MaximusNerdius

Customization is an absolute essential part of multiplayer gaming these days. If we are all running around in generic space suits, it would certainly detract from the game, in my opinion. I'd actually love to see organizations be able to import their own logos in order to have those as optional displayed patches on characters or logos on ships. I know that isn't something easily implemented in an MMO style game, but that sort of customization certainly brings a lot to immersion, when you see a fleet of ships all with the same banner.

Honestly I don't think this should be implemented as an actual game mechanic for slavery - if people wanted to roleplay this out that would be great, but forcing it onto players that aren't interested in such play styles would be very bad if you want to keep people playing. Personally I am the type that I'd just roll with it, but I have much more interest in the roleplay aspects than other players might.

Excellent job in clearing that up, NQ! So glad to see that not only did you provide evidence to invalidate the claims being made, but you did so in a very professional manner. I am already really enjoying the level of community and interaction with community manager here.

Wow, that didn't take long for the conspiracies and haters to jump on DU. Should make a drinking game out of how many times this guy says the word "truth", lol.

Yes x 9000!!! Although if they include that I would want it to be set up to where we can fully customize it ourselves - a base "example" that most people think is cool would be great but definitely would love to allow full customization for something like this.

This is my opinion of NMS as well. I'm sure it will be great to those who enjoy that, but that just doesn't appeal to me at all.

I have seen it. I'm talking more about actual gameplay mechanics though - it's easy to come up with ideas or to draw stuff in an anime, but not so easy to implement that into a video game. That's also my point about the exit gate. Star gates will likely be in PvP space, meaning they can be attacked. A guesstimate on my part says they won't be easy to destroy... but my experiences in Eve and many other MMO's say that doesn't matter, players will find a way to do it. If you make it a requirement to have both a start and end gate... that opens up a whole can of worms (punny) that would make maintaining star gates not worth it in my eyes. Also... a lot of work would likely have to go into building one... just to end up "lost in space" because people on the exit gate decided they wanted to ruin your day.

*chuckles* Just noticed the signature there, Tracuer. Well done. To add to the list... Satellite Dishes Antennas Drills (several sizes) Ore Detector Helicopter Blades Aircraft-like Wings

Interesting proposals, though I think you miss some important points about FTL / Hyperspace travel. Your first idea about traveling through hyperspace not being instantaneous is fine, although personally I disagree with the idea I can see the justifications for it. However, requiring an "exit" gate makes it a logistic nightmare to set up a gate-to-gate system. The point of the "exit" system is to have a way to return, not a way to limit the potential of star gates. Combat in hyper is honestly illogical. Most sci-fi genres have imagined that you could figure out where someone went based off things like the signature left by their jump, their direction of ship, etc... but almost none have alluded to being in hyperspace at the same time as another, unless it's a purposeful "timed" jump like some have done in things like Battlestar Galactica. The "science fiction" fact is that you generally cannot join someone already in hyper, so the only potential for a combat scenario would be that you jumped with someone else.. and then tried to kill them while in hyper. That would be too rare of an occasion to justify the resources needed to provide a hyperspace combat system. Stuck in hyperspace? What would be the result of this? While it's an interesting story potential, I think the gameplay of it would not be quite as exciting. This is another reason I disagree with the required "exit" gate. Different sizes is actually not a bad idea - I have worried that the star gates idea would become a thing that only very large organizations could do... but implementing it in a way where there are various sizes gives the potential for smaller groups or possibly the rare individual even. Though one thing that does concern me.. would star gates be limited in number in a star system? I'd hate to see 1,000 star gates in one system... but then again, does it give too much advantage to a group if it's very limited? I think that aspect could certainly use some talk / decision making by the devs. Don't let me feedback hold you back, though. The more input and ideas we provide, the more fleshed out DU can really become and the more inspiration we can provide to devs.

While I can appreciate the intent behind this suggestion, I don't think it is something that needs to be implemented in-game. For one thing, how is it implemented? For your bounty hunter example, that idea is very open to abuse. Let's say you post on in-game "bounty" on someone. A friend of his then kills him and gets the money, splitting it with him and likely losing nothing in the process. I see this in GTA V all the time. There isn't an easy solution to get around this sort of abuse, unfortunately. For your alliance example - how exactly would you implement it to where the contract is broken? Is it broken only by one group attacking the other alliance member? I could easily get around that by simply not defending fellow alliance members during an attack by an outside party. Or even worse, I could hire mercenaries to do the attack for me. Further, there are lots of ways to skirt around attacks, such as providing intelligence on alliance members to outside parties, stealing from alliance assets... and these are just unsophisticated methods.. I could come up with a dozen more that would easily get around any sort of in-game contract. Honestly, the best method for making people not want to break contracts is reputation. The problem with most online video games is people are often using a name besides their own for their character and if that character gets a bad rep, they simply recreate. This is where a subscription model comes in handy, especially one where characters are either limited or very valuable so deleting / remaking characters is uncommon. If the devs wanted to take it a step further, a reputation system that works across the entire account and not just per character could help... but that also opens up a whole can of worms of abuse, false reports, etc. In my years of online gaming, I've found the best method for avoiding contract breakers is to be very wary of who you trust... and for those you do trust, make it more valuable for them to stick with you than betray you. Of course, you can't avoid it 100%... but in 16 years I've had very few friends turn on me.

Definitely would like to see Vive support over Rift, though both would be even better as to bring in a larger player base!

Unfortunately what Traceur says is all true. Uncapped speed limits are not something really feasible. About the closest we could hope for in that regards would be something along the lines of how Elite Dangerous does it, where you transition between speed "levels" of normal, sublight and FTL travel. Something like that is more doable than actual uncapped speeds.

You make some good points, but you also have to realize that some things are simply not possible (at least at this time). Think about it this way - Space Engineers can handle collisions, but try crashing a ship of 10,000+ blocks into a planet at high speed. When the impact occurs, frame rate and sim speed suffer dramatically... and that's only 1 person/ship. That's on a scale of server that is very small in comparison to what DU is proposing. Imagine trying to play on a SE server with 100 people... and 10% of them constantly crashing into planets, other ships, or anything else. The server would pretty much die or be so slow it would be entirely unplayable. Now scale that up to thousands or even tens of thousands of players... and you see why this isn't really something feasible. Granted, SE is not optimized and especially not for multiplayer, but the amount of processing power required to figure out the level of geometry and physics for even a few hundred ship collisions would be tough. I do expect there will be some sort of collision mechanics, but just not to the detailed level that you are thinking of. Perhaps when a ship collides with something, the collision mechanics will look at the speed of collision (speed of your ship +/- speed of what you ran into) and what each object is (or is composed of), then determine whether this collision meets a certain threshold - if it does, a "destruction" type event happens, which could even be made graphically pretty without having to render your ship breaking into a million pieces; if it doesn't, the ship simply bounces off, perhaps even a minor "collision" event could happen that leaves a mark on your ship or does slight damage to it's systems... I would certainly hope that we're not able to just fly through things, and especially not each other.. a space sim definitely needs the ships to be solid objects.

Definitely an excellent idea that I hope sees the light of day.

Where have you seen or heard that they won't be releasing new content? I am pretty certain the opposite is true, being a monthly sub game. If they don't release new content, they will lose players pretty quickly.

It certainly would.

I love that NovaQuark laid bare why they chose this model in their blogpost. It has very well laid out details on why the decision was made and I agree with many of them. The F2P model is hard to maintain, since the devs constantly have to add to the cash shops, but balance out whether the items added are merely cosmetic or whether they can actually influence gameplay. Many F2P games fall into this trap, even unintentionally sometimes. I've even seen a few B2P games that added a cash shop end up in similar situations. I can however appreciate that not everyone can afford a subscription, as many of my long-time online friends fall into such a category. I think it is important that NovaQuark make it possible for those who put time and effort into the game be able to use those efforts to pay for their play through in-game means. I've played Eve Online and honestly while their model allows you to do it, actually earning enough to pay for your sub in-game was very time consuming and quite frankly, boring. I've done transporting, I've played the markets but if you're not a long time veteran with heaps of cash already, it's very tough to earn your way to the point where you can make an account pay for itself and you still actually have time for "fun". Overall my point is I hope that NovaQuark will implement a way to pay for your sub that won't be just a boring grind. I guess time will tell on that. Also I saw it mentioned before, please implement a system where you can "gift" subscription time to other players. I'd love to help my friends play, or see Twitch / Youtubers handing out subcriptions as rewards to their fans.

I understand your reasoning behind this, as I have 16+ years of experience playing MMO's and have certainly grown tired of dealing with problem players that bring very little to the game. Personally though, I do not feel that your suggestion would fit well within this sort of game, as part of playing an MMO is being immersed in a world with thousands of other players and personalities. It is an interesting concept to propose though, so kudos for trying to think outside the box. I don't think it really brings RTS playstyles into the game, but as some mentioned each person having their own starting planet would make many things like bringing your organization's people together much tougher.

Just want to point out that if you read the Dual Universe short story by A. Damasio it sounds like something like a material quality system is already planned. Specifically mentioned are special properties of the material that the original spaceship we all land in is made from, as well as a discovery later on in the story.

I am fairly new here, but would like to suggest that a slight change be made to these forums. It is very hard to follow a conversation taking place in a topic where quotes are used, due to the dark colors used in both the forum background, the box around the quotes and the unchanged color of the text between the quoted part and the response. Please change the colors on one of these - either put a colored box behind the quoted text or change the text color for the quoted text, so that it is much easier to distinguish the response from the quote. Thanks

I have to say it's refreshing to see a game community that actually rewards it's active participants in such a way. Bravo to NovaQuark for that!

Thanks for the link. Definitely some good info there on how they plan for things to work. I am following this game closely, as I have high hopes for it - I am skeptical due to the many failed similar games out there, but it sounds like this NovaQuark team has actually put proper planning and thought into it.