NanoDot
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Posts posted by NanoDot
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14 minutes ago, CaptainTwerkmotor said:
... I'd like knowing that mining IS a legit means of making money in DU...
Legit ?
Mining is the ONLY way to make money in DU, lol
And that's using the word "make" in it's purest sense, i.e. to create.
Nothing else creates wealth AFAIK, unless there's some sort of alien artifacts that can be discovered and sold to the NQ bots...
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7 minutes ago, CaptainTwerkmotor said:
That''s a definite possibility on the capped circulation as of liquidity. Remeber, resrouces in DU are not regernerating like EVE, so an area CAN afford to trade in exghange rates of mienrals i.e. 1 Au == 100 Fe (1 gold unit equals 100 iron and vice versa).
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Or - as I envision i going - people adapt a barter system and declare "the Gold Standard" as their go to currency.A barter-based economy will be tedious as hell...
And NQ will have to seed minerals in percentages that allow that to work, otherwise it will create new problems.
Let's assume that minerals will be seeded in proportion to their use in manufacturing. The "rare" minerals will inevitably be needed for high-end elements, etc. That's how you control the availability of high-end components usually. If everyone now decides to use gold as "money", that introduces a huge additional constraint on manufacturing anything that needs gold. The volume of gold in the game world will not have been designed with that in mind, leading to all kinds of problems, like massive inflation of the value of gold (and anything that needs gold in manufacturing).
NQ's plan to cap the amount of money in the game will simply slow down the accumulation of wealth (not stop it), whilst making general game play more tedious and frustrating.
If money becomes tight, people will switch to a "gold standard" or some other resource-based currency, as you've already suggested. The amount of wealth in the game will continue to increase unabated. Resources are "finite" in any given area, but infinite in supply in the entire galaxy to all intents and purposes. They have to be, if the resources run out, the game stops working. The value of resources will just rise over time as it becomes more time-intensive to exploit them and cart them back to where they are needed.
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3 minutes ago, CaptainTwerkmotor said:
Well ,as far as I was aware, EVE Bank is the thing that keeps the economy going for PVErs in EVE. In either case, DU has no PVE Missions to begi nwith, and CCP can't really keep te bots goign forrever, cause tatr will create a shortage of minerals in the markets.
Again, looking at the analysis of the September 2015 numbers in that EVE report, we see that skillbooks and the LP Store took 4 times more money out of the EVE economy than transaction taxes.
The presence of NPC factions and corps in EVE allow for a wide range of both sinks and faucets to be easily deployed.
The complete lack of NPC structures in DU will make it very tricky to introduce "plausable" money sinks and faucets, for instance. What possible use could the arkship AI have for money collected by transaction taxes ? Why would the AI charge players money to buy skill training ?
OTOH, perhaps the plan is for DU to simply have no money sinks. If NQ plan to cap the money supply by withdrawing system-generated buy orders at some point, then money sinks would not be needed. They would be counter-productive, even.
I don't believe that it's practical to freeze the money supply in DU, which is what will happen when the system-generated buy orders are switched off. Just like in any other MMO, people will leave DU over time, removing large chunks of money in the process. The bots will have to interfere constantly just to keep the money supply at a specific level. Which means that the bots will constantly be interfering in the player resource market.
I honestly think that NQ's vision for the economy is DU's biggest weak point.
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6 minutes ago, CaptainTwerkmotor said:
Oh, that one, that's due to inactive accounts mostly and a bad calculation on CCP's partr on "What would happen to a walllet if a person was to delete their pilot".
But then again, VE is 14 years old
Are you suggesting that CCP have less of an understanding of their economy than you do ?
Look at the monthly analysis for September 2015. The taxes collected from market transactions are about 15% of the income generated by mission payouts. EVE Bank would utterly unable to balance their budget with those numbers.
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2 minutes ago, CaptainTwerkmotor said:
a long time now? NPC missions pay out of Bank of EVE's wallet - the corp that collects in-game taxes. If you ask "why do prices go up" that's cause of EVE's playergbase going down, so less and less people having more and more money on average, thus giving the impression of money being injected in the market.
This report seems to suggest otherwise:
https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/eve-economy-update-eve-vegas-2015-report/
The "active ISK" in EVE has been steadily climbing since launch. EVE money supply is clearly not a closed system, even though it does appear to be well-balanced to slow down the growth.
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4 hours ago, CaptainTwerkmotor said:
Not neccesarily.They only need to inject a stable amount, then let the market handle itself. That's what CCP did with EVE Online. NPC missions in EVE are paying out of the moeny Jita taxes on trading.
...That's interesting, when did CCP cap the EVE money supply ?
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It's an interesting idea, and ideal for testing.
I'd be happy to put some time into it.
Perhaps we can recreate that "city" featured in one of the demo videos...
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The smaller the player base, the greater the chance that one or two individuals or orgs can manipulate the market.
Even in EVE's relatively massive economy, people try it all the time, with varying degrees of success.
It will undoubtedly be tried in DU as well, there are people with years of experience in "MMO economics" by now, and DU will have DAC's from day one...
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If I buy a ship blueprint copy from another player and build that ship, what are the copyright protections going to be ?
Can I customize the ship I built from the BPC ? Can I add voxels and swap out elements, for instance ?
And once I've modified that construct, am I now the new "creator" of the modified construct ?
Can I now create a new master blueprint and start selling BPC's of my "improved design" ? I'd certainly hope not...
Or is a construct "locked" against voxel or element changes by the new owner ?
Lua scripts should probably be exempted from construct locks, but changing those shouldn't give you the option of creating a new blueprint of the construct itself.
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53 minutes ago, spaceDJ said:
Disclaimer "know that this has been talked about already"
1) Is there going to be any way to build bigger and better weapons .
2) if so what could or would be in place to balance this.
3) can you name a planet alderaan.
Weapons are pre-made elements supplied by NQ, so you cannot build actual weapon modules, only use the ones that the game provides.
The weapon elements will have functions that you can use via Lua scripts, so you could potentially change some of the weapon behaviours in some ways, like "overheating" it to get a temporary 10% damage increase, but with the risk of damaging the weapon itself.
Alderaan, eh ? It has already been said by NQ that you can build something the size of the Death Star, but there will be no "planet killer" weapons in the game, so the Death Star will just be a cool-looking ship with loads of conventional weapons.
And there's no plan to allow players to name planets...
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23 minutes ago, mrjacobean said:
Or procedural hangar doors that can be built to any size*. Adds convenience when building them.
*or maybe just force field doors can be procedural, since all you are doing is increasing the area of effect rather than the size of a mesh.
If you want a hangar door, you will have to use one of the "door" elements supplied by NQ. I'm sure they will come in different sizes. I doubt the elements are scalable on demand.
Seems to me that any part which has a "function" (e.g. doors, engines, lights, etc.) will be pre-made elements supplied by NQ in various sizes (e.g. small, medium, large).
The functions of the elements (e.g. Light ON, Light OFF) will be "code hooks" that can be manipulated via Lua scripts.
It doesn't sound like players will be able to define functions for their own constructs. Only the functions of the pre-made elements used in building a construct will be manipulatable. That means you cannot build a free-form door out of voxels, because there would be no way to make the door open or close.
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2 hours ago, Neolithic said:
Is alpha going to be the same thing as space engineers, but without damage?
Are you referring to pre-alpha, alpha-1 or alpha-2 ?
DU will not have damage from collision between constructs. Crashing a construct into the ground or into an asteroid will cause damage though. There will obviously be no combat damage until the PVP mechanics are implemented.
Pre-alpha will basically be a "creative mode" where players get given unlimited resources to experiment and build whatever they want. Players will also be able to create blueprints of their constructs, which they'll be able to keep permanently. Beyond that there are no other game systems implemented yet AFAIK. However, constructs built in the alpha stages will be lost, because there will be server wipes between the development stages.
During alpha 1 and alpha 2, more systems will be added incrementally, such as scanning, mining, markets, skill training, etc. We don't have a roadmap as yet, so it's not clear yet what is planned to be added at each stage.
Once the basics are reasonably stable, NQ will probably start on the PVP implementation, which sounds like it's planned for late alpha-2.
- Captain Jack, Demonneo, Ben Fargo and 2 others
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5
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This is a recurring theme in many posts that I've read. It's either "I want to build a LARGE ship" or "I want to build a space station" or something along those lines.
Building a large anything will probably be out of reach of the single player, because there is currently no "creative mode" in DU, which means you'd need to first mine for a few hundred hours to get the materials to build a large construct of any kind. Mining can only be done by hand. There's been talk of adding a "creative mode" to the game at some point after launch, but until that happens, a single player will probably be limited to small or medium constructs as a matter of practicality.
The materials will have to be stored somewhere (vulnerable to theft) and the partially completed construct will be permanently in the game world, which puts it at risk, unless you're building in the arkship safezone.
As for automation, NQ seem to have decided on a design that will intentionally limit automation. That implies that they don't want single players flying 21-gun dreadnoughts. If players find a "workaround" to make that possible, NQ will likely patch it out, because it conflicts with their intended game design.
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In about 3 weeks' time, we'll see how it all hangs together when around 2000 pre-alpha players all try to login simultaneously !
I'd guess well have at least 1000 concurrent, with most trying to build various things in or near the arkship zone. It will be an excellent stress test.
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The ATV group will get access in about 2 weeks from now, so I'd expect NQ to announce the planned server uptimes soonish...
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45 minutes ago, TehWardy said:
This worries me ... I'm only an "average gamer", and games that force "elitism" essentially end up driving me out as I lose interest in being ganked or cheesed all the time.
Hopefully there will be some good Security forces that make up a policing alliance in the game
Half tempted to take on a role that results in driving intel in to such a group with LUA driven smarts in ships.
We'll have to see how things pan out in DU, there are some potential subtleties in the game design that may produce a very different outcome than allowed by EVE's design.
Having no safe place to logout cuts both ways...
In EVE a "pirate" can simply fly to a bookmarked safe spot in space and logout, at which point player, ship and "loot" vanish safely from the game world. That means the pirate can dictate game play, you can only find them when they're logged-in on that char.
In DU, that pirate's ship and contents (i.e. loot) stays in the game when they logout, so it can potentially be scanned-down and destroyed by hunters. So casual robbery might be much more risky in DU. In DU, a pirate will have to transfer loot to a "non-pirate" alt (loot laundering) to access the markets, unless they have a pirate base with trading facilities. But pirate bases will be prime targets for the security forces of big orgs...
The risks and costs of a bandit lifestyle in DU may even mean that only "successful" bandits will be able to sustain operations (i.e. making a good profit from robbery). Unlike EVE, DU has no "easy money" sources like NPC missions or ratting in asteroid belts. EVE's easy money options can always be used to replace losses, there's no need to spend hours mining before you can get back in the action. Blowing-up NPC's is generally more fun than mining...
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I'd certainly hope we get a "creative build mode" sooner rather than later.
There's a difference between "design" and "construction". Design is a 1-man process, but large-scale construction requires a team.
If designing large structures are only possible if you have the materials for building it, that will essentially mean that only a handful of players (the nominated designers in large player orgs) will ever be able to "design" large structures and ships.
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The problem with research rate seems to be that NQ want to introduce new tech in stages. The only way to ensure that is to make the research process controllable (i.e. predictable) from a developer viewpoint.
If research is done in a clever or "interesting" way, it opens up the possibility that some players may be able to discover new tech before NQ wants it to be discovered (i.e. stargates get discovered in week 4 after launch). Once 20 thousand players start working on a puzzle or minigame, there's no way of controlling the outcome unless there's hard caps in place.
One way to keep control of the rate of discovery would be to only allow research of new tech levels after a certain time has passed. Perhaps the list of available research projects can simply be limited, with new projects being released over time. The research mechanics themselves can then be a fun and interesting process, without risking too much progress too soon.
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3 hours ago, TehWardy said:
Security by obscurity is not really anyone's solution, in IT that's actually considered actively "bad practice".
I'm one of those people that likes to know my efforts will still be there when I return from not being around ... none of us play games 24/7/365, it just can't be done so my preference is to have options no matter how I choose to play ... even if that choice is to go it alone!
I'd like to think i'm in a corp that does well, but my experience from eve is that really, only a the top few do that well, everyone else is likely to lose anything not stowed in a space station or in high sec space.
That said ... if I do something risky, sure I don;t expect the game to bail me out ... but that's my choice ... having control over my losses is the thing I would say is most important.
As has been pointed out in the replies here, DU will be far more hardcore than EVE.
EVE has high-security space, where Concord will avenge your death. Empire space is littered with safe zones (NPC stations) where your ships and possessions are 100% safe at all times. DU will have none of that, outside of the initial starter safe zone. The best you can hope for in that regard will be to join or rent space from a medium/large org who will hopefully be able to provide a measure of security. No guarantees, you pays your money and takes your chance...
EVE has a well-known saying: "Don't fly it if you can't afford to lose it".
In DU, that applies too, but there's an additional saying needed: "Don't build it if you can't afford to have it blown up".
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I guess that's why we'll have pre-alpha, followed by alpha-1 and then followed by alpha-2... and depending on how things go, maybe alpha-3 and then beta-1 and so on.
I broadly agree with the OP, it does sound like a bit of a fruit salad. We'll have to see how it plays.
The concept may not survive the implementation, but it will be interesting to see what can be done.
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11 minutes ago, Fitorion said:
I vehemently disagree when it comes to solo play.
I won't quite go to the point of saying it shouldn't be possible... but it should be difficult... inefficient... expensive... and generally much harder to play solo than with the help of others in 1 or more organizations.
MMOs are not single player games. And this MMO is a civilization building simulation. If people can scatter and be self sufficient they will. There must be reasons ... compelling game play reasons for players to need to interact with each other or the game will fail.
MMORPG's are about interaction with other players. Joining an org is just one form of interaction.
You DON'T need to join an org to:
- Be a pirate hunting lone traders
- Group up temporarily to kill a local pirate
- RP in a cantina with random strangers
- Buy and sell items on the market
- Ask a master builder to build you a special ship
- Hire mercs for protection
- Find resources and sell the location to miners
But you DO need to belong to an org (longterm group) to:
- Defend a territory claim
- Build a city and maintain/defend it
- Build a space station and defend it
- Go to war with another org
- Do large-scale mining and manufacturing
There's room for everyone in a sandbox. Solo players don't stop orgs from doing anything.
Independent players increase the player base, which makes the economy stronger, because there are a whole load of additional customers in the market. None of them will be self-sufficient, because it takes a lot of training and time to make everything yourself. And even if you do train all the skills, an organised mass-manufacturer will still make everything faster and cheaper than you will on your own.
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13 minutes ago, Fitorion said:
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I want there to be a need and value in a large construct that may take several people's resources ... IE an org to construct. So that people will specialize. Miners will mine and sell to an org with a refinery... and the refinery processes it for sale on the markets.
If 1 person can... go mine up some ore... process it in their desktop refinery... and then go build something isolated on a claim or fly off all alone... That's bad. There were no social interactions with other players during any of it. MMOs are social games. The instant they become too accommodating of solo play... is the instant they die. People need to ... need other players.
So I'm trying to think of ways of making the act of refining something difficult for 1 player to do alone. Simply making the refining device expensive is one way. Making it also complex is another. If some sort of skill based mini game could be incorporated... perhaps even a few different ones so you might need several "workers" to crew your refinery like the large ships will need a crew... that could be even better.
I disagree.
The fewer producers there are, the less the competition and therefore the higher the prices of produced goods.
In EVE, the prices of basic items are kept super low because it's easy for anyone to become a producer. The competition between 1000's of producers completely removes the effect of inflation in EVE. Prices stay relatively flat, even though the money supply is increasing rapidly.
Common items should be cheap and widely available.
If there are special high performance fuels, for instance, that is where it should become difficult for everyone to make it in their garden shed...
Don't try to force people to play a certain way. It's a sandbox, all playstyles should be viable, including solo play.
Rather offer incentives for grouping up, instead of penalties for not doing so.
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1 minute ago, Fitorion said:
I... don't think that's actually any different from what I said... so... yes I agree.
I built a ship in DU at PAX 2 days ago.
What I was trying to say is that a refinery "construct" may not need nearly as many elements to make it work as a ship would, but there's nothing stopping you from making the refinery look like a large complex building.
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2 hours ago, Fitorion said:
I kinda want a refinery to be something you build... along the lines of a space ship.
So what I'm saying is that there shouldn't be a single element that is a refinery... there should be many elements with their own functions that when assembled together function as a refinery.
Much like you assemble engines... and fuel tanks... and thrusters... and a cockpit to make a space ship. The machines used for industry should also be assembled that way.
Alternatively, you could build a large and complex structure using voxels, and then just plug a refinery element into it, along with a storage element, etc. and the whole structure becomes the "refinery".
Ships are just a few elements wrapped in a large custom voxel structure that you shape any way you like.
The Economy
in The Gameplay Mechanics Assembly
Posted
Hyperinflation only happens when the faucets and sinks are seriously unbalanced.
CCP managed just fine all these years, EVE's CPI has remained almost flat since launch. Vigorous competition between player manufacturers, combined with a steady supply of minerals, and a nicely balanced set of faucets and sinks, has kept EVE's market remarkably stable, even though the total money supply has been steadily increasing for 14 years...
Well, as long as you ignore the spiralling cost of PLEX, which everyone assures me has nothing to do with inflation...