Vorengard

1) Yes, everything outside of the 20km Safe Zone will be fully PvP. The discovery of other Arkships was mentioned as a possibility, but that's not at all set in stone, and would not happen for years after release, if at all. Protection Bubbles have also been mentioned, but they're also hypothetical. We know literally nothing about them, and they might not even be in the final game, so planning around them isn't a good idea at this time. 2) All combat will be "tab-targeting", not free fire, and it's going to stay that way because the server load for free-firing in a game like DU would be extreme. You will have to select or "lock on" to a target before you can shoot at it, with hit chance and damage being automatically decided by the server. However, in some cases (like with avatar v avatar combat), the "lock on" mechanism may be tied to automatically select whatever target you're aiming at, so it will feel like a free aim game, even if it isn't. 3) Yes absolutely. Players can also build ground vehicles, like tanks and armored cars. Ground combat will be a fully functional and important part of the game, particularly if you want to storm someone's underground base, or take over a building without completely destroying it. However, I should mention that PvP will not be implemented into the Pre-Alpha at all. PvP as a feature isn't going to be implemented until Alpha at the very earliest, but more likely not until Beta, so don't get too excited about it right now.

I definitely understand where you're coming from, and that does sound really cool in it's own way. But like you said, automation would force new players out of the market completely, and would eventually destroy the in-game economy if taken too far. So not including those types of features really is for the best.

Yes, there will definitely be several tools and elements that are used to turn resources into materials, and materials into elements, and so on. You can find out more on the official wiki page about industrial units. I would imagine that when combined with the skills system, which will increase the efficiency of many elements based on your skills, that there will be certain people that are far more efficient at using refineries than others, so a system like you describe is certainly possible.

I assume that there is a hard local limit, but NQ hasn't mentioned one yet. The only limit on scripts that I've ever heard of is distance. Your scripts stop running once you get so far away from them, and they stop effecting other things past a certain range as well. No, there are some player activities, such as mining, that will not be scriptable, and scripted weapons will be far less efficient than their counterparts. I would imagine the same will be true for other game concepts, but those are the only two I've heard specifically mentioned so far. Every player has a built-in map system in their character's suit, but it's unclear at this time how that will work exactly, or whether you'll be able to use it to send data to scripts and other elements. Contrary to what some people think, I would say absolutely. It will certainly be harder in many ways, and there's obviously going to be some content you can't access at all (can't fly a battleship by yourself after all), but generally speaking I'd say yes. Now, that doesn't mean you'll be able to be 100% self-sufficient, but you can still grow and thrive on your own, even if it's just as a part of a larger organization that lets you do your own thing. I'd also say that it's going to be much more difficult in the beginning, when there aren't established player markets and everything is a lot more wild-west, but give it time and you'll get there. The only one of these that would be potentially viable is the transport role, and even then only as a drone that follows you around, as demonstrated in the most recent developer diary . While you could certainly attach guns to a drone to make it fire for you, those weapons would be far less effective then you using them yourself, and the drone would cease to function once it got a certain distance away from you, so you'd be better off using those resources to build a construct that you piloted yourself. Perhaps defense drones wielding forcefield projectors could be used effectively on combat, but that's still entirely hypothetical. As for mining, JC has emphatically stated that there will not be any means of automating mining at any point. So, while I hate to burst your bubble mate, I don't think a career as an automator is going to be particularly lucrative. At least not in the way you seem to be thinking. I'm sure there are tons of organizations that would love to use your Lua skills however, as prime scripting is clearly going to be critical to having the best ships in the game.

To quote Nyzaltar's response to a similar question in the AMA from way back in July of 2016" Who knows if this is still the plan for how stargates will work, but this was what they were thinking previously. It's also important to note that JC has said on multiple occasions that stargates are not something players will be able to build until years after launch. I'm as excited for them as the next guy, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here

Definitely agree with you here. There will be a lot of tribalism in the beginning, and the limited space of Alioth will contribute to that some. However, we shouldn't underestimate the size of the safe zone and Alioth. A 20km in diameter circle is a really big area, and that's only a fraction of the size of the planet, and then there's the three moons to consider. Overall, while I am concerned about it, I'm not overly worried. NQ has over a year of development to figure things out before launch, and we'll all be here to offer our feedback the entire time. Furthermore, I don't think people judge MMOs "once and forever" as they do with other types of games. EVE showed that it's possible to grow year by year in a market that's stereotypically about spikes in growth that slowly trickle away, and since DU is a similar game, I think it's possible to replicate that success. DU is going to change radically in the months and years after launch, just like EVE did, and that change will bring in plenty of new people, and persuade old hands to give the game another try.

Certainly. Your underlying theory, that people would never act as a police force because it's boring, is fundamentally wrong, and there are multiple games currently on the market with significant populations of players that prove it. The first and most relevant is EVE, where thousands of payers routinely sit for hours in station ship-spinning and shooting the breeze while they wait for someone to spot targets in their vicinity. Then they form up a fleet and go kill them. I used to do this for days at a time. It's one of the fundamental activities of pirates and small-gang pvpers. I ran a small pirate alliance in Derelik a few years back, and we couldn't get two jumps into Providence on a roam without being spotted by CVA, who would form a defense fleet to come kill us. Then there's the people who gatecamp for hours and hours, just killing non-blues who jump in, and the people who used to sit on Titans for hours and hours waiting for their hunters to bridge them in on people. The point is that these people are effectively a police force for their group and its allies, and DU can easily create an atmosphere that rewards and encourages similar behavior. There's also games like Foxhole, where players spend hours and hours just driving trucks filled with supplies back and forth between bases without ever once getting into a fight or even seeing an enemy player. They aren't given any money or rank or status for that effort, but they do it because they like feeling like a part of something larger and more important than themselves, even in a video game. The assumption that people will refuse to do something you personally find to be boring is completely false. I would agree that we can't have a video game society that's as stable and complex as modern-day real life for a variety of reasons, but setting the bar at tribalism is being too pessimistic. We can easily reach the status of an effective feudal kingdom, and perhaps even a renaissance nation-state level society in a game, and the activities of players in EVE Online proves this. EVE players already willingly constrain themselves to arbitrary (and often harsh) rule sets in order to exist within a given group. They even sacrifice huge portions of their free time to performing otherwise unpleasant and un-fun tasks for those groups (anyone who's ever had to put up a dozen staging towers knows what I'm talking about). These groups often include thousands, or even tens of thousands of players with diverse backgrounds and cultures (in real life and in game) that nevertheless manage to work together for each group's mutual benefit and safety. The old CFC is a perfect example of a coalition of otherwise distinct entities that banded together to rule a huge portion of the EVE universe for a significant amount of time, and people in DU will have even more incentive to perform this type of behavior than people in EVE. I think you need to have more faith in people and their willingness to put up with crap to do something cool. DU can and will develop unique and complex societies that rise above killing everyone who's not in your org "because reasons." Though it might take us a few years to get around to that point lol

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize we were being condescending pricks to each other. But if that's how you want it to be... You're technically correct, but in doing so you completely ignore the real issue in order to make a pointless, childish, and near-sighted argument that's easily refutable by anyone who's thought about the issue for more than two seconds. How, my dear, did society get to be the way it is? Through millennia of pain and anger and distrust and chaos. We had to learn how to make society worth living in by experiencing misery for thousands of years before finally realizing how to work together enough to make it bearable. Of course that's not what we want for DU, but that's not the point. The point is that the real world does not have unbreakable rules that make us civilized, and yet we still manage to get by without killing each other all the time. These "consequences" you talk about aren't enforced by a magic system that mandates punishment, it's carried out by thousands of hard working people, and it only functions because nearly everyone complies with its rules and assists in making it happen. Civilizations can be formed in a system with no rules and limited punishments, and the fact that we're having this conversation is proof of the success of that concept. THAT is what makes a real civilization work, and that is exactly what DU is going to need, because 99.999% of the game world is going to be a PvP zone with no real rules, teams, judges, or police (unless we make them, which we should!). These people can be punished by killing them, destroying everything they've built, and driving them from the game because no one will work with them. That is precisely how we enforce our own rules on society, and the process of working those differences out is going to be interesting and fun and unique in the gaming world. This is an incredibly ignorant statement. Are you so dense that you don't realize that these conditions that allow for a safe society are manufactured by the people of that society? This is exactly what we need to do in DU: Manufacture a society that's worth enjoying by punishing the negative aspects of society (griefers). It will be hard, just like it is in the real world, but it can be done, and in a properly structured game advancing that process will be fun and rewarding. But if you're too spoiled to put any real effort into making it work, then by all means, go play something else.

Two thoughts: First, you're assuming that a scam-proof system for managing contracts is a good thing for the game, which I disagree with in this case, for philosophical and psychological reasons that I won't get into right now because it would take an essay to truly explain. Suffice it to say that NQ is specifically seeking to create a civilization simulator in a game, and one of the key tenants of civilization is that every single interaction is built on trust. One of the craziest things about real life is that there are no guarantees or hard-blocks against being mistreated ever, and if DU wants to be as "real" as possible, it needs to adhere to that philosophy as closely as possible. But, more importantly, there's a perfectly legitimate way to make this happen. Let's take a look at your hotel example. As the owner of a hotel, all you'd have to do is create an organization specifically for that hotel (let's call it "Hotel Inc"), and put it under the organization that owns the land the building is on. Then you can go into the RDMS menu for Hotel Inc, remove all default permissions from basic members, and set new roles that grant the individual access to specific doors, containers, and elements. Then, anyone who wants to stay in your hotel can simply join your organization, and once they've paid the appropriate fee you can give them rights to a specific room. Voila! You have a hotel business. The same thing could be done with individual constructs to make a ship rental service, or with individual plots of land to make a property leasing company. Since anyone can join any number of organizations, there's no problem or hassle. You'd still have to take those rights away at a later date on your own, but that's a minor inconvenience. Asking for full automation is too much. Also, while it's true that there's still some trust required in this agreement, that's unavoidable. The requirement of trust is one of the things that makes open-world games open-world, and to subtract that from DU would do it a disservice. Finally, try to stop thinking about DU's systems from the perspective of an EVE player. The EVE corporation system is important to making the game work, but in many cases it seriously restricts the freedom of the players, and that would be very bad for DU.

It would definitely depend on the nature of asteroid voxels. I'm not sure if asteroids will be movable, because in order to move voxels need to be attached to a Dynamic Core Unit. Now, if NQ makes it so that you can place a dynamic core on an asteroid, thus attaching all it's voxels to that core and making them dynamic, then yes, I'd say you could move it (assuming ofc that the entire asteroid fit into the build zone of the core). That would take a lot of engines and fuel, and you'd probably want to hollow a bunch of it out to reduce the mass as much as possible, but it could be done. But I wouldn't rest my hopes on that. Right now I'd say it's possible but not likely. However, you could always mine an asteroid and then re-place all of it's material into the shape of an asteroid around a dynamic core. It would take much longer, and it wouldn't necessarily look the same, but it could be done with enough time, effort, and patience.

I'm sure there are already stunning mountain and ocean views to be found in the game. However, as Lethys said, no moving water means no waterfalls at this time. However, moving water is something the devs have discussed adding in the future in a limited way, like with Minecraft. It's also very important to remember that nothing in the game is final right now, including the planets themselves. The procedural generation algorithm will change before full launch, so don't go making any final judgments at this time.

What Lethys said. Additionally, it's important to note that the end of September is the Pre-Alpha (which you can play in with a Gold pledge), not the actual Alpha. The actual Alpha isn't going to launch until next year, with the Beta coming some months after that. So buying a Gold pledge gets you into the intermittent Pre-Alpha now, as well as the full, multi-month long Alpha early next year. So basically you're getting access to two closed Alpha states, as well as the Beta.

The problem with selling fully-built ships in DU will be finding a place to put them while you wait for them to sell. Since things on market in DU don't disappear to some magical place where they sit until they're sold, if you want to sell a ton of ships, you're going to need a big field or space station to put them in while they're listed on the market, like a car dealership. The problem there is that I could easily come along and blow up a bunch of these un-piloted, un-powered ships while you're not around, and boy would that hurt profit margins That being said, I really hope such things happen in game, because that would be really cool to see. However, selling blueprint copies will almost certainly be a better and easier solution in most cases. I can only see full ships being a viable solution in situations where people need it right now, or they're in a situation where they can't get the materials necessary to build the ship, like an active war zone. ...So in retrospect (assuming the construction process takes more than an hour or so), I'm sure there'll always be a small market for pre-built ships, but I don't see it being the dominant means of selling them.

I wouldn't have really minded if they had postponed the Alpha, because game development is game development, and things don't always go as planned. That being said, it's really great to see that NQ is committed to keeping their promises as best they can, and I'm definitely excited to get a chance to actually play the game.

I think the biggest takeaway from these interviews is the better impression we're getting on JC's idea for how the game should expand and grow. Specifically this quote: We've all known about stargates and FLT drives for a long time, but this seems to be saying that those things are going to be deliberately designed to be unreachable for years, and I don't think most people realized that. This is a really big deal because it completely changes how people imagine the gameplay, and how we need to pitch DU to others. If we sell people on the idea of exploring a massive universe like No Man's Sky (man do I hate that comparison), then they're going to be extremely disappointed when they get in-game and realize they can't do that for years. If the game's not actually going to become functionally interstellar for a long time, then we need to understand the implications of that ourselves, and make sure we market the game appropriately to our friends. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely and completely agree with this sort of long-term thinking (if this is actually what JC meant by those comments). One of the most significant problems for open world building games is that they always feel empty and lifeless, because everyone and everything is so spread out. By forcing players to remain in a concentrated area (first on Alioth, then the starting solar system), the players will be channeled into building a living and active world, instead of just scattering all over the galaxy and never seeing each other again. This is a great idea, and shows a great level of forethought and long-term planning.

Speaking for myself, I don't think teleporters of any kind, over any distance, are a good idea because they remove risk and content from the game. Dual Universe is all about players interacting with one another, and instant teleportation is the antithesis of that. Not only does teleportation remove the potential for emergent experiences while traveling, it also makes the traveler immune to spontaneous pvp, and both of those factors directly reduce the amount of available game content. Furthermore, as with all of these systems, you need to consider the consequences of their abuse. No matter how expensive you make this system, one day someone will become rich enough to afford hundreds of them, and then they'll be able to make a transportation network that covers an entire planet, which would make them virtually immune to pvp while on that planet. This is inherently bad design, because while wealth should allow players to reduce their inherent risk, no level of wealth should make them immune to risk. So no, I'd prefer no teleporters ever, just to be safe.

My only problem with this approach is the unnatural advantage it gives to those organizations. There's huge amounts of psychological research that indicates that name recognition has a huge effect on how people view other groups, what they buy, who they trust, and many other aspects of human interaction. This is why major corporations spend hundreds of millions of dollars just to put their name on a new stadium; because every time anyone mentions that stadium, they're inadvertently building brand recognition, which has a demonstrable effect on sales. Therefor, by identifying certain organizations as "major" on the wiki, we would essentially be validating those orgs to the community. New players would be more strongly drawn to join these groups. People would be more likely to buy ships and products from these groups simply because they've heard of them before. The community itself would, to some extent, view these organizations more highly because they've been arbitrarily identified as "important". This would put smaller groups at a serious disadvantage. Think about it: you're a new player cruising the market with absolutely no idea what to buy and you see two ships in your price range. One is an unfamiliar ship built by some no-name industrial corp with 6 members, and the other is a mass-market design from some major organization who's name you've seen around a few times. Even if the indy design is slightly better and more affordable, most people will buy the brand they've heard of, because their subconscious tells them that must be better simply because they've heard of it (after all, if it's good, why haven't I heard of it?). Obviously this is going to happen no matter what we do, but I don't think that's a line the wiki should be drawing, and definitely not before the game has even launched. The point of a wiki is to help people learn the game, not to advocate for one group or another, even indirectly.

So far it seems like the two sides are pretty close together on the issue. We all agree that obviously some player content will have to be on the wiki, like major cities and space stations, trade hubs, star gates, and so on; and even those most strongly in favor of adding orgs to the wiki can agree that it shouldn't be for advertising or propaganda purposes. So, to refocus the discussion, it seems like the largest issue is whether or not there should be biographies for individual organizations and players. In relation to that issue, first I'd like to say that arguing for or against having multiple websites is a serious waste of time. There will be multiple websites, no matter what we say about it. That's not a bad thing at all. If you can't handle searching multiple websites for information, then you probably can't handle playing a game like DU, where virtually all of the game world is a PvP zone. What's most important here is that each website be clear and useful, and it's hard to accomplish either of those goals when you're attempting to do everything. So, the wiki should be focused on accomplishing a specific goal: being a central location for people to go to get a basic understanding of topics essential to playing the game. So, to go back to the EVE example: If I were to write an EVE wiki, I would definitely include a page just about Jita, because it's the most important system in the game. I'd also probably include a page on suicide ganking and smartbombing on gates, because those are important things to look out for. These are player created activities and content, but they're essential parts of playing the game, so they would belong in a wiki. However, I wouldn't write an article about specific alliances, like Pandemic Legion for example, because you don't have to know who PL is to have fun in EVE. I wouldn't bother with keeping track of who's flying where, how many pilots they have, what systems they hold, their current tactics, and so on, because those things change all the time and aren't really essential to playing EVE. Furthermore, websites like Evewho and Dotlan do those jobs much better than I could with a wiki. So, players would come to my wiki to find out about how to play the game, but they'd go someplace else to find out about the other people playing the game. Similarly, a DU wiki should focus on explaining things like the building mechanics, how to set up a Territory Control Unit, how to find the best ores, or where the most important cities and space stations are. Leave the tracking of organizations to other websites that will do so more effectively. If new players want to figure out which organizations to join, they should be going to the community portal, or some other website dedicated to detailing orgs, and not the wiki.

I think we need to separate "essential game concepts" from organizations in the wiki. However, in a single shard universe, some player made content will be essential. For example, no guide to EVE Online would be complete without mentioning Jita and the vital role it plays in the game. Jita is only Jita because the players decided that it is, so that's definitely a function of player content, not the game. The content on the wiki should definitely include similar issues that are highly important to how we play the game. However, adding articles about organizations themselves seems like a bad idea. Doing so will present a huge array of problems. Those articles will need to be updated constantly to represent changes in those orgs. Any org on the wiki would have a built-in advantage over everyone else simply on the basis of being more well known. By including an org you'd automatically offend any org that doesn't get included, and that could also spiral into a flame war on the wiki between orgs that hate each other. Nevermind the fact that including orgs at this time seems really silly given that none of us have even played the game yet. We don't actually know what each org will be doing, who will be on who's side, and so on, because the game doesn't even exist yet. As of right now, all discussions about orgs and their function is entirely hypothetical and academic, so making a big deal about it seems incredibly arrogant. So no, leave orgs off the wiki. Maybe include some player content later, but right now it's very premature.

I can think of situations where adjustable wings might be necessary to increase the aerodynamics of a ship designed to operate in space and atmosphere. For example, perhaps you need a longer wing span to remain stable in atmo, but that extra surface area is just a vulnerability in space. Or perhaps moving elements could allow you to re-position weapons for different situations, such as air-to-air vs air-to-ground. Assuming of course that weapon positioning matters at all...

Once again, everyone is thinking about what they want, rather than what needs to be done to make the game a success. There will have to be censorship of certain content because actual real-world countries have laws about what kind of media you can promulgate. So, if there are giant billboards flashing the swastika or other Nazi propaganda, NQ could potentially face fines, or even the banning of DU, under German law. The same could be said for statements that are racist, homophobic, anti-immigrant, or whatever, in countries like France or Great Britain, or under EU hate-crime laws. Personally, I don't really care. Internet trolls don't bother me much. But there are people with real power in the real world who feel differently. Furthermore, it will not be good for DU to become known as a game filled with racists and haters (which is what people will say if there's swastikas everywhere, regardless of the intentions) because then the vast majority of people won't play it. That is bad for the game for obvious reasons. I'm sure the next comment will be someone ranting about how they don't want to play with people who can't take constant Hitler jokes, but in reality a game like DU needs a decently large player base just to have a functioning economy. This isn't about you, it's about having a successful game, so get over yourself. Tl;dr - There will be censorship, and that is a good thing. Your precious feelings can get over it, because DU is a game, not a free speech simulator.

Am I the only person on this forum that doesn't care about everyone's stupid drama? The game hasn't even come out yet and you're carrying on like it's all a big deal or something. Save all the buthurt for when there's actually something to fight over, because right now you're basically fighting tooth and nail over your own imaginations.

I would agree that the most effective method will most likely involve skilled pilots acting as the equivalent of captains by positioning their ships and relying on the crew to act accordingly. That person could essentially be the captain of a small to medium warship, and a single FC (basically a Commodore or Admiral) would be in charge of directing the movements of the fleet as a whole. However, DU being a game with limited complexity and no moral and legal ramifications (as in real life war) the members of ships could be relied upon to learn what they need to do in battle, and to do it without being told. This will probably require a little bit of training to get right, but it's really the most efficient means of conducting combat, and should be pretty easy, assuming DU doesn't have a massively complex combat system.

First to all, there will be war simply because a lot of people like pvp. That's all the reason you need in a game, and it will probably be the primary motivator for most people. I know I intend to participate in some pvp, regardless of whether there's an official war on or not. Additionally, you need to realize that there aren't actually an infinite number of planets for us to use. Not in a practical sense anyhow. Interstellar travel without warp gates will be very very time consuming, and warp gates will be both expensive, and difficult to build. We don't have final details yet, but JC mentioned in an interview that they're thinking of it taking up to a month to set up a warp gate. Therefore, the scope of the game will essentially be limited to the number of systems currently connected by warp gates. So, with limited space and resources, conflicts will erupt. But you're also thinking of a narrow and formal concept of war which has only really existed for the last several hundred years. For most of recorded history, conflicts didn't really have beginning and ends, they only had upswings in intensity. Raiding between tribes, for example, wasn't restricted to who was officially at war with who, it just happened whenever people wanted it to. That will be very much the case in DU, with official "wars" being mostly a formality people declare as a propaganda statement.

Do you really think commanding most ships is going to be something that requires a single person's whole attention? I would hope that this would be the case on the very largest ships (we still have no idea), but you really need to think about the consequences of doing that. Say you have 5 ships, each with a crew of 5 (captain, pilot, engineer, gunner x 2). If you remove the captain from this situation, you have enough crew for an extra ship, thus increasing your fleet power by 20%! Do you really think having a captain for each ship is worth sacrificing 20% of your fleets combat power? Instead you can train the people on the ship how to act on their own, or put a single fleet commander in charge of calling targets, and have the crews responsible for following those orders. Furthermore, a captain relaying orders is much slower than having even a decently trained crew follow orders on their own. Speaking of training, where do you think you're going to get 5 competent captains? As a long time EVE player, I can tell you finding even 2 people willing to step up and FC a small gang in an alliance of 500 people is virtually impossible, never mind 5. And most organizations won't have 500 people! Not to mention the fact that it would be insane to sacrifice additional bodies in combat ships just so you can have a person stand around shouting orders to a crew that could otherwise be trained to follow simple instructions on their own. Simply put, while cool sounding (because who doesn't want to be the captain of a space ship in epic battle?) this really isn't going to happen. At least not until months (if not years) after release when major capital ships with crews of 20+ become a thing. The logistics and realities of playing a video game simply don't support it.