Bobbylord

Now imagine that all this could come naturally via emergent gameplay instead of orchestrated via the devs.... like, e.g.

Hey NQ-Naunet, thanks a lot for taking the time to listen to us and investing it to explore viable options for the scavenging profession going forward. This is really very much appreciated no matter the outcome. That sounds about right. The only thing we could argue over is the timeline of the change ("Once Beta hit, this mechanic was changed so that only ships taken down in PvP could be claimed the way that's described above. This fundamentally shifted the way players like you were able to enjoy DU.") - as we observed/noticed/witnessed it this change happened, or only came into effect, about 2-3 weeks ago. Other than that your summary looks solid to me. I also fully understand the reasoning behind it, even though I do not agree with actually implementing the change (or at least on how it was done - silently and to an extend removing scavenging from the game). It somewhat sends a wrong signal removing any risks from the game as there is no "risk vs reward" anymore - only reward (consensual PvP combat in the 100% avoidable PvP enabled piece of space is not really a risk but a choice). Which, obviously, has a big impact on the player behavior (recklessness and ignorance towards flying mechanics/physics, learning that choices in game do not really have consequences), how the game is observed and viewed by the community/new players (PvE gameplay only) and the in-game economy (if you never lose anything there is no need for continuous production; demand dies down and the only reason left to play in the current beta, mining and production, is gone). And hopefully just as a coincidence, but at around the same time this, and excuse my wording, carebear change has been introduced, NQ starts spawning artificial wrecks with artificial salvaging mechanics (limitations in amount salvageable) - which makes it look even more like the strategic direction is away from any emergent, sandbox and PvP centric content (scavenging essentially is PvP gameplay) towards artificial, PvE based theme park organized content. This felt like: Hey, we take your profession away, we remove the last bit of emergent gameplay left in the game currently and give you artificial wrecks with artificial salvaging mechanics. But, hey, you won't be able to see them on the radar so you got to check every hex "by hand" - have fun! Not sure I'd call it my version, this is more of a result from talking to various (former) scavengers and taking into account how it used to work before the change. Nevertheless, yes, I think introducing a version of the mechanic which would look like the following could do the trick: When a player crashes their ship in a way so that the core gets destroyed (essentially any core that gets destroyed in any way), said ship (construct) should be salvageable by any other player anywhere in the universe (all planets, moons and in space). With the _exceptions_ being: - On Sanctuary (and sanctuary like moons added in the future) - cause it's the "safe zone" by definition and a place were no bad things should ever happen to you - Within the wider "safe zone" (as announced by JC in recent interviews - obviously also on "safe planets/zones" in solar systems/galaxies/universes added in the future) - namely Alioth, Thades and Madis - nowhere but on tiles owned by someone else (another player or an org you are not a member of) and which are not owned by NQ/Aphelia (markets and such) Requiring players to "abandon" a destroyed construct/core manually is not emergent gameplay and should not be required for constructs with destroyed cores in order to make them salvagable. Thanks again for your time and support! Bobbylord

Done:

As pointed out by NQ-Naunet in I'm posting this suggestion/idea here in the Idea Box section: When a player crashes their ship in a way so that the core gets destroyed (essentially any core that gets destroyed in any way), said ship (construct) should be salvageable by any other player anywhere in the universe (all planets, moons and in space). With the _exceptions_ being: - On Sanctuary (and sanctuary like moons added in the future) - cause it's the "safe zone" by definition and a place were no bad things should ever happen to you - Within the wider "safe zone" (as announced by JC in recent interviews - obviously also on "safe planets/zones" in solar systems/galaxies/universes added in the future) - namely Alioth, Thades and Madis - nowhere but on tiles owned by someone else (another player or an org you are not a member of) and which are not owned by NQ/Aphelia (markets and such) Requiring players to "abandon" a destroyed construct/core manually is not emergent gameplay and should not be required for constructs with destroyed cores in order to make them salvagable. Bobbylord on behalf of the hopeful Scavengers Community

Hey NQ-Naunet, first of all, sorry for addressing you the wrong way. I'll do my best to remember A very big yes to 1), not sure about 2) and absolutely on 3). I figure most, if not all of the participants in this thread understand the difference between the artificial salvaging event with wrecks spawned out of thin air and actual player constructs which have been crashed and/or abandoned. Regarding 1) - there is (was) a community of players making a living of Scavenging (salvaging wrecks of player constructs) until a few weeks ago (me included). There were almost infinite amounts of crashed and salvageable player constructs all over the place. That feeling when you make radar contact to a crashed player construct with destroyed core, get closer, identify it and see that there is actually more than just a core... priceless. A couple examples: - https://www.reddit.com/r/DualUniverse/comments/jjmokh/to_the_pilot_who_crashed_locobus_with_gold_in/ - Streamer who used to focus on scavenging: https://www.twitch.tv/sku11face_ (he used to stream multiple hours daily from his scavenger hunts and has hangars full of salvaged elements from player constructs) Sadly though, about a couple weeks ago we noticed that almost all crashed ships we stumbled over were no longer "abandoned"/salvageable. That's also when the discussions and rumors about a "stealth" change started to spawn on reddit, DU discord and on streams of players who used to go scavenging regularly. I also noticed it myself - my usual "hunting" grounds dried up and most of what can be found and salvaged now are essentially empty cores or cores with bugged fuel tanks attached. Not even worth looking for anymore considering fuel and time invest. There is obviously the alternate option that out of the sudden, within just like 12 hours about two weeks ago, all the players who crashed their ships did no longer click "Abandon Construct" (and we have to assume they all did that before). But that seems rather unlikely. Regarding 3) - Yes, this is a sad story. Upvote is currently, besides trying to get NQs attention on Discord and the forums (both of which do not seem to work/be the right place to get the attention of NQ and start a proper interaction - so far), the only and obv right place to try and get heard by NQ as a minority group of/in the community. Hence why I chose to suggest this game design suggestion (as outlined in the first post inn this thread) on upvote - twice. And twice, as you know, it was deleted without any feedback even though there are no "duplicates" going into this direction at all. Not even getting the chance to make the communities interest in the scavenging "profession" transparent by giving us the chance to vote for it in the system designed and meant for exactly that is, well, saddening. Saddening to a point where I start to wonder if it was the right decision to fund NQ and DU via Kickstarter in 2016 (imagine spending hundreds of Euros to support a company and a vision you believe in just so that they can ignore you and the community you identify with once they have your money). Let's get the discussion started Bobbylord

Well, NQ-Naunet said he was looking into it and replies here in this thread on the board. That was yesterday. Let's see if/when he finds the time to reply.

Well, I'd love to provide you a link, but, won't be helping much. They deleted the suggestion a second time now: This was the second submission: https://upvote.dualuniverse.game/suggestions/132378/make-the-scavenging-profession-salvaging-worth-the-time This is definitely not how you should treat your customers NQ...

I've posted an upvote suggestion regarding the Scavenging/Salvaging suggestion in this thread. This is the second time I post this (I posted it on Friday, 6th of November the first time) on upvote - the first post was deleted without comment (even though I left a proper Email address I received no feedback or reasoning at all). Let's see if it will be approved this time and if NQ allows us to at least vote for our future in DU.

I hope this is a joke and not meant to compensate for crippling the Scavenging "profession"... sad times....

Update from Discord: Don't let the topic die on discord, streams and social media. We need an official statement from NQ that this will be addressed. Thanks, Bobbylord

Hey everybody! This post is about the sad state of the "Scavenging" "Profession" in DU currently - resulting from the gimped status of salvaging gameplay. Even though not documented, salvaging gameplay changed drastically in the last few days/couple weeks. While we, the players exploring and salvaging crashed ships and left alone static cores, were able to make somewhat of a living from exploring and salvaging until about a couple weeks ago, now, with the undocumented and unannounced changes to salvaging gameplay, we are no longer able to sustain this lifestyle. Previously, when a gold digger on Lacobus overloaded their ship and crashed back down on the planet trying to make their way out of the atmosphere, we were able to benefit from that. We were able to find, locate and salvage the ship as well as reap in the rewards. Now though, there is neither a risk for ignorant players overloading their ships or carelessly flying and crashing into everything anymore. We cannot claim cores anymore that were destroyed (only in the sad, completely avoidable, tiny bit of pvp space we have left) - only cores that were abandoned by the owner by intention. Here's the story unfolding pieced together from the DU Discord (just search for salvaging and get an impression of the confusion and frustration due to these unannounced and undocumented changes) : Scavenging used to be a viable way of living. And a nice way to combine flying, exploring and making some money to pay for the fuel and upkeep. We are now forced into digging in mines underground instead of flying about and exploring this world you created for us to explore and conquer. I'd like to end this post with a proposal and at the same time ask for feedback from the fellow DU player base: Constructs which core get destroyed should be salvageable by anybody in general (on planets/moons and in space) - with the only exceptions being: On Sanctuary - cause it's the "safe zone" by definition and a place were no bad things should ever happen to you Within the wider "safe zone" (as announced by JC in recent interviews) - namely Alioth, Thades and Madis - but only on market tiles or your own/your org tiles - your destroyed construct should be salvageable by anybody on tiles of others (not yours or your orgs) and unclaimed tiles There should be no need for the owner to abandon a destroyed core/construct in order to make it salvageable by others taking above proposal into account. This mechanic takes scavenging/salvaging out of the game as a "profession". It takes the primarily reason to play the game away from me and a whole lot of others. "Please fix" - as they say.... Best regards - former scavenger, Bobbylord

I completely agree with your outline of the mechanics above. That is more or less exactly what you can get out of the information published about the topic so far. Still, I think it would be awesome to have a less artificial way to solve this. Having artificially blocked areas other players cannot build in is easy to be implemented and allows for easy and quick balance changes, but having self defense options which make it about impossible or at least very very hard to build in a specific radius of another players construct, without consent, would feel a lot more natural. If one organization feels that they want to try and build up a staging station next to the one of their enemies, why not let them try? If the defense of the station is too bad or they manage to take it out they will succeed. If not, they will just waste all the resources. In addition though, to fight the griefing, a game mechanic which prevents players from attaching building blocks/modules/... directly to the structure of someone else should exist I guess. Expanding this protection to hundreds of meters or more is artificial. This would of course be different if that could be solved with "shields" (like you outlined above as well). Such a shield would be an actual barrier preventing someone from building/entering and not just an invisible bubble/area which makes a sign pop-up which says: building in this area is blocked! Greetings, Bobbylord

Depending on the actual game mechanic details it might make sense to have some kind of space/territory claim unit which is intended to block others from building right in-front of your space station - potentially building you in... But, on the other hand, if aspects like this are considered in the mechanics design from the start these "griefing" issues can be avoided. E.g. if there are self defense mechanisms you can deploy around your starbase/add to your base which allow your base to shoot any building blocks/core units and attached constructs automatically and, if building in space takes some time and cannot happen instantly this can be solved that way. As it would be rather hard to build in the range of enough guns without getting everything destroyed immediately. Disclaimer: this is just _one_ rough idea on how to tackle "claims" of space without introducing artificial claim units / building blockers. See you all in space, Bobbylord

Thanks a lot everybody. Feels good to be here. And I'm already looking forward to trade intel and rarities as well as gunpower in DU as soon as we get to (ab)use it.

... because Nomads cant be stopped. I'm Bobbylord. A Nomad who used to travel and conquer various virtual universes and who is looking to make DU his new home. Come and join me in endless space. Traveling wherever the "winds" will take us, fighting whoever tries to "break" us and making whatever we cant buy in "ToysRus". There's nothing bigger than you - this is DU. Bobbylord