Idea to make people wait productively

[Hiztaar]

Hi everybody,

 

As I arrived to late for founder pledges I am one of the many who will not be able to attend alpha 1. But I think it should not be a blocker to be able to actually "use" DU. What I propose is that pledgers and supporters could have access to a kind of "closed local building area", in which we could build and train our skills in ship or construction design (and LUA scripting + all kind of stuff). It could allow non-alpha players not to be totally killed from start by founder players having super advanced blueprints and much higher experience in designing. Constructions might be erased with any breaking update, but it's the deal of an alpha anyway. As per "local" it would not be hosted by the servers but only by the client machine.

 

It's a small idea but I thought it would be an interesting one nonetheless.

[Megaddd]

What you suggest here will not work because they have already enough people as it is to stress test their server architecture, and now that they have a concrete number of the maximum amount of people that could load their servers, throwing it up into the ether again would be a bad move.

 

However, what would be interesting to me personally, is a single-player version of the game for messing around with (a client+server bundle), however considering their server tech is (extremely likely) proprietary, they probably don't want to distribute it freely. Would be pretty cool, not happening, unfortunately..

[Lethys]

Well, that's exactly why people bought alpha....Your idea would diminish the perks we got for pledging early and trusting nq. 

[Hiztaar]

1 hour ago, Megaddd said:

What you suggest here will not work because they have already enough people as it is to stress test their server architecture, and now that they have a concrete number of the maximum amount of people that could load their servers, throwing it up into the ether again would be a bad move.

 

However, what would be interesting to me personally, is a single-player version of the game for messing around with (a client+server bundle), however considering their server tech is (extremely likely) proprietary, they probably don't want to distribute it freely. Would be pretty cool, not happening, unfortunately..

Actually it was the idea, an offline kind of "Hangar" a la SC.

[NanoDot]

1 hour ago, Hiztaar said:

Actually it was the idea, an offline kind of "Hangar" a la SC.

There simply aren't enough resources to tackle such a project.

 

There has been a suggestion that NQ should add a "creative mode" for building things in game to allow players to create blueprints without physically gathering all the resources first. Even that request was answered with "possibly some time after launch".

 

There's still a massive amount of development ahead for DU. And all that has to be tested, balanced, optimized and polished.

 

It would certainly be a nice toy to have, but I'd rather have the game launch 3 months earlier !

[Magz]

Have to agree with @Lethys here,

I think there would be an uproar if they gave access to an offline version for people who have not pledged as of yet.

NQ did give a significant amount of time for people to upgrade their pledges so imo, its just to bad and youll have to wait for supporter packs/beta.

 

As for the creative mode in general, i think it is an interesting idea.

However i think a creative mode would kind of ruin the game. Well not exactly ruin it but kind of throws away the concept of the game imo. 

I think everything you learn in terms of building and the game mechanics should be done online because the game is supposed to be rebuilding civilisation from scratch. Not going into some god mode-esk creative mode and perfecting everything then building it in the online word. Just my opinion

[blazemonger]

A creative mode in a MMO is simply not a viable option for what I feel are pretty obvious reasons. 

 

To get back to the OP.. There are plenty of ways for those who found DU late to prepare for their eventual arrival, one would be to play games that will offer similar options such as Space Engineers (voxel building),  Roblox (LUA) and even EVE online (community/PVP/economy/politics).

 

I agree that the idea of creating a 'waiting room' for those who are late where they can in actuality do what backers 'paid for' to have access to is simply not going to end well. And frankly, even if you get in on the second Alpha or even Beta stage you will still have plenty of time to 'catch up' and I really do not expect to see actual full loop gameplay before late Alpha2 or Beta anyway.

 

Lastly as I would expect the game to change quite a bit over the coming year and see many wipes/resets including a final one before release the advantage will not be that great, at best early Alpha backers will have the opportunity to start offering functional and useful blueprints to the market early on.

 

[Kuritho]

I hope there will be heavy equipment testing/monitoring:

Basically, you have to make sure you have safety systems working properly (unlike Chernobyl).

Make sure cooling fluid/heatsyncs are working.

And of course, overclocking/modifying refineries (down to tweaking "feedrate", increasing conveyor amounts, adding heatsyncs, DUAL-functionality [sorry, but I mean such as Refinery/Assembler or Refinery/Purifier combos, energy types [such as easily accepting normal fuel, mini-nuclear reactor, built in solar panels] and modularity [a longer refinery chain to reach higher temperatures on a conveyor line, and energy efficieny [at the cost of physical materials], yield [talking about higher purification/grade for the same amount of ore, NOT more ore /  and takes longer], and speed [which has lower purification/grade but can mass-produce {great for non-combat structures}]).

That was a huge parenthesis loop. My bad.

 

And I'm not even beginning on thrusters, water-machines, covfefe machines...

[TheBlender]

At OP 

 

Please keep in mind that this game isn't a free-for-all. You're perfectly free to learn under a founder and what they themselves have learned. Also, there will be a lot of changes I'm sure when the alpha and beta hits. What worked in alpha may not work well for the beta. 

 

You have time to catch up and time to learn from others. I'm sure that you will still be able to build your own special things, and that you won't allow being a little late to the party demoralise you. 

 

Carry on wayfarer ?