I'm about ready to uninstall this game...

[Cajanegra]

I already DU'd it

[Zeddrick]

On 3/25/2021 at 4:47 PM, IvanGrozniy said:

It is beyond all logic and reason how some "ship builders" (I'm being so.... so.... generous right now) have no clue what a pvp ship is in this game, or at least what armor is. What exactly do you mean by giving them more of a chance? No... if people actually learn to read they'd realize that you don't make haulers with no armor.. you don't want to use fancy voxelmamcy that does nothing to protect against bullets...  you don't fly in the pipe. I mean... just this last bit, in all my flying with naked haulers I never once encountered anyone simply because I never fly in the pipe. I know, just a personal example but... there are builders who have been in this game for way longer than me and they still have no clue. I don't get it.

 

Also not saying this system is perfect. Frankly it's a shit show. But... nah... giving them more chances is like trying to improve on stupidity.

Not really.  I like PvP and have actually tried to solo in DU but the game doesn't really support that game style yet and the culture in the game is such that just blowing people up for a laugh is frowned upon.  But if I'm not doing PvP I don't want to put myself in a situation where PvP might interrupt what I'm doing if I will have 0% chance to inflict any meaningful damage in return.  And so will other people.  But if I can have a chance to actually win (or just cause a lot of damage) in the process that's fun.

 

I'm not talking about idiot designs with no armor here, they're just target practice.  But I should be able to make a ship which is good at, say, hauling a lot of stuff but which can still be competitive at PvP.  Or build a ship I can fly solo which can be competitive against a gang of players if I play the fight cleverly.   It doesn't seem like that's possible at the moment because of the very severe restrictions on what you can do while flying the ship.

 

And yes, you can play in a group, but there won't always be a group around and a game which is only good when there's a group is one which is not going to be easy to play at offpeak times, etc...

[IvanGrozniy]

3 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

Not really.  I like PvP and have actually tried to solo in DU but the game doesn't really support that game style yet and the culture in the game is such that just blowing people up for a laugh is frowned upon.  But if I'm not doing PvP I don't want to put myself in a situation where PvP might interrupt what I'm doing if I will have 0% chance to inflict any meaningful damage in return.  And so will other people.  But if I can have a chance to actually win (or just cause a lot of damage) in the process that's fun.

 

I'm not talking about idiot designs with no armor here, they're just target practice.  But I should be able to make a ship which is good at, say, hauling a lot of stuff but which can still be competitive at PvP.  Or build a ship I can fly solo which can be competitive against a gang of players if I play the fight cleverly.   It doesn't seem like that's possible at the moment because of the very severe restrictions on what you can do while flying the ship.

 

And yes, you can play in a group, but there won't always be a group around and a game which is only good when there's a group is one which is not going to be easy to play at offpeak times, etc...

Well I actually agree with you in a lot of respects here. But I don't think we need more mechanics to solve the solo non-viability issue, we need less restrictions. I mean, better mechanics would be nice, but if we were lazily working with only what we have:
 

1. Why can't a solo pilot operate any guns larger than xs? What is the reasoning behind this? To encourage teamwork? Seems silly to me, in pvp big battles multicrew ships would still have a lot more advantages over solo ships anyway because engineers could repair ships and restock ammo containers while solo players have much more limited abilities, although if they had L weapons they could still pack a punch. But limiting solo players to only xs guns exasperates gameplay issues rather than solving them.
2. Why are there restrictions on sizes on cores? One of the arguments for this was to make other ship designs besides borg cubes viable. This is false. The Boo L core gold ships were made prior to that limitation and they kicked ass. But the result of the demands for limiting weapons sizes to core sizes was this: XS, S, and almost all M ships are non-viable against the meta L ships. Consequently, you might as well delete XS, S, and M weapons from the game because they are rubbish compared to L weapon stats.

But now for a bird's eye perspective: 

 

When a company sets out to make a sandbox where "you can do anything", and creates mechanics and building modes that offer various customizations and changes, what inevitably happens is the emergence of meta, and best case scenario, 2 or 3 metas. But it's usually one. And that makes all of the customization and cool designs and doodads irrelevant and useless. Customization and freebuilding is cool and all but utterly useless when you ty to accomplish anything, especially in PVP, when you are not building around the meta. Mortal Online 2 will suffer from this, Starbase will suffer from this, Space Engineers suffers from this, Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen,  countless games suffer from this phenomenon. The net effect of this phenomenon is that the devs are then forced to counter the emergent meta builds with more restrictions and limiting mechanics to the point where the restrictions become absolutely absurd. Imagine creating a sandbox where you can do anything and then proceed to fight your own sandbox that you created in order to govern fairness while the kids in the sandbox refuse to learn the meta. It's a losing battle, by default it's a sunk cost with diminishing returns. DU suffers from this to a great extent and will never achieve balance. If it does, it will either be the balance of Eve or it will not be a sanbox.

[JohnnyTazer]

1 hour ago, IvanGrozniy said:

Well I actually agree with you in a lot of respects here. But I don't think we need more mechanics to solve the solo non-viability issue, we need less restrictions. I mean, better mechanics would be nice, but if we were lazily working with only what we have:
 

1. Why can't a solo pilot operate any guns larger than xs? What is the reasoning behind this? To encourage teamwork? Seems silly to me, in pvp big battles multicrew ships would still have a lot more advantages over solo ships anyway because engineers could repair ships and restock ammo containers while solo players have much more limited abilities, although if they had L weapons they could still pack a punch. But limiting solo players to only xs guns exasperates gameplay issues rather than solving them.
2. Why are there restrictions on sizes on cores? One of the arguments for this was to make other ship designs besides borg cubes viable. This is false. The Boo L core gold ships were made prior to that limitation and they kicked ass. But the result of the demands for limiting weapons sizes to core sizes was this: XS, S, and almost all M ships are non-viable against the meta L ships. Consequently, you might as well delete XS, S, and M weapons from the game because they are rubbish compared to L weapon stats.

But now for a bird's eye perspective: 

 

When a company sets out to make a sandbox where "you can do anything", and creates mechanics and building modes that offer various customizations and changes, what inevitably happens is the emergence of meta, and best case scenario, 2 or 3 metas. But it's usually one. And that makes all of the customization and cool designs and doodads irrelevant and useless. Customization and freebuilding is cool and all but utterly useless when you ty to accomplish anything, especially in PVP, when you are not building around the meta. Mortal Online 2 will suffer from this, Starbase will suffer from this, Space Engineers suffers from this, Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen,  countless games suffer from this phenomenon. The net effect of this phenomenon is that the devs are then forced to counter the emergent meta builds with more restrictions and limiting mechanics to the point where the restrictions become absolutely absurd. Imagine creating a sandbox where you can do anything and then proceed to fight your own sandbox that you created in order to govern fairness while the kids in the sandbox refuse to learn the meta. It's a losing battle, by default it's a sunk cost with diminishing returns. DU suffers from this to a great extent and will never achieve balance. If it does, it will either be the balance of Eve or it will not be a sanbox.

So the only sensible route is go the eve route.  And what does that mean? Give certain cores special important modules/mechanics that others dont. Like the command destroyer in eve that booshes ships 100km away.  

 

Make only xs and small cores have "surgical strike". They can target exact elements with some probability of success thrown in. Also give these small ship "tackle modules". Call it a tractor beam. Reduces a ships speed based on tier and talents.  Now you able to slow a ship down.  Make it so probability is also factored in dmg done.  If I have L guns and have 25% probability, if I land a hit I only do about 25% of my damage. This makes M ships the best to Combat small and xs. And L to combat the M cores. Now fleets are needed of many sizes to reach max potential.  Better than what we got now anyway. 

[SpiceRub]

Bit of an identity crisis. Core sizes have no distinguished purposes other than, this one is bigger than that, and then that one is bigger than this.

[le_souriceau]

1 hour ago, IvanGrozniy said:

... what inevitably happens is the emergence of meta, and best case scenario, 2 or 3 metas. But it's usually one. And that makes all of the customization and cool designs and doodads irrelevant and useless.

But its kinda... natural? : ) 
 

Beyond some periods of experimentation/old and new coexistance (caused by changes in tech or in societal order with some lag), even IRL military ideas constantly gravitate to some "meta" (2-3 or one). Only critical difference, that IRL meta most often checked by some circumstance (material base primarly), so diversity generated by not by love of different things, but compromises... per example, every medieval warrior likely was quite informed what is best armor or horse available, just was most often not able to afford them.

 

In games is harder to limit players with material base, because even if meta is hard to achieve, they will grind anyway.

 

 

[Zeddrick]

5 hours ago, IvanGrozniy said:

Well I actually agree with you in a lot of respects here. But I don't think we need more mechanics to solve the solo non-viability issue, we need less restrictions. I mean, better mechanics would be nice, but if we were lazily working with only what we have:
 

1. Why can't a solo pilot operate any guns larger than xs? What is the reasoning behind this? To encourage teamwork? Seems silly to me, in pvp big battles multicrew ships would still have a lot more advantages over solo ships anyway because engineers could repair ships and restock ammo containers while solo players have much more limited abilities, although if they had L weapons they could still pack a punch. But limiting solo players to only xs guns exasperates gameplay issues rather than solving them.
2. Why are there restrictions on sizes on cores? One of the arguments for this was to make other ship designs besides borg cubes viable. This is false. The Boo L core gold ships were made prior to that limitation and they kicked ass. But the result of the demands for limiting weapons sizes to core sizes was this: XS, S, and almost all M ships are non-viable against the meta L ships. Consequently, you might as well delete XS, S, and M weapons from the game because they are rubbish compared to L weapon stats.

But now for a bird's eye perspective: 

 

When a company sets out to make a sandbox where "you can do anything", and creates mechanics and building modes that offer various customizations and changes, what inevitably happens is the emergence of meta, and best case scenario, 2 or 3 metas. But it's usually one. And that makes all of the customization and cool designs and doodads irrelevant and useless. Customization and freebuilding is cool and all but utterly useless when you ty to accomplish anything, especially in PVP, when you are not building around the meta. Mortal Online 2 will suffer from this, Starbase will suffer from this, Space Engineers suffers from this, Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen,  countless games suffer from this phenomenon. The net effect of this phenomenon is that the devs are then forced to counter the emergent meta builds with more restrictions and limiting mechanics to the point where the restrictions become absolutely absurd. Imagine creating a sandbox where you can do anything and then proceed to fight your own sandbox that you created in order to govern fairness while the kids in the sandbox refuse to learn the meta. It's a losing battle, by default it's a sunk cost with diminishing returns. DU suffers from this to a great extent and will never achieve balance. If it does, it will either be the balance of Eve or it will not be a sanbox.

Eve is a good example of what I'm talking about here.  In eve every (properly fit) ship is a min/max optimised setup for doing one particular thing.  So if you want to PvP you need a PvP optimised setup and if you don't have that you basically want to avoid getting into PvP at all costs.  It's one of the things people learn early when playing.  The imbalance between being PvP and non-PvP fit is so big that on several occasions I've solo'ed non-PvP battleships with PvP fitted frigates.

 

But because everyone is either PvP fit or wants to avoid PvP at all costs, PvP becomes either arranged fights, stratiegic battles or cat+mouse hunts of non-PvP ships which bolt and run at the first sign of trouble.  Nobody wants to be an easy target so the vast majority of non-PvP ships stay in places where they are safe -- 85% of players stay in hisec and most of the ones which venture outside join the huge nullsec blocks where they have lots of warning about incoming threats.  The usual response when presented with PvP is to dock up and wait it out.  When people can't stay safe they literally stop playing the game -- try doing hisec wardecs and you'll see that most hisec players just log off for a week until you're gone.  The way the numbers dropped during the blackout (where the devs took away the safety people had and made them risk being an easy target in order to do non-PvP things) shows it's not just the hisec players who are like this.

 

I think DU will be just the same -- if you force people to either fly PvP only ships or become easy targets then everyone who is an easy target will avoid any area where PvP might happen unless they have a fairly reliable way to run and avoid the PvP.  Because nobody wants to make themselves an easy target.  Change the game so some activity makes people take risks and most of them will change their activities or just log off if they can't have fun without becoming a target.

 

I just think it would be cool if DU went a different way from eve and tried to make a game where there isn't such a hard 'PvPer / target' distinction and people might actually fight you when you interrupt them mining an asteroid ...

 

[IvanGrozniy]

3 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

Eve is a good example of what I'm talking about here.  In eve every (properly fit) ship is a min/max optimised setup for doing one particular thing.  So if you want to PvP you need a PvP optimised setup and if you don't have that you basically want to avoid getting into PvP at all costs.  It's one of the things people learn early when playing.  The imbalance between being PvP and non-PvP fit is so big that on several occasions I've solo'ed non-PvP battleships with PvP fitted frigates.

 

But because everyone is either PvP fit or wants to avoid PvP at all costs, PvP becomes either arranged fights, stratiegic battles or cat+mouse hunts of non-PvP ships which bolt and run at the first sign of trouble.  Nobody wants to be an easy target so the vast majority of non-PvP ships stay in places where they are safe -- 85% of players stay in hisec and most of the ones which venture outside join the huge nullsec blocks where they have lots of warning about incoming threats.  The usual response when presented with PvP is to dock up and wait it out.  When people can't stay safe they literally stop playing the game -- try doing hisec wardecs and you'll see that most hisec players just log off for a week until you're gone.  The way the numbers dropped during the blackout (where the devs took away the safety people had and made them risk being an easy target in order to do non-PvP things) shows it's not just the hisec players who are like this.

 

I think DU will be just the same -- if you force people to either fly PvP only ships or become easy targets then everyone who is an easy target will avoid any area where PvP might happen unless they have a fairly reliable way to run and avoid the PvP.  Because nobody wants to make themselves an easy target.  Change the game so some activity makes people take risks and most of them will change their activities or just log off if they can't have fun without becoming a target.

 

I just think it would be cool if DU went a different way from eve and tried to make a game where there isn't such a hard 'PvPer / target' distinction and people might actually fight you when you interrupt them mining an asteroid ...

 

In DU context, miners need L weapons regardless of their core size. At least someone would think twice before trying to blow them up. Either that or more meta restrictions. 

[krateria]

Today, after 6 months of subs, I decided to take a break from DU and Uninstalled. 

 

Still wanting it to succeed. 

 

 

[Aaron Cain]

this starts to look like a giveme your stuff post

 

[le_souriceau]

Btw, people people (who not in terminal stage of DU-induced gangrene) may try to find attempt of salvation here:

 

https://mmopress.wixsite.com/newmeroviachronicle/post/utopia-be-sure-to-wear-flowers-in-your-hair

 

(shameless advert)

[GraXXoR]

one of my alts is a member of the Utopia Spacer's Guild and has access to their beacon... I visited last week... A very nice project that felt relatively lively. Got myself a space facing XS core and will be building it up into a little apartment at some point.

 

We are doing the same at Madis MP3 and are trying to become the Madis hub, like Freeport on Alioth.

[Treelover69]

On 3/26/2021 at 3:58 PM, JohnnyTazer said:

So the only sensible route is go the eve route.  And what does that mean? Give certain cores special important modules/mechanics that others dont. Like the command destroyer in eve that booshes ships 100km away.  

 

Make only xs and small cores have "surgical strike". They can target exact elements with some probability of success thrown in. Also give these small ship "tackle modules". Call it a tractor beam. Reduces a ships speed based on tier and talents.  Now you able to slow a ship down.  Make it so probability is also factored in dmg done.  If I have L guns and have 25% probability, if I land a hit I only do about 25% of my damage. This makes M ships the best to Combat small and xs. And L to combat the M cores. Now fleets are needed of many sizes to reach max potential.  Better than what we got now anyway. 

Yea 100%, this is really the only way to "balance" - imbalance with counters. "Rock, paper, scissors" instead of "rock, paper, shotgun".

League of Legends does this well.

WoW does this well.

I've not played with Eve enough but it also seems to do this well

 

The radar range & scan time was the first stab at this, failed. The PvP rework will be interesting, my expectations bar is pretty low at the moment but I do hope that they at least get into the right ball park with whatever "energy" becomes. Wish there was more communication on it, unlike the majority of other features coming up this year this is about the only one I can think of where player feedback early in the cycle can offer fundamentally good direction.