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The biggest problem is that people can do everything ....


Verliezer

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After playing the game for more than a year I am more than convinced that the biggest flaw in the game is that people can do or become everything at the same time. This causes the economy never to balance out. It does not make sense that people who are the largest industry tycoons also mine their own ore. This way smaller setups or people who make money from ore, will never get their economy running. It will feel like a struggle forever.

 

How to prevent that everybody can do everything?

 

Just as in real life, limit what you can become. In other words, professions which limits the talents. If I choose to become an industry tycoon, I can only train talents related to my profession. The profitability should be related to the talents trained so that mining only will be profitable by having the right talents. People who become a miner, have mining talents to their availability. Etc, etc. This way it will never become profitable for industry tycoons to mine their own ore so it forces them to buy. When you think about this concept most likely more clever people then I can think of even more ways to split the talents and their professions.
 

You should be able to switch profession, this however will reset your talent points and return the talent points (of course with a penalty extracted from them because you switched).

 

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A big issue causing what OP noticed is that the talent system is set up to allow this. Everyone gets access to anything instantly and talents really provide mostly buffs and gate nothing except for maybe what size core you can deploy (and how many).

 

As a side effect new players get no incentive to choose a "career path" as is the case in EVE for instance, where you buy the skillbook first, which is a first gate to drive choice, and then skill towards what you want to do.

 

Overall it's all really a symptom of the same root cause for the game, no real direction, structure or plan when starting development, just a list of "this is what we want the game to do/offer" and then just start "doing stuff" while never really stopping to think about how what you are building may affect other parts of the game.

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Imagine how boring DU would become if they restrict players more on how to play, as wanted by the op. If I do PvP I want to be able to craft Exotic weapons and also mine my ore for it and later be able to also build a ship. Idk if it is only me but it's how I think it should be. 

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1 hour ago, Verliezer said:

After playing the game for more than a year I am more than convinced that the biggest flaw in the game is that people can do or become everything at the same time. This causes the economy never to balance out. It does not make sense that people who are the largest industry tycoons also mine their own ore. This way smaller setups or people who make money from ore, will never get their economy running. It will feel like a struggle forever.

 

How to prevent that everybody can do everything?

 

Just as in real life, limit what you can become. In other words, professions which limits the talents. If I choose to become an industry tycoon, I can only train talents related to my profession. The profitability should be related to the talents trained so that mining only will be profitable by having the right talents. People who become a miner, have mining talents to their availability. Etc, etc. This way it will never become profitable for industry tycoons to mine their own ore so it forces them to buy. When you think about this concept most likely more clever people then I can think of even more ways to split the talents and their professions.
 

You should be able to switch profession, this however will reset your talent points and return the talent points (of course with a penalty extracted from them because you switched).

 

 

 

Exactly as I have summarized in my "What happened" video and kept saying this for over a year now in at least 10 or so more DU videos.

 

 

 

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8 minutes ago, Walter said:

Imagine how boring DU would become if they restrict players more on how to play, as wanted by the op. If I do PvP I want to be able to craft Exotic weapons and also mine my ore for it and later be able to also build a ship. Idk if it is only me but it's how I think it should be. 

 

And that is simply wrong.
As I mentioned in the video, that would be OK if this was a SINGLE PLAYER game (because you want to give the possibility to the player to do all or most things - since, otherwise, how will he be able to do it?)

 

But in a multiplayer game, in this case, a MMORPG "player driven" game - that is just wrong. You should need other people for many of the things in game - otherwise, quoting myself here "no one needs anyone" - thus the very idea of an "emergent" gameplay dies.

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Maybe there should be something worth doing, before we start talking about adding more limitations?

 

Just look at what happened with 0.23, and now with bots/tax. While obvious that something had to be done with industry to prevent everyone from being completely self sufficient in the long run, the timing (and execution) for the industry nerf was disastrous. At the time industry was one of the few things people actually enjoyed doing in the game. So when it was nuked without any other replacement activities, the resulting reaction from players was obvious. And this trend has only continued, and it feels like there is less and less of a game with every new patch.

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48 minutes ago, CptLoRes said:

Maybe there should be something worth doing, before we start talking about adding more limitations?

 

Just look at what happened with 0.23, and now with bots/tax. While obvious that something had to be done with industry to prevent everyone from being completely self sufficient in the long run, the timing (and execution) for the industry nerf was disastrous. At the time industry was one of the few things people actually enjoyed doing in the game. So when it was nuked without any other replacement activities, the resulting reaction from players was obvious. And this trend has only continued, and it feels like there is less and less of a game with every new patch.

Better yet, rather than limitations.. why not craft quality buffs. People should be able to make anything but to get the best stats on that exotic weapon you need to specilise in weapons with a side tree. But if you choose weapons and ammo you don't have enough points for brakes and engines.

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It works in eve because there is other stuff to do and make money. Majority of people don't craft in eve. A very good portion don't ever mine either.  That's because there are NPCs to shoot for loot and money.  There is PI. There is exploration and the hacking mini game for loots.  There is trading In stations. There is hauling. There is ganking for profit.  Now look at DU. That is the problem and why everyone does everything as there is like 2 things to do, mining and industry. 

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7 hours ago, Walter said:

If I do PvP I want to be able to craft Exotic weapons and also mine my ore for it and later be able to also build a ship.

 

Yes, you should be able to do that but not as efficient as somebody who is specialized in a single profession. That includes that somebody who spends the same total talent points only into PvP and buys the exotic weapons would have an advantage over you in PvP. This is how it is intended in DU, but I do see two problems:

 

1. It is quite easy to get decent talents and than spending additional talent points don't make much of a difference anymore. The talents should scale more linear and have more levels.

 

2. Talent points grow passive only. That makes it too easy to bypass the system with alts. There should at least be a mixture of passive increase and upskill by actual playing in the particular profession.

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1 minute ago, Maxim Kammerer said:

 

Yes, you should be able to do that but not as efficient as somebody who is specialized in a single profession. That includes that somebody who spends the same total talent points only into PvP and buys the exotic weapons would have an advantage over you in PvP. This is how it is intended in DU, but I do see two problems:

 

1. It is quite easy to get decent talents and than spending additional talent points don't make much of a difference anymore. The talents should scale more linear and have more levels.

 

2. Talent points grow passive only. That makes it too easy to bypass the system with alts. There should at least be a mixture of passive increase and upskill by actual playing in the particular profession.

 

Again you are right they use eve model without using the T5 as a time gate. So many things can't be done or even sit in ships until T5 skills are trained. In DU you get 80% of the bonus of a skill for 20% time invested.  Then some skills it's 26 days for the last 5%.  If you aren't gonna hard gate with T5 then it should be way different for skills. Lvl 1-4 should be 2.5% and lvl 5 should be 15% increase. This would separate the people a lot more who master certain skills. And allow at least a little more specialization. 

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6 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

At the time industry was one of the few things people actually enjoyed doing in the game. So when it was nuked without any other replacement activities, the resulting reaction from players was obvious.

I had finally gotten enough basic industry units to make my own fuels and start tinkering with production of ship parts.  The 0.23 patch set me back so far that I still had not recovered before I decided to take a break.  Now that Demeter has nuked mining and replaced it with buggy auto-mining chores I'm barely above new player start point and not looking forward to grinding to keep playing.  

 

TBH, I'm most likely to go beta test a different game until NQ gets a clue (or folds).

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2 minutes ago, Wyndle said:

I had finally gotten enough basic industry units to make my own fuels and start tinkering with production of ship parts.  The 0.23 patch set me back so far that I still had not recovered before I decided to take a break.  Now that Demeter has nuked mining and replaced it with buggy auto-mining chores I'm barely above new player start point and not looking forward to grinding to keep playing.  

 

TBH, I'm most likely to go beta test a different game until NQ gets a clue (or folds).

 

They think they can keep removing stuff without also adding shit to do. That may and well be fine during an alpha. But they chose to charge people a monthly sub.  Kind of backed themselves into a corner and it shows. 

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The game was marketed as and open skills games, so ofcause you can do everything, just not at once. This allows the player to try out all aspect of the game to it fullest and chose what ever they want on a given day.

 

What the OP seems to want is class based game, you know the same old paladin, wizard priest, we can call them miner, pilot and ceo. A system where you get locked in, unless you delete  your character and start over.

 

Open skill systems give the play options to do what they want, in a manner they want. But it is not for all players many prefer the more linear class based route

 

 

 

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38 minutes ago, Kurosawa said:

The game was marketed as and open skills games, so ofcause you can do everything, just not at once. This allows the player to try out all aspect of the game to it fullest and chose what ever they want on a given day.

 

What the OP seems to want is class based game, you know the same old paladin, wizard priest, we can call them miner, pilot and ceo. A system where you get locked in, unless you delete  your character and start over.

 

Open skill systems give the play options to do what they want, in a manner they want. But it is not for all players many prefer the more linear class based route

 

 

 

 

the open skill system is fine, if you actually have a game.  If people have way more options then to do industry, then things usually even themselves out.  People find their niche or place in the world.  DU is severely lacking in that department so these things seem more of a problem then they are.  If a new person can come in, set a few autominers, mine a MOON near alioth. get a xs core with some guns and go shoot some rats, or go do a scan/radar exploration game to get some loot from NPC wreck, you have other ways to progress, earn $$ and then buy stuff you need.  Right now the game is so [filtered]ing bare bones, and whats scary to people is "release" seems to be coming sooner rather than later.  NQ cant keep letting these 10s of thousands of beta keys keep logging in without paying. 

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21 minutes ago, Knight-Sevy said:

We need talent systems that can be unlocked with real playing time and not with afk talent.
 

It must be on merit

 

I really have to agree with that. Not necessarily remove the background talent point generation, but have real activity to earn points for players. For example, have players chose a profession that they can only have one at a time, which gives bonus points as they do actions on that. Example: a person working as a hauler gets bonus talent points every X km or su they travel, a mining specialist gets talent points for scanning and calibrating mining units, industrialists get talent points per batch produced on their selected industry type, etc.

 

You can even go deeper on that and allow like two or three specialization levels, which allow higher tiers of talents to be learned:

- Level 1 - General Industrialist, can learn up to Tier 2 of industry-related talents. Gets X amount of talent points when a batch is produced

- Level 2 - Fuel Producer, can learn up to Tier 4 of that specific "general" talent area, so for example a Fuel Producer would be allowed to learn up to Tier 4 on fuel production talents but only Tier 2 of refining. Gets X + 25% of talent points when a batch of their speciality is produced (fuel), none for the other areas

- Level 3 - Specialist, can learn Tier 5 talent on a very specific area or product (only Space Fuel, Atmo Fuel or Rocket Fuel), Tier 4 on their area's products (other fuel types) and only Tier 2 on the other areas. Gets X + 50% of talent points when a batch of their speciality is produced (space fuel), none for the other areas

 

With that the game would pretty much enforce players to chose a specific area. Even basic stuff such as refining ore would only be efficient if the person doing it was a specialist, otherwise the way would be going for the market (which is really bad for pures, currently). Other intermediate product types could also start seeing more trading too.

 

You don't even need to lock someone to that specific profession forever, maybe limit it to changing once every 30 days, but the moment they do that any bonus they get from the higher tiers is disabled, so one must really think about what they want to do, how they want to progress, etc.

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The 'solution' should not become too complex to implement. Many ideas sounds good but when you start thinking how to implement them it probably is way to disruptive and would take too much time and will not make the release because the game will be dead by that time.

 

Solutions needs to be in-line with current gameplay and implementation. Things like the game-release, will solve the problem that's being caused be those many ALT's . A lot ALT's will getting inactive which will cause a new problem.

Adding professions can be a feasible solution if not too complicated. So limit current talent trees (as-is today) based on your profession, is not that disruptive so will be most likely feasible within a single Q or so to implement.

The game is becoming more and more polluted by inactive players, broken economy, the schematic failure (when selling prices dropped for a fraction of the price),  inactive tiles with headquarters (coming action), stockpiles of ore, to large industries in single hand and when the game releases those thousand of ALT's (former beta-keys) which become inactive with all side effects to it.

Adding all those things up then there is only one solution which we al realizes we can't avoid anymore ..... The Whipe :). We know it will come, the only question is how and when.

Edited by Verliezer
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They have taken 2 steps to address the OP's issue. First was schematics. No longer can you produce everything you need in only a couple machines. Choices need to be made to invest in those schematics are buy the items. In many cases it is now cheaper to buy the item then to setup your own production chain.  And NQ is still getting push back to have them removed. 

 

The second step they have taken is to limit ore types on planets. You will now need to have operations on 4 or 5 planets to get every type of ore. 

 

And there is a third option they should consider. Right now there is no industry skills.  You only have refining, smelting, and intermediary products.  And to produce anything you will need all 3 of those skills. Once you have all 3  you will be able to produce anything.  There needs to be another set of skills that affect assembly machines.  And the tree needs to be basic, Uncommon, Advanced, rare, Exotic.  With basic having its own tree, with uncommon having its own tree, with advanced having its own tree........   That way a player can choose to focus on doing say uncommon. and max uncommon.  So all the uncommon things he produces will cost less.  This will not solve a player with 5 alts from being able to work on specializing in everything. but you will never be able to solve the alt from being able to do things like this. 

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There allready is that in the game, using different tiers of industry is talent gated as well as different sizes of assembly... But what makes a little less sense is the efficiency skills; millions upon millions of talent points to craft like 25% faster doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

 

 

Overall I disagree with OP, the premisse is correct and as others stated, NQ has consistently been moving towards forcing more specialisation, but all of the suggestions made are anti-fun and liable to invoke yet another mountain of complaints.

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On 12/17/2021 at 2:07 AM, Verliezer said:

How to prevent that everybody can do everything?

What I loved about this game and I really mean loved, is the fact I could start on a tile, mine the 4 basic rocks and turn that into a base, then that base could become a factory and start producing ship parts and I could build that ship and fly to space without ever leaving that tile. The only thing I would need is a core or 2 but really that's it. That concept is really attractive to me. 

 

In a sense, I am self reliant and I honestly dont think that's an issue. It's the way I wanted to play before 0.23 and I dont want to be forced to play together. (I'm not opposed to it, just the forced play style)

 

Either i can build "everything" myself or I wont play the game so is the game better off without me? Is NQ better off with one less sub? 

 

The mistake NQ makes is looking across the whole game and making decisions that fit their way of playing instead of a case by case basis. 

 

It really comes down to a player and if I want to build everything and I can't, is the game better without me? I'm not sure how it is but I'm sure many will disagree. 

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1 hour ago, RumRunner25 said:

What I loved about this game and I really mean loved, is the fact I could start on a tile, mine the 4 basic rocks and turn that into a base, then that base could become a factory and start producing ship parts and I could build that ship and fly to space without ever leaving that tile. The only thing I would need is a core or 2 but really that's it. That concept is really attractive to me.

 

Just like it was attractive to many other players, and should be so since it is ties into some of the basic survival instincts we all have.

But apparently this did not fit with NQ's idea of how an "completely open world community" should work. Which is all kinds of ironic.

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No, the biggest problem is shit game design. 

 

There is no real point to the game.  The only point to PvP is to harass other players and serve as a refuge to the unskilled who can't pass muster in other games with combat that requires real skills.

 

Construction is just there to build pretty but useless structures (sand castles) and is basically there to serve the Landmark refugee crowd who weren't enough in number to save that game.

 

The economy is on life support (bots) because there is no demand for anything.  This is where the OP's point comes in. There is no specialization in the game. Specialization is what drives economic growth but, the economy in this game was always going to face an uphill battle.  The devs are French and with that comes a belief in economics that is more akin to alchemy and magic.  I suppose that also explains PvP to an extent, as it largely consists of running away.

 

 

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