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A rant about games like this


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Please, do not misunderstand the title of this thread. I’m not trying to simply bash this game or games like this one, on the contrary, I will go through most of the main advertised features of this game mentioned on the homepage of http://www.dualthegame.com/#screenshots as well as some of the points in the FAQ (http://www.dualthegame.com/faq) and compare them to other games I played or heard a lot about.

Furthermore, I’d like to point out that I haven’t read everything there is to read, and I’m not going to before writing this. Why? Well, because I don’t want to discuss whether what the dev’s are trying to do with one particular aspect of the game is good or bad, I am going to point out mistakes similar games made with these certain aspects and try to find out WHY those were either wrong, unsatisfying, annoying or simply bad. I may suggest possible solutions to some of these problems, for others I might just want to see what the dev’s come up with, or I might just not have a solution myself.

 

So let’s get going with a rather light-hearted topic: Guilds, Clans, Nations, Factions, or, how the Dev’s call them, Organizations.

 

To be honest, I read a bit into this one in the Dev-Log, but quickly decided to leave in order for this to stay unbiased.

Now, what happens quiet often in MMO’s is, that the amount of Ranks inside an Organization are limited, a prime example here would be Planetside 2, where you are only given 5 usable ranks, which, in larger player-communities, is a ridiculously small diversity to have. What I have also noticed is that often the Rights and Privileges are pre-given, an example here would be “Tribal Wars” a free browser game obsessively played by many, where you have some 10 different rights and privileges which could be given to different ranks within a clan. Now I understand that some rights need to be pre-given, such as the alteration of the organization itself or the ability to hire and fire members, however it shouldn’t be limited to those, as the head of an organization I want to be able to say that no, the guy scrubbing the toilets on my battlecruiser does not have access to my military coms, period. Or the receptionist at my 5-Star hotel cannot use one of the rooms to go ‘afk’ for a few minutes.

So here is a solution, I doubt it’s perfect, far from it probably, but perhaps worth a thought:

Instead of limiting the organizations to ranks or some such, giving a player two “designations” to describe his position within the organization would be far more effective, which is why some military’s in reality use it.

Ok so let’s take Dude Dudsen as our example. Dude has the rank of Officer in his organization, which gives him the ability to promote players under him up to the Position right below him. He also has the function of Navigator, which gives him access to the bridge since his Job is to navigate.

The con for using this method would be that the player has to set up to entire systems in order to make his Organization work. The pro is that it gives him flexibility when giving privileges, instead of having to make up an entirely new rank, whenever the others don’t quite fit he has these bundles of privileges that he can give to someone.

Now in order for this to work properly one would have to be tied to the other, it would make sense to tie the functions to certain ranks, since a Janitor General wouldn’t make much sense.

If you didn’t get that last part, you can hope that I find enough time to make a small sketch of what I mean and upload it (it would be named Fig. 1)

 

Alright, that took longer than anticipated, sadly I’m not done.

 

The Player driven economy:

 

It’d be nice wouldn’t it? Sadly, I just don’t see myself positioning my character at a wooden stall or on some square to wait for someone to buy my damn iron. I also don’t really want to sell all my stuff to an NPC vendor because he needs to make Profit off his sales, otherwise he couldn’t pay me next time I come around and want to sell more stuff, which means I make less than I could. You could, off course, say that he can just sell it for what he paid me and just pay me whatever the current stock price is. Well my dear, that won’t work because it would generate in-game-money. Imagine that everyone just sells to the vendors but the vendors never get to sell, money would be generated and overflow the market, which in turn would make money worthless.

But continuing on to the next problem, who’s going to mine the trillions of tons of iron I need for my Fleet of 10 destroyers 16 support frigates 8 missile boats and that supercarrier I always wanted to have which can carry 500 fighters?

I’ll tell you who, not me. I don’t have time to do that, and by the time I have advanced in the game enough to be able to do that I honestly might not want to. So who’s it going to be, you? And yes, I mean you, the dude reading this, because I don’t think you will do that for me will you? I mean why would you work to build my fleet just for fun, I doubt you would actually do that. So if I can’t hire players to build my fleet, I need someone else who’s willing…and we’re back at NPC which, if you noticed by now, are an economic dead-end. If I give the NPC a salary, what’s he going to do with it? Where does he give it back into the system? Because that’s all that economics is, giving and taking from the system. And if there is a dead end somewhere which is substantial enough, the system will inevitably crash and fail.

If I don’t pay the NPC a salary I get a free Fleet and rule the Galaxy. Sure I don’t mind.

But then the game would be boring and I’d play it for a few days until I have conquered everything and got bored of expanding.

What might work is if I could put a NPC placeholder for me in the wooden stall I mentioned at the top of the paragraph who would sell my things.

And before I forget, I don’t WANT a global trading platform where I can just put up my Iron for X money and then some random Person takes it, where’s the fun in that? Where can I rob my trade Partner, where can I betray him? It’s just so much fun to stab people in the back.

 

While we’re on the topic of money, the games price:

 

I’ve read what the dev’s wrote in the FAQ and it sort of, well dampened my enthusiasm. I don’t want to delve too much into this since it’s less about the game than other points and it’s also not really any of my business so I’ll try to keep it short.

Dear dev-team, your game lives and dies with the amount of people playing it, for a small group of people this game will soon become repetitive and boring, for the millions you promise it can handle, it will be one of their greatest adventures. The casual gamer, which is a majority, will be less interested in a subscription-based game than a one-time pay plus in-game purchases game. I understand that you need to have a steady stream of money to pay salaries and server-upkeep and the likes, however I ask that you at least consider what I said before making your decision on the subscription final.

 

Let’s move on to a less serious topic: Scriptable Ships and Constructs

 

Oh boy, what to say. I understand how dev’s might think that a Script isn’t that big of a deal but, well it is, for me at least. I never learned how to program anything, granted I did tech myself some .cmd a few years back for fun, but that doesn’t nearly compare to anything I’d need to script a damned ship! Space Engineers did the exact same thing, and I see the awesome stuff like lock-on cruse-missiles and the likes, and it just makes any attempt I make laughable in comparison, it takes away the thrive to create something new and innovative. If you do scripting, next to it make some sort of easy to learn module connector platform. Where people like me with no programming experience can quickly and easily learn to make the basics work, for example a simple trade route, move from here to here, dock there and done. Or try to make a missile “script” in that sense.

 

So that’s it for now, it’s late and I have work tomorrow. I might continue this some other time.

 

Please comment on anything and everything I said, tare my arguments to shreds if you want. And call me out on any ignorant remarks I may have made. Also if there's anything very wrong with my English, make a footnote out of it, it's my second language and I'm always happy to learn.

 

Have a good day. ;)

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Instead of limiting the organizations to ranks or some such

 

DU doesnt do that.

 

 

 

 

The Player driven economy:

 

But continuing on to the next problem, who’s going to mine the trillions of tons of iron I need for my Fleet of 10 destroyers 16 support frigates 8 missile boats and that supercarrier I always wanted to have which can carry 500 fighters?

I’ll tell you who, not me. I don’t have time to do that, and by the time I have advanced in the game enough to be able to do that I honestly might not want to. So who’s it going to be, you? And yes, I mean you, the dude reading this, because I don’t think you will do that for me will you? I mean why would you work to build my fleet just for fun, I doubt you would actually do that. So if I can’t hire players to build my fleet, I need someone else who’s willing…and we’re back at NPC which, if you noticed by now, are an economic dead-end. If I give the NPC a salary, what’s he going to do with it? Where does he give it back into the system? Because that’s all that economics is, giving and taking from the system. And if there is a dead end somewhere which is substantial enough, the system will inevitably crash and fail.

 

 

So basically you dont want to personally trade, dont want auction houses but still get all the stuff without effort? where did u ever find a game like this?

If you want ressources you dont have to mine them yourself, there certainly will be dedicated miners for that, but you will have to give something of equivalent worth, whatever that might be. In which way you trade that with the miners, be it on personal base, per mail system auction house or whatever... up to your choice.

 

 

 

Dear dev-team, your game lives and dies with the amount of people playing it, for a small group of people this game will soon become repetitive and boring, for the millions you promise it can handle, it will be one of their greatest adventures. The casual gamer, which is a majority, will be less interested in a subscription-based game than a one-time pay plus in-game purchases game. I understand that you need to have a steady stream of money to pay salaries and server-upkeep and the likes, however I ask that you at least consider what I said before making your decision on the subscription final.

 

 

dont worry, nobody would overlook something so elementary :P i do agree tho, that i think a free player system with certain limititations would certainly help the playerbase, but sadly would not nessecarily be good for the community

 

---

 

and considering the scripting and coding, if you dont want to do it urself because you dont want to bother learning it then nothing is keeping you from paying others to do it for you, if, and only IF you really want to create something that needs more than the basic scripts which everyone has access too.

 

I'm all for usefull critizism, but sadly most of what you wrote only reads to me as "i dont want to put in the effort to archieve my goals" and ofc, while it is a game that should be enjoyable, giving everything without limits will rather limit its development.

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I love the idea behind NPC employees... I say pay them, then they simply eat the money you spent... make stronger NPC's cost more.

 

I say if you can build ships and space stations I want to build actual bots (robots) miners, drones, shop sellers, builders, farmers, guards, attackers, pilots... toilet scrubbers.

 

make them easy to command and for advanced players, add deep scripts.

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Hello, and welcome! Nothing like a rant for a first post  :D

 

You've brought up some excellent points that many are probably wondering about, but as much as you don't want to, it is really quite a necessity to read and browse through all of the Devblogs to gain a more holistic view of the game rather than, say, oh look, there's Organizations, or a player-driven economy: This can't work because of X or I've seen Y in other games before and it flopped.

 

But that's not how the devblog, or DU for that matter, is set up, because whatever is discussed in Devblog X could be closely tied with Devblog Y, and one can't function without the other.

 

 

So let’s get going with a rather light-hearted topic: Guilds, Clans, Nations, Factions, or, how the Dev’s call them, Organizations.

 

To be honest, I read a bit into this one in the Dev-Log, but quickly decided to leave in order for this to stay unbiased.

Now, what happens quiet often in MMO’s is, that the amount of Ranks inside an Organization are limited, a prime example here would be Planetside 2, where you are only given 5 usable ranks, which, in larger player-communities, is a ridiculously small diversity to have. What I have also noticed is that often the Rights and Privileges are pre-given, an example here would be “Tribal Wars” a free browser game obsessively played by many, where you have some 10 different rights and privileges which could be given to different ranks within a clan. Now I understand that some rights need to be pre-given, such as the alteration of the organization itself or the ability to hire and fire members, however it shouldn’t be limited to those, as the head of an organization I want to be able to say that no, the guy scrubbing the toilets on my battlecruiser does not have access to my military coms, period. Or the receptionist at my 5-Star hotel cannot use one of the rooms to go ‘afk’ for a few minutes.

So here is a solution, I doubt it’s perfect, far from it probably, but perhaps worth a thought:

Instead of limiting the organizations to ranks or some such, giving a player two “designations” to describe his position within the organization would be far more effective, which is why some military’s in reality use it.

Ok so let’s take Dude Dudsen as our example. Dude has the rank of Officer in his organization, which gives him the ability to promote players under him up to the Position right below him. He also has the function of Navigator, which gives him access to the bridge since his Job is to navigate.

The con for using this method would be that the player has to set up to entire systems in order to make his Organization work. The pro is that it gives him flexibility when giving privileges, instead of having to make up an entirely new rank, whenever the others don’t quite fit he has these bundles of privileges that he can give to someone.

Now in order for this to work properly one would have to be tied to the other, it would make sense to tie the functions to certain ranks, since a Janitor General wouldn’t make much sense.

If you didn’t get that last part, you can hope that I find enough time to make a small sketch of what I mean and upload it (it would be named Fig. 1)

 

Alright, that took longer than anticipated, sadly I’m not done.

 

 

So to take your example on organizations: The way orgs are designed in DU is not based on ranks. The actual "forming an organization" mechanic itself is probably the most basic and the simplest template for any group, to allow for complete customization. There's legates and there's members. Legates own the organization and keep the structure collapsing. Members actually run the organization and its operations.

 

So how does that accomplish anything. Through the Rights and Duties Management System (RDMS). This is essentially the "designation" function you were talking about. Through the use of "tags", players can give other players Rights (the ability to access or do something, such as accessing console X or opening container Y) and Duties (a player's job or role). I cannot explain it in its entirety here, so here is the link. But essentially, this removes the need for pre-defined ranks and takes the limit off of how organizations can be organized. Yes, this means that new organizations will have to set up a whole system of Rights and Duties and tag distributions, but they can do it however they want.

 

And again, welcome to DU.

Hello, and welcome! Nothing like a rant for a first post  :D

 

You've brought up some excellent points that many are probably wondering about, but as much as you don't want to, it is really quite a necessity to read and browse through all of the Devblogs to gain a more holistic view of the game rather than, say, oh look, there's Organizations, or a player-driven economy: This can't work because of X or I've seen Y in other games before and it flopped.

 

But that's not how the devblog, or DU for that matter, is set up, because whatever is discussed in Devblog X could be closely tied with Devblog Y, and one can't function without the other.

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Welcome to the forums!

 

Regarding Guilds, you need to read these devblogs:

https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2015/03/20/organizations-build-your-corporation-faction-nation-or-empire/

https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2015/05/21/rights-duties-management-system/

 

Regarding the economy:

https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2014/12/04/from-barter-to-market-economy/

 

Regarding game pricing:

https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2016/04/08/monetization-player-happiness-and-economic-viability/

 

And Scripting:

https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2015/09/18/lua-script-and-distributed-processing-units/

 

And.... you can either purchase premade scripts, or you're going to have to learn how to do it yourself.  But, I'll certainly help you with that, because thats the area I'd like to focus on.  I'll be selling my scripts for various functions.

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The Player driven economy:

 

It’d be nice wouldn’t it? Sadly, I just don’t see myself positioning my character at a wooden stall or on some square to wait for someone to buy my damn iron. I also don’t really want to sell all my stuff to an NPC vendor because he needs to make Profit off his sales, otherwise he couldn’t pay me next time I come around and want to sell more stuff, which means I make less than I could. You could, off course, say that he can just sell it for what he paid me and just pay me whatever the current stock price is. Well my dear, that won’t work because it would generate in-game-money. Imagine that everyone just sells to the vendors but the vendors never get to sell, money would be generated and overflow the market, which in turn would make money worthless.

But continuing on to the next problem, who’s going to mine the trillions of tons of iron I need for my Fleet of 10 destroyers 16 support frigates 8 missile boats and that supercarrier I always wanted to have which can carry 500 fighters?

I’ll tell you who, not me. I don’t have time to do that.

 

...

 

Let’s move on to a less serious topic: Scriptable Ships and Constructs

 

Oh boy, what to say. I understand how dev’s might think that a Script isn’t that big of a deal but, well it is, for me at least. I never learned how to program anything, granted I did tech myself some .cmd a few years back for fun, but that doesn’t nearly compare to anything I’d need to script a damned ship! Space Engineers did the exact same thing, and I see the awesome stuff like lock-on cruse-missiles and the likes, and it just makes any attempt I make laughable in comparison, it takes away the thrive to create something new and innovative. If you do scripting, next to it make some sort of easy to learn module connector platform. Where people like me with no programming experience can quickly and easily learn to make the basics work, for example a simple trade route, move from here to here, dock there and done. Or try to make a missile “script” in that sense.

 

Software development is my profession, and I have done a bunch of Lua scripting in games like Second Life and Legend of Grimrock I & II and scripting in other languages such as Javascript for games like CodeSpells.   As a result, I will likely gravitate in a huge way towards construct building and sales. I will also be trying to get into the earliest possible alpha / early access program they make available through Steam or Kickstarter or whatever.  As such, I hope to grow a huge manufacturing and sales empire in the game. From this perspective, I have a few comments:

 

  • It is probably inevitable that certain  resources will become dirt-cheap (literally) in the markets, others will have greater value.  As a builder, I would rather spend my time constructing and coding, rather than mining and gathering resources.  I would prefer to leave resource gathering to newer (or more dedicated who can handle that grind) players and just buy them off of the markets.  Depending on how many people gather resources, I may pay more or less for them on some days.  At first, I probably won't have much cash on hand, so I'll focus on smaller items that I can build and sell quickly in order to generate the revenue for larger products to put up for sale.
  • According to the DevBlog, much of the markets will be automated.  You post a buy order at specified price. Someone who has the resources posts a sell order. If the two line up on cost, it will automatically post the transaction for you.  You shouldn't have to babysit the location for sales to go through.
  • As to scripting the constructs, I will certainly be one player developing scripts constantly to make things bigger and better. I may even contract myself out to players from time to time to code private scripts if they can't do it themselves.  So there will be at least one, but probably many people to assist with that sort of work.  Contracting for script coding, means I will have more capital to buy more resources so that I can build more products to sell later.
  • My product prices will be based on the amount of work I have to put it to develop the prototypes and cost for resources plus a bit of profit. From my perpsective, that will balance out nicely as I won't short-change myself.

I plan to set up a base right near the Arkship so that all of the new players will be able to find me right away and Know I am the one to go to for the best constructs.

 

EDIT: For the grammar police.   :)

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I plan to set up a based right near the Seed Ship so that all of the Noobs will be able to find me right away and no I am the one to go to for the best constructs.

 

The "Arkship". My apologies - I'm a terminology Nazi.

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I feel the need to clarify the point in my criticism. I'm trying to bring a fresh mindset or prespective to the disussion, it's a method often used by journalists when handling sensitive news, they give basic information to a new, uninformed party who then tries to punch holes in the case the journalist makes in order to find loopholes, dead-ends and the likes.

 

But I got some good answers anyway, especially with the scripting part. Where multiple people laid out their script selling enterprise to me. Which is all fine with me, don't get me wrong. But as someone who can't script I don't want to rely on others for EVERYTHING. Example: I mine at point B, my Base is at point A. I want the small cargo ship i built to move in between those two points, load up at point B and unload at point A. Super simple stuff like this could be done with the modules i talked about earlier, more complex things like missile scripts, search and destroy etc. would still have to be made by programmers. So that someone who can't programm doesn't have to completly rely on scripters.

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Super simple stuff like this could be done with the modules i talked about earlier, more complex things like missile scripts, search and destroy etc. would still have to be made by programmers. So that someone who can't programm doesn't have to completly rely on scripters.

 

thats what you read dev blogs for, it was said that basic scripts will be availeable for all players ;)

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thats what you read dev blogs for, it was said that basic scripts will be availeable for all players ;)

Still, the question remains how easy it will be to use, but that will depend on the execution and interface design

But i just read through about 25% of the dev blog and it seems like their on top of their game, pun intended ;)

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I see where you are coming from TheOdersMaster. I too like to play Devil's Advocate. I find that it helps people find flaws that they may not have thought of.

 

The economy is probably my biggest worry. I played Runescape for the longest time, but even when they introduced the Grand Exchange, prices could SEVERELY change from one day to the next. Like, saving millions to buy a weapon, then you decide you don't want it. When you go to sell it, you lose money. I know this is a risk with anything, but I have seen people come together to change prices in a drastic way.

 

On the point of it being P2P, I don't think it will be a problem retaining people, especially if they do things the way they are talking in the dev blog. Like, with the possible 2-4 week trial? You could join a friend who gives you enough in-game money to get you the subscription without spending a dime(if they offer this, at least a significant discount would be nice). I personally, along with a lot of people out there, don't mind paying money to play a game as long as it is fun, immersible, and updated and we hear/interact with the devs in some form or fashion. 

 

Seeing as how they have been planning and designing since 2014 to some extent, I believe they have been working on how to resolve the issues people might see or think of before they happen. Maybe they could throw scenarios at us on the forum to see how people might challenge them? 

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Oh boy, what to say. I understand how dev’s might think that a Script isn’t that big of a deal but, well it is, for me at least. I never learned how to program anything, granted I did tech myself some .cmd a few years back for fun, but that doesn’t nearly compare to anything I’d need to script a damned ship! Space Engineers did the exact same thing, and I see the awesome stuff like lock-on cruse-missiles and the likes, and it just makes any attempt I make laughable in comparison, it takes away the thrive to create something new and innovative.

That's where the other players do come in. Contact people, give them contracts to make scripts for you. There will most certainly be people who do that (I certainly will be) for money or other services. And I assume there will be tutorials by users for that.

Generally speaking: In a game like this you need to talk to others if you can't accomplish something by yourself.

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That's where the other players do come in. Contact people, give them contracts to make scripts for you. There will most certainly be people who do that (I certainly will be) for money or other services. And I assume there will be tutorials by users for that.

Generally speaking: In a game like this you need to talk to others if you can't accomplish something by yourself.

 

Agreed.

 

No sense playing an MMORPG if you don't partake in the MMO part - be social. You're aren't meant to be able to do everything by yourself. 

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And before I forget, I don’t WANT a global trading platform where I can just put up my Iron for X money and then some random Person takes it, where’s the fun in that? Where can I rob my trade Partner, where can I betray him? It’s just so much fun to stab people in the back.

 

Really? :huh:

 

So you want me to put in hours of my time to mine the resources you need for building, then you want to be able to deprive me of my well-earned cash at the end of it? I'm sorry but an economy where you can so blindly rob another person will not last long!

 

I personally like to harvest resources, but hate to script and/or build (or I suck at building more to the point, so I'll buy buildings/plans), I love that thrill of finding a vein of some rare resource I can harvest or filling up on something I know is going to sell well. So it will be people like me who help you build that fleet :)  but in return I expect a fair trade for the work I have put in, else I am using them to build my own fleet :P

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Agreed.

 

No sense playing an MMORPG if you don't partake in the MMO part - be social. You're aren't meant to be able to do everything by yourself. 

We have those people in Eve Online, we call them "Wormholers". I like to think of them as the hermits of Eve. 

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Please, do not misunderstand the title of this thread. I’m not trying to simply bash this game or games like this one, on the contrary, I will go through most of the main advertised features of this game mentioned on the homepage of http://www.dualthegame.com/#screenshots as well as some of the points in the FAQ (http://www.dualthegame.com/faq) and compare them to other games I played or heard a lot about.

Furthermore, I’d like to point out that I haven’t read everything there is to read, and I’m not going to before writing this. Why? Well, because I don’t want to discuss whether what the dev’s are trying to do with one particular aspect of the game is good or bad, I am going to point out mistakes similar games made with these certain aspects and try to find out WHY those were either wrong, unsatisfying, annoying or simply bad. I may suggest possible solutions to some of these problems, for others I might just want to see what the dev’s come up with, or I might just not have a solution myself.

 

So let’s get going with a rather light-hearted topic: Guilds, Clans, Nations, Factions, or, how the Dev’s call them, Organizations.

 

To be honest, I read a bit into this one in the Dev-Log, but quickly decided to leave in order for this to stay unbiased.

Now, what happens quiet often in MMO’s is, that the amount of Ranks inside an Organization are limited, a prime example here would be Planetside 2, where you are only given 5 usable ranks, which, in larger player-communities, is a ridiculously small diversity to have. What I have also noticed is that often the Rights and Privileges are pre-given, an example here would be “Tribal Wars” a free browser game obsessively played by many, where you have some 10 different rights and privileges which could be given to different ranks within a clan. Now I understand that some rights need to be pre-given, such as the alteration of the organization itself or the ability to hire and fire members, however it shouldn’t be limited to those, as the head of an organization I want to be able to say that no, the guy scrubbing the toilets on my battlecruiser does not have access to my military coms, period. Or the receptionist at my 5-Star hotel cannot use one of the rooms to go ‘afk’ for a few minutes.

So here is a solution, I doubt it’s perfect, far from it probably, but perhaps worth a thought:

Instead of limiting the organizations to ranks or some such, giving a player two “designations” to describe his position within the organization would be far more effective, which is why some military’s in reality use it.

Ok so let’s take Dude Dudsen as our example. Dude has the rank of Officer in his organization, which gives him the ability to promote players under him up to the Position right below him. He also has the function of Navigator, which gives him access to the bridge since his Job is to navigate.

The con for using this method would be that the player has to set up to entire systems in order to make his Organization work. The pro is that it gives him flexibility when giving privileges, instead of having to make up an entirely new rank, whenever the others don’t quite fit he has these bundles of privileges that he can give to someone.

Now in order for this to work properly one would have to be tied to the other, it would make sense to tie the functions to certain ranks, since a Janitor General wouldn’t make much sense.

If you didn’t get that last part, you can hope that I find enough time to make a small sketch of what I mean and upload it (it would be named Fig. 1)

 

Alright, that took longer than anticipated, sadly I’m not done.

 

The Player driven economy:

 

It’d be nice wouldn’t it? Sadly, I just don’t see myself positioning my character at a wooden stall or on some square to wait for someone to buy my damn iron. I also don’t really want to sell all my stuff to an NPC vendor because he needs to make Profit off his sales, otherwise he couldn’t pay me next time I come around and want to sell more stuff, which means I make less than I could. You could, off course, say that he can just sell it for what he paid me and just pay me whatever the current stock price is. Well my dear, that won’t work because it would generate in-game-money. Imagine that everyone just sells to the vendors but the vendors never get to sell, money would be generated and overflow the market, which in turn would make money worthless.

But continuing on to the next problem, who’s going to mine the trillions of tons of iron I need for my Fleet of 10 destroyers 16 support frigates 8 missile boats and that supercarrier I always wanted to have which can carry 500 fighters?

I’ll tell you who, not me. I don’t have time to do that, and by the time I have advanced in the game enough to be able to do that I honestly might not want to. So who’s it going to be, you? And yes, I mean you, the dude reading this, because I don’t think you will do that for me will you? I mean why would you work to build my fleet just for fun, I doubt you would actually do that. So if I can’t hire players to build my fleet, I need someone else who’s willing…and we’re back at NPC which, if you noticed by now, are an economic dead-end. If I give the NPC a salary, what’s he going to do with it? Where does he give it back into the system? Because that’s all that economics is, giving and taking from the system. And if there is a dead end somewhere which is substantial enough, the system will inevitably crash and fail.

If I don’t pay the NPC a salary I get a free Fleet and rule the Galaxy. Sure I don’t mind.

But then the game would be boring and I’d play it for a few days until I have conquered everything and got bored of expanding.

What might work is if I could put a NPC placeholder for me in the wooden stall I mentioned at the top of the paragraph who would sell my things.

And before I forget, I don’t WANT a global trading platform where I can just put up my Iron for X money and then some random Person takes it, where’s the fun in that? Where can I rob my trade Partner, where can I betray him? It’s just so much fun to stab people in the back.

 

While we’re on the topic of money, the games price:

 

I’ve read what the dev’s wrote in the FAQ and it sort of, well dampened my enthusiasm. I don’t want to delve too much into this since it’s less about the game than other points and it’s also not really any of my business so I’ll try to keep it short.

Dear dev-team, your game lives and dies with the amount of people playing it, for a small group of people this game will soon become repetitive and boring, for the millions you promise it can handle, it will be one of their greatest adventures. The casual gamer, which is a majority, will be less interested in a subscription-based game than a one-time pay plus in-game purchases game. I understand that you need to have a steady stream of money to pay salaries and server-upkeep and the likes, however I ask that you at least consider what I said before making your decision on the subscription final.

 

Let’s move on to a less serious topic: Scriptable Ships and Constructs

 

Oh boy, what to say. I understand how dev’s might think that a Script isn’t that big of a deal but, well it is, for me at least. I never learned how to program anything, granted I did tech myself some .cmd a few years back for fun, but that doesn’t nearly compare to anything I’d need to script a damned ship! Space Engineers did the exact same thing, and I see the awesome stuff like lock-on cruse-missiles and the likes, and it just makes any attempt I make laughable in comparison, it takes away the thrive to create something new and innovative. If you do scripting, next to it make some sort of easy to learn module connector platform. Where people like me with no programming experience can quickly and easily learn to make the basics work, for example a simple trade route, move from here to here, dock there and done. Or try to make a missile “script” in that sense.

 

So that’s it for now, it’s late and I have work tomorrow. I might continue this some other time.

 

Please comment on anything and everything I said, tare my arguments to shreds if you want. And call me out on any ignorant remarks I may have made. Also if there's anything very wrong with my English, make a footnote out of it, it's my second language and I'm always happy to learn.

 

Have a good day. ;)

 

 

It sounds like you want to abuse the playerbase A LOT in every point I see you make. So how about you get to be the abused in this game, because everyone plays the same game after all (you could end up being outsmarted by someone smarter than you or has way more experience in this game than you). And if you ever played Space Engineers survival online you would know that backstabbing was the biggest bitch you ever had to deal with in gaming. It has to be fun/fair for people on both sides of the community you know what im saying? Take another look at what you just posted, it's complete bullshit and in no way relevant with making a good game, it's only about yourself and what motivates you to play games and code. lol

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It sounds like you want to abuse the playerbase A LOT in every point I see you make. So how about you get to be the abused in this game, because everyone plays the same game after all (you could end up being outsmarted by someone smarter than you or has way more experience in this game than you). And if you ever played Space Engineers survival online you would know that backstabbing was the biggest bitch you ever had to deal with in gaming. It has to be fun/fair for people on both sides of the community you know what im saying? Take another look at what you just posted, it's complete bullshit and in no way relevant with making a good game, it's only about yourself and what motivates you to play games and code. lol

 

yamamushi has brought up some good points that would not be considered "abuse", merely constructive criticism - or pointing out potential flaws and potential solutions. We all maintain an air of positivity and support here- so don't be toxic (and absolutely do not end your sentences with lol).

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We have those people in Eve Online, we call them "Wormholers". I like to think of them as the hermits of Eve. 

Guilty as charged.  Though I keep it fun with that character.

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