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Persistent Players


_Jaynx

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I just learned about this game and am pretty interested in it.

 

I know they don't plan on having NPCs in the game but I think it would be cool if you could run the game in a headless state and have an AI control your character when you log off. It could defend your base, harvest resources, sell items etc. 

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I would agree, logging off and having yourself and/or your ship you are in disappearing could lead to some cheap metagame strategies, and the solution of logging back in at the nearest friendly base would really really be annoying and would also lead to some metagame travel acceleration tactics. I don't see any way for persistent sandbox worlds to not have persistent characters.

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What we need to understand before processing the AI idea is :
Havin an AI controlling your character means constantly heavier server load,
They are not going to make mining automatable,
Selling stuff offline means botting the market
If they are not able to defend properly and the AI goes statistics for defense solving, it's going to put people in trouble, or force them to leave base to disconnect.

Not saying these issues can't be limited/configured...

Now to get specific on the issue of persistence, you could have like a "pod" to sleep in, where no one can loot or kill you unless they destroy said "pod", the character just sleeps on the ground otherwise, or any place (ships, roofs, whatever). Shouldn't be able to sleep underwater/floating in space tho...
For now i'm about sure it's
not priority, gameplay wise i think it's an interesting matter, why making rooms/safeplaces if you can just pop in and out? where the subject is the most sensitive is about higher tier stuff... should you be able to log off and disappear with these, and then having the issue of safe transportation in dangerous conditions unbalancing the game??

Can't see anything about this in the Trello. Ideas?
 

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I don't see safe rooms being that important, would take away from the immersion. Find a group with active players. Your group will protect you when you are offline. Backstabbing should be allowed. Persistence is becoming very common in sandbox MMO's

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How about this:

 

Faction A wants all of Faction B's stuff. Faction A slowly sends 1 player in the system all friendly and that player logs off making all their stuff disappear. Repeat this 100 times. A day later all 100 players from Faction A login and start shooting everything.

 

Or...

 

A player knows a VIP is going to be coming somewhere ahead of time. He places himself in an optimal position, logs off. Well ahead of time, the VIP's security team sweeps the area and cordons off certain area's to keep things more secure. VIP comes through, the first player logs back on and shoots the VIP.

 

From the other side, where everyone is forced to login from a specific point:

 

A player is exploring deep space, it took him many hours to get to where the planet he is now scanning and analyzing. He has to log off. He now has to spend many hours traveling all the way back.

 

Or lets say his ship stays there but then his character is the only thing that disappears. Someone else see's the ship and takes it or destroys it. Now what?

 

---

 

It is much better to have persistence 

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First two scenarios are products of retarded players over retarded programming. Definitely not going to happen.
Then the  "forced to login from a specific point: He has to log off. He now has to spend many hours traveling all the way back. " didn't made sense.
Then again the last sentence didn't make sense, 

So you are not answering as to why safe rooms to log off would be useless, on the contrary, because if player stays in world, you'd better be safe to make sure to find your stuff back upon reconnecting. So in no way does it takes the immersion away… 
You are also not answering as to how could active players protect you while they are busy operating away for mining / production / exploration / war.

So i guess you just didn't read and didn't understood that everyone here asks for persistence.

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55 minutes ago, Venstix said:

First two scenarios are products of retarded players over retarded programming. Definitely not going to happen.

happens in eve every day ;) logoff traps, seeding wormholes - stuff like that. classic tactic

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Yep I'm totally aware of that, been there… yet their ambition wasn't to be a "civilization rebuilding game" instead of a space arena, mostly focused towards PvP, 4 main player oriented factions etc...

That's why in this particular context of DU it would be retarded, i mean, i Don't need to quote what happens IRL to see that classic stuff isn't necessarily Driving the world towards peace and building whatever together, mostly the need to feed drives the work, mostly to private interest instead of global care. Now, i might be totally wrong, but i'm not sure that NQ wants to bring another sad depiction of humankind. And it would be if these kind of things were to become next DU's classics Imo.

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I mean, from what I am getting at here NQ is going to build a framework and make sure they aren't legally liable for activities within DU; they won't try to make society (BOTTOM TEXT) into a certain way.

 

You guys might be familiar with Locke, Hobbes, etc, but I'm just going to throw this out here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_nature

 

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I like the idea of the player's body being persistent in the world. I do not play Rust, but I like how players cannot simply "disappear" or use other age old methods of exploiting a game to win, such as combat logging. Having a logged out player inside a cryopod or some kind of shell/case would be easier on system resources to complete. The cryopod does not have to be transparent showing the body, a simple red or green light will due for indication of occupancy.

As for a person logging out at random, the system would need to leave the body or basic human 3d placeholder in some type of form or another to comply with the meaning of persistence. I really hope NQ will add these features! 

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Other players protect you by not allowing enemy ships past your borders and subduing rando's trying to break down doors. 

I didn't say safe rooms are useless I said they would take away from the immersion. If everyone can hang out in a 100% safe room. Would just break the game. There needs to be a healthy balance between defense and offense. In a larger universe like this, yes some players will need to do jobs many consider menial like patrolling the border.

 

DU doesn't require persistence to work, but it would be better for it, as well as attract more players (its what all the cool kids are doing these days). Games are evolving and people are looking for very short attention span games and very long-term high social depth games. Persistence increases the required social depth for any group to be successful. It's also easier to do in this game since we have no perma-death.

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I too would love this feature, it would give PvPers a reason to continuously hunt as well as give players a reason to have backup bases. What I'm not sure is how that would work when it comes to server performance. 

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I personally see player character persistence as "off-putting factor" in the larger picture or on an abstract level.

 

On one hand, I never had much experience with it. But by just looking at the concept it seems clear to me that it would be off-putting to people who are not into some sort of hardcore PVP or survival mindset including "sleeping characters" when you are offline. Your base and assets being out there any time? That's normal for most games. The character remaining and being attackable? Not so common.

 

All in all, I doubt we get to see this, at least not applied to all. So far my assessment, purely based on gut feeling, is that NQ would possibly lose players and the "abstract damage" might not justify the "pleased crowd". I also do not know what the impact on server load might be in the grand scheme of things.

 

The risk averse crowd might decide to purely be restricted to safe zones, any more casual oriented players in either gameplay approach or time investment frame might shit their pants at work or wherever, wondering if they char is still up if they somehow had to play and log out beyond safe zones. The limited safe zones might get potentially packed or be 'abused' in the sense of people just logging out there, making them untouchable, if any of those are within reach.

 

Since someone mentioned combat logging, a compromise would be a timer applied to your character. Whether you wait for it to go down or log out immediately, your character will persist for that time.

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I hope that pvp is less about the small scale personal bullshit you see in most survival games like Rust etc.   I would like to see strong defensive options, so that once a reasonable sized org gets set up it would take an organised attack to breach their defenses.  That way it is more about the team and if individuals within the org are logged off it doesnt really matter.

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3 hours ago, Moosegun said:

I hope that pvp is less about the small scale personal bullshit you see in most survival games like Rust etc.   I would like to see strong defensive options, so that once a reasonable sized org gets set up it would take an organised attack to breach their defenses.  That way it is more about the team and if individuals within the org are logged off it doesnt really matter.

 

Agreed, I would like a series of automated defenses and turrets for use. I like the idea of a player operated everything. But that just becomes impractical once a player has a couple bases set up for various tasks or when fighting a larger foe. With automated defenses the single player is allowed even playing field against a larger force. Which is one thing I enjoy about space engineers because automated defenses are what keep your hard work from going away once you leave base.

Additionally there is no reason a player could not control these automated defenses manually. With lua coding these defenses could even be grouped together to from the controls of one turret. A coder has already achieved this in space engineers and it is a very helpful script for ships because all fire can be directed at one direction.


 

8 hours ago, MaltoSigma said:

Combat logging can be prevented by a logout delay.
And regarding persistent players, I'd like to mention, that adding things, that would make the game more tedious, will make the game, well, more tedious.

I disagree, a logout delay only prevents the inevitable "player disappears" due to disconnecting. Also there are far more age old ways of "getting out of a fight" then just the example of combat logging I provided. With player persistence, trolling will decrease to an extent because the person is not free to disappear from their actions. Thus this would improve gameplay and experience over all for everyone. Also the player persistence in rust is a highly favored system that would work great in DU, in my opinion.

As for additional concerns about making the game more "tedious". The player model does not need physics attached when they log out. The body can just became a 3d placeholder of a person until they log back in. In terms of straining the game, it would be no different from say placing a chair on the ground or a locker with an inventory inside. DU is already capable of adding player persistence and it would not be too difficult to implement. 

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3 minutes ago, geronimo553 said:

With player persistence, trolling will decrease to an extinct because the person is not free to disappear from their actions. Thus this would improve gameplay and experience over all for everyone. Also the player persistence in rust is a highly favored system that would work great in DU, in my opinion.

 

-snip-


The body can just became a 3d placeholder of a person until they log back in. In terms of straining the game, it would be no different from say placing a chair on the ground or a locker with an inventory inside.

Regarding the 1st bit:  I think player persistence would be a good idea, but I don't think it would reduce trolling significantly (what happens on Ark as a prime example). 

 

Combat Logging has been kind of dealt with gracefully in some games.  Some make you wait, some persist your player for an additional 30 seconds dead stick style.  Others penalize you monetarily.

 

Regarding the 2nd bit:  I think creating a 3D place holder of someone wouldn't ease stress significantly unless the body was adhere'd to a another rigid body.  Maybe you can reduce a logged out player into a cube and adhere them to the closest construct or voxel (within 2m) would be good.  Some games allow you to log out gracefully (I prefer this heavily).  By this I mean like Haven Bags in Wakfu or beds in Ark.  A place to put your character that combines you with a rigid body.

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1. Resurrection Nodes Network (+radio frequency distance)

2. In ship: Capsule/Pod (see above) for your body storage (ships are persistent objects) ~ the capsule can abstract a stored body into a idk a cryogenic pod, pale glowing light or rubix cube or w/e tbh...

 

I think that covers it and probably covers disconnection issues too? Remember the utility of a capsule/pod increases with more crew who may be online to run the ship while you go into cold storage logging off line. If you're running a small solo ship, it's more like pitching a tent (find a big hole to hide your ship in or buzz off into the blackness of space etc. You're playing solo/survivor afterall in an E--normous space. Naturally friendly stations are a solution (any port in a storm).

 

AI is beyond feature-set already locked for release.

 

Resurrection Nodes likewise are an Org wide infrastructure, again a major part of a group's utility and value to members. Their necessity is group strength factor as opposed to an individual inconvenience (looking down the wrong end of the telescope). Think about it: the further you go from your group nodes, that applies to all groups. Thus you have power projection decay over distance for ALL groups.

 

 

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9 minutes ago, Borb_1 said:

 

I think that covers it and probably covers disconnection issues too? Remember the utility of a capsule/pod increases with more crew who may be online to run the ship while you go into cold storage logging off line. If you're running a small solo ship, it's more like pitching a tent (find a big hole to hide your ship in or buzz off into the blackness of space etc. You're playing solo/survivor afterall in an E--normous space. Naturally friendly stations are a solution (any port in a storm).

 

 


I was thinking of something similar to this as well. However I realized there was no incentive for someone to return to the cryopod over just logging out somewhere random. It would need to supply a reason to return into the cryopod before logging out. 

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Ark's beds prevent people from looking into your inventory IIRC.  I don't think Space Engineer's cryopods prevent that though, but they do make it so you can travel with the ship while logged off.

 

EDIT: Cryopods that are linked to storage / oxygen can manipulate inventories I think

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15 minutes ago, Odendis said:

 I don't think Space Engineer's cryopods prevent that though, but they do make it so you can travel with the ship while logged off.

 

The only way to access the person's inventory in a crypod in SE is to destroy the cryopod or kill the engineer to loot the body.

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16 hours ago, Context said:

Other players protect you by not allowing enemy ships past your borders and subduing rando's trying to break down doors. 

I didn't say safe rooms are useless I said they would take away from the immersion. If everyone can hang out in a 100% safe room. Would just break the game. There needs to be a healthy balance between defense and offense. In a larger universe like this, yes some players will need to do jobs many consider menial like patrolling the border.

Then we prolly misunderstood there, to me a safe room is a room that YOU build, securing your pod which atm happens to be your resurection node, Inside of your alliance base, maybe with harderhoneycombing as to ensure to have a bit of more time if the enemy breaks in, and so as to multiply the time for an offender to actually get rid of these spawn points, thus requiring a lot more firepower to actually raid, balancing the whole gathering:building/guncrafting:going@war time required, Nothing like getting your body out of game or untouchable…
Totally agreeing to what's next.

 

 

2 hours ago, geronimo553 said:

With player persistence, trolling will decrease to an extinct because the person is not free to disappear from their actions.

Pretty much this, unless said trolls get the means of their behavior.

Personnally i'm unsure how will people behave when they'll discover the amount of gameplay just to build a single person proficient machine, then craft the weapons for it or themselves, then the time to code it's manoeuvering properly, and then lose it in a snap…. Eventually you can get all of this done a lot quicker with an org, not sure tho how many orgs will accept people that just come in to break stuff that other people took time to think, craft, Harvest the ressources for etc without getting the job done themselves.

Crafting times also. Drives away casual players, and in DU it looks like casual = pretty much useless… well unless other players fill them up with ressources and they serve as factories… ?

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