't understand the nature of an example, please, feel free to look it up in the dictionary. If you can't understand how percentages are derived, please, feel free to go back to first grade.)

Item Volume = 25 Volume Units.
Maximum Inventory Volume = 50 Volume Units (size of your personal inventory)
R = 10,000 Km from the Resurrection Node.
MR = 100,000 Km from the Resurrection Node.


Given the formula of ( iV / MIV ) x [ ( R / MR ) + 100% ], we get :


(25 / 50 ) x [ ( 10,000 / 100,000)

(50%) x ( 1/10) = 5% chance to lose the item.


That item was taking half your inventory's volume size, but given you died really close to the Resurrection Node, that chance went WAY down. It's still, a 5% chance, but let's see what happens for all those other items you carried on you.



Let's say a Kadpack (or Nanopack or magic satchel of material compression from the Lore ) has 1 Volume unit as a size, but it also contains a metric heckton of materials in it. You may be thinking "so.... is it gonna be rarer to drop than the Untamed Blade was to drop in Vanilla World of Warcraft?"

No, not really. KadPacks can follow the same ruleset, although, we add a modifier of their maximum capacity material-wise in the formula, as well as take into account the material in question (e.g. Gold is twice as dense as iron ,hence, gold may have twice the drop chance of iron).


 Item Drop Ratio Formula adapted for KadPacks 


[ ( iV / MIV  ) ( ( MC / MMC ) + 100% ) MQF ] x [ ( R / MR ) + 100% ]

MQF = Material Qualifty Factor ( for the sake of the example, assume Atomic Number as a factor).
MMC = Maximum Material Capacity
MC = Material Capacity
iV = item Volume.
MIV = Maximum Inventory Volume.
R = Distance from Resurrection Node
MR = Maximum Distance (Point of 100% chance of losing an item at its full chance to drop)


Let's say that for some reason, you elected to be an intergalactic moisture farmer, ready to sell your spiffy hydrogen to the Intergalactic Bureaucracy (the faction formerly known as Prince-- I mean Cinderfal Syndicate).

You are on your merry way, being stacked to the brim with so many hydrogen-full KadPacks to constitute as your very own star if one of them lit up.


Suddenly, a Honey Badger appears ( he's probably a BOO zealot ). 


Your hydrogen is on the line and you wage how much you much of it you may lose when the Honey Badger gets to you. With the aforementioned formula and my ceaseless quest in drinking more - thinking less, we may got the answer.


You know your distance from the tntegalactic bureaucracy's trading hub ( the place known as Emberstone, until some german started a barbecue on the streets and the place got its actual, more concise name, Baconstone). The distance, it's 30,000 Km. KadPacks are 1 Volume unit worth, but they are full of hydrogen. The formula, is something like this :


[ ( iV / MIV) ( ( MC / MMC ) + 100% ) MQF ] x [ ( R / MR ) + 100% ]

[ ( 1 / 50 ) ( ( 10,000,000 / 10,000,000 ) + 100% ) 1 ] x [ ( 30,000 / 100,000 ) + 100%) ]

[ ( 1 / 50 ) ( 200% ) 1 ) x ( 130% ) = 5.2 % of losing a KadPack worth of that sweet sweet Hydrogen.


Don't worry though, you got a lot of of them after all. If the material was something actually rare like Rhenium, the aforementioned result would be.



[ ( 2% ) ( 100% + 100% ) 75 ) x ( 130% ) = 400%


That's exactly how screwed you are if you were to transfer Rhenium on your own. You are guaranteed to lose the KadPack with the Rhenium voxels in it and make Cybrex the most rich kid in all of Babylon.



Tactical Advice : If a Honey Badger zealot stops you on your merry way to Baconstone, you may wager paying a toll to them. Pirates are lazy and will rather be collecting the easy cash rather than chase you, kill you, salvage your wreck and then sell them. Ain't nobody got time for spreadsheets, especially Honey Badgers. Unless you are a moisture farmer and are selling Hydrogen to mermaids. At that point you should DEFINITELY say something rude to the pirates. Trust me, it will work fiiiiiine. Say something like "fite me bro 1v1 irl".






This way, the mentality of Risk/Reward is maintained. You wanna play safe and trade within your faction's borders? You are free to do so, but people won't pay you more for such jobs. You want to be a spiffy smuggler, trading between factions, having to take long journeys in deep space that are dangerous? You get paid more, as you run the risk of being intercepted and losing all your assets on your ship and person.



P.S. : I will be expecting the hate-mail from mad carebears at the Dual Universe Discord channel, where you can flame me in alt accounts all you want.

 

It's a sandbox. Why punish killers with debuffs? Why not just setting up a player run police to kill those people first? Why not defending your dudes yourself? Why not accepting contracts miners set up to protect them? Why not hiring Mercs? Why not being smart and think about safety before you go mining?
 
All above can be copy/past to building stuff, mining, running around, exploring, etc.
 
With debuffs on the killer you only generate a society that will attack in waves or with such huge numbers that those debuffs don't count. PLUS you are killing EVERY emergent gameplay! So no, that's just a totally bad idea and against the whole idea of a sandbox with emergent gameplay.

Well 'scaled appropriately' is a wide definition.
 
Scale our universe down by a factor 100 (earth dia 12k - DU ~ 100) or even 1000, even FTL (lets say 20c) won't get you anywhere near the galactic center  which is some 25k light years away. So it would only be 250 LY in this model and you make that trip in 12,5 years - not cool.
 
If you want a vast galaxy, you can do it. There are estimated 20k stars within 100ly from the sun (so 1ly here - trip: 18 days). Which would be enough of course, but players would still only inhabit a fraction of one galaxy. You only get to know the direct neighbours of our sun. I think that this kind of model would suffice, because you just have to have the feeling of a vast, dangerous, enormous and living galaxy.
Travelling further will just not be possible, it would take (even with 20c) too long. Depends what they do with those probes though...

It's a sandbox. Why punish killers with debuffs? Why not just setting up a player run police to kill those people first? Why not defending your dudes yourself? Why not accepting contracts miners set up to protect them? Why not hiring Mercs? Why not being smart and think about safety before you go mining?
 
All above can be copy/past to building stuff, mining, running around, exploring, etc.
 
With debuffs on the killer you only generate a society that will attack in waves or with such huge numbers that those debuffs don't count. PLUS you are killing EVERY emergent gameplay! So no, that's just a totally bad idea and against the whole idea of a sandbox with emergent gameplay.

It's a sandbox. Why punish killers with debuffs? Why not just setting up a player run police to kill those people first? Why not defending your dudes yourself? Why not accepting contracts miners set up to protect them? Why not hiring Mercs? Why not being smart and think about safety before you go mining?
 
All above can be copy/past to building stuff, mining, running around, exploring, etc.
 
With debuffs on the killer you only generate a society that will attack in waves or with such huge numbers that those debuffs don't count. PLUS you are killing EVERY emergent gameplay! So no, that's just a totally bad idea and against the whole idea of a sandbox with emergent gameplay.

There have been some topics around this area, particularly with building ships, but I feel that the this is a concept valid for the entire game. In a huge civilization-building, player-interactions-driven game, I feel that having people skilled in just certain areas will eventually lead to a more enjoyable experience for players. And this is something that many people may disagree with upon first hearing it, but find in the long run that they think it works really well. Or maybe they'll hate it! I want to share my opinion on it though, and I ask that those reading, who may think it's stupid, give it a chance. Also remember that there are two sides to this, neither are correct, and both are valid. It's just opinion based.
 
If anyone is familiar with the game series LittleBigPlanet, the first and second iterations for the PS3 played a huge role in a season of my life. They were the main games I played for months, and I had a friend who was into it as I was. Anyway if you don't know the game, it's not important. Basically, you use some basic tools to make little minigame-ish things (I'll refer to them as levels).
 
Anyway, in the first game, there were a few levels and creators that stood out significantly from all the rest, because they were fantastic (anyone that knows the name "Lockstitch" off the top of their head is a freaking awesome person). Me and my friend, we knew exactly what tools were available, and what you could and "couldn't" do. But some few levels stood out to us because, as people who knew the game inside and out, we had no clue how they some of these things were accomplished. A fair few levels were outstanding and amazing due to their mechanics and visuals.
 
When LittleBigPlanet 2 arrived, there were tons and tons of new tools added. These were fun and great to be sure, but they made everything that made the old levels special, not special. Because, all of the fantastic things that had been done before (in the first game) were now basic and easy because there were tools to do them (in the second game). This made a lot of great content a lot more common. Which of course was a good thing. And there were certainly levels that still pushed the boundaries. But overall, by making cool and unique things easy, it made great content a lot more common and thereby a lot less special.
 
If Dual Universe makes building easy, and mining easy, and combat easy, and exploration easy... Well, then there are going to be lots of amazing ships, and lots of miners, and lots of warriors and lots of explorers. You may say, "that sounds great!" But, remember my exceedingly dramatic and emotional story. When you make it easy, it stops being special.
 
In a game like Dual Universe, where player interactions and jobs and organizations are such a key factor, it shouldn't be easy to do anything. It shouldn't be easy to switch from a being an efficient miner working for a large corporation to a stupendous explorer finding rare resources on hostile worlds at the edge of the known galaxy. Sure, you can switch job titles and do whatever you want whenever you want, because it's a game! I'm just saying you shouldn't be able to switch from being outstanding at one thing, to suddenly outstanding at another. This allows individuals the opportunity to stand out, and be known for something. "Hey he's that guy that makes that line of super efficient yet powerful ships. I don't know how he comes up with that stuff." "What, you want to send Xx_M8_SLAYR_xX to go hunting for that anomaly? He's an architect, someone else will find it way sooner!" If someone wants to be known for something, then they go for that something and only that and they end up being great at it, and known for it. Lots of people will choose to not do this, which allows the few that do to stand out.
 
I can't really say much else that I haven't said already. I believe I've gotten my point across. Regarding designing ships or stations, it's easier to see how an individual could be better at it than most others. Mining or exploration expertise could be accomplished, not just by having better equipment or skills, but also by there being hidden techniques that people just have to learn by doing it. Thank you for reading and please try and be civil in your response, as, once again, both opinions are valid!
 
 
When everyone's special, no one is...
And if you're good at something, never do it for free!