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Hello everyone, We understand your concerns and why you would suspect that we intend for Dual Universe to go to a free-to-play model. Without going into detail about the open position, we can however let you know that there are currently no plans to change Dual Universe into a Free-to-play model for several reasons, “Cost-per-User” being one of the major ones. Nor do we have any plans, or intents to introduce any "Pay-to-win" microtransaction systems into Dual Universe. This position is open for another project and NOT for Dual Universe. We hope this cleans up some of the assumptions that are being made in this thread. Best regards, The Novaquark Team.

Dear Noveans, We took the time to look at all the feedback you gave us during this weekend and the past few days. We understand there are still concerns and that the second version is not the perfect solution to all potential problems. That doesn’t mean we are just going to deploy this version and be done with it. As mentioned previously, our goal has never been to punish players and we don’t want you to feel pressured to destroy/abandon/remove some of your current constructs. Therefore, while monitoring how things will evolve (reminder: we are still in Beta, and things are bound to change or to be tweaked. Nothing is set in stone yet), we are going to act on two aspects when we will deploy the core units limitation with the Panacea release: Extending the time period during which the automatic abandonment feature for core units in excess will remain inactive (1 month was previously announced but we now aim at 2-3 months at least). This is to make sure everyone has enough time to reach the amount of core slots needed through queued talent training focused on specifically construct slots. In rare cases where it wouldn’t be enough, the Novaquark team is willing to help players who have large community projects, assuming they don’t gain any particular profit from them, and they’ve been in the limit of “one player personal cores + organization cores limit of one organization (which is 275 pre-Panacea)” and for whom the limit of 200 cores per player is not enough. We know those cases will be quite rare as there are currently less than 40 organizations going beyond the 200 Core limitation. If you are a player in charge of an organization with more than 200 constructs and you have a genuine issue about keeping all your Constructs, please reach out to NQ-Deckard or NQ-Nyzaltar on Discord or on the forum by private message and we will see how we can assist. Again, the goal is not to frustrate you, our players, nor put you in panic mode to reduce the amount of core units you may currently have in your organization(s). We are not applying limitations with a light heart, without caring for players. We do know that these measures are frustrating for many of you, but at some point, we have to think also about the long-term sustainability of the game. All the restrictive measures already deployed, going to be deployed or activated in the coming months, have been all decided with this main goal in mind. We do acknowledge the first version of the core units limitation was way too low and too much based on metrics that weren't detailed enough, not taking into account many edge cases. To show our good will, we decided to approach the problem from another angle: what could be the highest limitation of core units we could give to the players without endangering long-term sustainability? The answer is what has been suggested in the second version. Even if we wanted to go further, it would be unreasonable. What would be the point of keeping the "no limit" policy if we find ourselves unable to sustain the model one year after its release? Dual Universe is meant to become a MMORPG and as such we have to do our best to design it for the long term. You might ask: Why didn't you set the limitations sooner? Why is it just now you talk about long term sustainability? Those are legitimate questions and here is the explanation: We had, of course, from the beginning, some rough estimation regarding long term sustainability. But as you can imagine, estimation on paper (or even simulations with a massive amount of bots) can vary quite significantly from actual metrics we get from running a live server with a massive amount of real players. To have accurate numbers, we needed to have two things: having all the main gameplay mechanics implemented in game, and enough metrics about player habits once all the main gameplay mechanics have been implemented. Those are things we didn't have yet before Beta launch and we could only guess before for some of them. Player habits are, for example, a parameter no one can predict perfectly in advance. Even after reaching the Beta stage, it required quite a few months to accumulate enough data to have an accurate idea of what could be the real cost per player. So yes, ideally, we should have set the limitations much earlier, to prevent players from going wild in creativity beyond what was technically reasonable and sustainable. However, this would have been a decision with just "gut feeling" (which is always very risky) and not based on relevant metrics. Now to reply to the many suggestions and concerns you’ve mentioned in past few days: Isn't there a risk of seeing the organization slots weaponized by opponents infiltrated in the organization through Alts? Weaponizing organization slots - if someone ever does that - will have a very limited impact. There will be no way of catching by surprise the legates of an organization: - Legates of the organization are all notified when a construct check has failed for the first time (opening the two-week period before random abandonment), in order to check what happened, take immediate action and handle the situation before the next check. - Once lent, construct slots cannot be taken back for 30 days, which limits the possibilities for immediate negative actions and allows for anticipation. - Organization legates can know from the list of active slots whether a donator is part of the organization or not (and how many slots are lent), therefore caution should be taken not to rely too much on 'external' slots to deploy new constructs, especially to the point where it becomes critical to pass the construct checks. - Deploying a construct is restricted to legates and via RDMS, so people actually using the slots are assumed to be trustworthy. - The log keeps track of every movement in the slot count (who gave/took back slots, how many and when, what happens to the amount lent by this player, what happens to the total amount for the organization) Will you give us more control ( show the values ) of : - how many cores do you have free? - how many org slots cores do you have free? - what is YOUR org potential limit? The org related numbers are visible in the new UI elements, we will look into creating better insight into your personal construct counts however this will not be available in the initial release of Panacea. Why chosing core units abandonment randomly? We understand it might seem a strange decision at first glance, but we think it's a necessary measure to prevent some players to abuse the system (like inflating temporarily the number of core unit slots before a war and fill them with junk or "can afford to lose" ships). We did consider ways of selecting which type of constructs should be abandoned first, but in the end we found none exempt from loophole. Why not go with “constructs are not abandoned when the limit is not high enough? You just can't place new ones (otherwise many constructs will be abandoned long before the players will have leveled the skills for that) This would in fact result in a situation where an organization could get players to temporarily increase their slots, deploy a very large amount of constructs, and then remove the slots to leave the constructs in place. This in fact does not meet our requirements. Suggestion: assigning automatically 10 organization core slots to each organization the player is joining? If he joins the organization, he must participate in the group effort. While we definitely agree on the idea (each member of an organization should participate a minimum to help an organization to achieve its goal(s)), there are a lot of edge cases if we enforce a hardcoded assignment. What happens if the member doesn’t have 10 organization core slots available? Can he still join the organization? What happens to those who are already in organizations and don’t have the required slots? Moreover, if someone really doesn’t want to share some organization slots, he might just quit an organization if we try to force to assign organization slots to a player. In every case, whether it’s enforced or not, it’s up to an organization leader to convince their members to assign some organization slots to the said organization. Last but not least, enforcing an organization core slot assignment shouldn’t be a prerequisite: not all organizations have a purpose of sharing constructs, and we want to let the organization system be flexible in this regard. Suggestion: putting a maximum amount of organization core slots being assigned per member to one specifically organization? (beyond the 10 automatically assigned, like 25 max) Limiting organization slots assigned per organization will just have the same effect as the suggestion above: if a player wants to keep organization slots for personal use, they will still find a way to do so by creating several organizations for personal use. Beside, as some of you may be wary of potential opponents infiltrating an org, letting the option of having the maximum amount of organization core slots assigned to one organization should be useful to make sure that even in big organizations, you might have a significant amount of organization core slots with just a small team of trusted people. Will we have a way to disassemble or deactivate easily and quickly a Construct to avoid taking hours to just remove the Constructs in excess of the Core slot limitation? (for example, an ability to compactify a larger variety of constructs in a way that retains their mass and volume, so you can basically box away ships - or even buildings - not currently in use to avoid the core count cost) This kind of feature is on the roadmap. While we’ll try our best, we cannot guarantee it will be delivered before the activation of the automatic abandonment feature for core units in excess owned by an organization. Will there be in-game assistance from GMs in deleting or dismantling the constructs? As we plan to extend beyond 1 month for the inactivity of the automatic abandonment feature as mentioned above, we aim at developing a tool to make it easier to disassemble or deactivate Constructs using the Core Units in excess. We’ll keep you informed on the topic once we’ll have more information about it. What do you think about limiting to each player to be a member of 5 orgs maximum? That could be an idea, but being aware of how frustration is accumulating after many limitations, we don’t want to push more limitations than the ones really needed. How long would it take to train all the talents to max them and reach the maximum limitation? Currently we estimate to maximise all the talents from nothing, will take approximately 6 to 7 months. However there is a curve, the last few talents take the longest: - In 30 days, you should be able to reach around 60 slots total. - In 60 days, you should be able to reach around 90 slots total. - In 90 days, you should be able to reach around 130 slots total. - In 120 days, you should be able to reach around 170 slots total. The remaining slots will take considerable time. Remember you will also have a partial refund of talent points, which should speed up quite significantly your training in the new talents. If cores were tokenized will they count towards the cap? So if I was to tokenize 90% of a HUGE station? that might save it? Technically they wouldn't be my core right? Might be a legit way to save larger projects. Then hand out tokens to people who buy / already own... These tokens expire after 3 months or something. Tokens are always inactive, so server wise not as much load? Boom, in game tradable property token market aka NFT's (without being able to buy these with USD but they would be considered as "Non-Fungible Tokens"). While tokenized, constructs still count towards the organization they belong to until the token is claimed. And transferred ownership is to another owner. That's all for now, but if you have additional feedback on the upcoming changes, let us know in this discussion thread! The Novaquark team.

Hi everyone! The new character model is an artistic re-imagining of the original design, and is one of many steps we’re taking to update the look and feel of the game. The goal of this redesign was not only to create something functional and realistic for interstellar travel, but also come up with something memorable, appealing, and instantly recognizable. The Novaquark team.

Alright. Things are getting a bit out of hand here. @xlDvSlx @DvS_UK Thinking that the DAC system is "Pay to win" is your opinion and it's your right to think that way, even if many people here disagree with you. However, it's strange that you start a crusade right now on the monetization model as you claimed to be a long time follower of the game. If you are a long time follower, then you know we never hid what the monetization model was going to be and said it right from the beginning (the Kickstarter Campaign in 2016). If you disagreed on the monetization model, it would have been perfectly understandable to not support the game. Why starting a crusade on this topic now? If you realized what the monetization model was going to be just now or recently, then maybe the real issue here might be "this game is not for you". In that case, please contact the customer support at support@novaquark.com for such kind of topic. The monetization model has been debated many times, and the Novaquark team has already explained in length why we were going with this one. For the record, this monetization model has also been adopted by some of the biggest MMORPG, such as World of Warcraft (through the WoW token system, which is exactly the same thing as the DACs) and as far as we know, there hasn't been a huge uproar stating this system is "pay to win". The original definition of "Pay to Win" is the following: it implies you have a system where you can get a specific advantage only by paying. If an advantage can be obtained by playing the game, then, by the original definition, it's not "Pay to Win". Of course all is question of common sense and equilibrium here: if the way of obtaining the said advantage is grinding an incredible amount of hours, making it virtually impossible or irrelevant to get it by playing then yes, it might be considered pay to win in disguise. But we are nowhere near this situation in Dual Universe (or else, you're welcome to give very specific examples, and not vague assumptions. The examples you have given so far are just too vague to be considered as such). On the opposite side of the spectrum, the expression "Pay to Win" have been used and exaggerated many times over the years. There has been excess on both sides. In any case, starting to say "some people should be shot down", for whatever reason it may be, is a no go and a direct breach with the forum rules. Also, resorting to personal attack and/or provocations toward those who don't agree with you is just an invitation for trouble and another breach of the forum rules. This is the first and last warning. While your post started in an attempt to convince people from your point of view (which is fine), it quickly escalated in provocations and nothing really constructive. So we ask you to change the way you discuss with other community members on the forum (stop being provocative), or your posting rights may be removed (temporarily at first, and possibly in a definite way if you insist in this behavior). This topic has derailed enough and will now be locked. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

@boots_1588 As mentioned in the forum rules, please do not necropost on old threads as you have done already several times. (The forum rules has been updated to indicate what is considered an old thread) Granted, this time you stay in the limits but keep this in mind for the next times. Now to reply on the topic: Fallout56 is a multiplayer game and NOT a MASSIVELY multiplayer game. Todd Howard confirmed that during the E3 2018 Bethesda Conference. So it can be compared to Minecraft, Ark, Conan Exiles... but clearly not to MMORPGs where the server infrastructure cost is exclusively handled by the Dev Studio or Publisher. The Subscription model is one of the few topics not open to discussion. We have already talked in great length about why we went for a subscription model and no, there is no solid argument countering the reasons why we chose this model. 1) Dropping monthly subscription to have more players is not a valid argument if the server infrastructure cost grows proportionally to the player base size while incomes don't grow accordingly. 2) Saying subcription is an outdated model is not a valid argument as it relies on personal opinion not backed by solid reasons. Seeing less MMORPGs using monthly subscription is not a solid reason if there is no understanding about the "why". Here is how we view the situation at Novaquark: monthly subscription model has been on the decline due to nearly no clear innovation in the MMORPG industry during the last decade. As new MMORPGs had to offer something different than those already well settled in the market (World of Warcraft, EVE Online, etc), if they weren't going to offer something really new, they had to be different on another level: monetization model. That's how the Free to Play games wave began. Many marketing representatives said many times that "Free to Play" was the future and most people believed it. Inconvients of such model were put under the rug... for a time. The question "Is F2P good or bad?" is irrelevant. Free to Play is a good monetization model good for some kind of games. We just don't think MMORPGs is among those. When you aim to have a game lasting for decades, you need to have steady income for decades as well. Free to play game incomes are too fluctuant, especially because they rely on the success of cosmetics (which is a everlasting gamble for a company as no one knows for sure in advance if players will love the new cosmetics and how much income it will generate before they hit the shop) and lootboxes. Ironically, there has been recently a huge witch hunt about lootboxes. While we totally understand the reasons, it's a bit surprising that this problem has been exposed only recently, as lootboxes are as old as the Free to Play model and represents nearly always a (very) large part of F2P or B2P game incomes. Surprisingly, with this kind of monetization now forbidden in a growing number of countries, discussions about monthly subscription model are a thing again for many studios and publishers. 3) Saying people want to make a one time payment is not a valid argument either: nobody with some common sense can ask for a one time payment (at the price of an average game) and expect to have a service lasting forever. @Sofernius Quite unlikely. From a financial point of view, that would mean taking more risks than necessary: as said above, it would mean going from a steady income model to a fluctuant income model. Cosmetics make a good complementary income to B2P and subscription models but again, making it the main income of a game is very risky, especially if the structural costs for a game are high. Those two things are already planned Beta Key giveaways and Trial period at official release. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi Primate and welcome on the official Dual Universe forum. - The need of approval for your first post by a Moderator or a Community Manager has nothing to do with NDA. You need to be approved once. After that, you won't need anymore validation. Why resorting to such measure? Captcha systems gave mixed efficiency results to prevent spam accounts to spawn on the forum. As we had Korean and Chinese, as well as English spam accounts on the forum in the past, this is the most efficient way to block them before they start polluting the forum (you would be surprised to see how many we have removed so far that never became visible to the Community - You might think that current Supporter Packs are underwhelming. That's totally your right. Sure, there are a lot less attractive than our previous Kickstarter Founder Packs, but they remain worth it in terms of value: their price alone is approximatively the total value of the number of DACs (tokens for months of playtime) included in it. That means that everything else if given for free (while cosmetics items - pets, outfits, skins and decorative Elements - have also a significant value too). The value of Pre-Alpha access is not even taken into account as we consider it a "bonus perk" for those who want to support the game beyond just buying it to play. As mentioned in the disclaimer of the Patron Pack, Pre-Alpha is not meant for those who want an immediate fun experience, as the game is not yet at this stage. Pre-Alpha is meant for those who really want to help us tracking bugs and give feedback on every aspect of the game in its current state. In any case, just wanting to play the game and have fun is perfectly understandable, it's just it's not the right time for that yet, and that's why we won't encourage players to aim for a patron pack if they're not interested in this early phase. - Live gameplay is limited for the time being indeed. That's pretty common in this early stage, especially for a MMORPG. Again, if you prefer to play when the server will be up permanently, Pre-Alpha may not be the phase you want to join, and that's totally understandable. - Subscription model is necessary. Server architecture to host the whole community in the same universe (no instances) and Quality Support cost a lot. As this kind of cost can be, in a certain measure, proportional to the amount of players, it would make no sense to go Free-to-Play and even Buy-to-Play could be a risky move. Hence, Subscription model is the most logical choice. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi RadFallout100, Technically, yes, it would be possible to have Dual Universe playable in single player mode or LAN multiplayer mode, given the appropriate amount of game development time. However it won't be done because of the two following reasons: - because it's not the game vision. - because of game development time necessary to adapt the game to such configuration. That being said: - Nothing will prevent you to play "solo" if you're not interested in activities that could involve PvP (like building your base in a secure area). - If you don't like to pay a monthly subscription, there's a high chance to see a yearly subscription once the game will launch. While it makes total sense to prefer paying only once for a single player game or player-hosted server game (where you can invite your friends to join in multiplayer mode), it makes more sense to pay progressively for an online game managed by a company, as paying only once won't give you the same pros (and cons) of buying a single player game or a player-hosted server game: you won't own the game. you will own the right to play the game for a specific amount of time. - There was a lifetime subscription option for exactly one year (from the 7th September 2016 to the 7th September 2017). This was a limited reward to thank early backers for having given us their trust and backed the game to a such exceptional level. Many people who like to play solo or just with a small group of friends see the current development of "games as a service" as an evil thing attempting to force them to change their way of playing. Nothing is more wrong: 1) The number of available games enabling players to play solo or in small groups has never been so huge (a short glance at Steam will convince anyone at that). 2) Seeing games released as services is not necessarily an attempt to force these people to pay more than before: it's just that these games are not meant for them. If they prefer to play solo and/or with a small group of friends, it's totally their right. However, they often forgot that not all players want the same thing, far from it: there are also many players wanting to play in a huge world/universe populated with many other players. MMORPGs (like Dual Universe) are meant for this second category of players, and from there, it's just a matter of financial viability: Players want a huge world/universe with many other players (or even the whole community, in the case of Dual Universe) around them? => as no player will have the hardware to host a server powerful enough, this is where it becomes necessary to have the hardware managed by the company developing the game. => such server will be expensive to maintain (hardware + staff behind it), and the cost will never end. Moreover, as many people will have different material, may encounter problems, due to a technical issue or a social issue with other groups of players (harassment, griefing, etc), it becomes necessary to get teams able to handle such situations (customer support, community managers). Moreover, as such games generally continue to evolve a lot after the release, to provide new features and new content (development team). All this can't just be paid once, with the wish that the game can live forever: if there are bills to pay at the end of each month, then the healthy to maintain the game is to have a subscription model. Some will say "Yes, but there are a lot of MMORPGs free-to-play or buy-to-play". Sure, but to be honest, it would be interesting to ask ourselves the following: - how many have lived for a very long time (10 years or more) with such model? - do those games have been beyond reproach regarding the three following points: permanent server availability, high quality customer support, regular content/feature updates? Dual Universe has the ambition to be a game that will last a lot more than a few years, with regular updates. Obviously, the vision will not appeal to all types of players (as no game can appeal to all players) and or the service to have a decent quality, it needs to have a regular income, hence a monthly subscription, and no "this monetization model is obsolete" or "look how many went free-to-play" will change that fact. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

All right, as this topic is turning into a flame war, and there is nothing constructive left to say, it's going to be locked as well. @Bleep_Bloop: Having some skepticism about the game is understandable and even healthy. We took the time to answer to your questions several times. However since you started to participate on the forum, you made posts containing only: - Negativity about the game - Negativity about the people who endorsed the game - Negativity about the game monetization model - Assumptions that you know how business works in video games (while your oversimplified point of view clearly shows the contrary). - Assumptions that you know what will be the developer decisions on critical matters (and always imagining the worst case scenario). - Disregard towards opinions different from yours. - Not understanding (or feigning to not understand) why people start to feel irritated by your attitude and bringing the "fanboy" or "white knight" excuse to avoid questionning your own attitude. There is nothing constructive in your attitude and everything inciting to conflicts. Again, while being a bit cautious and skeptical can be healthy, your attitude is way beyond that stage and has nothing healthy in it. So a friendly advice: whether you make an effort of being radically less provocative and a lot more constructive, or we will start removing your posts without a warning. @all: Please don't feed the troll. Thank you for your understanding. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone, @Bleep_Bloop: Please keep a respectful tone when debating with other members of the community. "Are you fucking retarded" or "read the fucking post" are not an acceptable way to discuss on the forum. If you haven't already read our forum rules, please read it there: https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/8-forum-rules/ Continuing with this kind of behavior may lead to removal of your messages, and, in the last resort, to a ban. We value the freedom of speech, as long as you are respectful while discussing with others. We can understand that discussing with people not agreeing with your point of view could be irritating, but it's not a valid excuse to start employing rude/insulting words. Thanks in advance for your comprehension. Now to answer to your point of view: - Some members of the Novaquark team have worked for years on F2P games. The F2P model (or the B2P model, which is nothing more than the F2P model with an initial sale of the game at the beginning) isn't the shiny and perfect model often perceived from an external eye. This model has a lot of drawbacks, and the fact of diverting artists from doing content for all the players is not a minor one: while they work on cosmetics, they don't work on the global visual improvement of the game, and this has a real impact of development speed of the game, especially when the team behind it is still relatively small. - Relying only on cosmetics on the long run is like playing casino a bit with the financing of the game. You can win a lot... but you can also loose a lot (regarding the ration "cost of making cosmetics"/"income brought by the said cosmetics"). Any financial manager having a good head on his/her shoulders would tell that, in order to properly budget the investments for a MMORPG in the coming months or years, the ideal situation is to be able to predict more or less the amount of income you will get during this period. With a model relying only on cosmetics, this part is a bit unpredictable, because all the income relies only on the artists shoulders and mishaps can happen. What if a batch of cosmetics doesn't appeal to the players who usually pay for them? What happens if a few key artists leave the studio (which can happen even in the best companies)? In that case, during this period (even if it's temporary) you might have a serious drop of income that could generate difficulties, and even if in the same time the game programmers deliver amazing gameplay features, it won't help, because they can't bring any income. The subscription model is a lot more resilient in this regard: if there is a period where the artist can't provide the same amount of content as usual, the programmers can still deliver new features and the players will still have new content for their subscription. The subscription model can also enable the different teams from the studio to alternate the type of content released: game features for one release, visual/graphic content for the following one, giving more time to each team for each content release (Side note: these are possibilities that only the subscription model make possible, but that doesn't mean all things mentioned above is necessarily how the content releases will be managed for Dual Universe after release). - Saying subscription is "a monetization model from another age, very few games use it nowadays, so it's a proof that doesn't work anymore" is oversimplifying the situation. If we look at the bigger picture, as in many other sectors, a lot of investors (not all, fortunately) to make quick, easy money with minimal investment/effort and pressurized publishers to find an adapted solution to this request. In this situation, the Free to Play model is the most adapted one. With this model, you can't be (or a lot less) accountable for not having high-quality services, for not listening to your community, etc. This is the perfect model for short term ROI (Return On Investment). It makes big profit in the first years. However, in the case of MMORPGs, if no significant investment is made to update the game, the profit crumbles in a matter of a few years and cosmetics alone won't prevent that. That's fine for a lot of investors and publishers and that's fine too for a lot of players that don't spend more than a few months on the same game. But all players expectations aren't the same far from it. - Among gamers who have played MMORPGs for a long time, both F2P and subscription-based ones, a lot have realized that the F2P/B2P model isn't the best answer for every time of games. A growing number of these gamers would now prefer to pay a subscription fee than having the inconvenient of a F2P/B2P Model. So yes, the Subscription Model may be not very common at the moment, but this model might make his comeback in the years to come, when enough people will be fed up of having F2P/B2P MMORPGs on the western market (as F2P model is originally born - and fully accepted - from the eastern market). - Funny thing: as we speak, former developers from EverQuest I, II and Next have launched a new project: Ashes of Creation, which seems the spiritual successor of EverQuest Next. It's a subscription-based MMORPG... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1791529601/ashes-of-creation-new-mmorpg-by-intrepid-studios/description Well in 48 hours, they founded their original goal of 750.000$ and are now at more 870.000$ with more than 4.500 backers. In 48 hours. Does it looks like the subscription model is dead/inappropriate? - Another point who is quite important and specifically tied to Dual Universe: our game will use cloud technology. To buy our own server cluster(s) at the beginning is absolutely unrealistic regarding the cost. That's why we are currently considering a partnership with a Cloud Computing Provider such as Amazon or Microsoft Azure. This means the game will have a cost per player, and going for anything else than a monetization model proportional to the number of players (hence the subscription model) is just taking significant risks in terms of financial viability (at least until we are in a position to buy our own server cluster(s)). So yes, unless we are in a case where we already own the server infrastructures, going for any other model other than the monthly subscription one while you don't know yet what size your gaming community will be (and how many gamers in it will be willing to pay for cosmetics), going F2P/B2P is not the safe road. It's the risky road. If all the points above didn't convince you, this one should. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi Lexator and welcome on our forum. To answer your concerns: - Yes, Dual Universe will have a monthly subscription. We are aware that it's not a model appealing to all people and we don't try to everyone, because it's impossible. Also, due to the specificity of the game (costs higher in terms of server infrastructure), the team has come to the conclusion that the subscription model will be the only one viable on the long term. However, we have managed a way to play without paying a subscription. For more information, read below. - The game won't cost anything, and expansions will be free as well. You will only have the monthly subscription to pay. You will even have free trial period. - The DAC enable people who can (and are willing) to pay a Monthly subscription to be able to help paying the subscription for those who can't. DAC will be sellable in-game for in-game money (Quanta). So if you gather enough Quanta during your free trial period, you will be able to use the in-game money to buy a DAC from another player without spending real life money. Everybody wins: you don't have to pay a monthly subscription and the player who sold you a DAC - generally people who have more income and less available play time - will be able to gather enough Quanta for the activities they are focusing on, despite their limited available play time. In any case, we are not currently planning to drop the monthly subcription model. This has already been discussed over and over on the forum, many people have backed this project knowing this will be the monetization model, so a new topic asking about that won't change anything. We're planning on the long term, and with another model, the team is convinced it wouldn't be possible to make a durable game. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

@Lethys: There is no automatic orbit mode (at least for the moment). Being in orbit of a planet is basically the result of having reached a certain speed (whether by propulsion generated by engines or by inertial speed with engines turned off) while being near a planet in space. @ATLMVE: As there wasn't any answer to your topic, it hasn't been archived. @CaptainTwerkMotor: Yes, at the end of the video, it's the new Core Unit Design. As the 3D Model is nearly finished, with a bit of luck, you will see it in-game in the next DevDiary @Lights: No food system planned at the moment, sorry We wanted to implement tons of cool features for the Official Release, but we had to make tough choices. @Ripper: Yes, the switch next to the door was a place holder, not a final version.

Hi everyone! So we had an internal discussion on this topic in the team. Here are the main points: 1) We still think that the DAC as a Monthly Subscription Token remains the easiest form to understand for new players about its use and primary goal (enabling players who can't afford a monthly subcription to be able to play the game by remaining reasonably active in-game). 2) As the merge of such currencies makes PLEXes a virtual item accessible from anywhere, and as we had already a lengthy discussion on the forum several months ago about the same topic for DACs, we saw this side effect as a negative point. So, in the case we would go for a more divisible currency, we will think of the possibility while keeping the following constraint: once the currency token is dropped into the game from the external inventory (being called "Vault" or "Account's Redeeming System"), it will be tagged if it is returned to the external inventory. It will then be only droppable to the last location it was redeemed in-game (just like the PLEXes work in EVE Online at the moment). 3) The move from merging PLEX and Aurum currencies makes sense as it simplifies the whole system: one currency for both the monthly subscription model and the in-game cosmetic cash shop. However, as it's not even confirmed that there will be a cosmetic shop (still currently being discussed) in Dual Universe, this positive point doesn't apply to our context at the moment. If at some point, a cosmetic cash shop is integrated to the game, it's possible that the DAC will be converted in a more divisible currency, to avoid deploying several currencies for the same purpose. 4) Going for more divisible DACs will require extra development time that could delay the official game release, and that's another negative point. So, in a nutshell, it's not planned to do any changes regarding the DACs at the moment. We stick to the plan with DACs being usable as monthly subscrition tokens. If something isn't clear or if you have questions, just let us know! @Lynkx: - We are aware that the PLEX system is not perfect, but in our opinion (the Novaquark team) the best compromise we can find. We have in the team players who have played many MMORPGs: EVE Online, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Neverwinter, Archeage, Elder Scrolls Online, Elite Dangerous, Wildstar, etc. So we aren't just looking to the EVE Online model while ignoring completely what has been done elsewhere. It's just that the EVE Online model seems to be the most balanced one so far (even if it has flaws). - A minimal alien fauna is planned for the official release (and will probably grow in diversity afterwards) - Having a few NPC helpers visible in-game for the tutorial is something considered, but we can't promise anything on that topic right now (we have also some ideas for tutorials without involving visible NPCs in the game world). - On a last note, please avoid to reply to other community members in an ironical/provocative way (this doesn't add anything to the discussion) Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Before starting to read the Lore Bible, here are three things to keep in mind: - Some names and acronyms (put between brackets) in the texts below are still temporary names/placeholders. The final names will be decided in the following days. The update will be announced on the forum and on the social media. We don't want to keep these names, for different reasons varying for each case. Once in its final version, it will be published on the Community Wiki hosted by Gamepedia in a more structured way. - It was a difficult decision but we have to consider that some parts of the short story written by Alain Damasio will be modified or removed. We all agree in the team that Alain Damasio has made a short story of the highest quality, but this short story was written more than a year ago (July 2015) and at that time, too many points regarding the game universe were unclear or undecided. With all the recent additions to the Lore Bible (those released today publicly and those which remain hidden as "secrets" for the time being), it generated some inconsistencies difficult to solve. We tried to find solutions or workarounds, without success. Some points were also not possible to represent in-game, gameplay wise. While the short story will be updated in the near future to fit with the current Lore Bible, in the meantime here are the specific points from the short story you should not take into account when writing a Fan Fiction for Dual Universe (if you want it to be eligible for being integrated to the official backstory of the game, of course. If not, you are not bind to such limitation). Unfortunately, Sohan Decker is not a member of the Alpha Team, as he woke up just a few weeks before the Arkship landing on Alioth and do not participate in the neural simulation that will take place more than a year and a half before the landing. Aphelia memory must have had a glitch when talking to Sohan for the first time. When approaching some Kyrium, the matter doesn't reflect human faces aging or growing younger. Sohan Decker has probably some hallucinations, a possible side-effect of the long cryogenic sleep. While probably convinced of it, Sohan Decker didn't communicate with an invisible entity by using elements and he didn't get some schematics of a high-performance reactor in Kyrium as a reward. The proof? When asked to show it, he's not able to find it anywhere! Poor Sohan. Probably another hallucination. Cryogenic sleep seems to have a lasting side effect on him. - The Novaquark might slightly change the Lore Bible over time, but we will try to keep those changes to a minimum, to ensure that it doesn't contradict fanfictions that have been already integrated to the official lore. These changes will occur mainly when an inconstancy is discovered in the official lore. And in this regard, we count on your feedback to track down every little detail that might seem inconsistent (some details may be awkward on purpose though ). As always, we remain open to your feedback on the Official Lore. Let us know what you think about it! That being said... Happy reading! Dual Universe Lore Dual Universe takes place about 10.000 years after the Grand Exodus when humanity left the Earth to establish itself in new star systems. The information below is meant to help answer the most common questions about the game environment and try to set the general framework where fan fiction can be written. Main historical dates 2027: Discovery of the doomsday Neutron Star that is heading towards the Earth. Collision will happen in 498 years. There are margins of error, so we don’t yet know if it means annihilation or simply major disruption in the solar system’s planets, but the end result is the same: the Earth will not be able to host humanity anymore. The event is nicknamed the [“Star Kiss of Death”], or [SKiD]. It’s basically the Armageddon. 2049: Creation of the United Earth Federation (UEF), a transnational institution in charge of coordinating humanity’s efforts and response to the SKiD. After concluding there was no hope to save Earth, the “Rebirth Program” is launched to analyze possible responses and escape strategies. New measures are voted to encourage natality in the population, to fight against a nihilist movement that advocates a “no future” philosophy and maintain a sufficient level of humans in the long run to fuel the Rebirth Project’s considerable needs. 2084: Better measurements have narrowed the margin of error. We are now certain that the neutron star will hit our solar system, and will actually collide with the Sun, turning into a black hole that will ultimately swallow or eject into deep space all the planets, Earth included. There is no hope anymore. Major funding is directed towards the Rebirth Program. All nation states must contribute at least 20% of their resources 2100: Mankind is entering a new era where robotics and AI have profoundly transformed society. Work as we know it has long disappeared, and social influence has replaced money as the currency of value. People do not “work” anymore, they have “activities” that can get them socially recognized. Money is still used, via a Universal Revenue, mainly as a way to control the scarcity in production, and balance the availability of goods against their rarity. 2130: AI have reached a threshold of global sentience. It is active in political, economic and social debates, and, while its benefits are recognized because it allowed the transition to the post-work era, more and more concern is raised about the sentient aspect and the potentially uncontrollable dimension of the AI agenda. Irrational fear rises. The AIs try to reassure the population that they have no rational reason to threaten humanity, but it only increases the level of suspicion within society. 2145: Massive rebellions all around the world signals the end of sentient AI, introducing a permanent universal ban on this technology, enforced by the very powerful UEF. Against all expectations, sentient AIs accept this and willingly shut down without any form of violent action. 2150: Society is reorganizing itself, as many “jobs” that needed sentient-level AI (surprisingly many, including low skill manual work), are once again left to humans to perform. Robots, in general, are banned also, as most of them required sentient-level AI to function properly. Early attempts at designing automated non-sentient robots all failed in the late 21st century, as it was discovered that sentience was a necessary byproduct of any sufficiently sophisticated AI for it to be able to interact with a complex world. 2200: A major summit of the UEF signals the alarming lack of progress on project Rebirth at the dawn of the 23rd century. Debates continue for years afterward about priorities, what technology to use to build Arkships that could help evacuate Earth, who would be eligible if we cannot host the 3 billion people still in the current population. 2200-2400: Major political events keep slowing down humanity and the UEF in its attempts to advance the technologies needed to build functional Arkships. Many wars, economic crisis, and nihilist terrorism are plaguing the progress. 2400: A period of calm and peace opens up. Major progress is suddenly made in the technologies needed to build the Arkships. Some are scheduled to be built within the next decade. 2440: Several key technologies are unlocked: cryosleep modules, nanoforming technology, nanopack condensers, resurrection nodes (it is unfortunately too late to use this to save humanity, as we would need to install billions of them out of the solar system, on a hospitable planet. There is not enough time for this). 2450: The Arkship technology is now mastered. Mass production begins. The race is on to produce as many as possible. 2500: Terrifying high-resolution images of the neutron star are provided by our most powerful telescopes. Riots break out all around the world over the selection process that dictates who gets to board the Arkships. The process was created by a scientific committee from the UEF, aimed at gathering the maximal amount of genetic diversity, plus a lottery to offset the fact that not everybody could go. Massive euthanasia programs were organized for those who had to stay, in order to provide them with a painless death at the time of their choosing. 2510-2536: The first Arkships leave Earth. Each Arkship is heading towards a particular part of the galaxy. One of them, the Novark, is heading towards the Scutum-Centaurus arm. 2538: The neutron star annihilates the solar system. Arkships are on their way, heading towards different regions of the galaxy. 12477: The Novark arrives on Alioth with a mighty thud as it deploys itself into the planet surface. From afar the planet shows many similarities to that of Earth, a blue and green marble sitting in the goldilocks zone of its star. Large continents surrounded by equally large oceans define the planet's appearance. Mountain ranges suggest continental drift, and large forests have taken hold over most of the planet. Primitive lifeforms are abundant. There are no obvious signs of advanced lifeforms. Year 0 after arrival (0 AA): It will be your turn to write History in-game. The world in 2500 In the century that preceded the Grand Exodus, the Earth’s population had dropped considerably, down to something less than 1 billion people. The “no future” movement had gained a considerable momentum. people were simply trying to tend to their immediate needs; losing any vision for the future or any concern for the consequences of their actions. Natality had dropped to an all-time low, crime had been continuously rising, and nation-states, as we know them, had long disappeared. The UEF was the last large-scale social structure still holding, among a myriad of medium to small sized city-states. UEF representatives and offices, research centers, production units, etc, were scattered all around the world within the largest city-states. The UEF’s role now extended far beyond its initial goals, including a feared and powerful armed force to maintain order and ensure that the proper funding was collected from all city-states, in order to fuel the Rebirth Program. A global language shared by all people on the planet started to emerge at the end of the 21st century. By the end of the 22nd century, almost everyone was speaking at least two languages: the global language (the “common”) and their local native language, each city-state having somehow evolved a variant from their original country’s language. Economy During the first half of the 21st century, the Internet quickly decentralized the economy, removing intermediaries and frictions. Anyone was able to open their own marketplace online, with powerful central aggregators to help integrate available offers. This was both true of goods and services. This highly distributed model of economy stood the test of time, both during the sentient AI era, and even after, up until the last century. One of the main challenges of the last century, after the city-states model had become the norm, was logistics. Transporting goods over long distances carried the risk of being attacked by pirate hordes living outside of the city-states. The UEF and other independent security groups were in charge of ensuring protection, but still, the risk made inter-city trade dangerous, and local markets were the preferred method for basic commerce. A global currency, the [U2] [(Universal Unit)], is installed by the UEF at the beginning of the 22nd century. It has acquired a growing support over the years and is still used as a reference currency on Alioth to help organize the exchanges of goods and services between colonists. Culture & Society At the moment of the Grand Exodus, humanity, and more precisely the UEF, was divided into four main political movements, essentially different from each other in the way they decided to answer one simple fundamental question: what is the main driving force in the development of humanity? Behind this question lies the promise of a political agenda on how to best rebuild civilization after the Grand Exodus and where to put priorities. The [Luminous] are the first group. They consider the main driving force to be knowledge and wisdom. They value science, industry, and technology as the main sources of progress, and were heavily involved in the Rebirth Program, which led to the construction of the Arkships. They are, of course, very much respected for this even if some may criticize them for their all too rational take on things. The Alphas are the second group. For them, the main driving force is, well, … force. They believe that people will respond mostly to strength and balance of power. They favor military action as a way to control and orient the evolution of the world in an attempt to avoid chaos and prevent instability. Their intentions are good, but they often fall to scandals involved with their expeditious way of handling subtle situations. The [Ethereans] constitute the third group. They believe in the power of culture and arts. For them, humanity needs to be driven by dreams, beauty, and ideals before anything else. This is what gives us meaning. They are not against more practical endeavors but like to see these activities as a way to expand and support their vision. They have many supporters but are also often criticized for their lack of pragmatic action. The [Emporium] is the final group. They believe in the power of money and commerce. They think that this has been the life and blood of human societies for millennia and, even if they will gladly regret it in private, they think this is nevertheless what gets the job done and can really set people in motion. Some point to them as a cause of an ever greater inequality, but they know how to silence critics and make people happy. None of these movements are inherently good or bad, they all value human life and sincerely want to help drive humanity to success again. Science & Technology After the early 2400 years, science and technology suddenly advanced very rapidly. Incredible innovation occurred, becoming the foundation of the industrial, societal and economical program of Project Rebirth. Here are some of the most prominent breakthrough: Nano fields: an expected advance in theoretical physics led to the discovery of a new force in nature, called the nano force due to its scale, that allows the fine control of the molecular dynamics of matter with incredible precision using high-frequency nano fields. Nano fields can be focused and modulated in a very precise way to destructure, collect or deploy and assemble matter in a short range radius. This is the core technology that gave birth to the nanoformer that every colonist is now equipped with. Calabi-Yau Compactification: the science behind CYC has been inexplicably lost in the Arkship archives. It is the technology that powers nanopacks, which are extra small containers (that colonists wear on their suit), capable of amazing volume and weight reductions of almost anything contained in them. All we know is that it seems to work based on the possibility of storing matter within the extra dimensions of space-time allowed by String Theory, inside what is called the Calabi-Yau space. The exact science and understanding behind them have been lost and attempts at reverse engineering have all failed. Due to the limited number of Nanopacks available and their considerable value, further attempts to reverse engineer them are discouraged. Nano fields displacement: this is a direct application of nano fields, used to collect, store and maintain matter within containers. The matter constituting objects is analyzed and de-structured first then stored using stable nano fields and can then be retrieved later via a reverse process that reconstructs the original object. Unlike with CYC, only limited volume gain can be obtained, and no weight reduction is possible. Nano 3D printing: based again on the versatile nano fields, advanced 3D printers became possible. They are capable to assemble matter from reservoir sources to build small sized technological parts; from electronic to industrial units. Coupled to the automated assembly, this quickly became the basis of the industrial chain. Quantum branching: Quantum Branching is at the heart of the Resurrection Node technology and is based on the “Many Worlds Interpretation” of quantum mechanics. At any moment, in particular, when you die violently, several versions of the universe coexist in parallel. Scientists working on EPR pair experiments unexpectedly found a way to instantly switch one universe with another, and in particular to switch the universe where you die with another one where everything would be exactly the same, except that your body position would be inside a Resurrection Node. The amount of matter to switch increases the energy cost of the operation, so RN teleport only the minimal set of mass to get the desired effect, which is... your naked body. A Resurrection Node is paired with your body and cannot be used by somebody else. It will make you virtually immortal, even if natural aging will probably get you out of the loop at some point. Propulsion Engines: the conquest and exploration of the arrival star system, as well as nearby other stars, is a clear objective of the UEF for each arkship colony. Several engine technologies have been perfected as part of the Rebirth Program to allow for various flight modes, either within the atmosphere or in space. Warp drive technology was near completion and should become available a few years after the arrival, and even stargate instant transport has been sketched as a not too distant possibility but was unfortunately still not available at the time of the Grand Exodus. Warp drive speed is believed to be in the range of 100 times the speed of light, while super warp probes, that could be used to seed stargates, could reach up to 10.000 times the speed of light Making it possible to cross the entire galaxy in just 10 years. Environment & Alioth Alioth is a rocky planet orbiting a yellow dwarf star, very similar to the Sun. It has been selected due to its very similar Earth-like environment, including oceans, forests, mountains, and lakes. It has a moderate fauna and flora. The temperature during the day is similar to what can be found on Earth, but nights can be extremely cold. The planet underground contains all the usual materials needed for basic industry, but more rare resources may have to be later harvested from one of Alioth’s three moons, or even from more distant planets in the system. The planet day/night cycle is only 5 hours, and its weather pattern is relatively stable. Overall, Alioth is a very life-friendly planet, carefully chosen to facilitate the starting years of colonists. The Arkship The Arkships are a marvel of technology. They can host millions of people in cryosleep for extended periods of time. Made out of Kyrium, they can sustain incredible amounts of deceleration or acceleration, and absorb the corresponding crushing forces for whatever stand inside them. The origin of Kyrium is not well documented, and it seems that the material cannot be produced from a known industrial process, but has probably been found during some mining operations within the solar system. Designed to travel close to the speed of light for extended periods, the Arkship engines are also not part of the colonist UEF documentation and no assembly schema could be found within the archives. There is much debate over why the UEF would intentionally withdraw such potentially useful information. Each Arkship is controlled by a proto-sentient AI that was allowed to be built against the very strong UEF AI ban because it was argued that it would have been to hazardous to let the fate of humanity rest with dumb automatic machinery that would possibly not be able to react to unexpected situations. While being an exception to the AI ban rule, the onboard AI is still however not allowed to take control of any machinery or robot beside the Arkship itself. The Novark AI is called “Aphelia”. Once on approach to the destination planet, the Arkship is designed to literally “plant” itself into the planet, to allow the deployment of deep geothermal energy collectors that should sustain the ship functions for potentially unlimited amounts of time. One of the key functions of the ship once arrived, is to deploy a 20km radius safe zone area where colonist would be free from any form of aggression from the outside, or… from themselves. It was indeed decided that the potentially violent nature of mankind under stressful situations should be mitigated with appropriate supervision. Within the safe zone, Aphelia is in charge of maintaining order and providing support and information to colonists. Regrettably, one known consequence of prolonged cryosleep periods is that the subject will suffer from a loss of episodic memory, as well as most high-level cognitive memory like expertise, skills or know-how. To mitigate this side-effect, the Arkship archive contains large data banks that are transferable to colonists via a wireless data transfer process involving brain implants capable of stimulating neural activity. The process is slow and can take days for the most advanced skills, but is an effective way to re-enable lost knowledge for long time space travelers. The Arkship extreme energy efficiency, designed to allow the ship to travel for millennia, forced trade-offs on what could be embarked in order to minimize the total mass, and of course, human bodies were preferred over any other “mass”. For this reason, and because nano 3D printing would make it possible to easily rebuild them, no ship or industrial machine was included inside the Arkships’ cargo. Humanity would have to rebuild civilization from scratch. A large set of Resurrection Nodes tuned to each registered colonist where however installed inside the Arkship to avoid any loss of precious life once arrived on the destination planet. For these reasons, the inside of the Arkship, besides the propulsion machinery, is mostly occupied by cryosleep pods, as well as Resurrection Nodes. Alpha Team While most of the Arkship passengers will wake up after the Arkship landing, a few thousand among them become half awakened between a few years and a few weeks before the arrival: the Alpha Team. While their bodies are still asleep, their brains are awakened and connected to an advanced neural/computer network that immerses them collectively within a virtual reality that is meant to simulate their first steps on the destination planet, for education and testing purposes. During this simulation, of course, nobody can die (this represents the Alpha phase in-game). They are given easier access to certain resources in order to help them experience various stages of the tasks they will have to face in real life when arrived. The Alpha Team will then be in charge of guiding newcomers and helping to bootstrap the first months of civilization rebuilding on the destination planet. Mysteries The cryosleep memory loss side effect and the apparently incomplete archive has given birth to several mysteries for which colonists have developed many “theories”: Kyrium is an absolute mystery. Nothing is available in the Arkship archives about its nature, how it was found, how to create it or even manipulate it. No colonist have the slightest memory about the Kyrium. If Aphelia is asked for information on Kyrium, the Novark’s AI will just give an elusive answer, explaining its lack of information as memory loss. Obviously, this is not a satisfying answer. Aphelia is in charge of the Novark and the well-being of all the passengers. She seems as caring as invasive in the private life of the colonists. While she doesn’t seem brutal, hostile or coercive by default, her behavior is perceived as if she monitors every action of each human that has been aboard the Novark. She also seems to avoid disclosing information on some specific topics - at least that’s the feeling of some passengers - despite the fact she always says if she doesn’t give a satisfying answer, it’s because the answer is beyond its capabilities. For these two reasons, many colonists think the AI is not trustworthy. Aphelia seems to have incredible defenses against hacking, far higher than anything the most experienced colonists in hacking have ever seen, reinforcing the feeling that the AI might hide a lot of things. The Arkship light speed engine is completely undocumented. No schema is available to rebuild one using 3D nano-printing, or by any other means. There seems to be no trace of the records pointing to the destination of the other Arkships within the galaxy. Best Regards, The Novaquark Team

@johan26: To make a few things clear (before closing this topic that was ongoing for too long): 1) Arguing the fact that the limited success is just due to the monetization model is a very very biased statement to justify a point view. True, it had an impact, without a doubt. But if there was a calculated factor to reduce the amount of players interested, it was this one. We don't want to publish a "mass market" game to apply to any kind of player. And it's also just a matter of financial viability: Dual Universe might the first MMORPG to use cloud technology to host the game universe and it will have a cost per player. Yes, Dual Universe will be a niche game, but with a community probably much bigger than all those against the subscription model can imagine: Free to Play and Buy to Play have shown they weren't perfect models or the ideal solution for every game. In short, there are not the prophetized evolution as they were presented. There are just alternatives, and alternatives that make sense in specific cases. As it is now, they're are not the models that make the most sense for Dual Universe. Plain and simple. 2) If you don't see other reason for the slow progress of the kickstarter, here are a few that are quite obvious: - Dual Universe was nearly unknown 3-4 months ago. Visibility takes time. A lot of players that can be potentially interested are not even aware yet of the game existence. - There have been a few recent events (notably one very ambitious Sci-Fi game made by an indie studio that promises a lot more than what has been really delivered) that generated - understandably - a lot of distrust to the genre and we happen to have started the Kickstarter campaign in the middle of that. This is very unfortunate, but we couldn't reschedule the kickstarter campaign for later. So we have to deal with it. - There have been several kickstarter projects that have disappointed recently, generating - again understandably - some distrust to the crowdfunding model. This didn't help to promote the game either. We still think that Kickstarter is a powerful way for indie developers to finance their game, even if there are projects failing. It's not a perfect model (no one is), it's true it can be improved, but it's a model that need to exist, just because it's a relevant model in many cases. Failure shouldn't make loose faith in a model or a genre, especially when there have been also many success, but this is something only players can decide on a personal level and the mood nowadays tends - unfortunately - to see the bad without seeing the good. We hope this will have answered most of the questions on the topic. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi ChipPatton and welcome to our forum. There has been indeed a few people on the Kickstarter saying DAC was a "Pay to Win" feature. We also replied to why it wasn't and why we went for this feature. We also agreed that it probably wasn't a perfect model, but it was the best we found until now. This was our official reply: The DAC/PLEX/CREDD system isn't at fault there. The problem is elsewhere because without this system, the problem remains: it's just hidden. And it's not because something is hidden that it doesn't exist. The people we got in contact with (probably your officers) turn a complete blind eye on our point of view. They didn't try to understand our position or even suggest an alternative. It's always easy to blame or criticize something without trying to come with a better option. In this situation, how could the discussion go anywhere? Threatening to cancel the pledges (and doing so) won't change the situation either if there no dialog and just threats. We want to listen to feedbacks from all people interested in our game and take them into account, but without constructive feedback helping to find a good compromise for both sides, it's not possible. Also, while we want to satisfy as much players as possible, We are also aware that we can't satisfy everybody. In any case, we remain open to discussion if you have more to say on this topic. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi Metalmamoth and welcome in the Dual Universe community. So to address your concerns (or at least give you an explanation, even if it's not the one you would have expected), here are some answers: Please make the difference between what would seem nice in your opinion and what is really needed. No, it's not essential to make customizable prefab blocks in our game: what you're asking requires a considerable amount of development time. It's like asking to develop ingame a tool like 3D Studio Max, Maya or Blender, each of these software having a full dev team behind it. Keep in mind that we are an independant studio and while we have a bigger team than the average indie, we can't be compared to big studios like Bioware or Blizzard. We have to choose our battles, to make tough choices about what we will develop and what we won't. This + the fact that our dev team wants to keep a minimal control about the artistic direction are the main reasons why we won't have prefab customizable blocks. Does it have to be Massively Multiplayer? Short answer: Yes. Long answer: If you like playing on small private servers to play with small communities carefully selected, that's perfectly fine and you have already many games aiming to achieve this goal: Space Engineers, Starmade, etc. On the other hand, there are NO massively multiplayer Builder games as we intend to do. That's one of the big reason why there has been a lot of investment developping the tech necessary to make it happen. We are perfectly aware that it won't be everybody's cup of tea, but we aren't trying to satisfy every player either. There is no game offering such experience at the moment and we're intending to provide such service. If massively multiplayer games don't appeal to you, then maybe it's not a game for you. From what you are saying, other building games have performance issues with huge voxel constructions, and we can understand that's a problem. However, if you prefer their way of doing things (private servers, small communities), it would be more relevant to ask them directly to address the problem in their game than attempting to modify the vision of a game (like Dual Universe) that has entirely other goals. If you see our game like a "Space Engineers" clone, then you have missed most of our goals with the project: building spaceships and cities is just the corner stone of a bigger edifice. We want to combine Building gameplay with a player-driven economy, constested territories and politics. These last three gameplay aspects won't thrive unless we reach a critical mass regarding the number of players. That's the big reason to go for a massively multiplayer online structure. Dual Universe is not a game meant for children. So unfortunately, this scenario is not relevant. There's currently a high chance that our game will be rated PEGI 18 when it will be officially released. Not because of offensive content included originally in the game (there won't be any), but because of the very nature of sandbox games (especially when it comes to massively multiplayer games): giving player freedom is something that is expected in a Massively Multiplayer Sandbox game, but it comes with some duties. This is not something you can ask from someone who isn't legally responsible because of his age. You can see Dual Universe as a Minecraft-like game made for mature, adult players. We want to build a community with players responsible for their actions and ready to handle the consequences of their actions ingame: do not trust blindly someone you've just met one minute ago, do not transport valuable goods in an unprotected spaceship, etc. You would be perfectly right if we wanted to develop a "theme park" MMO like World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Star Wars the Old Republic, etc. In this kind of games, the developers mission is to bring huge amount of content regularly. To sell expansions in this scenario would be totally relevant. But in a Sandbox context, where players make their own content? Sure the dev team plans to add regularly additional gameplay mechanics, to offer aways more gameplay possibilities to the players, but would it be enough to convince the most part of players to buy an expansion ? nothing is less sure than that. And that's probably why CCP preferred to keep a subscription model instead of selling expansions (despite the fact they did make expansions, they didn't sell them and kept the monthly subscription formula). This would be a very very risky bet. With all due respect, there might be a third possibility: Without having all the cards in hand to judge objectively, you're making a (probably involuntary) biased assessment, and the way you calculate the costs are incredibly far from the reality (with the costs being in fact much higher than what you are thinking). Unless you have already managed and directed the budget for a Massively Multiplayer Online game, you're not qualified to make such bold statement as above. Continuing to affirm such things would be just arrogance. It has become increasingly common in the recent years to see many players jump to the conclusion that devs are immediately greedy and/or evil masterminds as soon as the price of a game isn't the price they deem reasonable without having made rigorous market studies on the topic and/or being fully aware of how much cost a game, and especially a MMORPG (costs skyrocket when you're aiming for Massively Multiplayer Online Game, available 24h/24 7d/7 with all the logistics behind. Moreover, the costs for an offline single player - or a player hosted server - game is nothing comparable to the costs of a MMO game. Another point that makes your reasonnement starting on a wrong basis: currently, Dual Universe isn't planned to require a payment equal to a full game price from day one. So to reach the price of a Buy to play Model, you will have to play and pay at least 4 months (+ the free trial period) if we refer to standard monthly fees, before reaching the same cost. After all this time in game, if you don't want to pay anymore, you will still have the alternative to buy monthly subscription tokens from other players with your ingame money (or even before: if a player is active enough, it might be possible to buy the first monthly subscription token right after the free trial period expires). This is exactly how the PLEX system from EvE Online works. So in all honesty, we have a hard time to see how this formula can be seen as greedy or evil. It's a balance between giving people with low budget but with lots of free time to join the game and the investment in the game (be it in time played or money) as a deterrent to adopt a bad behavior. If you have read our devblog post here, we do tell that the B2P model (Buy once, Play forever) is a strong deterrent to player negative behavior, nearly as much as the Pay to Play model. Our main concerns with the "Buy to Play" model are elsewhere: - This is an immediate paywall that would discourage many players with low budget. - This makes our alternative to play for free impossible. For more info, read the first part of the DevBlog ("Being able to play the game without spending money"), and especially the "Pay to Play" part explaining the benefits of the PLEX system used by EvE Online (and copied by other MMOs like Wildstar and World of Warcraft). - This is not a solid and sustainable model unless we invest a huge amount of our budget in developping a cash shop. Because MMORPGs with a Buy to Play model always have a huge (some players would say oversized) cash shop. The server and the team behind a MMORPG aren't just financed by the sales of the game. On the long term, the main revenue to finance all this is generated by the cash shop. As we are aware that relying too much and/or becoming dependant from a cash shop revenue can generate many problems, that one more reason to be careful about this model. That being said, an official thread will be made soon to answer and adress all the concerns about the Pay to Play monetization model. There are already too many threads about this topic, and it's about time that all the related discussions are gathered in the same place. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Well, it's a noble goal to warn fellow gamers of a possible scam. But be sure to check the honesty of your source before following him blindly in his diffamation and misinformation speech. There are some points that don't add up in the scam theory: If we tried to scam and deceived people, would we opt for a monetization model where we plan to make a free trial before starting a monthly sub? Obviously, it would be suicidal to give access to the game, even temporarily for free if we wanted to scam people. On the other hand: - Bluedrake42 seems to present only information that could back his side of the story. - He hasn't even tried to contact us to check his assumptions. - When we asked some explanations on his Youtube channel, he didn't validate our comment on purpose (he has validated other comments, more recent, since then) for some reason known only from himself. Transparency seems to bother him. - The tweet pinned on his twitter account is self explanatory: In short, he's proud to say that he doesn't care if he's right or wrong, if he's loved or hated. All he cares is visibility. In the end, the bad guys are not always those who appear to be in the first place. Not all indie developers are scammers, not all youtubers have good intentions. Do not follow blindly what others say. If you have a doubt, ask the involved persons before accusing them. Indie developers generally answer to the questions. In other words, make an opinion by yourself, do not just follow an opinion made by someone who has visibility. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi SzaryWilk, To give additional info complementary yo vylqun answer: 1) Yes, all players will be on one single server (using cloud computing), managed by Novaquark. No player-hosted server will be possible. 2) Yes, a Kickstarter campaign, planned for the end of the year. 3) What's planned at the moment (but it might change): Alpha Team members will get access to the Alpha a few months after the Kickstarter campaign. There are two ways to join the Alpha Team: - by being an active member of the community who brings constructive suggestion & feedback and/or contribute to the community growth. (the Novaquark team will decide on a case by case basis) - by backing the game during the crowdfunding campaign. (minimum pledge amount still in discussion) We adopt the same philosophy for Alpha Access than for our Monetization Model: by bringing personal and significant contribution to the community or by supporting financially the game, this show proof that a player cares about the game and contributes to its development. Considering that, we assume players corresponding to this profile are the ones we seek to help us improving the game during the Alpha. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

@Vylqun & Semigod: Eagle777 is from Russia. He made some efforts to write in English (even if it's still difficult to understand) @Eagle777: If I understand well what you are saying, I don't think we can't compare EvE Online and Dual Universe on many aspects: 1) In EvE Online you can build things, but you can't design the shape of your ships or your buildings. It's already predefined in the game. 2) In EvE Online you have planets and Planetary Interaction, but you can't walk yourself, as a character on any planet surface, nor modify it either. 3) Dual Universe is more centered on a character avatar than a ship model considered as an avatar. So while both games have similar points, they are also very different. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Our Art team has grown significantly since the beginning of the year, both in seniority and by the number of dedicated artists. This has impacted the development on two aspects: 1) Harmonizing the Art Direction Recent artworks and 3D models (still work in progress) published share a common style: - Heavy weapon turret 3D model - Cockpit Concept Art for solo spaceships - Decorative Props for city streets - The new reactor 3D Model displayed in Marmoset later today You can see in these visual assets the art style (work in progress) we plan to use to represent the "United Nations" and human technology at its peak before embarking in the Arkships (keep in mind it might evolve quite a bit between today and the official release or even the Alpha phase). 2) Including their knowledge and their skills in the first screenshots We had planned to post some screenshots sooner, but we felt it would be a missed opportunity if we didn't include some of the massive improvements, relatively quick to implement, coming from the new guys. No doubt this will have a significant impact on how the game will look & feel. These first screens won't contain the final quality of the playable Alpha, but it will give some ideas of where we are heading. So brace yourselves for the first in-game screenshots in the second half of May! Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone, A DevBlog about Monetization Models is in the pipeline (not the next one, but the one after). It will explain in details all the reasons why we chose the P2P model instead of the others (F2P and B2P) and they are many. Here's a quick explanation about how we are planning to monetize the game: We assume we will have two global types of players: 1) Those who have a lot of available time to play the game but not necessarily a lot of money to spend in games (example: students) 2) Those who haven't a lot of available time to play the game but have a bigger budget to spend in games (example: people already working and having a family) Let's say category 1 players like the game gather a lot of in-game money... but they have a problem: the cost of the monthly subscription. Let's say category 2 players like the game and pay the monthly subscription... but they have a problem: they haven't enough time to play to gather the amount of in-game money they need to enjoy their favorite activities. We will provide the opportunity to buy monthly subscription coupons for real money. These coupons could be sold on the markets in Dual Universe for in-game money. This could solve 3 problems with one feature: - Category 2 players will buy coupons and sell them to category 1 players: They will have very quickly all the in-game money they need for their activities. Their problem is solved. - Category 1 players will be able to stay in-game without paying their subscription. Their problem is solved. We can see that as a reward for contributing very actively to game economy. - On our side, we will have always as many subscriptions as the number of players, which should stabilize the ratio income/costs. It's just that some players will pay the subscription for others in a system where everybody wins something (time or money). This Monetization model is already used by several big MMOs: - EvE Online (PLEX system) - World of Warcraft (Time Tokens) - Wildstar (CREDD) In our opinion, this is a good evolution for the subscription model. Furthermore, while it can work for Theme Park MMOs, we think it works best with Sandbox MMOs. And so, it might be the most appropriate for Dual Universe. But we are very interested to know what you think of it! P.S: there might be a cash shop in the future. But if such a thing appears, it will only contain items with no impact on the gameplay (= cosmetic) Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Well, we have of course considered this fact. But the real questions are: - Is the subscription model really on a decline that can't be avoided? - What are the exact reasons why the model is declining? - Is it just due to some changes in consumer habits as most of the big publishers claim? - If there was other reasons, who would be less acceptable to the players, would the big publishers will tell them with transparency? Don't get us wrong here. The idea is not to blame the big publishers. But our stand on the situation is what is regularly said is biased, for economic reasons. The more a game has a big budget, the more the investors risk a large sum of money, the more they want to secure Return On Investment. There is no evil there, it's just life. And limiting the risks conducts inevitably to... copy something that have already worked well, hoping the success will be repeated. If there are interrogations about why there isn't real innovation in the last decade on MMOs, from our point view, this is mainly because of this. And generally, indeed, players seems less and less motivated to pay a subscription for a game being a copy of another they played in the past. We might be wrong, but as time pass, we are more and more confident that subscription model is the way to go for our game, for many reasons that will be explained in DevBlog post dedicated to the monetization model. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi Spacelike, Indeed, we won't go for a "Free 2 Play" Model. A few people in the Novaquark Team have already worked on F2P titles and here is the opinion they built upon experience: While it may look like attractive like a siren's call on the paper (at first, it seems all fair and ethical as anyone can pay what he/she wants), there are a lot of drawbacks to this model. That's why we're aiming to another model, and we will probably make a Blog post in the near future to explain the details of the chosen monetization model, why and how we come to this solution As for a possible Linux version, we are thinking about it. It might be a stretch goal for the coming crowdfunding campaign.

Klatu: (Posted Tuesday 17th of March 2015 on the DevBlog) I stumbled across this game a couple of days ago and have since read everything I could find on it. It sounds awesome! If the ship is a real object with player avatars inside, and hostile players can board ships through hull breaches, would space be a hostile environmental? If so, how feasible would it be to provide atmospheres and space with some basic physical properties such pressure? I’m imagining players flying out into space when their hull is breached, and suffocating if they’re not wearing a pressure suit. You’ve mentioned space ships, do you have plans for land, air and sea (surface and submarine) vessels be buildable in a similar manner? Novaquark Team: (Posted Thursday 19th of March 2015 on the DevBlog) Implementing space void as a mortal environment is something we’re thinking of. But it will remain quite basic at the beginning. There will be three environment types: Planet Atmosphere, Construct Environment and Space Void. When your character is in one of the two first environments, he will be safe. If for some reason he ends up in Space Void, there are two possibilities: – If he is wearing a space suit, he’ll still be safe. – If not, this will mean instant death for him. Physical properties like pressure or atmosphere dilution when a breach is done in a Spaceship Hull won’t be implemented, at least not for now. We might develop this in the long run if we think it is feasible (remember that we plan to handle large-scale battles. And such mechanics are really resource-greedy in terms of calculation. This could definitely be a feature for a single player game. But we still need to test if that can be done for a MMO at a reasonable cost). Concerning the different types of vehicles: We currently plan spaceships and Hovering technologies for Land vehicles, and Reactor technologies for Air vehicles. We are also thinking about sea and submarine vehicles, but this won’t be available at the beginning. It will probably be an addition in the coming crowdfunding campaign Joshua: (Posted Friday 13th of March 2015 on the DevBlog) Will there be a guild or clan system that we can have. Even be able to have guild/clan battles for, lets say a certain sector control. Like lets say they can control a certain sector and set the price for entering to mine that certain place(But not allow them set it to high). Novaquark Team: (Posted Monday 16th of March 2015 on the DevBlog. Updated answer: Monday 23th of March 2015) Yes there will be struggles to fight over territories. This is a big feature planned for the game. For the guild / clan system… well, it’s the main subject of this DevBlog Post! Austin: (Posted Friday 13th of March 2015 on the DevBlog) Since we’ll be building our own ships, will it be possible to build a carrier ship equipped with fighters and/or bombers? Also, and this is probably just the fanboy me talking, would it be possible to build mobile suits like those seen in the anime Gundam? Novaquark Team: (Posted Monday 16th of March 2015 on the DevBlog. Updated answer: Monday 23th of March 2015) Yes, it will be possible to build a carrier with fighters and/or bombers piloted by players. For mobile suits like in Gundam or Aldnoah Zero… Even if the game is not specifically design for building mobile battle suits, from a technical point of view, nothing should prevent it. But it’s a bit early to confirm this right now. Estevan: (Posted Monday 2nd of March 2015 on the DevBlog) Would there be moving parts on ships that can interact with the real world? for example what if i want to build a pirate ship that had arm-claw-things on the bottom to attach to other ships for boarding or destruction purposes? would this be possible? Novaquark Team: (Posted Wednesday 4th of March 2015 on the DevBlog. Updated answer: Monday 23th of March 2015) Yes it should be possible to have moving parts on a ship, with the use of “Anchors” (a special unit type). But keep in mind this is still a very early design, and there is no promise this will be implemented in the game from start. You can see a Concept Art research here on our Facebook page. However, to have these moving parts used in PvP Mechanics is not what is currently intended, but this is definitely an interesting idea worth of the Idea Box! Estevan: (Posted Thursday 26th of February 2015 on the DevBlog) You've been talking about teams and alliances being an important part of the game. Would there be social areas that make finding people easier? Like lets say maybe postings at a pub that request a crew for a mission? or perhaps a specific place to meet possible allies? Also should there be people whod want to be a “crew for hire” would there be parts of the game that would incorporate that? Novaquark Team: (Posted Thursday 26th of February 2015 on the DevBlog. Updated answer: Monday 23th of March 2015) This will go directly in the Idea Box when it will be operational. Creating social features making life easier for players to interact with each other is on the list. Having “social hubs” where people can put requests looking for people (example: Mercenary for hire, Advertising to join a Player faction/corporation, etc) is something we are thinking about. More information on this DevBlog post. Wicpar: (Posted Wednesday 25th of February 2015 on the DevBlog) Will we be able to create a faction like the CSI in star wars, entirely made out of automated robots and “battledroids”? will there be a AI controlled repair system, so if an automated ship gets attacked, it can auto repair once finished? Will we be able to craft advanced game components like star trek like replicators, that use E=mc2 energy to create matter, and materials, and that can auto craft raw and manufactured materials(simple ones, like water stone, iron, glass, porcelan, food etc…) but needs to be programmed to do it first, and has a 80% E-M conversion efficiency? Novaquark Team: (Posted Wednesday 25th of February 2015 on the DevBlog) A faction entirely automated wouldn’t be a playable faction. We must keep in mind that we are building a MMO, to encourage players to gather in groups, around a common goal. Playing as a lone wolf will be possible to some extent. But you won’t have the advantages as a faction with many players in it. Having some droids as helpers for several tasks (repairing, mass producing, etc) is something in discussion. But right now, we can’t promise anything as this is a topic in progress. Wicpar: (Posted Wednesday 25th of February 2015 on the DevBlog) OK many thanks, I meant robots for more like automated transports between outposts, and for defence while offline. And for keeping factions from getting fully automated you could add a way to “hack” into the droids/system and disable everything and disable all, but it would be difficult if alone (you would be able to do it if you have a equal or superior force,or get to sneak into the central command core). And I hope you will in some time make an Idea box where people can post ideas (it will filter duplicates and link the people to the already existing idea) and up or downvote on them (and report if abusive or duplicate). I am insanely excited about the game. Novaquark Team: (Posted Thursday 26th of February 2015 on the DevBlog) This is an interesting concept. We have already some ideas about how players will protect their base or outpost, but what you’re suggesting could be an interesting advanced possibility once all the essential features of the game will be implemented. We will discuss it in the team. And about crafting advanced components, you won’t have start trek-like replicators but you will be able to create “Alloys”. These advanced components won’t be available right from the start: The Alloys will be discovered with research done by players. And for the Idea Box… Don’t worry: it’s coming right with the forum opening. Wicpar: (Posted Monday 2nd of March 2015 on the DevBlog) Amazing, thanks, I would like to add another request for very late improvements: have the ships be able to melt with a voxel based temerature. if it melts, it would convert itself to a metaball representing liquid metal (or use the system you use for water) that can cool too and be changed back to a voxel, but it would keep the approximate shape of the metaball. so we could make huge furnaces and melt ships down, with all its crew and then sell it as salvage steel or whatever the material is ^^. or even build stuff like this: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/World_Devastator Novaquark Team: (Posted Wednesday 4th of March 2015 on the DevBlog) As already answered to PetdCat, implementing temperature mechanics is very unlikely, for many reasons: resource cost on server side (always remember we must develop for large-scale interactions, so what could be really cool in a single player or a multiplayer game is not always a good thing in a MMO), very low priority even if it’s feasible, game balancing, etc etc. Don’t get us wrong: the idea is really cool. But it just seem to us it’s not really compatible with the project. PetdCat: (Posted Saturday 21st of February 2015 on the DevBlog) The idea of being able to disable/board a ship, or provide a diversion while the special ops team attempts to infiltrate is a great idea. That is a mechanism that we have not really seen before and would provide an whole new level of strategy to the game. If you also think about it, in a voxel game, weapons matter. if you melt through a hull with a laser or particle beam, is the opening “hot” for those attempting to enter through it, possibly damaging their suits if they touch it? If you use something kinetic, like an explosive, can the pieces blow off the ship you are fighting damage your ship if you get too close? If you do so much damage to a ship that it explodes while you are along side attempting to board, can your ship take damage? A great deal of possibilities for things we have never been able to do before. Novaquark Team: (Posted Wednesday 25th of February 2015 on the DevBlog) You’ve brought very interesting ideas to the topic. However, we must also take into account what is feasible in terms of large-scale battles. Representing that some voxels can be warm due to a weapon shot and damage approaching player might be possible in a single player or a multiplayer game, but probably too much resource-consuming on server side to be represented in a MMO. Imagine if this was handled for hundreds or even thousands of ships present in a conflict… we need to keep in mind to make the game run smoothly even in these cases Estevan: (Posted Saturday 7th of February 2015 on the DevBlog) How would the player design the ship? Will there be individual pieces that can be put together in different orders? or is there some form of base model then editing it with color and adding shape changes? Im curious about this aspect. Novaquark Team: (Posted Monday 9th of February 2015 on the DevBlog) As we really want to give maximum freedom to players creativity, there will be several steps to create a ship: – Creating the hull: this will be basically voxel manipulation/sculpting. Like in Minecraft, but with Dual Contouring (it will be possible to “polish” the voxels). – Adding “Elements”: it will consist in plugging interactive 3D props (obtained by using a crafting system) on the hull from different categories: Control Units (to pilot the ship: Computer Screen, Cockpits), Engine Units (Reactors and such), Weapons Units… – “Painting” the hull: As this is still work in progress, we can’t give many details on this step for the time being but we are definitely looking into painting voxels. We hope this answers your questions! Jared: (Posted Saturday 31st of January 2015 on the DevBlog) I’m really excited about this game, I’m so glad that you are trying new things and are expanding into new areas of game development. As far as multiplayer crew goes how will communication be possible will the game support its own voice chat system or will players have to rely on third party voice chats such as Skype. Again I’m really stoked for this game and will be following its development with much interest. Novaquark Team: (Posted Friday 6th of February 2015 on the DevBlog) Thanks for your encouragements! As gamers ourselves, we are aware that nothing is better than a voice chat system to coordinate teamplay in real time. We are currently exploring possibilities on this side, to implement a voice chat system directly into the game. Some popular voice chat systems are evolving this way, to offer some “embedded solutions” like Teamspeak. However, we are far from having decided anything on this aspect for the time being. If you have any suggestions in mind, feel free to tell us! Jared: (Posted Wednesday 11th of February 2015 on the DevBlog) I agree that a built in voice chat system would be incredible beneficial as far as teamwork is concerned, still though I am wondering if you have any ideas on how to deal with talking in crowded areas. Many games have a talk key that only allows your voice to be heard when it is held down. I find that method cumbersome especially in games that require a lot of your focus. As an idea, I have always wanted a game with true voice mechanics so that if your talking your voice only carries so far and if your yelling it can be heard farther away. I don’t know how this might be accomplished or if it is even feasible for a game, but I think it would fit in well with a game designed around immersion and a real world feel. Novaquark Team: (Posted Friday 13th of February 2015 on the DevBlog) This is definitively an interesting idea! You’re 100% right on the fact it would improve immersion. We will discuss about it in the team to see if this can be developed in some ways. If this seems achievable, it will most likely be a stretch goal for the crowdfunding campaign!

(Posted Friday 30th of January 2015 on the DevBlog) Piloting a spaceship in a videogame is a classic of the Sci-Fi genre. Amazing titles have been written based on that idea. Most of the time you get to control a given ship, among a set of predesigned ships, either in first person view within the cockpit (Wing Commander style), or from a third person view outside of your ship (Eve Online style). You will be able do that in Dual Universe too, but there is more. First, in Dual you won’t have to use predesigned ships, and in fact there will be no predefined ships. We will have some basic ships available at the beginning but nothing will force you to use those. You will be able to build your own, or buy a model designed by another player or organization, from a nearby market. With the balancing provided by the supply and demand selection mechanism (I’ll talk more about the ingame economy in another blog post), the best ship designs will naturally emerge, incremental improvements will be made on them over time and innovation will disrupt the status-quo from time to time. Just like in a real market economy. The first ship you will pilot will likely be a single seated one-person ship, mostly for transport or small cargo jobs. The experience of piloting such a ship will be similar to the classical cockpit first person/third person view we mentioned at the beginning (you will be given ways to choose which type of view you want). Now, the interesting thing is that a ship is not a special entity in the game. It is in fact a construct like any other - it just happens to have reactors and ship-like elements that make it behave like… a ship. But in particular, it can be given any shape and any size, provided that you are able to equip it appropriately in terms of power and control so that it can fly. Being on a planet surface, entering a ship and being “in” a ship is also a completely continuous experience for the player, there is no formal boundary. So you could have a truly gigantic ship, hosting a complex infrastructure inside, with hundreds of rooms and corridors. People would be free to embark the ship, walk inside it, jump out of it. Think of all the possibilities. The control of this multiplayer crew ship would be distributed to several players according to their specialization. People for navigation, some others for left bank/right bank weapon systems, missiles, others for repair facilities, radar, energy systems, com, or for the faster-than-light engine, etc. You would need real team play to fly an interstellar mothership, creating emergent “professions” ingame as people specialize in certains aspects of ship control. Now, imagine combats. Besides the specialized weapons allocation to various crew members, the fact that the ship is a real object and not some formal 3D image allows for incredible things: partial structural damage that must be repaired (crew members racing to fix this broken hull - FTL anyone?), but also even more exciting is the possibility to board another ship after having cracked open its hull. In my opinion, from an emergent/strategic point of view this is a very interesting alternative to the classical way of completely destroying any enemy ship during combat: instead, board it and take control! Note that we don’t know yet how much of this will be playable in the alpha or beta stage, but it will definitely be something we will support in the long term. Once again, at the heart of all these ideas are key game-technology changes (real ships created by players), together with emergent gameplay. What players will do with this is still not really known, but the possibilities are huge and exciting! JC Baillie, Project Lead