What concepts from sci-fi movies/books/etc. would you like to see in DU?

[aliensalmon]

Apologies if this is a stupid question, but this is one of those games where it seems more fun to talk about ideas than actually play.

 

We've talked about the various games that influenced DU, such as EVE, as well as games that it in turn influenced, such as Starbase. But what about movies, books, and other forms of sci-fi? JC frequently discussed the influence of "Ready Player One" on the game. Maybe DU could borrow more stuff from the Gene Roddenberry works for example (Star Trek, Earth: Final Conflict, Andromeda, and so on.) As for what, I don't know exactly (although I think people have already considered adding stuff from these IPs.)

[Novean-32184]

Andromeda is already built in game.. so are most ST ships actually

 

[blundertwink]

TV shows have a good understanding of the push and pull between realism and engagement when it comes to space combat.

 

Star Trek is a great example of "high sci-fi" with shields and advanced tech -- yeah, if it were "realistic" you'd never get close enough to really see enemy ships, but they have always understood that they are creating a work of entertainment first. 

 

The Expanse is another good example of lower-tech combat that feels more realistic and less futuristic, but doesn't kill drama in the name of realism. 

 

DU definitely needs to take a page or two from TV on how to represent combat -- 'chase the red square' isn't very dramatic or engaging. It's the age of streaming, it matters if combat is super boring, especially for an MMO.

[CptLoRes]

Using TV/film is a bit misleading, since they will play loosely with both time references, distances and physics as needed for each scene to meet the narrative.

I.e. as long as we have ships that operate in open space flying at the the speeds needed to travel such large distances with sane limits to acceleration, it is never going to be "like in the movies".

 

[tomasco]

17 hours ago, Jake Arver said:

Andromeda is already built in game.. so are most ST ships actually

 

I'm unable to find Andromeda on DU-Creators. Could you send me link ?

[joaocordeiro]

Being a single star system, it kind of reminds me of "the expanse". 

[blundertwink]

14 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

Using TV/film is a bit misleading, since they will play loosely with both time references, distances and physics as needed for each scene to meet the narrative.

I.e. as long as we have ships that operate in open space flying at the the speeds needed to travel such large distances with sane limits to acceleration, it is never going to be "like in the movies".

 

That was kind of my point -- the movies do it the way they do for a damn good reason, to create drama and engagement.

 

Realism isn't the goal in DU, either -- there's nothing realistic about the game, anyway -- from the lore to the mechanics. Besides, realism is never the goal of any game. 

 

DU should take a page from movies and television in wanting battles to be dramatic and engaging, not realistic. They should bend the rules of physics to create drama and engagement, that's their job as game makers. 

 

Realism can be boring and flat -- "chase the red square" is really not exciting to me or anyone watching. Especially with full open world PvP, this concept this needs to be much more evolved, engaging, and balanced to work. 

 

I've played a lot of space games...and frankly, combat in DU ranks among the worst implementations in terms of engagement, skill, lag, and balance. 

[CptLoRes]

1 minute ago, blundertwink said:

I've played a lot of space games...and frankly, combat in DU ranks among the worst implementations in terms of engagement, skill, lag, and balance. 

You will get no argument from me there..

I am just saying that the speeds and distances we operate with together with the statistical hit system in this game, means that fights are always going to be more strategy and less FPS instant action.

[Atmosph3rik]

2 hours ago, blundertwink said:

 

That was kind of my point -- the movies do it the way they do for a damn good reason, to create drama and engagement.

 

Realism isn't the goal in DU, either -- there's nothing realistic about the game, anyway -- from the lore to the mechanics. Besides, realism is never the goal of any game. 

 

DU should take a page from movies and television in wanting battles to be dramatic and engaging, not realistic. They should bend the rules of physics to create drama and engagement, that's their job as game makers. 

 

Realism can be boring and flat -- "chase the red square" is really not exciting to me or anyone watching. Especially with full open world PvP, this concept this needs to be much more evolved, engaging, and balanced to work. 

 

I've played a lot of space games...and frankly, combat in DU ranks among the worst implementations in terms of engagement, skill, lag, and balance. 

 

 

These posts always seem to totally ignore the reality of technical limitations.

 

If it was possible to have all the things that DU has, and hyper realistic visual combat, don't you think at least one or two other games would have that by now?

 

There are plenty of other games with hyper realistic visual combat, so if that's what you want you can have it.  And if you find a game with it all, please let me know.

[blundertwink]

2 hours ago, Atmosph3rik said:

These posts always seem to totally ignore the reality of technical limitations.

 

If it was possible to have all the things that DU has, and hyper realistic visual combat, don't you think at least one or two other games would have that by now?

 

There are plenty of other games with hyper realistic visual combat, so if that's what you want you can have it.  And if you find a game with it all, please let me know.

 

What do you mean? I'm advocating for the opposite of realism.

 

I'm well versed on technical limitations having spent years in game dev. Exactly what limits are you talking about? Having interesting combat in any way, shape, or form? 

 

Suggesting that NQ needs more engaging combat isn't demanding "hyper realistic visuals" at all...when I say they should borrow a page from TV/movies, I don't mean TV/movie level graphics.

 

I mean they should think about combat in terms of creating drama and engagement instead of realism. "Chase the red square" is very much the opposite of that philosophy. 

[Physics]

How about some ideas on how NQ can do this and less of the what NQ should do. Almost as bad as players saying the blanket phrase “we need content”. 

[Atmosph3rik]

6 hours ago, blundertwink said:

What do you mean? I'm advocating for the opposite of realism.

 

But when you say you don't want to "chase a red square" what does that mean? What do you want to chase?  Because I assumed you meant you wanted to chase a tie fighter or something like that.

 

I'm sure the PVP needs lots of work still.  But it will always be "lock and fire" combat.  It's a sacrifice they decided on at the very start, so we could have everything else.

 

I've just seen the result of people blindly complaining that this type of combat should be more "fun" or more "skill based" and it's the worst of both worlds. 

 

I would rather have lock and fire combat, with depth, then combat that's exciting to watch.  I don't think we can have both.

 

 

 

[Knight-Sevy]

What would I like to see in the game ?

 

- Add a structural constraint for the design of a ship (just to justify the use of voxel)

 

- Make game mechanics before realistic mechanics (end of the pvp cross section to have playable ships with any type of design).

 

- Vmax clamping according to the size of the core or the weight of the ship (in order to have a possible use of fighter xs)

 

- Addition of incapacitating weapon:
ionizing charge that can temporarily deactivate or reduce shield, motors, shield.

 

- Added tractor beam to prevent smaller ships from fleeing

[blundertwink]

11 hours ago, Atmosph3rik said:

 

But when you say you don't want to "chase a red square" what does that mean? What do you want to chase?  Because I assumed you meant you wanted to chase a tie fighter or something like that.

 

I'm sure the PVP needs lots of work still.  But it will always be "lock and fire" combat.  It's a sacrifice they decided on at the very start, so we could have everything else.

 

I've just seen the result of people blindly complaining that this type of combat should be more "fun" or more "skill based" and it's the worst of both worlds. 

 

I would rather have lock and fire combat, with depth, then combat that's exciting to watch.  I don't think we can have both.

 

By "chase the red square" I mean you should be able to see what you're fighting. Combat should be closer and slower. 

 

Lock and fire isn't the problem, it's that combat is only lock and fire....with no other depth like you said.

 

I would prefer it being more strategic and not some "twich-based" insane skill-cap PvP. I never implied that is the best model for DU. 

 

Combat now has no drama, no engagement, no appeal. That's where it needs to draw inspiration from T.V. and movies, not reality. If combat isn't at least mildly interesting to watch, it probably won't be interesting to play. And like it or not, we live in a streaming world where huge marketing value is driven from streamers -- it's free money NQ is leaving on the table. 

 

As for "blindly complaining" -- NQ doesn't read shit, anyway. "Good" feedback with intricate implementation ideas is exactly as useful as vague complaints. 

 

Even for a highly engaged studio, that's probably true. The devs don't care about detailed implementation ideas -- they know that when people say something "isn't fun", they mean "not engaging" -- and ultimately, it's a design problem they need to fix. That's the point of feedback. 

 

Maybe you don't find random complaints like "it isn't fun" helpful, but for the dev it actually is important feedback to listen to. For every one person with a detailed implementation idea, there's a lot more that have a general sentiment but no clue how to "fix" their design...it really isn't up to any player to judge what feedback is useful, especially for a studio that doesn't really engage with feedback anyway. 

[Atmosph3rik]

1 hour ago, blundertwink said:

Lock and fire isn't the problem, it's that combat is only lock and fire....with no other depth like you said.

 

I would prefer it being more strategic and not some "twich-based" insane skill-cap PvP. I never implied that is the best model for DU. 

 

 

I agree with this part.  But everything else you're saying sounds like you want to watch one of NQ's PVP promo videos while you're doing PVP.  You said you're a game dev, i am definitely not, so you may know better then me, but is that possible?

 

In a large battle with 20+ ships, is the game going to be able to handle rendering a whole little movie for streamers to watch at the same time?

 

Will changing the rules of PVP so all those ships have to be close enough to see each other affect performance?

 

 

 

[blundertwink]

28 minutes ago, Atmosph3rik said:

I agree with this part.  But everything else you're saying sounds like you want to watch one of NQ's PVP promo videos while you're doing PVP.  You said you're a game dev, i am definitely not, so you may know better then me, but is that possible?

 

In a large battle with 20+ ships, is the game going to be able to handle rendering a whole little movie for streamers to watch at the same time?

 

Will changing the rules of PVP so all those ships have to be close enough to see each other affect performance?

 

Rendering isn't the core issue with performance, it's generally network. Granted, DU has some uniquely bad rendering problems...but there's no reason why a GPU can't handle rendering 15-20 simple mesh ships (they are simple mesh ships, not voxels) in the otherwise blank canvas of space.

 

Raycasts over large distances are significantly more expensive than over short ones, so yes performance might be better closer and slower.

Physics from off-the-shelf engines like Unigen tend to break at large speeds. Everything becomes less precise and relies more on LERPs and guesses in terms of client/server sync.

Even understanding what ships are "near" each other is more expensive over large distances.

 

Optimizing resources around smaller areas might be easier based on their auto-scale model -- just speculation based on some of their early posts on how they optimize network for "busy" areas. Their auto-scaling model is kind of irrelevant for combat because it takes too long to spin up resources, anyway...and NQ doesn't want to pay for it. 

 

I don't know if closer and slower combat would actually improve performance (that's plausible, but impossible to know without grinding into the details of their implementation), but it is technically reasonable IMO....

 

Regardless, combat needs more love...I think everyone can agree with that.