wizardoftrash

This may be the case, but depending on what DAC's actually end up going for on the market, the free trial might not be long enough to actually get there. That isn't by necessity a bad thing. If only having acces to t1 skills was limiting enough though, it wouldn't really be anything like a f2p game (where you can always progress, but very slowly). This would be like playing WOW but being stuck at LV5 until you can save up 20 platnum

Even if it ends up being a post-release feature, having an offline voxel/mesh editor that is compatible with DU, or an official "build only" offline tool would be a nice option in the event of server troubles or an internet outage. It would be extra excellent if blueprints for DU had a local folder, so that you could save your design to the same place as your Master Blueprints in DU

You have a point there. Unless the limit on how many locked players can be around before being kicked is very tight, it could have a negative impact on how much resources can be spent on new content. A lower cost/player ratio does lead to less revenue to use on content. On the flip side, if the attach rate for those locked players is high enough, it could generate more new revenue. The trick there would be to test/study it to see if it would have a significant positive impact over a strictly time-based trial (or more realistically, see if the attach rate is high enough where the locked players are not a financial burden). If the locked players end up costing more money than their attach rate warrants though then it might not be worth it on its other merits.

Name 3 successful single shard sandbox MMO's. Heck, name 1 that's still doing well and I'll give you a high five. EDIT: 1 reply and still no attempt. Looking like I'll have to take this high five elsewhere

Edit: This post does not mean that I endorse this system, this is meant to be a discussion about the trial period. I will be adding peoples suggestions to the applicable pro/con list below Edit: THIS thread is proof that we can discuss a controversial topic in a constructive and respectful way, I love what I'm seeing from this discussion. DU will definately have some sort of trial period, however I haven't seen a dedicated discussion for what that trial period might/should look like yet. I've heard that Eve switched to a F2P system that includes a skill cap of some kind, so here are my thoughts If the skills were sorted into tiered groups where the 1st tier allows the player to participate in that activity on a basic level, then a character could have their skills locked to 1st tier when their trial period ends or when their subscription laps. Let me define what I mean by lock. If a Locked Skill is higher than 1st tier, it can no longer increase. The skill can still progress up to 1st Tier, however it will not go beyond it. If your skill was higher than 1st when it became locked, you won't lose your progress. You will simply be "stuck" at a low level until unlocked by renewing your subscription. Advanced skills that are 2nd tier or higher might be rendered unusable while locked, such as "advanced mining". This means a new player could continue to play at a basic level once their trial ends, but would not be able to mine, scan, fly, etc beyond a very basic level. This would apply too for a player who's subscription lapses, they might be unable to fly their ship, might be unable to use certain ship systems, might be unable to build with an advanced polymer, or use their gun if the skill required becomes locked. If implemented, players might still need a limit to how long they can play while locked. If the full free trial is 2 weeks for example, the player might be able to continue playing with skill caps for another month afterwards. This locked status could also be a fallback specifically for lapsed subscriptions, to allow a player to consolidate and liquidate assets in order to earn a DAC. This system wouldn't be perfect, but worth discussing and going over the pros and cons. EDIT: At the moment the Cons seem to be way outweighing the pros. Pros: Working Class: This could bulk up the player count with redshirt level players. Evil empires need the storm-trooper equivalent now and then, big projects Demand for DAC's: Players will have ways to earn DAC's beyond the trial period, and would have a chance to sell off ships or materials for a DAC while locked if they return from a long break. More demand means a better Quanta price for DAC's, which means players with expendable income will have more incentive to shell out. More money for NQ makes a better DU. Higher Demand for Economy Ships: If building a basic ship takes a long time or a lot of infrastructure as the Devs have implied, then there will be a higher demand for Low-tier ships/tools. Any items that can't be made by locked players, but can still be used by locked players will have a high rate of consumption. This would incentivize orgs to mass-produce efficient constructs and brand-names could emerge. Could be a good marketing tool: It is hard to say if a capped play experience after the trial period would add much, but the frustration of trying to play while locked AFTER having the full experience might motivate subscription renewal. EDIT: Suggested by mrjacobean - Less currency lapse: since players can still buy/sell after their subscription lapses, it doesn't cause currency to vanish with them. Cons: Server Load: The servers might bet bogged down by stat-locked players. Solution: auto-kick locked players during high traffic. Prioritize subscribed players first, followed by players that are in the trial period, followed by locked. Gold Farmers: This opens the door for players attempting to farm for DAC's. This could be a bad thing. Undesirable Players: Yeah I said it, players with less to lose are more likely to be a negative influence on the community. If creating a trial account is easy enough, we are more likely to get skummy players and trolls. If they can stay longer, there will be more of them and create a toxic environment. Slavery: We see this behavior emerge in Rust, where large orgs take advantage of freshly spawned players and force them to grunt work. If orgs can take advantage of locked players without breaking the rules, it might make the game a worse place to be. EDIT: suggested by captaintwerkmonger - Turncoat Nakeds: players using an alt to masquerade as newbies and sabotage a ship. Solution: Make trial-period characters labeled in an obvious way, do the same for locked characters. Edit: Suggested by Shyrnas - Resentful Parasites: allowing players extremely limited access for free creates a resentful class of player. This resentful class could be a serious PR problem for the game, causing more damage than the option would be worth. Thoughts?

Your posts don't come off as skepticism, they are a proposal to change the pay model of the game. Calling us children doesn't change the fact that the existing community is invested in the currently established pay model. When you propose to change an established system, the burden of proof is on you. You must demonstrate why the alternative model is an improvement on the current system. So far you have failed to demonstrate this in a convincing way in this thread, so you moved to another thread. Dota 2 was the example you cited in that thread before it was locked, and that is a great example of this disconnect. Dota 2 had years of brand-recognition before it became its own actual game in the market. Its predecessor was a free mod that defined the MOBA genre. Dota 2 however is an entirely different genre, they can afford 90% of their players not paying anything to play in part because their cost per player is so much lower. Individual matchmaking does not require anywhere near the server infrastructure as an always-on MMO style game, and you picked what is by far one of the most successful games in the Moba genre. Other MOBAS require you to buy the game (Overwatch) or pay money for additional characters (Go Gigantic) because they cannot survive in the same market using a F2P model. Mobas also don't have the same kind of push for new content that MMO's have, so this is apples and oranges (two things so different that they can't be compared). There has not been a single successful sandbox MMO to date. Even comparing DU to other MMO's as proof that it could be f2p would be a farce. They can't afford to take risks with their pay model when their entire endeavor is inherently risky.

I feel like DU is going to get some pilgrims from Space Engineers that worship the mighty KLANG. Probably should be added to the list of dieties. Unless KLANG is the devil of the RNGesus religion. That kinda makes sense (since KLANG is a creature of random buggy misfortune).

@Bleep_Bloop has been trolling on this topic pretty hard lately. This is just an example of one non-supporter who just wants DU but doesn't want to pay for it. Instead, the Devs should totally waste their time designing content that the paying players MUST have so that freebies don't have to put down a bit of money each month. Two nice coffees is the same price as the monthly fee for DU. A dinner at Red Robin is the same price as the monthly fee. like get over it people lol! its a hobby, hobbies cost money. Just disregard and move on

Providing advantages in a sandbox game is a hotly debated topic, to the point where a good chunk of the playerbase is uncomfortable with the DAC marketplace period (even though the Quanta, resources, and ships you would trade DAC's for come from players). This is not Minecraft or 2nd life, PVP, strategy, conquering territory, and marketplace management are all going to be big features for this game's target audience. You can't casually tick those people off, those are exactly the kinds of players who make an emergent game-play environment interesting and exciting. Any premium currency transaction that allows players to buy an advantage not derived from the work of other players will have a toxic effect on the hardcore audience for the game. You can't mess with those players. They are the imperium, rebel alliance, ciminals and bounty hunters of the in-game universe, the biggest structers and coolest ships will be built by those players, not by the devs. You suggest a AAA price with tacked-on freemium transactions. Lets take a quick look at some games that followed that model. Halo 5 - only did well because its THE next Halo title. I played it, I liked it, but the kind of work and cost that goes into a Halo title is entirely different from what's going to go into an MMO. The infrastructure required to run multiplayer servers for an Xbox title is big, but almost all of the cost for developing the title was up-front. The player base size continually drops, and they just can't keep cranking out the kind of content that will keep a large group there paying and playing. This is the most successful example to date of a full-purchase price game with freemium transactions, and they stopped releasing new content a year and a half after it came out. Most players dropped the $60 for the game and earned their unlocks the hard way. An MMO can't survive if it stops making expansions after 18 months, and it would die shortly after release if they mimicked that model. That should be end of discussion. Starwars Battlfront - This was a pretty game and it captured the feel of the starwars universe perfectly. It was a buggy mess on release, took forever to fix, and still stopped releasing new content about a year after release. The sequel has already been announced, meaning there is no chance the current Battlefront will get more content. Players will have to pay the $60 again only a year later, pay more money for the DLC, and probably end up paying more per year buying each sequel for this game than they would pay for a full premium MMO subscription. $60 game with microtransactions isn't a new model that could support an MMO, its an extention of DLC and a way for developers to get a bit more money out you before you move onto the next $60 game. These aren't designed to be a player's primary hobby, they are just as expendable as the next AAA release. If you charge people $60 for DU without charging a subscription, you'll get content for a year and a half tops and then nothing. The game will die, and we'll all have to pay $60 again for the next Call of Duity game.

It depends on whether or not DU will get a "traditional" development cycle alpha, or if it will get a "greenlight" style alpha. A "traditional" development cycle does sporadic alpha tests, often with downtime periods to implement changes. Server-side games (like a single shard mmo for example) would be limited uptime, so that in-between uptimes the development team will be able to make tweaks. The design team would work on new content until it is ready, and then there would be a gap of several days to a couple of weeks where development implements the new content before alpha testing resumes. With the traditional cycle, there is usually a big difference between alpha and beta. Alpha is more geared towards getting new core content systems into the game and working, beta is more about polishing and rebalancing existing game elements, and implementing less essential core elements. This means a significant downtime between Alpha and Beta, so that the Design and Development teams can plan what kinds of changes they are testing for in beta and in what order. Often times traditional games use Beta testing primarily for server load (stress testing) and user feedback for re-balancing, tutorial design, ui design, and future updates. A "greenlight" development model is more iterative, attempting at each development phase to create a "complete" game for players to play during Alpha and Beta. They still use Alpha to add bigger content portions to the game, but the line between alpha and beta will be blurred. Greenlight projects often use the shift from Alpha to Beta to signal that they are shifting from adding new features (depth) to focusing on performance and iterative content (variety). Since NQ announced that they are delaying access to Alpha so that they can provide a more complete play cycle at that stage, it looks as though DU's alpha and beta will be a bit more like a "greenlight" project. We don't really know what features will be there day 1 for the Alpha, but I've got a hunch that the bulk of the game's actual mechanics will already be present when the game shifts from alpha into beta. The fact that there is a minimum cutoff for who will actually be included in the alpha might be a good thing: you won't get people throwing money down and expecting a complete game on day 1 like often happens with Green-light projects on Steam. Assuming NQ still allows people to pledge into Gold level and higher after Alpha has already started, a really playable alpha will mean a big injection of revenue as lower pledged backers will want to upgrade and people on the fence will finally throw-in. There isn't a way to know for sure, but I've got a hunch it will be more continuous, with minor gaps during the Alpha and Beta for big updates, and possibly an outage for a couple of weeks in-between Alpha and Beta. The smart play might be for NQ to make implementing the Beta mechanics a part of the alpha, slow-rolling the content until the transition is seamless.

How dare you mock the mighty CLANG. he will ruin your builds! you have cursed us all!

If it happens, it won't need to be mechanically implemented. It could be possible to set up a religion as an Org. Depending on how much chance their is in scanning and loot though, I will be praising RNGesus.

The intent with the heat-explosion would not be to damage other constructs, only the overheated one. If the heat explosion can't damage other entities then it should be just fine as drawback mechanic.

This is why I suggested only 1 type of element that actually kicks out heat: the heatsink elements themselves. Heatsinks wound only need to be "ckecked" when the ship turns on, and when the game already checks to see if an element is disabled due to damage. -when the ship turns on: the ship generates the spheres (but they would look more like rectangular prisms to be honest or cylenders) and checks for elements within those areas. If they are, it applies the debuff and gives you a heat warning. Example: HEAT WARNING - THRUSTERS OVERHEATED. If the dispersal area is not enough for your reactoe, it gives you a heat warning for your reactor. -when the ship receives damage and checks the damaged elements to see which ones are disabled, since the Heatsinks will likely be elements, it would check to see if any of the heatsinks are disabled. If so, it repeats the above process (though the only system that would gain a heat warning that didn't already have one wod be your reactor. If your Reactor generates a Heat Warning, it would check its current heat level against what its "new maximum heat level" is with its reduced number of heatsinks. If the current heat level exceeds the new maximum, that's when bad stuff happens: Outage, or in an extreme case, Explosion.

You actually totally can, because its a game. The goal was to make the heatsink elements or heatsink voxels effectively an extension of the reactor. In theory do weapons and thrusters generate heat too? well sure, however the assumption is the the Thruster Element has its own heat dissipation right out of the box, same with weapons. They were all designed not to overheat on their own, that is unless you overheat them with another heat source (or push them too hard). The reactor on the other hand would need more install, gotta have X ammount of heat dissipation that does not overlap with your thrusters and weapons, or else the heat from your reactor will heat them up to the point of inneficiency/damage. Heatsink parts will let you decide where to put that heat dissipation in or on your ship, and avoiding overheating your other elements would be a fun part of ship design for any ship bigger than a shuttle (which would probably have a tiny reactor, and consequently not need any additional heat dissipation).

ITS TIME TO DU-DU-DU-DUAL?\ You've activated my Trap Ship!

Or we could build the logos into our constructs so that the devs don't have to develop yet another game mechanic!

The Devs already mentioned NOT having a system like you described as it would take up too much manpower. This thread was put together to discuss the idea of making the process of uploading a logo resource intensive so that it would not take as much manpower.

This doesn't actually have to be about heat. This could be about electrical interference, radiation, or some imaginary technology. The idea is to make the player allocate some space inside of their ship that isn't functional elements, where they put that space would encourage people to build ship interiors. -> Players that don't want spaces on their ships would place their heatsink elements outside of their ship. It makes their ship more dense, but exposes them to more risk. That option would be there. Making players do something that they don't want to do is part of game design, you give them choices (heat dispersion outside or inside). I recall the Dev team talking about Repair Modules, which leads me to believe that repairing and restoring a damaged ship is entirely automated. You would need power, raw polimers for the damged/destroyed voxels, parts to replace the destroyed elements and time. -> We don't actually know what element damage, voxel damage, or repairs will look like at all. If you need to repair those things by hand then yes, creating access ports for maintenance will be baked in. This was a suggestion for if there were no other incentive to create those spaces so that they aren't anemic flying skeletons with everything non-essential removed.

I'm personally content just crudely creating images and logos using the voxel sculpting tools. It shouldn't be too hard to make a GRATZ PUPPY head ornament on a ship!

Either that or taxing on the game client or user's machine. Scripting will be user-side, and if a system like this were only applied to moving constructs, heat management could also be player-side (since a construct would only generate heat if its functional elements were in-use).

Similar scifi sandbox games suffer from a ship-building flaw where players have an inventive to include no interior spaces in their ships. (edited for spelling) Space Engineers, Starmade, Emperion all have a problem where even with big spaceships, players are rewarded by densely packing the ship with systems and armor and creating no interior spaces for players and decorations. Starmade is working on an overhaul for their power systems to solve this issue and I have a different idea for how to encourage players to build large ships that feel large, but have interior space. Heatsinks. Now I'm not saying that the power units for ships should create dangerous heat-areas that hurt players, however a system in which Reactors require space to dissipate heat creates opportunities for balance and build decisions. I will define some terms here so that it makes sense. Reactor: I'm referring to power units here. Different sizes of reactors would have different Heat-Outputs and different Heat-Dissipation threshholds. If you can get your heat dissipation above the threshhold for the reactor, it will operate at its highest efficiency. If the heat dissipation is below the threshhold, it would output way less power per fuel consumption. A steep decrease in heat dissipation (from the heatsink being severed or destroyed) could overload the power block, creating an outage or explosion. Bigger Reactors would have a higher Heat-Output and a much higher Heat-dissipation threshhold. Smaller reactors would have small heat-output and a much smaller heat-dissipation threshhold, and the smallest would require no heat dissipation whatsoever. Heatsink: I'm referring to the physical element or voxels that need to be placed adjacent to the Reactor to dissipate heat. This could be elements that can be inter-connected and chained together, or a conductive polymer that are palced and formed just like voxels (as an element would probably be the simplest to implement). When you connect a Heatsink to a Reactor, it projects a heat-dissipation field around it (1 meter on all sides when connected to a small reactor). This heat dissipation field's volume is what you need to reach the heat dissipation threshhold of your reactor, big threshhold means more of your ship's volume must be built to dissipate heat. This field wouldn't hurt the player, but any other elements placed within this field (thrusters, weapons, shield generators) would receive a massive performance drop. This allows you to turn space built for heat dissipation into interior spaces, since you don't want to place functional elements there. Larger reactors need much more heat dissipation, which will encourage players designing large ships even for combat to create interior spaces that could be decorated to look like living quarters, an engineering bay, or any other interior space. In addition, Large reactors would have a much higher Heat-Output. Heat-Output: is a property of reactors that determines how large of a heat dissipation field a heat sink will project. If you attack a 5 meter long heatsink rod to a small reactor, it would project a 1 meter wide heat dissipation field around it. Connecting the same heat sink rod to a much larger reactor would project a 5 or even 10 meter wide heat dissipation field around it, which will allow you to create a large heat dissipation area without packing the interior of your ship with "more" heatsinks. "cant you just have your heatsinks protruding out of your ship so that the ship denser and more efficient?" Good question, and the answer to that should be absolutely yes. This is why I feel the system would create some neat balance decisions. A builder could absolutely design their heatsinks so that they all protrude from the ship, projecting their heat-dissipation area into empty space so that it doesn't interfere with their functional ship elements. That choice would also create a vulnerability, as they could easily be damaged or destroyed during combat leading to a reactor outage or explosion (that's where that steep drop in heat dissipation would come from). A clever ship builder could even have their heatsinks recessed in their ship (where they might interfere with systems at full power), but use a track or roter to push the heatsinks outside of their ship when they need the most power, or if they need to turn on a 2nd bigger reactor (which would increase their heat-output, and make the heat dissipation area around the heatsinks much much bigger). Thoughts?

I believe the goal would be to make the custom image item expensive enough that MODs would have time to approve each image. When a player uploads an image via this item, it would probably have a 24 hour delay before it could be used, and during that time a Mod would either veto the image (if it is deemed inappropriate), approve the image (turning it "on" immediately), or do nothing which would turn on the image when the timer expires. This allows the item to function correctly even if they are having high work strain or taking some time off. There will already be a way to report inappropriate constructs, so I imagine the same feature could be used to report inappropriate decals (in the cases where a mod either approved an inappropriate image without understanding it, or did nothing and it was approved by default). People WILL be making inappropriate constructs as it is, but the consequences for one getting caught might be bad enough that it doesn't become a problem. I would rather not see something like this implemented for another reason. Creative players will be able to use the construct building tools to create their own images and logos in-game. They already demonstrated the ability to "paint" lines onto the hull of a ship, so even if you "painted" squares you could create a pixelated logo or flag with a little planning, and copy/paste it as a blueprint into and onto your other constructs. If you are able to use a color-slider, these logos could look quite complex. In addition, adding a sliced wedge-shape could allow us to make more complex images. Take my banner/user image for example: it is made entirely out of squares and triangles (because I'm hoping to be able to use that technique to slap this puppy onto my structures and ships). Because we will be able to sculpt and carve voxels, we may be able to "spread" fairly thin pieces of colored hull onto a flat piece. The way you would do this is place a thin/flat hull piece, and use the reduction tool to carve the sheet into the shape you really want for that color. Then slap that thin piece onto your existing hull and repeat for each color layer. This will be quite a bit like mural painting, or painting with gel medium!

Again, we don't actually know how this will work yet! The intent of the TU is indeed to prevent the use of construction tools, mining, ect and manage permissions. However the Devs also mentioned that fighting over control of TU's will be a part of how war will work, which means there will be SOME way to attack a territory claimed by a TU. If attackign a well-protected TU pretty much REQUIRED a siege to occur, then storing a ship at a friendly TU would still be fairly safe. Perhaps immobile constructs will have access to much harder shielding, or an emergency shield system that kicks-in when the base is under attack and EITHER lasts a # of hours or requires an invasion force to attack it to bring it down faster. Stealing or grieving a ship is a crime of opportunity, if it is too inconvenient, then the typical player will leave it there. Thus storing a ship at a TU would require an invasion force or a very patient fairly well-equipped player to destroy/steal (and you'd lose your ship if someone was also after the territory of course).

How much does a typical gamer spend on hardware and software for gaming in a year? This is the price of roughly 3 AAA game titles per year, so roughly 4 months per AAA game. How many xbox one games really have 4 months worth of steady game content? There are a few sure, but 3 per year? Unlikely. Sandbox game junkies often spend tons of hours all in one game. MMO players often spend tons of hours all in one game. The kinds of players that will appreciate DU are the kinds for which $156/year breaks down into a very small and reasonable $/hour ratio. For the players that have the most time to play and the least income, there is a good chance it'll break down to $0/year with the ability to trade for game time in the in-game market. That seems pretty reasonable to me. EDIT for an additional point -Gaming is a hobby, and hobbies can sometimes be expensive. For someone who plans to play a bit each day, or have longer binge-sessions on the weekend, this could be considered someone's primary hobby. The advantage here is that if someone decides that they no longer want to play, they can stop paying and allocate future funds towards something else. Lastly this model ensures that the Developers will be able to create regular expansions, which will keep the game in a place where we want to have it as a primary hobby.