"Gameplay Loops"

[aliensalmon]

Okay, it's time for yet another stupid question by yours truly! Don't mind me though, I like reading discussions about games like this though. Cures my boredom.

 

I've heard about the term "gameplay loop" in this forum (and also in another gaming forum) for a few times now. Many people agree that Dual Universe needs a lot of these things to be more enjoyable.

 

My question to you is, what makes a good gameplay loop? What are some good gameplay loops to add to Dual Universe?

[VandelayIndustries]

Better destruction mechanics, thru PVP and PVE.  In turn salvage methods for completely destroyed items.  And in turn with more destruction means more need for the builder factory people.  But right now its way too easy to build and way to easy to not lose anything.  

[blundertwink]

A good gameplay loop creates a state of "flow" -- one of those game design buzzwords that's difficult to define precisely. Most gamers know what "flow" is because they've played games that drive it well, but it isn't easy to describe.

 

Flow is when the gamer is fully "engaged" and focused on the game and has the exact right balance of challenge and reward. 

 

A loop is those actions that work together to create this state.

 

An example of a loop is mining pre-Demeter. You have to find a node, dig to find the resource itself, extract it, then transport it back.

 

That's a loop, but a weak one  -- it struggled to create a state of flow because the 'challenge' of mole mode was more frustrating than engaging...but it had some level of depth because it interacted with the "build" loop -- want to carry more ore? You need a ship capable of lifting more. That's how games become more complex and engaging -- when loops interact with each other and become more intricate and interconnected as you play. 

 

We've seen negative progress with this loop being replaced by a calibration mini-game. Yes, mole sim wasn't great....but it could have been tweaked instead of being destroyed. I don't think NQ really thought about how big a part of their core loop mining really was. 

 

DU's loops are shallow and lopsided -- reward and challenge don't align, so gamers never experience enough engagement to reach that coveted state of "flow". The game is either impossibly easy in the ability to avoid all danger or impossibly hard in the asymmetrical and specialized nature of PvP. 

 

Many of the game's core loops now involve "wait" as an action -- the "collect materials" loop touches just about every part of the game, and now that it is mostly replaced by a mini-game....well, people will need to find depth in other loops to make up for it, but those loops don't exist. 

 

In those times where DU manages to capture that state of flow...tbh, I feel it's more of an accident that an intent of the design. 

[CptLoRes]

A game loop is just what it says. But that does not mean it is a good game loop.

 

A good one on the other hand is something you can repeat many times and still feel that there is progression and that you are not grinding just for the sake of it.

A classic example is PVE where the "environment" aka monsters and reward scale in difficulty as you level up. Often also livened up by sprinkling in some quests ect. that become available at certain thresholds to bring more variation.

 

DU on the other hand has no such thing. The mining loop (before they killed it) but also the mining bots, have no progression at all. Just a mindless chore repeating the same process over and over again. Missions can be a bit better, but they also quickly fall into the same category.

 

[le_souriceau]

DU has not gameplay loop, but gameplay noose.

 

Like more you hang out, pun intended, more it chokes you by combo of repetive BS and overall lack of content beyond purely decorative voxel building and cripple-grade pvp.

[Cybob19]

The obvious thing and I'm like a broken record on this: once avatar vs avatar is ingame we need animals. Without it, those who will have lvl5 skills and exotic weapons will dominate another sad battlefield. If you put animals in the game, you can make good on an antiquated KS promise, and from there on you can add all kinds of other items to interract with them in different manners, baits, traps, fishing rods, but also stuff on the other end of the production line: healing potions (or pills or syringes, it's the future afterall ^^), buffing potions, cosmetical items and trophies, maybe even ammo types or what have you. And NQ can aim small on this one, it's not the primary reason the game exists, eventhough other games get by on nothing but that. Of course we can dream of some day where we can collide with giant sandworms, see smooth monster animations, or have special acid attacks corrode ship hulls or what have you, but we needn't go there. Dumb[filtered] empyrion grade AI that isn't there when nobody looks would allready be a massive enrichment if the procedural spawn-in is credible, and the ways of locating them engaging. Better than radar pinging hotter or colder is being dependant on a second player who operates a scanner or a baiting mechanism even if it's just a minigame that is kind of fake. If all you need is a handtool and some skill specialisation, these things might become super interesting avenues for new players, if a 4 ton haul could hold some serious value that equates to a week of grind. Puts a stop gap to bigger is better. Live cheap on sanctuary, do PVE for a living.

And territory warfare on it's own doesn't cut it IMO. Sure with mobs running around there might be more reason to reserve a special tile... But this is a difficult one because it's unavoidable you take the game down more narrow paths no matter how you add onto territory warfare. Being able to formally declare war between orgs is an important detail. But like... I don't even really believe orgs controlling "hardcoded" places, like markets or taxes or something like that, is the best option. You can make it work, other games do, and dual universe does have tools allready that these games don't (vehicles, self made vehicles are yuuuge difference ? it could devolve into fortnight inspired firefights, where quick building is rewarded, but I don't think such a thing is particularely realistic, IMO the game is paced down in many small details so lag and desync don't matter as much, like having to hold a bunch of commands for a good second). I think it needs to be handled more elegantly, like events naturally attracting players to certain parts of the world, so there is more pressure on ressources in very small spots, that regularely change. IDK ground rocks are no fun to pick up, if 400l took at little time as 20l... but no... spawning in surface asteroids, so meteroids (that can be reserved through claim, though they would have to be huge to justify that) is kind of tacky too. We still don't know what thoramine does don't we? I'd assume it can be turned into DAC but they can't just hand out free access like candy forever and ever.

I see one avenue but is energy management still part of their plans? We haven't heard anything since a while, and taxation in some ways achieves what we allways pointed towards energy management for, when in reality that's pretty difficult to balance without making it lame. The way I see it could work something like this. The TCU generates a small amount of energy that would explained lore wise like "It derides it's power from the arkship, so long as you pay" (which you need to do anyway if you have industry, or mining units), then there would be a few passive power sources, like solar and wind, that are restricted in number per tile, and possibly also energy storage options. Tiles of the same entity would be able to share their energy. And if you need more energy than that, you can allways burn fuel in as many generators as you want. Well if we had something like that in place, we could have events like hotspots where energy is cheap for a while. (if the game is super well balanced, at that point it might be for example profitable, to claim no-mans land, just to produce hydrogen and oxygen with the abundance of energy for a while and bring it back to make fuel, I don't think such a degree of balance is very realistic without the game turning into a super slug where everybody is yearning for energy to progress) But even if people have to move over their whole industry for the cheapest energy it could lead to some fun. They could also do artifacts that produce an abundance of power until they run out, but are easy to locate and only work in pvp space or what have you. But it's easy to soapbox ideas into a system that does not yet exist.

Good incentives for engaging territory warfare are a though nut to crack, so is the claiming problematic, but I think I read somewhere eve has an ok solution? Like 2 weeks of time and the defender can decide when it starts or something like that.

[blundertwink]

15 hours ago, Overstimuloredom said:

The obvious thing and I'm like a broken record on this: once avatar vs avatar is ingame we need animals.

 

There will be no AvA until sometime "after release" -- realistically, it isn't likely to become part of the game overall. Keep in mind that AvA doesn't mean a first person shooter -- DU won't be able to support that sort of game. If AvA ever does come (again, that's unlikely), it'll be very basic. 

 

15 hours ago, Overstimuloredom said:

I see one avenue but is energy management still part of their plans?

Energy management adds more depth and engagement to the building loop -- a lot more than taxation does. Energy management works very well for building games because it creates a layer of strategy, albeit a simple one, around how to "spend" your energy.

 

If DU were a more robust game, they would have rolled out power management instead of schematics a long time ago...

 

That's the key with game loops -- NQ has mad a series of short-sighted choices that don't create a deep foundation to build on top of. Their loops won't get more complex because they were designed to be closed systems.

 

To scale to more territory, you must pay taxes...that's a closed loop that won't ever get more interesting or connect with the rest of the game. 

 

On the other hand, energy can have a lot of depth -- different types of power that require different types of fuel, solar/battery, wind...all of which could vary planet-to-planet. Turning energy into a commodity could add more economic depth and set the stage for more cooperation / city building. Geothermal or other renewable sources of energy might make a big different in TW (although I highly doubt territory war will include land-based hexes in its first iteration).

 

Relative to the complexity, energy adds a lot of potential. NQ wants some level of "touch" to keep your factories active...instead of a truly horrible mining mini-game, power solves this in a more elegant and engaging way by requiring fuel. Well...now there can be missions to deliver fuel. People can buy and sell fuel. Different types of fuel can have different efficiency...it's a game loop with a lot of potential for expansion that solves the same problem without nerfing engagement. 

 

When you look at schematics, taxes, and "mining", I think it is clear that NQs core loops are becoming more shallow and less engaging over time -- they've designed themsleves into a corner where there's nothing to do because they made the end of every loop the same: "grind for more currency". 

[Cybob19]

I know it will never be a first person shooter but let's be honest here: a sobering number of modern MMO are still lock on target. Even if they like to create the impression that you're doing something by giving you misses if you don't stay in range, or if it's more fancy, make you miss according to the animation cycle.

[Zarcata]

I am very curious to see what will be on the new roadmap. When I read through the player requests and all the ideas, one can only be disappointed with the roadmap. Many seem to wish much more into DualUniverse purely, than it is at all possible to be really implemented in the game.

[XKentX]

NQ Roadmap 2022: Survive

 

That's all you seen it.

[Kurosawa]

energy sounds boring, it is yet another survival element like auto mining, air or food. No real game play and a continuations of the degradation of open game play.

(well unless you like survival games :))

[Cybob19]

Very likely that it will not make DU feel like more of a game, I think it's main purpose is to impose challenges on real big factories, give the people who could buy out most of the ore and dominate all production lanes something to bang their head against, it should be very negligeable for "small" players. I tried to say at a few points that it's kind of fallacious to inject ideas into systems that do not yet exist, eventhough I wasted like a long paragraph doing just that lol. I agree that annoying counters that serve no purpose other than debuff you if you forget about them, like hunger and thirst, are not gameplay either, they're time"fillers", more like empty calories.

 

Hmm what else could they do besides mobs, I feel like a hands on the ruleset approach, like for example let orgs fight for the control over certain important institutions, is just more believing the anarchistic element that is the player will do all the content for them.

[CptLoRes]

Yes. While energy is probably needed, adding it now without major improvements to other parts of the game would just be a repeat of 0.23.