dualism

I also didn't realise the section when I commented on the article that was linked to - that this is just an "introduce yourself, your organization (guild/clan)" section. So the note to mods is that it was my mistake and @Vyz Ejstu wanted to make me aware of that.

Hi, thanks for the article Ben. I'd take some issue with the first quote about boredom:
 
"I have seen a number of comments by people who have pointed out aspects of Dual Universe that they consider boring.  Whether is it the length of time space travel takes, the need to mine resources manually or the limit on the weapons one person can operate, they all stress that unless these sources of boredom are eliminated, no one will want to play the game. "
 
I have mentioned travel times a bit recently, yes, but not said that the sources of boredom should be eliminated, nor taken the position that nobody will want to play. I believe that certain paths should involve investment, also of time, but this does not mean that the time spent spending time needs to be boring almost by very definition. I find it crazy that people engaged in a game end up regularly pointing their spaceship in a certain direction and going afk for 30 mins to 'avoid' the boring bit - and that's just in a 'smallish universe' where you may even be killed because you are afk, but you take the risk anyway because even taking the trash out is more 'interesting'! I did not suggest necessarily shortening the journey time, but want the devs to consider what can be usefully done in game at the same time. It could be a mini-game holodeck, crafting, permanent dangers in space which require active piloting similar to driving a car or so, doing ship upgrades, or even switching to secondary chars in game.
 
"If you are tempted to request changing some feature of Dual Universe to make it less boring, ask yourself what you want to do in the game." 
I don't want to be wasting time needlessly on repetitive stuff if I don't feel like it. Different people will be bored by different things, though, so it's going to be tricky to decide whether good immersion means it takes me 5 mins or secs to dock my ship and get to whatever shop, or my quarters, or wherever else. Generally, if you offer people short cuts, they will take them, however...

Hi, thanks for the article Ben. I'd take some issue with the first quote about boredom:
 
"I have seen a number of comments by people who have pointed out aspects of Dual Universe that they consider boring.  Whether is it the length of time space travel takes, the need to mine resources manually or the limit on the weapons one person can operate, they all stress that unless these sources of boredom are eliminated, no one will want to play the game. "
 
I have mentioned travel times a bit recently, yes, but not said that the sources of boredom should be eliminated, nor taken the position that nobody will want to play. I believe that certain paths should involve investment, also of time, but this does not mean that the time spent spending time needs to be boring almost by very definition. I find it crazy that people engaged in a game end up regularly pointing their spaceship in a certain direction and going afk for 30 mins to 'avoid' the boring bit - and that's just in a 'smallish universe' where you may even be killed because you are afk, but you take the risk anyway because even taking the trash out is more 'interesting'! I did not suggest necessarily shortening the journey time, but want the devs to consider what can be usefully done in game at the same time. It could be a mini-game holodeck, crafting, permanent dangers in space which require active piloting similar to driving a car or so, doing ship upgrades, or even switching to secondary chars in game.
 
"If you are tempted to request changing some feature of Dual Universe to make it less boring, ask yourself what you want to do in the game." 
I don't want to be wasting time needlessly on repetitive stuff if I don't feel like it. Different people will be bored by different things, though, so it's going to be tricky to decide whether good immersion means it takes me 5 mins or secs to dock my ship and get to whatever shop, or my quarters, or wherever else. Generally, if you offer people short cuts, they will take them, however...

I've been having this problem in real life a bit. If you separate too much, then you begin to lose a feeling for connections and consequences - and I think it's important for conversations to mention or link to other threads, which happened. The OP did also ask about DAC overall, but in a way that is more about facts than opinions..
 
Anyway, an important factor in how easy to earn is obviously about supply/demand affecting the relative price. Hoarding will also be part of this.
Making DACs cheaper will be that they are apparently the only way (afaik) of injecting real cash into the game, so paying to try and get ahead fast will all be via DAC supply side. Edit: this is perhaps the most important step by NQ as an answer to your question.
 
Making DACs more expensive may be attempts to buy up and hoard DACs for a time when cash injection slows down and supporter DACs per player are running out.
 
 
Harder to get means more effort in-game to get the quanta to buy a DAC. However, the prices of other things will be relative as well and that unit/currency will be quanta. People will focus on their motivations - but most will agree that doing well is part of having fun, so trying to amass quanta actively and through investments paying off is what will actually drive a lot of the focus in my opinion. DACs are only a subset of this.
I suppose the critical element is how many players will be aiming to play for free and how acceptable this is for the players trying to get ahead faster by paying/investing real cash. If NQ make a great universe then I think there will be no problem for them to get incomes based on the number of active players (=monthly subscriptions).

Well, I think the "loads" for good voice comms would certainly be an important factor and not minimal.
The upstream traffic would at least in bursts (press to talk) be much higher than transmitting player decisions and text entries. However, if intelligently databased and handled, burst transmissions could be similar to downloading picture or vid files from a fast-moving library. There would be rivers of data, but players could set up which 'streams' they are on and permissions.
 
It might be fun to see whether "shouting at your enemies" could actually slow their systems down: "severe lag down here, captain; everybody is yelling stuff...", but yes, I do think a good system design could brush any of that aside...
 
I do think that 'live' audio would make a massive difference to the immersion factor as well as communication speeds in battle etc. and should be implemented in DU.

As I like to say, referring to your last sentence: Not just large organizations, but, really, ANY players with or without an organization (potentially anyway, some might be mute, but even then you can listen to others and benefit from it) for a simple reason:
 
Encounters with strangers or people you know without being in third party software or by booting it up first being a hassle or improbable in that particular situation.
 
Picture a market place where you are a trader and want to sell wares in the old fashioned way. You need (or want) to be there. Lots of foot traffic, people coming by and leaving all the time. Typing everything could be a hassle. Being able to speak in a limited radius with the option of further adjustments to radius, volume, etc would not just be vastly convenient, it would also increase immersion.
 
Picture another setting: You clear an abandoned station or check on once you lost contact with or one that was attacked. You encounter random people in it. Being able to instantly (or quickly) communicate can perhaps change the outcome of encounters (think of DayZ and comparable games with VOIP where lack of quick communication can result in immediate combat that may not have happened otherwise).
 
There are so many reasons for this and I can imagine many ways of compromises for the reluctant ones or critical arguments that may apply in some situations ("input overflow" of the senses if too many are in one spot and talking -> limiting talk range dynamically to make it feasible in high traffic areas for example, and so on) that I think the community - each player potentially - benefits more from having this than not having this at all.
 
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In other words, for me it's not a question of "Useful or not" any more. It is useful for me and I think most people who played games that may even heavily rely on VOIP and whatnot such as DayZ, ARMA (any title) and many more might largely agree. As for potentially bad constellations, compromises can be found, including a total mute of local voice comms if people desire this (whether as quick feature or by going into the options to lower the volume by hand).
 
For me the only relevant question is: Can NQ implement this and will this run (well) with what the game envisions to be on a technical side of things? Or will it draw too many resources later, be wonky, not work properly as intended or can NQ simply not work on this any time soon (until and maybe after release) because of the work required to properly implement this?
 
I'm not an expert. All I see is the benefits from the user or customer side of things and surely it may not be a walk in the park, especially if you add additional customization features such as range scaling and maybe even audio filters or radio communication. Additionally it's an additional - even if small - strain on resources I imagine.
 
 
But if it can be done and gets implemented, all players can hugely benefit in many situations.