wizardoftrash
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Posts posted by wizardoftrash
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I've been hanging out at gold, because I honestly want to help tinker with the alpha and push hardware limits. Plus the sooner I can play with the voxel sculpting the better.
AKA I wanted to be a lousy beater.
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They should hire more artists if they intend to do a lot of extra modeling. I do want to see extra models, it will liven up the gameplay.
I think what Phroshy meant was that the modelers can stay busy making alt-textures and meshes and other bling while other aspects of game dev continue. It is hard to say what their pipeline is, but if the main elements end up meshed and textured, and numbers are still being balance tested in beta, the artists could work on bling.
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I don't consider this to be a premature discussion, because they brought up the premium cosmetic shop within the context of Alpha and Beta players. They mentioned that as an outlet for those players to continue to support the game, without charging Alpha and Beta players a subscription. It is their intent to make cosmetics available at a very early stage, hence my bringing it up.
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Yeah I agree, I think the arkship "safe zone" will be unlike anything available to players. It will be much larger than the TCU's available to organizations, and will prevent all pvp. Not much I can say that wizard didn't say above me though!
I do want to point out a specific difference that I've noticed though. The entire game is built around player-made content; the developers aren't creating any entities for the game because the point is that everything is made by the players. As such, the arkship is significant because it is made by the developers. So this makes the arkship, and the elements associated with it, unique. Thus, I think the arkship's safe zone will remain permanently unique.
On a recent dev diary, they mentioned that "Arkitization", being able to turn owned territory into a safe zone miiiight be a feature they will consider, a possibkly very rare "ark token" that would take a week to actually set up.
So as it stands right now, it is in the firmly MAYBE POSSIBLE category.
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Forgive my ambiguity, but I didn't mean custom images, I was talking an alternate skin for deployable elements that would be purchasable in a premium cosmetic shop as discussed in the Monitization thread.
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In their monetization post, the topic of a premium cosmetic shop was mentioned and it got me thinking...
How about some alt skins and meshes for elements?
Lets say I bought an alt skin/mesh for a cockpit with a skull sprayed into the glass. Cool right? Now when I go to place a cockpit, I would have that option. Similar to transmogs in Wow or D2, alt skins and meshes are a common cosmetic in other games, but usually for avatar items. Couldn't this also be the case for construct elements?
If I bought that alt cockpit, I would still need the materials for a cockpit, it would be functionally identical to an existing cockpit, just cosmetically diffwerent. Then... Would I be able to sell the ship? Would the special cockpit only display if they owned the cosmetic, or would it stick? Would builders have a way to earn extra ingame resources by building ships and structures with premium cosmetics?
Discuss
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Hi Zhiroc!
Your concerns are understandable. And here are the game design basics that should tackle both problems you mentioned:
The character progression will be based on skill progression over time (no character leveling).
Learning a basic skill at the minimum level will be a matter of minutes.
Having a basic skill at the minimum level will generally unlock a type of gameplay.
So the casual player will quickly have access to many gaming experiences, and he will be able to do more or less the same things than a veteran player, just less efficiently. On the other hand, if you don't play the game for a long time, money is not entirely wasted as your character continue to learn the selected skill while you're offline. Yes, this is quite similar to another game, in which it works incredibly well.
Hi Quasibyte !
We understand that the combo subscription model + cosmetic Cash Shop might appear a bit too much at first glance.
But there are some reasons behind it. And one of the biggest is directly tied with the reason why B2P + PLEX Model isn't a so great combination.
1) To make the PLEX system thrive right from the beginning, you need to have a free trial period: this enable players with low budget to accumulate enough in-game currency to buy their first PLEX. If you put a B2P model, it's immediately a paywall for them. If these players can't get into the game, the demand in PLEX will low to inexistent. Then, all the purpose to have PLEX is wasted. In this case, it's better to make a classic subscription model without PLEX.
2) Why a cosmetic Cash Shop? Let's say a lot of people discover our game after the Kickstarter and they want to support us. For ethical reasons, we can hardly ask for a classic subscription in Alpha, or even in Beta before the game is officially launched. It's unlikely such announcement would be welcomed. A cosmetic item that you buy and get in alpha or beta that you keep after official launch seems a lot more fair. True, an alternative would to have a Post-Kickstarter pledges on our website, but there are also drawbacks to go the supporter packs road several times. Another aspect is our technology relies in great part on cloud computing and that is something that might become signicantly more expensive in maintenance than classic servers used by other MMORPGs. If we fall into this scenario (we are still currently evaluating all our options), inflating subscription fee will probably not be well received, while a cosmetic Cash Shop might be more easily accepted by the community.
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.
I would be ALL OVER a cosmetic shop, gotta get that sweet #swag.
But for real, as someone that wants to be a part of the alpha and beta, if continuing to throw down for cosmetics helps, i'll be down for that. Just give me some sweet hobo rags to go with some spooky space armor and I'll be a happy camper.
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After around 2km of digging there will be no technology to dig any deeper into a planet's surface. Stripping an entire planet would leave it with 4km less in diameter than it originally was on a scale of thousands of kms. It may no longer be very beneficial to mine from, but you could probably still settle on it, not sure why you'd want to though.
depending on how resource management works in the game though, players might have to dispose of unused material volume (effectively trash) by placing it, making stripped out planets perfect landfills.
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I'm willing to bet that Governments will simply be a kind of ORG. I don't think that players will have the ability to create ark ship style safezones using Territory units. The ORG itself would likely determine what is and is not permitted, manage mining, building, and editing rights in that area, but probably won't have the ability to prevent PVP.
Instead an ORG might set up laws governing the zones that are a part of the territory, and might have to use scripts to implement punishments. The EMPIRE org might have a script running in their territories that automatically puts a bounty on anyone that attacks and/or kills someone in their territory that expires after an hour (except of course, people who have that kind of bounty on them). Provided the ORG has sufficient funds to pay, it turns anyone nearby into potential law enforcement.
We don't really know the specifics of how laws and TU's work, but I'm willing to bet that Governments will simply be a kind of Org
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Also there is already an identical thread, this is a duplicate.
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There are plenty of good games that don't have subscriptions. If you can't afford one, I'd recommend going and playing one of those.
For real though, the reason why games wike WOW and EVE can continue cranking out quality expansion after quality expansion is because their audience continues to pay. I would have (and still would be) fine with paying a subscription for Minecraft, so I'm deff up for paying a subscription for a game like this.
Plus you can always join an org and earn your DAC's, successful orgs can afford to keep players on payrole if they contribute enough to their efforts. Do that long enough and a player can afford to buy their DAC's off of the in-game market.
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1 USD
I can always count on you to give me a chuckle
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PLEX model = DAC is digital and in-order to be sold to another player it needs to be turned into a physical item in-game, then, it can be sold and it's a risk to keep it on your person for long periods of time. The original buyer is guaranteed their Euros' worth of in-game currency they can manage to sell the DAC for.
Who do you think will create the trend of playing for "free" by buying in-game playtime extensions? That's right, Ruby and above backers on the kickstarter.
That's why their DACs must be "Safe". Those DACs will create the trend of people buying their gametime with in-game currency.
That's why it's "The Compromise".
Option A makes DACs into Premium Currency, like it's some Free-to-Play game.
Option B makes the game a gangster's paradise.
Option C is the Compromise, to make the game into the corporate and political flustercuck that it can trully become, and the Backer DACs are limited, as the packages are limited as well.
you know so much, can you guess my backer level?
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There is no connection between being able to steal DAC's and preventing the game from being P2W. You are just tacking on something that people hate to rally support. Time has an impact on games like these, but few games talk about limiting how much time people can play to make it "fair" for people that can't Grind2win. Pay2Win has nothing to do with their decision to keep DAC's from being stealable
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Make cheap DACs safe and expensive DACs risky? It is stupid illogical solution)
Just consider the consequences of day 1, when 20% of the player base starts with 6-20 months worth of DAC's that they cannot protect. The most involved members of the community, who's kickstarter usernames are public and probably their ingame usernames, can be targeted harassed and hunted down for a chunk of their kickstarter pledges. That seems ridiculous right? Hence the distinction.
I just don't understand why being able to steal DAC's is so important. A player can inject DAC's into the economy for goods and services, and you can undo their work and steal their goods. Isn't that equivalent? Is that not good enough? If the answer is no, wouldn't it just boil down to wanting to be able to digitally steal someone's wallet? (kek that's too bad not going to happen).
Lets imagine a world where you can't steal DAC's (you know, the world as it's currently going to be)
Lets say at month 6, Territory Units are in high demand and are very resource intensive to build (TU's). These are physical elements that can be built, bought, sold, transported, stolen, destroyed etc. We reach a point that there are enough DAC's in the market that people are willing to trade DAC's for TU's. They are each worth roughly the same spacebux, another currency that can be stolen, destroyed, etc, and they have been equivalent for about a month and are likely to stay equivalent for a while.
Why isn't stealing a TU enough? You can turn around and trade it for a DAC. The guy you stole it from traded a DAC for it in the first place. Sure, the demand for TU's could go down, or the supply could increase and hurt it's price, but its the same for DACs. The only real division between stealing DAC's vs TU's in this scenario is that one has an IRL dollar value.
So is this boiling down to you guys wanting to be able to really mug people in a video game? That's how it seems
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I just don't understand why being able to steal DAC's is so important. A player can inject DAC's into the economy for goods and services, and you can undo their work and steal their goods. Isn't that equivalent? Is that not good enough? If the answer is no, wouldn't it just boil down to wanting to be able to digitally steal someone's wallet? (kek that's too bad not going to happen).
Lets imagine a world where you can't steal DAC's (you know, the world as it's currently going to be)
Lets say at month 6, Territory Units are in high demand and are very resource intensive to build (TU's). These are physical elements that can be built, bought, sold, transported, stolen, destroyed etc. We reach a point that there are enough DAC's in the market that people are willing to trade DAC's for TU's. They are each worth roughly the same spacebux, another currency that can be stolen, destroyed, etc, and they have been equivalent for about a month and are likely to stay equivalent for a while.
Why isn't stealing a TU enough? You can turn around and trade it for a DAC. The guy you stole it from traded a DAC for it in the first place. Sure, the demand for TU's could go down, or the supply could increase and hurt it's price, but its the same for DACs. The only real division between stealing DAC's vs TU's in this scenario is that one has an IRL dollar value.
So is this boiling down to you guys wanting to be able to really mug people in a video game? That's how it seems
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they wanted to make resource prospecting a social thing wich is good and should be, but there is no point in making mining one, as it will be quite boring with huge ore veins.
resource prospecting is you go on a planet, take samples analyze them and detect what ores lye beneath the surface, and then sell the location to a mining corp.
mining is, remove voxels, deposit: repeat.
If mining is boring, then people might just pay good credits for large volumes of ore. As a minecraft player, I can tell you that different people enjoy different aspects of that game, but sometimes being able to put on some netflix and just dig for a while can be nice, especially if it goes quickly.
Digging by hand might be very efficient in this game. We aren't really sure since Alpha isn't out yet little lone beta. We might find that players spend more time prospecting, and that mining is the quickest part. It may be that transporting and refining ends up being the riskiest/most time intensive part.
For now though, there isn't enough out there for us to guess, but there is plenty out there to say that the Dev's won't want the MMO to suffer a performance hit because of a self-replicating drone army.
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There should probably need a report function, as in-game voice chat without it simply gives people a way to verbally abuse each other. Text chat is much easier to manage as there is a record, and it can have screenshots taken, but it is much trickier with voice chat.
I've got a hunch that the fact that it is subscription based mayyy be enough to keep people from using DU as a harassment simulator, but they announced a free trial period, what is to keep people from using throwaway accounts to verbally assault people?
I do think there should be a voice chat function, however just playing devil's advocate here. If there was a setting in-between accept all and mute all, where you can accept to chat with specific players but don't hear the unwashed masses, that would solve this problem as well.
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pretty sure there is already an official decision on this
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"hello, my name is steve, i have been mining for 20 years in DU, and look at that hole over there, it's my life's work, 1 million cubic meters"
this is absurd, having a futuristic game and having no mining automation...
best mining automation would be analytical vein depletion, instead of voxel removal, thus reducing the server cost.
"Hey game dev, implement a feature that reduces server cost so that I can cause it to implode with self-replicating nanites" yeah great suggestion.
I beleive it was during the Q&A that they wanted exploration and resource collection to be a personal experience, and they wanted to incentivise players to explore by making resource collection by-hand only. Even if that changes, I highly doubt they will allow players to automate construction.
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Source?In the safezone are resources but nothing of value so for ship construction you have to wander outside
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Source?
I do believe it is not in their main interest to allow player to create such creatures, but be sure they will be many of us to try it anyway ^^
The wiki section on Material states that it is collected and seployed via your nanoformer, which us a hand tool
http://dualuniverse.gamepedia.com/Material
The nanoformer is described as being built into your right arm
http://dualuniverse.gamepedia.com/Nanoformer
AKA material collection and placement is by hand.
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The effect of TUs on larger Organizations can be described as negligible if one considers the manpower, resources, and potential of said groups. What is a TU really but a flag planted on a hill signifying that you own it? If anything, a TU is just an organizer for information and a warning system for trespassers; an essentially useless piece of equipment for those Organizations with the capability of constantly posting men in their "claimed" territories. There are no rules preventing the Organizations from taking on a shoot-to-kill policy on all foreigners in any given region; there are no restraints. The presence, or necessity, of a TU in early stages of the game is void. Think of it this way - unless some miraculous discovery is made, there is no method which my mind can concoct so as to allow a smaller group to develop a TU faster than a larger one. Thus there is no competition except with other larger organizations. Given the limited amount of larger organizations currently present and the sheer size of the starting planet, I fear the possibility of Larger Orgs monopolizing unique resources and destabilizing the game. Also, what is there to limit the "ring surrounding the safe zone prohibiting expansion"? What is there to prevent early domination in a world where no advanced technology exists to balance the difference in manpower?
If there are enough resources in the safe zone to allow you to leave orbit, it will be very hard for an org to trap incoming players. Not to mention one of the largest orgs at this moment is... Not likely to do that.
It is true that there is really no way for a solo player to build a TU faster than an org, but this is a cooperative game. The reality is that it will be built with teamwork as a key part of its core. Being a lone wolf will have clear disadvantages.
What if Weapons simply don't fire in the first 48 hours? What if rare resources don't appear right away and can't be mapped in advance, and appear over time after the first week? There are several ways that the devs can prevent a hunger games stuyle day 1 start, but since alpha has not even started (which won't include pvp mechanics or combat at start) we are a long way before we can guess what that could look like.
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I do think (and hope) the Quest system NQ is going to implement will be contract-like as in :
1) A party issue a quest, where he stipulates what the rewards are and what the proof(s) of completion should be for him to trust completion of the quest (nothing, items, money, information, screenshots and, why not videos).
2) The quest is shared to second parties (individuals, organisations or publicly)
3) The second parties take the quest and such action is registered (there can be multiple second parties in case of bounty hunter for example or if you need the quest to be fulfilled more than once)
4) The second parties complete the quest and brings proof of it or the second parties cancel the quest (registered).
5) The first party upon presentation of proof(s) rewards the second (registered upon approval of receipt by the second parties) or refuse to pay (registered) according to his trust towards the proof(s).
-> At the end of the day, each party make the other's party reputation and trust is the key essence and every party involved have some log of the quest status to use as proof of completion for their boss, claim of breach of contract to judges or for statistics purposes.
This seems like too many actions for unrelated parties to be responsible for. If you have a quest system that relies on many other people to take actions to ensure that you got paid, who is going to want to be responsible for all of that? What happens when those people suddenly stop caring?
Great job! You spent a month building the space lazer for the death star! Too bad Janet in Accounting has to sign off on your check, because she doesn't play anymore! Oh and the player you listed as a witness got the request added to his action list, but he doesn't check his email, you you aren't getting paid!
That would happen ALL THE TIME, often enough for players to abandon that kind of contract system. How many people started avoiding Preston in Fallout 4?
Just let the game handle the contract system, and work within it to improve it. If in its fully developed state there are jobs that simply don't fit in the scope of the contract system, you can always do handshake deals (about as emmersive as it gets).
Character Creation/Customization and Races
in Idea Box
Posted
Given that there may be a premium cosmetic item shop, we might see more alternate armor designs come up, but so far no reason to indicate anything other than humanoid shape. But hey, if enough people would buy alt race character meshes, who knows right?