Jump to content

GETTING READY FOR 1.4? Dev Q&A Summary


NQ-Nyota

Recommended Posts

devqasummary.png

Hello, Noveans!

 

During our most recent livestream, NQ-Deckard and NQ-Entropy joined us and answered questions about upcoming features in update 1.4, which will be coming soon to Dual Universe. We know you have many questions, and to make it easier for you to stay informed, we wanted to summarize what was shared.

 

PvE Missions

 

We are excited to add PvE Combat missions in update 1.4, where players participate in missions against NPCs using familiar PvP mechanics. Here's an overview of what to expect in PvE Missions:

 

Difficulty Levels: Missions will have various difficulty levels, from very easy to very hard. Players can solo the lower tiers, but as the difficulty increases, players will need to team up to complete the missions using ships with a crew equipped with multiple sets of guns.

 

Challenging Gameplay: Even for experienced players, the higher-difficulty missions will be tough. Players will need to strategize and optimize their ships to achieve victory.

 

Customizable Mission Ships: Players must build their own mission ships within the parameters set by each mission. Restrictions may apply, such as not allowing large battleships in easy missions. Players can choose their preferred weapons, shields, and variants for their ships.

 

Instanced Battles: Missions will be instanced, using similar technology as VR challenges. However, players can now bring their own ships and enter the same instance alongside multiple other players. You must also supply your own ammunition, scrap, and fuel; any lost elements during the mission will be your loss.

 

Rewards: Completing missions will earn players quanta, addressing feedback requesting more ways to make in-game currency. PvE Combat provides an alternative method for players to fund their gameplay, similar to hauling missions.

 

Scaling Difficulty: The intention is for very easy missions to be accessible to new players with a few days of talents without requiring perfect equipment. As players progress to higher difficulties, missions become more demanding and require precise strategies.

 

Loss Consequences: We are currently finalizing what happens when players lose a mission, with the goal of not being overly punishing. One possibility is allowing players to salvage their ships if they fail a mission.

 

Mission Retreat: If players find a mission too difficult, they can retreat to the entry point to save their ship and resources. Completing the mission isn’t needed to escape.

 

More information about PvE Missions, including specifics on the consequences of losing a mission, will be provided as we develop and refine the feature.

 

PvP Changes

 

We are implementing significant changes to our PvP mechanics, including:

 

We’re changing the tracking formula that runs hit or miss calculations, especially the impact of ship cross-sections on the formula. We expect this to shift the meta away from lighter ships with small cross-sections by removing the protection they currently enjoy from the low probability of being hit by medium and large guns.

 

We’re also adjusting most parts of PvP, with changes to systems such as base weapon stats and removing debuffs from weapon variants.

 

Shield venting is also being changed, and stasis weapons are being buffed to make them more powerful and relevant to their role, for instance, in tackling small ships that get caught.

 

We are also investigating server issues and lag in PvP. To help us address these problems, please submit detailed reports with player names, ship names, times, and any other relevant information when lag occurs. These issues are difficult for us to replicate on our end, and being specific in your reports will enable us to analyze our logs better.

 

Planets

 

In Update 1.4, we aim to reintroduce two planets, each with exciting new features and locations:

 

Sicari: Retaining its original feel but visually enhanced with more interesting elements and a new location.

 

Sinnen: Completely reworked from the ground up and placed in a new location.

 

Following player feedback, we are experimenting with closer positioning for the new planets. Stay tuned for upcoming images showcasing these planets in the coming weeks.

 

Additionally, Update 1.4 will introduce three new Alien Core Units, enabling access to all types of plasma in the game.

 

LUA Changes

 

We are implementing several updates to the Lua system, which may cause temporary disruptions but are essential for long-term improvements. Some changes include:
 

  • Update Lua version to 5.4.4
  • Slightly improve the syntax highlighting
  • Fixed the boolean type to return 'true' or 'false' instead of 1 or 0.
  • Seeking faster solutions for JSON encoding and decoding.

 

We've taken the opportunity to introduce some minor changes to radar to help filter signals.

 

We will have more detailed information coming on the Lua changes soon.


 

Joystick Support

 

This feature has taken significantly more resources than we had anticipated, but it does look like we’ll have full joystick support in update 1.4.


 

Thanks for reading, Noveans. If you have any questions about the PVE Mission System, you can submit them to our upcoming PvE special episode of Ask Aphelia using this form and we’ll do our best to answer them.

 

The Novaquark Team

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • NQ-Nyota changed the title to GETTING READY FOR 1.4? Dev Q&A Summary

Loss Consequences: We are currently finalizing what happens when players lose a mission, with the goal of not being overly punishing. One possibility is allowing players to salvage their ships if they fail a mission.

 

I feel like this can be dealt with fairy using the difficulty scale.

For example
Level 1 - No punishment - Ship is returned with max lives and no quanta punishment but the down side is you get less quanta for doing so (preventing vets from spamming it)

Level 2 - Ship returned with no damage, You pay a quanta loss for losing

Level 3 - Ship returned in a damaged state forcing the player to repair it and take element lives lost - At this point you're considered a vet so rewards/punishments really come into play

Level 4 - (vets) Must repair own ship + quanta loss. - Highest possible quanta reward but also difficult. Punishment should go up as rewards do.

 

Its important that element loss (aside from fuel/ammo) is used here. If items are damaged a fair way this could go a long way to keep the markets moving for both quanta and elements. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm looking forward to trying the PvE and testing the new PvP changes and adding them to my guide. However I do want to mention that if nothing has been changed with alien cores, there will be no participation and so no reason to introduce three more. Very few players are willing to devote so much time and effort to take an alien core and hold it. I expect Legion will claim them unchallenged and sit on them for months.

Plasma-related objectives need to be reduced in participation scale: less time investment, less cooperation necessary(since the game doesn't really support 40v40 battles right now and since the playerbase is dwindling), and less rewards. They need to be small scale, randomly scheduled events, much like asteroids. Or similar to daily, bi-daily, or weekly events like other MMOs have. The current implementation forces way too much time investment, rewards the group with the largest player participation, and also allows continual rewards for no effort or investment after the fighting is over.

 

9 minutes ago, VarietyMMOs said:

Its important that element loss (aside from fuel/ammo) is used here. If items are damaged a fair way this could go a long way to keep the markets moving for both quanta and elements. 

Yes, even with the current element lives system, there's too little element turnover. Most players have had to replace only a few ship's worth of elements since launch. PvE could become a major driving force for element turnover, so most difficulty levels should remove element lives.

Edited by TobiwanKenobi
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like the idea of NPC PVE Missions... this will refresh the economy and the demand of goods.

One idea that could boost the economy even more...
The higher the reward will be, the higher the possible loss has to be when missing the goal of a mission.

Means if a player tryes an easy Mission, the player gets some money worth about 50% of its ship in Quanta.

If a player takes a medium mission and fails, he gets 25% of the cost of his ship in Quanta.

If a player tryes a hard mission and fails, he loses everything.

In all 3 cases the ship will be lost and needs to be builded again from blueprints and Elements from stock or the public market.

This way the economy gets boosted eather way the player succeed or misses the goaly of a mission.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Will these missions have time gates like missions/other vr quanta gaining activities? If the pve is limited to once/twice a day for example the disappointment all round will be huge.

 

I hope nq has really done the math on the quanta injection this will bring into the game and make sure it's sustainable - Unlike what happened with missions being introduced in beta.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The reward of a mission need to scale with the average marketprizes...

it needs to mirror the inflation and the overall economy wealth.

For Example...
When the overall Marketprize is : All prizes from all average sell prizes from all  items on the market that have been sold in a specific timeframe divided by the number of all sold items within that specific timeframe you get X

The Reward for a PVE Mission is a specific percentage of this X
And when X is 2% higher in the second week, the mission reward is 2% higher in the following week too.
This way the market will regulate itself and it will ensure that people will trade on the market as well as they do missions in a balanced way

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, BiGEdge said:

I like the idea of NPC PVE Missions... this will refresh the economy and the demand of goods.

One idea that could boost the economy even more...
The higher the reward will be, the higher the possible loss has to be when missing the goal of a mission.

Means if a player tryes an easy Mission, the player gets some money worth about 50% of its ship in Quanta.

If a player takes a medium mission and fails, he gets 25% of the cost of his ship in Quanta.

If a player tryes a hard mission and fails, he loses everything.

In all 3 cases the ship will be lost and needs to be builded again from blueprints and Elements from stock or the public market.

This way the economy gets boosted eather way the player succeed or misses the goaly of a mission.

 

 

I'm not so sure i like the idea of the ship being completely deleted from the game when someone loses.  That seems harsh.  The "cost" of replacing a ship completely is more than just Quanta.  It takes time and effort to gather all the parts and transport them.  And people develop an emotional bond with their ships (ok maybe that's just me😁)

 

They would also have to purchase another BP if the ship was DRM protected.  Which would increase the cost further.  I sell ship Blueprints too, so that would benefit me.  But i think people would be a lot less likely to bring a DRM protected ship into an instance, if they might lose it.

 

I think it would feel a lot less frustrating to lose a PVE mission if you got your ship back when it's over.  Even if it's a smoking pile of rubble.

 

Cost should be in Quanta, not frustration.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 minutes ago, Atmosph3rik said:

 

 

I'm not so sure i like the idea of the ship being completely deleted from the game when someone loses.  That seems harsh.  The "cost" of replacing a ship completely is more than just Quanta.  It takes time and effort to gather all the parts and transport them.  And people develop an emotional bond with their ships (ok maybe that's just me😁)

 

They would also have to purchase another BP if the ship was DRM protected.  Which would increase the cost further.  I sell ship Blueprints too, so that would benefit me.  But i think people would be a lot less likely to bring a DRM protected ship into an instance, if they might lose it.

 

I think it would feel a lot less frustrating to lose a PVE mission if you got your ship back when it's over.  Even if it's a smoking pile of rubble.

 

Cost should be in Quanta, not frustration.


Do you know what games like DayZ or Eldenring made so popular and engaging?
The danger of losing everything when doing the wrong step.
The enjoyment, when you solve a mission gets hightned even more when you avoided the danger of losing everything or the logistic organization for having Mission-ships needs often a good Industry or trading relationships with other players to have missionships.
Right now we have none of it all... not the exitement, not the danger, not the enjoyment of solving a mission and a dieing market and economy.
I just wanted to point out ideas to solve some of the major problems DU has right now with a constructive and successfull implementation of a new feature instead of getting half baked updates and only frustrating features without a reaward or with the potential of destroying a market, like the Miningunits were, when they got implemented.
Miningunits have become more boring, frustrating and worse than the miningsytem we had before and it destroyed the market with a limitless influx of resources.
As an equal we need a constant destruction of Elements and Material to counter the death of the markets and boost shipsales for shipsellers and Elementsales on the markets

 

Edit.:

Furthermore, when a player brings a ship to a mission and it gets destroyed it wasnt worth to be named a missionship anyway and a player would never use a non mission ship on a mission foolishly right?

And even EVE online s economy works the same way for more than 2 decades now

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What's my incentive to bring a 30m or more Quanta ship to this? What are the rewards going to be?  If the reward doesn't at least come close to what a player risks to do the task in the first place someone needs to go back to the drawing board. 

As the regular mission system sits now the payouts are less than amusing. Everyone just uses alts anyway. What's the difference here? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, TobiwanKenobi said:

I'm looking forward to trying the PvE and testing the new PvP changes and adding them to my guide. However I do want to mention that if nothing has been changed with alien cores, there will be no participation and so no reason to introduce three more. Very few players are willing to devote so much time and effort to take an alien core and hold it. I expect Legion will claim them unchallenged and sit on them for months.

Plasma-related objectives need to be reduced in participation scale: less time investment, less cooperation necessary(since the game doesn't really support 40v40 battles right now and since the playerbase is dwindling), and less rewards. They need to be small scale, randomly scheduled events, much like asteroids. Or similar to daily, bi-daily, or weekly events like other MMOs have. The current implementation forces way too much time investment, rewards the group with the largest player participation, and also allows continual rewards for no effort or investment after the fighting is over.

 

Yes, even with the current element lives system, there's too little element turnover. Most players have had to replace only a few ship's worth of elements since launch. PvE could become a major driving force for element turnover, so most difficulty levels should remove element lives.

 

Maybe put up a fight instead of complaining about it.  Not Legion's fault you guys lost half your players due to the last spanking that was given.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, BiGEdge said:

The danger of losing everything when doing the wrong step.

 

You can already lose your ship in PVP though.  And someone else gets to keep the ship if they catch you too, so it's not just gone.

 

I think what DU is missing is a way for players to get their feet wet doing a bit of combat.  Without such a steep cost.

 

In other games replacing or repairing your ship is as easy as clicking a button and paying for it.  Replacing a ship is a lot more time consuming in DU.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, Atmosph3rik said:

 

You can already lose your ship in PVP though.  And someone else gets to keep the ship if they catch you too, so it's not just gone.

 

I think what DU is missing is a way for players to get their feet wet doing a bit of combat.  Without such a steep cost.

 

In other games replacing or repairing your ship is as easy as clicking a button and paying for it.  Replacing a ship is a lot more time consuming in DU.

 

 

True.  Maybe they should just sell pvp ship blueprints at the du ship shop.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, PancakeGod said:

 

Maybe put up a fight instead of complaining about it.  Not Legion's fault you guys lost half your players due to the last spanking that was given.

Please don't bring toxicity into discussions about legitimate concerns regarding the design of the game. The main reason Lodestar stopped engaging in alien core content was because we felt it wasn't worth our time. It required 4-6 hours of our day, every other day, in large part due to NG's harassment strategy of using the combat lock mechanic to waste our time instead of giving both player groups a fun fight. We didn't want to retake Alpha if that was going to be our pvp 'content' when we owned it. This reaffirms my point - the mechanics and general design of the alien core feature is ill-suited to the type of game that DU is. Introducing more of the same while pretending that it's adding content to the game is a bad decision imo.

Edited by TobiwanKenobi
Link to comment
Share on other sites

PvE in a normal MMO:

Explore some exotic world with your friends, discovery hidden treasures monsters and loot. Have chance encounters with other players that you may or may not cooperate with to take down difficult PvE enemies for better loot.

 

PvE in DU:

No exploration because there is nothing to discover. PvE is basically just a collection of new VR challenges that use the existing and lackluster PvP functionality, only difference is that NPC's replace players as opponents. Ohh.. And it's instanced away from the main game to make sure there absolutely will not be any kind or community interaction or emergent game play/strategic element to the PvE missions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

--------{ We’re changing the tracking formula that runs hit or miss calculations, especially the impact of ship cross-sections on the formula. We expect this to shift the meta away from lighter ships with small cross-sections by removing the protection they currently enjoy from the low probability of being hit by medium and large guns. } ------------

 

Not sure I agree with this, I think a better solution would be to tie the targeting between the size of the gun and the size of the cross section of the ship it is targeting. A large ship is not going to use its largest guns against a smaller ship. They would have point defense batteries with smaller guns or specialized ammo to defend against smaller ships ( fighters )

 

I think it would be better to add more flavor to the combat than to just dumb down the targeting. Give fighters limited special weapons or ammo to attack larger ships. Give larger ships Special weapons and or ammo to defend against the smaller targets. Its always the simpler solution ( IMO ) to to want to nerf something that may seem overpowered, but if you really want to add diversity and flavor to a game, Instead of weakening something, give the other things defenses or abilities to counter the overpowered abilities. This pushes players to Improve and adds more strategy to the playing field.

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, VarietyMMOs said:

Will these missions have time gates like missions/other vr quanta gaining activities? If the pve is limited to once/twice a day for example the disappointment all round will be huge.

 

I hope nq has really done the math on the quanta injection this will bring into the game and make sure it's sustainable - Unlike what happened with missions being introduced in beta.

 

Missions *still* inject an unsustainable amount of quanta.  Look at DAC prices.  It only works because of the low player count at the moment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For consequences of losing a mission, please dump the player somewhere in the PvP zone complete with their ship in whatever state it was in when the mission ended and somehow announce the location to everyone.  The player get the possibility to not lose their ship and PvPers can join in with the fun!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote

We’re changing the tracking formula that runs hit or miss calculations, especially the impact of ship cross-sections on the formula. We expect this to shift the meta away from lighter ships with small cross-sections by removing the protection they currently enjoy from the low probability of being hit by medium and large guns.

Dont do this. With all your other changes you will nerf small ships so far that it will turn into L core only combat again.  Instead I propose you have statis weapons also increase the cross section of the targets they shoot. This would allow for more strategy, more of a rock paper scissors scenario. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/5/2023 at 8:43 PM, Zeddrick said:

Missions *still* inject an unsustainable amount of quanta.  Look at DAC prices.  It only works because of the low player count at the moment.

That is because the entire game is unsustainable. Or to be more concise, the game is far from finished and lack the necessary game loops to sustain players in the long run.

 

And NQ in their infinite wisdom tried to quick fix this fundamental problem by adding grind and time gating (starting with v.23) in an effort to extend the game time (without doing the actual dev work required to add content) so that players would pay subscriptions for longer.

 

But players generally don't react well to lots of grind just for the sake of it with no real reward, other then paying taxes and building yet another ship or base construct.

And the grind made losing ships to PvP very costly in actual player time, which is the most valuable asset in any MMO. And combined with the lackluster and also time stealing PvP game design on top, it is no wonder that many players stayed away from PvP in DU.

 

And so as a consequence of this, players start demanding more quanta in return for missions etc. to offset the grind and time requirements of the game. But using quanta to combat grind is going to ruin the already struggling economy in the game. So it's just another lose-lose scenario for the few remaining players in the game.

 

In short. No amount of tweaking mission rewards, ore yields, PvP mechanics or any other quick fix will make this game sustainable. And the only thing that can salvage this game, is adding the actual game content (six pillars) that was promised. But that is not going to happen..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Really happy to see all the improvements on the Lua side, specially regarding the updated runtime, joystick support and faster JSON.

 

For the JSON part, I'd really suggest looking at the possibility of using some native C/C++ library for that and adding the bindings to the Lua runtime, since it allows that kind of thing. It should work way faster than anything built using just Lua...

 

Also nice seeing the work being done towards PvE and fixing the PvP meta, definitely very welcome changes!

 

While I haven't been around in a while (mostly due to personal issues), all those changes make me want to eventually come back for a bit :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, Wolfram said:

For the JSON part, I'd really suggest looking at the possibility of using some native C/C++ library for that and adding the bindings to the Lua runtime, since it allows that kind of thing. It should work way faster than anything built using just Lua...

 

I reckon it would be easier to just supply the data as nested dictionaries instead of JSON in the first place.  Perhaps with on-demand loading of the data to deal with things which are rarely accessed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...