NQ-Nyzaltar

Hi there! There is no strict rules regarding the posting of ship visual profiles in the Arkship Pub. That being said, as the community grows and the organizations start to become numerous, it might be more "fair" if everyone sticks to one global thread for all announcements (Youtube channel opening, new art about a ship profile, etc) regarding the same organization, to avoid taking too much visibility from other organizations. If necessary, I can merge all the topics related to GLSQ. If you want to make a dedicated thread about visual assets, then posting in the "Novark Art Gallery" section would be more appropriate. Keep in mind that the "Arkship pub" section is meant to make your organization known, and inform about recent activity of the said organization. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone! As the rules for the Community Portal were a bit unclear on some aspects, we are going to update: - The "Create a Dual Universe Account" page. - The "Create a New Organization" page. Here are the texts that will be displayed soon on these pages: --------------------------------------------------------------- New Text for the “Create a Dual Universe Account” page: ( https://community.dualthegame.com/accounts/register/ ) Warning: By creating a Dual Universe account, you accept and agree to follow the terms and conditions available here. A reminder of the essential rules: Account names may not contain any copyrighted material (names, places, Etc) Account names may not contain any material, references, words, or descriptions deemed offensive by the Community Team. You agree to post only your own original content or content which you have been given explicit, express permission to post by the creator or the copyright holder. Do not copy content from copyrighted universes. Do not spam or post content that could be offensive in any way. The community team may, at its sole discretion and without warning, remove any content, account, and/or organization it deems to be offensive, inappropriate, in violation of these rules, or for any other reason they deem necessary or appropriate. --------------------------------------------------------------- New Text for “Create a New Organization” page: ( https://community.dualthegame.com/organizations/add ) Warning: By creating an Organization, you accept and agree to follow the terms and conditions available here. A reminder of the essential rules: Organizations may not contain copyright names or other materials. Organization names may not contain any material, references, words, or descriptions deemed offensive by the Community Team You agree to post only your own original content or content which you have been given explicit, express permission to post by the creator or the copyright holder. Do not copy content from copyrighted universes. Do not spam or post content that could be offensive in any way. Organizations created for the only purpose of offending, provoking, or insulting others will not be tolerated. Creating multiple ‘fake’ or ‘sock puppet’ accounts for the purposes of inflating the Organization’s size in order to appear in the list of the biggest organizations, or for any other reason, is strictly prohibited. The community team may, at its sole discretion and without warning, remove any content, account, and/or organization it deems to be offensive, inappropriate, in violation of these rules, or for any other reason they deem necessary or appropriate. Pre-Alpha stage: Organizations created here are a provisional step towards building your organizations in-game. As the game is in development the features and systems in place will evolve and are subject to change over time. Once the game launches the organizations, the members and the information held here will be synchronised with the game world. The organization structure will be composed of Members and Legates with different roles and/or responsibilities. For more information about Dual Universe Organizations and what they will become in the future, check out the Devblog! A “Legate” status is currently NOT reversible (it is planned to be reversible at some point though), so choose your legates wisely! What you do here matters, so be careful what you promise! --------------------------------------------------------------- Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

*A bit late on the topic* Hi Onethousandstars and Munney and welcome on the DU forum! There are more landmarkians here than it may appear at first glance (some are very discreet ) Talking about other games is totally ok as long as it's not an obvious promotional campaign for it. If you have any questions about Dual Universe regarding voxel building, just let me know! Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone! To answer your questions (and requests): 1) About raw/uncut videos as technical demos: We will do raw/uncut videos from one planet to another in the future. However, we might wait for some FX to be implemented. Why? while we think it's important to debunk as much skepticism as soon as possible, and keep the hype in check (some hype is always good, too much hype can have the opposite effect), we also think it's important to avoid releasing too much early raw stuff without anticipating the consequences: once a video is released on internet, even with a proper communication, you can expect situations where some people will take the video, use some parts of it (and sometimes the worst parts) for their own videos talking about the game, and give a pretty poor image of the game (intentionally or not) to new viewers who don't anything about the game yet, turning them off. For those who are in the community since nearly a year now, you might remember the controversy raised with BlueDrake42's videos. That's why we want to release our videos (even the raw ones) with the lowest risk of complaints in mind, and not hiding anything at the same time. Such videos will be also released as unlisted: while the community members will be able to share them with their friends, we won't use them as material to promote the game. Again, there is a reason for that: Statistics have shown that in order to catch the attention of new viewers (who don't already know the game), we have to aim for 2 or 3 minutes video length. The average attention span regarding videos hosted on media like Youtube was not much more than 2m40s in 2015 and has significantly decreased from 2000 to 2015. So it might even be lower in 2017, and we are already at 3 to 4 minutes in our last Dev Diaries. While we don't want to make overwhelmingly aggressive marketing campaigns, we want to avoid shooting ourselves in the foot and at least follow Marketing 101 guidelines . We hope you'll understand our position on this. So in a nutshell, you can expect the first raw/uncut video as a technical demo around the next Dev Diary release 2) Wich kind of FX effects are in the work: On the short term, there might be an Acceleration/Speed visual effect in space and probably a visual effect when a spaceship enters a planet atmosphere... But I said nothing! 3) How long the trip took (in minutes)? The trip took more or less 15 minutes. But the distance is not the final one. We might reduce the distance to prevent the travel to be too boring. 4) All the stacks of iron ore are 95m3 and the coal one is 99m3. Will these be the standard stack sizes? And will different materials have different sizes? This are temporary stack sizes, not necessarily the final ones. It hasn't been decided yet if we are going for one universal stack size (in volume) or several ones. 5) Having this craft system simplified to on-board refinery/distillery/factory system, seems to be oversimplification and we loosing some immersion here. Are you guys planing such thing? Again, as clearly mentioned in the Dev Diary, this is "work in progress", a temporary setting to show that basic crafting game mechanics have been implemented, but we are far from the final version. These are just the first steps of the complete implementation. There will be different crafting action types (refining, making alloy, making mechanical or electronic parts, assembling parts to create items, etc) and for each action type, you will probably have to create and use a specific Element such as: - Foundry Unit for making alloys - Assembly Unit to create items - Factory Unit to create contructs Of course, at the beginning, the Nanoformer will enable you to create all the Elements for the basic crafting action types. 6) Locking the construct to a point where it won't be editable anymore: Yes, once the builder decides that his construct is complete, he will be able to lock it. The feature is not implemented (yet) in pre-alpha, but it might be there at the Alpha release. We might also give the ability to let the construct unlocked for further customization (by the creator or other players), but we are still analyzing all the consequences it could generate on the economy level and the possible emerging scams related to this customization freedom ("I sell you the AX-23 spaceship, but what you don't know is that the expensive Elements X, Y and Z on the default construct have been removed before putting it on sale"). 7) About the blue dots in space: The blue dots are just something decorative in the Skybox at the moment. Keep in mind that we will have only the Alioth solar system available at the beginning of the Alpha: we prefer to focus on quality than quantity, and a solar system should be big enough as a first field test. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone! There will be answers to all your pending questions tomorrow (though a few have been replied already in the Youtube comments) Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

I will ask if it will be possible to have a time lapse version of the video. However, we are not sure it will be meaningful: The thing is, as we don't have (yet) FX effects giving a feeling of speed in space during most of the space travel, at the moment it feels like you are not moving at all, until you get really near of a celestial body. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

No, having multiple players who have characters with the same in-game name doesn't bring only benefits, far from it. While it can viewed as coold feature from a player point of view, it's not for a MMORPG, especially when trading/economy and/or politics are a big part of the gameplay. What about the problems generated by: - A player takes the same character name than the character of another player he hates to scam people in-game => Destroy the reputation of the targeted player. - A player takes the same character name than the character of another player he hates to insult people in-game => Destroy the reputation of the targeted player. - A player takes the same character name than the character of another player he hates to kill people in-game => Destroy the reputation of the targeted player. Attempts of impersonating another player through a similar character is forbidden, so the first step to prevent that is to prevent two players to have the same in-game name. Allowing this in a MMORPG, especially in a sandbox one, would be completely irresponsible. This is one of the main reasons why no reknown MMORPG allows such thing. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

All right, as this topic is turning into a flame war, and there is nothing constructive left to say, it's going to be locked as well. @Bleep_Bloop: Having some skepticism about the game is understandable and even healthy. We took the time to answer to your questions several times. However since you started to participate on the forum, you made posts containing only: - Negativity about the game - Negativity about the people who endorsed the game - Negativity about the game monetization model - Assumptions that you know how business works in video games (while your oversimplified point of view clearly shows the contrary). - Assumptions that you know what will be the developer decisions on critical matters (and always imagining the worst case scenario). - Disregard towards opinions different from yours. - Not understanding (or feigning to not understand) why people start to feel irritated by your attitude and bringing the "fanboy" or "white knight" excuse to avoid questionning your own attitude. There is nothing constructive in your attitude and everything inciting to conflicts. Again, while being a bit cautious and skeptical can be healthy, your attitude is way beyond that stage and has nothing healthy in it. So a friendly advice: whether you make an effort of being radically less provocative and a lot more constructive, or we will start removing your posts without a warning. @all: Please don't feed the troll. Thank you for your understanding. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone, As it is pretty much the same discussion in two threads, I will lock this one and advise you to continue in the one mentioned below. @Bleep_Bloop: please read the reply here (this is important): https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/11087-game-looks-like-%E2%88%9E10-so-far-except/page-3#entry50966 Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Yes, it has been mentioned many times that we plan to make a free trial period, and we don't plan to make anyone pay for the game itself. It's in the FAQ of the kickstarter page, and it has been said many times on the forum. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone, @Bleep_Bloop: Please keep a respectful tone when debating with other members of the community. "Are you fucking retarded" or "read the fucking post" are not an acceptable way to discuss on the forum. If you haven't already read our forum rules, please read it there: https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/8-forum-rules/ Continuing with this kind of behavior may lead to removal of your messages, and, in the last resort, to a ban. We value the freedom of speech, as long as you are respectful while discussing with others. We can understand that discussing with people not agreeing with your point of view could be irritating, but it's not a valid excuse to start employing rude/insulting words. Thanks in advance for your comprehension. Now to answer to your point of view: - Some members of the Novaquark team have worked for years on F2P games. The F2P model (or the B2P model, which is nothing more than the F2P model with an initial sale of the game at the beginning) isn't the shiny and perfect model often perceived from an external eye. This model has a lot of drawbacks, and the fact of diverting artists from doing content for all the players is not a minor one: while they work on cosmetics, they don't work on the global visual improvement of the game, and this has a real impact of development speed of the game, especially when the team behind it is still relatively small. - Relying only on cosmetics on the long run is like playing casino a bit with the financing of the game. You can win a lot... but you can also loose a lot (regarding the ration "cost of making cosmetics"/"income brought by the said cosmetics"). Any financial manager having a good head on his/her shoulders would tell that, in order to properly budget the investments for a MMORPG in the coming months or years, the ideal situation is to be able to predict more or less the amount of income you will get during this period. With a model relying only on cosmetics, this part is a bit unpredictable, because all the income relies only on the artists shoulders and mishaps can happen. What if a batch of cosmetics doesn't appeal to the players who usually pay for them? What happens if a few key artists leave the studio (which can happen even in the best companies)? In that case, during this period (even if it's temporary) you might have a serious drop of income that could generate difficulties, and even if in the same time the game programmers deliver amazing gameplay features, it won't help, because they can't bring any income. The subscription model is a lot more resilient in this regard: if there is a period where the artist can't provide the same amount of content as usual, the programmers can still deliver new features and the players will still have new content for their subscription. The subscription model can also enable the different teams from the studio to alternate the type of content released: game features for one release, visual/graphic content for the following one, giving more time to each team for each content release (Side note: these are possibilities that only the subscription model make possible, but that doesn't mean all things mentioned above is necessarily how the content releases will be managed for Dual Universe after release). - Saying subscription is "a monetization model from another age, very few games use it nowadays, so it's a proof that doesn't work anymore" is oversimplifying the situation. If we look at the bigger picture, as in many other sectors, a lot of investors (not all, fortunately) to make quick, easy money with minimal investment/effort and pressurized publishers to find an adapted solution to this request. In this situation, the Free to Play model is the most adapted one. With this model, you can't be (or a lot less) accountable for not having high-quality services, for not listening to your community, etc. This is the perfect model for short term ROI (Return On Investment). It makes big profit in the first years. However, in the case of MMORPGs, if no significant investment is made to update the game, the profit crumbles in a matter of a few years and cosmetics alone won't prevent that. That's fine for a lot of investors and publishers and that's fine too for a lot of players that don't spend more than a few months on the same game. But all players expectations aren't the same far from it. - Among gamers who have played MMORPGs for a long time, both F2P and subscription-based ones, a lot have realized that the F2P/B2P model isn't the best answer for every time of games. A growing number of these gamers would now prefer to pay a subscription fee than having the inconvenient of a F2P/B2P Model. So yes, the Subscription Model may be not very common at the moment, but this model might make his comeback in the years to come, when enough people will be fed up of having F2P/B2P MMORPGs on the western market (as F2P model is originally born - and fully accepted - from the eastern market). - Funny thing: as we speak, former developers from EverQuest I, II and Next have launched a new project: Ashes of Creation, which seems the spiritual successor of EverQuest Next. It's a subscription-based MMORPG... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1791529601/ashes-of-creation-new-mmorpg-by-intrepid-studios/description Well in 48 hours, they founded their original goal of 750.000$ and are now at more 870.000$ with more than 4.500 backers. In 48 hours. Does it looks like the subscription model is dead/inappropriate? - Another point who is quite important and specifically tied to Dual Universe: our game will use cloud technology. To buy our own server cluster(s) at the beginning is absolutely unrealistic regarding the cost. That's why we are currently considering a partnership with a Cloud Computing Provider such as Amazon or Microsoft Azure. This means the game will have a cost per player, and going for anything else than a monetization model proportional to the number of players (hence the subscription model) is just taking significant risks in terms of financial viability (at least until we are in a position to buy our own server cluster(s)). So yes, unless we are in a case where we already own the server infrastructures, going for any other model other than the monthly subscription one while you don't know yet what size your gaming community will be (and how many gamers in it will be willing to pay for cosmetics), going F2P/B2P is not the safe road. It's the risky road. If all the points above didn't convince you, this one should. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone, There is currently no plan of creating cosmetics related to Hello Kitty, My Little Pony on any related furry stuff. Two reasons for that: - We have so many things to make having a higher priority before that. It couldn't be a priority for years, even after official release. - While we don't plan to restrict the creativity freedom of the players on this topic, we have currently no plan of creating such cosmetics because it simply doesn't fit with Novaquark's vision of the game. We understand that some of you might be disappointed by this news, but as we never promised anything about this in the past and as we don't think this kind of cosmetics is compatible with the immersion we are aiming for (but not enforcing), there's very little chance this decision will be reversed. Regarding symbols like the Swastika: Although origins of this symbol can be found in Hinduism and Buddhism with no evil meaning, as it has been promoted by the Nazis in Europe and used as their emblem, this has been a symbol a lot of people don't want to see anymore in Europe because as it has been now tied to the concept of real life genocid. Letting such kind of symbols propagating in the game would be interpreted as promotion of the Nazism or to the very least a certain complicity with it. That's why we won't create cosmetics for such symbol, and we will take action if a player spots such thing in-game and report it. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone, We can't give you details yet about how turrets will work as it refers to game mechanics still currently being designed. However, what we can tell you is what the team is aiming for: - Giving the ability to players to build some automated defense for their base. - Avoiding to give the ability to players to have a huge multicrew ship entirely manageable by one player. This would defeat the purpose of multiplayer crew ships, and would end up destroying the team play we are aiming for. People wanting to play solo will be able to do many things, but not everything: piloting alone a multiplayer crew ship with maximum efficiency will be one of the things they won't be able to do. Team play must be rewarded by some exclusive activities and piloting a multiplayer crew ship is the biggest one. Without strong incentive, team play just won't happen. - Regarding AI, it depends what players are expecting: if it's to help in some basic industrial tasks, or basic automated defense, yes, there will be some - limited - possibilities. However, no AI self-replicating robots, no AI able to replace completely a player in a multiplayer crew ship. We know this isn't much or new info for now, and we will try to update the topic as soon as possible. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi Lexator and welcome on our forum. To answer your concerns: - Yes, Dual Universe will have a monthly subscription. We are aware that it's not a model appealing to all people and we don't try to everyone, because it's impossible. Also, due to the specificity of the game (costs higher in terms of server infrastructure), the team has come to the conclusion that the subscription model will be the only one viable on the long term. However, we have managed a way to play without paying a subscription. For more information, read below. - The game won't cost anything, and expansions will be free as well. You will only have the monthly subscription to pay. You will even have free trial period. - The DAC enable people who can (and are willing) to pay a Monthly subscription to be able to help paying the subscription for those who can't. DAC will be sellable in-game for in-game money (Quanta). So if you gather enough Quanta during your free trial period, you will be able to use the in-game money to buy a DAC from another player without spending real life money. Everybody wins: you don't have to pay a monthly subscription and the player who sold you a DAC - generally people who have more income and less available play time - will be able to gather enough Quanta for the activities they are focusing on, despite their limited available play time. In any case, we are not currently planning to drop the monthly subcription model. This has already been discussed over and over on the forum, many people have backed this project knowing this will be the monetization model, so a new topic asking about that won't change anything. We're planning on the long term, and with another model, the team is convinced it wouldn't be possible to make a durable game. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Exceptionally, here is a post mainly in French to answer the following questions: 1) Why no info in French on the forum? 2) Why no communication in French from a French studio? 3) Is Novaquark waiting for official release before making a French version of the game? 4) Why no articles in the French press? 5) Does JC want to give a better reputation to video games in France? 1) Why no info in French on the forum? Pourquoi n'y a-t'il aucune information disponible en français sur le forum ? La principale raison est une question de budget temps. Nous restons une petite équipe et il nous faut donc choisir nos combats. Bien que le français soit la langue natale de beaucoup de membres de l'équipe Novaquark, il faut bien être conscient que devoir écrire un texte en anglais et en français cela prend... 2 fois plus de temps. Même si le temps passé à traduire est presque égal à zéro pour quelqu'un de raisonnablement bilingue, il n'en reste pas moins qu'il faut deux fois plus de temps pour écrire des textes en deux langues différentes, qu'il faut relire pour corriger les tournures de phrase bancales et les fautes d'orthographe. Ceci étant dit, certains pourraient se demander pourquoi ne pas écrire tous les textes en français au lieu de les écrire en anglais dans ce cas. Même si certains instituts de recherche prédisent une explosion démographique de la Francophonie à l'horizon de 2060, il n'en reste pas moins que nous vivons dans le présent, et qu'aujourd'hui, les faits indiquent les choses suivantes: Dual Universe a vocation à construire une communauté internationale. Ce faisant, il est logique de choisir la langue qui est la plus utilisée lorsqu'il s'agit de communiquer entre différentes communautés linguistiques. Outre le fait qu'une importante partie de la communauté a pour langue native l'anglais: - Il y a plus de joueurs nativement germanophones qui comprendront l'anglais que le français. - Il y a plus de joueurs nativement russophones qui comprendront l'anglais que le français. - Il y a plus de joueurs nativement polonophones qui comprendront l'anglais que le français. - Il y a plus de joueurs nativement hispanophones qui comprendront l'anglais que le français. - Il y a plus de joueurs nativement italophones qui comprendront l'anglais que le français. ... Et on pourrait continuer cette liste - non exhaustive - pendant longtemps. Donc oui, le choix est d'écrire dans la langue que le plus de joueurs à travers le monde seraient à même de comprendre aujourd'hui. Et cette langue est indubitablement l'anglais. Cependant... Comme le processus de sélection des modérateurs est bien avancé, lorsque ces derniers seront mis en place, nous envisageons d'ouvrir des sections du forum dédiées aux différentes communautés linguistiques. Le pré-requis sera d'avoir au moins un modérateur parlant la langue en question et qui sache communiquer en anglais de manière raisonnable, de manière à communiquer avec l'équipe (évidemment, pour la section française, ce pré-requis ne sera pas nécessaire). Nous envisageons l'ouverture de telles sections pour l'ouverture de l'Alpha, voire peut-être un peu avant si tout se passe comme prévu. A ce moment-là, en fonction du temps disponible du modérateur et de sa motivation à faire une telle tâche, il est possible que ce dernier puisse aider à la traduction de certains textes/news en français. 2) Why no communication in French from a French studio? Pourquoi n'y a-t'il aucune communication en français de la part d'un studio français ? Parce qu'il semblerait contradictoire de communiquer régulièrement en français sur le jeu, alors que nous ne prévoyons pas pour la sortie officielle une version française du jeu. Alors que nous avons déjà quelques remarques régulièrement sur le fait nous ne prévoyons pas de version française pour la sortie du jeu, nous en aurions bien plus si nous communiquions en français sur le jeu sans annoncer de version française. Nous tenons à rester cohérent dans notre démarche. 3) Is Novaquark waiting for official release before making a French version of the game? Est-ce que Novaquark attend la sortie officielle avant de faire une version française du jeu ? Nous concentrons d'abord notre budget (temps et argent) à développer les mécaniques de base d'un jeu complet, et ensuite, une fois que le jeu sera lancé et progressera convenablement, l'équipe s'agrandira et nous nous pencherons sur les versions localisées (la version française étant dans les premières envisagées). Quand nous entamerons cette phase, nous commencerons à communiquer de plus ample manière sur les territoires francophones. 4) Why no articles in the French press? Pourquoi n'y a-t'il pas d'articles sur le jeu dans la presse française ? Il n'y a pas beaucoup d'articles sur Dual Universe dans la presse française... mais il y en a quand même quelques-uns ! Ce n'est pas parce que nous n'avons pas été proactif dans notre communication dans la sphère francophone que nous boudons les journalistes pour autant: notre porte reste bien entendu ouverte à tout journaliste francophone intéressé par notre jeu en développement. Et en voici quelques examples: - Nous avons eu un article de 3 pages consacrées à Dual Universe dans le magazine Canard PC numéro 349, et vous pouvez retrouvez une version en ligne de l'article à cet endroit. - Nous avons également eu un article sur Jeuxvideo.com, qui est trouvable ici. - Des portails de news comme gameblog.fr ou mmo.jeuxonline.info suivent régulièrement nos avancées dans le développement et font des articles en ligne à ce sujet. 5) Does JC want to give a better reputation to video games in France? Est-ce que JC veut donner une meilleure réputation aux jeux vidéo en France ? Il y a un peu de ça. Dans la mesure où Dual Universe proposera aux représentants de l'Humanité (les joueurs) de se retrouver en condition où ils ont des mondes vierges à leur disposition et d'impacter ces mondes par leurs actions, qu'ils seront libres de choisir leur système politique et économique, Dual Universe pourrait aller bien au-delà du simple jeu et devenir une expérience sociale. Evidemment, on ne cherche pas à changer radicalement les mentalités des anciennes générations en France sur les jeux vidéo, mais si on pouvait instiller l'idée que parfois, un jeu peut devenir un loisir honorable, constructif pour des adultes et pas toujours bon qu'à occuper les enfants... Alors l'objectif serait rempli. Cela ne veut en revanche pas dire que l'on investira une masse de temps considérable pour remplir cet objectif. Si cela est réalisable en intervenant de temps à autre, lorsque la situation le permet, tant mieux. Sinon, tant pis. Ceci ne sera jamais quelque chose qui déviera l'équipe de son but premier, développer et lancer le jeu, en respectant au mieux les échéances planifiées. Une petite note pour terminer: Même si c'est un sujet qui revient de temps à autre, merci d'éviter tout "necroposting" (remonter un sujet sur lequel il n'y a pas eu des réponses depuis des semaines). Nous espérons que cette réponse en français servira de référence pour tout nouveau fil de discussion qui pourrait à nouveau poser la question sur l'absence de news en français, aussi bien sur le site que sur le forum (ou dans la presse). Ce fil de discussion sera ensuite épinglé dans la section francophone du forum une fois que celle-ci aura été créée. Cordialement, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone, Just a friendly reminder: We respect diversity. However, forum rules also indicate that subjects related to sexuality, religions or real life politics aren't allowed (even in the off topic section). The reason is simple: these subjects don't contribute to the discussions about the game and they are quickly a source of conflict in any game community (as this topic showed once more). So please avoid to discuss such thing on the forum in the future. On a side note: According to the official lore, there will be no playable furry creatures. Only humans. So, as sad as it may sounds for certains members of the community, don't expect to be able to visually represent such character in-game. We prefer to be clear right from the start, to avoid giving false hopes on that topic. This thread is now going to be closed. Thank you all for your understanding. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

@Lethys: There is no automatic orbit mode (at least for the moment). Being in orbit of a planet is basically the result of having reached a certain speed (whether by propulsion generated by engines or by inertial speed with engines turned off) while being near a planet in space. @ATLMVE: As there wasn't any answer to your topic, it hasn't been archived. @CaptainTwerkMotor: Yes, at the end of the video, it's the new Core Unit Design. As the 3D Model is nearly finished, with a bit of luck, you will see it in-game in the next DevDiary @Lights: No food system planned at the moment, sorry We wanted to implement tons of cool features for the Official Release, but we had to make tough choices. @Ripper: Yes, the switch next to the door was a place holder, not a final version.

Hi everyone! To end (sadly) this mystery, the obscured stretch goal was something we planned to have before deciding to stop the stretch goals at the bounty system. The reason behind this decision: we want to avoid the feature creep trap, which generally delays a lot the official release of crowdfunded games. That doesn't mean we are going to cancel the obscured stretch goal. It's just it won't be implemented for the Official release, and it will just be part of one of the free expansions we will work on after the Official Release. We have a lot of unrevealed stretch goals in the pipeline so you can expect, if all goes well, many expansions in the coming years after the Official Release! Sidenote: the obscured stretch goal is going to disappear with the updated picture of the stretch goals (coming today) on the Crowdfunding Portal. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone, Yes, CvC is now officially a thing for the Official Release !!! @Kane Hart: while we can understand your confusion about other people than Novaquark's staff able to create topic in this section, this is not a valid reason to reply in an agressive way to other community members. True, Lights may have not posted in the most relevant section. However, you could have mentioned the issue .This small issue is going to be fixed quickly. In the meantime please stay courteous, even in cases where you think someone has done something wrong. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

@Megaddd: We can understand your concerns, fears and/or doubts. It's a natural reaction, especially in the era where a lot of projects are either promising the moon (which they can't deliver) or just failing. So being skeptical is totally understandable. However, allow me to clarify/correct a few of your statements: 1) EVE Online success: EVE Online current gameplay loops are not what they are today just because of CCP designers. They have really talented people, no doubt about that. However, the gameplay loops you are refering haven't been as precise as they are now right from the beginning. There is a lot of work from the designers, that's a fact, but these loops where born from emergent gameplay at first: CCP developers have admitted themselves that when they launched the game in the first year, players have used the game mechanics in ways they hadn't think about. Then, they analysed what people liked to do in game and listen to the community feedback. Saying the success of the game was reached because they had 3-4 absolutely brilliant people is very reductive to say the least: - They started with good base with open game mechanics. - They have talented and reactive developers. - They kept listening to their community. It's the combination of these 3 factors (not just one) that brought them success. 2) Not much gameplay has been shown until now: Regarding Dual Universe, yes indeed, you have mostly seen technical stuff for the moment and very little from the gameplay. Is it because we want "to hide" the gameplay side? Jumping to this conclusion is a bit oversimplying the situation. Here are a few facts: - The pros and cons of having proprietary techs: Until a few months ago, the Novaquark team kept prioritizing and building the tech, for several important reasons: The project is technologically ambitious, our studio is coming from nowhere (no past track record for the studio, even in the people in it are experienced), and the combination of these two points made it very hard to be taken seriously right from the beginning, especially in the current context where overpromising has become a common thing. So the first thing we had to address is to show some proof saying "Hey guys, this is really possible!". The other important reason is because it's just common sense to start by building the tech before the gameplay. It's only once we know the capabilities of our tech - after testing it - that we can build a gameplay adapted to it. Some could argue we are taking a very long time to build our tech compared to other studios able to show advanced gameplay just only one year (or sometimes even 6 months) after they started the project. Why is there so much difference between them and us? Simply because they started the project with an engine with many features implemented. This kind of engine is great to have a short development cycle. However, "ready-to-use" game engines have a drawback: you can't expect making a game really different frow what has been done before. Dual Universe is in this case. We tested affordable game engines (Unity and Unreal Engine) in the early days of the studio and we came to the conclusion that they wouldn't allow Novaquark devs to do exactly what they had in mind. We hadn't the time (and the man power) to build a complete game engine from scratch. So we opted for a middleground solution: we've chosen Unigine, which was a very good base to start with (especially for planetary simulation), with not too many technical constraints (generally proportional to the number of features already implemented in the game engine). However, having not many features already implemented in the game engine is a double edged sword: having less features implemented from the start than popular game engines, means more things to develop on our side: the massively multiplayer tech, the voxel tech, and some of the graphics tech (to be optimized for a massively multiplayer context). Then, after all of this reached a reasonably advanced state (it's not finished yet), we were able to start the gameplay development. And that's where Novaquark was a few months ago. As you can imagine, it wasn't possible to show advanced gameplay footage just a few weeks after having seriously started the development of this part. It takes at least months to have something meaningful to show. - The lack of gameplay loops in the early days of sandbox games: As CaptainTwerkMotor stated, you won't find complete predefined game loops, at least not at the beginning. In this regard, we have exactly the same open-minded approach than CCP Developers in the early days of EVE Online. It's also what happened, to some extent, for Minecraft. In the early days of a sandbox game, developers give "tools" to the players and those "create" the gameplay loops they like. Then the developers make improvements to the game to favorize the emergence of popular gameplay loops. That's, in our opinion, how a successful sandbox game can be born: synergy between developers and the community, not just game design decisions made by developers. So yes, you will see gameplay mechanics in the future that could be used as pieces of a gameplay loop. But you probably won't see a complete gameplay loop, or if we do such kind of video, then it will be to show some example, not to say "This is how the game is meant to be played". Moreover, the Alpha will launch with just a few of the gameplay bricks we have planned on the long run, precisely to get feedback on the first ones by alpha testers, and adapt/improve the following ones coming into the game. 3) The poor graphical performance in the Dev Diary videos: You're right, the framerate of the recent DevDiary videos is not a decent one. If you have read the comments under those videos, you might have seen that we already replied regarding this concern. While we have currently a good framerate in-game on a high-spec machine, when it comes to recording it, the framerate displayed in the video is far from being representative of the current framerate in-game. We made tests with Shadowplay and OBS, and while tweaking the parameters improved a bit the framerate in the videos, this is still far from being perfect. Yes, we admit we haven't any expert (yet) in this domain inside the team at the moment. However, we have taken note of advices made by some professional streamers and youtubers following our Youtube channel and we are going to have a dedicated machine to record videos for DevDiaries in the future. We planned to have it for the March DevDiary of March, but it might be too tight in the schedule to make it happen next week. We will give an update on this topic next week. Long story short: If you have questions, ask them. We will do our best to answer them We can't promise we will be able to give you only satisfying answers (as you might have a lot of "too soon to give you a detailed answer on this gameplay aspect") but it's sure you won't have any answer if you don't ask first. @All: If you would like to see some dedicated videos to a specific topic already presented in the previous videos, just let us know: I can't promise anything right now, but I can transmit to the devs what are the topics you would like to see developed. @Bleep_Bloop: We won't go "Early Access" on Steam any time soon (if we go one day, as it's not even certain either). We want to wait until we're close to have all the main gameplay mechanics implemented in game and a decent stable version. We are very well aware that the Steam Community is composed of a lot more people that want to play a nearly-finished game than testing a game in its early stages... And that's perfectly fine: we totally understand that a lot of people are not interested in experiencing the intermediate stages of a game development. As for your question "what are the chances of this game reaching its full potential?", unless someone has a working crystal ball... No one can answer this question accurately. The chances are something that can vary a lot in a development process, according to the decisions taken and the unexpected events. So far, we think (but you are free to think otherwise) the odds are good, as we haven't hit any "wall" that seems like an impossible obstacle. Our private investors, who saw the success of the Kickstarter campaign, are ready to help even further in the game development, as promised. So as far as we know, there is no dark cloud in the sky at the moment. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi Bleep_Bloop and welcome to our forum. Not sure if this is the best way to introduce yourself in a positive way, but that's your choice. We know our project is ambitious and we don't force anyone to believe the Novaquark team on words alone. We communicate as much as possible on the game development, we show what we can show. We do our best to avoid overpromising things (we stick to what seems to be technically feasible to us) and we try to be as transparent as possible in the development process, then it's up to the players to make their own opinion. If you have a hard time to imagine how a game can contain many planets without being extremely unstable, keep in mind that the game world won't be hosted on just one single hardware server, but hosted on a server cluster. we suggest to look at: - This page on our website describing the "single shard" technology: http://www.dualthegame.com/technology - This devblog post: https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2014/09/26/a-single-shard-continuous-universe-one-world-no-boundaries/ - This video explaining visually how the game world is splitted in real time across many servers to keep a global stability and handle the workload proportionally to the number of players gathering in specific areas: After that, if you still have questions, feel free to ask. About Brian Fargo: You might not like the games delivered by his studio (maybe they don't suit your tastes) but they have been successful and the numbers disagree with your opinion. The fact that you don't like them doesn't mean they are bad. Beside, it would make no sense to compare Wasteland 2/Torment: Tides of Numenera with Dual Universe as they are two completely different types of games (the first ones are rpg solo games with deep storyteling designed by developers in 3D isometric view, the other one is a Massively Multiplayer Online RPG Sandbox in first person view where the story is made by players). Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone! So we had an internal discussion on this topic in the team. Here are the main points: 1) We still think that the DAC as a Monthly Subscription Token remains the easiest form to understand for new players about its use and primary goal (enabling players who can't afford a monthly subcription to be able to play the game by remaining reasonably active in-game). 2) As the merge of such currencies makes PLEXes a virtual item accessible from anywhere, and as we had already a lengthy discussion on the forum several months ago about the same topic for DACs, we saw this side effect as a negative point. So, in the case we would go for a more divisible currency, we will think of the possibility while keeping the following constraint: once the currency token is dropped into the game from the external inventory (being called "Vault" or "Account's Redeeming System"), it will be tagged if it is returned to the external inventory. It will then be only droppable to the last location it was redeemed in-game (just like the PLEXes work in EVE Online at the moment). 3) The move from merging PLEX and Aurum currencies makes sense as it simplifies the whole system: one currency for both the monthly subscription model and the in-game cosmetic cash shop. However, as it's not even confirmed that there will be a cosmetic shop (still currently being discussed) in Dual Universe, this positive point doesn't apply to our context at the moment. If at some point, a cosmetic cash shop is integrated to the game, it's possible that the DAC will be converted in a more divisible currency, to avoid deploying several currencies for the same purpose. 4) Going for more divisible DACs will require extra development time that could delay the official game release, and that's another negative point. So, in a nutshell, it's not planned to do any changes regarding the DACs at the moment. We stick to the plan with DACs being usable as monthly subscrition tokens. If something isn't clear or if you have questions, just let us know! @Lynkx: - We are aware that the PLEX system is not perfect, but in our opinion (the Novaquark team) the best compromise we can find. We have in the team players who have played many MMORPGs: EVE Online, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Neverwinter, Archeage, Elder Scrolls Online, Elite Dangerous, Wildstar, etc. So we aren't just looking to the EVE Online model while ignoring completely what has been done elsewhere. It's just that the EVE Online model seems to be the most balanced one so far (even if it has flaws). - A minimal alien fauna is planned for the official release (and will probably grow in diversity afterwards) - Having a few NPC helpers visible in-game for the tutorial is something considered, but we can't promise anything on that topic right now (we have also some ideas for tutorials without involving visible NPCs in the game world). - On a last note, please avoid to reply to other community members in an ironical/provocative way (this doesn't add anything to the discussion) Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone! This is an interesting topic and we have to discuss it in the team. At the moment, it is not planned to change the DAC from the monthly token version to a more fragmented version. We will keep you informed as soon as we will have discussed about it (and of course all the community feedback will be taken into account) Best Regards, Nyzaltar

Hi there! While we salute the effort already invested in this project, the Novaquark team has a few growing concerns about it. It seems this is, for a big part (but not the whole project) what is planned for the official Community Portal on the long term. @MasterRed: We just sent you a private message to open the discussion on the topic. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi Caesares, We won't come back on what has been said in private. However, we salute the fact that you apologized publicly on your own initiative, using your main account. That means something and from there, there's no reason you couldn't have a fresh start (we hope there won't be a second time though). To answer to some of your suggestions: - As Lethys said, IP Address Cheking is not reliable. It's easy to fake an IP Address nowadays. - Requiring filling out payment info or residence can be faked as well, and asking people to make a payment transaction just to check if the information is real might be a deterrent. However, we might consider this depending of the feedback on a certain idea mentioned in another topic. - Another idea currently considered is to create a blacklist recording all disposable e-mail services and preventing to valid a fake e-mail address from the said services during account creation process (we have a 400+ address list and all guerrillamail addresses are already in it). Best regards, Nyzaltar.