Asmodeus

I was talking storage, as in storing currency or materials in what is referred to in nearly all MMO's as banks which is an item storage depot that in some cases allows the players to store in game currency. In video games which do not function by the laws of real life, banks mean item storage depots so that is what I meant and I thought I was being clear on but apparently not. Novaquark has already stated that they plan to make it so that players can have their stuff taken if they are killed, how far they implement that is up to them and is ,like I said, a balancing act. You can talk semantics all you want in regards to how the words apply to the majority of video gamer's versus the actual definition but what I am talking about is not having some magically untouchable item storage system. I am talking about the exchange of items from game to players inventory and the types of inventory and system exchanges to be used beyond that point and if you want to get technical about it, yes in game currency is an item no different than something else harvested in the game or one of their elements. I am not saying what they are doing but what I believe they should do in order to maximize the games viability and chance of long-term success. I am very aware they are emulating Eve Online and it is a great game to emulate but I will remind you that emulating something in no way means a straight up copy. Even if I never actually play this game I want it to be a success, the Novaquark team is brilliant and what they are trying to do is truly visionary in the world of MMO's. As the thread states very clearly, this is an Idea thread for what they could do, so even if they already have a banking/storage/market and general item/resource exchange system then this thread is about coming up with ideas to improve it.

Buuuuut, as I stated earlier, such a thing would make any resource transportation system meaningless and make the very Idea of in game piracy and such utterly pointless which would really hurt the game by removing a massive amount of Emergent Game-play and would make our player decisions be barely capable of affecting the games economics. A strong economic system capable of wild fluctuation would be the driving force behind larger organisations, the ability to have in game currency or other resources lost or stolen by pirates would be a massive force driving Emergent Game-play and without such a force this game will lose a large part of its long term survive ability on the gaming market by making the player choices matter less and diminish the quality of the gaming experience. If Novaquark wishes this game to be entirely driven by Emergent Game-play, they will have to at least consider putting in some kind of banking system and think very carefully about what they ultimately employ. Of course players need a safe way to store resources without the risk of those resources or money being stolen but they have already solved that problem by creating the permanent safe zones, so creating a banking system along the lines of what we are proposing would only enhance the games viability and add to Emergent Game-play. It should be risky anytime you travel outside the safe zones or choose to transport resources outside the safe zones because this forces players to create personal police forces or organizations to think about protection, pvp without resource risk is utterly meaningless in a game like this and would only hurt this games capacity to earn and maintain long term players. It really is a balancing act, protect too much and Emergent Game-play dies, protect too little and players get board and lose interest. I really do believe that the system we are proposing would be the best chance for this game to survive and thrive.

I do believe the majority of you seem to be failing to understand that wealth is not just an accumulation of currency. The big haulers that Dual Universe has shown off would become purely decorative and pointless without some kind of storage system similar to banking in most MMO's. One does not need to store money externally in order to store wealth and personally I would find the game a lot less fun to play if a single player could hold an entire planet of resources in their inventory. The banking system we are talking about does not really need to exist for new players or solo player in general but would make the game far more interesting as far as corporations and other organizations go, especially with intermediary organizations who exist to facilitate interactions between other organizations. If Dual Universe does too much of the resource protection and storage for us then it will ultimately harm the idea of Emergent Game-play which is the staple point idea of this game. Everything I promote about methods of gambling and item storage was conceived of with the goal of facilitating Emergent Game-play and minimizing the amount of interference required by the developers in creating drive for players to play the game. It is entirely possible for banking systems and advanced currency exchange systems to simply not exist in the game but I truly believe that it would only hurt the player experience and diminish the value of our decisions.

There are a lot of personal reasons to use a shared account not the least of which being something like the guild storage in many other MMO's. Given that this game has large organizations in it, one would assume that at least some of those organizations might want to offer some kind of free stuff to new members or some kind of group storage between members in certain fields without having to personally transfer the money or items which could get very inconvenient very quickly. There are also more suspicious reasons that one might want to make a transaction indirect in order to keep secrets and such.

Awesome, I will put a strong consideration to joining you although I do plan on creating my own organization for other purposes I am really glad to see someone else who understands the necessity of item storage/transfer systems and banking which is honestly all I am really proposing.

You make a really valid point I had not considered. Even though the gambling would not be real it would still be a suggestive theme that could have complications in availability. This does raise the question though about how Dual Universe will approach gambling done independently between players within the game. So long as it is possible for players to trade and share items, gambling will be able to and probably will exist. I personally really like the idea of a rich veteran of the game losing months of in game currency in a day or a brand new player suddenly becoming extremely wealthy in-game. I am going to look up a bunch of laws on how the video game rating system works and try to learn how independent player interactions in this game might affect its availability. Thank you for bringing it up.

We definitely need some kind of dispensing system to help automate trading and free up players time to do what they want to do although I worry about how much something like that might tax the servers. It would also be really helpful if their were a way to link multiple containers together and automate storage and storage transference but I also worry about that being a big weight on the servers. What I was thinking when it came to credit was that it was exactly what you said but I was suggesting that it could be turned into a physical object as a security measure. It would not necessarily prevent theft but rather make it easier for another player to spot it.

I think we should have the ability to create interactive elements that make it possible to gamble such as slot machines or some kind of roulette wheel. I think we also need to have some kind of lightly automated localized transfer system that can automatically move something from one container to another, maybe using LUA scripts. I had this idea when I was thinking about how I want to play the game. I plan to build a bank for new players to store their goods in a single heavily protected area and having a side business would make that goal all the more feasible, specifically a casino. It should be possible to adjust the win percentage chance in any kind of randomized gambling system like a slot machine. It would also be nice if their were a way to force the machines to let a player win if the owner feels that no one is winning enough or is just feeling generous. This would clearly allow owners of gambling devices to cheat people but I can't imagine a lot of people would go to gamble at a place where they feel like they are losing too much. As far as banking goes, it would be really nice if people could turn their money into an in game credit chit with a tag line reading (for example) made by Asmodeus. Two credit chits made by the same person should fuse together when stacked but if made by different people should swap places. When a credit chit is used it should be destroyed and the money it represented is then added to that player. This would protect players from having their money stolen by banks because if the banker took any money then the credit chit would no longer read that it was made by that player. I really want to find ways to make the game more fun for new and old players alike and when the game comes out I hope to build the infrastructure that makes it fun for everyone. I really hope this adds something new to the game discussion and that I am not just saying something someone else said first, I kinda find that notion rather terrifying.

The idea of narcotics might seem like a cool idea initially but it would have a negative impact on the games publicity and player accessibility. I feel that their should be alcohol and other items that mess with the camera perspective and such but that these items should not have any feature that is not purely cosmetic. I don't think it would be good for dual universe to appear that it is promoting some kind of illegal drug. I know it seems like a fun idea but I would rather DU didn't give the media any kind of big weapon to use against it.

A straight up lock preventing any kind of construction would be a really useful feature for a lot of reasons. Additionally, if they made a multi-tiered permission system where you could for example build an apartment complex and draw an outline around one of the housing segments internal area and set it to be completely editable by the tenant but not anyone else other than the owner would be awesome. Having a permission based construction system like that would also make much larger city constructs far more feasible and practical from a game play perspective.

This is my first comment so please be forgiving if it is not the most useful. I believe that the game should have a logout mechanic involving a bed or cryopod chamber. Their should probably be a 15/30/60 minute reuse timer and I lean more toward it being 15 or 30 minutes. If a player logs out just anywhere their body should be left in game indefinitely or until killed. If killed while away the player should not re-spawn until the player logs back on. The same if a player is just away from their keyboard for too long. The ark ships should serve as a free unlimited logout item with no cool down. If the player is logging out at an ark or a bed they should only have to be near it and should not necessarily be required to directly interact with it. In the case of the ark ship I think players should be able to perform the full logout from literally anywhere in the protection bubble and just log back in at the base of the ark ship. It should be possible for players to charge a fee for the use of beds. This will create a wonderful business opportunity that the free market system will make pretty reasonable and cheap since no one is gonna pay an arm or a leg to logout. It should also be possible to set bed items to reserved so only a specific player or organization can use them. This system will encourage players to build homes for themselves which everybody is going to do anyway just about. Players who prefer traveling in space can either put one on their ship and gamble on leaving their ship unprotected or go to some player made inn somewhere and rent a bed while docking their ship in a protected area. I mostly just encourage this system because it is easy to use and understand, encourages inter-social behavior in players such as building communities and also creates a relatively fair system that respects both PvP players and more passive players like me. It would also be really cool if new players had like a ten day loot protection grace period where if they died then nothing they had on them got lost or damaged giving players a chance to form or join some kind of protective community before being exposed to any of the harsher aspects. If you see flaws in my system please point them out because I really want to help this game be as successful as possible.