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BLUEPRINTS STICK WITH YOU THROUGH ALPHA/BETA


wizardoftrash

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After giving the most recent Kickstarter update video a listen, I got a nice little nugget of info.

 

~Blueprints will not be wiped between Alpha, Beta, and the Release.

 

This gives a tangible advantage to players at the gold level and higher, as the time they spend building (and helping test for that matter) the voxel system, ship building, and base building will get to carry-over all of their blueprints and potentially have an economic advantage at game launch. While other players are trying to develop ships from scratch or working off of the start ships, Alpha/Beta players will already have designs with a slick uniform look and possibly so will their respective org. Despite not having access to all launch features, this makes ORG play viable at least in Beta to acquire an advantage for main release.

 

Does this provide an unfair advantage to Alpha/Beta players? An advantage sure, however our characters probably won't get to keep the levels we had to gain to make those builds possible. When the wipe hits after beta and before main launch, every other tangible resource will still be an obstacle for players who have a bank of blueprints from the previous versions.

 

I for one will try to flex my Alpha and Beta muscles with the Alchemists to get a head start on builds!

 

Pretty neat eh? I'd HIGHLY recommend upping those pledges to at least gold at this point if you haven't already  ;)

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Nope. 

 

First of all, is not going to happen for sure.

Then you'll need skills and materials to create even a basic ship at release, so you'll have time to understand the voxel mechanics and design one. 

People will share blueprints with friends and their organizations.

People will post blueprints and voxel mechanics on the forum, so that everyone will have a basic understanding for release.

I heard there'll be an open beta before release.

A lot of stuff will change through alpha/beta, designs will change constantly. Only in the last couple of months before release designs will be kinda good.

Many other reasons. 

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Nope. 

 

First of all, is not going to happen for sure.

 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1949863330/dual-universe-civilization-building-sci-fi-mmorpg/posts/1690156

They said that blueprints will be the only thing that won't be wiped after alpha and beta, and so far their message has been preeeeettttyyyy consistent.

 

and the rest of your post is pretty solid, I don't beleive it will be an insanely unfair advantage, but it'll be a big help to people who want the look of their ships and structures to be solid. Players will need to make tweaks as versions go up, but a player with an alpha and beta's worth of building experience only needing to tweak a ship is going to be a tangible advantage over players building from scratch day 1. Plus, if a player can turn around and sell BP's in the early game, that is sort of a way to build a product pre-launch for an in-game advantage.

 

An open beta would be a good way to even the odds too, but those players won't have the same amount of time to learn the systems and controls as the players during Alpha and Closed Beta.

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Same feature was in (Everquest) Landmark... Except that many of those LM-blueprints just stopped working after the release, due to some new bugs being included and some tools revamped. No advantage anymore to those who backed early and has been through development time...

I really hope that the very same thing won't happen in Dual Universe - Devs, please, learn from LM mistakes, I beg you :)

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I am definitely glad they are letting people save Blueprints through launch.  Wiping progression and inventories is the way to go but wiping something creative like blueprints would just be depressing.

 

Anyone who participates in an Alpha or Beta will always have an advantage just because of familiarity with the game anyway.

 

The thing i found about saving designs in Landmark was that most of the time when i dig up a really old one and place it i immediately think it looks horrible and that i can do it way better now anyway.  So a lot of my older designs really just end up being souvenirs.

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Yes, it feels unfair. But these players (I am one of them) make this game more and more real. We gona work on this project improvements (true, some of testers will try to play and probably will be disappointed, but we are testers, it is work). So that is very little reward. It will be a pay-back for our time and financial support.

 

I'm not against that and won't cry if Dev will remove this option.

 

Thanks,

Archonious

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It'll be kinda neat too to have an "antique" design from alpha on the full release marketplace. I'm curious if we see design trends shift evough during the different phases that the "hot" end-beta designs end up looking completely alien compared to the alpha blueprints?

 

Then there could be culturally an antique look and a modern look for ships, a player may even want to collect antique ships? This opens some neat doors that I'd rather not see close.

 

Plus keeping blueprints incentivizes players to do exactly what the devs want us to do, emphasize building and cooperation. If I build something in Alpha/beta that I want to re-build from BP in the release, the fastest way to do that is get help and team up! Share designs for feedback, share scripts to get the "perfect drift" on our hovercars for the hovercar races. All kinds of good stuff here.

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My brother backed at the Gold level, and we have already hashed out a couple of really cool ship ideas. He will be glad to know that if he succeeds in building one in Alpha/Beta, it won't be lost on release! (The design that is.)

 

As far as it being an unfair advantage? Nah. If anything, it will help the game become interesting earlier than it would have otherwise. I mean, if everyone is flying around on a hoverboard or in an ugly ship just because it was easy to build, it won't exactly inspire creativity. But when you see a couple awesome police cruisers glide past, escorting a sleek dignitary transport, yeah....that'll do it!

 

Also, I think any ship created directly from an Alpha or Beta blueprint should have a special designation in addition to its classification type, (I assume they will have those?) maybe something like: "Explorer Class", or, "Founder Class", etc. (with the actual ship classification it would look like: "Explorer Corvette Class", or, "Founder Behemoth Class.) Just so long as they don't call it, "Alpha Class," or, "Beta Class,"....that would kind of stink.

 

Anyway, that would possibly add to a ship's collectability, as mentioned above, since it would confirm that the design was indeed pre-release.

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  • 2 months later...

In the beginning ti will give the backers the advantage of getting away from the new players and not interfering with their learning, sure but in the relative future i think these alpha/beta ships will just be more of prestige items to show off that you played for so long and if its a good item you can claim you did the best design in alpha and compete with other alpha players on whos idea was the best for its time.

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Right you are. And most blueprints are going to be player-created anyway, so it's not going to be backers getting loads of blueprints for free. Sure, there'll be some pre-made ones, but the vast majority will be handcrafted.

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