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@Cornflakes

Fine, I'll stand back and watch how you guys struggle with the impervious logics of people saying "Please give us multiboxing" and "please make Dual Universe EVE 2.0 ".

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@CaptainTwerkmotor That could be Incorporated into what I was saying. You would build it one way, out of certain materials. Yes, it would work, but not that good.  It would be a Trial and Error type of system. Have you played Empyrion? it has a level system that requires you to mine, craft and build things for experience.

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Personally I'd like it to be a series of puzzels you can solve, maybe with some experements involved to research something. Less RNG and waiting if possible. Their's a magic mod in minecraft called thaumcraft that has some fun puzzels you need to solve to unlock the research for each item. Something like this where each element must be connected to one of the two that composes it in order to link, and you need to build a path between the 4 corner elements and connect them all. It's a decent way of doing it because it involves less skill and more resources, but more skilled players can come up with more efficient solutions to the problem http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/thaumcraft-4/images/3/37/Research_Mastery_Research.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150524204156

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@CaptainTwerkmotor

 

I didn't mean to imply that a cookie-cutter or an EVE-esque point-and-click adventure was good, nor that a weird voxel based future technology physics system was bad. I only meant to point out that if we go with that quirky physics sytem, then it could allow a sort of "universal" research, where research is done for everyone everywhere. It would allow a situation where it's possible a newbie can implement advanced technology that was intended to be at the top of the tech tree. That isn't balanced, and I don't think it should work that way.

 

A way that a quirky physics system could work is by creating a tiered system in the mining and industrial processes as well. (ie a newbie cannot mine platinum to begin with, perhaps only iron, nickel, cobalt, zinc, etc) This way there is no shortcut to advanced technology. Though there would have to be some additional mechanic somehow to allow constructions made with simple materials to lead to obtaining more advanced materials and so on.

 

As mentioned above, I like the idea of a fail-and-try-again approach. Perhaps when trying to move on to using those advanced materials, you try to create some object. The object may work well, or it may not. I am reminded of Reactors and Turbines from FTB in Minecraft. Their power, efficiency and such are completely dependant upon overall size and the shape of the core. Simple iron blocks were terrible for Turbine efficiency. You had to spend a lot of time obtaining "shiny" platinum blocks in order to get a better reactor efficiency. But that's a matter of obtaining materials rather than knowing what to do with them. It's also a good example of people decomposing the Reactor/Turbine dynamics down to a few equations, optimizing and then immediately using the best design from the beginning, all based on others' research.

 

Perhaps there could be some sort of UI interface where the internals of an Element could be configured to try to increase efficiency. This would create a kind of "manual" research. Certain configurations would work better than others and you you (as opposed to the character) would possess that research data. But again this leads into situation where this information could be given to other players and immediately they jump up the tech tree. I don't know that it's possible to create this configuration mechanic that would allow for infinite improvement.

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@CaptainTwerkmotor

 

I didn't mean to imply that a cookie-cutter or an EVE-esque point-and-click adventure was good, nor that a weird voxel based future technology physics system was bad. I only meant to point out that if we go with that quirky physics sytem, then it could allow a sort of "universal" research, where research is done for everyone everywhere. It would allow a situation where it's possible a newbie can implement advanced technology that was intended to be at the top of the tech tree. That isn't balanced, and I don't think it should work that way.

 

A way that a quirky physics system could work is by creating a tiered system in the mining and industrial processes as well. (ie a newbie cannot mine platinum to begin with, perhaps only iron, nickel, cobalt, zinc, etc) This way there is no shortcut to advanced technology. Though there would have to be some additional mechanic somehow to allow constructions made with simple materials to lead to obtaining more advanced materials and so on.

What would be gained by hard limiting new players to follow some predefined progression path?

 

If the player is good in building what he wants, let him build it.

 

If he finds a way to bootstrap himself to advanced tech, let him do it.

 

Why limit players in that regard?

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@Velenka

What you are describing has merits... if the game had a leveling system and classes. It's an MMORPG, true, but it's not a Theme Park MMO (like WoW or EVE in a way). It's a sandbox. A sandbox with leveling that isn't organic, is crap. And your "access to higher level tech" part, is rendered moot when you realise that in WoW, when my friends came over and started playing, I took my tank paladin and boosted them to level 80 (yeah, back when) in less than a week. They shouldn't be able to do such thing, yet they did because I was theree to help.


Providing an organic leveling system for mining it's okay... if the game is medieval, where you need a steel pickage to mine better. Guess what, lazors > steel. And if not lazors , a jackhamemr. You don't need tech trees for that, you are not going to re-invent the wheel here. They mastered spatial withdrawal, I don't think that the people in Dual Universe lore forgot how to do the jackhammer. It's a motor, with a plug on one end and a series of gears that provide a palindromical motion. 

Let the leveling be an experience, not the leveling being an XP bar.

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You both make a good point. Why have a research mechanic at all? The advanced technology already exists, so why not use it? It would certainly make the player's race to the top of the tech tree as short as possible by having everything available from the start. Although I do recall that there was some sort of technological progression at the end of the short story. It was something like the main character appeasing nature then nature gave him some kind of new reactor. Albeit this is not at all research, but it does show that there may be an intended progression of tech, from old and simple to new and powerful.

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And where does "not make technology a timer or xp bar" exclude technological progress?

 

give the player tools to create thrusters/reactors/whatever from varying materials using varying tools with every factor influencing if and how well the device works.

 

Then technological progress is a direct function of players playing and understanding the processes of building better equipment.

 

With some more intricate components only being buildable by well tuned assembly plants.

 

So the playerbase as a whole has to go through the (resource intensive) process of designing and building infrastructure which enables higher tech devices to be built.

"Teching up" the community as a whole instead of placing every new player back at the start of the whole process.

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Hi everyone,

 

Technological research will probably quite hybrid in Dual Universe:

 

You will have to "unlock" technologies to make advanced Elements (like a new type of propulsor) or advanced crafted items (like a new type of fuel). The way to unlock these technologies remain to be decided. There are currently several ideas. 

 

Unlocking through research time is one of them but it's not sure it will be the one being kept in the end.

Here are the pros & cons:

- easiest and fastest way to implement research.

- safe process to prevent automatically that all the tech are unlocked from day 1 or even from week 1.

- on the other hand, it's probably not the funniest way to play it.

 

Among others solution, we have: 

- RNG mechanics but relying on luck for research can be very frustrating as well.

- Grinding significant amount of specific resources (supposed to be used for experiments to make a technological breakthrough) but this might not appear fun either to many players.

- Through "trials & errors" experimentation might be a problem as Alpha & Beta testers will get a huge advantage compared to new comers (and the risk that having a frenzy of technology breakthrough in the first days following official release). Moreover, there will be already "trials & errors" to design LUA scripts and test spaceship "flyability". So it might be too much to put several layers of "trials & errors". It can be discouraging for many players.

- Civilization-wide unlock: when a certain amount of player characters have learn a specific skillset in the game, then a technological breakthrough happens and a new tech is unlocked. This idea is interesting but it generates some risks: "what if this number of player characters learning this skill is not reached? what if it takes 3x or 4x the time the dev team expected?" 

 

As you can see, the perfect answer is not that simple.

And this will be without doubt the topic of a DevBlog to discuss in the future.

We thank you all for giving suggestions and ideas on this topic and if new ideas come to your attention, don't hesitate to mention them! As always, this is very valuable info for the team to know what you like and what you don't like, and sometimes new way of thinking the design of some game mechanics :)

 

Now on a complete another topic:

 

@CaptainTwerkmotor: We understand everyone here is very passionate about his/her vision of the game. However, as much as you don't like the vision loved by other players, you still have to respect them. You might find their vision old or inappropriate, there is no reason to quit being polite and starting using sacarsm. You don't have to agree with them, but have to respect them. "Respect each other" is an elementary rule on this forum. And we'd prefer not having to play the police among the community to enforce the rules. As we believe all the participants in this thread can be reasonable, we hope that we won't need to use hard/cold moderation (which we try to use always in last resort).

 

Best regards,

Nyzaltar.
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As you can see, the perfect answer is not that simple.

And this will be without doubt the topic of a DevBlog to discuss in the future.

We thank you all for giving suggestions and ideas on this topic and if new ideas come to your attention, don't hesitate to mention them! As always, this is very valuable info for the team to know what you like and what you don't like, and sometimes new way of thinking the design of some game mechanics :)

 

Now on a complete another topic:

 

@CaptainTwerkmotor: We understand everyone here is very passionate about his/her vision of the game.

Best regards,

Nyzaltar.

Can I ask about yours? Vision I mean, at least on a more abstract level (even if the particulars are still fuzzy).

 

Right now it's all too easy for anyone of us to fill in the blanks with whatever dream mechanics we might envision. Having some idea about the role you want research to have in the game and the purpose of the mechanics would make it a lot easier to discuss it constructively. Is it about finding an immersive way to introduce new elements to the community as you develop them? Do you see it as another layer of character progression, or as something a group should be able to share? Do you view it as something that must be achieved individually or something that could be a traded commodity? Is it meant as a reward? If so what would you rather reward? time spent in the game, exploration, economical contribution to the in-game economy, social cooperation, alien-rat tooth collections?

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Hi everyone,
 
Technological research will probably quite hybrid in Dual Universe:
 

[...]

 

- Civilization-wide unlock: when a certain amount of player characters have learn a specific skillset in the game, then a technological breakthrough happens and a new tech is unlocked. This idea is interesting but it generates some risks: "what if this number of player characters learning this skill is not reached? what if it takes 3x or 4x the time the dev team expected?" 
 
 
[...]
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

 

 

I don't know if it could be a good idea, but maybe there could be an intermediate level... The breakthrough could be at two level: corporative and global. In such a way is also possible to create a real specialization between the different corporations...

 

Corporation: a certain skill becames available for the members of a corporation when a certain amount of its members have learned a specific skillset in the game; after that, the threshold needed became lower and for the second corporation is needed a lower effort to unlock the tecnology, for the third i became still more easy and so on...

 

Global: after a certain amount of players have learned the skill from their corporation, then it became a comon knowledge and the new tech is unlocked for everyone.

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I don't know if it could be a good idea, but maybe there could be an intermediate level... The breakthrough could be at two level: corporative and global. In such a way is also possible to create a real specialization between the different corporations...

 

Corporation: a certain skill becames available for the members of a corporation when a certain amount of its members have learned a specific skillset in the game; after that, the threshold needed became lower and for the second corporation is needed a lower effort to unlock the tecnology, for the third i became still more easy and so on...

 

Global: after a certain amount of players have learned the skill from their corporation, then it became a comon knowledge and the new tech is unlocked for everyone.

 

I really like that idea. It allows for technological development to occur at first on an individual level, then rising higher through a player hierarchy until it is free knowledge available to everyone.

 

In addition to this, perhaps anyone who leaves a corporation with certain advanced research would not be able to continue to benefit by that research, but anything done personally by that player or that is commonly shared by the universe is still available.

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Or you can leave it at the hands of players.

 

If you make the initial breakthrough a finding that you can either share or not, an innovation can become globally spread, exclusive to an organization or a trade secret in the hands of very few players depending on the choices the player makes. If players are able to research an unknown element or resource if they find it (Possibly with related skill requirements), then it provides both a way for introducing new technologies and spreading them around, and a motivation for conflict when trying to prevent or delay it from spreading.

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Maybe the economy can provide part of the answer.  Rather than having a civilisation-wide breakthrough just allow players and organisations a mechanism to sell their discoveries, and allow buyers the ability to sell it on again (maybe a customisable contract system that says they can't re-sell for a set period of time... actually this would work well for selling exploration data too).  Eventually enough people will have the knowledge that the price of buying it will be trivial and there you have your "breakthrough".  This would work with any research system whether it is a simple timing mechanism, trial and error or anything else.

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I think the reason behind this is to make a big task like going into space an advancement that takes time, right? I agree with others that a "skill level" system or "research trees" to delay these advancements are the wrong way because they are zero fun. Instead, give the players something to do over a period of time to achieve these goals. Like:

All technology should in principle be available from the start. But in order to, let's say, build a space ship, you will have to achieve a lot of things before. You start on day one with barely any technology or ressources. So the first thing you have to do is to explore the environment where you have been placed on the planet by foot to look for water, food, raw materials, etc. You have to build a base starting with basic elements like housing, power generation, greenhouse, mines, refineries.

 

Then a point should be reached where the local ressources become insufficient to build more / bigger structures, so the last thing you can build is a vehicle (fun!) that allows to explore a larger area of the planet to find more and rare ressources. Not before these are found and harvested, you can build production facilities for components that can be used on a spaceship, like engines, computers, pipes, weapons, etc.

 

Once you have built a space ship, you can put some technology and ressources in the cargo bay, so that you don't have to start over from scratch on a new planet.

 

Some things, like highly advanced weapons or shield generators, should require ressources from different planets / moons / asteroids / gas clouds.

That way it also takes time to achieve something, but you actively work in a logical way to get there, which is way more satisfying than chosing a tech or "skill" level and watch the timer bar. If some elements of real research can be included to spice things up, perhaps including try and error allowing results that are unpredictable, all the better.

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what thoger said.

 

if you know exactly what to do and have the materials to do so available creating things should be easy and fast.

 

when you have copper and tin making bronze is trivial, but finding out that a 3:1 mixture of copper and tin makes a pretty good metal should be the hard thing.

 

the whole research mechanic could encompass a field of materials science where you mess around with different processes and base materials to get different end results.

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To me, any system which places artificial walls in front of player progression should be avoided. So tech trees based on timed unlocks, or grinding meaningless activities are out. 

 

There seems to be this underlying idea that letting players have access to the whole tech tree at launch is a bad thing for some reason. But I think Knowing which pieces we need to build a rocket is not the same as successfully launching a mission to space. 

 

In a building game like this the true progression is the infrastructure you build to support your projects. It's the difference between mining every block by hand in Minecraft and creating a gigantic ship in Space Engineers that eats asteroids whole and 3D prints space stations. 

In a Massively Multiplayer game creating and/or gaining access to the infrastructure you need for space travel and exploration will be a huge undertaking in its own right just because of competition with other players and factions. Forcing everyone to go through the tree punching stage isn't going to improve the experience in my opinion.

I think a better way to simulate technological progression is to increase the complexity of the crafting system at the fundamental level. Instead of building ships out of engines, cockpits, and reactors, plus voxels, build ships out of machine parts combined in different ways. Players will experiment to find the ways the parts work for the constructions they want, and specialisations and knowledge will arise naturally.

I've explained it in more detail here:

https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/833-component-elements-building-with-smaller-parts/

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The problem is you can't be a universal scientist. Dual is not a single-player game and nobody is a comicbook superhero. You can't be an engineer/fighter/trader/pirate/muppet at the same time. The system of "taking time to unlock" is meant as a hinderance from people skyrocketing to max stats. Sure, there should be a cap on skillpoints spent, with the extra ones to be used as "extra lives" for the prospect of dying and losing skillpoints, but being able to tap into ANYTHING by yourrself defuses the point of an MMO.

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But you can't be everything at once. Because while you're busy trying to be an empire of one, an organisation of thousands is stripping asteroid belts wholesale and turning them into warships and battle tanks to come and mess up your pitiful little tent city on the frontier. 

 

The point of an MMO is to play with a crap ton of other people. Progress in something like EVE is not measured in skill points but in how many people know your name.

 

leveling is superfluous if the systems built into the gameplay are sufficiently complex.

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But you can't be everything at once. Because while you're busy trying to be an empire of one, an organisation of thousands is stripping asteroid belts wholesale and turning them into warships and battle tanks to come and mess up your pitiful little tent city on the frontier. 

 

The point of an MMO is to play with a crap ton of other people. Progress in something like EVE is not measured in skill points but in how many people know your name.

 

leveling is superfluous if the systems built into the gameplay are sufficiently complex.

Well, as I mentioned many times, I'm not here for the spaceship thingy or the building. I'm here for the ground combat  with possibly mechas being viable options for ground warfare. Perhaps Mechas will be having access to the same arsenal as ground vehicles, which requires me to specialise with operating ground vehicles. And I'm fine with that ^_^ . Nothing gets me hyped more than the idea of operating a mecha with two other guys, one being the driver, the other being the engineer's watch and me being the gunner. Each one of us specialised on a different task for combat and we three came together to operate a giant murder machine :P

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I would like some sort of hybrid between time, resource grind and civilization unlock (maybe something else, if it appropriate). Actually to unlock a single element, the coolest way would be to require some of each. Variety is the opposite of boringness.

 

Like if you have to unlock the stargate, you'd need 1)time, 2)a certain amount of resources, 3) a civilization unlock (something like "first solar system completely explored"). There are civilization goals that can't be avoided, so they're gonna happen one day, like colonize 10 planets, 5000 players deaths, 18 planets explored,...

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