le_souriceau

There have been some topics around this area, particularly with building ships, but I feel that the this is a concept valid for the entire game. In a huge civilization-building, player-interactions-driven game, I feel that having people skilled in just certain areas will eventually lead to a more enjoyable experience for players. And this is something that many people may disagree with upon first hearing it, but find in the long run that they think it works really well. Or maybe they'll hate it! I want to share my opinion on it though, and I ask that those reading, who may think it's stupid, give it a chance. Also remember that there are two sides to this, neither are correct, and both are valid. It's just opinion based.
 
If anyone is familiar with the game series LittleBigPlanet, the first and second iterations for the PS3 played a huge role in a season of my life. They were the main games I played for months, and I had a friend who was into it as I was. Anyway if you don't know the game, it's not important. Basically, you use some basic tools to make little minigame-ish things (I'll refer to them as levels).
 
Anyway, in the first game, there were a few levels and creators that stood out significantly from all the rest, because they were fantastic (anyone that knows the name "Lockstitch" off the top of their head is a freaking awesome person). Me and my friend, we knew exactly what tools were available, and what you could and "couldn't" do. But some few levels stood out to us because, as people who knew the game inside and out, we had no clue how they some of these things were accomplished. A fair few levels were outstanding and amazing due to their mechanics and visuals.
 
When LittleBigPlanet 2 arrived, there were tons and tons of new tools added. These were fun and great to be sure, but they made everything that made the old levels special, not special. Because, all of the fantastic things that had been done before (in the first game) were now basic and easy because there were tools to do them (in the second game). This made a lot of great content a lot more common. Which of course was a good thing. And there were certainly levels that still pushed the boundaries. But overall, by making cool and unique things easy, it made great content a lot more common and thereby a lot less special.
 
If Dual Universe makes building easy, and mining easy, and combat easy, and exploration easy... Well, then there are going to be lots of amazing ships, and lots of miners, and lots of warriors and lots of explorers. You may say, "that sounds great!" But, remember my exceedingly dramatic and emotional story. When you make it easy, it stops being special.
 
In a game like Dual Universe, where player interactions and jobs and organizations are such a key factor, it shouldn't be easy to do anything. It shouldn't be easy to switch from a being an efficient miner working for a large corporation to a stupendous explorer finding rare resources on hostile worlds at the edge of the known galaxy. Sure, you can switch job titles and do whatever you want whenever you want, because it's a game! I'm just saying you shouldn't be able to switch from being outstanding at one thing, to suddenly outstanding at another. This allows individuals the opportunity to stand out, and be known for something. "Hey he's that guy that makes that line of super efficient yet powerful ships. I don't know how he comes up with that stuff." "What, you want to send Xx_M8_SLAYR_xX to go hunting for that anomaly? He's an architect, someone else will find it way sooner!" If someone wants to be known for something, then they go for that something and only that and they end up being great at it, and known for it. Lots of people will choose to not do this, which allows the few that do to stand out.
 
I can't really say much else that I haven't said already. I believe I've gotten my point across. Regarding designing ships or stations, it's easier to see how an individual could be better at it than most others. Mining or exploration expertise could be accomplished, not just by having better equipment or skills, but also by there being hidden techniques that people just have to learn by doing it. Thank you for reading and please try and be civil in your response, as, once again, both opinions are valid!
 
 
When everyone's special, no one is...
And if you're good at something, never do it for free!

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.

I'm strongly for unlootable, safe DACs.
 
Main reasons:
 
1) Lootable DACs will lead to rapid escalation of hatred in our community and poisoning of overall game atmosphere by constant fear.
2) In-game trade development will be crippled by need of using only safe-zone hubs.
3) Players, who enjoy suffering of others (and present in every game) will be extreamly motivated to do their worst with lootable DACs.  
4) Many people will not take lightly loosing DACs and quit the game, with very bad feelings. DACs cost real money and its simply immoral to take them from people just for "game mistake". They will be pushished enough by loosing inventory/ships.
 
Thanks.

There is big wall of text =)
1. I am against lootable DACs. This will force to upset players, who may leave. Stealing DACs from trade increase chance somebody who need it, won't get it - as result player leave the game.
If I would be basic player, without time for grinding, and somebody will steal DAC, game woukd get negative feedback very quickly. Wasting real money, it is too offensive. Reputation of game going down. Players amount (who ready to pay extra money) going down. Players amount (who can not pay for subscribe) going down. Income of company going down. I don't see anything positive for game.
 
Words about "If DAC would lootable, we would get much more players", sound as funny stories. I have never met players who joined game because of lootable DAC (or similar system). But negative effect of players loss still actual.
 
2. My view.
DAC is option to pay for game time for those who has problems with subscribe (but have time to grind). So player 1 employ player 2 and pay him for job. DAC do not give any extra advantage, that can not be gained without real money payment. So P2W stories are too cool. Sorry.
With same thing, we can remove organisations, because it not fair to those who play solo. Org teams have much higher range of finances and abilities.
 
But I agree, unlootable DAC could be abused on markets. So IMO, DAC must be unlootable, but also could be trade only once.
 
That mean, owner (paid $) can freely sell DAC to any player without risk (if you want to put risk for game supporters, that mean you don't care about supporters). But as soon DAC was sold by owner, it become binded to player, that mean item can not be traded again.
 
Result: Supporter/owner get money without any risk (reward for support). Player who bought DAC from owner, will have option to use it to get 30 days of playing.
 
Pirates can steal resources, money and use it for buying DACs, if it so necessary to them.
 
3. Result:
-Supporter always will get what he paid for (real $)
-Grinder have risk while gathering and selling resources
-Pirates can steal resources and later use money to get DAC
-Prices for DAC can not be abused by large organisations, who can buy all DACs and make price x2 (some players time can run out)
-Perfect balance, when 1 player work for another (money do not come from air, like in typical P2W)
-Market balance. You can not sell 1000 DACs instantly, if there is no enough of demand
 
My opinion, not lootable or First-Trade-Bind.
 
Thanks,
Archonious

I am against having Loot able DACs in game. for the following reasons.
 
1)  It is assumed that once you use it to add to your game time, its a timer, so if you know you are going to be off line for an extended time, you should have the ability to buy them when they are cheap, and hold onto them for when you need to use them.
2)  It is not IMHO emergent game play to loot these, as they have no real game world purpose so why should a character even want them?  Resources on the other hand, yes a character would desire that.
3)  This whole market crashing BS can still be done safely using the safe zones or other methods as described by GrandMasterApex.
4)  If Credits are non loot able, which has a real presence in the game, why should DACs not also be safe?  It is more emergent game play to demand the ability to loot credits.
5)  IMHO it is a better plan to resolve these complaints of hoarding, by making these items only able to be sold or traded ONCE.  This solves almost all of the legitimate complaints against keeping them non-loot able, but also lets players hold in game purchased ones till they need to use them safely.  This will also stop scams and griefing people buy luring them out to remote PVP areas with extremely low prices, to only be pounced on after they are purchased.
 
I also think it is ridiculous to be taking so much of the community's time and NQ's time discussing this now when the release of the game is 2 years out.  I would much rather have the NQ team focusing on building a great stable Alpha, and construct vs. construct combat, you know the important EMERGENT game play.
 
 Also I thought since most of the PRO loot able arguments were coming from EVE players and supporting how great it works in eve I would share the following link.
 
https://community.ev...ges-on-the-way/
 
In particular this part of it.  "The PLEX Vault will allow you to move PLEX safely throughout the universe rather than having to move it in a ship."
 
So i personally consider all "this is how it works in EVE " ETC. arguments invalid since it no longer is the way EVE works.  Also I would like to add that if it was working so well why did CCP change it and should we also then consider the why and the route they went.

Mostly Minecraft player. I love building. 

Hi, everyone.
 
Long story short, after literaly years of Minecraft and thousands of hours, I get little bored and was wandering to find some new amusement. So I stambled upon DU. Game conquered me by its potential.
 
As my little boring bio suggest, I mostly interested in design. Ships. Buildings.  It was temptation to make some mock company with fancy name and me as fist and only employee, talk about lot of fantastic things, but... meh. I will probably just work freelance and solo. 
 
And I made little showcase project. This is light aerospace fighter, sketchy 3-day work.
 

 
 

 

 

 
Made with Blockscape. Game itself is complete crap, but works (and looks) good as voxel constructor. Bad side - process is mostly hand work "sculpting" (little or non instuments), very time consuming. And UI irritating as hell. 
 
Generaly, I plan use this thread as some sort of portfolio, form client base, so to say. 
 
Thanks!
 
 
 

Hi, everyone.
 
Long story short, after literaly years of Minecraft and thousands of hours, I get little bored and was wandering to find some new amusement. So I stambled upon DU. Game conquered me by its potential.
 
As my little boring bio suggest, I mostly interested in design. Ships. Buildings.  It was temptation to make some mock company with fancy name and me as fist and only employee, talk about lot of fantastic things, but... meh. I will probably just work freelance and solo. 
 
And I made little showcase project. This is light aerospace fighter, sketchy 3-day work.
 

 
 

 

 

 
Made with Blockscape. Game itself is complete crap, but works (and looks) good as voxel constructor. Bad side - process is mostly hand work "sculpting" (little or non instuments), very time consuming. And UI irritating as hell. 
 
Generaly, I plan use this thread as some sort of portfolio, form client base, so to say. 
 
Thanks!
 
 
 

This is castle I'm currently building (WIP) in Minecraft. 
 

 
This is "aerial" view of my city. New castle will replace old crappy one (some day). Everything too in "constant process", so some strange things and pits can be seen.
 

 
Some buildings.
 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 
Time to stop. I hase so much of this stuff to show : ) I played MC literaly years and years.
 
But if you want to see somthing more close or detailed (and I dont lose it original, in case of more stand-alone projects), my pleasure.

This is castle I'm currently building (WIP) in Minecraft. 
 

 
This is "aerial" view of my city. New castle will replace old crappy one (some day). Everything too in "constant process", so some strange things and pits can be seen.
 

 
Some buildings.
 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 
Time to stop. I hase so much of this stuff to show : ) I played MC literaly years and years.
 
But if you want to see somthing more close or detailed (and I dont lose it original, in case of more stand-alone projects), my pleasure.

Putting this disclaimer on top:
The dev team has not actually said if CvC will be in alpha/beta just that it may be added post release. They have been silent on what will be in alpha/beta as far as construct v construct. It just concerns me that NQ seems to have an attitude of "it can be added later" when I think this is possibly the most important part of the game because of the time needed to get it right and its impact on everything. For the purpose of this post I am assuming they plan on adding CvC post release with little to no CvC in alpha/beta
 
 
 
I agree with OP that in videos and interviews they are selling large CvC battles as part of the game. Shipping without it is a huge negative. My concerns go deeper then just the perception of the game at launch. I have serious concerns that CvC will not be implemented in Beta or even Alpha. In my eyes one of the hardest things to do is make pvp combat balanced and fun for everyone. In a game like DU this is much harder because there is so much freedom and creativity in building ships that compounds the difficulty of pvp balance. In most games, take star citizen for example, all the ships are predesigned. This makes balance easier because control of the ships is in the hands of the developers.
 
In DU I feel like most people will understand that it is an adult game and you will die, people will steal your stuff and that's just the nature of the game. However, no player will or should tolerate losing their stuff because construct v construct combat is a cluster-fuck of balance that was not properly tested and hastily implemented post launch.
 
PvP is also something that will have an impact on every player in this game that leaves the safe zone. Lets say you want to be a miner, you have no interest in pvp or killing players. You build up defensive skills and a very defensive and safe ship so you can mine and move your cargo. The pvp system has to be able to acknowledge that you should be able to defend yourself from a lot of small ships and low skilled players if you do this. If the system is messed up and not well thought out and some low skilled player can use OP Laser ship A to insta kill all your defenses, you will probably say fuck this I'm not playing till they fix this crap. While I'm sure the dev team is smart enough to now allow something that imbalanced there will be months worth of balance needed for any pvp system to work well.  If you consider the free form nature of the game I would not feel comfortable with the pvp system until it has been tested for at least 6 months to work out all the bugs and balance issues with it.
 
Ultimately the message that i think OP is trying to get across that CvC shoudl be a much higher priority is correct. lack of having it a launch can simply make the game less appealing or because of the horrid balance issues it could lead to. My hope is they will push hard to get as much CvC in the game pre release as possible.

Hi, everyone.
 
Long story short, after literaly years of Minecraft and thousands of hours, I get little bored and was wandering to find some new amusement. So I stambled upon DU. Game conquered me by its potential.
 
As my little boring bio suggest, I mostly interested in design. Ships. Buildings.  It was temptation to make some mock company with fancy name and me as fist and only employee, talk about lot of fantastic things, but... meh. I will probably just work freelance and solo. 
 
And I made little showcase project. This is light aerospace fighter, sketchy 3-day work.
 

 
 

 

 

 
Made with Blockscape. Game itself is complete crap, but works (and looks) good as voxel constructor. Bad side - process is mostly hand work "sculpting" (little or non instuments), very time consuming. And UI irritating as hell. 
 
Generaly, I plan use this thread as some sort of portfolio, form client base, so to say. 
 
Thanks!
 
 
 

Hi, everyone.
 
Long story short, after literaly years of Minecraft and thousands of hours, I get little bored and was wandering to find some new amusement. So I stambled upon DU. Game conquered me by its potential.
 
As my little boring bio suggest, I mostly interested in design. Ships. Buildings.  It was temptation to make some mock company with fancy name and me as fist and only employee, talk about lot of fantastic things, but... meh. I will probably just work freelance and solo. 
 
And I made little showcase project. This is light aerospace fighter, sketchy 3-day work.
 

 
 

 

 

 
Made with Blockscape. Game itself is complete crap, but works (and looks) good as voxel constructor. Bad side - process is mostly hand work "sculpting" (little or non instuments), very time consuming. And UI irritating as hell. 
 
Generaly, I plan use this thread as some sort of portfolio, form client base, so to say. 
 
Thanks!
 
 
 

Hi, everyone.
 
Long story short, after literaly years of Minecraft and thousands of hours, I get little bored and was wandering to find some new amusement. So I stambled upon DU. Game conquered me by its potential.
 
As my little boring bio suggest, I mostly interested in design. Ships. Buildings.  It was temptation to make some mock company with fancy name and me as fist and only employee, talk about lot of fantastic things, but... meh. I will probably just work freelance and solo. 
 
And I made little showcase project. This is light aerospace fighter, sketchy 3-day work.
 

 
 

 

 

 
Made with Blockscape. Game itself is complete crap, but works (and looks) good as voxel constructor. Bad side - process is mostly hand work "sculpting" (little or non instuments), very time consuming. And UI irritating as hell. 
 
Generaly, I plan use this thread as some sort of portfolio, form client base, so to say. 
 
Thanks!
 
 
 

Epic fail of NMS already gives very negative effect on our KS campaign. Its in the air. If DU Kickstarter started, lets say, year ago, it will be 1 kk USD for same time period, even more. But after NMS people very suspicious, to say at least, liar Murrey crippled genre for years.
 
So, interesting PvP at start, and overall GOOD start is essential MUST for DU, just for survival at larger scale. Critics, youtubers and other crowd of this sort will be completly mercyless.

Let me start by saying that I'm very excited about this game, I've backed it from day 1 of the Kickstarter, and I've been promoting it to everyone who will listen ever since. I very much want this project to succeed.
 
That being said, the idea that PvP might not be included in the launch of the game is a very serious negative for me and any other player whose main gameplay in MMOs is PvP. I have no doubt that such an absence of combat will turn off a lot of people just on principal. Building games are all well and good, but DU isn't setting out to be a prettier Minecraft, or a PvE-only Space Engineers. If DU wants to be, as the Devs say, "the next best Sci-Fi MMORPG" then it cannot launch without a combat system.
 
For example: I can run around for hours in The Witcher 3 just playing Gwent and exploring because those are all fun and enjoyable experiences; but if the game didn't have combat in it I never would have bought it in the first place, because combat is an essential part of every RPG. The fate of Dual Universe will largely hinge on the review scores it receives at launch, and if there is no combat then you can bet that every single one of those reviews will reflect strongly on that absence. You do not get a second chance at a first impression, and DU's first impression can't be as another half-baked, all-promise-no-delivery No Mans Sky clone.
 
It's not good enough for combat to show up "eventually", it has to be there at launch, and it has to be at least decent. Just thinking of the 100 or so people in my EVE corp, it wont matter how good the game is; if there's no combat they won't even give it a second look.
 
I want this game to succeed too much to ignore what I consider to be a failure-inducing design decision.
 
Thoughts?