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Realistic incentives for City building


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On 4/12/2018 at 5:55 AM, Aaron Cain said:

This, i do not agree with. Any MMO i have played, even with voice chat has a need for social intereaction, people want to show their skins and emotes, and some more things in that field. Simply because being alone on the chat without seeing another avatar can get boring, feels more lonely then when you goof around between more players, and thats where the social factor will be present in any MMO. Build it And they will come. Why else is there already a few topics of people that want to be able to wave in game ;)

Regarding the need to socialize option.  It would be interesting if any voice chat options in game had a mode of location based proximity chat.  This would give a more RL need to congregate in the same area.  only being able to 'hear' someone if they are in range of your 'voice' per se.  Other methods to communicate could be used as well such as doing away with the location based voice range idea all together and using the 'anyone can talk to anyone' method like the various voice chats available today.

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  • 1 month later...

Hey Guys,

 

I am an old mayor/architect from Star Wars Galaxies. Some things that I saw player cities being popular for in that game were as follows:

 

1. A physical representation of Player Associations (guilds) aligning. Many PA Halls would be in a city together and usually those players would congregate in that area and place there homes nearby.

 

2. City facilities and recources inaccessible or inconvenient to access through single player progression and gameplay. As your city leveled up you could get a bank, skill trainers, market access terminals, respawn location and eventually shuttle ports and spaceports. Rapid transportation and respawning was huge. This acted as a tie to the rest of the planet and eventually the rest of the solar system. 

 

3. Faction consolidation was also a big draw. If someone or a group of players were heavily into the Faction/PVP side of the game they could pool their resources and place bases and NPC defenders all around the city. These bases also provided places to get missions and  served the dynamic look and feel of the city. 

 

4. Wealth and power consolidation. Once your city had a decent number of residence you could have a actionable amount of money to put towards the progress of your city.  it gave your city the ability to jump ahead if used properly. When your city got ahead and you were the first to get a shuttle port in your area this meant that traffic would be going through your city to get to smaller cities in the area. This meant more people buying things in your city and a direct influence on the cities around you.  Thus wealth and power. 

 

Those are just the basics but the main thing that I hope DU has that SWG had but most games of this nature do not is systems that support non combat roles that are just as dynamic as combat roles. I loved that my only skills were Mayor/architect skills. Also in this game it has so much more potential in the aspect of scale and mass production of intricate objects and structures. Lean on that in my oppion. If I can place facilitiy hubs/cores and organize lots for people to build in I will be happy.  I saw a Power grid being suggested. I love that kind of detail from a gameplay dynamics position as long as it isn't unwieldy and tedious. A core unit or a set of linked core units that have a sphere of influence that is upgradable as your city progesses would be enough imo. I would love to discuss any of this further. This is how I want to play this game and I am happy to help make it a great experience. 

 

-Skylark

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I think when organizations have a certain territory locked down they'll want to rent out land (or buildings/hangars) to make money.

 

It would be in their interest to have services like markets and such to incentivise people to live there. If I was a miner I'd rather rent a hangar to store my stuff and ship and have the org take care of the security.

 

If a organization is successful in making money from a city from rent and taxes then other organizations will fall suit and compete. I think the leasing and selling of secure land will be a key driver in cities appearing and I'm sure the devs have other ideas to create incentives to make cities appear naturally.  

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 4/12/2018 at 12:55 PM, Stig92 said:

The key to cities is having reason for people to gather in limited area. I think another major incentive for this would be security.

 

The first post mentioned raiders, warmongers and grief players and if one area can offer protection against this. This depends on the territory mechanisms. We know there are territory units with some level of protection, but not invulnerable. Cities might be supported if there were much more powerful (still not 100% invulnerable) protections, that were also much more expensive so they would only be built in few places where many players would contribute, size and energy needs would also affect this. The protection could also consist of several elements like, TU, shield generator etc.

 

I haven't played EVE, but I've heard it has citadels or something like that, which are shielded against attacks except for specific set times. Would some gameplay element like that work for cities?

 

This way we could have relatively few places with higher security than what any individual player or small organization could get anywhere outside the safe zone around arkship and as such these areas would be attractive. 

 

I also remember seeing a post on this forum suggesting some system where individual territory has some protection or status and if it is completely surrounded by claimed territory it can be elevated to different status or something like that. This would also be one way to increase the cost of the protection so number of these places would be low enough to gather enough players.

Close. What will really drive the construction of a city is Organizations. Particularly the large ones with >50 players. The leader picks the planet/moon and lays down a territory unit and the rest of the members lay down territory units adjacent to other members and suddenly, you have a sprawling city of bases, meeting places, space ports and residences (people love their residences). This may also drive an architectural council that may intervene if your neighbor raises a massive penis right next to your life's work.

Additionally, you could coordinate defenses across the whole organization as well. It all depends on what the PVP mechanisms look like.

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True words, but what if the planet you are on turns into a war zone, or what if you dont like planet life and want to be spaceborn? 

Indeed then you build a space city, it will be harder to pull off but it will be a test to the boundaries of DU, and isnt that what we are all here for?

The same things count for that, why even build one in space? and Why would people like to live there? well since syfy lovers seem to be atracted to places like Babylon 5,  battlestar galactica and all to many series based In space there must be a good reason to go there, and the best reason is Adventure and elevated Risk. there are more risks, thus higher rewards, more chances on PVP and more hings to explore. If DU delivers what it tells us having a Space city that can actually move will be so much more attractive than a static city on a planet where everything will be the same every day and where you wake up onder the same sky everyday. But well, thats my point of view and i cannot wait to start building it after release.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Just wanted to pop in for my first post and bring something from my experience playing Eve Online. In Eve the farther out you went the more rare and expensive various items became. If you went to Jita you could find thousands of players and anything you could ever want all at the lowest prices. If you were out in the sticks you'd often have to make 10 jumps through hostile gates to get back and equip a replacement ship. The wise among us stocked up a personal base of operations in nearby "safe" stations but you would still eventually run dry and have to make the trek of shame.

 

On top of the "Jita effect" I can see various ship designers, coders, and arms manufactures taking up residence in various cities to build show rooms and dealerships. In Eve all the ships and modules were hard coded. In Dual Universe each product on the market will be something someone somewhere designed. I can see these two things, along with the inherent safety of having thousands of wealthy oligarchs selling weapons of mass destruction having a stake in the cities continued existence, leading to multiple massive player cities and various hubs and stations of all shapes and sizes.

 

I usually end up a low key weapons dealer and small ship manufacturer in these games so it's likely I'll spend most of my time out in some deeply hidden underground base of operations but no man is an island and even my feral self has to make a run to the city from time to time.

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Indeed,

What i do believe and i might be very wrong is that we need to rethink the whole city idea as being ground based.

With the possibility of an ever growing universe with organizations spreading far and wide the game might need moving cities in stead of solid cities on a planet that might be fully out of the loop after a few months/years. adding all these facilities to such a moving city might be a good incentive to join.

Just my vision.

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On 4/5/2019 at 1:17 PM, DecoyGoatBomb said:

Hey Guys,

 

I am an old mayor/architect from Star Wars Galaxies. Some things that I saw player cities being popular for in that game were as follows:

 

1. A physical representation of Player Associations (guilds) aligning. Many PA Halls would be in a city together and usually those players would congregate in that area and place there homes nearby.

 

2. City facilities and recources inaccessible or inconvenient to access through single player progression and gameplay. As your city leveled up you could get a bank, skill trainers, market access terminals, respawn location and eventually shuttle ports and spaceports. Rapid transportation and respawning was huge. This acted as a tie to the rest of the planet and eventually the rest of the solar system. 

 

3. Faction consolidation was also a big draw. If someone or a group of players were heavily into the Faction/PVP side of the game they could pool their resources and place bases and NPC defenders all around the city. These bases also provided places to get missions and  served the dynamic look and feel of the city. 

 

4. Wealth and power consolidation. Once your city had a decent number of residence you could have a actionable amount of money to put towards the progress of your city.  it gave your city the ability to jump ahead if used properly. When your city got ahead and you were the first to get a shuttle port in your area this meant that traffic would be going through your city to get to smaller cities in the area. This meant more people buying things in your city and a direct influence on the cities around you.  Thus wealth and power. 

 

Those are just the basics but the main thing that I hope DU has that SWG had but most games of this nature do not is systems that support non combat roles that are just as dynamic as combat roles. I loved that my only skills were Mayor/architect skills. Also in this game it has so much more potential in the aspect of scale and mass production of intricate objects and structures. Lean on that in my oppion. If I can place facilitiy hubs/cores and organize lots for people to build in I will be happy.  I saw a Power grid being suggested. I love that kind of detail from a gameplay dynamics position as long as it isn't unwieldy and tedious. A core unit or a set of linked core units that have a sphere of influence that is upgradable as your city progesses would be enough imo. I would love to discuss any of this further. This is how I want to play this game and I am happy to help make it a great experience. 

 

-Skylark

Great post. It gave me some ideas.

 

When they implement orgs in the game, they could do the following:

 

Each org gets an Organization Territory Unit and several organization static cores. Once that territory unit is placed, members above a certain rank can deploy and edit the static cores ONLY within that territory in close proximity. Them more members you have, the more cores the org gets (maybe even one per member?). If the org reaches a certain size, they get more territory units.

 

This would allow orgs to build bases/cities and create the clustering you talked about. They could also get a lot of the other benefits you mentioned. Maybe they train skills faster when inside the territory/ base? That kind of thing would work.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I think it will be very difficult to plan a city, people will naturally build close to marketplaces for convenience and cities will just grow naturally over time, a decentralised approach is needed.

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13 minutes ago, Belispeak said:

I think it will be very difficult to plan a city, people will naturally build close to marketplaces for convenience and cities will just grow naturally over time, a decentralised approach is needed.

Agree that big trading hubs will be in some safe zone, and people will build around it.

Though when some big alliances appear and get enough workers/resources - they will build own empires on some borders with their own market. As always EVE example: in main trade hub there are always ~2k people around, each neighbor system has many player owned structures that allow you to trade, build, invent and do almost everything. But at the same time in null-security big alliances have much bigger infrastructure, they mine much more ore and build much more ships. And most of that things stay in alliance. For example for me there is little sense in leaving alliance territory for any kind of personal trading - if I cannot buy smth. on our territory it's much cheaper to order some courier for guys, who specialize on it than spend hours on hauling it on my own. Everything I produce - I can sell more expensive than in 'safe' trade hubs, just because other people won't waste a lot of time for deliveries and it's easier to pay a bit more. 

 

In other words - decentralization will exist anyway, but access to deep-space hubs will be limited for owner friends. 

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I agree, there will be cities based on market placements and based on placement by big organizations/groups.  

 

What i try to achieve with tranquility is about the same, i already call it a city in space but technically it will be a gigantic ship with all facilities you will need in a city, build with multiple organizations to form community and have fun and a place where Roleplayers can gather to go out to and come back from adventures. At the moment we have about 61 registered residents and about 45 organizations pledged to be there in one way or the other with the idea to be a neutral meeting spot.

Reasoning why space was pretty easy, planet side will probably be covered with cities but with no place in space to be able to have R&R all people are kinda forced to land on a planet. Having a place in space makes it possible for those who want to only be in space and live there as much as possible.

 

I think we will need more ideas like this and the new horizon and other large projects for the people from the people to the people, and thus indeed planet side cities with no owner or multiple will work as well to build community. Tranquility will be the same, in the end it will be for and by the people, only thing is it is practically impossible to build such a thing without pre-organizing and developing it and thus an organization is needed to at-least prepare for that.

 

 

 

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  • 7 months later...

Well, I have a lot (years) of experience building/managing cities in Minecraft in survival server. Game is different,  but as I can see it, there still will be lot of similiarities.

 

Reality check will be very harsh for many. Things go south for "mayors" with FTL speed, as I seen it in Minecraft.


4 types (or combinations) of "city-like enteties" can survive (and be to extent practical or entertaining):

 

1) Its of extraordinary architecture, place generates tourists and something like  patronage from important people. 

2) Location is really strategic and offers something really needed (respawn - fuel - ships sales),  possibly on edge of hot pvp zone. It can work, if managed properly.

3) Location is some kind of capital of top organization and visiting/using it kinda forced on members/associates. No clear result, but will work.

4) Owner just of so powerful interesting  personality that people stay around his place to interact, whitout any material reason. Such people blessed with godly charisma very rare, but it happens.

 

Everything else, to be honest, more or less doomed or will be complete pain to maintain.

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  • 3 months later...

Love the idea of organizations or a civilization co-locating land structures together. There may need to be in-game benefits applied in a subtle way to incentive congregating. I think the best example I've seen has been a ship showroom. Another could be XX amount of building mass is required to institute a political system to govern the region/planet. Issue would of course be if it was located on a planet and not a moon then the factor of PVP is an issue and some d-bag org can flip the place upside down (grieve). However, that threat may actually add interest in the game, and we could start to see something like nations fighting each other in the atmosphere.  I REALLY think some facet of this should be explored for development. 

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  • 1 month later...
On 4/11/2018 at 8:14 AM, vylqun said:

To have a somewhat imersive experience in Dual Universe we definitely need to see cities. But why exactly would people create cities in DU if just use a vast amount of resources without any real benefit except for showing off?

 

Normally city planning depends on  a lot of different factors, like the environment, available resources, especially food, the condition of the ground, expected industries etc. Those are mostly things that wont work in DU. On the other hand, building cities in DU has quite a lot of disadvantages, like being target for raiders, warmongers or just griefplayers. So without any real benefit or need to create cities we will at most have very few large organization building and maintaining a city as HQ and maybe one or two trading hubs. Mostly we'll see well hidden factories and bases which are statistically placed across the planets with nearly no clustering.

I think Dev's will need to make cities SAFE zones or NoN-Combat zones. 

I would gladly help build a city but if griefers can come destroy it and my work then I will not waste my time.

Its different when you build your base, you expect to be attacked.

With a city that would benefit all trade hubs etc.   then you would expect a safe zone to fly over that city/planet

I think thats the only way to go .

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  • 2 months later...
On 4/11/2018 at 9:14 AM, vylqun said:

To have a somewhat imersive experience in Dual Universe we definitely need to see cities. But why exactly would people create cities in DU if just use a vast amount of resources without any real benefit except for showing off?

 

Normally city planning depends on  a lot of different factors, like the environment, available resources, especially food, the condition of the ground, expected industries etc. Those are mostly things that wont work in DU. On the other hand, building cities in DU has quite a lot of disadvantages, like being target for raiders, warmongers or just griefplayers. So without any real benefit or need to create cities we will at most have very few large organization building and maintaining a city as HQ and maybe one or two trading hubs. Mostly we'll see well hidden factories and bases which are statistically placed across the planets with nearly no clustering.

 

There are two possible ways to facilitate cities. One is giving artificial benefits like production bonus or similar things, i wont advocate that as it is unrealistic and just shows a lack of creativity in the game design. The second way is giving realistic incentives. The only incentives that work on larger scales in a mmorpg are economic or security benefits or needs. Social or educational facilities can be mostly ignored (there could be University-Type elements that increase the speed of accumulating xp for the first 20% or something of the skilltree, with which organizations can cater to new players, but that wont be a real incentive for creating a city).

 

In my mind there are three mechanics which would directly create the need for clustering buildings on a small area:

 

1. Powergrid

The first suggestion is, that all functional elements (Doors, electronics etc.) require electricity. Standard, small sized elements would need a marginal amount of power so, that a small generator that can easily be installed in every ship/building is sufficient to support them. More advanced facilities like factories, Elements with strong supporting effects (something like the University for example, or greenhouses), military elements (planetary turrets, shields, sensor units ...) however should have an exponential increase of the power required. Factory units for example should require enough power, that no stacking of small generators can support them.

To support those power hungry elements players can build power plant elements which are extremely large on scale, like 64³m³. They would support buildings within a certain radius with a set amount of power and to increase that radius you could create power-relay stations. What does this do for city building? If players want to run a factory or other facilities they need to create a power plant. If a single power plant generates enough electricity to support several factories, then the economic way of action would be creating enough factories within the vicinity of a power plant to  effectively use the generated power. A large cluster of factories in turn needs military protection as it is a nice target for raiders, thus we have some kind of city growth. At the same time owners of those power plants could rent space in the effective radius for players which can afford to create a factory, but not the required power plant.

 

This can be extended to every kind of large scale element which would be nice to have in a city, for example if we want a space port in the city. The simplest way would be to just create some flat areas for ships to land on. But what about quality of life services like refuelling or rearing constructs? Those actions can take ages. If we had large scale elements like a repair Dock, which repairs damaged ships in the vicinity if activated or refuelling stations, those can save a lot of time to players. Elements like that would also require a lot of power, thus the need for a power plant in the vicinity.

 

In short, if every advanced element has a big size and a large power requirement, coupled with the need of power plants, we would by default see clusters of buildings which can be called cities.

 

2. Resources

We can see in some videos how the ground is removed with a tool, its fast, efficient and effortless. if we can mine resources in this way, then DU players will be like a big locust swarm, run across the surface of a planet, scanning and within hours mining all interesting resources. But a big influence on city-building is the need to create a permanent structure in specific places, thus mining resources should definitely not be near-instant. Optimally mining out a big underground ore vein should take years if done by hand or several months when done with elements for mining. If we have long term mining then locations get a certain economic and strategic importance. If an organization finds a large vein of a rare metal it can't just mine it and go away, it has to defend this place against other players. Thus they need to create defensive structures, which again need power plants. If you have defensive structures and power plants on a mining base and some power surplus due to it then its economic to just continue and create the needed refinery elements etc. too, which in turn leads to clusters of buildings again.

 

3. Dependencies

Similar as all functional elements require electricity there can be other dependencies which make it necessary to create several constructs at the same place. In the new content update we learn about market Bots, where resources can be sold for quanta and elements can be bought (probably very limited after crafting is implemented, but maybe some of the most basic elements can still be bought). Those Quanta and elements aren't created from void and the sold resources can't spontaneously vanish. So if someone wants to place market bots in his base, it would make sense to require a trading hub element in the vicinity. There are quite some heavy industries which are dependent on water as coolant, so some refinery elements could actually need water purification plants in the area, the same plants could be used to support greenhouses or other buildings with water. If several buildings depend on each other there is a huge potential to incline people to gather together and create cities. Especially as everyone has a limited amount of cores available.

 

########

 

I really think that those three points are absolutely necessary for a good experience in DU and will lead to some pretty interesting results.

I just gave up hope that any game ever will get Mining right! Its infuriating that they had this great opportunity to create incredible valuable ore veins that could last years and would foment conflict wars could be fought over these special places where resources are extracted and that would be awesome... but no, we get ore veins that deplete as quickly or we get big veins that deplete less quickly... fuck man I wish any games where really trying at all to get this one aspect right at least once, I had high hopes for this game and for SC and both got mining completely wrong, SC approach is kinda fun but too gamy for my taste and DUs approach just leaves a bad taste in the mouth for the missed opportunity.

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  • 2 months later...
On 9/26/2020 at 9:07 PM, w1r3dh4ck3r said:

I just gave up hope that any game ever will get Mining right! 

yeah, sadly most of my fears from 2 years ago came true, i wish they wouldn't have :/

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  • 1 month later...

I've been playing games, both single player and MMOs for a few decades now.  I haven't played them all, but I have played a decent amount of them.  The only time I have played an MMO that I was part of a clan/organization that built a "city" was in Star Wars Galaxies(SWG).  They had no effect on the players or crafting or mining (mining was not allowed in the city limits).  About the only real thing it accomplished was allowing for PvP matches to be setup between organizations as well as a "treasury" for the members to store items and money and such (it has been a while since I played the game, go my memory might be a little foggy on other options).  But, there really was not much that making the city did for the players individually.  I think Eve Online did do something for organization stations, but I never got that far into the game to know what they provided (I think they provided a bonus to industry type stuff).  So, they are probably just following the models of all the previous MMOs that did allow players to build things from the ground up.  Otherwise, it would take up too much more time and programming to make things work correctly, which will provide many many more bugs and errors.

 

As for mining, yea, this game has a very boring mining process, especially on land.  The best experience I've had with mining is on SWG.  You had a scanner that, from ground level, gave you read outs of what ores were present.  You could move in a direction and it would change on how much was or wasn't there.  When you find the best spot you drop down an ore extraction device.  It would then start extracting the ore it was placed above.  You can come back in hours/days/weeks and pick up what it extracted.  The ore had a time limit on how long it would be there (generally a week) and then it would disappear and "shift" to another planet or location on same planet (all planets had this happening, rarer ores might have only appeared on a specific planet(s)).  There was fields of ore extraction machines.  If you did not get there early, you would not get the best spot or might not get any of that specific ore.  In "cities"/"towns" you could not drop these devices, even if it was your own city.

 

The mining for this game has me wondering how the land above your tunnels/caverns actually stays in place.  If I were to dig out an entire hex, say 300 m below the surface, it would still "magically" be suspended and not fall/collapse down upon itself.

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