MadOverlord
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Posts posted by MadOverlord
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A couple of celestial mechanics points... just quibbling...
* A neutron star actually hitting the sun is vanishingly unlikely, and if it happened, disrupted planetary orbits would be the least of our problems. Basically, the neutron star would accrete a huge amount of gas from the sun and trigger a supernova-like event (a type 1a, for example, is caused by gas accretion onto a white dwarf) plus probable black hole formation. All the planets would basically get turned into plasma, and any object within a couple of lightyears would get cooked by the gamma rays (heck, if you were on Mars you'd get a lethal dose just from the neutrinos -- see https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/)
* A close passage (ie: outer solar system distance) is all that would be needed to disrupt the orbits and render Earth uninhabitable.
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Humans being what we are, if there is a supply and a demand, a market will form. In gaming, there is clearly a supply of people who have time and want money, and people who have money and want time.
It is all very well to argue in the abstract that this market should not be permitted, but while we play in virtual worlds, we live in the real one -- and as we all know, if a legal market is not available, an illicit one will arise.
In games, this illegal market is RMT. RMT has numerous pernicious side effects for both legitimate players and the developers; legions of botters, ripoffs, significant customer support expenses, etc. One tactic to address this is to create a legal, regulated market -- and thus we get PLEX, CREDD, and now DAC.
Keep in mind that with these tokens, you are trading game time (and thus real-life $) for in-game resources that someone, somewhere had to expend effort to gather or create (as opposed to being created by the developers in a cash shop) - and because it's a legal market, that source is less likely to be a bot. Also note that the market tends to self-regulate due to supply and demand.
Tokens like DAC become P2W when you can use them to buy advantages (and in particular, advantages not organically available in-game) in the developer's cash shop.
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I say if people want to strip mine it into a canyon, let them do so.
Your position hilights the tension between making the game as open-world as possible and the commercial realities of attracting new players to the game. As the saying goes, "you never get a second chance to make a first impression", and if the first impression of new players is a cratered hellscape encircled by legions of griefers, that does not bode well for anyone long-term.
It will be interesting to see what mechanisms the developers come up with to address this issue and provide a smooth path for new players, as well as environments that fit the risk/reward tastes of various player demographics. I am sure there will be lots of instructive "emergent behavior" in the alpha.
- Gojo_Ryu and Cornflakes
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Just check this link every few days: http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/1949863330/dual-universe-civilization-building-sci-fi-mmorpg/
Projections are not that accurate early in the funding period. Likely if the funding reaches 350k with a week to go it'll make goal as there is usually a surge of late signups and up-pledging. Don't be too concerned if there is flat period in the middle of the campaign.
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This makes a lot of sense. I hope the developers consider it. Props to you, @MadOverlord.
Thanks, but I am sure it has already occurred them.
I would expect that the arcship zone has non-renewable resources that will deplete over time. But as infrastructure and markets develop those materials will be available for purchase.
I would not be surprised if resource extraction was not permitted in safe zones -- only construction. Otherwise they'll quickly become cratered wastelands, which is hardly the initial impression you want to give new players.
The problem of people doing obnoxious things like building walls around the arcship to keep "immigrants" penned up, or disassembling your nice townhouse overnight, also needs to be considered. The fundamental problem in a citizen-policed anarchy is that bad actors can do damage much faster than good actors can build and repair, and if there is no legal system to resort to (or an equivalent set of rules enforced by the game engine), the only way to enforce contracts (business or social) is violence (ie: every mafia, ever).
And of course, in a MMO with semi-immortal characters and multiple accounts, violence is not a credible method of social control.
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One possible idea would be to have tiers of resources. The starting planet would only have Tier-1, getting to a moon would get you Tier-2, getting to another planet would get you Tier-3, and so on. The more powerful blueprints would require higher tier materials, and there might be structural limitations on what could be built with lower tier materials (good luck building your skyscraper out of wood). This would organically drive players away from the starter planet.
However, the fundamental problem for new players is that the convenient (ie: close to the arkship) materials will all have been mined out.
A possible solution to this is that new players are assigned a plot of virgin territory ("40 acres") somewhere on the planet, and given a method of transport between it and the Arkship (a "M.U.L.E.", acryonym TBD). This would give each player resources to exploit at an equal "distance" from the ship. And if you want to build something close to the ship, you'd have to pay rent...
Finally, the concept of humanity as a plague of locusts inexorably devouring planet after planet is not a pleasant one (however accurate it might be given our current level of maturity as a species).
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Writing code for use in games is one of my favorite ways to play (I was going to implement the Nand2Tetris ALU in Fallout 4 but their logic gate implemention is flawed), so the LUA scripting is one of the more interesting parts of the DU project to me.
That said, I'm somewhat concerned about the potential for abuse that it represents -- and that the response to the abuse by the developers will ruin the fun for the non-abusing scripters.
The problem as I see it is that:
- LUA scripts have to run inside the client, and
- You can't trust the client, and
- Any closed control loop (ie: while (true) { sense_environment(); change_environment(); } ) == a bot, and
- Even if you can't script a closed loop, any external regular trigger (ie: a keypresser) closes the loop.
As soon as you have bots (drones, aimbots, miningbots, etc.), everything goes to hell. Aimbots destroy the fun of combat, miningbots destroy the economy, etc.
It occurs to me that one way to begin to address this concern is to place limits on what aspects of the environment LUA scripts can sense; in particular, the external sensors available to them should be restricted in what information they can provide. So for example, a proximity radar might simply return the distance to the closest object within a 90-degree arc; this coupled with a GPS (Galactic Positioning System
) device would let you build a collision-avoiding autopilot, but not a useful combat autopilot/aimbot.I look forward to seeing more information from the developers about the scripting aspects of the game, so that the community can tiger-team potential problems and solutions. And, of course, I will do my best during Alpha to explore the edge cases of the scripting environment.
Official Dual Universe Lore Bible
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Why do that when there are much more plausible TEOTWAWKI's that result in much more horrible fates for the Earth?
Not to mention that anyone in-game who learns about astrophysics is going to realize how improbable it is, and immediately jump to the obvious (and correct) conclusion that the simulation hypothesis is true.