Sifting

[Warlander]

This game needs a personal and industrial sifting device to take raw materials (sand, tundra, ice, dirt, etc) and run it through the machine or personal sifter and you can gain trace amounts of other materials found in that area. Most people probably dont even collect the raw mats now while tunneling 100s of meters between nodes. I think if there was a real purpose to these raw resources along with talent(s) for production or efficiency for personal/crafting

 

 

 

 

[Cptsigh]

If they did this they need to add a way for grass to be replanted. Ugly holes everywhere.

[NQ-Naunet]

?

 

It would be really neat if grass/weeds just slowly grew back over time, so the craters people make end up going 'back to nature' as it were.

[Warlander]

I think that there are potential options to keep the grass/foliage with some form of a gradual world heal/erosion system outside of territories where it could just gradually heal back the raw materials until it fills in all the destruction. The way Everquest Next Landmark did it was way too quick (30-60 mins to fully heal the damage done) and it could be slowed down to a really slow gradual process that could take RL weeks/months could do a lot for the longevity of DU.

 

The devs could also add in texture changes for different "seasons" where they just rotate some surface textures or perhaps the priority in which they appear or blend in order to keep the bushes and trees present on the surface. Games like BDO change their textures up gradually throughout the year. It does not need to be that dramatic and im not sure the texture limit constraints present with DU in the Voxel Engine.

 

They could also make a script during patches to just fully collapse all the tunnels in a couple random unoccupied territories to simulate an earthquake to set some of the more destroyed unclaimed areas back to normal. Earthquakes or just random honeycomb territory resets could also help to keep trees and holes from dotting the landscape especially in various locations. The devs could also create random strings of unclaimed territories in high traffic areas to keep them from becoming swiss cheese.

 

I also think it would be interesting if there was a mantle system for both starting planets like Alioth or highly contested pvp planets which had an active mantle crust system that acted like a planet within a planet that simulated magma/lava so that you cant dig down 32km to the core without dying by touching the magma or that by doing so would activate the healing system above where below the surface it turns to a glowing color and just fills in the whole tile before cooling once it heals the tile completely.

 

Beyond that I am also surprised that there arent layers of different rocks that have random hp to them that take longer the further you go down to where each layer becomes tier 1-5 raw mats which translate to building materials for bases in addition to the voxels we can get from mining and processing the ores.

 

With the new universe the devs are working on it would be nice if there were unclaimable areas where there were just large seams or chains and veins of massive quantities of ore as well as quarries.

 

The devs could also create a system that takes their magic blueprints into an unoccupied territory tile that has random size impact craters in the sahpe of a doughnut with raised up walls and the center crater containing some random ore that may or may not be from that planet for both a point of interest but also a way to seed some more ore into the game.

 

Last but not least I wish there was a crash system that when your ship was destroyed in a crash it just threw all the metal that should still exist into mineable surface voxels so that it just didnt wipe those resources out of the game completely but rather gave you the chance to collect what you can find in the crash site.

 

Either way something has to give with all the mats that are being flushed out of the game. Matter should never be destroyed without being converted into some other form in this game if it is to last more than a couple years.

 

These are but a few ideas which could work well with a sifting system to fit in line with a sifting system or at the very least a gradual healing effect to keep basic resources flowing into the game years from now. Even if it takes 10 L containers worth or raw resources to create 1 L container of ore with talents when its all said and done at least if you go to a heavily mined planet at least you can come home with something at least and its not a complete wash out if large orgs have just decimated all the ore in the area.

 

.02c