NQ-Nyzaltar

The reason why the text was changed was specifically because we saw how the system could be abused. Infiltrating an organization and trying to sabotage it from the inside is one thing. However sabotaging an organization by using a flaw of the game mechanics is another: keep in mind this is never intended by the devs. So if some of you find some game mechanics strange that could be abused, just contact me in private and I will discuss the devs to check if this is intended or not. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone, The text mentioned in the first post is a text from the beta version of the portal, before going live. This text has been modified before going live but unfortunately not in all place. It has been changed on the "Create a new organization" page but not on the "Join the organization" page. This is just something that has never been reported and went through the QA before the portal going live. Update on the Community Portal is incoming as we speak. This is the text that should be considered as the official one:

Guys, could you please talk about constructive topics and refrain to flame each others? Yes, as a community grows, moderation is more and more needed. And yes, it's going to be taken care of: - A new CM will join the Novaquark team very soon. - We're considering assembling a moderation team. For now, I will close this topic, to prevent more unnecessary flaming between members. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone, Just a quick reminder: There is a forum chart (available here) that each forum member is supposed to follow when posting. In regards to some topics that have been recently removed, here are 2 lines no one should forget: IV) Following actions can result in the immediate suspension of forum privileges: e. Posting hate speeches toward specific people." Until now, as we have a mature community, the need of banning people wasn't necessary. But it might change, if this becomes necessary. We really don't like to play the police, we prefer a lot to have friendly discussions about the game with the community. But if we need to do it, we will enforce the rules. @friendlytyrant03: Saying you "hate" someone is already forbidden, even if you have good reasons. But to hate people just because they want to play pirates in a game without knowing them, giving them intentions without talking to them, is sad and troubling. We sincerely hope this was not a serious statement. Anyway, wheither it was humour, serious, or just trolling, it's forbidden. We hope this is now crystal clear. to others: When you see a topic like this, please don't answer to it. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone, To answer some questions: The planet was spinning in the video to show the landscape diversity under atmospheric lightning. At the moment, in our current game version, the planets are static. However, the team plans to make some tests to see if it would be technically feasible to make them spin without generating too many problems. One of the first problem would be to define around which altitude a flying construct start to fly without being influenced by the planet rotation (because when a construct takes off, it could cause some technical problems if it doesn't follow the planet spinning, at least for a few moments). Same problem applies (and others emerge) for a planet making a revolution around a star. So only time will tell if we can implement that properly in the game. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi Metalmamoth and welcome in the Dual Universe community. So to address your concerns (or at least give you an explanation, even if it's not the one you would have expected), here are some answers: Please make the difference between what would seem nice in your opinion and what is really needed. No, it's not essential to make customizable prefab blocks in our game: what you're asking requires a considerable amount of development time. It's like asking to develop ingame a tool like 3D Studio Max, Maya or Blender, each of these software having a full dev team behind it. Keep in mind that we are an independant studio and while we have a bigger team than the average indie, we can't be compared to big studios like Bioware or Blizzard. We have to choose our battles, to make tough choices about what we will develop and what we won't. This + the fact that our dev team wants to keep a minimal control about the artistic direction are the main reasons why we won't have prefab customizable blocks. Does it have to be Massively Multiplayer? Short answer: Yes. Long answer: If you like playing on small private servers to play with small communities carefully selected, that's perfectly fine and you have already many games aiming to achieve this goal: Space Engineers, Starmade, etc. On the other hand, there are NO massively multiplayer Builder games as we intend to do. That's one of the big reason why there has been a lot of investment developping the tech necessary to make it happen. We are perfectly aware that it won't be everybody's cup of tea, but we aren't trying to satisfy every player either. There is no game offering such experience at the moment and we're intending to provide such service. If massively multiplayer games don't appeal to you, then maybe it's not a game for you. From what you are saying, other building games have performance issues with huge voxel constructions, and we can understand that's a problem. However, if you prefer their way of doing things (private servers, small communities), it would be more relevant to ask them directly to address the problem in their game than attempting to modify the vision of a game (like Dual Universe) that has entirely other goals. If you see our game like a "Space Engineers" clone, then you have missed most of our goals with the project: building spaceships and cities is just the corner stone of a bigger edifice. We want to combine Building gameplay with a player-driven economy, constested territories and politics. These last three gameplay aspects won't thrive unless we reach a critical mass regarding the number of players. That's the big reason to go for a massively multiplayer online structure. Dual Universe is not a game meant for children. So unfortunately, this scenario is not relevant. There's currently a high chance that our game will be rated PEGI 18 when it will be officially released. Not because of offensive content included originally in the game (there won't be any), but because of the very nature of sandbox games (especially when it comes to massively multiplayer games): giving player freedom is something that is expected in a Massively Multiplayer Sandbox game, but it comes with some duties. This is not something you can ask from someone who isn't legally responsible because of his age. You can see Dual Universe as a Minecraft-like game made for mature, adult players. We want to build a community with players responsible for their actions and ready to handle the consequences of their actions ingame: do not trust blindly someone you've just met one minute ago, do not transport valuable goods in an unprotected spaceship, etc. You would be perfectly right if we wanted to develop a "theme park" MMO like World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Star Wars the Old Republic, etc. In this kind of games, the developers mission is to bring huge amount of content regularly. To sell expansions in this scenario would be totally relevant. But in a Sandbox context, where players make their own content? Sure the dev team plans to add regularly additional gameplay mechanics, to offer aways more gameplay possibilities to the players, but would it be enough to convince the most part of players to buy an expansion ? nothing is less sure than that. And that's probably why CCP preferred to keep a subscription model instead of selling expansions (despite the fact they did make expansions, they didn't sell them and kept the monthly subscription formula). This would be a very very risky bet. With all due respect, there might be a third possibility: Without having all the cards in hand to judge objectively, you're making a (probably involuntary) biased assessment, and the way you calculate the costs are incredibly far from the reality (with the costs being in fact much higher than what you are thinking). Unless you have already managed and directed the budget for a Massively Multiplayer Online game, you're not qualified to make such bold statement as above. Continuing to affirm such things would be just arrogance. It has become increasingly common in the recent years to see many players jump to the conclusion that devs are immediately greedy and/or evil masterminds as soon as the price of a game isn't the price they deem reasonable without having made rigorous market studies on the topic and/or being fully aware of how much cost a game, and especially a MMORPG (costs skyrocket when you're aiming for Massively Multiplayer Online Game, available 24h/24 7d/7 with all the logistics behind. Moreover, the costs for an offline single player - or a player hosted server - game is nothing comparable to the costs of a MMO game. Another point that makes your reasonnement starting on a wrong basis: currently, Dual Universe isn't planned to require a payment equal to a full game price from day one. So to reach the price of a Buy to play Model, you will have to play and pay at least 4 months (+ the free trial period) if we refer to standard monthly fees, before reaching the same cost. After all this time in game, if you don't want to pay anymore, you will still have the alternative to buy monthly subscription tokens from other players with your ingame money (or even before: if a player is active enough, it might be possible to buy the first monthly subscription token right after the free trial period expires). This is exactly how the PLEX system from EvE Online works. So in all honesty, we have a hard time to see how this formula can be seen as greedy or evil. It's a balance between giving people with low budget but with lots of free time to join the game and the investment in the game (be it in time played or money) as a deterrent to adopt a bad behavior. If you have read our devblog post here, we do tell that the B2P model (Buy once, Play forever) is a strong deterrent to player negative behavior, nearly as much as the Pay to Play model. Our main concerns with the "Buy to Play" model are elsewhere: - This is an immediate paywall that would discourage many players with low budget. - This makes our alternative to play for free impossible. For more info, read the first part of the DevBlog ("Being able to play the game without spending money"), and especially the "Pay to Play" part explaining the benefits of the PLEX system used by EvE Online (and copied by other MMOs like Wildstar and World of Warcraft). - This is not a solid and sustainable model unless we invest a huge amount of our budget in developping a cash shop. Because MMORPGs with a Buy to Play model always have a huge (some players would say oversized) cash shop. The server and the team behind a MMORPG aren't just financed by the sales of the game. On the long term, the main revenue to finance all this is generated by the cash shop. As we are aware that relying too much and/or becoming dependant from a cash shop revenue can generate many problems, that one more reason to be careful about this model. That being said, an official thread will be made soon to answer and adress all the concerns about the Pay to Play monetization model. There are already too many threads about this topic, and it's about time that all the related discussions are gathered in the same place. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone! The daily answer will restart today. There has been a lot of activity on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube these last two days, after the first gameplay video release Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone, Despite the fact we hate playing the police on the forum, it seems there's a need for some clarification about rules on this forum: - Being 14 years old isn't a viable excuse for not following forum rules. If someone is not able to interact respectfully with other members of the community, he (or she) will be banned, no matter the age. - Saying "kys" is absolutely NOT okay, even followed by "JK". If it was, it would be too easy to insult and/or harass everyone and get away with it by just finishing a message by "JK". - Hate speech against a specific group (be it racial, sexual related, or political affinity) is absolutely forbidden. @Dragoon: As everything stated above happened in this thread or another, this is the first and final warning. If this behavior continues, this will escalate with a ban without further notice. I hope we won't have to resort to this kind of action. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi DrunknGod! Thanks a lot for the testing you did. Let's use this topic to centralize all the registration problems encountered on the Community Portal. I will transmit regularly the new updates to the Dev Team regarding this problem. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

But... But he's everywhere! Welcome to our forum FrigoPorco Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Player input is always valuable. Sometimes really good ideas can come from the community. That doesn't mean devs have to materialize every request, especially those which are not compatible with the game vision. Not listening to the community is as harmful as trying to satisfy every whim in a development process. All is a matter of equilibrium. So we will try to find efficient ways to gather community feedback in the future. However, we don't promise it will be exactly as the CSM for EvE Online. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone, Technological research will probably quite hybrid in Dual Universe: You will have to "unlock" technologies to make advanced Elements (like a new type of propulsor) or advanced crafted items (like a new type of fuel). The way to unlock these technologies remain to be decided. There are currently several ideas. Unlocking through research time is one of them but it's not sure it will be the one being kept in the end. Here are the pros & cons: - easiest and fastest way to implement research. - safe process to prevent automatically that all the tech are unlocked from day 1 or even from week 1. - on the other hand, it's probably not the funniest way to play it. Among others solution, we have: - RNG mechanics but relying on luck for research can be very frustrating as well. - Grinding significant amount of specific resources (supposed to be used for experiments to make a technological breakthrough) but this might not appear fun either to many players. - Through "trials & errors" experimentation might be a problem as Alpha & Beta testers will get a huge advantage compared to new comers (and the risk that having a frenzy of technology breakthrough in the first days following official release). Moreover, there will be already "trials & errors" to design LUA scripts and test spaceship "flyability". So it might be too much to put several layers of "trials & errors". It can be discouraging for many players. - Civilization-wide unlock: when a certain amount of player characters have learn a specific skillset in the game, then a technological breakthrough happens and a new tech is unlocked. This idea is interesting but it generates some risks: "what if this number of player characters learning this skill is not reached? what if it takes 3x or 4x the time the dev team expected?" As you can see, the perfect answer is not that simple. And this will be without doubt the topic of a DevBlog to discuss in the future. We thank you all for giving suggestions and ideas on this topic and if new ideas come to your attention, don't hesitate to mention them! As always, this is very valuable info for the team to know what you like and what you don't like, and sometimes new way of thinking the design of some game mechanics Now on a complete another topic: @CaptainTwerkmotor: We understand everyone here is very passionate about his/her vision of the game. However, as much as you don't like the vision loved by other players, you still have to respect them. You might find their vision old or inappropriate, there is no reason to quit being polite and starting using sacarsm. You don't have to agree with them, but have to respect them. "Respect each other" is an elementary rule on this forum. And we'd prefer not having to play the police among the community to enforce the rules. As we believe all the participants in this thread can be reasonable, we hope that we won't need to use hard/cold moderation (which we try to use always in last resort). Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone! You will have more info about the Kickstarter during the Gamescom at Cologne (Germany) in August Btw, we will be there if you want to come and say Hello! Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone! On behalf of the Novaquark team, thanks a lot for your support! We were expecting to see Dual Universe received with skepticism by many as the game is really ambitious. We are aware that several promising projects have been cancelled or didn't deliver at all what was expected from them in the past few years. So seeing a lot of people skeptic is perfectly understandable and we can't blame anyone for that (the only case where we can't remain silent is when someone makes negative assumptions and present them as a truth). All we ask from skeptic people is to give us the benefit of the doubt, to wait and see what we will present over the coming months, and we will listen equally to positive and negative feedbacks. We will also try to improve our communication, to minimize risks of misinterpretation (as it has already happened once). On the other hand, we have seen the number of people supporting Dual Universe growing tremendously during the last month. And that has bolstered the motivation of the whole team! So thanks again for your support! You can always help us by just talking about the game to your friends, and if you don't convince them, it's perfectly fine: we aren't expecting to convince everyone with just discussions, some screenshots and one video at this point. Spreading the word that our game exists is already a big help! Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi Legate and welcome! Releasing Dual Universe on Steam is being considered (but no promise at the moment). If we go for Steam at some point, it won't be before Beta (so not before 2018). The client would be available on the Steam store, a bit like EvE Online. This approach wouldn't be led by greed. It would just give more visibility to the game. It's a no brainer: Steam platform gives visibility. And to see more players joining the game is never a bad thing, especially when the game is centered around player activities. We are aware that Early Access on Steam are seen with more and more suspicion as developers ask to pay for products far from being finished and the only games who got positive feedback were the games nearly complete or not far away of the official launch. That's why we won't rush a Steam release in any case. We also make a clear distinction between Early Access and Crowdfunding support. From our point of view: - Early Access should be equal to selling a game, not completely finished but already fun to play and fairly stable. In other words, at least a game that has reached Beta. Those who buy a game in Early Access are consumers who buy a product to play a bit in advance prior to the official release. - Crowdfunding is meant for people who want to help the project and support, people to have suggestions to make to improve the game, etc. They can access the game right from early stages, in order to provide feedbacks that could be taken into account into the dev roadmap. But there are here more as supporters willing to help improving the game than consumers in the first place (but they deserve, of course, the same respect as other consumers!): they understand they are going to enter a game that isn't a nearly finished product or that the fun is not completely there yet. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

To be more precise: - Crowdfunding campaign: it will be launched before end of 2016. - Alpha Launch: early 2017. So yes, for the time being, we're still on schedule Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone, Just to clarify on this topic: We totally understand that First Person Shooter gameplay would be more immersive. However, we have to take everything in account. And when we do, then we have to make some compromise. We want combat, but combat is not the main feature of the game. Only one of the main features, equally important with building, real massively multiplayer system in a single-shard universe, exploration, trading, etc. Once this was sorted out, it was logic that we wouldn't sacrifice things like the massively multiplayer aspect just to have the best First Person Shooter possible. In that case, even if it's not the best combat mechanics (we totally agree on that), target locking combat gameplay is the answer for the best compromise. So it's not a decision led by personal taste, but really the most relevant decision on the technical aspect in our case. We totally understand that it won't appeal to every player. We are aware that our game won't satisfy everybody, and it's the same for any game. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

@Tnecniw: If it can reassure you, no, we're not making a Sci-Fi version of Ark, without Dinos There will be safe zones for those who don't wan't to have PvP activities. We won't force PvP on players, we want to avoid that at all costs. We also plan to provide basic resources (necessary to make all the vital items or basic constructs) available in (really) huge amounts, so no one can have a monopole. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Well... It will be always our word against his. But here is our side of the story. Just the facts: - We posted two comments on his second video asking why he was deliberately spreading disinformation and diffamation about our game. - In both comments was a link to our video proving the big spaceships were voxel-made. - They weren't validated to become public, despite the fact that comments posted after by other posters were. We don't exactly know how BlueDrake42's channel is configured, but if comments require validation to become public, that means he sees every comment before chosing to validate one (or not). It seems to us really unlikely that, in this situation, he hasn't seen the comments who were pretty straightforward and posted with the name "Dual Universe". Maybe there is another explanation but from our side, we don't see any. In the end, with his video "GG Dual Universe", BlueDrake42 showed he didn't mean to misinform (despite the fact that the result was exactly that). We personally recognize we were wrong in thinking he had ill intentions toward our game. Sketpicism in his first video was totally ok and we perfectly understood that (as not much about our game has been presented yet). Presenting personal assumptions as the truth (saying our ships were just meshes bought from turbosquid put in our game and not voxel-made spaceships) in the second video was where a line was crossed. There will be soon a blog post explaining our unexpected presence at E3 (that wasn't even expected on our side a month ago) and how it came to make some choices that seem weird from the outside. We also totally agree that there have been several mistakes in our communication like the fact we should have pointed out that the big spaceships design weren't home made but available on Turbosquid. There was no intention to hide it. We truly didn't see it as a problem a few weeks ago, as the teaser was meant to present what players would be able to build, not to present what the players will find in game. So there is no hypocrisy here. To avoid feeding the troll any further, this topic will be locked now. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

We are always open to Q&A. It would be a good moment to start a new thread to compile all the most pressing questions with all the new members who arrived in the last week. Prepare your list, and we will discuss soon about it. However, keep in mind we can't promise to give you a precise answer for all questions as, as always, we are just in pre-alpha and many things are far from being finalized Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone, A quick update that should close this controversy once and for all. It seems it's our turn to be wrong this time: We thought BlueDrake42 was not caring about what is right or wrong and was just interested in getting visibility by any means. He made a video to admit he made wrong assumptions so it may have been just desillusion on his side generated by deceiving advertisements he saw on other games. From there, we hope that we could restart a constructive discussion on a healthier basis with him soon. Best regards, Nyzaltar

Well, it's a noble goal to warn fellow gamers of a possible scam. But be sure to check the honesty of your source before following him blindly in his diffamation and misinformation speech. There are some points that don't add up in the scam theory: If we tried to scam and deceived people, would we opt for a monetization model where we plan to make a free trial before starting a monthly sub? Obviously, it would be suicidal to give access to the game, even temporarily for free if we wanted to scam people. On the other hand: - Bluedrake42 seems to present only information that could back his side of the story. - He hasn't even tried to contact us to check his assumptions. - When we asked some explanations on his Youtube channel, he didn't validate our comment on purpose (he has validated other comments, more recent, since then) for some reason known only from himself. Transparency seems to bother him. - The tweet pinned on his twitter account is self explanatory: In short, he's proud to say that he doesn't care if he's right or wrong, if he's loved or hated. All he cares is visibility. In the end, the bad guys are not always those who appear to be in the first place. Not all indie developers are scammers, not all youtubers have good intentions. Do not follow blindly what others say. If you have a doubt, ask the involved persons before accusing them. Indie developers generally answer to the questions. In other words, make an opinion by yourself, do not just follow an opinion made by someone who has visibility. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Criticism is perfectly fine, as long it is used in a constructive way, to improve a project. Diffamation on the other hand is absolutely not tolerated for obvious reasons. Could you clarify if you are here just to cause trouble in the community or to participate in a constructive way like other members? Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone, So it seems that BlueDrake42 has a vendetta against our game for no apparent reason (if there is one, we will be interested to know it). As we can't remain silent against such diffamatory talk, here is our answer: In this video, you can see that our battlecruisers are made with voxels, and arent' meshes as supposed in BlueDrake42 last video on Dual Universe. @Pittouniata: Your signature and your posts will be edited as they are definitely inappropriate and diffamatory. If you persist in this behaviour, you'll be banned. This is the first and last warning. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone! Just to avoid multiple threads on the topic, I'd suggest to focus all the discussion in the following thread: https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/544-announcement-dual-universe-at-e3-pc-gaming-show There will be most likely a version of the show put on Youtube once it will have been live streamed. I wouldn't worry too much about that Best regards. Nyzaltar