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Absolute Biggest Bang for Your Buck things NQ could do in the short-term to improve DU


EmbyrCelyca

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Lack of varied content, terrible & incoherent progression paths, etc... etc, players seem to agree on as obvious flaws in Dual Universe that have been persistent through Alpha and Beta. Lots of big features are still missing and I hope the game gets a chance to see those features added some day but those aren't the answer to the here-and-now state of DU. To be clear I'm in a hopium-phase with the game still. I'm going to keep playing for the time being because I very much want games like DU wants to be to be successful.


What the game needs RIGHT now are changes that can be done reasonably quickly but add a lot to the fabric of the game world. ( I have no idea if these are quick, I'm making assumptions, obvi)

 

Here are some things I think could be done asap leveraging the design of current systems in the game.

 

1) For planet/moon surfaces create radar like items that can fit on xs dynamic constructs that detect ore in a similar fashion to asteroid mining (distance detection/ having to triangulate it's position as you move around

     - Ore should be at the surface and not require massive tunnels to get to, hopefully addressing the original performance issues of tunneling on planets. Unclaimed tiles should return to default terrain after a period of time, not sure if that happens currently but it should for performance reasons.

     - Should benefit and use mining hand tools used on asteroids so there's a lower level entry point to content that benefits from these skills. Suddenly using them on asteroids is extremely jarring from a progression point of view.

     - This would provide more exploration gameplay and encourage people to spread out to uninhabited parts of planets and moons.

     - Good for low skill point players so they can enjoy flying their early constructs.

     - Allow this radar item on to larger ships but reduce the effectiveness or range which can be justified by saying larger systems interfere with the radar item.

     - Have these ore veins respawn somewhat regularly and vary the distribution based on the planet biome to encourage trade/transport between regions.

     - These surface veins could also spawn more regularly the further they are from player owned tiles, which would make the location of this gameplay vary over time giving a simple way of adding to the game world feeling alive and influenced by players.

 

2) Localize the effect of Deep Space Asteroid Trackers

     - Every player in the game has access to every asteroid which basically funnels ALL competition in to a narrow corridor of content.

     - Make the DSAT required to be anchored on space structures so players have to commit their DSAT gameplay to a specific region of space, or if they want full solar system coverage they have to commit multiple cores to the effort.

     - Remove current tracking "mini-game" of fly to a destination and press button, ad nauseum. Make the mini-game reflective of the type of discovery players will need to do once they find the asteroid and are trying to triangulate the position of ore with the tools they currently have.

     - Add skills that influence the effectiveness of DSAT 

     - Add T1-T5 of DSAT

     - Maximum DSAT skills should allow a player to scan the region around a single orbital body to a certain range or have to commit a deep space outpost to find asteroid away from all orbital bodies.

     - Asteroid rarity, value, and skill points required in DSAT to find them should increase in zones further away from orbital bodies in addition to whether it spawns in safe or PVP space.

              - This would help add progression to this gameplay loop, instead of just...build big dsat and bam everyones the same.

     - Whenever territory warfare is implemented if multiple players co-habitate the same region of space and are DSATers, they would have reasons to fight each other.

 

3) Make salvaging gameplay loop viable by having entry level content players can commit to early as their money making method.

     - link entry/basic wrecks to the amount of player travel in a given zone.

             - Would make beginner salvage content predictable in it's location. Quanta per hour should be similar to someone surface mining.

     - Skills and hand tools specific to salvaging so there is a measure of player commitment to the gameplay

     - For speeds sake, add seeded buy orders for salvage specific material to jump start the gameplay loop. They should disappear after the buy order is fulfilled.

     - Maybe not in a first pass of this overall change because it could take too long when change is needed NOW, but add salvage specific items that would be needed in crafting so there is trade and exchange between gameplay loops.

     - High rarity and value wrecks should still be a thing but you need an entry point for new players and a daily salvage gameplay loop they can count on doing everyday.

 

 

If I was in charge of DU this is what I would be having the studio be doing for the next 1 or 2 patches.

 

I didn't mention PVE combat because that's not a quick thing imo but it is DESPERATELY needed as an entry level combat profession for players.

 

A lot of elements I mentioned above would apply there too.

 

     - Trade and exchange between PVE, Miners, and Salvagers,

     - Entry level content for day 1 or 2 players. 

     - In my mind game lore for suddenly there being PVE combat is that a group of noveans is dissatisfied with Aphelia as an overlord because their loved ones aren't scheduled to be awakened anytime soon so they attack her raising still sleeping noveans and striking out on their own without aphelia. Or you could go the opposite and say they made a corrupted copy of aphelia.

     - PVE should have lootable blueprints that are new that this new faction or corrupted aphelia has created.

             - These blueprints should be based around adding Specialized Cores, dynamic and static.

                    - Specialized Static could have combat, factory, mechanic.  Combat would get bonuses to weapons (think territory warfare in the future), factory to indy machines, mechanic to building and maintaining dynamic contructs.

                               - again, players needing to commit to a type of gameplay with their cores.

                    - Specialized Dynamic could have recon (ties in with exploration gameplay salvaging, surface veins, and however PVE should spawn.), combat which is obvious, hauler. and miner (hopefully complementing other styles of mining but not making them obsolete perhaps with new types of ore required for specialized core crafting)

 

 

Anyways, I'm just a person wanting DU to improve and I realize it needs A LOT of work and needs fast changes or it might die.

 

Also, the tower didn't need to be taken down, don't fly your nasty ship below 1000 over land people own, geez.

                 

 

 

 

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At this point in the game's history, I honestly see no point in giving one's suggestions any more.

Pretty much everything you have said has been suggested in some form or other by others both here and even more pointlessly on Discord.

NQ are developing the game at their own pace, in their own way and very obviously, in their own sweet time. They clearly don't need our opinions. /shrug/

 

My first ever gripe with DU, made over 4 years ago, IIRC was XS Space Tanks, this was requested dozens if not hundreds of times. And at loooooooong last, in the "Final Release" (LOL), version of the game, they were added.

 

Instead of listening and adding one scaled element to the game, a few years later they introduced a fuelling access point which was not a linkable element but was basically just a 1 voxel micro-door. LOL.


It took nearly 50 months to introduce one single element which had been requested repeatedly so many times that to me, it almost became a meme.

 

 

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4 hours ago, EmbyrCelyca said:

I don't want schematics dropped just the tedium of keeping them in machines removed with a schematic bank per character or per construct. 

Unfortunately, that tedium is about half the design intent  and 3/4 the actual game effect of the mechanic. Take that away, and all they are is a quanta sink, but since the quanta faucets are practically limitless, they merely reduce the rate of inflation.

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I'd very very much like to see an improved chat system/UI.

 

As it is now, custom channels are bugged (sometimes you can no longer write to a custom channel, until you rejoin or relog into the game), notifications are bugged (I disabled the LUA script notifications, but "Session started" when entering the cockpit still causes a notification), and you can only see one chat tab at a time. You cannot even resize or move the chat window.

 

This makes it very easy to miss messages, and it seems like nobody ever uses the local chat for this reason.

 

But communication should be a key point in a community building game.

 

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Shameless cross-post from reddit because the post was cross-posted too and I wasn't sure of the best place to reply.

 

I actually think NQ have some 'breathing space' at the moment -- everyone is busy building back up to where they were before, developing the market, developing space stations, building PvP ships, large haulers or whatever, setting up personal bases.

That will keep everyone busy for a few months. What they should be doing now is coming up with a roadmap so in 2 months time when the game is starting to run out of road they can put the roadmap up to keep us all excited and release new things every 2 months or so after that.

Some of your suggestions are saying 'remove existing gameplay and replace with XXX'. IMO that's the mistake NQ have been making so far -- they need the number and breadth of activities to increase over time and that won't happen if new gameplay replaces old gameplay. Asteroids are a great example of this -- they added some really good and badly needed stuff but ground mining was removed at the same time. What's needed is to add new gameplay loops which don't interfere with the old ones.

IMO the thing which would add the most 'bang' would be to add whatever is needed to make the universe feel 'alive'. I watched my son playing minecraft recently -- he was out exploring caves, discovering abandoned outposts and all sorts of other interesting things that the game had randomly put there. DU should have that same feeling of discovery and exploration -- I should be able to go scan territories and have the report tell me that an underground base was detected (or perhaps I just find an abandoned surface one?). Space exploration should be similar -- if I just fly out into the black there should be things to find out there (more than just the odd wreck) and there should be ways to find these things beyond blundering about (like you suggest above).

Also to make things come alive there needs to be a sense of danger and actual *life*. Not necessarily full-blown NPCs but animals and natural hazards. The player should have health and there should be things that can kill us. I love the idea of 'space whales' which can be hunted for resources and which will occasionally attack and damage your space stations, for example.

Finally to really make the world come alive give cities a purpose to exist. Terraria does this (have never played it, just watched others do so) by allowing players to create places where NPCs (yes, I went there!) can live and provide useful services. Perhaps if you make a bar there might be NPCs who will sell you a location to go scan in order to find an abandoned ship/base/whale/whatever? Other services can then coalesce around these (casinos, ship shops, player markets or whatever) and cities with an actual purpose can be born.

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3 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

Shameless cross-post from reddit because the post was cross-posted too and I wasn't sure of the best place to reply.

 

I actually think NQ have some 'breathing space' at the moment -- everyone is busy building back up to where they were before, developing the market, developing space stations, building PvP ships, large haulers or whatever, setting up personal bases.

That will keep everyone busy for a few months. What they should be doing now is coming up with a roadmap so in 2 months time when the game is starting to run out of road they can put the roadmap up to keep us all excited and release new things every 2 months or so after that.

Some of your suggestions are saying 'remove existing gameplay and replace with XXX'. IMO that's the mistake NQ have been making so far -- they need the number and breadth of activities to increase over time and that won't happen if new gameplay replaces old gameplay. Asteroids are a great example of this -- they added some really good and badly needed stuff but ground mining was removed at the same time. What's needed is to add new gameplay loops which don't interfere with the old ones.

IMO the thing which would add the most 'bang' would be to add whatever is needed to make the universe feel 'alive'. I watched my son playing minecraft recently -- he was out exploring caves, discovering abandoned outposts and all sorts of other interesting things that the game had randomly put there. DU should have that same feeling of discovery and exploration -- I should be able to go scan territories and have the report tell me that an underground base was detected (or perhaps I just find an abandoned surface one?). Space exploration should be similar -- if I just fly out into the black there should be things to find out there (more than just the odd wreck) and there should be ways to find these things beyond blundering about (like you suggest above).

Also to make things come alive there needs to be a sense of danger and actual *life*. Not necessarily full-blown NPCs but animals and natural hazards. The player should have health and there should be things that can kill us. I love the idea of 'space whales' which can be hunted for resources and which will occasionally attack and damage your space stations, for example.

Finally to really make the world come alive give cities a purpose to exist. Terraria does this (have never played it, just watched others do so) by allowing players to create places where NPCs (yes, I went there!) can live and provide useful services. Perhaps if you make a bar there might be NPCs who will sell you a location to go scan in order to find an abandoned ship/base/whale/whatever? Other services can then coalesce around these (casinos, ship shops, player markets or whatever) and cities with an actual purpose can be born.


This is a good idea. Updating the environment shouldn't be too hard and hidden gems make exploration a lot more fun. I suspect they don't have time to implement NPCs if the backend infrastructure for that hasn't been build yet.

One thing I think they could do relatively easily is try to make Aphelia missions that are part of a grand design instead of the deliver 10 widgets to location standard MMO quests they have now. By this I mean, have a GM roleplay as a Aphelia bureaucrat and try to accomplish some in game goal, like building a new market or big statue or city or something that would actually exist in the game world. Then the GM could make missions or buy orders, etc. to try and accomplish that goal in game. When it's done the structure is actually created. You could even have a design contest so it would be player designed as well. 

 

The point would be to make players feel like they're having an impact on the game world, instead of just hauling the same junk to the floating ship every day for 300k quant
 

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1 hour ago, Qith_Karrar said:

One thing I think they could do relatively easily is try to make Aphelia missions that are part of a grand design instead of the deliver 10 widgets to location standard MMO quests they have now. By this I mean, have a GM roleplay as a Aphelia bureaucrat and try to accomplish some in game goal, like building a new market or big statue or city or something that would actually exist in the game world. Then the GM could make missions or buy orders, etc. to try and accomplish that goal in game. When it's done the structure is actually created. You could even have a design contest so it would be player designed as well. 

 

This. Any new world should start out with exactly zero markets. Aphelia's resources should be tracked as if she's a player, and UEF shop ships should use up the resources. She should offer bounty missions to supply her with elements and honeycomb as well as all Tiers of ore, Pure and Product. And she should use those to send players with Magic Blueprints (which will only activate at the designated waypoint) to build new markets on the new worlds. All the elements and cores Aphelia uses should be available for players to build, too. Player-built Markets were one of the pillars, way back, weren't they?

 

I'd rather see Aphelia guiding the building like this, since "building a civilisation" seems more key to the game's initial conceit than "exploring the unknown".

 

But some 'splorination options would be good too. And possibly lower-hanging fruit.

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2 hours ago, Pyrate89 said:

No, they should shut down DU and stop making games forever.

See I knew there was a reason I was using Reddit more instead of this forum.  This forum has no way to deal with obvious and useless troll comments like this one!  Give us a downvote button please NQ!

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There's endless possibilities, just pick something and do it 😑 

Personally I want more purpose in building, build for shelter and protection from different hazards on different planets and in space: heat, cold, radiation, micro meteors, creatures...

Make antennas actually do something, like allow ships and even statics to message other constructs within radar range.

Everything's decorative with no purpose other than industry and storage and transport. (besides pvp which I can't speak on much)

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On 10/9/2022 at 9:34 PM, Jinxed said:

At this point in the game's history, I honestly see no point in giving one's suggestions any more.

Pretty much everything you have said has been suggested in some form or other by others both here and even more pointlessly on Discord.

NQ are developing the game at their own pace, in their own way and very obviously, in their own sweet time. They clearly don't need our opinions. /shrug/

 

My first ever gripe with DU, made over 4 years ago, IIRC was XS Space Tanks, this was requested dozens if not hundreds of times. And at loooooooong last, in the "Final Release" (LOL), version of the game, they were added.

 

Instead of listening and adding one scaled element to the game, a few years later they introduced a fuelling access point which was not a linkable element but was basically just a 1 voxel micro-door. LOL.


It took nearly 50 months to introduce one single element which had been requested repeatedly so many times that to me, it almost became a meme.

 

 

 

They interact with out opinions all the time. They implement things based on our decisions. JC even quit because peoples' opinions turned against him so strongly. Your statement is not founded in fact. Saying they develop the game at their own chosen pace is simply a ridiculous statement. They work as quickly as they can while not rushing things through. They dont sit at home and go ".... hmmm..... I think I could take another two months on this because I feel like it." Thats a ridiculous claim for a company with supervisors and investors. 

 

If you dont like the game, why are you here?

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When I hear people say they have suggested things for years and only implemented now, that worries me.

 

It reminds me of a game called Atlas, that had high hopes also but the devs bit off more than they could chew and it slowly died. I hope they continue to add things into the game on a regular basis because if it takes years to implement things I for one won't be sticking around I'm afraid, not when it is subscription game.

 

A good dev team should always listen to the customers as it is them who put the time into the game and play it. I guess time will tell if the game will be a success.

Edited by DannyUK
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On 10/10/2022 at 8:32 PM, Zeddrick said:

See I knew there was a reason I was using Reddit more instead of this forum.  This forum has no way to deal with obvious and useless troll comments like this one!  Give us a downvote button please NQ!

Not everyone who disagrees with your fanboy opinion is troll. Such low effort, try harder.

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10 hours ago, DannyUK said:

When I hear people say they have suggested things for years and only implemented now, that worries me.

 

It reminds me of a game called Atlas, that had high hopes also but the devs bit off more than they could chew and it slowly died. I hope they continue to add things into the game on a regular basis because if it takes years to implement things I for one won't be sticking around I'm afraid, not when it is subscription game.

 

A good dev team should always listen to the customers as it is them who put the time into the game and play it. I guess time will tell if the game will be a success.

 

 

Sorry to comment on this, 

 

The main contributions of development last year was limitation of features, and alot. Like adding tax, limit number of orgs, kill mining.

 

what they did add i have no clue how that should help gameplay, like alien cores.......we never get npc so what the f is an alien core...good lore breach

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8 hours ago, Pyrate89 said:

Not everyone who disagrees with your fanboy opinion is troll. Such low effort, try harder.

No.  My comment was not directed at everyone who disagrees with my opinion.  Whilst I do understand some of the frustration, I would like to filter out single line, low effort, nonsense "game is gonna die' types of comments which add nothing and just make everyone feel worse.

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