croxis
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Posts posted by croxis
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Space Engineers, Minecraft, and Arc (all with survival mode and with mods): My brother and I have shelved this for now. We felt like we have reached the end game of what we set out to do and the game loop has become stale. There are no more challenges we want to overcome or problems that we need to engineer a solution for. We've overcome the survival aspects of the game to the degree that it is just creative mode.
On the other hand we play all of the above on very small, private, pve-centric servers. We don't want to participate in pvp combat because, to be honest, we can't play all the time every day to make sure our hard work isn't lost. One success of Eve is that a thorax is a thorax and so I'm ok losing it as long as I can afford a replacement. However my creative work is much more important to me, so I don't want to put my hard work at risk.
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Tutorial: I often shelf games that have isolated tutorials. "Oh you finished the tutorial? Lets throw away all the work you have done in this simulator and now you can start over with a real game." I would much rather have a tutorial system that actually begins to set me up for success in the actual game environment.
Combat: The result of combat in eve seems mostly predetermined by ship loadouts instead of player skill and choices in combat. This can lead do some hour+ long waits for key players to fit their ships. I'm 32 with a kid on the way, I can't wait for that anymore.
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This makes me think of three Overwatch Healing characters, Luci, Ana, and Mercy. For many games the healer (like mining) is a class that players don't often pick because of boredom or uninteresting gameplay. Mercy requires no twitch skills at all, but incredible situational awareness of her team mates and map awareness. Lucio's healing is passive so he can participate in combat and booping the bad guys off the map. Ana is a sniper, she can hit an enemy for damage or a friendly for healing. All of these make the role fun depending on the particular gameplay wanted or player talents.
I haven't figure out how this could apply to mining as a lot of the "fun" gameplay in dual hasn't been announced or finalized yet.
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Kerbal Space Program, Space Engineers, Overwatch, Eve Online
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I have yet to play a game where the act of mining (or resource gathering in general) was itself fun. That is the other balance to the equation.
I'll quote Sid on this one. The fun in games is "a series of interesting choices." Game mechanics that stabilize into a status quo (Rust and infinite oil) will result in a boring game for all sides. Mechanics that never result in a stable equilibrium (Rust with limited oil) requires individuals and groups to reevaluate and iterate on their systems if they want to keep the status quo.
Here is my ideal:
* Everyone can get some basic resources and build simple constructs (like a small hover bike) themselves so they can bootstrap on their first play or after a total loss, but most will purchase from the market to fullfill most their resource and construction needs.
* The players we consider miners wont really mine themselves, mining is generally automated and the miners manage more of the logistic side of things, be it keeping a cheap mining rig functioning or a massive pit quarry with numerous automated drones. A player who is good can run a massive rig, or a smaller one and pursue other gameplay.
* Player choice is needed to keep it running. Neglect the mines too long and they will begin to not produce at capacity and even break down.
* Profit = Income - Expenses. Even a cheap rig will cost some money to run. If "everyone" is mining then mineral prices will drop to the point of being a loss. Others will flock to more profitable gameplay and prices will rise again.
- Saul Retav and satoshi
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What I know about economics comes from a xenobiology class I took back in uni (of all things).
An economy is a system. "Energy" enters the system, moves around the system, and is pulled out of the system. This "pressure" (in energy its called flux) is what drives the internal parts of a system. A more practical analogy is a faucet and sink. If the faucet is off and the sink is plugged then the economy will gradually stop. The reason why not anyone can print money (legally) and developers in Eve control ratting payouts is so people who know what they are doing can control the flux on the economy to have "stuff happen" at an optimal/fun speed.
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I think a great feature would be people mixing metals to make alloys.
Possibly gun powder mixtures?
The big danger is that players will very quickly figure out the several alloys with the best min/max ratios, so all that dev time with to developing an alloy mixing system when they could spent far less time developing those several alloys in a more static way.
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travel time is more important to a game than distance, imo. The next planet could be close (which is a great visual even if not realistic) but takes 20 minutes to get to with engines balanced at a slower speed, or a real Earth to Mars distance with engines scaled up.
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All weapons turn to paint ball guns for April 1st
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But you arnt behind, not in any real practical sense.
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I'm not sure I like this idea for two reasons. The first is that I feel it would take away a lot of the need to expand. Without the constant need to gather material and fuel, I'm certain a lot of players would be content to just sit on a solar farm and never explore.
The other reason is that a solar farm and everything else needed to setup a such a self-sustaining system would cost materials in the first place. So it wouldn't really help new players get started. At best, new players would get these materials from other players' setups for free. Being outright given mid-game or end-game equipment is never fun in Minecraft or Terraria, and I'd expect the same for DU.
I apologies that I wasn't clear, but that isn't what I posted. The tl;dr is that very basic, simple things is renewable/self sufficient. This is to get new players started quickly, a pathway for players who lost everything to restart, and reduce the chance of getting totally 100% stranded.
I thought I was explicit with a BASIC construction material -- the voxel cube stuff for building constructs. With a good first player experience/tutorial a new player can have a structure built within 30 minutes. This construct will have no elements, because OTHER materials are needed to build functional elements. This will require the player to explore to obtain the other resources themselves or buy from a market. I would expect that a player could sit around on their farm if they wish because of the market, they are just indirectly paying others for it.
The other issue you didn't consider is rate. The basic resource production chain is relatively slow. So if the player wishes to build or power more things faster, they will also need to gather/buy resources.
I would expect that the arcship zone has non-renewable resources that will deplete over time. But as infrastructure and markets develop those materials will be available for purchase.
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I would love if they do that, the different organisations can connect those API's to their own org pages and stuff or even use in their own websites and make their personalized org application though I wonder if it could be done, if it could be done that would be awesome xD
It has been done. Eve online has an API and, iirc, star trek online has an XMPP bridge for chat.
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I really have to disagree. In your analysis you assume the skills increase linearly, wich is bound to result in that behavior. But if you have a logarithmic progression there is less and less reward to grinding, making it useless after some time. Imagine it as a max level without a limit, that is the property of the logarithmic curve. Levels wouldn't unlock new stuff, it would increase stats in the produced things. This said a veteran will always have an advantage over a newb, but the gap gets smaller and smaller with time. Just type f(x) = log(x) - log(x - 10) in google too see the gap curve.
A vet will always be able to make the best but the gap becomming smaller will decrease the demand for its products thus regulating the market to not make it balanced in the profit area.
Sorry my post wasn't clear for you. I assumed log growth and levels being bonuses. (Did you quote the wrong post?) . Also my primary point is that players will create unfun grind if xp is gained by doing the task, despite the best intentions.
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What is the point? One of the basic ideas behind the block chain is to create "p2p" transaction history. Something totally un needed in this game. Its an MMO with authoritative servers thats going to use (probably) traditional databases and logging. There is nothing to gain by using blockchain schemes other than nerd wankering.
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Can I kill zombies with only fire spells, or healing spells as well?
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I posted this on another thread of this exact same topic.
* Eve, specifically, does a couple of nifty things with the skill system. Each skill has a very limited number of levels (5). It is the number/diversity of skills that is more important. This means that the only big difference between a new player and a vet is the number of roles that they can choose to take on.
* The time to train 1, 2, 3, AND 4 of a skill is far less than just 4 to 5. That means that within a skill a newer player at level 4 is quite comparable to a vet a level 5 as none of the skills offer super drastic bonuses between levels.
* A player can unlock the next gameplay they want to get into while still playing their current in game role.
There is a major problem with gaining experience with doing that task, and that is human psychology. Humans are natural min/maxers. Time and time again players will create unfun grind to max a skill, even if developers never intended for it. Here is a random made up example: Skills in construction efficiency increases the more the player builds things. That sounds great because you expect that it is a reward for players being successful builders. What ends up happening is that players will just build as many uninteresting useless cubes that they can afford to min/max their skill before their Next Big Thing™. The developers can spend time creating and balancing "gotcha" mechanics to try and prevent this - not just for construction but combat, mining, and every other gameplay element, which will end up adding to a LOT of developer time. Or they can use an Eve line time based skill system and the developer time can be invested into interesting gameplay.
I really think, for a massive multi player game, that eve's time based system is incredibly elegant.
edit for words
- Aeon_II and BliitzTheFox
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This is also a game. An Earth size planet is so huge in surface area -- 7 BILLION people can live on only 25% of it and even then there is a lot of wilderness. For a game of hopefully a hundred thousand active subscribers it is just too much surface area. There needs to be limiting factors to create conflict (in a general sense, not just combat).
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I've proposed in past threads on this topic that the basic resources are renewable -- so a farm and/or hydroponics produces plant matter which is process into hydrocarbons (fuel) and can be processed further into basic construction material (plastics). This solves the spawn area resource problems. Because construction seems like a major focus of the game it also makes sense to have the basics be self sufficient for those far away colonies and ships.
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right know there are not stuff like that (radiation, temperature, ...) but i guess wouldn't be too hard to add.
Famous last words for a programmer.
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A voxel is a zero size point in 3d space (volume pixel = voxel) with some information in that point. How that information can be visualized is a question. Minecraft chose to visualize it with cubes. This is why when the uneducated plebeians hear "voxel" they think a cubish looking thing. Voxels can be visualized with any sort of geometry the programmer wishes.
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The only hard care numbers that I know of for a f2p game finances is Robocraft - after their change to a crate base reward system the number of players who dropped money on the game doubled -- to 5% of the active player base.
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Or they just write an API and the community can make third party tools and apps.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_of_influence_(astrodynamics)
Fancy trick for relative reference frames -- position and velocity of a game object is tracked relative to the soi the object is in. A quick recalculation is done when an object transitions to a new SOI. L-Points are not modeled with SOI, but the stable ones (4, and 5) can be faked if needed.
Here are a couple questions to put out there: in orbiter and KSP thust and fuel is limited so the player needs to understand orbital mechanics to get to where they want to go. If thrust and fuel is in copious supply then it is less of a consideration.
The other issue is playtime -- if the difference in fuel and travel time between different positions is meaningful (10 min at opposition vs 3 hours and 1000 fuel vs 100,000) then traveling to another body is a significant event for players and strategic for wars. If the difference is not significant due to how the game is balanced then no need for the extra complexity.
Also calculating the position of a body isn't terribly expensive. I got a python script that can handle many planets and moons in realtime using the 6 keplurian parameters. Writing it in C and simplifying some of the mechanics the impact is almost trivial.
Nomad Mothership?
in Builder Forum
Posted
In theory we won't even get to orbit for the first few months of the game. I have the nifty idea of a balloon type ship that moves about the planet. Over time as tech advances additional layers and tech get added on, so eventually it becomes a giant space station with the old wooden airship hull inside somewhere.,