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DUAL UNIVERSE: WHAT'S COMING NEXT


NQ-Wanderer

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Hello, everyone! I'm Mark van den Heuvel, known to many of you as NQ-Deckard, a member of the Production team here at Novaquark.

 

First, to those of you who celebrated your new year recently, I wish you a wonderful new year, and I look forward to seeing all of your creations in-game. As we step into 2023, I want to bring you all up to speed on where we're at with Dual Universe and where we are going.

 

After our launch last September, we have all worked hard to squash remaining bugs and improve balancing. We also delivered the promised digital Kickstarter rewards to our backers.

 

As is always the case with Dual Universe, work does create itself in front of us, and we have a great deal to work on and improve. One of our current central goals is to enhance the gameplay experience and catch up with some features and quality-of-life improvements, particularly some of those requested by our community.

 

Let me walk you through some of what we have planned for you both soon and further down the road.

 

Planets


We’ve recently released a new version of Talemai, and we’re continuing work on the others. After reviewing our progress, we've decided to take extra time to make the new planets truly feel different with new art, new terrain, and more exciting features. This means they are coming at a slower pace and possibly in a different order than we had envisioned. Expect new teasers, concept art, and images from us soon™!


Combat Missions


We had decided early in the life of Dual Universe not to focus on a PvE combat system, given other priorities. With all of the feedback we’ve received since the beginning of the game, PvE combat has consistently remained a highly requested feature from our community. We always try to listen to your feedback, and I’m happy to announce that we have begun work on implementing the first iteration of a PvE combat system into the game!

We’re planning the first version to be a PvE mission system that takes players into combat in their ships. The missions will scale in size to allow all players (solo or part of a larger group) to participate.

 

We’re very excited about the PvE combat feature. It will add more engaging gameplay for all Noveans and allow players to try out the rigors of space combat before heading out to battle with other players in Dual Universe PvP.

 

We are still in the early development of this feature, and it will take time, but we are already looking forward to seeing you all trying it in future PTS sessions. Your feedback will be instrumental in our developing PvE combat in Dual Universe.


PvP Improvements


Following a recent and very successful round table discussion with members of our PvP community, we are reviewing all the feedback gathered and our own data to determine what changes we will make. We are considering increasing the importance and/or requirement of having voxel armor onboard successful PvP ship designs, finding ways to encourage multi-crew ship setups, and potentially restricting the ability to remove cargo while in combat. Stay tuned for more exciting developments on PvP.


Contest Winner Constructs


Before launch, we ran the Build Your Legacy Contest for players to design starting outposts and speeders, with the winning entries being added to Dual Universe. We are currently working to make the constructs that the contest winners submitted available as options to select during the first start of the game, and we are also looking to make these available for purchase in the UEF shop. The contest entries were original and impressive. I want to congratulate all of you who took part. 


Maintenance Unit


A complete rework of the repair unit was planned for the 1.2 release just before the holidays. The feature still needed more work, and we decided to delay its release with plans to include it in the upcoming 1.3 update. When finished, the repair unit will be replaced with the maintenance unit, which can repair constructs with scrap and disassemble constructs. However, construct disassembly is the feature that still requires the most work, and we are determining if the feature will make it into the 1.3 release. When added, this feature will remove the pain of finding that one last bit of voxel in a construct and make redesigning builds easier, with the Maintenance Unit taking down constructs for you.


Joystick Support


Dual Universe already has a basic system to connect joysticks to the game. However, these were never cohesively connected with the Lua system. We will change that, allowing players to map analog and button inputs from Joysticks, Throttles, Pedals, and even simple Gamepads into Dual Universe. This will significantly improve the flying experience for non-Lua developing players and open new doors for Lua developers through projects such as Lua arcade games, custom flight control systems, and other nifty things our community creates.


Default Lua Configuration Rework


Once we’ve added Joystick support, we will redesign the default Lua scripts we give to players. Our community has long requested this update, and we want to ensure we deliver it. We will add a full suite of features and improvements. This means new Lua flight control systems, the ability to toggle widgets on and off without requiring Lua code, and integrating several systems not fully encapsulated in current control scripts, such as Anti-Gravity Generators.


Fuel Intake Changes


This has been a popular demand by our players, and we are looking into options to allow players to refuel tanks from another element. Currently, we plan to make a  'Fuel Intake' able to act as a proxy for a single fuel tank. This feature is still on the drawing board and may change as we dive deeper into it.

 

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As always, thank you for reading this short overview of some of what’s coming up. I hope you have a clearer picture of the direction we're taking Dual Universe in, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the forums. Have a wonderful day.

- Mark (NQ-Deckard)
 

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Will those of us who already have Repair Units find that they have been converted to Maintenance Units or will we be given a Maintenance Unit for each Repair Unit we already own?

 

I invested quite a bit (proportionally to my resources) to get a device that I was under the impression would be gaining repair functionality in the future, not being deprecated.

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29 minutes ago, NQ-Wanderer said:

Fuel Intake Changes


This has been a popular demand by our players, and we are looking into options to allow players to refuel tanks from another element. Currently, we plan to make a  'Fuel Intake' able to act as a proxy for a single fuel tank. This feature is still on the drawing board and may change as we dive deeper into it.

i would suggest to reconsider the "for a single fuel tank"  bit.
a problem that all advanced Flight Huds have is the number of links on the control units. mainly the fuel tanks are the limiting factor, as whenever you have a bigger number of fuel tanks, those consume so many links, that we are unable to link all elements needed to control the ship to a single seat.  there are some workarounds in place, like not linking the fuel tanks and going via core and talent levels to try to get the correct amount of fuel in each of the fuel containers. but this is painful, difficult and honestly nothing we should have to do.

Just implement this change as a fuel "hub" allowing 10 fuel containers per fuel type to be accessed via one link and the problem would be solved, and wouldn't cause a risk,like increasing the general number of allowed links might do.

Hagbard.

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Good timing, I was almost going to suspend my alts payment.
So I think it will wait a bit.

I hope that the heresy that a ship without voxel is more efficient than a design ship with voxel is finally eliminated. It was indeed dissonant that voxels do not have to be present on a ship when the game relies on its exceptional voxel creation system.

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This is some really exiting news and I wish the NQ team a great success!

 

Just please be very cautious with this part: "finding ways to encourage multi-crew ship setups". This alone has the potential to counter all efforts to bring more people to PvP, if it means "the game mechanics make sure, that a multi-crew ship is better than an equal amount of players with solo ships". Many players enjoy their independence and prefer to depend on their own skills. Group play and coordination is a great advantage on itself and doesn't need enhancement by game mechanics.

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Ita nice to see Novaquark finally listen to the cries of their community. I hope it's not too little too late.

 

I remember Deckard saying to ke directly that adding NPC PvE was never gonna happen due to the conflicting ideals for the game being player driven... I am glad they're realizing how badly it's needed. I may come back for a bit when this gets added.

 

Side note, jettesoning cargo is something you'd see if a real pirate was on your @SS. Instead of stopping players from doing it, with items being deleted.... drop the items as a lootable container behind the ship to be used as a decoy/dropping weight. Pirates can then double back for the package. Add more gameplay, don't restrict it further... I am so tired of yall restricting gameplay, so much I could / did in Beta can no longer do on the launch game because of that mentality. 

 

Apart from that, you didn't address the largest complaint right now on Steam reviews, and that is the game is a second job to play. It still needs some heavy balancing, and nothing in this post about the future has even hinted at that.  You can try to stifle players, but whales are still running alt mission running/field mining... with the solo player left to eat crumbs..  

 

All that I see left in terms of players are mostly hard-core PVP holdouts. Most of the PvE crowd beyond pure builders have already left... and a lot of them feel pushed out by PVP, and how BAD the pvp actually is. If you don't improve the overall combat experience...  will just end up with meh PvE, and lackluster PvP. 

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3 minutes ago, BlindingBright said:

Side note, jettesoning cargo is something you'd see if a real pirate was on your @SS. Instead of stopping players from doing it, with items being deleted.... drop the items as a lootable container behind the ship to be used as a decoy/dropping weight. Pirates can then double back for the package. Add more gameplay, don't restrict it further... I am so tired of yall restricting gameplay, so much I could / did in Beta can no longer do on the launch game because of that mentality. 

 

I absolutely agree with this. Replace "no" with "yes, and"

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Thank you for this post. I look forward to all of these features.

May I suggest you introduce just a weeeee bit of Lore into the PvE system too! who are we fighting? and why? This is a very important part of game cohesion and player motivation. Also who damaged Thades? Was it really Aphelia as Tyim insists?  Inquiring minds want to know! Drop some crumbs.

/grin

 

Tordan

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8 minutes ago, BlindingBright said:

Side note, jettesoning cargo is something you'd see if a real pirate was on your @SS. Instead of stopping players from doing it, with items being deleted.... drop the items as a lootable container behind the ship to be used as a decoy/dropping weight. Pirates can then double back for the package. Add more gameplay, don't restrict it further... I am so tired of yall restricting gameplay, so much I could / did in Beta can no longer do on the launch game because of that mentality. 

 

Hell yes! so on point.

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34 minutes ago, Hagbard said:

Just implement this change as a fuel "hub" allowing 10 fuel containers

 

I also think this is the obvious choice, I'm certain that it was considered by the Devs. If this isn't the obvious choice for the dev team too, it would be nice to know why.

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Good stuff!

 

I just wanted to add my voice to what @Hagbard said above about the Fuel Intake Changes.

 

That sounds great but what we really need is something that works like a container HUB, for fuel tanks.  So we can link multiple tanks and display them as one tank in the HUD. 

 

 

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4 minutes ago, Atmosph3rik said:

Good stuff!

 

I just wanted to add my voice to what @Hagbard said above about the Fuel Intake Changes.

 

That sounds great but what we really need is something that works like a container HUB, for fuel tanks.  So we can link multiple tanks and display them as one tank in the HUD. 

 

 

in case i did not make it clear enough above, that would be what i suggested above. one fuel hub, linking up to 10 fuel tanks of the same fuel type, requiring only 1 link to the control unit. obviously, it should act like a container hub , just for fuel tanks as well..

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1 hour ago, NQ-Wanderer said:

 


PvP Improvements


 and potentially restricting the ability to remove cargo while in combat.


 

 

Why ??

pvers dont get enough when they destroy your ship?

 

Its litterly the only fun i get when my ship is destroyed, pvpers are going to deprive me of my ship.
the only fun i get out of it is depriving the pvper of my cargo.

 

dumping cargo is the only "weapon" miners have against a pvp ship

 

but NQ says NO, the pvpers get to blow up your ship AND take your cargo...

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So we back in a kind of beta? Using PTU and so on? Is this a released game?

 

How much the new lua will brake the actual one and how much work we will need to do?

 

Can you increase the file size to increase the number of features we can add?

 

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