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There's Gold in Them There Hills!


KlatuSatori

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What is disrespectful and ignorant is your statement: 'You seem to be confusing the act of exploration with the motivation for the act....' If you can assert that I am confused then I may respond that you are ignorant of what defines exploration and how it was historically achieved. What's more AI is artificial intelligence - equipment can contain AI as will computers. And whether it is AI or not isn't the point....it is the act of landing, laying claim and erecting equipment. 

 

Fair enough, let's move on.  The point is I think we all agree we should be able to achieve what you are asking for.

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Can we all not argue about the difference between exploring and it's meanings. This shouldn't turn into a flame of back and forward comparisons of words, just state your idea or response and we can all read and think of how to make DU better as a whole without the infamous 'E' word causing any more havoc :)

 

But yeah, i agree that there should be rewards or purpose to the explorers, that's why I mentioned the core samples and taking data from close up to the surface ect, You could have a way for explorers to be the first people to discover alien ruins and the monoliths that are mentioned through out the devblogs, claiming the prize for themselve or selling it.

 

You will always have a stale game eventually for explorers in any sandbox game because players will congregate, and form a central place in the universe/ map of that game, but i think with the incorporation of the 'time survey' inside the exploration data it would give explorers a form of action that would not just be 'how far away from alioth can you get' because that data could contain enemy troops or bases or mining posts.

 

It could even be put into a machine to compare that data from other data in the past to make up graphs and trends of the piece of data, so you can show how quickly somewhere is being mined or populated ect.

 

I don't think explorers are ever just 'go here and here and here' in any game i've played, they've always had something to do, even the 'explorers' or whatever they were in WoW had something to reward them and do for their wandering around.

 

I do have faith in NQ/DU to do this right... Seeing as they have a entire universe to play with and others only had a map :)

 

nora,

If you actually read what I wrote you will see that I offered an idea immediately above your post. What's more, I have no problem defining what exploration is because I think it is important to learn from our past; it can even provide very interesting gameplay if we truly understand what exploration actually meant and how and why it was carried out. 

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I have no problem defining what exploration is because I think it is important to learn from our past; it can even provide very interesting gameplay if we truly understand what exploration actually meant and how and why it was carried out. 

 

I actually agree with this completely.  I think different people have different motivations though.  Nations may want to colonise lands in order to exploit resources or have military outposts.  Scientific organisations may want to expand their knowledge of different regions or phenomena.  Some groups may want to find untouched riches.  Others still may want to simply go and see things, discover things, achieve "firsts".  All of the above exist in history and all should be able to exist in the game.

 

By catering to the last group, by giving them a means to sell what they find and maintain their lifestyle, you essentially cater to all the others as well by extension.

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I actually agree with this completely.  I think different people have different motivations though.  Nations may want to colonise lands in order to exploit resources or have military outposts.  Scientific organisations may want to expand their knowledge of different regions or phenomena.  Some groups may want to find untouched riches.  Others still may want to simply go and see things, discover things, achieve "firsts".  All of the above exist in history and all should be able to exist in the game.

 

By catering to the last group, by giving them a means to sell what they find and maintain their lifestyle, you essentially cater to all the others as well by extension.

I can see your reasoning, as I think there is always a little of achieve 'firsts' in all of us. I am just a little skeptical in terms of actual gaming because even firsts become old. I did a ton of scanning in Elite to get my name attached to a system and/or planet and while cool at first it got old really fast. Also scanning for new anomalies gets just as old despite paying off - once you've seen one alien artifact, you've seen them all. lol. So easy for things to become a grind in gaming but hopefully DU will be able to show us something new and exciting. Already sounds new and exciting but we should be careful not to become complacent. And I apologize if I may sound a bit on edge but I have scanned until my finger has worn down to the knuckle, especially in EVE; I really would hate to see 'Exploration' slapped on just another tedious game mechanic.

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In ED the having peoples names displayed that they first discovered it was always a huge turnoff to me. Many people have reasonable names, but theres always Captain Dickbutt that went out and discovered a huge swath of space that is now repulsive.

 

For dual universe, as an intended leader player, Even if someone discovered a cluster of planets that were 11/10 desireable, if they have a atrocious gott-awful name, I would have to reject it. Im not a total roleplayer, but I do fancy respecting the game environment.

 

I don't wan't to fight about what an explorer is I think its a pretty broad term, especially when we start talking about it as a role in the game. I don't see a scientist player activity in the list, so maybe this class doubles for blueprint copies of data as well.

 

As I understand from lore part 5, monoliths will be related to exploring, either on purpose or by accident in the case of Sohan Decker.

 

I expect them to be a form of Indiana Jones like exploring. Go out and Scan, land on planet, launch a drone or something. Fight / make way to the monolith, and solve a random puzzle to get the reward. Go back to civilization and be a professor make copies of data, sell the rare artificats, and so forth.

 

Hopefully the monoliths will randomly generate and despawn and aren't fixed to only generating on new unexplored worlds. Its not that I dont want people to forever have to go outwards, but rather I want to prevent them from jumping through 100 stargates for an hour and a half. discovering 6-12 monoliths, maybe getting 1 good rare reward actually worth money. And then having to jump all the way back.

 

In that regard, I was hoping to at some point recommend they create space anomalies, specifically derelict space stations, that spawn at random even in explored space and you have to find them, dock with them, and then explore a randomly generated space station. The dangers could be anything, not exactly booby traps, but say you walk through a falling apart station and a wall panel suddenly blows off the station, sucking the atmosphere out. Perhaps there are some sort of hostile mobs, or hostile pirate / raider npc's. Not to mention other players that might be after the very same rewards.

 

Some side notes:

I think you guys are looking at what value a planet has the wrong way. Atmospheric, earth like, planets that can support humans arent necessarily more valuable than any other place. For a while, and they haven't necessarily hinted otherwise, everyone will be in environmental space suits, I may as well go live on a barren rock with no atmosphere and farm oxygen in a bio-dome.

 

Personally I think living in a luxurious space station will be cooler than inhabiting a rock. Militaries and various organisations may hire you to explore void regions, for rogue planets or asteroid clusters to put their secretive bases.

 

Also I believe we should be pushing them for resources that are capable of regenerating by some means. E.VE has what 30-50,000 active players at any given time, and they clean mine out massive swaths of asteroid belts. Unless when a ship is destroyed a large % of it becomes salvage and can be recovered, we will see empires drifting apart over time. And the "Core" region around Alioth will become more and more abandoned, and less and less livable to newbies, even with factions such as the one im apart of trying to ensure they can access the game.

I know that detracts from the notion of exploration and colonization for new places, New players will always want new lands for their new empires, who is to say a large number of players wont migrate to a different region of space and start a cluster of empires far away from the core sector, but they'll never have the opportunity if the existing large guilds are in a constant state of slow nomadic migration across the stars, for resources, to make new ships to blow up.

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Also I believe we should be pushing them for resources that are capable of regenerating by some means. E.VE has what 30-50,000 active players at any given time, and they clean mine out massive swaths of asteroid belts. Unless when a ship is destroyed a large % of it becomes salvage and can be recovered, we will see empires drifting apart over time. And the "Core" region around Alioth will become more and more abandoned, and less and less livable to newbies, even with factions such as the one im apart of trying to ensure they can access the game.

I know that detracts from the notion of exploration and colonization for new places, New players will always want new lands for their new empires, who is to say a large number of players wont migrate to a different region of space and start a cluster of empires far away from the core sector, but they'll never have the opportunity if the existing large guilds are in a constant state of slow nomadic migration across the stars, for resources, to make new ships to blow up.

 

You seem to be thinking of resources in terms of Eve, I am not however. Eve has a few small sites with a low number of asteroids in each. This is a precedurally generated voxel world. I am hoping it is more representative of the real world. Planets have an immense amount of resources, and the deeper you go the more concentrated heavy ores are. It has way more volume than the few million m3 you may pull out of an asteroid belt. 

 

And when moving into space, you could have multiple planets and moons in a system, all containing a various assortment of ore. Then theres the comments and asteroids. I expect there to be vast fields of asteroids in belt, similar to our asteroid belt. While they may not be stacked on top each other like in eve, they could be thousands of miles apart, the belt contains countless asteroids varying from tiney pieces, to some miles across. This would provide a lot of materieals for players, especially if factions split across a few system like in eve. 

 

I also fully expect to be able to salvage ship remains. Sure some pieces will be blow up and destroyed, but the remainders should be left there to salvage, not blow up in a fireball. 

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You seem to be thinking of resources in terms of Eve, I am not however. Eve has a few small sites with a low number of asteroids in each. This is a precedurally generated voxel world. I am hoping it is more representative of the real world. Planets have an immense amount of resources, and the deeper you go the more concentrated heavy ores are. It has way more volume than the few million m3 you may pull out of an asteroid belt. 

 

And when moving into space, you could have multiple planets and moons in a system, all containing a various assortment of ore. Then theres the comments and asteroids. I expect there to be vast fields of asteroids in belt, similar to our asteroid belt. While they may not be stacked on top each other like in eve, they could be thousands of miles apart, the belt contains countless asteroids varying from tiney pieces, to some miles across. This would provide a lot of materieals for players, especially if factions split across a few system like in eve. 

 

I also fully expect to be able to salvage ship remains. Sure some pieces will be blow up and destroyed, but the remainders should be left there to salvage, not blow up in a fireball. 

 

I really don't know if i agree with the 'immeasurable' amount of resources that people speak of. Fair enough on Alioth when players spawn they need to have enough materials for everyone to make a spaceship and get off the planet. But i hope that every planet we come across isn't the same.

 

I hope that planets that are not alioth or don't have a arksite on them will be able to be cleaned of resources, at least the rare ones, if they have a stupid amount of the basic ones that are only used to create the ships but nothing else then that is fine. But like i've said somewhere else, i don't want to be able to have a entire organisation settle in one place and never need to leave the area again unless they are attacking or pillaging some area.

 

Resource balance could be a make or break for the game in terms of players exploring the openness of the infinite universe that they want, if you have to much in a small area people will not really explore that much, but if you have too few in a area you will not have any bases and people will constantly be moving away from each other making the player base very sparse.

 

I do have faith in NQ/DU to do it right, but i think the amount of resources could very well have a big impact on how people play the game. 

 

nora,

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I really don't know if i agree with the 'immeasurable' amount of resources that people speak of. Fair enough on Alioth when players spawn they need to have enough materials for everyone to make a spaceship and get off the planet. But i hope that every planet we come across isn't the same.

 

I hope that planets that are not alioth or don't have a arksite on them will be able to be cleaned of resources, at least the rare ones, if they have a stupid amount of the basic ones that are only used to create the ships but nothing else then that is fine. But like i've said somewhere else, i don't want to be able to have a entire organisation settle in one place and never need to leave the area again unless they are attacking or pillaging some area.

 

Resource balance could be a make or break for the game in terms of players exploring the openness of the infinite universe that they want, if you have to much in a small area people will not really explore that much, but if you have too few in a area you will not have any bases and people will constantly be moving away from each other making the player base very sparse.

 

I do have faith in NQ/DU to do it right, but i think the amount of resources could very well have a big impact on how people play the game. 

 

nora,

 

Well I did say I dont expect every planet to have every ore, i expect some systems to be almost void of some ores. Asteroids will be able to be depleted easily, but  i expect there to be plent. Planets should have a ton, but i would expect the rarer ores to be more scares and harder to locate. 

 

Remember the game is persistent, so unless you impliment an ore generation system, something they said they would try not to, you have to have a lot of resources otherwise immense areas in the universe will be just void of anything after a year. 

 

The limiting factor will be 2 fold, one the time it takes to collect the ore, especially for massive projects. 2 will be the constant need to rebuild and replace ships that are destroyed in battle. Even if you can salvage I wouldn't expect it to all be recovered. Also as players join, more ships will be needed and larger ships will be made. 

 

I dont want you to have to clean out 5 system to be able to construct a capital ship,  its not realistic when you look at the immensity of resources in a system. Now some things tend to be more rare, and those will require you to spread out and search the galaxy

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In ED the having peoples names displayed that they first discovered it was always a huge turnoff to me. Many people have reasonable names, but theres always Captain Dickbutt that went out and discovered a huge swath of space that is now repulsive.

 

For dual universe, as an intended leader player, Even if someone discovered a cluster of planets that were 11/10 desireable, if they have a atrocious gott-awful name, I would have to reject it. Im not a total roleplayer, but I do fancy respecting the game environment.

 

I don't wan't to fight about what an explorer is I think its a pretty broad term, especially when we start talking about it as a role in the game. I don't see a scientist player activity in the list, so maybe this class doubles for blueprint copies of data as well.

 

As I understand from lore part 5, monoliths will be related to exploring, either on purpose or by accident in the case of Sohan Decker.

 

I expect them to be a form of Indiana Jones like exploring. Go out and Scan, land on planet, launch a drone or something. Fight / make way to the monolith, and solve a random puzzle to get the reward. Go back to civilization and be a professor make copies of data, sell the rare artificats, and so forth.

 

Hopefully the monoliths will randomly generate and despawn and aren't fixed to only generating on new unexplored worlds. Its not that I dont want people to forever have to go outwards, but rather I want to prevent them from jumping through 100 stargates for an hour and a half. discovering 6-12 monoliths, maybe getting 1 good rare reward actually worth money. And then having to jump all the way back.

 

In that regard, I was hoping to at some point recommend they create space anomalies, specifically derelict space stations, that spawn at random even in explored space and you have to find them, dock with them, and then explore a randomly generated space station. The dangers could be anything, not exactly booby traps, but say you walk through a falling apart station and a wall panel suddenly blows off the station, sucking the atmosphere out. Perhaps there are some sort of hostile mobs, or hostile pirate / raider npc's. Not to mention other players that might be after the very same rewards.

 

Some side notes:

I think you guys are looking at what value a planet has the wrong way. Atmospheric, earth like, planets that can support humans arent necessarily more valuable than any other place. For a while, and they haven't necessarily hinted otherwise, everyone will be in environmental space suits, I may as well go live on a barren rock with no atmosphere and farm oxygen in a bio-dome.

 

Personally I think living in a luxurious space station will be cooler than inhabiting a rock. Militaries and various organisations may hire you to explore void regions, for rogue planets or asteroid clusters to put their secretive bases.

 

Also I believe we should be pushing them for resources that are capable of regenerating by some means. E.VE has what 30-50,000 active players at any given time, and they clean mine out massive swaths of asteroid belts. Unless when a ship is destroyed a large % of it becomes salvage and can be recovered, we will see empires drifting apart over time. And the "Core" region around Alioth will become more and more abandoned, and less and less livable to newbies, even with factions such as the one im apart of trying to ensure they can access the game.

I know that detracts from the notion of exploration and colonization for new places, New players will always want new lands for their new empires, who is to say a large number of players wont migrate to a different region of space and start a cluster of empires far away from the core sector, but they'll never have the opportunity if the existing large guilds are in a constant state of slow nomadic migration across the stars, for resources, to make new ships to blow up.

Actually I agree....they shouldn't attach stupid names onto planets, really wrecks immersion. I mean who wants to inhabit systems discovered by CaptainFroggyPants? I wouldn't and I named them. Guess there is a little griefer in me after all. 

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@Saffi

I agree that planets and minerals are not the only things worth finding, and that "alien archaeology" may be a thing as well as good in-space plots for building a military or trading outposts.  I'd like to see exploration have many forms - not just the motivations as those are numerous and the extent of them cannot be foreseen - but the methods and the discoveries, from looking at whole solar systems down to exploring a single cave on a barely-colonised planet.

 

I take take or leave the naming of discoveries.  If first discoverers get to name the discovery, just let current territory owner rename it.

 

@nora

I don't see why you would want to force every organisation to constantly be on the move.  If an organisation of say 100 players can live on 2 territory tiles on a planet in a sustainable way, why would you want to limit their gameplay style?  Personally I wouldn't like to see planets getting strip-mined easily.  I want to see a dense universe that players can survive in, not a shallow one that gets eaten from the inside out and requires constant expansion to be sustainable.

 

I'd like to see all kinds of gameplay at the organisation level.  Some organisations could just live on an orbiting space station that they built and maintain as a trading outpost and base for passers by.  Others  might never leave the starting planet, with an aim of getting the largest piece of Alioth that they can.  Others might want small colonies on multiple planets across multiple star systems, others might be nomadic... or anything else you can think of.  This might be off topic, lol...

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@Saffi

I agree that planets and minerals are not the only things worth finding, and that "alien archaeology" may be a thing as well as good in-space plots for building a military or trading outposts.  I'd like to see exploration have many forms - not just the motivations as those are numerous and the extent of them cannot be foreseen - but the methods and the discoveries, from looking at whole solar systems down to exploring a single cave on a barely-colonised planet.

 

I take take or leave the naming of discoveries.  If first discoverers get to name the discovery, just let current territory owner rename it.

 

@nora

I don't see why you would want to force every organisation to constantly be on the move.  If an organisation of say 100 players can live on 2 territory tiles on a planet in a sustainable way, why would you want to limit their gameplay style?  Personally I wouldn't like to see planets getting strip-mined easily.  I want to see a dense universe that players can survive in, not a shallow one that gets eaten from the inside out and requires constant expansion to be sustainable.

 

I'd like to see all kinds of gameplay at the organisation level.  Some organisations could just live on an orbiting space station that they built and maintain as a trading outpost and base for passers by.  Others  might never leave the starting planet, with an aim of getting the largest piece of Alioth that they can.  Others might want small colonies on multiple planets across multiple star systems, others might be nomadic... or anything else you can think of.  This might be off topic, lol...

I just posted something about this on Hot Spots for Empire Building regarding players preferring to stay in one area - couldn't agree more, that style of gameplay should definitely be encouraged. This is why I think Hot Spots will help solve a lot of problems between those who prefer a sedentary experience as opposed to a nomad experience. 

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@Saffi

I agree that planets and minerals are not the only things worth finding, and that "alien archaeology" may be a thing as well as good in-space plots for building a military or trading outposts.  I'd like to see exploration have many forms - not just the motivations as those are numerous and the extent of them cannot be foreseen - but the methods and the discoveries, from looking at whole solar systems down to exploring a single cave on a barely-colonised planet.

 

I take take or leave the naming of discoveries.  If first discoverers get to name the discovery, just let current territory owner rename it.

 

@nora

I don't see why you would want to force every organisation to constantly be on the move.  If an organisation of say 100 players can live on 2 territory tiles on a planet in a sustainable way, why would you want to limit their gameplay style?  Personally I wouldn't like to see planets getting strip-mined easily.  I want to see a dense universe that players can survive in, not a shallow one that gets eaten from the inside out and requires constant expansion to be sustainable.

 

I'd like to see all kinds of gameplay at the organisation level.  Some organisations could just live on an orbiting space station that they built and maintain as a trading outpost and base for passers by.  Others  might never leave the starting planet, with an aim of getting the largest piece of Alioth that they can.  Others might want small colonies on multiple planets across multiple star systems, others might be nomadic... or anything else you can think of.  This might be off topic, lol...

 

The thing that concerns me at the moment is the concentrated population. If there is no reason to pick up and move or to leave the central core planets around Alioth, then the player base further out and the number of players actually using the  'infinite universe' has a chance to just never pick up, I mean, why move if you have everything you ever need within arms reach ? Why have a infinite universe when people are happy with a couple of system that give them everything ?

Haven't big resource heavy sectors means organisations will stay put and not spread out. 

 

I'm not saying don't have resource heavy areas (i mentioned this in another place but can't find it)... You can have as much of the base resources you want, have an entire planet of the base resources. But i think for rare resources you shouldn't be able to just live off the land you settle on, completely wrecks trade and markets that way. Because like i said 'why do it if you don't need it', if you have everything you will ever need under the surface of the TU you have why even leave?. The only reason you have left to leave is to just go killing for fun.

 

You can have all the resources you like where ever you like, i just don't like the idea of having Everything you need in one place. A game that is infinite should have a reason for seeing as much of the infinite side of it as possible.

 

If you have a trade station where you don't move because people are bringing you the things you don't have then that's fine. Someone on your behalf is going out there looking for the things you need, because you don't have them. The infinite universe is being looked at. It's not just a congregation of players in the core planets, it's a universe of people mining and foraging everywhere you go. You wouldn't have that if it was everything under a single area.

 

nora,

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The thing that concerns me at the moment is the concentrated population. If there is no reason to pick up and move or to leave the central core planets around Alioth, then the player base further out and the number of players actually using the  'infinite universe' has a chance to just never pick up, I mean, why move if you have everything you ever need within arms reach ? Why have a infinite universe when people are happy with a couple of system that give them everything ?

Haven't big resource heavy sectors means organisations will stay put and not spread out. 

 

I'm not saying don't have resource heavy areas (i mentioned this in another place but can't find it)... You can have as much of the base resources you want, have an entire planet of the base resources. But i think for rare resources you shouldn't be able to just live off the land you settle on, completely wrecks trade and markets that way. Because like i said 'why do it if you don't need it', if you have everything you will ever need under the surface of the TU you have why even leave?. The only reason you have left to leave is to just go killing for fun.

 

You can have all the resources you like where ever you like, i just don't like the idea of having Everything you need in one place. A game that is infinite should have a reason for seeing as much of the infinite side of it as possible.

 

If you have a trade station where you don't move because people are bringing you the things you don't have then that's fine. Someone on your behalf is going out there looking for the things you need, because you don't have them. The infinite universe is being looked at. It's not just a congregation of players in the core planets, it's a universe of people mining and foraging everywhere you go. You wouldn't have that if it was everything under a single area.

 

nora,

 

I think there's getting to be a lot of overlap between this thread and the Hotspots for Empire Building thread.  Procedural generation allows the universe to be as large as necessary, not necessarily "infinite".  A virtually infinite universe would not be a good thing.  What we want is meaningful, emergent conflict between players and player organisations.  That is driven by putting players close together and forcing them to fight over resources and such.  Travelling far beyond inhabited space should be difficult, and something only the most dedicated explorers undertake.  Building an empire far beyond inhabited space is even more difficult, because you need a large group of players willing to travel a long way.

 

As the player base expands, new technologies can open up more of the universe.  What you don't want is 100 players spread across a huge planet, or 1000 spread across a massive solar system, etc, because no one will ever see each other!

 

EDIT:

What I am trying to say is that population density needs to be between a certain minimum and maximum value in order to drive emergent gameplay in a true MMO.  Density is dependent on the number of players in the game and size of the inhabited areas of the universe.  The size of the inhabited areas is directly dependent on the speed you can travel.  So the available techs is how you control population density.

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