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Showing results for tags 'game design'.
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You should add blocky terrain like Minecraft, because a lot of people build buildings without land voxle. Also, it would save NQ server monkey. You guys have got to get it together and learn from your competitor, starbase. make cities more of them, and NPC made. ,make them empty so players can go in and make it theirs. NQ, you have to face the realty of the situation. Not enough players to make market work. Make more market, procedureally generated, with npc. the more players that use it, the less npc there is. Please do not add voxle corner editor. Make the game use the normal voxle tools so it adds challenge and makes buildings more special. It add new progression, called, "Voxlemancy" Let us make our own skyborgs! Skyborgs like space, nebula, white or etcetera It may sound like joke, but it good for games future (i am studying game designing, by the way) Rehire NQ-Entropy, fire NQ-Sesch make npc ships, make then fight like pew pew BAM, make it really deadily too so people have to go away, make it hard to find new market. when finding new procedure space market, far away, make it more cheaper items, so player have to fight through to it. add food, hunger, stanima, sprint and double super sprint, players go fast = less players going slow, fast = good and more play faster, good = money. NQ likes money, no? remove quantas, please make it gold ingot, so people can steal item Question myself below please
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At its current state DU is nothing more than a game prototype. All this talk about civilization building where the game mechanics are nothing remotely about "civilization building"... and no, ability to build cities with voxels does not qualify. A city is not a bunch of buildings, it's the social aspect and the reasoning behind living in a city in the first place. DU does not have social drivers for civilization, DU does not have selective pressures for civilization organization (no danger, no scarcity, pvp is just flying space castle sieges, no technological progression system at all)... The common plight of big universe games (Elite Dangerous I'm looking at you) is they are going for scale, not depth. In Elite, I can basically play the whole game loop in less than 2 hours, you just have millions of planets and systems to play that game loop in. I feel like DU is going the same way. A new system will not fix the current problems as it will only make the universe larger but will not add depth. It's a common and frankly silly mistake, especially in DU context. What I am proposing here is focusing on depth, which requires a massive amount of content (what we've been asking for since... forever). You get the depth right with a fun game loop for the majority, you can then extrapolate that unto new systems. I know that this whole thing is wishful thinking at this point of the "beta" that should be an early alpha, but here goes: A way to simulate "civilization" in DU would be to scrap this Eve talent system (some things really shouldn't be copied) and do an org-based technological progression system. NOTE, not a skills tree, a TECH tree: You have to be in an org to even progress in advanced technologies... Or there should be more technology branches available for group context Solo players should have basic technology progression available to them to facilitate solo play, and maybe a separate tech tree. Solo player tech tree should not be an afterthought, maybe it should have some cooler stuff than org tech trees. But the higher tier advanced stuff should only be in group context. Tech can only be progressed through when you are actively doing actions that facilitate skills /numbers that unlock a tech path (you have to play to progress) Vast technological skills tree that unlocks stuff on an org basis. This automatically creates groups of people that progress through technology differently and this adds a ton of variety to orgs. an org can choose to progress through a more electronic line of skill, while another one might focus on plasma, another one might focus more on laser tech. an org may choose to develop agricultural skills for resource generation, or more mining, or more building.. debatable topic here but it's not hard to imagine that with this system orgs will specialize As you climb further and further up the tech tree the branches have wider distance from each other, meaning that it's a lot harder to cover the whole tree (you need to specialize AS AN ORG in a certain area of technology) This should be a background systems with interesting skills (so you don't have to feel like you need to hit a rock X number of times to gain a better skill in idk... pooping). Skills progress organically based on actions, the difficult part is making the grind not grind for its own sake. You can have org waypoints (for example, some skills have multiple options and the org has to choose what type of said technology they want to unlock, they can't have both). IMPORTANT - this system gives devs a ton of room and opportunity to add more stuff to the tree whenever they want to, basically an unlimited system. An example of a skill tree from Path of Exile: Granted this is a different mmo and all that (do not comment on path of exiles, irrelevant to the topic, I'm just showing a tree, could have used a different game), but the principle remains the same. As you go out to the outer layers of the tech tree you are forced to specialize because it becomes much harder, even impossible to cover everything on the outer branches of the tree in a group context. Skill training is done organically in group context, you simply focus on what you want to train and do those activities. In my opinion this system simulates "civilization building" much better than the Eve talent system which only focuses on the individual anyway, with few skills in group context. The main thing with this tech system is it gives devs plenty of room to add more features and technologies to the tree, and as an mmo, new content is always important. Anyway, what do you all think? And before someone says "I specifically joined DU to avoid doing x number of stupid quests to gain a skill point", this is not what I mean by this tree. Tech should be acquired organically, not through some lame quests. Valheim for example has a really nice organic skill generation system, you don't even spec skills. You CAN'T. You automatically gain skill based only on what you do. I think this is a good system. I think it will encourage people to group up, I think it will add a ton of variety into orgs, and I think it will greatly increase specialized fun.
- 25 replies
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- skills system
- talent system
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A classic case of vision getting in the way of good game design (also known as fun). This is a post about what civilization is / can be in Dual Universe, and perhaps what went wrong. Before diving in, here are some of my assumptions: - JC is a scientist, not a game designer - JC is a micromanager - JC does not want to listen to his devs (some of which worked for Ubisoft and know a thing or two about good game design and mechanics) - Because of the assumption above, I also assume there's a degree of conflict between devs and JC - I assume a lot might change up to release since this is a beta, but something tells me... not really, given the track record so far of very good ideas being thrown away or not listened to (classic examples include bot market orders screwup in beta, this was talked about extensively by Blazemonger and a slew of other people in the community, was completely ignored, and the results are clear) Lets get the whole "but it's a beta" shtick out of the way... if you can't, just pretend that you can. To the point: The game suffers from very bad game design choices. My stance is, if this game was really about civilization building, the mechanics of the game would be very different than they are now. What is civilization? organization of individuals into social bodies due to selective pressures characteristics of civilization include: social structure and hierarchy, efficiency, work organization, supply of needs, development of more efficient technologies selective pressures that create civilization include, but are not limited to: resource shortage, non-uniform resource distribution, geography, weather, proximity to neighboring civilizations, war, dangerous environment, dangerous neighbors I'm sure a lot of you have seen (or were part of groups that tried to build) cities in DU. Some have actually done so. The problem is, they are completely useless and empty. They look nice, there was tremendous effort in making them, but they are completely nonfunctional because no one needs to be in a city. And that is due to the fact that there really are no selective pressures for civilization at all. There is no reason to be in a group because there is no danger. There is no scarcity of distribution of regular ore. We have safezones on all planets, and a big giant safezone around three planets. Why would anyone live in a city? There are no "white-collar" and "service" game mechanics that characterize cities. DU has no danger element at all (even in pvp zone, if you don't fly in the pipe, you're pretty much golden) DU has no progressive tech tree DU has no progression, it has quanta gates for elements that anyone can acquire and use given they have the quanta for it I can go on, but for an analysis of "civilization" just read this discord post: https://discord.com/channels/184691218184273920/304455542162587649/80629454165311491 I know this is wishful thinking at this point, but DU would be much better off with actual game design: Better Talent System: scrap the Eve talents system (some things should really not be copied), instead have a tech progression tree where you unlock technologies you can use. And have the skill grow based on your activity in the game, not a set amount of points per hour. It's gamey , it's simple, it's fun, it's very intuitive. And you can always add more tech to the tree indefinitely as the game grows. This will allow whole orgs to gravitate towards a direction in the tech tree so we actually get diversity in org playing styles. For example, one org can develop their pvp armadas with ballistics (machine guns, gattling guns, big bertha weapons), another org might focus their armada pvp tech research into laser or electonic warfare. The same can go with unlocking building technologies. The same can go for politics and leadership styles within an org. Have it all be a research tree. There are countless ways of adding diversity and different paths to a game using this mechanic instead of the Eve Talent Points system. Safe Zones: seriously.. is Sanc Moon not enough? The game lacks any danger and people just stop playing because of tedium and burn out. You won't believe how hard it is to convince people to gather into PVP events in this game because they're just too bored of it, it has zero consequence. Sanc moon is a sanctuary moon. That is its purpose. Better Consequences: This game has the wrong consequences. What seems to be happening is a bunch of nerfing to create more consequences in the game, such as talk about nerfing linked container distance, brakes, mining, this whole permadamage to elements, etc. How about actual danger, not the tedium of fixing and replacing parts? How about lowering the cost of building guns and ammo? Halfing most of the voxel HP? How about designing the game so that more people can get into pvp easier, and if they lose, the cost isn't too great that they are discouraged from ever trying it again? JC should actually listen to his devs and game designer (if he has one): lets face it, economists, mathmeticians, scientists, or whoever NQ may or may not consult about their game.. they are not playing the game. WE ARE. What we are witnessing is the result of the disconnect between how gamers play and how JC thinks a game should run. And it is our wallets that are paying. This means JC should listen to his devs. This means JC should really hire a game designer, they are a rare species and it's difficult to find a good one, but if you do, please listen to that person. JC may know stuff about robotics, but as I see it, he has no clue about human psychology, especially gamer psychology. My rant is over. Catch me outside how bout dat.
- 56 replies
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- game design
- civilization
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Hi I'm Wesley Bruce, wesbruce in may games. That heading was not quite serious, Much. I am a geographer and would be game designer but not a programmer. I don't even have a computer that can run the game though I am planning to buy a new PC. Dyslexia makes reading code hard hence my interest in non code based solutions: Second Life, Voxels, Blenders little boxes, minecraft. Played many MMO's. I have abandoned avatars everywhere. I know Geography, some astronomy and planetology, human ecology, some economics and chemistry. Degree Australian National University. I've out lived my membership in the National Space Society twice! (A Sad story and a funny story there.) I know all the old L5 society stuff. Also I have blog posts on para-terraforming, sea steading, space stuff. Two NASA submission, not winning but considered useful. I have some skill in blender, wings 3D, sculptris, etc. Enough to be useful in a team but not on my own. I've studied game design informally including game economics, quest/ tutorial design, map pitfalls, voxel theory, minecraft modding. I checked out the jobs on offer at NQ and know I could help but I'm not that good. Total lack of formal qualifications matters! And I know my limitations. I'm also in Australia. A long way from Paris which may be an issue. I have Skype. PM me for it if you need it. My current job is as a carer, disability support but that is diminishing as the guy I look after gets better at doing things. He has Cerebral Palsy and more university qualifications than me. I'm a crazy ideas man with an idea of what JC baillie is wanting to do, how it's working and some of the things needed. I can also see the pit falls ahead; that may make me useful. I'm a bit of a lore master with many ideas. I hope to see you in-game some day.