Bella_Astrum

Probably another very early topic hehe, but also one of my favourite ones. I love collecting armor, and also love having tabs where you can easily slot armor for appearance if you want, while still retaining your original armor for stats etc. SWTOR has a nice system, which I prefer over say GW2 which essentially makes you destory armor to get the appearance you want. My favourite character creators tend to be ones like Blade and Soul where it essentially gives you control over small details, but I certainly don't expect every game to do that. As long as there are some nice long hair styles *hint hint* I've seen the various designs for DU in rockets and other technology, and also interior style, and those look fantastic, so if the same level of detail and quality is put into armor eventually then I'll be on cloud nine.

Welcome to the forums!

Gamers are a cynical bunch these days, too quick to judge before knowing much, but this game sounds awesome to us, guaranteed it will to many others as well . It doesn't matter how good a game is, there will be negative comments regardless. I noticed a couple of them were about pvp....understandable as some players lean more towards the PvE side of things, but it seems to me DU will appeal to different play styles. PvE, PvP, voxel building, RP'ers.

Welcome!

Here you go, should be at the top of the page to subscribe. : http://www.dualthegame.com/

Hehe I'm glad you agree. I just worry my questions at times are looking too closely at small things, rather than the bigger more important things. But I always appreciate the little things, I'm a role player in some ways (mostly in my head) and things like sitting is a big plus for me, and as you say, which I hadn't considered, it does impact other things as well. ...like being able to sit on my throne as I oversee my Empire lol. Well not really...it'll be more like relaxing in a chair on a balcony somewhere enjoying the landscape, or sitting around tables!

I had wondered at that too Voodoo Great newsletter overall, I read it while I was comfy in bed this morning. It's great to know of the progress that's being made.

Call me simple but one of my favourite things in games is sitting my character on chairs/furniture. Landmark has a way of doing it that involves placing the character near an object and typing /sit. The character then sits down on the object. In SWTOR it's similar but you type /chair. There is a chair that you simply click on and the character automatically sits down (in the player ships). That's probably my favourite approach. I know it's not a priority, and would definitely expect it to be a last minute feature, but will there be sitting on chairs/furniture in DU? If so, what will the approach be, /emote or click? I hope it's not too basic a question. I know I will have more useful ones closer to play testing.

Yeah that was a great draw for me as well, the freedom to just jump in with the masses. That's an aspect I really enjoyed. I hit a bump with dungeons because I'm one of those people who doesn't like pug groups. I really enjoy dungeons with people I'm familiar with, and never really like the unpredictable aspect of running with pug groups, especially if you get someone who is easily rattled and becomes irate, but it's definitely nice in GW2 to run around as a free agent if you want to be.

Which makes wonder if there will be any group mechanics in-game for us to test early on.

I wonder if sometimes games themselves help to create healthy groups. In Lotro I was in the same guild for my entire time. The game had the adoption mechanic that seemed to encourage group connections to feel like 'family' , which was certainly instrumental in me experiencing a fun, close-knit guild. In Aion I experienced more politics, I joined a big guild only for it to break off after some officers fell out with the leadership to form their own. When I joined the new one that too devolved and broke off as well. It was generally a much more competitive, unstable experience. Mostly due to people wanting to be 'the best guild'. GW2 I never settled into one guild. In fact I joined one in closed beta and by the time the game launched people started breaking away and doing their own thing. I think because of the ability to join multiple guilds in that game it didn't help to create loyalty or an affinity to one guild in some cases. I'd log into a guild and see guild members logged into their other guilds, which meant I saw a few small guilds die quickly, and big guilds felt impersonal. I really like the security of a strong, friendly and loyal guild like the one in Lotro. I stopped GW2 just before they introduced guild housing precisely because I couldnt find a guild I felt at home in, and like most games, when you try to return you feel lost due to so many changes in that time. I'd also left Aion just before housing kicked in because of the collapse of yet another PvP guild. Player housing is an aspect I like a lot. And as first officer in my Lotro guild I made it priority for us to obtain our guild house for meetings and gatherings for everyone. So we had a joint home. I really like housing and guild housing. It's one of the reasons I'm currently having a blast in SWTOR right now and decorating my stronghold there. My personal experience is that if the leader is all encompassing and embracing of members it's halfway there to a bonded guild. And that RP guilds tend to be more fun. PvP guilds more prone to in-fighting. Small PvE guilds more tight-knit. That's just my experience over the years.

Welcome Kvasir, nice intro there

The first thing we will do....is survive the Arkship landing and plan our vicious assault on the new World! *evil grin*

Good luck with your group plans. I don't know which way I'm headed yet, but I'll consider you if I fancy joining a group. Probably not a bad idea to develop kinship with fellow Alpha teamers.

I don't think it's too early, I'm already eyeing up some minions for my Empire *insert creepy laugh*. But on a more serious note, I've tended to join groups really early only to see those groups go different ways once a game launches. I like to see the lay of the land and get a gist of how things will be in game. I already know of at least one person I'll be tagging along with quite possibly

I'll probably need some ship building tips from you when the time comes...or somehow bribe you to build me one I'm guessing it'll be possible to sell it for in-game currency.

Looks great, love the sand, the heat wave, the detail. It's great. I can't wait to see this in-game.

I think Atmospheric captures what I mean. That voxelmancy refers to what was originally unintended. All of the clever things we can do now with voxels in the other game was an accident. Even the dev's had no idea these various new tricks could be used to manipulate voxels. That is good in a way because everyone can see what is possible but for usability for the average player the tools themselves are more user friendly. That said, for all we know we may discover unintended voxels techniques in DU as well. Voxels seem to have a mind of their own, not the big unchangeable ones like Mine craft obviously, but smaller more manipulatable ones like Space Engineers, Landmark and perhaps many others. It could just be the nature of the beast that voxels are unpredictable in unforeseen ways. I know I've personally made things I like by taking advantage of the unpredictability and experimenting in different ways.

I won! Sometime in the (near) future! Very lucky people indeed. Wouldn't it be nice to be in their shoes right now.

You're awesome Nyzaltar. I'm looking forward to knowing more about the experience of building with voxels in DU more than anything else at the moment.

Lotro online was my favourite mmo for a good while when it was subscription based. I stopped playing and then tried to go back when it went F2P. I felt like the game had had its heart pulled out. Everything was gated off by pay walls, or so it seemed. I never went back. I don't mind the B2P approach which GW2 has, but even then there is much emphasis on drawing you to cash shop goodies. Since I love new things, especially outfits and cosmetics, I was drawn in a lot. I will happily pay a monthly sub for DU. It seems like a solid move. Those serious will continue to pay. Whereas games like GW2 (which I do love but got lost amongst all the story event updates) don't promote real gamer commitment to the game because you can literally come and go. It works for that game though. I'm happy with NQ's decision.

Playing a subscription based game is safer for me (and my purse) that's for sure.

That's a good point, DNA sampling then possibly. I'd imagine there'd be some sort of DNA database of plants and animals for settlement elsewhere.

I don't think I've personally ever fully been clear on the voxelmancy concept. The reason being: there are players who are good at voxel manipulation (ie creating new yechniques/voxel shapes etc) and there are players who are good at using those techniques to make something outstanding. There are those in between and a rare few who are adept at both, though not that many. I've been called a voxelmancer but don't consider myself one. I just build what feels inspiring. I don't create weird vox3lmancer shapes. Though I have used/discovered my own techniques others asked me to show them. The term voxelmancer caused some rifts in some aspects of the community in other voxel game, in the alpha stage, simply because there was some frustration from some (not myself) that voxelmancy was on the verge of being elitist and prevented some less adept players from building at a high standard because instead of solid tools, players were left to invent their own ways around voxelmancy by making up new techniques (work-a-rounds). These were never my arguments but as time has gone on I've come to see the points behind the frustrations some players had. There are pros and cons of voxelmancy. I guess it is a term that is now out there, though I agree with Kiklix the 'mancy' aspect has connotations of magic rather than Sci fi. My hope is voxelmancy in DU will mean a player is simply good at building, instead of what it means in the other game: inventing new microvoxel techiques, because that would likely mean voxelboards and I would really like to get away from those. If it's not possible then I will embrace it, but personally I have found the past year of learning work-around after work-a-round frustrating. If we can do what microvoxels/offsets etc can do with Dev made tools, I will be super happy. I have much faith in NQ.

I wasn't keen on the idea of dogs and cats, but this is a good idea. Considering how bonded humans are to domesticated animals (I have two cats myself), it makes sense some humans would want to bring their beloved pets along with them on the Arkships. Makes me feel sad thinking of all those people boarding the Arkships, leaveing behind their loved ones who couldn't make it onto a ship....but maybe it could lessen the hurt a little if their pets DNA was saved for cloning later on, or simply put into cryo sleep as well.