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Change of Course


SvarogZ

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I would like to discuss the near future of DU.

 

It's no secret to either the players or the developers (as I see it) that DU will fail immediately upon release with the current mechanics. As it stands now, it's a mining and production simulator with pretty weak economics.

 

It's so sad to see this great idea go to hell.

What is DU now? It's a construction, manufacturing, and peaceful flight simulator.

What is the current course? To make a combat flight simulator and maybe a shooter.

 

Who plays this game? Most of us are pretty close to nerds (sorry if that hurts your feelings). I am interested in playing DU even in excel. Do graphics make a significant difference to me? Probably not.

Who will the developers attract? Looks like shooter players who definitely don't like excel. What will they find here? Obviously, nothing. That means anger and, of course, nasty posts everywhere.

 

I don't see how ping and pendings can be reduced to an acceptable 30-60ms. Thus, pvp as we know it from Fortnite and similar games is hardly possible in the near future on a single server. NPCs are also unlikely to be possible due to the architecture  of the game.

But I love this game, I want to play this game, I don't want this game to die.

 

How can this situation be improved?

I'm already playing this game. Sure, I'm waiting for additional content, but do I really need an atmo combat simulator here? No. It makes it impossible to live on the planet.

Do I need a PvP area in space everywhere? No. It suppresses the idea of peaceful gameplay for construction and production.

Do I really need PvP? Yes, I do. However, if you remember, I am a nerd, I'll be more than happy to fight you in excel.

 

I think we can leave the space as it is. It works more or less acceptably. Of course, it needs to be improved, but at this stage it's more or less fine.

 

The focus should be on the economy and the planets.

I believe we can realise territory wars without shooting. There are a lot of strategy games that don't require a good ping and reaction.

I want to be able to occupy any tile I like if my corporation is strong enough. My territorial and border integrity should play an important role in the mechanics of territorial wars.

So my proposal is a flight simulation in space and a solid strategy game without the rush of the surface.

 

Should we ignore reality and just hope for a happy future? Or should we perhaps change course and help the game survive?

 

What do you think?

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I have at several times said that I believe that if NQ would push the combat aspect in DU more towards a strategic mechanic and less an action based one that it would benefit the game as a whole.

 

It was always the intent for the game to be the sum of it's parts with no single "major" pillar. That said, some pillars are easier to make work than others and as it stands pillars like Exploration and RPG really are not present in game at all because the core game does not provide the means for these to become an active part in the game. 

 

Industry work but is very "flat", it has no depth in that everything is on one level and there is no way to extend that right now. There would be ways to do so but NQ seems uninterested in even exploring these options. A good start would be to fix the schematic mechanic. Not by removing it but by making it an actual integral part of the game like I suggested HERE

 

Mining has been reduced to a numbers game, there is asteroids sure, but the main mining mechanic does not interact with the environment at all, it is purely an "in the UI" mechanics, likely driven by the lack of funding to support bandwidth server side.

 

Economy is mostly dead because bots drive the markets, people complain that T2/T3 materials are near or at T1 levels and that is only because T1 is being kept where it is by the bots. These need to go. If NQ would expose market data through API, it would bring in a whole new gameplay option which would fit the "excel warrior" well ;)

 

PVP is really the weak link for me though. A big problem here is that it appears many combat focussed players seem to not want to be part of the game itself, they just want their pewpew and with that want access to as much of the game as possible, regardless of how that would impact players who think and play differently. And that is a dangerous slope. NQ seems to try and desperately shoehorn combat into the game where it really doesn’t fit and with it is skewing the game as a whole.

 

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Dual universe PvP has been always problematic due to many technical problems. When it works and players come out in masses it is great fun to have. Like in the Gamma Fight

We still talk about it how it was a great experience. People bashing PvP and dismissing it as bad for the most part did not put much effort in it to begin with.

 

I think to have atmo PvP is posible and I want it, but needs to be scaled down from Space pvp to deal with desync much.

 

I will not fight you on excel you need to hop in a ship with few guns to fight me.

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21 minutes ago, Walter said:

Dual universe PvP has been always problematic due to many technical problems. When it works and players come out in masses it is great fun to have. Like in the Gamma Fight

We still talk about it how it was a great experience. People bashing PvP and dismissing it as bad for the most part did not put much effort in it to begin with.

 

I think to have atmo PvP is posible and I want it, but needs to be scaled down from Space pvp to deal with desync much.

 

I will not fight you on excel you need to hop in a ship with few guns to fight me.

 

That Gama fight was so great that no one does it again....hahahahah. Amazing mental gymnastics you people have to do to keep telling yourself how good DU pvp is.  There is pvp every second in EvE for the last 18 years, but happens once every 6 months in DU.  Such a great experience that you do it once since Athena then never again.  Amazing.

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1 hour ago, blazemonger said:

Let's try and stay fair here.. He said that while it has issue, on the occasions it works, it is really enjoyable and fun.

The one doing the "mental gymnastics" here to try and validate their opinion is really you..

 

 

People could go fight for alien cores right now and have that same fun experience, pretty much daily. But they don't.  All that needs to be said really. 

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11 minutes ago, CousinSal said:

 

People could go fight for alien cores right now and have that same fun experience, pretty much daily. But they don't.  All that needs to be said really. 

The reason for it is simple Legion can field every day 30 ships for defense of the cores without sweat. And the adversaries of Legion are not able to do the same. No one likes to be sealclubed and the fight for Gamma was their one and only shot to be relevant again (Empire and co)  So until a group is formed that can put togheter 50 players there is just no contest

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35 minutes ago, Walter said:

The reason for it is simple Legion can field every day 30 ships for defense of the cores without sweat. And the adversaries of Legion are not able to do the same. No one likes to be sealclubed and the fight for Gamma was their one and only shot to be relevant again (Empire and co)  So until a group is formed that can put togheter 50 players there is just no contest

 

Bad game design then. NQs fault.  And 30 ships is INSANELY LOW. I was in a small lowsec alliance in eve, and we could field 150 for a timed fight. 

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Player numbers and specifically PvP player numbers are very low, we're in a sub-to-play early access beta stage game.

The whole fight around Gamma Alien Core had around 150 constructs involved. You compare it to fully launched, decade-long running game that doesn't come with the uncertainty of the terrain DU is right now.
Not sure how the lack of players and a lack of unified opposition of the players towards a big adversary like Legion is "bad game design". Lack of marketing engagement to create hype or whatnot to bring in players might be NQ's fault, but it's not a question of game design in that aspect.

Where I do blame NQ here is that they didn't do anything with the Gamma fight. They could have made a video of sorts to promote it, show how PvP actually plays out in their game compared to the false advertising they do with their youtube videos on PvP. Get some info from the parties involved, backed by the data of the server and pull it off documentary style, generating some hype and maybe moving people to involve themselves with it, to at least check it out.

Edited by Metsys
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2 hours ago, CousinSal said:

 

People could go fight for alien cores right now and have that same fun experience, pretty much daily. But they don't.  All that needs to be said really. 

Guess what? We just had again a Fight at an Alien core. It really just needs to get radars back it seems.

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On 6/10/2022 at 1:16 PM, Walter said:

Like in the Gamma Fight

What exactly was fun about it? Looking at marker icons for hours, announcing the main target in Discord, everyone clicking on it -identify-shoot click and if target dead, repeat.

Sure, you can also spend an hour with ships and max speed to keep the alien core in phase again and again...drags the whole thing out enormously.

Who dies, is revived on a nearby point, sits down in a spare ship - or, if these are not available, one revives 350su on Alioth again and spends to consider whether one now flies for hours to the fight or logs out.

Sure, it looks great when 5-10-30 blue markers suddenly pop up in the dark space and you can still see your own blue markers at the same time, the whole view becomes much more interesting. It doesn't matter if the ships look great - no one sees them anyway at combat distances of up to 2su.

How PvP works in space with ships in Dualuniverse is boring for me. There is nothing dynamic about it. Add to that the enormously poor performance - ships bounce from point to point and you guess where it could really be or hope the hit chance recognizes the position of the enemy.

The best part of PvP is probably the ship building itself. You can design it however you want, play ping pong with the stats and the elements, and make calculations about what makes more sense in combat in what situation. The combat itself is tiring and boring, sometimes just time-consuming.

This is what DualUniverse is supposed to represent? This is what a meta-company really wants to present? 

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On 6/10/2022 at 5:16 PM, Metsys said:

The whole fight around Gamma Alien Core had around 150 constructs involved.

and how many real players? much less - tendency currently due to lack of interest and the wipe always decreasing.

 

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2 hours ago, Zarcata said:

What exactly was fun about it? Looking at marker icons for hours, announcing the main target in Discord, everyone clicking on it -identify-shoot click and if target dead, repeat.

Sure, you can also spend an hour with ships and max speed to keep the alien core in phase again and again...drags the whole thing out enormously.

Who dies, is revived on a nearby point, sits down in a spare ship - or, if these are not available, one revives 350su on Alioth again and spends to consider whether one now flies for hours to the fight or logs out.

Sure, it looks great when 5-10-30 blue markers suddenly pop up in the dark space and you can still see your own blue markers at the same time, the whole view becomes much more interesting. It doesn't matter if the ships look great - no one sees them anyway at combat distances of up to 2su.

How PvP works in space with ships in Dualuniverse is boring for me. There is nothing dynamic about it. Add to that the enormously poor performance - ships bounce from point to point and you guess where it could really be or hope the hit chance recognizes the position of the enemy.

The best part of PvP is probably the ship building itself. You can design it however you want, play ping pong with the stats and the elements, and make calculations about what makes more sense in combat in what situation. The combat itself is tiring and boring, sometimes just time-consuming.

This is what DualUniverse is supposed to represent? This is what a meta-company really wants to present? 

If it was not fun we in Legion would not be eager to have again such a fight.

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6 hours ago, Walter said:

If it was not fun we in Legion would not be eager to have again such a fight.


It would certainly be an interesting survey, who really plays the alien cores for fun and who out of pure boredom or because they want the valuable plasma.

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1 hour ago, PleiJades said:

A lot of people did that. And DU population is now rather small. I am not sure if this advice is really helpful for DU or is actually killing it, but OK.

It's not like that many players came from Eve or returned there. Especially all the builders certainly didn't go into the Eve game. In the end, it will be seen how many players remain active in DualUniverse and form the player core and, if this number is then sufficient to keep DualUniverse alive. Unfortunately, it is a very special game that has also been implemented in a very special way. It will probably never be enough to attract the masses permanently.

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18 minutes ago, Zarcata said:

It's not like that many players came from Eve or returned there.

How do you know? DU was definitely talked about several times on EVE corp discords. Several EVE streamers also tried out DU for a while becuase trailers at the launch of beta also suggested a lot of PvP and warfare.

And this poll is from 2016, yes but it looks like there were definately some backers back then who did play EVE before:

And as you can see the whole discussion about being like EVE seems to be very old.

Right now the game is mostly about building so many active players care about this part. So probably PvP players are maybe a minority but I am not sure if that was the case at launch of beta.

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