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DU - Civilization Building - A Dual Civilization and Unaligneds in Between


Hirnsausen

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The video in the URL is not my video, but some of the points he is making might be true.

I would like some civilization and environmental aspects in this game. But I am also saying, that DU sets new industrial standards if it comes to terrain interaction and design of constructs.

Please watch this video before continuing to read. Here is the URL:
 

 

 

I am also suggestion to open a new Upload Page that allows for uploads of 3D models of alien life as Suggestions (plants and animals). Your own 3D designers could then create life forms roughly based on these player-submitted suggestive models.

 

And I would like the idea of a few Ancient Alien Civilization Sites or Ancient Alien Fossil Sites - areas that cannot be claimed, but players can travel to those sites and start researching. There shoulkd be ten thousands of different research inventions, so a good number of players then own something only they can construct or do (incl. genetic modifications to the own body)

Game characters need a Security Rating. It is the level of that security rating, that determines what kind of research or research findings that character can make.  Some of the ancient sites are hold by the Peace Liga, some others by the Unrulies, and some sites cn be accessed by both or non-aligned members. The security rating determines which faction that player can join if (s)he wishes to do so, with all advantages and disadvantages an alignment comes with.

 

The security rating is influenced by how many times a player attacks another ship without being attacked first from that ship.

 

Like PVP space is very dangrous for unarmed gamers/ships, there should now also be a vast area (or even entire solar systems) that are held by the Peace Liga and their Police ships (not player-owned as members do not have the best weapon technology) driving out everyone who is not a member of the Peace Liga. This territory contains vast geological treasures, too, as the PVP space does. Destroyed non-Liga ships, however, can be looted by Liga members.

 

The purpose of all that is to create a situation where each side, and the people in between, need each other.

 

Not all researched elements or other things can be used by a player not being a member of that same faction.

 

The members of the Peace Liga have access ot a wide range of new, very beautiful but less robust honeycomb types and decorative elements, while Unruly members have a better access to less beautiful but more robust new honeycombs and elements.. Unaligned gamers have access to both but lack the protection and risk-free access to all areas within the territory of either faction.
 

Civilization Building
 

I can imagine that there is a city for each of the three factions, each different in the way they look, but each with hundreds of roads and a few dozens of places ad plazas. The entire city would be NQ-created, may it be n a mountain peak or side, or in the flatlands. Each building has apartments beginning from the 2nd floor, and shops in the 1st floor (ground). Only once a player has some sorts of achievements, citizenship to the city of the own faction is offered.  Depending on the kind of achievement, the offred apartment is smaller or larger. With the then permanent ownership of the apartment comes automatically ownership of a shop (ground floor of the same building).

 

These cities expand with the amount of citizens.

 

The citizen can paint the inside walls, and also add all sorts of faction-available or existing general decorative elements..Some elements can be added to the outside, too.

 

Only a tiny daily quota of non-faction members can visit such a city. A non-faction member must have made achievments for the faction whose city (s)he wishes to visit. Some achievement last for only one visit, others allow a permanent licence and make that visitor to an acknowledged trade traveller (but only a fixed number of such traders is permitted on a monthly base). This way we dvelop trade connections and dependencies between factions and players. Civilization.

 

If a city citizen invites a member of another faction for a house visit, it is possible only if that visitor has some minimum achievements for the citizen*s faction, and the visitor won't be able to enter any shop or collect anything in any way.

 

Citizens can donate money with an aim: a new park (park size selectable, and the donors can add plants or decorations for a park area depending on their donation size), a new sporting area, statues, ponds and lakes, and so on.

 

If it comes to the discovery of new solar systems, the members of the two opposite factions can donate money to their faction's bidding on the ownership of that new system. If the faction wins, half of the money is returned, and the space outside the safe zone will be owned by them, allowing PVP ships or automated police ships inside. The faction of the unaligned will always have a risky access to that space outside the safe zone. The unaligned always dominate in the safe zone, while members of the two other factions have acces to it, too, but with a few limitations NQ has to develop. Maybe unaligned get the best trade taxations.

 

If destruction is allowed on some planets in the future, there should be each week 3x a randomly selected hour where no destrution is possible. During that hour the time of the next such hour is announced. Only during those hours, everyone can briefly visit those planets.

 

Within each faction, orgs of course still exist. And of course, each player cn build and keep his or her bases even when being a cisitzen of the faction city.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yeah I saw this as well.

 

He nitpicks a lot on things that dont necessarily matter too much since he talks about gravity and NQ tried that and all the constructs that fell and blew up without never requiring AGG on static cores to maintain anti gravity on static cores was why. They wanted to do it but it wasnt feasable.

 

The real issue in this game is the sense of community. We dont need AI as much as including people into a bigger factional setting as its not one civilization of disorganized orgs as much as it needs to be Planet VS Planet of multiple factions that call one planet or another home and working together as a unified faction instead of sepperate orgs to give people more of a sense of community to allow people to work together instead of simple Org vs Org setup they have now.

 

I know making planets into factions sounds limiting but if NQ allowed more people to work together or to rally to do more since you are locked into a planet faction with all your tiles and assets you can fight other planets and add Dynamic mining ships back into the game to need protection of an army vs disorganized spread out orgs or solo players that dont need to work together and everyone is an enemy that makes trusting people harder since nobody has your back and you can do everything on your own or in a small group with talent speccing.

 

If missions or taxes were used as a means to build armadas for planets and then just have anyone who wants to fight pick up a ship and fight can its a more inclusive system if the mission system takes or and parts and actually builds BPs in a dry dock Core element that is massive players could be a lot more included and since the taxes they pay are being used to build and maintain a planetary fleet or defenses there is no real loss if you lose since the taxes pay for all the ships instead of putting it all on players.

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Right... to the important bits... 

 

On 12/1/2021 at 6:38 PM, Hirnsausen said:

...Large video screen-link that doesn't need to be on this page more than once...

 

This has nothing to with factions, and needs its own thread to be discussed there.

 

 

On 12/1/2021 at 6:38 PM, Hirnsausen said:

... Like PVP space is very dangrous for unarmed gamers/ships, there should now also be a vast area (or even entire solar systems) that are held by the Peace Liga and their Police ships (not player-owned as members do not have the best weapon technology) driving out everyone who is not a member of the Peace Liga.

 

I can certainly appreciate the intensions here, but DU is currently generally incapable of having NPC dynamic constructs, so odds are you are not getting npc cops. This isn't to say that I don't want them to find some way to include npc dynamics for other various reasons, just that it would be a lot of work and possibly better to focus their efforts else-ware in the short term.

 

I'm sure the pirates appreciate your willingness to recklessly slow-boat directly between planets and in to their blockades, and the irony of linking a video of a guy complaining that there isn't enough risk in the game before asking for the inclusion of a massive area where people that are willing to shoot first aren't even allowed to play is not lost on me, but you really need to stop asking the devs to protect you even more from pvp players in a game that already affords you substantial ability to do that yourself. Seriously, make a friend, join a faction, have them fly scout/escort, or pay someone to do that, or fly around where the blockades normally are, or just warp. Asking the devs to provide you risk free all the resources accessible to those willing to take risks just removes the point of taking the risk in the first place.

 

 

On 12/1/2021 at 6:38 PM, Hirnsausen said:

...

Civilization Building
 

I can imagine that there is a city for each of the three factions, each different in the way they look...

 

If you want a faction-city, try playing with the existing large factions, such structures already exist and are entirely player made and operated.

 

 

On 12/10/2021 at 2:53 PM, Warlander said:

...

The real issue in this game is the sense of community. We dont need AI as much as including people into a bigger factional setting as its not one civilization of disorganized orgs as much as it needs to be Planet VS Planet of multiple factions that call one planet or another home and working together as a unified faction instead of sepperate orgs to give people more of a sense of community to allow people to work together instead of simple Org vs Org setup they have now.

 

I know making planets into factions sounds limiting but if NQ allowed more people to work together or to rally to do more since you are locked into a planet faction with all your tiles and assets you can fight other planets and add Dynamic mining ships back into the game to need protection of an army vs disorganized spread out orgs or solo players that dont need to work together and everyone is an enemy that makes trusting people harder since nobody has your back and you can do everything on your own or in a small group with talent speccing.

 

Forcing factions could be iffy. WoW got away with it because in spite of all the story being about a war it was first and foremost a PvE game with little in the way of consequence resulting from an entirely different risk/reward system. EVE got away with it because the factions were just shy of irrelevant and were for the most part just flags to fly with players already having decided to cooperate (or not). NQ isn't forcing enmity between everyone, they are simply not requiring cooperation and allowing players to make their own decisions in an environment with more consequence than having to run the quarter-mile from the nearest graveyard to your unlootable corpse.

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11 hours ago, Taelessael said:

Forcing factions could be iffy. WoW got away with it because in spite of all the story being about a war it was first and foremost a PvE game with little in the way of consequence resulting from an entirely different risk/reward system. EVE got away with it because the factions were just shy of irrelevant and were for the most part just flags to fly with players already having decided to cooperate (or not). NQ isn't forcing enmity between everyone, they are simply not requiring cooperation and allowing players to make their own decisions in an environment with more consequence than having to run the quarter-mile from the nearest graveyard to your unlootable corpse.

 

WoW used racism and the historical lore of the game as the pre-established war of good/evil you could choose to take part in. Everquest was the opposite in which you were born into a good/evil race but had soft locked faction and used a faction system to allow players to change the viewpoint of local sub factions of those races depending on what/where you fought that changed over time.

 

If anyone wants to know "What the bloody hell happened to DU" you simply just need to watch this clip (2:48-4:32) and it should be quite clear what happened here.

 

 

 

JC said outright that he has never made "games" he had a background in AI & Robotics and he was only interested in the technology and emergent gameplay by grifting MineCraft/Landmark along with Space Engineers and bundling it into a scalable single shard world via VoxelFarm to generate the world. He never really used his AI/Robotics background to do anything other than manipulate the market and or to make anything other than the industry which is overly complex due to his robotics background since it is the only really developed portion of the game. He just bundled everything and wanted some Second Life "Emergent" gameplay and put much of the game on us the players.

 

JC was not a gamer. JC is not a Psycologist, Geologist, Aeronautcal Engineer, Miner, Carpenter, or Logistics specialist in his resume.

 

Its easy to see how JC was influenced by the PvP community and how much he really did not understand in general outside of his wheelhouse of AI & Robotics as to what a "game" is rather than he "There is no connection to video game from what I've done before, except perhaps the fact that I like, you know, technologies & complex systems so I know how to do that. And I like, you know, at domain and say what can we do that has not been done yet that was made possible by the advances of hardware, new battery technologies, or the auto industry. And how can we rethink how things have been done like in MMOs for example."

 

As JC says before the clip "I'm a Science guy, basically".

 

Its not hard to see why DU sucks this much since JC was basically an academic tech grifter who just wanted to emulate car manufacturing in a single shard uniers- I mean solar system and frankenstein what other games did without acutally understanding games or the sphcology behind games as much as making a tech demo and leaving 60+% to us to make it for NQ. And then being influenced by the community in things like PvP since he didnt know anything about it and little else.

 

Had he understood game psycology or psycology in general in regards to faction or anything else in gaming, he would or should have known that people in general sepperate or divide into small groups naturally and so this giant space war he wanted was never going to happen when you consider that gamers inherantly dislike each other and will not build any kind of utopian civilization on its face. Sure they attracted the Space Engineers crew and Landmark crew on top of it which only want to build or create and not fight. So without a soft or hard locked faction system it would never become what JC thought it would.

 

He also structured the game in a way that made faction based PvP impossible since people are just going to do their own thing, or if you were the 40% segment of the population that bought into PvP in general most players dont like Pvp if given a choice and will only risk Pvp in deep space since you have strategic resource setups with planets/moons. To make matters worse NQ then decided to not let mega orgs become factions with limiting land purchases with the compounding land drop tax. Through trying to force people into mega orgs JC inevitably started punishing people like me and my crew from trying to build up a base and industry to PvP with schematics and kept doubling down with punishments and taking away our means to be able to participate in space warfare since our crew has no want/need to join a mega organization to enguage in PvP as we run our org indepentently and it is self sustainable.

 

Demeter also made space warfare mega orgs even less likely with taxes since you will be self destroyed by the scope of your land ownership under the weight of the taxes from owning whole planets or that by owning one you still need toown a majority of all 9 planets and their moons to get the resources you need to even opperate as a faction if it cost you billions/trillions per week.

 

So to me if they want space warfare something needs to give to make players want to co-opperate as a team of orgs to streamline this game since JC was clueless on what to do or what makes games work as a whole let alone the dynamics of MMOs. Right now its a logistics car manufacturing sim and teribly designed PvP.

 

JC the science guy!

 

tenor.png

 

Nothing here is new or unique to MMos and it shows.

Edited by Warlander
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Right... my apologies if I over simplify any of your points, your post seemed to me to be a lot of "stream of consciousness" and it was hard for me to follow without trying to boil it down and sort it first.

 

10 hours ago, Warlander said:

WoW used racism and the historical lore of the game as the pre-established war of good/evil you could choose to take part in. Everquest was the opposite in which you were born into a good/evil race but had soft locked faction and used a faction system to allow players to change the viewpoint of local sub factions of those races depending on what/where you fought that changed over time...

 

I admit, I am not familiar with Everquest. Did it have a "You permanently lose all your gear on death" kind of mechanic? Games that do tend to have much more paranoid player-bases as far as pvp stuff goes. Such paranoia does not however permanently prevent large groups from ever forming, it just makes it take longer.

 

11 hours ago, Warlander said:

...

Stuff amounting to: JC isn't an experienced game developer and tried to build DU by copying what he believed to be the cool bits of other games.

...

 

You say that like you think he tried to claim he was an experienced game dev and came up with all that stuff first. The game is far from perfect, the devs are obviously borrowing basic concepts from other games and learning as they go, and this was obvious back at the start of beta. People do that, nobody has experience their first time around, nobody writes a book or program without errors and good enough to make them rich on their first draft, and almost nobody comes up with a totally new idea. 

 

If ya don't like it, nobody is keeping you here, but if you stay, then you can always help try and improve it.

 

 

11 hours ago, Warlander said:

...

Stuff amounting to: Large factions and faction pvp will never happen because nobody will ever trust that much, and it costs to much, and the devs didn't force everyone to pick one of only a few sides right from the start.

...

 

-EVE Online proves that enough people can trust that much in spite of the paranoia of losing all their stuff given sufficient time and size of player-base.


-Cost is relative, economics of scale require consideration, and while you wont be often seeing people spamming general chat for enough new-joins to hold all their guns, faction-scale pvp still happens whether or not your a org can produce combat ships at a speed it is comfortable with. We may not have whole planets worth of resources going in to 1000-ship battles any time soon, but the game is still young. 

 

-Again... EVE... all those news-worthy major battles between players, those weren't fights between the NPC factions players were forced in to, they were wars between player-made orgs and alliances.

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12 hours ago, Taelessael said:

Right... my apologies if I over simplify any of your points, your post seemed to me to be a lot of "stream of consciousness" and it was hard for me to follow without trying to boil it down and sort it first.

 

 

I admit, I am not familiar with Everquest. Did it have a "You permanently lose all your gear on death" kind of mechanic? Games that do tend to have much more paranoid player-bases as far as pvp stuff goes. Such paranoia does not however permanently prevent large groups from ever forming, it just makes it take longer.

 

 

You say that like you think he tried to claim he was an experienced game dev and came up with all that stuff first. The game is far from perfect, the devs are obviously borrowing basic concepts from other games and learning as they go, and this was obvious back at the start of beta. People do that, nobody has experience their first time around, nobody writes a book or program without errors and good enough to make them rich on their first draft, and almost nobody comes up with a totally new idea. 

 

If ya don't like it, nobody is keeping you here, but if you stay, then you can always help try and improve it.

 

 

 

-EVE Online proves that enough people can trust that much in spite of the paranoia of losing all their stuff given sufficient time and size of player-base.


-Cost is relative, economics of scale require consideration, and while you wont be often seeing people spamming general chat for enough new-joins to hold all their guns, faction-scale pvp still happens whether or not your a org can produce combat ships at a speed it is comfortable with. We may not have whole planets worth of resources going in to 1000-ship battles any time soon, but the game is still young. 

 

-Again... EVE... all those news-worthy major battles between players, those weren't fights between the NPC factions players were forced in to, they were wars between player-made orgs and alliances.

 

With the EQ/WoW portion its just to show the difference between a hard locked and soft locked faction system. Both were based on racism as the driver that has either predefined sides or let you choose your side through actions you took through choices but either way you were forced to join a side of floating factions as two examples of what could be done.

 

As far as JC ill just say I think DU was more of funding his gaming opperating system/engine and not actually making a game as much as showing the tech was there since it requires a bit of R&D to frankenstein it together and make it work well. Ill just leave it at that.

 

 

Since DU is a build your own civ type game it demands that people form groups for survival benefit with little to no survival gameplay and offering bubbles to hide in. Natrually players will form and stay in small groups since there is no actual survival mechanisms to naturally force/make players join larger groups to go from a group, organization, and form governments or factions within a civ without mechanics since there is nothing other than a roster to join now that mining is no longer a thing, logistics is, and the little to no combat that happens on a daily basis.

 

Without mechanics to streamline a civ from material aquisition, production, logistics, and fleet building on a mass scale though factions or civs players can join and get behind it will always stay small groups with a few large or mega orgs. Even still NQ has made DU so that with taxes that will never happen and has religated mining to static cores which makes traveling for mining beyond shuffling ore around and potentially getting attacked or just warping to your destination requiring anything more than solo players working alone or in small groups require even less need to group up or form groups, mid-large orgs, or a civ faction in what has been set up. And for the most part you can join a bunch of orgs which further diminishes the need to group or side with anyone because you can join all your enemies chat clubs.

 

 

If left alone players will not make anything like a faction in DU and with the current system mechanics coming in it makes it even more less likely any meaningful PvP will happen without a pipeline to streamline the mining, production, logistics, and military support on a mass scale rather than what it is without mechanics to drive it. This game is prime for that in its core elements.

 

We have 9 planets and however many moons which could be perfect for three factions wether that is NovaQuark, rebellion, and trade federation with ronin type space pirates as a 4th option to make your own faction it leaves plenty of room to have 3 planets with 3 factions and having 1 progression planet per faction and still having 2 left over planets that should be FFA for top tier ores. On Alioth the 3 moons should be all like santcuary so that you choose a side when you start and alioth acting like the galactic senate homeworld of all three planets you progress into that offers a launchpad. From there you should only be able to jump to your progression planet and live there.

 

So you have 2 planets to fight over but the bubbles still exist to protect property so you can fight and have sufficient ground weapons to repel space assaults and all dynamic cores outside alioth can fight on planets or moons. With the way ore is set up it makes needing to go to those planets necessary for the resources and any frontier tiles without players could be mined with Dynamic cores as well as attacked by the 2 opposing factions. But there needs to be a pipeline to streamline combat to even make it a possibility since we have industry and ship engineering already in place we just need the mechanics to make it work in a way people will get behind because to this point it only worked in alpha and part way through beta and it drives out more players than it brings in.

 

And really in each of the factions or civs it comes down to Military, Trade Federation, and Union inter factions since military covers attack/defense, Trade federations handle trade and logistics, and the Union covers mining and industry. Choosing a civ faction is part of it but there are no clear roles to be part of something bigger as much as just doing whatever you want to quing up quality of life talents and doing what you need to accomplish personal or micro spec group based goals.

 

This game lacks danger in 80+% of daily gameplay and since nobody has your back why watch theirs or care about people in DU without factions making that a possibility. The other aspect is that this game needs large scale PvP to keep the millions of elements, structures, and ships in check and take a lot of assets out of the game. At some point territory warfare might do that but with taxes it makes owning planets all but an impossibility as you will likely never be able to feasably do it.

 

And on top of that factions owning planets and using the taxes they collect to pay for things and bolster a mass group of people instead of just taking quanta helps streamline or buy what a faction needs to run a solar system wide fleet so even if you do your own thing in game and play solo your contribution of taxes goes to actually building ships for people who want to participate in solar warfare or that there are roles to play in that if you just want to mine, run an industry and build, run logistics via freighters, or attack/defend players it is all covered and helps the whole rather than the system mechanics currently that divide players, destroy them economically, and then kick you out of the game.

 

And as faction as a system within a civilization actions being taken should give faction with other players depending on what you do. So if your faction comes across two different faction players fighting and you kill one but not the other you should get faction with that civ. If you play as trade federation and run delivery runs or pick up ore from that side you should get faction. If you doi work order missions as a miner or industrialist then you get mining faction. So you can be friendly with one side or another through your actions so that you can have players within a faction that work with or against the civilizations to open up interesting mechanics if you come across other players in deep space or even within the bubble since you dont actually have to attack anyone from an opposing side but the option is there to prevent one faction or another from mining your planet for free vs buying from your markets since if they kill your side they cant actually access your markets and are forced to trade or steal from planets at that point.

 

Or it sets up interesting elements like having small bubble trade space stations half way between planets that need to be restocked or offer a place to exchange ore to the three factions or as a social hub in a smaller bubble so you can trade but still attack players but not the station that has overkill defenses. Or having pirate space hubs or outposts for those who want to not be in a civ to have an avenue to kill all sides. Or that space pirates own the trade space stations to collect tax or to allow all three sides to trade and bank.

 

As far as territory any faction should be able to drop a TU but it should always be FFA on a planet their civ is not allowed on to mine aggressively and be forced to defends at all times to gain a foothold on a moon or planet by dropping a TU inside an enemy bubble. Inside a bubble the faction civ on that planet should get a defense bonus that negates some attack power so that they can mount an offense and also grant a slight defense debuff on enemies to where deep space is even odd or if you go to another planet you are at a slight disadvantage. 

 

With territory wars you could drop an ATU or assault ty on or against any tile that starts hacking the defenses of a Territory unit and in 24 hours it will finish hacking it and open up the assets on the tile to being assaulted by a civ faction generating military missions. The attacking faction should have to hide their ATU somewhere and the faction civ that owns the land should need to find it on their own or some kind of alert system should tell them they are under attack or just that it is silent and just goes live to force players to patrol their land on their planet and sweep for ATUs.

 

 

Either way whatever NQ is doing is not working and dropping territory warfare on top of taxes will finish off this game unless they restructure or add a faction system since its more an mining industry economy sim with optional Pvp as a game loop.

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39 minutes ago, Warlander said:

...

Since DU is a build your own civ type game it demands that people form groups for survival benefit with little to no survival gameplay and offering bubbles to hide in. Natrually players will form and stay in small groups since there is no actual survival mechanisms to naturally force/make players join larger groups to go from a group, organization, and form governments or factions within a civ without mechanics...

 

...If left alone players will not make anything like a faction in DU and with the current system mechanics coming in it makes it even more less likely any meaningful PvP will happen without a pipeline to streamline the mining, production, logistics, and military support on a mass scale rather than what it is without mechanics to drive it. This game is prime for that in its core elements...

 

...Without mechanics to streamline a civ from material aquisition, production, logistics, and fleet building on a mass scale though factions or civs players can join and get behind it will always stay small groups with a few large or mega orgs...

...On Alioth the 3 moons should be all like santcuary so that you choose a side when you start and alioth acting like the galactic senate homeworld...

...And really in each of the factions or civs it comes down to Military, Trade Federation, and Union inter factions since military covers attack/defense, Trade federations handle trade and logistics, and the Union covers mining and industry...

 

EVE was a huge space-game with massive player owned factions and alliances, as well as what I'd assume was a substantially greater risk to pvp than was in most mmo. They didn't form these factions to avoid getting killed by Starvation, or blown up by random space-lightning, or even running out of fuel like you can in DU. They also didn't form quickly. Goonswarm is a massive alliance with tens of thousands of members in EVE, they didn't start a major faction because the game made them join one that was always there, they started their own after the game was already going because they were a bunch of guys in cheap ships that got together and thought "let's just go use overwhelming numbers to win in pvp". If the game keeps going, and gets enough players, it will get there.

 

Also, seriously? An org doesn't need to have a planet with dev-made cities and governmental structures to be a faction, an org with 2 or more people in it is a faction (albeit a very small one). People are in fact capable of organizing themselves, and building constructs to operate these organizations out of as they see fit. It happens all the time, I've taken part in such on more than one occasion.

 

 

1 hour ago, Warlander said:

...

Even still NQ has made DU so that with taxes that will never happen and has religated mining to static cores which makes traveling for mining beyond shuffling ore around and potentially getting attacked or just warping to your destination requiring anything more than solo players working alone or in small groups require even less need to group up or form groups, mid-large orgs, or a civ faction in what has been set up...

...At some point territory warfare might do that but with taxes it makes owning planets all but an impossibility as you will likely never be able to feasably do it...

...And on top of that factions owning planets and using the taxes they collect to pay for things and bolster a mass group of people instead of just taking quanta helps streamline or buy what a faction needs to run a solar system wide fleet so even if you do your own thing in game and play solo your contribution of taxes goes to actually building ships for people who want to participate in solar warfare or that there are roles to play in that if you just want to...

...Or that space pirates own the trade space stations to collect tax or to allow all three sides to trade and bank...

,,,Either way whatever NQ is doing is not working and dropping territory warfare on top of taxes will finish off this game unless they restructure or add a faction system since its more an mining industry economy sim with optional Pvp as a game loop.

 

... Please stop talking about taxes, not only is it a new system that has yet to stabilize properly, but it is readily apparent that you don't understand any more than "they need to be paid" and "the government irl uses the money for stuff". 

 

Having an NQ enforced tax to pay for other players to do something is seriously just asking to see some clown try to find out if he can pile enough abandoned wrecks to climb to space because they can do it on someone else's dollar. Players hold each other accountable, they observe and determine trustworthiness, this game wont make enough money to pay NQ to employ enough GMs to reasonably do the same.

 

 

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18 minutes ago, Taelessael said:

 

EVE was a huge space-game with massive player owned factions and alliances, as well as what I'd assume was a substantially greater risk to pvp than was in most mmo. They didn't form these factions to avoid getting killed by Starvation, or blown up by random space-lightning, or even running out of fuel like you can in DU. They also didn't form quickly. Goonswarm is a massive alliance with tens of thousands of members in EVE, they didn't start a major faction because the game made them join one that was always there, they started their own after the game was already going because they were a bunch of guys in cheap ships that got together and thought "let's just go use overwhelming numbers to win in pvp". If the game keeps going, and gets enough players, it will get there.

 

Also, seriously? An org doesn't need to have a planet with dev-made cities and governmental structures to be a faction, an org with 2 or more people in it is a faction (albeit a very small one). People are in fact capable of organizing themselves, and building constructs to operate these organizations out of as they see fit. It happens all the time, I've taken part in such on more than one occasion.

 

 

 

... Please stop talking about taxes, not only is it a new system that has yet to stabilize properly, but it is readily apparent that you don't understand any more than "they need to be paid" and "the government irl uses the money for stuff". 

 

Having an NQ enforced tax to pay for other players to do something is seriously just asking to see some clown try to find out if he can pile enough abandoned wrecks to climb to space because they can do it on someone else's dollar. Players hold each other accountable, they observe and determine trustworthiness, this game wont make enough money to pay NQ to employ enough GMs to reasonably do the same.

 

 

 

DU will never be anything like EvE due to the tech limitations of going with a voxel system. The thing about copycatting a game is that you also have to make it your own or you might as well play the real thing that is inherantly better. DU has some decent things about it but due to NQ wanting us to make 60^% of it for them will never get this game to where it needs to go.

 

 

 

vs

 

 

 

The difference is night and day. DU will never be EvE and most people will just play EvE if they wasnt orgs as factions.

 

This game needs a push to get people to fight or they simply wont without having pre-existing factions or you can just mine, build an industry, build or build ships, and, and well keep building some stuff for well the sake of just adding a lot more into the game with no end game fun stuff to do even with the horizontal progression system. 

 

When it will take 260 billion a week to own a planet like alioth as a faction or even half of that being 130 billion a week in tax is too insane to ever have anything more than it is now until people fall off the treadmill. If there were factions they could at least put those billions into ships to blow up which would be a lot more fun than whatever this game turns into when they drop TWars on all our heads or tons of people leave before that happens since guess what when TWars come all the people that got their bases salvaged want to come back there is nothing to come back to.

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6 minutes ago, Warlander said:

DU will never be anything like EvE due to the tech limitations of going with a voxel system. The thing about copycatting a game is that you also have to make it your own or you might as well play the real thing that is inherantly better. DU has some decent things about it but due to NQ wanting us to make 60^% of it for them will never get this game to where it needs to go.

 

The difference is night and day. DU will never be EvE and most people will just play EvE if they wasnt orgs as factions.

 

This game needs a push to get people to fight or they simply wont without having pre-existing factions or you can just mine, build an industry, build or build ships, and, and well keep building some stuff for well the sake of just adding a lot more into the game with no end game fun stuff to do even with the horizontal progression system. 

 

EVE is a good point of reference, and partially what DU wants to be/replace, but it has also had 20 years to get to that point while DU is not yet even in full release, it still needs time to develop. I use EVE as a point of reference when I say it didn't meaningfully push factions and did fine. DU can do the same. People don't play EVE because they want to join the Minmatar Republic, trust in the rust, and fight the Amarr Empire, they play because they want to command cool space-ships while being a pirate/pirate hunter/naval officer/miner/business magnate/ect... 

 

They didn't need major factions forced on them, and indeed often ignored them entirely. I know I did, just like I did here until I felt like joining a larger group. The faction I am in now has its own factories, its own bases, its own small cities, its people are organized in to a governmental structure of sufficient complexity to manage everything. We operate collectively to take advantage of the economics of scale, we work together to design ships and structures and run operations, and we participate in fleet battles when we desire. We didn't need an npc faction for any of that, and neither did any of the other major factions already doing exactly the same as we are. So, why do we need to be forced in to someone else's idea of a faction if all of the supposed benefits of doing so are what we already have in the current system? 

 

The faction system is fine as is, go join a better faction if you don't like your current one.

 

As for "end-game content", that is a different topic entirely and needs its own thread.

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52 minutes ago, Taelessael said:

 

EVE is a good point of reference, and partially what DU wants to be/replace, but it has also had 20 years to get to that point while DU is not yet even in full release, it still needs time to develop. I use EVE as a point of reference when I say it didn't meaningfully push factions and did fine. DU can do the same. People don't play EVE because they want to join the Minmatar Republic, trust in the rust, and fight the Amarr Empire, they play because they want to command cool space-ships while being a pirate/pirate hunter/naval officer/miner/business magnate/ect... 

 

They didn't need major factions forced on them, and indeed often ignored them entirely. I know I did, just like I did here until I felt like joining a larger group. The faction I am in now has its own factories, its own bases, its own small cities, its people are organized in to a governmental structure of sufficient complexity to manage everything. We operate collectively to take advantage of the economics of scale, we work together to design ships and structures and run operations, and we participate in fleet battles when we desire. We didn't need an npc faction for any of that, and neither did any of the other major factions already doing exactly the same as we are. So, why do we need to be forced in to someone else's idea of a faction if all of the supposed benefits of doing so are what we already have in the current system? 

 

The faction system is fine as is, go join a better faction if you don't like your current one.

 

As for "end-game content", that is a different topic entirely and needs its own thread.

 

 

 

Making a faction out of an org is tedious and why force all that upon the players when they can streamline the whole process.

 

Sure Eve was popular but there are much more popular games than EvE. Sure it was one of the first space games before SWG came and went so if you wanted a space themed MMO it was all you had for a long time so there is no surprise it got the lions share of players.

 

 

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3 hours ago, Warlander said:

Making a faction out of an org is tedious and why force all that upon the players when they can streamline the whole process.

 

Sure Eve was popular but there are much more popular games than EvE. Sure it was one of the first space games before SWG came and went so if you wanted a space themed MMO it was all you had for a long time so there is no surprise it got the lions share of players.

 

...Your argument seems to have gone from "players wont cooperate on a large scale without the devs forcing them to" to "its too hard to cooperate on a large scale without the devs forcing us to"...

 

I suppose I should point out that the argument of "these games in an entirely different genre with entirely different game mechanics were more popular" works better as an argument for buying someone a different game for x-mas than it does for trying to change a single mechanic in DU.

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12 hours ago, Taelessael said:

 

...Your argument seems to have gone from "players wont cooperate on a large scale without the devs forcing them to" to "its too hard to cooperate on a large scale without the devs forcing us to"...

 

I suppose I should point out that the argument of "these games in an entirely different genre with entirely different game mechanics were more popular" works better as an argument for buying someone a different game for x-mas than it does for trying to change a single mechanic in DU.

 

Honestly I am not beholden to any one type of faction system from floating faction bested systems like DU/EvE, soft locked faction systems like SC/EQ, or hard locked faction systems like WoW/SWTorR and could discuss any form of those. DU has tried the floating faction based system via Orgs and it should be apparent by now it is not enough without additional mechanics like soft lock faction in order to make it work with the direction the game is now going due to limitations since they tried floating faction and it does not work for this game and Territory Wars will not change that as the losses are so high in time for aquisition and building infrastructure in its current capacity or how quickly it can be destroyed.

 

I posted that video to show how unpopular space genre MMOs are in the grand scheme of things since you cited EvE vs other MMOs available in 2004-21 to showcase what people actually like to play that is fun and works most for all player types even with PvE vs PvP vs PvEvP type games in general. It should be very clear what types of systems based on the top 5 games per year along with the top games over the span of almost 20 years what is actually popular.

 

In brass tacks there is no real difference between any genre in terms of Space MMOs or Fantasy MMOs except for they are 3D or 4D as all mechanics wise all systems are pretty much the same across the board with different paint jobs or model of vehicles they use as system mechanics. Since a horse or flying amount eating carrots or meat in general terms is the same mechanic as a spaceship needing nitron and engines vs saddlebags. Really it is all the same its just the theme and colors used at the end of the day in 2D/3D/4D space.

 

And as far as factions go it just depends on if you limit populations in a guild/org as to how much impact they have on land ownership or if you want a small group vs multiple small groups being part of that in terms of orgs vs a full blow faction system being more inclusive in genral for a variety of guild/org types from elite power guilds, semi elite power guilds, regular guilds, casual guilds, and smaller groups to solo players still being able to do their own thing but still come together as a larger group of groups to accomplish something in a PvP game since if you just have one sided battles and everyone is inherantly your enemy and there is no threshold of success then its DoA for a large majority of people in general from what I have expereinced in many games with a variety of different gruiping, raiding, floating faction, soft lock faction, and hard lock faction based games.

 

When you let people do their own thing and come together as a group of groups under a faction that is a lot more inclusive and easier for everyone if you know the sides and have support even if you are not part of elite guilds, sister guilds, or all the other random guilds out there but can still pull together as a team and accomplish something that impacts the game at large. Most games that offer floating faction are instance based combat in the sense that even though you won the territory it still has no impact on the game as in DU that is one shard and the losses are real and totally impactful since it takes a long time to build an infrastructrre and build ships to throw them away in potentially minuites with no real purpose of doing so.

 

Where as a soft or hard lock faction system allows incusivity and unity of players and actually puts all this infrastructure to work along with the new faction system to take all the burden off the players backs of doing all that and takes tax quanta to buying all the ore, parts and ships their fleet needs and uses that to run the war effort from owned faction planets to fight other planets other than then fighting for scraps and peanuts in someones couch since there is no reason or purpose to fight in general.

 

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46 minutes ago, Warlander said:

...DU has tried the floating faction based system via Orgs and it should be apparent by now it is not enough without additional mechanics like soft lock faction in order to make it work with the direction the game is now going due to limitations since they tried floating faction and it does not work for this game...

 

We went over this yesterday, it works fine.

 

 

48 minutes ago, Warlander said:

...I posted that video to show how unpopular space genre MMOs are in the grand scheme of things since you cited EvE vs other MMOs available in 2004-21 to showcase what people actually like to play that is fun and works most for all player types even with PvE vs PvP vs PvEvP type games in general. It should be very clear what types of systems based on the top 5 games per year along with the top games over the span of almost 20 years what is actually popular...

 

By all appearances, I'd say bright colors, little to no risk of substantial loss, and obvious reward/advancement no matter how little time is put in (even if it is only a very small advancement) are the most popular. All of these are possible in a sci-fi setting, but are more easily achieved in fantasy. But if we are being honest here there's a whole lot of science that has already been done to determine this so as to best direct game development companies on how to make the most money they can. None of those is a faction system.

 

 

1 hour ago, Warlander said:

...In brass tacks there is no real difference between any genre in terms of Space MMOs or Fantasy MMOs except for they are 3D or 4D as all mechanics wise all systems are pretty much the same across the board with different paint jobs or model of vehicles they use as system mechanics. Since a horse or flying amount eating carrots or meat in general terms is the same mechanic as a spaceship needing nitron and engines vs saddlebags. Really it is all the same its just the theme and colors used at the end of the day in 2D/3D/4D space...

 

This statement is wrong in almost every way.

 

-A flying horse that you can spawn from your pack to move more quickly and that despawns harmlessly when you are attacked so that you can respawn it again after your fight is not a ship that you need to invest substantial resources in to have repaired or entirely replaced after you get in to a fight.

-Dying in a fantasy world such that you either need to wait the 10 secs for a friend to cast resurrection, or run the two minutes from the graveyard back to where you were to pick up right back where you left off (assuming the graveyard isn't closer to your goal than you were when you died) with no risk of losing your gear or inventory is not getting blown up and losing both a ship and several hours/days/weeks worth of resources you had been slowly collecting.
-Having to avoid riding a horse in to walls so that you don't look like you may have DC'd is not the same as having to dodge half-loaded space elevators so you don't get killed.

-Having to periodically watch your abilities because you whacked enough boars in the forest to gain a level and are now better at everything is not having to work out the minutia of what an SStO starship needs so you can carry more ore between planets in a ship that handles almost entirely differently from your old one.

 

 

1 hour ago, Warlander said:

...And as far as factions go it just depends on if you limit populations in a guild/org as to how much impact they have on land ownership or if you want a small group vs multiple small groups being part of that in terms of orgs vs a full blow faction system being more inclusive in genral for a variety of guild/org types from elite power guilds, semi elite power guilds, regular guilds, casual guilds, and smaller groups to solo players still being able to do their own thing but still come together as a larger group of groups to accomplish something in a PvP game since if you just have one sided battles and everyone is inherantly your enemy and there is no threshold of success then its DoA for a large majority of people in general from what I have expereinced in many games with a variety of different gruiping, raiding, floating faction, soft lock faction, and hard lock faction based games.

 

When you let people do their own thing and come together as a group of groups under a faction that is a lot more inclusive and easier for everyone if you know the sides and have support even if you are not part of elite guilds, sister guilds, or all the other random guilds out there but can still pull together as a team and accomplish something that impacts the game at large...

 

Several very large alliances of small factions disagree with you, mine included. We operate as small groups when we feel like it, and large ones when we feel like it, and accomplish quite a bit. 

 

 

1 hour ago, Warlander said:

...Most games that offer floating faction are instance based combat in the sense that even though you won the territory it still has no impact on the game as in DU that is one shard and the losses are real and totally impactful since it takes a long time to build an infrastructrre and build ships to throw them away in potentially minuites with no real purpose of doing so....

 

Where as a soft or hard lock faction system allows incusivity and unity of players and actually puts all this infrastructure to work along with the new faction system to take all the burden off the players backs of doing all that and takes tax quanta to buying all the ore, parts and ships their fleet needs and uses that to run the war effort from owned faction planets to fight other planets other than then fighting for scraps and peanuts in someones couch since there is no reason or purpose to fight in general...

 

This isn't WoW, and there are actual substantial consequences to your actions. This is also not a faction-mechanic, and requires its own thread for discussion.

 

 

1 hour ago, Warlander said:

...Where as a soft or hard lock faction system allows incusivity and unity of players and actually puts all this infrastructure to work along with the new faction system to take all the burden off the players backs of doing all that and takes tax quanta to buying all the ore, parts and ships their fleet needs and uses that to run the war effort from owned faction planets to fight other planets...

 

We've been over this already too, your understanding of taxation and collective/governmental usage and resource requirement/expenditure is severely lacking. Please stop trying to argue it, it will never work the way you are trying to explain it as working without a wildly impractical amount of accountability-enforcement carried out by NQ on the player-base.

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2 hours ago, Taelessael said:

 

We went over this yesterday, it works fine.

 

 

 

By all appearances, I'd say bright colors, little to no risk of substantial loss, and obvious reward/advancement no matter how little time is put in (even if it is only a very small advancement) are the most popular. All of these are possible in a sci-fi setting, but are more easily achieved in fantasy. But if we are being honest here there's a whole lot of science that has already been done to determine this so as to best direct game development companies on how to make the most money they can. None of those is a faction system.

 

 

 

This statement is wrong in almost every way.

 

-A flying horse that you can spawn from your pack to move more quickly and that despawns harmlessly when you are attacked so that you can respawn it again after your fight is not a ship that you need to invest substantial resources in to have repaired or entirely replaced after you get in to a fight.

-Dying in a fantasy world such that you either need to wait the 10 secs for a friend to cast resurrection, or run the two minutes from the graveyard back to where you were to pick up right back where you left off (assuming the graveyard isn't closer to your goal than you were when you died) with no risk of losing your gear or inventory is not getting blown up and losing both a ship and several hours/days/weeks worth of resources you had been slowly collecting.
-Having to avoid riding a horse in to walls so that you don't look like you may have DC'd is not the same as having to dodge half-loaded space elevators so you don't get killed.

-Having to periodically watch your abilities because you whacked enough boars in the forest to gain a level and are now better at everything is not having to work out the minutia of what an SStO starship needs so you can carry more ore between planets in a ship that handles almost entirely differently from your old one.

 

 

 

Several very large alliances of small factions disagree with you, mine included. We operate as small groups when we feel like it, and large ones when we feel like it, and accomplish quite a bit. 

 

 

 

This isn't WoW, and there are actual substantial consequences to your actions. This is also not a faction-mechanic, and requires its own thread for discussion.

 

 

 

We've been over this already too, your understanding of taxation and collective/governmental usage and resource requirement/expenditure is severely lacking. Please stop trying to argue it, it will never work the way you are trying to explain it as working without a wildly impractical amount of accountability-enforcement carried out by NQ on the player-base.

 

So then let me ask you why DU is so unpopular then with so many players and why large scale PvP in general is so rare if everything is peachy as is?

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Faction stuff is fine as is. DU's issues stem from non-faction stuff, such as:

 

-Power miners didn't want auto-miner only planetary mining (though several others did).

-PvP players want more variety (combat is too simple, so all the top orgs are more or less flying identical ships because of meta-math).

-Power builders don't like the rumors of impending complexity limits because they like having filigree on their filigree (regardless of how hard that is for everyone to load).

-Market tycoons don't like that the new mining system has disrupted the value of their ore stocks (even though they still can throw around enough money to substantially manipulate prices).

-Manufacturers don't like that industry takes a lot of money to really get in to (because if it didn't there'd be mega-factories everywhere that would lag).

-People don't like taxes (without regard as to their necessity).

-The map is hard to read because the system image is out of date (if it was ever accurate) and NQ keeps making the info-colors on the planet map ever more transparent.
-Asteroids all respawn at once and in relatively limited numbers and only once a week and are visible to the entire universe, so if you are unavailable to play at that exact time you have a much harder time finding good ones to mine (NQ still needs to work on this).

-There is only so much exploring to be done on the few planets the game does have (we need more solar-systems with more interesting planets and moons).

-There is no pve combat for players to serve as pvp-lite or to try and cut their teeth on before facing the savagery of other players.

-There is no atmospheric combat so if someone makes a major nuisance of themselves planet-side without breaking any game-rules players cant do anything about it.

-RDMS is a fantastically complicated thing to wrap one's head around for how simple it is (so it causes a lot of "stupid user errors" that annoy people).

-The game is buggy because it is still in development (but getting better).

-The game has not hit the point in its development where system optimization becomes the dev's primary focus, so it is hard to run for some comps and is prone to lag under certain situations (last I heard it is on NQ's to do list, just ahead of full launch).

-The game has several settings that either can't be altered, revert to standard after every log in, or should be there to be adjustable but aren't, so players have a hard time adjusting things to suit their personal preferences.
-The game is still being developed, meaning what works well now has a fair chance of not working as well or at all later when things get updated (even if things get better when updated, people don't like change).

-The game is not in full release and is not well advertised, so it doesn't have a huge player-base yet.
-The game is focused on the sandbox-space-sim/builder niche, so even with relatively few competitors it has only a small portion of "gamers" it is competing for.

-The game had (and still occasionally has) loopholes that some people abused heavily and did not later suffer consequence or even have what they gained taken from them (so people feel cheated because they have a hard time competing with the resources the abusers gained).

-The people that get irritated with anything in game sit in chat and try to get others to be irritated with them (because misery loves company).

-The people that play one way may often argue with people that play another over "how things should be" and it usually ultimately just irritates both sides (because that is how people are and there is nothing that can be done about it).

-Trolls see the relatively low cost of getting in to the game and hop on to just sit in chat and irritate/demoralize people because they think its funny to ruin everyone else's fun.

-And finally the flippin' trees on Alioth are still a pain in the rear to load. 

 

...you know, just to name a few issues...

 

DU is generally improving, but it still has a good ways to go. In general I'd have to say factions are probably the one area that NQ should avoid tinkering with for the moment, they have enough actual problems to solve without trying to drastically change a relatively clean, concise, and more or less fully functional part of the game in to a massive monstrosity of a gameplay component that would require reworking almost the entire game around it to properly accommodate. 

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No point encouraging large orgs, large cities and fleet battles until the systems can actually handle them.

 

We can’t have huge busy cities, just look at all the issues with Alioth Market 6 for a lot of players.

 

We can’t have fleet battles when people have resorted to single seated fighters as running multiple gunners on a ship was causing issues.

 

let the rest of the system catch up first.

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