Fitorion

Looking at some recent interviews and stuff. At release player customization will probably be fairly simple... male/female and gear... More complex character creation is the second stretch goal on the Kickstarter. I strongly desire immense amounts of character customization. And if the ability to do so expands with time... then the ability to change existing characters to take advantage of the new features needs to exist. I think such things could easily be explained as a genetic "barber shop"

I'm only real concern is that they make it abundantly clear what the deal is... As a somewhat new person to looking at DU myself... I thought there was ship to ship combat at launch until about a week ago. It's not at all clear from the promotional materials that the space ships you see flying around... with big gun parts all over them... in a game based on players creating their own society through conflict and cooperation... can't be used for combat... Looking at the kickstarter and very recent interviews is how I learned about it. And it is a disappointment... but the only thing currently to be done about it is to make sure it's abundantly clear what is and is not in the game.

The way I see it... there will be PvP... it'll just be person to person... ground based... boarding actions... at the start. But you are right that there being not ship to ship... construct to construct combat at launch is a problem. People see the trailers for the game and their minds go immediately to imagining all the epic space battles they'll have. It's an expected ... fundamental feature... which not having will hurt the progress of the game. The game wont be able to grow very fast without it. That said... it also has to be done well. Bad, boring, and superfluous pvp is just as bad as none at all.

Just trying to be sure I'm clear on everything. DAC can be redeemed for game time. DAC can be bought for real money. DAC can be sold for in game currency. Why would DAC ever be a physical item in game? If you want to steal them for the value they represent... why not just steal the currency used to buy them instead? The currency used in these transactions isn't being sunk out of the game... it's going from player to player to be used to buy other goods and services from players. So we can short circuit this whole discussion by just making the in game currency stealable.

Local voice that falls off with distance... which does take into account the intervening walls to even further reduce it. Voice modulation so those who wish to play female or male characters can make their character sound as close to the way they want as possible. Radio transmission like mechanics... so you can call an individual... hail 1 ship... or broadcast to the whole area... as well as create "encrypted" private channels for your group to organize... Yep I want all of that. I don't want to use third party programs to get some of the above functions... I want it built into the game.

In the safe zone by the acrship you're fine. No one can do anything to any of your stuff there. I foresee the arcship zone becoming a mass storage zone with people renting out their space there for others to store valuable goods... As for outside the zone. You need to hide... and you need to join an organization and build together and defend each others stuff when they're not online. This is how settlements and towns and cities form. It doesn't happen in the games you mention because the tools to formalize relationships and communicate aren't there. In this interview https://youtu.be/H9Y0YmqGYDM It sounds like there won't be any automated defenses... at least not at launch... because having independent objects running scripts that use server resources 24/7 is a bad idea. Though I think you could find a way to only have those scripts active when players approach... But really this whole game is focused on group play and social dynamics. The point of it is that you need other people... need to trust them and rely upon them to succeed. MMOs these days have become way too solo friendly. In the old days it was either impossible or very hard to progress very far on your own.

There's always the safe zone around the arcship... And I do remember hearing something about a build view... where in you can design things in a virtual environment and then take them into the "real" virtual world of the game. So no one can ruin what you're building while you're working things out... but once it's out in the world it's subject to the rules of the game.

The point of this game is that the other players are the content. They're your friends and allies and your bitter rivals. If griefers are griefing you... then you must group up to protect yourself. This is how communities form in real life... banding together in common purpose and defense... or offense as the case may be. The server might be a constant war zone of small factions all fighting each other... One large group might form with sub groups to police itself and or defend against outside threats. It may morph slowly over time in ever changing social dynamics... all driven by player actions. It is what we the players make it. If the destructive forces out weigh the constructive then that's the way it is... for now. Until the constructive forces change the dynamic.

Nothing should disappear... Ownership should be removed so anyone can claim the stuff... and demolish or keep the things built as the new owner so chooses. We don't want everything disappearing but we also don't want everything staying forever... There should be a timer ... or multiple timers for different categories of object... Like say if you don't log in for 3 months then your buildings... space stations... can be claimed. And of course claim priority lists should exist so that people who already have permissions to use said objects get first chance to claim it before any random person can. But the staying forever issue is mostly just in the arcship safe zone... anything out side... if you aren't there to protect it... then it could be destroyed or taken from you by force...

This is the time to air our hopes and dreams for the game.... and hope one of them gets added to the Big list of things they want to implement now... or later... If things go well then before too long there will be too much for them to pay attention to. So now is the time.

The more character customization the better I say. But only humans at launch makes sense. I'd love to see aliens down the road added as playable with an expansion or something. But consider the technology levels at play here. In the real world we're on the verge of some incredible genetic modification advances. It's slow going as it's not something you want to mess up... But such technology could be perfected and common place in the Game world. So imagine that you're still classified as human but you can make yourself blue... or red... or give yourself horns or cat ears or fur or scales or a tail... even gills... The possible combinations that a human could have could be huge. And you could have genetic modification stations like hair salons in other games... If they do that though... the aliens will have to be pretty... well... alien if and when they are introduced. They wouldn't be able to be Human shaped with familiar animal characteristics because humans would already have done that.

Blacking out / redding out and a pilot being stunned for taking a turn too hard are the same thing. Inertia is something different. Not having the crew be effected by turns and accelerating up to cruising speed does not mean that massive ships suddenly behave like fighter craft. I think you are conflating 2 things or attributing to one thing more than you should.

No. I don't want to have to worry about blacking out or redding out or spinning my ship apart in game. Yes I do want to be able to build ships and stations with rotating sections so that those sections have gravity. (but I can pull this off cosmetically if I can have rotating parts and gravity plating) I also want to have gravity plating or something like that so I can locally define which surface of the ship is down... and make an M.C. Escher ship interior. G force... or the sensation of gravity is caused by acceleration and resistance to it. Changing direction requires acceleration and a way to apply that force to you... the deck of a ship... the cockpit seat... The astronauts on the space station in Orbit above Earth are still bound to the Earth by gravity. Gravity hasn't shut off... though it is a little weaker given their distance from Earth's mass. Why then do they float around up there you ask? They're still being accelerated by gravity towards Earth why can't they feel it? Well Earth is spherical and they are traveling so fast sideways around it that they fall towards Earth but always miss it. They travel as far forward every second as they would fall. They're falling at the same rate as everything around them and there's no atmosphere to resist their motion. I get such accuracy in games like Kerbal Space Program. I don't want it in something like Dual Universe.

How valuable is it in real life? it's just the same. But we can't go to the stars you say... we can't even get off our planet practically... Yep. Just like in Dual Universe it'll take time and effort and many people working together to travel... The limit is practicality. This won't be a free flying go anywhere at any time in no time game. The same things that prevent you from loading up your car and driving across a continent on a whim in real life are the same things that will stop you from going too far in Dual Universe.

SWTOR has an "adaptive armor/weapon" set up that's kinda like what I want. The armor object has no stats it just looks a certain way and you can dye it different colors. You apply stats by putting into the slots, items that carry the stats you want... So the item can be made to be useful for any job/class. But it doesn't really require much skill or knowledge or puzzling out of anything to slot in the items. Anyone can do it... just buy the items you want and put them in... I'd like to see this part as a more complex system... Something where stat items arranged a certain way on a crafting grid can work off each other to raise or lower effects are combine to apply new effects. Or something like that. Maybe a whole different method... But which achieves the same goal... that being a complex system of trade offs where a skilled person can manipulate things to tailor make an item to fit any particular play style.

I want crafting of objects to be rather open... 1. I'd like visually for objects to have skins... and detail dyeable... maybe even contests for people to submit their 3D models for inclusion in the game during a later update... 2. The stats of whatever object determined by the materials... mods... gear... circuits... whatever you want to call them... that's slotted into them. 3. The process of putting the stat carrying items into a object skin requires skill and trade offs and synergies.

I want this. My dream for MMO's in general is they become ever more true world simulations where every aspect can be occupied by a player if they so desire. Want to be the low level armor vendor in town? you can do that. Want to fish all day and sell your catch to the restaurants in town? do that. And if I'm the town armor vendor I want to be able to send players out on fetch quests to get the supplies I need to craft all the stuff I've got for sale. I want to be selling to NPCs and players... I want to receive special orders for custom armor from NPCs and players. I want to feel like a vital part of the local economy and game societal structure. And there's got to be ways to prevent abuse of such a system. Like time limits... daily... weekly... or monthly quantity limits... I don't want someone accepting all the quests I've put out and never delivering... making me wait forever. I also don't want tons of material dumped on me such that the token reward I was paying out for such materials is no longer so trivial and I get bankrupted... People have got to be able to accept player quests and turn them in whether the originator is online or not... and limits have to be in place to prevent over use or ridiculous rewards for little things... And if a player is filling a game play role then safe guards need to be in place so the service is still available if they aren't online or away doing something else or have left the game entirely... I think it can be done and I very much want such a system. It will require careful thought on how to make it robust enough but also safe and easy to use / access. The contract system is a start but I haven't heard much if anything about how to offer contracts to massive quantities of people in a controlled and automated fashion... which is what is needed.

It also fits... Space battles if they ever occur in real life will not be manual control affairs. The velocities and gravitational effects on projectiles and long distances mean a human can't possibly aim accurately. Computer assistance is needed and even then the ship being targeted could move a different direction... slow down... speed up... thus changing where it's going to be before light reflecting off of it can reach your eyes letting you know that it has moved. In the game: Even when things appear to be point blank... ship size and position may be abstracted to be larger and closer appearing to you the player so you can actually see the whole battle field and make strategic decisions. If things were represented more realistically... if you zoomed out to see the whole area you're fighting in... your ship would probably be smaller than 1 pixel on your screen and your exchange of fire invisible... And that doesn't make for a visually exciting game. I think target and dice roll is perfect for this game. The algorithm used for it is the only question. If done right the instance of frustration due to perceived point blank shots missing should be near zero. Like within a certain range they could make shots much much more likely to hit... but add in a damage reduction variable to maintain their damage curve. So yeah you hit it... but maybe didn't do as much damage as you would have liked. But something like that is only needed if ship size is abstracted. If there is no abstraction then if you're really at point blank range the algorithm for hitting should be very near 100%. But that's without considering active countermeasures... There could be jamming of your sensors... projecting false images of the ship... dropping drones that fly off with simulated drive emissions... All sorts of things that could fool your sensors into thinking the ship is somewhere else and that your character through experience and thus a skill stat could correct for. The game gets bonus points in my book if they actually visualize these countermeasures in such a way that they actually are effective at fooling you the player too.

You're not up on the latest research and are wrong about the definition of terraforming. Terraforming is modifying a planets environment to make it more Earth like... Failing to make it 100% like Earth does not make what you did any less terraforming. Mars ground can grow Earth plants pretty well. Scientists have in the past year or so grown... I think it was beans... in simulated Mars ground. Mars is inside the Goldilocks zone just near the outer edge of it. It gets plenty of light to grow plants with. Your facts are wrong...

You can terraform Mars... and it's easy... you just can't get it to 100%. Terraforming Mars is simple. You go. You build manufacturing factories to support your population with the products they need and the products the asteroid miners need and even things Earth needs... You turn Mars into a manufacturing power house... basically China... And you don't care too much about what these factories pump out except for the most toxic stuff like mercury and some acids and such... but they can pump out as much Greenhouse gases as they want. Within 100 years we could increase the temperature and pressure on Mars enough so Humans would only need Warm clothes and a scuba tank for oxygen to go outside. Successfully terraformed. First bacteria and them grasses and shrubs would take hold. You could maintain that level of terraforming for hundreds of thousands of years without running out of in situ resources. As the solar wind strips the atmosphere away the factories replenish it with their waste gasses. But Mars will never be Earth like or no longer require active effort on our part to maintain its environment. There is no way to heat the core back up and get a magnetic field going again. And even if you could some how do that... you'd need to maintain what ever is keeping the heat up lest it cool and stop once again. So I agree somewhat that the scifi idea of terraforming that you do once and have an Earth like environment there after with no further effort required is bunk. Terrafroming is possible however... it just requires constant effort to maintain. End real world digression.

It would be nice. But micro forming would also have interesting possibilities. Like being able to create indoor parks with different biomes in the different rooms. Farming of different types of plants and animals which require different conditions. Or just decoration... Imagine if you will a residential tower... the outer edge of which is Park like forest or jungle or what ever so people looking through their room windows see that set to the backdrop of the planet past the outer glass.

but He's talking about it being natural and tied to the player... where as you're talking about it being codified into game mechanics. In his system the intricacies of how each system works and how well a person knows and can manipulate them to achieve results determines whether other people recognize them as being skillful... not the game applying any label.

well one This is a niche game for people with niche interests. It can not be all things to all people. and two The game is designed to concentrate players together so they build cities... form communities... as such travel is restricted to encourage that. While we can eventually expand out into an infinite universe I think the devs said something about them expecting it to take several months for us to advance and build enough to get off the planet we all start on. This isn't a free flying... universe roaming experience. If you're expecting that... you'll be disappointed... may I suggest No Man's Sky for that.

social interaction is the game. The amount by which modern MMOs have catered to solo play and gone away from the need for others to engage in activities is in my opinion THE major reason for most MMO's these days sucking. I agree with Shynras and CaptainTwerkmotor on the limited smaller scale that a solo player would be capable of. They simply wouldn't be able to engage in the grander... large scale endeavors that those that have formed groups... organizations... can engage in... unless they too join a group. The appeal of this game and the point of its development... the Core gameplay if you will... Is the emergent gameplay allowed by open ended social interaction systems. The antithesis of which can not and should not be catered to.

I'm not against utility skills leveling up... But I don't think our characters should have levels themselves that change hit points... or what equipment you can wear... There are lots of progression methods. Territory control for one. The initial low tech mining and manufacturing buildings we build which will eventually allow more advanced such buildings and space craft to be built. The simple amassing of wealth is a progression system all its own. I don't necessarily want to be able to do everything. I like the idea of specializing to some degree... Especially in crafting. A crafter can't become famous and sought after unless what they offer is a limited resource. What I'm against is the combat skill bars that WoW and every mediocre MMO out there that's tried to copy them has.