MookMcMook

That is may turn out to be the "actualite on the ground (or space!)" but the perception problem is in the beginning as valid a problem: Hence "going large" on the Space Bubble Citizen Protection Program (SBCPP) in the advertising to builders is saying several things at once:- * This game has what you want in it. * This game has you covered so you can do what you want in it * We speak your language too. It's all implicit in the communication and given the voxel scope gameplay where pvp will be fairly attenuated to perfect, it seems to get that all important Big Bang launch of numbers queuing up even if not able to all leap in at once as the servers are scaled up in the cloud, then that's the most commercial approach and again better for the long-term of the game. All guesswork.

That seems right to me, but where people seem to disagree is on "how long all that will take to emerge": Hence safety-zones will probably be a major feature in the beginning (more than they probably are envisioned currently). That would be my educated guess. It'll be good for the game being seen as a Building Game by builders (see how that works) so they have fun and pvp'ers are not losing out because those systems won't be fully functional anyway: Win-win.

That's an interesting consideration: There may be more safezones and more cut-throat pvp in richer resource areas as a consequence of those safezones paradoxically (the demand outstripping the supply for more diverse and useful resources in specific locales). All to the good. I think the scale of building might be truly huge. Which will mean huge safezones for a large population of players at the beginning. Once this matures then the simulation can start to take over the "automatic safety net" idea. One of the things that pops up is comparison to EVE. But because of the building gameplay I see the development of DU panning out differently to reach a similar final simulation connectivity of gameplay eg where there's cause and effect on things driven by players. Ultimately that's the best result, but as said "ultimately" not "primarily". At some point those large distances may indeed become another successful player-driven safety-net assuming a large playing population and a number of years of growth of the game world space. I cannot wait for when spaceships get weapons systems!

So much for hindering PvP, I've hinted previously that I predict the current safezone bubbles are incipient ideas which will become more developed ideas when the rubber hits the tarmac or the spaceship equivalent of that (!). I'm fully aware of what NQ has said on this subject to date 01-2018 but come 01-2020 or later: I don't stop considering what they said now to what might be then, is worth noting. In fact, I can go further and say I fully expect the game world to divide between the playing population and a consensus agreement being formed during the early years of the game. I'm sorry if people feel that is not what they want from the off, I'm just stating that's what I think will happen and probably MUST happen to THEN arrive at what we see in the design notes specifically on SIMULATION > Combat > PvP {within this lots of sub-types}. To say why I state a fairly confident if controversial speculation: I said before the scope of gameplay interaction in the voxel building is going to add a whole new MASSIVE to MMO. There ARE more reasons but keeping this short is useful: That alone is going to be good enough reason for any speculation, which all of this thread is. The Builder Players are going to arrive in DU and they're going to have so much to enjoy in these early years. I see that as a very necessary result in the beginning. It will take a bit longer for the type of game I personally crave to arrive on top of that, again to anticipate and manage expectations in a way I think is realistic. We'll build lots of civilizations. In time some of these civilizations will be destroyed. @Comrademoco Sounds about right to me.

I really like everything said here. Especially the glimpse of passion some players will have for building who have tasted the voxel game play, which I have not.

I'm fairly confident we can build our cake and blow it up... (in time).

"ply some patients" =/= ply some patience. Did you notice that word play? Is that what is making you "lmao"? I hope so.

Agreed. Hence why I introduced some ideas about language. Of course that does not stop some reverting to "slogans" a sort of written shouting equivalent of communication! But then that's politics for you - not actual subject discussion via argument dialectic. Of course it's unrealistic to not expect this reaction: There's ALWAYS a war between players due to the faulty designs of PvP systems in most previous mmorpgs. You have players TRAINED to want things they won't find very fun (care-bears) and PvP'ers who go nuts when there's the faintest sniff of "Real Integrated MMO PvP" via simulation, like a shark sniffing a drop of blood 40km away in the ocean currents! All this makes me more confident that NQ have to first get the world-building grounded successfully first, then gradually iterate the simulation systems such as combat and trade that we can refer to EVE as a rough blueprint (not an exact one) for. I can't WAIT to board another ship and overun the defenders and capture it, like something out of Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey and Maturin series eg Master & Commander, claiming other ships as a great "prize". *licks lips* I'm just hoping the tech can deliver and introduce such HIGHER INTERACTIVE COMBAT that previous mmos. @Atmosph3rik Although I know what you mean about Landmark in Space, ie the Next (lol!) big voxel mmo with that kind of gameplay that they'll LOVE; the slogan is far from perfect: SOE/Daybreak never had the server tech NQ has, never knew how to store the data of VoxelFarm, faked the AI in the demos and generally did not have a coherent vision of game design for EQN at all, then strung early backers along in a corporate funding strategy bid... Fairly low behaviour tbh, even if understandable given their predicaments. As someone said, NQ's vision is an emergent player-driven simulation game ontop of the sandbox stuff. Though PvP players should ply some patients for the next few years and carefully bide their time.

Sorry if people took the wrong idea from some of the language used, such as primary or secondary. The idea is merely to use words in a way that shows they're equivalent to taking a PRISM and seeing within specific angles of perspective specific "in-sights": Those sights don't define limits or exclusively exist, they're merely associate different sights of the same thing building up a potentially interconnected picture where some things remain undefined. For example, most people thing of MMO-RPG as a world with multiplayer adventures when most of the interaction that is emphasized is "Combat". Few even have developed sophisticated "Trade" for comparison. So to then call DU a primary "Building" MMO is not to demand "gape-keeping" definition rights over how other people will play the game or view the game, just to point out the difference to the implicit assumption mostly used about mmorpgs and emphasis this comparison is significantly different: Who knows maybe it will have more PvP than most mmorpgs, which oddly would make it "APPEAR" to be a "PvP title" and people might demand that it be called as such, though I think they are looking with too narrow a focus... Next, we know NQ had to get the Tech right for DU - first. The networking shard (multiplayer), The Voxel objects making the virtual world space entirely mutable (and some how storing this data successfully) and thence building and terraforming, then the functionality of these objects all deep within the tech solution. This is a priori hence in-built. Last I looked they'll be wanting to hire a game designer in addition to the current team. Probably with combat systems experience. Looking at the voxel stuff with a huge world system and the wonderful rendering seamless experience: It looks like if we take another new angle through our prism, we then consider that this building looks early on to be a potentially very very fresh game system in an mmo and very interactive compared to what we're used to, and wonderfully inventive and creative: In short it looks like it might have a high success ceiling. Just look at the last batch of pre-alpha creations (some discussing here will have even been involved in those early creations): They are the tip of the ice-berg - all so far without the bells and whistles of missiles and lazers !! I'm looking forward to Building Civilizations and some of those will be war-like I'd guess... That is good for PvP players.

Most mmo-rpgs are "Combat mmos" and some of those are specifically "PvP mmos". Eg Albion Online is a pvp mmo and Camelot Unchained is a pvp mmo, for example within the combat emphasis mmo. Just pause for a moment and consider the voxels + lua + mobile & functional constructs and terraforming and infrastructure building that players are going to be busy with... DU will be primarily a "Building mmo" (sandbox) and then we'll see how successful DU is at extending that towards (simulation) aspects including combat, trade and businesses and services and so forth... We'll see about those protection bubbles, that'll transform as an idea over time I guess, over the next number of years. Eventually safety features along with pvp will roll out. Will be a long duration and lot of dev. One huge simple solution to begin with. Remember with that inside that, amazing things can be built "...to begin with" (extra emphasis). Anyway, I look forward to PvP more than Building, I just want fun ships and battles with lots of ships and crew and cool weapons. But I like an orderly rationale to this as the context, some sort of formal war declaration in a larger flow of coherent events due to the game systems. If I wanted instant and meaningless pvp I'd play battlegrounds or a shooter for higher octane combat. Also, this is just cautionary: The dream of PvP in DU is BIG! Look at SC, they're gutting the persistence of stealing ships and scaling back the interactivity and causal-effect relationship of their sci-fi universe, much to diminishing "the simulation dream" idea. Their off-set is of course high fidelity graphics and high octane combat: I prefer the direction DU is going: It's rooted in world-building, first.

Yes, of course there is. Some players will RULE the markets and never touch combat or perhaps even "exist" in the game as it were (goodness knows what sort of trickery they'll be capable of)... for one obvious example. There may well be builders or other such creators at the centre of large groups of players who similarly only build from a hive of human interaction around them. These are examples of such mechanisms. Let's conjure up another: You could be an explorer who simply blasts off LIGHT YEARS finding new systems and extending ever BEYOND never meeting others... (well it's theoretically possible when the devs ""open up the possibility of other systems). Overall the emergence of large player groups will likely create interior conditions for such gameplay. Exterior conditions will likely be like "Old Man's War"concerning exploration and extermination....

It's curious and convenient, maybe, that your avatar is a crusader and mine is the world building image! You attributed some an intention to my post which does not exist. I won't be a builder but a pvp'er if anything, ie it's got nothing to do with my "desires". Like I said "sentiment misdirection" away from the argument about design itself. I think your rhetoric is persuasion about groups of players holding particular positions on pvp and you're attempting to angle for the pvp crowd against the stupid care-bear crowd (I agree btw but that's not the argument about design, it's politics via forums!). Anyway about the statement above:- 1. The webpage calls the game "civilization BUILDING mmo". 2. Voxels will likely interest a lot of people whether or not I'm one of them. 3. The voxels won't have much life with out a healthy simulation system which involves pvp combat. 4. Building stuff will take much more time and planning than destroying stuff ... Entropy's a .... 5. Initially and indeed currently there's zero combat and building hence building is precedent to combat/pvp. Just read the latest game update notes. Now, finally that out of the way: We look at what NQ is planning for pvp and getting it under control: They talk about bubbles of safety. I think they'll have to start with more bubbles of safety than initially suggested so far but with greater reward in resources "further out" so to speak... then over time as large groups coalesce then such bubbles can be reigned back (some lore reason eg the tech of the predecessors starts fading etc). Finally I was not talking about fact, but about prediction which seems obvious considering how much future development is still come.

Yes, I can back this up:- 1. I'm assuming Building WILL be a bigger population of games players capture than PvP (reasonably from previous games) 2. I'm also assuming that the voxel gameplay if it works will be magnitudes more interactive adding to the above... (add lua) 3. Then I'm taking a basis of Building stuff that does stuff being the basis for a Virtual World with stored value(time/money and more from players) driving the growth of the economy, itself an enormous driver (incentives). 4. We know that with Player population growth you have World Size Growth which means more building required for complex large group sizes and dynamics and services: Manufacturing -> Processing -> Marketing + Services etc. We can call this Social Cooperation and MMOs have barely tapped this to the Scale they're able to USP compared to other game genres. From this we then move onto exciting visceral and vitality pressures on this from such as combat, market capture (aka market pvp) where a small(er) force can have a much bigger effect on all the above. @Zamarus : Your sentiment: "absolute - trump => subjective desire..." leads to "globalization of this to "population who need to learn about protection simulation". This rhetorical misconstruction of my post which merely attempted to set some productive technical terms for language for communication. Eg Secondary does not refer to some sort of priority, it's merely the case of:- * Proportional to player numbers * Precedent to natural development of simulation systems * Dynamic feedback system in balance of growth not stagnation or limiting factors. In fact, to completely turn your rhetoric against itself: By adopting this progression, there will be MORE PVP - not less and more diverse likely hence too. Will say your contribution has been effective in creating a busy forum post thread with multiples of replies, which is fun too, I enjoy the passion and respect everyones' views - I just believe there's more reward in successful communication happening!

There's a lot of talk on this subject that simply falls through the cracks, taking side-tangents, specifics too far and losing the overall picture and then the sentiment misdirection when conversing. Let's use some building blocks:- Primary Dual Universe is primarily a building game due to voxel space. We can tag this "SANDBOX" Secondary Dual Universe is secondarily an interaction game due to freedom of player interactions possible: Trade, Combat, Politics. We can tag this "SIMULATION" The Primary container requires:- 1. Building investment TIME 2. Building investment PERSISTENCE 3. Building investment VALUE 4. Building investment COMPLEXITY This has to lay the foundations and be the Base of the Pyramid of INCENTIVES driving player behaviour. The Secondary container requires:- 1. Territory Control 2. Visceral Combat 3. Destruction of Assets 4, Changing of Power in Groups etc... But I'd say the Secondary must never engulf the Primary. Hence the official line from DU: Safe Zones is a simple communication to order players who want emphasis on the PRIMARY and de-emphasis on the Secondary sufficiently to feel it's worth INVESTING into DU. Over time DU will need to ensure the PRESSURES of the Secondary are self-balancing in frequency and magnitude as the PRIMARY has a MUCH HIGHER POPULATION CAPACITY for playing players. Which in any case drives the emergence of Simulation once populations populate the virtual world. Hope these rough thoughts help conceptualize and perhaps avoid the interminable pvp no yes no yes pve old mores of the old genre of mmorpg. Let's use more applicable terms for Virtual World MMOs.

It's an evolving space:- For example early beta iirc there won't be combat, but there will be building/terraforming (voxel) gameplay. Obviously combat is integral to the game:- Builders and PvP:- I guess large orgs are going to be very necessary for the second part of your preference, so in theory yes it should be possible but it's dependent on conditions emerging. Likewise without these conditions in theory no, if considering the shadow of threat hovering over your head along with those big constructs.

Yeah the parameters are what is going to be very interesting concerning gravity and constructs and size. "Watch this space". I've only seen the videos so have not had a full feel for planet size and ship speed and what is possible to accelerate concerning orbits, but a huge Star Destroyer hanging around some star systems is going to be a major guard or attack on any resources attempted to be transported off such a planet(s). Yup plenty of small constructs are going to be needed. How are raw materials handled: Are they simple "inventory space slots per construct" without weight and volume physical properties? ie do we know how constructs handle how much they can haul? eg from dig sight to space?

I was wondering if let's say you have a 60-crew, then you might need "pods" for double that number (120) so that at least half of that 120 or so is online providing (ie 60 while 60 would be off-line/out of game) "fully-functional" operational response 24hrs? Obviously with increasing size that number can hit "fully operational" more consistency with dependency on less individual people (beneficial for social and work life out of game); atst as perhaps having more arsenal and defensive power? Maybe you could call this "personnel redundancy" designed in mind. Thing is, imagine how valuable having a great big "Star Destroyer" capturing a planet from Space: Any resources on that planet would be under control either from claiming hexes in the first place (getting there) or transfering resources off planet (space) under the watchful wake of such "Star Destroyers". Also with plenty of redundancy crew, full emergency, wonder if there would be a strategy for boarding other semi-large ships and claiming such "prizes". Alternatively lots of small ships zooming into the atmosphere might be able to dodge the Star Destroyer and take the fight to anything planetside? Fascinating possibilities. For sure it would be a bit of a chore being on a big ship with a schedule, but could social (lots of players), could be immensely powerful in combat and rewarding in pay-off for "hoarding an entire planet or system" (!) and how interesting if the engineering (lua and design of such ships) and then the (management and running of crews) operations side as well. It really stokes the fires of fantasy and sci-fi to me in this concept sketch stage.

Maybe you're right, a balance between SIZE to TRACKING/TARGETING and SIZE to RANGE will be more conducive to gameplay? It will be fascinating whatever happens:- Space Battle (large constructs + smaller constructs) Atmosphere Battles (smaller constructs?) Avatar to Avatar Battles inside Constructs and Bases (avatars pew-pewing)... Anyway pardon slight off topic. Also like the idea of flying a smaller construct in a non-combat role for sure (hint: after such battles!).

Thanks for the explanation. I do get that. It seems from a technological point of view of space battles and technological space race, that that outcome does not "add up": Simply increasing the parameters:- * acceleration of movement in space * Number of weapon systems and their stats and variety of types eg range * shields * scanning/target locking eg range All these would favour a larger technologically advanced construct in an open space plane. Ie it can even deploy drones or as you say have scout ships along side, then it's just sheer power and sheer numbers game. Of course for gameplay reasons, we'll see what the devs decide.

Yeah on point: The big guns are going to take out any ship that may have a big gun that "could damage" the big ship. The big ship is also going to have lots of small guns (crewed by ~60-100 ppl or so) then you'll have numerous small ships that can buzz off the big ship too. Then we don't really know what sort of offensive weapons will be possible:- * Fission Nukes? * EMP? * Beam/laser spikes * Missile (explosive) cohorts * simple torpedo kinetic damage You got to wonder what the ranges will be as well and then if there's recharge and ammo rates to depletion along with shields. I'm not arguing THIS WILL HAPPEN: I'm saying I'd be happy if this DOES HAPPEN. @Lethys If you have more info about this then please share... It just seems to me that a gnat or mosquito is trying to take a chunk out of a tank is a suitable metaphor. Whereas I guess ships that can go into planetary atmosphere may work better as smaller constructs, perhaps? etc.

"Quaid... Quuuaid! Open your mind!" I wonder if there would ever be a way to simulate in-game relativistic time dilation?! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_effect

I think a huge "Flagship" which stores smaller ships and has a large crew. I love the idea of simulating being in a space navy:- * A huge ship is going to take down anything smaller and with smaller stats while being more or less impervious, with lots of crew and marines and then pilots for smaller craft eg scouts, cloaking if it's in (ie battlefield intel via voice comms). That's the kind of ship to dominate a planet or planetary body full of valuable resources... atst as a trade node or vertex connecting edges/flight paths. Also it's going to be a full 24hr around the clock job needing a large crew for world time differences: Shift time and in-game down-time. The race is going to be constant: To build more powerful ships, more of these ships, with tech and fuelling the war economy while depriving any threats of their own economy. No Han Solo for me: "Storm Troopers" are finally going to get their day in the sun.

What's all this furore about youtubers and their egos?

Exactly right: It's going to be HUGE SCALE virtual world space. * Building and creating and trading and socializing and services are going to be very popular in such areas that have stability. The equivalent of the old out-dated pve-combat content. * The pvp combat will likely be big fleet battles on the edges of such empires, with dog-fights "anything goes" in the outer reach lawless rimworld et al. zones and new systems....... with new resources and whatnot.

I'm not sure NQ has very clear ideas about PvP atm tbh. Of course they're dealing with the more fundamental areas of the game before war and politics. It does seem likely to me, that large bubbles for promoting stable infrastructure: Cities, Travel Routes, Space-stations etc will be needed or else PvP agency itself will need some sort of "privilege earnt or triggered". Where I suspect you're right, PvP Fleet Battles are going to be the way "facts on the ground (space!)" are counted then a settlement (politics) reached. I figure that's a reasonable starting point some years from now.