Phroshy

Nyzaltar already quoted my main points against lootable DACs, so I don't need to repeat myself. While I find the compromise agreeable from a purely game mechanical POV, I still feel it's a pointless waste of development effort for something that is bound to have so little effect on the game.
 
I'd like to add something different, though, directed at Nyzaltar and the team. I believe someone already mentioned it in the last (unofficial) thread on the subject, but this topic of lootable DACs or not is probably not quite as hot or as important to the community as it might seem from the furious debates. There are just so few gameplay elements yet that are really set in stone, so when NQ announces something that does sound like a definite decision was made, naturally we will all latch onto it and tear it apart.
 
DACs are maybe the first thing we are able to discuss in a factual manner, rather than the pure pie-in-the-sky speculation we are left with concerning almost everything else in the game at this point.  
 
 
 
Well, now I'm baffled that nobody else thought of this yet, or at least I haven't seen this idea. Sounds like a pretty straightforward alternative.

That's not even a single year worth of subscription time.
You can pledge 480 € on their Kickstarter page to get a lifetime subscription right now.

The only online game that I've been playing for any length of time in recent years is Elite: Dangerous.
 
The only proper MMO that didn't lose me within a month and kept me coming back instead was Wurm Online. It's the only thing I've ever played that attempted something similar to Dual Universe, only not with a sci-fi space opera theme, but instead in a medieval dark fantasy setting. The first players got dropped into a vast, unexplored wilderness and had to build civilization from scratch. It's the only MMO I've ever played that gave me a true sense of adventure and wonder, there are no decorative backdrops without purpose; every cottage, town, castle, cave or ruin you stumble upon has a history and is there for a reason, exploring with friends or alone is dangerous and exciting, building your first primitive cottage somewhere in the woods feels like a real achievement.
 
The game feels really antiquated now: It has barely any animations, most things are just represented in the form of text; the game feels more like a MUD with an advanced graphical interface than a modern MMORPG. But it always provided a unique experience that I hope DU will be able to replicate in a sci-fi setting with modern technology and good  old  new voxels.
 
The game is still online and has a surprising number of still active players. Be warned if you want to check it out, the game pace is absolutely glacial, it's very grindy and punishing. Last time I checked there was free trial period with skill caps on your character.

I believe this is my favourite general solution.
 
When I think about it, it might be necessary to make it possible for territory owners to declare "no parking zones" where foreign constructs may only stay for a limited amount of time after which they can be legally destroyed. There would probably need to be a minimum amount of time to avoid abuse, so people don't lure in others under the guise of a free fly zone and then after 1 second all automated turrets in the vicinity start shredding the poor "intruder" without further warning.

They seem to indicate that yes, there will be newtonian mechanics implemented with dynamic constructs. So, for anyone who's played Space Engineers, this will be all too familiar. In fact, NQ is taking it a step further. Where KSWH ignored Newton's 2nd law for rotation, NQ won't. This will make it even more challenging but more rewarding too. I can't wait to try my hand at some ship design.

https://gamerpantheon.com/2016/09/27/ground-breaking-spacecivilization-game-in-the-making-interview-with-dual-universe-from-novaquark/
 
"Arkification tokens have been deprecated, as we realized that they could cause many balancing issues. We will favor instead the possibility for explorers to discover and then unlock new Safe Zones, similar to the one around the Arkship, but on other planets and at a later stage in the game (probably attached to some ancient ruins, connected to the back story)."
 

Schoff is talking about your expert ability to walk the fine line of talking down to people while still flying under the mods' radar.
 
You are free to make of this whatever you will. I'm not surprised people find your way of communicating offensive, but personally I guess I'm desensitized enough after so many years on internet communities that I don't care anymore.

Yeah, my thoughts exactly. I don't know how old kid means (I'm going to guess around 14) but this is not a game for kids. I started playing EVE (whose community is very similar to DU) at 18 and people made fun of me for being a kid, and with good reason. Kids are immature. Games like this are not for kids. Period. I wish parents would realize that and not just expect the gaming community to be a bunch of babysitters. Had a 14 year old in an EVE corp once. He broke the rules and was a dick normal 14 year old, so we kicked him. The kid gets his Mom on mumble .... she starts lecturing about how she paid for the game so we had to be nice or she'd call our moms or whatever. Who cares. Long story short, our CEO ripped her a new poop shoot and we all died laughing and did age checks from then on.
 
Sorry, back to the topic.
 
Like people have said, f2p makes for terrible games. The problem is that 99% of the people who say "Let's make it free but have micro transactions to pay for it" don't actually want to pay the micro transactions themselves, just like the OP here. So either the developers get no money and the game crashes and burns or they make the micro transaction relevant to gameplay and the game becomes horrible. Like Twerk said, games are a privilege not a right, and if you can't afford them you can't play them.  The monthly sub is the best/only way this game is going to work.
 
EDIT 1: The DAC system does allow for people to play free, so if you are willing to put in the work, there is that for you.
 
EDIT 2: I know the topic has been beaten to death ... I just wanted to share my kid story ><

FYI me and Schoff made peace. We kept it civil over at the Discord for this community.

 

maybe some kind of modular element system, so you can attach two doors, or door segments, together to make a bigger door 

I do hope people understand the sarcasm here so that we don't have to introduce sarcasm tags to this forum.

most of us are a little tired of these theads, but it doesnt mean we can't be civil to new members who post them who may not have realized the horse has been beaten to death already. 
 
most of us just abstain from replying to them, but some are compelled to reply and generally insult or attack the new member for asking it. 

Thanks! I'm in the process of re-branding my other orgs as well now that I'm comfortable making vector images. I wanted to start with the Alchemists because they are likely to be more active during the Alpha than the other orgs (no need for squires during alpha without DAC's for example).

Even i'm tired of this lol. Was my thread already in the top posts, not good enough for you?
Wheres that guy beating a horse picture when we need it?

Why would you think you'd need to roleplay to enjoy the game? DU very much has a focus on economic rivalry and complex politics as driving the gameplay, something SL never really had; at least not as a driver of a grander game. I've played both SL and MMOs in a similar vein as DU (most notably Wurm Online), and I can assure you the concept does very much work without the need for roleplay. It certainly doesn't hinge on minute game mechanic details like "air voxels", all it really needs is a market where most to everything is player-created and progress that is slow and difficult unless you work together with lots of other players, the rest pretty much just falls in place by itself. 
 
How many players DU will attract will of course depend on how fun and diverse various game mechanics are. But in the mentioned example, Wurm Online, literally every activity is slow, tedious, and bland, and the game still somehow manages to hold thousands of active players (who pay a monthly subscription and some buy in-game cash on top of that). And I've played the game for quite a bit, simply because it gives you a sense of purpose that traditional MMOs can't provide.
 
 
Your other point, that 500,000 € isn't enough to finance the game: Yes, obviously it isn't. The kickstarter is a challenge by NQ's investors, in order to gauge if and how much gamers even care about the project. JC said that they were promised the necessary funding to complete the game (with full creative control) if they can meet the kickstarter goal.

I'm very sceptical whether this is a valid business idea in this game... but I like trains, too, so best of luck to you! Having some kind of automated rail system on Alioth would certainly be really cool.

That would certainly address the concerns I voiced.
 
But this suggestion has another catch: peer2peer networks would leave the game wide open for hackers. Effective anti-cheat mechanisms are afaik only really possible in a client-server system.
 
Not sure how much of an advantage it would give players to hack such a system, i.e. to make other ships leaky and magically plug their own holes. But it would happen eventually that someone did just that.

Pretty sure I also remember mention of "supplies" needed for exploration, I believe clothing suitable for the encountered environment was mentioned specifically.
 
Personally I'd like to have survival elements in the game, but I'm not necessarily sold on food. I'd much prefer if the focus was on things like energy, fuel, maybe oxygen, warmth, things like that. The environment could determine what you would need, like energy or fuel or heating elements to stay warm on a freezing planet, oxygen obviously when there is no breathable atmosphere, fuel for your jetpack, etc. There could be elements to "wirelessly" transmit necessary resources to friendly players within a certain range. This could also to a limited degree simulate pressurized environments that people keep asking for, even though you'd probably be able to effectively breathe while hovering just outside the hull. And boarding enemies wouldn't get their supplies restocked even while inside the ship.
 
Basically I like the idea of survival elements that you could build automated infrastructure for. I can't quite envision this with food, food kinda carries the risk of becoming much more tedious. And as mentioned, the exclusion of food wouldn't have to mean the exclusion of farming or even raising animals.
 
Also food in MMOs just always breaks the 4th wall for me, since the act of actually eating something is generally omitted, or condensed into a 2 second animation to not bother the players too much.

Pat answer - because you'll kick yourself if it works and you didn't get on board
 
Real answer from an "investor" perspective:
 
Essentially what you are backing is a startup PaaS company with a patented DB tech which makes problems like >C10K look trivial in terms of how it handles concurrency, ACID and other such things.
 
NQ doesn't do content, levels etc - they are building a sandbox which the players then create in - it's a PaaS model. So beyond the kickstart and the game itself, if we get NQ off the ground, the power of the NovaQuark game engine and DB tech will able to be monetized moving forwards - it really can change the entire face of the gaming industry, not to mention potentially applications in other industries requiring high performance/availability/concurrency solutions.
 
The team itself are industry veterans - not necessarily the gaming industry, as specialists in their chosen fields - they just all happen to be gamers as well. Additionally, NQ's advisers include the likes of Theo Priestly (http://www.forbes.com/sites/theopriestley/#1279282a5a4d, http://www.theinternetofthings.eu/theo-priestley et. al).
 
And that to me is the selling point of NQ over other investment opportunities (and yes, I do consider Kickstarter to be an investment model) - it is a solid PaaS businesses who have identified a niche which hasn't been filled or innovated on in years, and they are building technology and languages to meet that need, rather than being a group of simply passionate game devs with little to no business experience, especially in running a cloud based operation.
 
Key takeaway - for games like WoW or Runescape (10-12 million monthly players) - imagine that potentially on ONE instance/"server" - these guys can do it.

There's a digital version of every available pack. If you don't care about ID-cards and T-shirts you can go for those. You'll get extra DACs instead.

Pretty sure I also remember mention of "supplies" needed for exploration, I believe clothing suitable for the encountered environment was mentioned specifically.
 
Personally I'd like to have survival elements in the game, but I'm not necessarily sold on food. I'd much prefer if the focus was on things like energy, fuel, maybe oxygen, warmth, things like that. The environment could determine what you would need, like energy or fuel or heating elements to stay warm on a freezing planet, oxygen obviously when there is no breathable atmosphere, fuel for your jetpack, etc. There could be elements to "wirelessly" transmit necessary resources to friendly players within a certain range. This could also to a limited degree simulate pressurized environments that people keep asking for, even though you'd probably be able to effectively breathe while hovering just outside the hull. And boarding enemies wouldn't get their supplies restocked even while inside the ship.
 
Basically I like the idea of survival elements that you could build automated infrastructure for. I can't quite envision this with food, food kinda carries the risk of becoming much more tedious. And as mentioned, the exclusion of food wouldn't have to mean the exclusion of farming or even raising animals.
 
Also food in MMOs just always breaks the 4th wall for me, since the act of actually eating something is generally omitted, or condensed into a 2 second animation to not bother the players too much.

GET OUT

Ok, I think I understand what is going on here. I'll bring a fresh perspective to the table. Here is my guess.
 
CvC pvp is not on the table as a launch feature because they want to hire someone who's main job will be building CvC. To have enough money to hire that person, they need to hit their stretch goal.
 
This may not be a matter of allocation of time here. In theory a small team COULD reallocate their time to develop CvC before other game features assuming they all havr the same versatile skillset, but that is not realistic. Right now, you probably have team members contributing to the game in the areas that they specialize in, and that skillset is enough for the game with its current launch features to be out on-time in its current budget.
 
But lets say it will take one of those members twice or three times as long to develop the CvC as someone who could be brought in and is already experienced in those kinds of mechanics? Not only is reallocating that dev's time groselly inefficient, but the dev wouldn't be working on the parts of the game that they are good at, and possibly wouldn't be doing to job they thoight they signed up for. If Dev A loves working on multiplayer code, Dev B loves working on the building engine, and Dev C loves and specializes in building world gen algorythms, how do you think Dev C would like it if the owner went and said
 
"hey Dev C, the fans want CvC combat more than they want new biomes. 3/4th of our projected biomes will now be a stretch goal, you are going to build CvC for the next two years"
 
If I were Dev C, i might not be working for them anymore. They might be fixed on hiring someone to build CvC because their current team simply don't want to build it first. Its not our game, its their game.
 
Ok, so lets pretend for a second that the game gets finded (likely) and they don't hit their first stretch goal (unlikely).
You are concerned that they won't be able to test CvC during alpha and beta of it isn't added till launch (true) and that they won't be able to test it after launch (false). Deff harder to test, but not impossible.
 
Combat simulators, a possibel mini-gams of sorts where a player sits in a simulator pod, uploads their blueprint to the simulator, and fights against other players CvC without actually risking their ships. They would use this to test iterations of the combat system and balance it before players start having real engagements. Alternatively, they enable CvC just in some zones during the testing phase, and gradually expand the area as it improves.
 
We all want CvC, we all want it on launch and in beta, we want it to be really meet, and I'm sure the Devs do too. They MUST have a good reason for making this a stretch goal, you will just need to respect that.

i'd personally limit the range of any repair tools to very short ranges, like a few meters.
 
combined with some system that remembers the undamaged state of a given construct (or just plain blueprint access) it would strongly encourage shipyards (with repair arms) and small repair vehicles that crawl surfaces.
 
neither variant would make it "too cheap" or particularily useful in combat.
 
and would make repair yards and fleet tenders an asset to be protected.
with all the repair equipment and production capacity at hand.

GET OUT