CptLoRes

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2023
-k-

DU is lousy sci-fi, since there is so many inconsistencies and hardly any correlation between what you do in the game and the technology available. So a more correct term would be space-opera.
 
For example everything must fly in DU, but there is no advanced technology or Lore or anything in the game that would justify a society based around flying.
 
And one moment you have nano transformers doing hand-wavy magic and resurrection pods that can transfer you across the universe in a split second, and the next you are running around picking up glowing rocks from the ground.
 
Kinda reminds me of Star Wars where people are living in a western movie but then suddenly have all sorts of crazy technology for whatever fits the short term narrative, without any thoughts as to how having access to such technology would impact a society as whole. I mean just take a look at something as simple as the invention of the iPhone, and how much smartphones (and the internet) has changed our society in a relatively short time.

DU is lousy sci-fi, since there is so many inconsistencies and hardly any correlation between what you do in the game and the technology available. So a more correct term would be space-opera.
 
For example everything must fly in DU, but there is no advanced technology or Lore or anything in the game that would justify a society based around flying.
 
And one moment you have nano transformers doing hand-wavy magic and resurrection pods that can transfer you across the universe in a split second, and the next you are running around picking up glowing rocks from the ground.
 
Kinda reminds me of Star Wars where people are living in a western movie but then suddenly have all sorts of crazy technology for whatever fits the short term narrative, without any thoughts as to how having access to such technology would impact a society as whole. I mean just take a look at something as simple as the invention of the iPhone, and how much smartphones (and the internet) has changed our society in a relatively short time.

not good at all.
 
like others pointed before me, the difference between fantasy and science fiction is that fantasy, as genre, is for the most part, free of any constrains ; with author pretty much free to think up whatever plot device he deems necessarity to support the narrative, be it a telekinetic priest, flying elephant or whistling shrimp, it's all a fair game.
By comparison science fiction, by definition strives to interpolate possible future events, technologies and context based on current knowledge and trends; even if it is acceptable to do so  with ample dose imagination.  In this respect science fiction is very much in line with futurism.
 
Dual Universe, is very inconsistent and arbitrary its tech. There really no coherent vision of anything. Even on visual side, ( while there should definately be some flash and flair to make things look great) it can't even get the basic engine shape or plumes to resemble anything that makes remote sense. 
 
DU has this short tired ol , we trashed the planet so we got on the ship to find a new one.  there's really no world building there, no real back story, and quite frankly no context or backstory to build any story on,  science fiction or otherwise.   For all means and purposes DU is just about being a tech demo, very interesting one, but just a demo

Yes the lore makes no sense. We are humanities last hope sent to rebuild a dying civilization. But on arrival we are just giving some basic tools to survive and let lose to run around like a flock of hens. And when NQ introduced tax they pretty much gave up completely on following the lore. The last thing you do when trying to rebuild a civilization, is to tax everyone to death.
 
And.. who built the markets that where waiting for us when we arrived?
 
And so we are now in a situation where the alternative community Lore where Aphelia is an corrupted/evil AI overlord pretending to be good, makes for a MUCH more interesting and sensible explanation.

The (closed NDA) forum had good vibes for about a year or two. But by then is was already starting to be clear how NQ operated, and things started to change quickly..

Yes the lore makes no sense. We are humanities last hope sent to rebuild a dying civilization. But on arrival we are just giving some basic tools to survive and let lose to run around like a flock of hens. And when NQ introduced tax they pretty much gave up completely on following the lore. The last thing you do when trying to rebuild a civilization, is to tax everyone to death.
 
And.. who built the markets that where waiting for us when we arrived?
 
And so we are now in a situation where the alternative community Lore where Aphelia is an corrupted/evil AI overlord pretending to be good, makes for a MUCH more interesting and sensible explanation.

DU is lousy sci-fi, since there is so many inconsistencies and hardly any correlation between what you do in the game and the technology available. So a more correct term would be space-opera.
 
For example everything must fly in DU, but there is no advanced technology or Lore or anything in the game that would justify a society based around flying.
 
And one moment you have nano transformers doing hand-wavy magic and resurrection pods that can transfer you across the universe in a split second, and the next you are running around picking up glowing rocks from the ground.
 
Kinda reminds me of Star Wars where people are living in a western movie but then suddenly have all sorts of crazy technology for whatever fits the short term narrative, without any thoughts as to how having access to such technology would impact a society as whole. I mean just take a look at something as simple as the invention of the iPhone, and how much smartphones (and the internet) has changed our society in a relatively short time.

Yes the lore makes no sense. We are humanities last hope sent to rebuild a dying civilization. But on arrival we are just giving some basic tools to survive and let lose to run around like a flock of hens. And when NQ introduced tax they pretty much gave up completely on following the lore. The last thing you do when trying to rebuild a civilization, is to tax everyone to death.
 
And.. who built the markets that where waiting for us when we arrived?
 
And so we are now in a situation where the alternative community Lore where Aphelia is an corrupted/evil AI overlord pretending to be good, makes for a MUCH more interesting and sensible explanation.

It is a paradox. The game has so few players that it feels empty, but at the same time the planets are so small that a dedicated group can literally scan everything of worth in a short time frame.
 
So to sum it up. Broken game design, is broken..

It is a paradox. The game has so few players that it feels empty, but at the same time the planets are so small that a dedicated group can literally scan everything of worth in a short time frame.
 
So to sum it up. Broken game design, is broken..

Explain how "not giving perms to dishonest people" is supposed to work, though...? How are you supposed to know who is or isn't honest in a game, especially one where there's no repercussions for stealing because NQ insists it is "emergent gameplay"...?
 
Theft isn't "emergent gameplay", because theft is literally just using RDMS as intended -- emergence is an interaction of features, not using one feature exactly the way it was coded.
 
It isn't "gameplay", either, because it has no consequence -- PvP is barely implemented and there is no reputation or legal system of course. There is no gameplay whatsoever around theft. 
 
It's the game's job to manage ownership and property in a way where everyone can contribute to orgs without the org crumbling because a legate gets bored and tears it all down.
 
And let's be honest, when NQ had their market destroyed...they responded with bans...so maybe it's a bit silly to suggest that the end-all answer is "just configure RDMS right" when even NQ has made mistakes. 

DU is lousy sci-fi, since there is so many inconsistencies and hardly any correlation between what you do in the game and the technology available. So a more correct term would be space-opera.
 
For example everything must fly in DU, but there is no advanced technology or Lore or anything in the game that would justify a society based around flying.
 
And one moment you have nano transformers doing hand-wavy magic and resurrection pods that can transfer you across the universe in a split second, and the next you are running around picking up glowing rocks from the ground.
 
Kinda reminds me of Star Wars where people are living in a western movie but then suddenly have all sorts of crazy technology for whatever fits the short term narrative, without any thoughts as to how having access to such technology would impact a society as whole. I mean just take a look at something as simple as the invention of the iPhone, and how much smartphones (and the internet) has changed our society in a relatively short time.

DU is lousy sci-fi, since there is so many inconsistencies and hardly any correlation between what you do in the game and the technology available. So a more correct term would be space-opera.
 
For example everything must fly in DU, but there is no advanced technology or Lore or anything in the game that would justify a society based around flying.
 
And one moment you have nano transformers doing hand-wavy magic and resurrection pods that can transfer you across the universe in a split second, and the next you are running around picking up glowing rocks from the ground.
 
Kinda reminds me of Star Wars where people are living in a western movie but then suddenly have all sorts of crazy technology for whatever fits the short term narrative, without any thoughts as to how having access to such technology would impact a society as whole. I mean just take a look at something as simple as the invention of the iPhone, and how much smartphones (and the internet) has changed our society in a relatively short time.

Using normal 3D meshes yes, but not with voxels. All you have to do is to reset the voxel deformation back to default and voila normal filled in ground again. Remember that when you are removing something in a voxel space you are not really removing anything (doing so would corrupt the voxel structure), and instead you are just tagging the unused voxels as 'hidden' so they no longer render and cause collisions.
 
Edit.
And even filling in the holes is not the true optimal solution, since the main performance issue is that there is no culling performed what so ever when NQ is streaming voxels to the client.
 
So when you are flying over or just standing on the ground, NQ has to stream every underground hole and voxel change in your affinity regardless of if you can see them or not. So the entire thing is just another result of NQ's trademark "just make it work and fix it later (but they wont)" approach to game dev.

There are tons of good ideas in these forums - even some concerning the server-load long term to help them keep the costs down.
But whatever NQ does is totally weird, if the honest intention of NQ is to keep the game alive.
 
Bring back classic mining and fill those damn holes after 1-2 month if nobody was there again.
 
Make some energy limitation PER account to reduce to much load from factories. So the Multiboxer still have a reason to multibox for what they're happy to pay.
 
There's multiple formula which might work perfectly for DU. But NQ just cant or wont find them.
 
The rat race discussed on the topic is just an UNBELIEVEABLE thing to me. Ridiculous. 
I really blame NQ to let the game die, obviously. I'm not playing the game since release because I'm not fancy to loose all my progress again. And this will happen for sure, somehow.

It's not much of an addiction... I'm feeling zero pangs, or urges to log in... 
 
These forums tho'....
 

I've said this before, but the biggest sink in any MMO is player churn.
 
What percent of WoW items and gold are just sitting on inactive accounts collecting dust? Likely the vast majority of all the money and items ever "printed" into the game. 
 
Honestly, I'm not sure I much care about the "economy" of any MMO, overall...I'm just not the sort of player that cares to "play the markets" as a facet of gameplay.
 
What matters to me is that earning money is fun and that it is motivating because there's stuff I want to buy.  
 
In games, that is the primary driver of a good economy in my opinion -- actual interest in wanting to earn and spend money because it drives engagement with the game, overall. 
 
Earning money just to pay taxes is an objectively stupid design idea that undermines the whole point of having a currency system in games to begin with! it isn't to create a fake economy just for the sake of having an economy. 
 
This isn't complicated stuff; it's like they put quanta into the game without understanding why currency exists in video games. Game economies are not at all like real world economies.
 
NQ needs to step back and think about how to make their game fun; the state of the economy really doesn't matter if there's nothing fun to do with it.

Let's be honest here, DU never really stepped out of Landmark's shadow, with only exception being VPT.  And that shadow wasn't even that long considering that besides voxelmancers, nobody really even took notice it ever existing.
 
And when it comes so called "web 3.0" it is little more then bunch of irrelevant academics riding the current facebook meta shtick, The reality of it all is that after years of wasting billions Facebook has very little to show for it and in light of falling revenue has been cutting staff and funding left and right, particularly in their metaverve bits.  It did not even manage to match Second Life-s feature set and that was at the time touted as "web 2.0".  Back in 2007-2009 a lot of big corps rushed into SL to build their presence in the "next big thing"  and were mostly gone 2 years later and SL returned to its previous size and scope of catering mostly to creatives and sims online crowd that has found new home ther after EA shut the service down.
 
Second life really does fair job at what its name says, to many it offers a chance to live an alternative lives unbound from harsh realities of their "real" life circumstances. But it has always come with caveats.  Having a presence in SL can run you into hundreds in monthly fees to own your dream virtual land and hourse and plants;  into thousands when you're a creative building an experience for others to enjoy within its ecosystem.  Moreover it still requires  relative expensive hardware to have a decent experience inworld.
 
And hence the problem,  web 2.0  never really solved the hight barrier to entry to take part in, nor did it ( for the most part) offer general performance sufficient to really gamify the in world experience enough for mom and pops dropping their plants vs zombies on the phone and dive neck deep into their virtual lives.  As a result it quietly flizzled out and second life/active worlds and few others  returned to player populations they have had in years prior to the whole media frenzy.
 
So called facebook's web 3.0 doesn't even have that media frenzy behind it, barriers to entry are pretty much the same and user experience  shallower than 15 years prior.  Voxels are not exactly an important part of the equation here.  Voxels are a very old tech first showcased On Siggraph in late 80's. While i find working with them in game an interesting challenge, they do not really make creative process particularly more accessible for Joe Average, they don't scale particularly well and certainly don't offer more immerive user experience. It's just pixel art in 3d.
 
I'm sure there are few people of the sort listed in that NQ post who will make a nice buck "consulting" and land a few gigs speaking on dev panels, but that is far as it goes.  You can certainly make a career of spinning that water in the bucket but it's certainly not the next digital revolution, not unless it will work on joe's 250 buck laptop and using it is not as simple as playing with a lump of clay.

Which basically is a remake of what had already been done previously in Landmark. Take a look at this 8 year old video..
 
 

I don't care if the information was leaked or not.
 
Because the real problem here is being able to completely control a number of limited finite resources in a MMO, and then being able to hold them indefinitely. That is just bad design.
 
And being able to it in 24h or less is ridiculously bad design..
 
So thank <entity> we had this long beta before release, where NQ worked actively with the community to get all the kinks out.

The (closed NDA) forum had good vibes for about a year or two. But by then is was already starting to be clear how NQ operated, and things started to change quickly..

I don't care if the information was leaked or not.
 
Because the real problem here is being able to completely control a number of limited finite resources in a MMO, and then being able to hold them indefinitely. That is just bad design.
 
And being able to it in 24h or less is ridiculously bad design..
 
So thank <entity> we had this long beta before release, where NQ worked actively with the community to get all the kinks out.

Despite what NQ would like, people want to be self sufficient. So if a stable source of T2 is unavailable for most, they will use T1 instead regardless of price.

I don't care if the information was leaked or not.
 
Because the real problem here is being able to completely control a number of limited finite resources in a MMO, and then being able to hold them indefinitely. That is just bad design.
 
And being able to it in 24h or less is ridiculously bad design..
 
So thank <entity> we had this long beta before release, where NQ worked actively with the community to get all the kinks out.