Kurosawa

I hope they go with a fully open system without any limits or caps except for time, this allows a much more devised play, and not just a cookie cutter design.
 
Regarding catcing up, i think you thinking is flawed. lets assume they go with an EVE style system and simplify it a bit.
 
Player A has Battleship, Cruiser, Frigate and Carrier at level 5
Player B has Battle ship at 5 all else at 1
 
Since both has Battleship 5 they pilot Battleships equilly well with in the skill system, the fact that player A can fly other stuff is irrelevant.

Tons of games, waiting for the gaming industry to step out of the deep shadow WOW cast on MMO's
and once again make some open skill system/market games.

It's also called "wishful thinking"
 
You're spouting assumptions as fact.

First and foremost DAC represent a real world "investment" and as such should not be loot-able. It should be protected 100% and easier to access from anywhere in the game world for the buyer of said DAC.
 
A second hand market where DAC's are vulnerable to theft could be a good thing, but too prevent asshats from manipulating the DAC market and there by hurting the entire community and company some form of limits should be enforced, maybe a mini hacking game where you can steal the DAC from people that has hoarded  more then X amount, you know pvp is pvp im sure they would not mind.
 
In the end, the first buyer should be protected 100% no questions asked.
 
edit: maybe this is out of the scope of  this discussion, but theft and destruction will be keyfactors in how many and what kind of players we will get.

it's a macabre ancient book binding trade where human faced are skinned and turned in to pages of a book. the last know sample is from around year 500

Please explain, pointing fingers and throwing down little information or examples of your own really doesn't help get your point across.

there is also https://www.blender.org/

Hi Metalmamoth and welcome in the Dual Universe community. So to address your concerns (or at least give you an explanation, even if it's not the one you would have expected), here are some answers:    
Please make the difference between what would seem nice in your opinion and what is really needed. No, it's not essential to make customizable prefab blocks in our game: what you're asking requires a considerable amount of development time. It's like asking to develop ingame a tool like 3D Studio Max, Maya or Blender, each of these software having a full dev team behind it. Keep in mind that we are an independant studio and while we have a bigger team than the average indie, we can't be compared to big studios like Bioware or Blizzard. We have to choose our battles, to make tough choices about what we will develop and what we won't. This + the fact that our dev team wants to keep a minimal control about the artistic direction are the main reasons why we won't have prefab customizable blocks.     
 
 
Does it have to be Massively Multiplayer?   Short answer:   Yes.   Long answer:   If you like playing on small private servers to play with small communities carefully selected, that's perfectly fine and you have already many games aiming to achieve this goal: Space Engineers, Starmade, etc. On the other hand, there are NO massively multiplayer Builder games as we intend to do. That's one of the big reason why there has been a lot of investment developping the tech necessary to make it happen. We are perfectly aware that it won't be everybody's cup of tea, but we aren't trying to satisfy every player either.   There is no game offering such experience at the moment and we're intending to provide such service. If massively multiplayer games don't appeal to you, then maybe it's not a game for you. From what you are saying, other building games have performance issues with huge voxel constructions, and we can understand that's a problem. However, if you prefer their way of doing things (private servers, small communities), it would be more relevant to ask them directly to address the problem in their game than attempting to modify the vision of a game (like Dual Universe) that has entirely other goals.   If you see our game like a "Space Engineers" clone, then you have missed most of our goals with the project: building spaceships and cities is just the corner stone of a bigger edifice. We want to combine Building gameplay with a player-driven economy, constested territories and politics. These last three gameplay aspects won't thrive unless we reach a critical mass regarding the number of players. That's the big reason to go for a massively multiplayer online structure.     
  Dual Universe is not a game meant for children. So unfortunately, this scenario is not relevant. There's currently a high chance that our game will be rated PEGI 18 when it will be officially released. Not because of offensive content included originally in the game (there won't be any), but because of the very nature of sandbox games (especially when it comes to massively multiplayer games): giving player freedom is something that is expected in a Massively Multiplayer Sandbox game, but it comes with some duties. This is not something you can ask from someone who isn't legally responsible because of his age. You can see Dual Universe as a Minecraft-like game made for mature, adult players. We want to build a community with players responsible for their actions and ready to handle the consequences of their actions ingame: do not trust blindly someone you've just met one minute ago, do not transport valuable goods in an unprotected spaceship, etc.    
You would be perfectly right if we wanted to develop a "theme park" MMO like World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Star Wars the Old Republic, etc. In this kind of games, the developers mission is to bring huge amount of content regularly. To sell expansions in this scenario would be totally relevant. But in a Sandbox context, where players make their own content? Sure the dev team plans to add regularly additional gameplay mechanics, to offer aways more gameplay possibilities to the players, but would it be enough to convince the most part of players to buy an expansion ? nothing is less sure than that. And that's probably why CCP preferred to keep a subscription model instead of selling expansions (despite the fact they did make expansions, they didn't sell them and kept the monthly subscription formula). This would be a very very risky bet.    
With all due respect, there might be a third possibility: Without having all the cards in hand to judge objectively, you're making a (probably involuntary) biased assessment, and the way you calculate the costs are incredibly far from the reality (with the costs being in fact much higher than what you are thinking). Unless you have already managed and directed the budget for a Massively Multiplayer Online game, you're not qualified to make such bold statement as above. Continuing to affirm such things would be just arrogance.   It has become increasingly common in the recent years to see many players jump to the conclusion that devs are immediately greedy and/or evil masterminds as soon as the price of a game isn't the price they deem reasonable without having made rigorous market studies on the topic and/or being fully aware of how much cost a game, and especially a MMORPG (costs skyrocket when you're aiming for Massively Multiplayer Online Game, available 24h/24 7d/7  with all the logistics behind. Moreover, the costs for an offline single player - or a player hosted server - game is nothing comparable to the costs of a MMO game.   Another point that makes your reasonnement starting on a wrong basis: currently, Dual Universe isn't planned to require a payment equal to a full game price from day one. So to reach the price of a Buy to play Model, you will have to play and pay at least 4 months (+ the free trial period) if we refer to standard monthly fees, before reaching the same cost. After all this time in game, if you don't want to pay anymore, you will still have the alternative to buy monthly subscription tokens from other players with your ingame money (or even before: if a player is active enough, it might be possible to buy the first monthly subscription token right after the free trial period expires). This is exactly how the PLEX system from EvE Online works. So in all honesty, we have a hard time to see how this formula can be seen as greedy or evil. It's a balance between giving people with low budget but with lots of free time to join the game and the investment in the game (be it in time played or money) as a deterrent to adopt a bad behavior.    
If you have read our devblog post here, we do tell that the B2P model (Buy once, Play forever) is a strong deterrent to player negative behavior, nearly as much as the Pay to Play model. Our main concerns with the "Buy to Play" model are elsewhere:  - This is an immediate paywall that would discourage many players with low budget. - This makes our alternative to play for free impossible. For more info, read the first part of the DevBlog ("Being able to play the game without spending money"), and especially the "Pay to Play" part explaining the benefits of the PLEX system used by EvE Online (and copied by other MMOs like Wildstar and World of Warcraft). - This is not a solid and sustainable model unless we invest a huge amount of our budget in developping a cash shop. Because MMORPGs with a Buy to Play model always have a huge (some players would say oversized) cash shop. The server and the team behind a MMORPG aren't just financed by the sales of the game. On the long term, the main revenue to finance all this is generated by the cash shop. As we are aware that relying too much and/or becoming dependant from a cash shop revenue can generate many problems, that one more reason to be careful about this model.    That being said, an official thread will be made soon to answer and adress all the concerns about the Pay to Play monetization model. There are already too many threads about this topic, and it's about time that all the related discussions are gathered in the same place.   Best regards, Nyzaltar.

I find these "We need to steal real money from other people" saying too much... DAC is not the main part of the game... They say about no risk in the game, but players still have chances to lose ships, bases and other. Stop LIE and pull everything on your side. Your EGO is too high!
If you see that as "P2W" - "Bye Bye, go play your EVE and steal money there!", same as you "say" to those who will be upset and will leave after real money lose
 
P/S: I don't really like to say what to do, but some overEGO start cross the line.
 
Thanks,
Archonious

Please provide a legitimate source for..
 
"DACS can be stolen"

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15515-Note-From-The-Chairman