Dygz_Briarthorn
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Posts posted by Dygz_Briarthorn
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Wage-slavery can. It has turned us all into gears of the system. I don't see any difference if a big org can wage-slave people to grind for them in exchange for safety and a patch of land for the common folk to call home.
Even though I'm a socialist and not a communist, I'm tots down for starting a Red Octomber situation.
Wage slavery is possible when you aren't born naturally owning your own land. And you need permission from a government to hunt your own food.
What circumstances do you foresee in DU that can lead to wage-slavery?
I suppose if I'm in space on a multi-crew ship, I could suddenly find myself trapped on the ship without permissions to access food.
So, ostensibly, the owner of the ship would try to force me into "slave" labor... but, what else would I be doing on the ship? Sleeping?
If I'm sent down to a planet to harvest, I would probably be able to live off the land away from the slavers.
Worst case scenario, I kill myself and respawn at an Arkship - away from the slavers.
And hang out with friends who aren't slavers.
I don't see how it's possible to enforce wage-slavery in Dual Universe.
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I think of myself as Chaotic Good in real life - with the example given in D&D being Robin Hood.
One of the key elements of Chaotic is having an aversion to rules/order/law. One of the key elements of Good is high regard for life.
I typically avoid joining groups that list rules.
I joined COPS because I know Kiklix from Landmark, I've always admired his spaceship designs and I'm looking forward to funneling resources his way to help him create some cool ships in DU.
I'm thrilled to see so many people I know from Landmark here in the forums and glad several of them are joining or allying with COPS.
(The only person from the Landmark forums I don't consider a friend is Thrasy).
Labels aside, I'm pleasantly surprised to see our values aligned...
Freedom fighter, lone wolf, play by own rules...
I expect to subvert the economy by handing out a bunch of free stuff (my experience is that players are generally greedy when it comes to setting prices)
Traveling on a multi-crew ship with the members we have seems like it will be a lot of fun.
- Dhara, Bella_Astrum, nietoperek and 4 others
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The concepts of "slavery" in this thread are interesting but seem to be extremely broad.
I am not a voxelmancer, so I don't expect to do much building of constructs.
I expect to do quite a bit of harvesting and crafting - in addition to exploring.
I'm a hippie/commie/socialist at heart... so my hope is to share my surplus with others for free or barter for trade.
In Landmark, many of us had treasure chests on our claims filled with extra resources and gear for newbies to pick up for free.
Also, many of us handed surplus resources over to Builders simply to help them build cool-looking stuff.
In a game with Arkships and safe zones and a free personal TU, I don't think you can make players into true slaves.
I think it will be easy to find players willing to provide you with free labor - if you're friendly and also willing to lend them a hand when they ask for help.
Should also be interesting to see how relationships develop on multi-crew ships.
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Are you talking about 40 hours of real time waiting, i.e. automated building time, not actual playing time? You cannot equate automated building time with active playing time.
Destruction is always quicker and easier than creation, that is a fact of life. There does need to be a balance, but you cannot sum it up to a simple equation of 100 armor vs 100 bullets, or 40 hours vs 40 hours. Things are never that simple.
1: The 40 hours includes time designing, gathering materials and... testing Lua scripting as will likely be the case for ships.
Rebuilding won't take as long designing, but gathering building materials will take hours. And gathering fuel for ships will likely take hours.
2: "Fact of life" is irrelevant. Dual Universe is a game; not real life. The devs are going to design the game for what's fun for Builders as well as what's fun for Fighters. The balance of gameplay is not going to be the same it is for games where you can simply purchase a new ship from an NPC vendor. The solution will not be simple, but it will need to be fair. Otherwise, Builders will stop building - and then there's no point in having a voxel game.
3: At this time, we don't need a new thread for players to devise "solutions". We need to play the game first to see if the devs' design strategies feel fair and then we can help tweak whatever they've already implemented.
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Correct, but the same can be said of any attacker here as well, the complaint was it takes 5 min to destroy what someone spent 40 hours building, not giving any consideration to the time it took the attacker to get his weapon and skill to use it.... So i would say there does not need to be any game desigined balance for pvp, it will sort itself out
The same cannot be said for the attacker because both Builders and Fighters will have to spend time acquiring gear and upgrading skills.
If it takes Builders 40 hours to build contstructs and Fighters 5 minutes to destroy those contrsucts - Builders will stop building. It's not worth the effort.
Blatantly unfair for Fighters to have their fun in a handful of minutes while it takes builders tens of hours to have their fun.
The devs will definitely balance that since they've stated that Dual Universe is as much a building game as it is a PvP combat game.
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I was reading through the devblogs earlier, and had either forgotten about, or hadn't processed this part before:
So we will need food it seems, which I am glad about, it just depends on how it will be implemented.
From this devblog: https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2014/08/17/about-the-alpha-gameplay/
Edit: Seems Halo381's post above partially answers that.
(Posted Sunday 17th of August 2014 on the DevBlog)
At this stage, it is not clear if we will have enough time until the alpha to implement NPC animals to come and bother you during the night, as well as serve as hunting preys. But that’s the idea, because you will need to feed yourself, and the nanoformer cannot make wood-based lunch for you!
We are also thinking about farming and hunting, because you will need food.
That devblog actually mentions two times that we will need food.
But, as I said elsewhere, I don't think it's going to be minute-to-minute like a survival game.
- nietoperek and Bella_Astrum
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If we have implants, I'd love for them to be visible on our avatars - like cyber-tattoos.
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This has me wondering what other forms of fuel and propulsion we might discover on alien planets or via alien science.
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I don't understand the need for currency and banking. Why would anyone trade one item for another when all they have to do is take what they want?
Ha. I don't think we can steal designs/blueprints or LUA code. Probably not stuff in inventory.
Constructs, we can probably abscond with those. Yeah.
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Bartering wouldn't be standard, though.
Negotiate moment to moment.
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1: The devblog specifically states we will be able to build in safe zones. That's the primary reason for having safe zones. Two of the options for the safe zones are open world. One of the safe zone options is to build in a virtual sim.
Can't design without building. It's possible that the constructs built in the virtual sim won't be able to leave the virtual sim, but that's really meaningless when we're talking about ships. Just need to have the resources and the blueprint.
2: Your usage of "best" appears to be "cookie-cutter, flavor of the month". But that is still subjective... even if there is a majority consensus.
Your cosmetic example is completely irrelevant. Parameters which will effect perceptions of "best" will include weapons, shielding, speed, fuel-efficiency, engineering, life-support, scanning/communications, cloaking, etc. And those will be based on a variety of parameters, such as advanced character skills and discoveries of new elements - as well as player LUA scripting. Different orgs are going to be more interested in some systems than others. Orgs focused on exploration may have weapons lowest on their hierarchy and upgrade weapons by trading or purchasing them from other orgs rather than designing weapons systems themselves. Exploration orgs may also develop or discover the best designs for cloaking and scanning. While battle-focused orgs develop and discover the best designs for weapons and shielding.
So, it's not really about the "best" ships. The best systems will be objective. Some org will have designs for the most powerful weapons or the strongest shielding. But some other org may have the designs for most fuel-efficient engines, most powerful scanners or most powerful cloaking devices. That's what people will be buying and selling - along with ships and designs that have a variety of configurations of those systems.
It may also be that we will discover designs from a variety of alien races that people will want put on the market. Seems likely since there will be alien ruins.
a} Many people don't care enough about rock, paper, scissors for that to be a factor determining what is best. If they love rocks, rocks will always be best. That's an aspect of roleplaying that is different than competitive gaming. For instance, my Ice Wizard in NWO only uses Ice spells. Doesn't matter if a particular Repel spell is more powerful than a particular Ice spell because Ice fits my character's theme, interests and personality while Repel doesn't. Roleplaying always trumps combat, so in that case Ice spells are always better than Repel spells. Repel spells have no value for that character.
b} If a character in DU is a peacenik, carebear who refuses to use weapons, weapons have no value for that character. A ship with no weapons will always be better than a ship with weapons.
But the examples that will be more common is those peacenik explorers for whom weapons have had low value may find them selves in a predicament where they suddenly want/need to upgrade their weapons and they don't have anyone in the org who has sufficient weapon skills to build those upgrades.
Likewise, an org that had a low value on stealth may find themselves in a predicament where they have to rely on cloaking to successfully maneuver through a hostile solar system, but they don't have Builders with sufficient skills in cloaking to provide the needed cloaking devices.
c} "Simple enough" is unlikely to really be a thing.
People are going to want better systems that support their interests.
"Good enough" will very likely be a thing. As in some people will think that a ship with maximum speed, maximum cloaking and minimal weapons is "good enough for now". And good enough that it actually is considered to be best for now, especially if they are peacenik, carebears.
Some people will think that superfast, fuel-efficient solo scout ships are the best - some people will think that battlecruisers with the most powerful weapons are the best.
Rather than rock, paper, scissors - it will generally be the arms race of better rock, better rock, better rock (where the rock is a specific system like weapons or engines)
3: There really is no "meta" for "good" ship. What there is in many MMOs is a consensus of a cookie-cutter, flavor-of-the-month, best-in-slot build (for combat). I don't believe that really applies in voxel games. And won't apply with the kinds of designs we'll have from players and devs in Dual Universe.
But, even so... you may tell me that you have a ship available that is good because it has the most powerful weapons, heavy-duty shields, decent speed, decent fuel-efficiency but no cloaking.
If I'm a peacenik, carebear explorer who refuses to use weapons and who relies on maximum speed and the most powerful cloaking to survive, your ship is not a good ship from my perspective. Because what I value as good is different than what you value as good.
Where your org is focused on the most glorious military battles and my org is focused on the most knowledgeable exploration, our Builders will very likely have very different skill sets. As unpredictable challenges arise, we may need to rely on each other in order to meet that challenge.
Bottom line is: there will be ample opportunity for people to buy and sell and trade - because there will be a constant flow of new discoveries from different individuals and different orgs. And those discoveries will have significant impact on how we navigate through the game... as opposed to simply building constructs that look nice, but don't actually do anything.
And...I'm done.
You can have the last word if you want.
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1: It is relevant to what you were saying. You stated that we cannot build in safe zones. The devblogs state that we will be able to build in safe zones - the safe zones are specifically for Builders to be able to build without being interrupted by pvp. Constructs will remain in the safe zones until the Builders move them out of the safe zone... or until the safe zone is deactivated. Builders are unlikely to remain in safe zones forever - they will likely want to travel to other locations for advanced resources, etc. And, whenever they move to a new location, they will have to create a new safe zone. Yes.
2: Best is still going to be relative. 10 blocks may be perceived as best to some and not best to others - 2 thrusters and 1 pilot seat do not indicate "best". That just indicates personal preference. You may prefer to pilot alone, I may prefer to co-pilot. But, again, those cosmetic designs won't be what determines "best" for individuals. Personal interests will be what determines "best" in terms of ship design and those will be subjective.
Some people may perceive speed to be "best" while others perceive fuel efficiency to be "best". The Builders who are great at maximizing speed in their designs may not be in the same org as the Builders who excel at maximizing fuel efficiency.
3: You may not be comparing fighters with exploration ships; but organizations will be. If the org decides they want some of their fighters to have greater speed than what their Builders are capable of creating, they will have to find some means to obtain those designs. They may have to people outside of their org.
If the Builders who maximize speed demand payment for their designs.
4: Well, hopefully, the engineers will need to have some player understanding of how to fit the conduit elements together and advanced character engineering skills. Perhaps a bit of LUA knowledge and perhaps a decent amount of voxelmancy.
- Velenka, Kiklix and Atmosph3rik
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Hmmn.
Velenka's post (along with today's Q&A response and people speculating about skill levels) has me thinking about diverting energy to different systems in the ship.
The crew of the USS Enterprise would often divert extra energy to shields or extra energy to shields or life support.
Another factor in coveted designs might be the linking of energy conduits in a manner that most efficiently diverts power to key systems in crucial moments.
https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/841-ask-us-anything-event/?p=9215
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1: Two out of the three examples we have for building in safe zones allow building constructs in open world areas that are untouchable by pvp mechanics. One of the three examples is a virtual sim, similar to creative mode. If they implement virtual sim, we may not be able take the constructs built there out of the sim. But, that's a 33% chance at this point. 66% chance that they will go with contructs being built in safe zones where the pvp modes have been deactivated similar to the Ark safe zones. (And we can, of course build in the Ark safe zones free from pvp).
2: It's not necessarily the features that we will have in the game that will decide whether constructs will be "hard to build".
"Better" is subjective. What is "better" will depend on the interests of the specific consumer/client.
3: Again, "good ship" is subjective. There may be many people who in an org who know how to build a ship with powerful shields and powerful weapons - but no nothing about building ships with cloaking devices and fuel-efficient engines. That's not simply going to be a factor of being a great voxelmancer. That's going to be dependent upon who discovers the tech for cloaking and how the blueprints for that tech are shared. Fuel-efficiency may be more about engineering piping elements than voxel manipulation. An org might have excellent voxelmancers and average engineers or vice-versa.
4: Arkification has been confirmed. The specific method of Arkification has not been confirmed.
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There will be enough safe zones for those who want one.
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You come equipped with a very powerful and central tool, rigged right into your arm: the nanoformer. This tool uses incredibly sophisticated nanotechnology to allow you two things: to collect materials and store them in a nanopack (think of it as a super backpack, with space and gravitational compression capabilities), and to release these materials in various forms anywhere you want in your environment. Very convenient! Inside the forest, you have no difficulty to find wood, cutting large trees and gathering stone materials when you find them on the ground. Soon, your nanopack gets filled with various materials and you can start to think about building your first shelter. The process is very similar to Minecraft at this stage, but you will have many more possibilities to carve the structures you want to build into almost any shape. Still, we believe in the simplicity of some elementary geometric shapes, at least as a start, to make the process of 3D construction less cognitively demanding.
At this stage,
it is not clear if we will have enough time until the alpha to implement NPC animals to come and bother you during the night, as well as serve as hunting preys. But that’s the idea, because you will need to feed yourself, and the nanoformer cannot make wood-based lunch for you!----https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2014/08/17/about-the-alpha-gameplay/#more-313
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Builders like to build. They don't necessarily care about profit or politics.
Keep in mind that Builders will be able to build in safe zones - though, I'm not sure that's relevant.
People will buy from those they deem competent and credible.
Great Builders will have considerable reputation - many will not be willing to sacrifice their reputations in order to sabotage or compromise their own builds.
So, expect an ample amount of Builders who are neutral.
Having a medium to large organization doesn't guarantee the best designs. Likely those orgs will have Builders who can create ships designs that meet the org's desires.
But, we can expect constant innovation. There will likely come a time when Builders outside of the org create designs that are more desirable than the designs manufactured by the specific org. That's where trade and diplomacy come in.
"Hard to build" will cover a range of parameters: size, complexity, scripting, etc. Fuel, radiation shielding, scanners, life support, medical... all systems have to work.
NQ has already hinted that managing the resources necessary for interstellar travel sans Star Gate will be difficult. Fuel storage, food storage, etc will all be challenging.
The ships will have to be designed to deal with those challenges even if they don't primarily engage in combat. Some might have the added challenge of maintaining cloaking systems.
An organization focused on pvp combat might make great battle-cruisers heavy on shielding and weapons but have poor designs for fuel efficiency or cloaking.
So, having their own builders won't necessarily mean they have no interest in obtaining designs their own Builders can't manufacture.
I typically don't buy from other players. Most likely, I will either barter with friends or settle for prefab dev designs.
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Food management can be a great mechanic unto itself. For all of you QQing abut how your life is going to end if you need to eat a can of veggies every couple of hours consider the content that farming and hydroponics creates. These are HUGE gameplay elements which directly tie into resources like water and plant life.
They add tons of reasons to deform terrain, consider lighting (natural and artificial), they could even go so far as to have something like soil quality (maybe you can compost some rotten food and organic matter to increase soil quality).
Seriously, you'd deny all of that because you're too lazy to keep an avatar from starving to death? As long as a hunger mechanic isn't persistently annoying there's little reason not to have it. Plus on top of generic avatar nutrition there's also the bonus effects of certain foods and plants, the integration into medical supplies, and even more.
Seriously, this encompasses SO DAMN MUCH.
I'm still generally in favor. If I look at Minecraft (correct me but I think it wasn't specifically advertised as 'survival game' but it had a survival mode nonetheless with food consumption) that is a good example where the whole "You have to eat once in a while" played a not so small factor in gameplay. It was more fun and challenging.
Especially on some civilization-like servers you had to find food first or go to major cities that had public farming areas or food boxes to get by. You had to consider this as you built your hideout or organization base. If we consider this but notable slow down food consumption, I really see no hassle for DU if you indeed have to eat once in a while where "once in a while" would be every few real life hours or a bit less.
For me that seems perfectly acceptable and it all makes sense if food items are playing a role beyond just body health but medicine etc, as Cadavus mentioned.
Of course others are against it for whatever reason, but in the end you can argue back and forth or repeat yourself. What is a relative fact is that you can find arguments in favor and against survival mechanics (not just food). Over time and after many discussion threads, these pros and cons should be relatively known.
If there is no clear obvious community trend, I say let the developers decide in what direction they want to take their game. The rest is a question of prolonged feedback and tweaking.
Dual Universe plans to have some food management requirements; just not at the extreme of survival games.
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Building area will probably be the limiting factor rather than the size of the stuff a factory can build.
You can create a factory building if you want to, but the devs are going to want to control the code that dictates how quickly objects can be built.
If you want to piece together modular objects to make a large one, you will be able to do so.
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We'll probably have some sub-sets of Builders:
Designers get a lot of enjoyment out of designing new objects.
Crafters get enjoyment from the crafting and reproduction aspects.
Harvesters enjoy gathering resources.
Designers will keep tweaking the designs of their blueprints - really has nothing to do whether ships are destroyed.
We will be manufacturing ships from blueprints in any case - regardless of whether we're mass-producing.
But, as vylqun suggests, mass-production will still require construction materials and other resources, like fuel.
Gathering all the materials will still be time-consuming. Gathering the fuel will be as well. And then the ships still have to travel.
Just because a bunch of ships are created in a matter of minutes doesn't mean they will all be ready for battle or ready to voyage the same day or even the same week.
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Seems as though we will all at least have an AI companion like Aphelia.
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Seems like the Arkships will barely have enough room for people - I doubt there will be many animals brought along from Earth. They'd be several thousands of years old and not hooked up for cryosleep.
The sim world for "alpha" might not have alien fauna. When we truly leave the Arkships, those worlds will have alien fauna.
Many of the worlds will also have alien ruins. May take us a while to uncover "intelligent" aliens who are still alive.
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Still wrong thread, but:
https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2014/12/04/from-barter-to-market-economy/
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What? How am I going to test my weapons now? We need an "evil" side.
Order of Meru is the evil side.
PLEASE CLOSE THIS TOPIC,OR TELL ME
in Idea Box
Posted
The main reason I don't live in the wilds is because I can't legally do so.
Also because I don't have sufficient skills to harvest food or build shelters.
And also because there are no resurrection bays to bring me back to life if some wild animal kills me.
In DU, we start with a territory unit that allows us to claim our own plot of land. That's free.
We start with a weapon that allows us to harvest food. That's free.
We will also be able to mine for resources - for free.
Start-up and survival in DU have no costs. It's a game; not real life.
WoW is not a voxel game. Also, WoW had vertical progression rather than DU'z horizontal progression.
In DU, we will be able to craft our own weapons for survival - no need to purchase weapons if we don't want to.
I never experienced loot councils in WoW - never even heard of loot councils.
Raids and loot councils are not true slavery - you can leave a raid whenever you wish. Players cannot hunt you down and force you to raid against your will.
Some players choose -of their own free will- to beholden themselves to the whims of loot councils if they want BiS endgame gear.
"Willing slave" is an oxymoron.
People don't become slaves because they are envious, jealous or want to belong - people become slaves when they are conquered and have their self-reliance and free will stripped from them.
There are some cultures that don't even have the concept of ownership or stealing - so neither is human nature.
Animal nature -life in general- includes horrible experiences and suffering, true. Even if it's just being afflicted with parasites and diseases. That has nothing to do with slavery. Since humans are social animals and social animals recognize fairness and unfairness, humans will expect some form of reciprocity for helping to make your life easier - just as primates and crows and other social animals do. But that has nothing to do with slavery.
Bribery is not slavery.
You might be able to entice newbies to grind for by promising them some reward they're interested in - but that isn't slavery. You reward slaves by allowing them to live. Characters in DU will live regardless of what you do.
I don't understand the concept of a paycheck in a voxel game. I mean, if that's the way you want to roleplay you can do so, but that's pretty stupid to me.
I don't need or want a paycheck in a voxel game. That's not the kind of relationship I would support.
What I will do is barter and trade - my services for other people's services. I might offer to gather 60 tons of resources for someone to build a ship for me since I don't expect to be a great ship builder, but that's not slavery - that is trading something I don't mind doing for something they don't mind doing.
They wouldn't be able to force me to gather anything when I'm not in the mood gather. Slavery is someone forcing you to work when you don't want to work.
I am non-competitive.
I'm not interested in competing against other organizations.
I am a hippie/commie/socialist co-operative player who loves to give stuff away for free - especially to friends.
I join socialist groups in games - we don't have to be capitalist in order to share resources with other players.
"Why stay with those guys in X raid?" A slave doesn't have the luxury of asking that question. A slave stays because they can't escape.
Non-slaves can choose to go with whomever they want.
Your foresight about the death penality and skill points is moot. You need evidence that it's accurate before it can be meaningful.
What you described in your rant isn't slavery.
Players will be able to choose to work for a pay check if they want to, but that's not slavery. Slaves don't get a pay check.
Players will be able to choose to grind in return for some material reward - but that's not slavery, either.
Slavery is people forcing you to work when you don't want to work - and typically at labor that you don't enjoy and wouldn't choose for yourself.