blundertwink

What I mean is that the client's version of reality isn't what matters. Naive games implement a "hit" by detecting if a raycast on my client machine hits an object. If it does, it sends that "hit" to the server, which accepts it as truth because it is the most simple implementation. This "hit" isn't real, though -- because the model I hit might not actually be where my client thinks it is (due to a bad LERPing algorithm, lag, etc.). This is why you can scam the system by artificially increasing lag or unplugging network temporarily -- because that stops syncing the enemy entity, making the model stop, making hitting it easy...and since the server "trusts" client raycasts without validation, it is a cheat. A robust online game doesn't work like that -- it doesn't take any client's raytrace "hit" as truth, it validates it against its own "truth". Programming in multiplayer is like programming with multiple realities or dimensions -- entities live on every client that renders them and trusting any one client's version of events without server validation is always a problem.

Yeah, if they are doing these raycasts in a very naive way that's possible -- but a robust online game doesn't just take the client's opinion that a hit happened and validates it server-side anyway. Still, this goes to show how it isn't as simple as taking what works for mining and using it for combat...and why AVA will likely never be that good -- you need a really robust system built to handle FPS interactions with minimal latency and DU just doesn't have that. One of the many prices they paid for not rolling their own engine nor their own hardware, IMO.

The cost for terrain is much lower not just because it is closer but because it doesn't move due to player input. Even then, DU struggles to perform when there's a lot of people mining! When you have to raycast against a dynamic object, slight lag / sync issues become vastly more important. My position as it exists on the server must be exact; a few hundred MS of lag isn't acceptable and will cause a lot of misses (or it will look like you dodged something that the server thinks should hit you). The other thing with terrain is that it is a very simple mesh -- depending on exactly how the collisions work in DU, raycasting against constructs could be extremely expensive because it has to know if your raycast might pass through some hole in the mesh geometry. Since construct meshes are created from voxels, they might not be that well optimized...and larger/more complex meshes only increase that cost. It can become a performance nightmare really quickly.

Slightly off-topic, but I feel a lot of people especially in the forum don't consider this enough. Casual players are the lifeblood of any subscription-based MMO. They pay the bills for more hardcore players that stress the server 8 hours a day or more. Sub-based products just don't work without them. If this game is limited to ex-eve players it'll never go anywhere -- young gamers and casual players are such a vital demographic. People born the day Eve launched are 18 years old; they haven't played Eve and they don't have the same view of 'hardcore' as some of us older gamers. Casual gamers are something DU needs to survive as a subscription model. I know many people around here will not like changes to make the game more appealing to casual gamers -- but honestly who makes an MMO in 2021 with a game from 2003 as a model and expects it to work commercially?!

DU doesn't render constructs as voxels. Rather, it converts voxels to meshes server-side. That's one of the most fundamental and complex parts of their tech stack. That's one reason why constructs pop-in at the last second instead of loading progressively like a voxel structure could -- it has to jam the whole mesh into the GPU before it renders. So...the performance issues we see with ship battles are not likely voxel-related, at least not directly. I'm sure that their voxel-to-mesh algorithm isn't exactly the most effective at generating efficient meshes and obviously their LOD system needs a lot of work.

I guess my question would be 'why'? It isn't like the markets are meant to be stable at this point. There's plenty of other ways to balance the impact that auto-generated ore has on markets beyond an extra level of complexity that locks trading. So what if it crashes ore prices? They can always tweak the price of schematics etc. to balance it.

These are interesting ideas! They definitely are hardcore concepts, which I have mixed feelings about. High skill ceiling can be fun and extremely rewarding, but IMO it works best when players have ample opportunity to practice -- that means either fighting against NPCs to refine your skill and/or making it easier to reset after any death. If combat is both very high skill and very punishing...that's not going to work in 2021, not as an MMO. The most popular skill-driven competitive games understand that playing against especially high skill people can feel absolutely crappy, which is why they match players based on a rating system. Can't do that in an open-world game. Fair is a very relative concept and is more about player perception than reality. Is it fair to get ganked? It never feels it. Is it fair to fight against someone very skilled as a new player (or simply as someone without great reflexes)? It won't feel like it. By definition, most people are average at combat; not everyone can "just get good" because that's not how skill-based competition works. 100% skill-based competitions rely on matching people of similar skill to feel fair. Even those with 1000s of hours of practice will never be as good as top-tier skilled players, and it won't even feel like a contest. I think high player skill should be a huge factor, but not the only one. IMO, the model you describe here would work better in an instanced competitive game with a rating system more than an MMO in today's industry (I'd play that game).

NQ really needs to understand that battles being boring to watch is not going to work in today's age of streaming. It will deter players from trying the game instead of being a vital well of marketing. If battles aren't interesting to watch, most players won't find them that interesting to participate in either...especially as a gunner. I also agree that combat is too long-ranged. What's the real design reason driving this idea that combatants should only ever be represented as radar dots? Realism? Not a good enough design justification. Also a very likely driver of combat lag (due to high velocities) I think they really need to redesign most of their combat systems...keeping in mind that this isn't 2003 where this style of hardcore combat might have worked in an MMO.

Makes sense to me. All good games require conflict to work. Hell, even Stardew Valley has conflict. Wanting PvP doesn't mean wanting more combat in its current state. NQ needs to understand that they can't design for a hardcore audience as if it were still 2003. There needs to zero "do-nothing" roles like gunners and a lot less asymmetry in ship balance (like Lethys suggests, better defenses for non-combat ships). When people around here say that DU needs PvP to work, IMO they really mean that the game needs conflict to work...and PvP is the most obvious driver of this conflict. It isn't like they're going to add NPCs, hah! There's a billion ways to balance against ganking, which seems to be the main concern with PvP. Getting ganked is never fun, especially if the cost of death is super high as it can be with DU. Again, this can't be the hardcore of 2003, this isn't Eve, and DU won't survive without more scale, which means more mass-appeal, which means combat itself needs overhauls...

For sure. NQ needs a lot more semi-casual players if it wants to have a chance at sub-based monetization. Anything that helps this is to the game's benefit. There are plenty of ways to balance auto-miners without introducing more complexity or even new features. For example, miners could require real infrastructure like power -- they already wanted to make a power mechanic for industry (schematics were their quick and lazy fix). This creates an element of maintenance since power plants likely require fuel (without being too much micro-management) and prevents players from just dumping a miner and getting ore with no effort. Territory war could also play a huge role in balance -- yes you can slap down some basic infrastructure and power, but that wouldn't be enough to defend your claims. Autominers could also add a level of logistics beyond just hauling. Settling near mining outposts that are willing to trade minerals might be more efficient than just buying them at a market. Competition over (hopefully) rare nodes would help drive real conflict, which the game sorely needs. Done correctly (not holding my breath), autominers could add a lot of depth to industry, PvP, logistics, and the economy...but the game needs more foundation before this will really work.

Fair enough! IMO, these players aren't as "powerful" as NQ's drive to turn this ship around and make a buck. The new finance guy at the helm...he isn't going to give two craps about these people. He sure as hell ain't going to give refunds. Like...people understand what Kickstarter is, right? There's no such thing as "promises" in KS -- nothing they say there is remotely binding. KS exists to fund projects. That's it. They don't hand-hold backers to monitor if projects are following the "promises" which aren't binding and they simply won't issue refunds...I'm sure the new CEO understands this very well.

No one should care about the vision of an amateur game designer whose empty promises were never backed by realistic plans. He knew nothing about game design when making "promises" about DU. His "vision" is the reason he's no longer CEO and the reason why this game has struggled so hard to even define its genre. People constantly talk about the role PvP ought to play in this game because JC's inexperienced hand at design never bothered to clarify it for us. As for "promises"...I'd say sorry, but the promises from someone that has no idea what they are doing need to be taken with a grain of salt. We're talking about a commercial product, not some agreement between friends -- there's no such thing as promises. You can call it a "promise" if you want -- I call it a design that won't work and needs to be revised. Changing plans and designs is a reality of this business. Maybe NQ will alienate some of its most ardent backers...but what has adhering to JC's "promises" gotten them so far? Niche within niche, dwindling subscribers, half-baked designs that will never work at scale, and a product whose genre is a mystery even to its most active players.

As always, realism has never and will never be the objective for good video games. That's not how game design works. Realism inspires games, it doesn't mandate game mechanics. For every one point of realism in DU, there are dozens of concepts that are obviously unrealistic...but that's because it's a game. Realism doesn't make a game better because real-life mechanics aren't what makes a game good. We are talking about an MMO -- not a niche space sim that gives us a picture of "real" space battles. That'd be fine for a single player game or small-scale multiplayer game...but we're talking about a sub-based MMO that needs scale to survive. It sure as hell lacks that scale today...and I don't see how it'll ever achieve it being a niche space game with an even more niche model of combat.

This poll hints at the idea that newtonian / physics-based combat just isn't engaging or interesting...I agree with that, but that doesn't mean I want no PvP at all. For all this endless PvP discussion, there's generally not much discussion about the actual mechanics of combat (or lack thereof). Combat sucks in its current form -- they need to revamp combat before PvP will even matter in terms of market appeal...and that's what matters for DU's survival. If DU's style of combat were really so appealing, there'd be a lot more PvP going on and a lot more of it shared in social channels. If PvP was really so fun, people would seek it out despite the safe zones, especially since there's (apparently) nothing to do in DU. There's been like 2 or 3 big PvP events organized by players...they didn't make much of an impact, did they? Not enough to keep people playing. Somehow open world PvP will fix this? How? I see people posting their constructions every single day...but so few PvP videos. PvP or not PvP? It really doesn't matter...not unless you can make a case that combat will actually become engaging vs. a boring lag-fast where you chase radar markers and sit in a gunner chair but don't aim. I get that some people find it exciting, but we're talking about an MMO...one that needs a level of mass-appeal to survive, especially on a subscription-based monetization model.

DU's design is pure chaos -- of course there's a wide divergence between die-hard builders and die-hard PvPers. It's NQ's fault that they decided to make it "only run by players" so that PvP is the only possible avenue for conflict. Like good stories, all games need conflict to be interesting. It could be conflict against the environment trying to survive, against NPCs, or against each other. Conflict is what drives engaging content, not combat. DU's combat model is crappy, frankly. It's a niche within a game that's already too niche for its own good. There's a reason the only social posts about DU are builder creations. When I do see someone posting PvP videos...it reminds me why I don't do more combat. Slow, boring, and if you're an unlucky gunner? An extra side of slow and boring. It's possible to have combat without meaningful conflict -- asymmetrical battles can feel greatly unfair when there's no true conflict, e.g. being ganked or one-shot. The nature of this game means most battles will be asymmetrical -- that's just how it goes when players build their own ships and not everyone has a full crew. Is it realistic? No one cares; well designed games aren't driven by realism. NQ decided to build this game without having a real idea for how to drive conflict. That's like writing a story with no antagonist. There's no simple solution, here...simply adding more opportunity for PvP won't completely work, IMO.

Good luck. You're really committed to keep trying. I hope NQ actually improves first time user experience, because no one should have to try this hard just to play the game they paid for!

Eve launched in 2003; someone born at launch would be 18 (in two weeks). I'm not trying to make everyone feel old, but want to emphasize how wrong it is for DU to emulate Eve in general...because these comparisons seem to come up on every long thread. Eve is almost 18 years old -- what worked for an MMO then won't work for an MMO today. Frankly, NQ needs to attract younger players to survive -- the demographics seem to skew older, and that's not especially healthy for an MMO. I get that the original "vision" was inspired in large part by Eve...but JC is gone now, for good reason, and Eve needs to stop being a model for anything because it's simply out of date -- hardcore back in 2000 isn't the same as hardcore today. I get that DU will always be a niche/hardcore game, but to be a niche MMO it needs to widen its base...and thinking back to a game that was released almost 18 years ago isn't going to lead to success in 2021 and beyond.

No point getting new players until FTUE (first time user experience) is improved. NQ already got a huge crop of new players when beta launched and most have churned by now. If they ran a few million in ads today, it'd be the same exact pattern. I highly doubt they can get new players for less than $7 CPA -- new players probably need to sub at least two months for ROI to be positive. The churn rate is just way too high to scale up advertising.

So there's lots of talk about this feature and about is how easy it is, but let's think about it. First, we need a way to tell if someone is parked on an NQ-owned market -- that's not likely a flag that exists today You also need a firm definition of 'parked' -- does hovering just over the market count as 'parked'? Does it have to touch the market to count, or any idle ship within a market hex is affected? The "parked" bit must be stored server-side, too. Then it needs a timestamp to imprint the 'parked time'. Another server-side data construct they don't have today. What if someone climbs into their construct and moves it an inch? Ideally it is smart enough to know not to reset the timestamp... It needs to query every construct with an elapsed time; it doesn't have to do this often, though (e.g. every 10 or so minutes); but could still be a lot of constructs at scale It needs to push the "deconstructing" state to clients so that clients can render the ship disappearing and free the model from memory. Otherwise you'd be staring at a ship and it'd be gone server-side but still lingering client-side. It also will look very odd if they just vanish without some sort of animation or feedback. What if someone parks their ship then stays inside? Extra logic is required to eject them. On a similar note, what if someone jumps into their ship right as the countdown expires? It now has to eject them and compactify the ship...even though they were about to leave? But then how is it supposed to differentiate "about to leave" players from "just sitting in their cockpit" players...? It can't. Destroying stuff is a performance cost, too -- the timers must be tuned so that clients aren't having to constantly purge then reload models. Longer the timer, the more clutter but the less complexity with these edge cases. TBH, I do feel like the "timer+impounding" is an easy feature...but there's edge cases and caveats like with anything.

The new player experience is among the worst in any MMO... First, the "magic" of a single shard system evaporates quickly, either because of parking lot lag or because you're trying to start with a friend and end up in different starting areas. It feels no different than a traditional MMO (instancing), except it's harder to find each other because of the clunky teleport system. The UI...if the game is clunky, they could have at least spent some time on the UI to make it feel more polished. Instead, it looks like it was improvised by the tech team. A bad UI makes learning the game that much more annoying. The tutorial itself. Go to sanctuary and claim a hex near a market. Hah! So...fly my speeder across boring landscape and mostly derelict structures for 5-10 minutes before I can find an unclaimed hex? Great. Then it tells you to go back to the market. Oh goodie. While at the laggy market, you try some more tutorials...but for some reason, NQ can't seem to make their tutorials function, so you end up stuck and even more confused unless you're lucky. After more back and forth to the market, you learn that the tutorial was basically a waste of time and you should have never left Alioth to begin with. Great. This experience only gets worse with time...as more hexes are claimed, you're asking more and more of new players. Maybe that's fine for some, but (like it or not) this is the Twitter era...people don't have patience for monotony and chores, especially in their first few minutes of a game. Perhaps more than any one design choice, DU is an example of how the nature of "hardcore" needs to evolve over time. If DU wants to be 'hardcore', it needs to be hardcore for today -- it's been 18 years since Eve Online was launched. It feels like DU belongs 18 years in the past. The reality is that the majority of gamers are under 34 (59%) and that's the demo that devotes the most time to gaming on average (by far) -- good luck scaling an MMO without that demo! Good luck attracting that demo to a game modeled off a paradigm of "hardcore" that's almost two decades out of date.

I understand your point, but the reality is that MC has proven that it can retain and grow a massive, massive audience of players. You're saying you spent years in MC...that's really good retention and lends evidence to the idea that building is a viable niche. Everything about MC's demographics suggests that builders can carry a game financially. I mean...MC is among the most successful games in history. Yes, people get bored eventually, but that's true of every game ever, sub or MMO or otherwise. Nearly 30 million people bought Minecraft last year alone (2020)...DU won't get 30 million sales for its entire life. I'm not understanding the idea that builders can't carry a game financially because there's ample evidence in the industry to suggest otherwise.

Eh? I just explained what DB engines they use. Mongo is document-oriented, not a relational DB. Switching off mongo wouldn't change anything, they'd still have scale issues. Relational isn't better than non-relational, they have different advantages and disadvantages. I'm not sure what you mean by being "wrong" to mention DynamoDB -- yes this is something they use today. They use both Mongo and Dynamo. I know what DB engines they use because in the past I've checked their jobs site and they make the details of their stack pretty clear.

Ore doesn't have to be buried so deep, either -- they decided to make it a mole sim, now they don't like the fact that players dig to get ore...? Also they helped create this grind with 0.23 -- perhaps if schematics weren't so expensive people wouldn't need so much mole-time. How quick it goes from "millions of players" to "well even thousands of players is hard for us"... They use mongoDB and DynamoDB as their DB engines. Mongo shards horizontally. Dynamo is cloud-based and should work at any scale...with enough money. That's the real issue -- not that the DB will "collapse" but that's its just too damn expensive...because of their own design choices. As for restoring terrain to save cost, there's no way to differentiate between terrain dug out for base construction and terrain dug out for mining. If they started to fill it, there'd definitely be some buried bases.

I'd bet that most of NQ's own devs and the new management understands how many problems NPCs would solve for the game. So my bet is on "yes" because they realize exactly what the OP realizes: it won't work without them. The "vision" JC laid out isn't a real plan, it's a bunch of random thoughts. That said, it'll probably be either a long time before they are developed...or it'll be a really crap implementation. For NPCs to actually work, they need to somehow touch industry, building, PvP, and organizational dynamics -- it shouldn't just be a bunch of random space pirates that people can go kill for lootz.

Personally, I think automated mining should come with an industry revamp where power is a real concept. Schematics were always a hacky way to limit industry -- power is a much cleaner and more engaging mechanic. The ability to sell power as a utility would help with city-building and org politics. Power also limits the feasibility of mining scale and makes bootstrapping a mining operation more of an investment vs "slap down auto-miners anywhere". I think these deposits should be distinct from current deposits, like "deep ore" that is slow to extract and difficult to find (rare). This helps tie geography / territory war into the industry/building portions of the game -- and makes competition over key areas more important. This again helps with the concept of city-building/settlements by giving people a reason to group into an area that has cheaper resources thanks to nearby mining ops. It should not be as easy as dropping auto-miners everywhere and getting unlimited ores. Like most concepts people talk about around here, there's a lot of potential to make this work really well with DU and tie together the disparate 'pillars' of the game. Just saying "automation is bad because it's automatic" isn't compelling to me.