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The nature of a sandbox


Shynras

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It always happen to me to read threads from people talking about designing constructs for other people, selling scripts or sharing the technologies, so often comes to my mind, the fact that many don't realize this.

 

This is a sandbox, with a strong PVP component. There'll be fights, wars, treachery, spying, .... Informations will be precious. 

 

If a medium-large corporations need ships, it's likely they're going to design and build them by their own. Same for scripts. You don't simply go to war with ships your opponents know the limits and the strenghts. You don't just ask to another corporation to program your drones, to risk sabotage or that the same producer sell to your opponent a script able to counter the previous.

 

Of course there'll be a small group of people that doesn't really care, since they don't have much to loss, nor their opponents are so "advanced" to use the informations. Maybe you'll cash on those players, but I doubt you'll make enough to mantain your corporation. 

 

So what i said excludes from the market any construct made to fight (no bases, no warships, no wardrones) (ofc a solo player or a small organization could buy a couple) 

 

I'm sure there'll be some organizations that will just produces constructs, but for sure, isn't going to be that easy. In a voxel game, the building part is always extremely competitive (because a lot of people love to build): selling a single ship will have a small gain. 

 

So ships that are going to be sold mostly, are the ones regarding production, exploration and transportation. But are we sure that those "pve" ships are going to be hard to build? Can those kind of ship require so much skill to build that there'll be a market around it? Add this to the fact that many people will build their own, and for their friends too, since it's fun, and they can personalize them as much as they want. 

 

Well you could just create a construct so insane that everyone would buy it, right? Well, yes and no:

 

-You don't know how deep the designing is going to be. What's the difference between a ship that is just a cube with elements put randomly inside it, and a ship well designed? Does the shape matters? Does the positioning of rooms/elements matters? We don't know it yet. 

-LUA isn't that hard as you may think. Many people will learn the basics. And after a few months, maybe someone will public on the forum some good scripts for everyone to use.

 

You could make aesthetically pleasing hulls and sell those for people to fill with their elements and stuff. Sure, but in a sandbox, how many people are going to spend credits and resources they grinded for hours on a ship, to watch it explode in the next battle? Do you think they'll pay enough for you to keep doing it?

 

So, in my mind, any medium-large corporation will have their own builders, their own designs, their own constructs. All the technology, scripts, designs, will be kept secret. So, I just wanted to say, don't ignore this.

 

What do you think?

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I think the market for AI type scripts will be much more of a market than the ship designs, for a lot of people this type of game, the building is half the fun.  The scripting will be much less popular of a pass time. 

 

but i mostly agree with what you said 

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Well the thing is not everybody will go to war, Those that are going to war are the Military and obviouly they will make their own ships and other things that could be hacked.But for those Pve player that will do civil jobs and basically no fighting(Unless you're Planet is invaded then you would have to join the militia),They dont need to care who makes their ships because they wont affect anybody in lets say a Conflict.If they make the game as they are  telling us War will not be the answer to an all of the conflicts Because why would you start a war that is impossible to win? or if you win the war you mostly end up in a weak  state.And another thing is not everybody is good at building ships and if they succed at building one it will look like a block or something not even fuctional to whats intended.This is my opinion 

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I think the market for AI type scripts will be much more of a market than the ship designs, for a lot of people this type of game, the building is half the fun.  The scripting will be much less popular of a pass time. 

 

but i mostly agree with what you said 

Yea but once you buy a script, you can use that for another ship without buying it again. And I'm sure there'll be a nice collection that someone will post for everyone to use. There's a possibility, that the game will feature enough depth, that scripting an entire ship with, let's say, 100 elements, will require quite some time. Still, such a complex ship, usually has a role in fighting.

 

 

Well the thing is not everybody will go to war, Those that are going to war are the Military and obviouly they will make their own ships and other things that could be hacked.But for those Pve player that will do civil jobs and basically no fighting(Unless you're Planet is invaded then you would have to join the militia),They dont need to care who makes their ships because they wont affect anybody in lets say a Conflict.If they make the game as they are  telling us War will not be the answer to an all of the conflicts Because why would you start a war that is impossible to win? or if you win the war you mostly end up in a weak  state.And another thing is not everybody is good at building ships and if they succed at building one it will look like a block or something not even fuctional to whats intended.This is my opinion 

 

Yes, there'll be a market around "pve" ships. But usually, this kind of ships are way easier to design and build compared to a fighter. So, many people will probably build those by themselves. And if you add the already high competitiveness in this market, I'm not sure that the amount of buyers will be enough to satisfy not even half the sellers. Even if someone is not good at building ships, we're likely going to play with friends or in a corporation, we'll always have someone close that is good enough at that. 

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I wonder if there will be anything to protect from people buying a script/ship design etc and then reselling it again themselves.. 

 

 

could be interesting feature to have options to sell a use license of a script/ship or buying the distribution rights...

 

I have often thought to myself "how can we bring the real life excitement of copyright law to a video game"

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I wonder if there will be anything to protect from people buying a script/ship design etc and then reselling it again themselves.. 

 

That could solve partially the problem. Then the programmer could just add a line "selfdestroy if -rare occurrency- happens" )(he would make that happen if he wants, maybe in a fight, or sell the information to an enemy), and there's no way you could know that, so that you'd have to trust the engineer.

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That "we will keep our best stuff secret" policy sounds very plausible to me, and I even can back it up with experience:

In the first MMO I played, Mankind (RTS in space and on planets), there was no free building and scripting, but a large variety of units to chose from, like several types of space fighters that could be loaded into carriers. When I entered the game, everyone was building the most expensive fighter that had the best stats (strength, armor, speed). But one thing was missing in the stats: weapon range. I built each fighter to find out that a much cheaper model had the maximum range, so I built some more of those, tested them and saw they were as efficient as the expensive top fighters. I told only my guild, and the production lines were converted. We kept it secret and that advantage helped us winning several wars until the other guilds found out about it.

It was the same with other tactics we developped, we even had a paragraph in our statute that passing such information to outsiders will be punished.

Concerning the impact on the economy in a game like DU: I agree the best stuff won't be on the market. I see rare resources, standard components, finished infrastructure and services (hired fighter escorts, space truckers, mercenaries) driving the economy, not blueprints and scripts. It may even be dangerous to buy ships (scripted blueprints) or rely on them, since guilds may flood the market with subpar variants of their good ships.

In said guild, we had a Foreign Trade Decree containing a whitelist (no trade barriers towards guilds and alliances we liked) and a blacklist (trade embargo towards guilds and alliances we didn't like).

 

 

Yea but once you buy a script, you can use that for another ship without buying it again.

 

Not necessarily, scripts could be bundled with a blueprint in a way that the script is not visible to the customer. There are vehicles and other scripted objects in Second Life / OpenSimulator where the script is set to "no modify" in which case it is also invisible.

 

 

I wonder if there will be anything to protect from people buying a script/ship design etc and then reselling it again themselves..

 

In Second Life / OpenSimulator there are three settings you can apply to an object you built and scripted: copy / no copy, modify / no modify, transfer / no transfer. That pretty much solves all problems. Copy/modify/transfer ("full perm") objects are usually more expensive.

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Builders like to build. They don't necessarily care about profit or politics.

Keep in mind that Builders will be able to build in safe zones - though, I'm not sure that's relevant.

 

People will buy from those they deem competent and credible.

Great Builders will have considerable reputation - many will not be willing to sacrifice their reputations in order to sabotage or compromise their own builds.

So, expect an ample amount of Builders who are neutral.

 

Having a medium to large organization doesn't guarantee the best designs. Likely those orgs will have Builders who can create ships designs that meet the org's desires.

But, we can expect constant innovation. There will likely come a time when Builders outside of the org create designs that are more desirable than the designs manufactured by the specific org. That's where trade and diplomacy come in.

 

"Hard to build" will cover a range of parameters: size, complexity, scripting, etc. Fuel, radiation shielding, scanners, life support, medical... all systems have to work.

NQ has already hinted that managing the resources necessary for interstellar travel sans Star Gate will be difficult. Fuel storage, food storage, etc will all be challenging.

The ships will have to be designed to deal with those challenges even if they don't primarily engage in combat. Some might have the added challenge of maintaining cloaking systems.

 

An organization focused on pvp combat might make great battle-cruisers heavy on shielding and weapons but have poor designs for fuel efficiency or cloaking.

So, having their own builders won't necessarily mean they have no interest in obtaining designs their own Builders can't manufacture.

 

I typically don't buy from other players. Most likely, I will either barter with friends or settle for prefab dev designs.

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Builders like to build. They don't necessarily care about profit or politics.

Keep in mind that Builders will be able to build in safe zones - though, I'm not sure that's relevant.

 

People will buy from those they deem competent and credible.

Great Builders will have considerable reputation - many will not be willing to sacrifice their reputations in order to sabotage or compromise their own builds.

So, expect an ample amount of Builders who are neutral.

 

Having a medium to large organization doesn't guarantee the best designs. Likely those orgs will have Builders who can create ships designs that meet the org's desires.

But, we can expect constant innovation. There will likely come a time when Builders outside of the org create designs that are more desirable than the designs manufactured by the specific org. That's where trade and diplomacy come in.

 

"Hard to build" will cover a range of parameters: size, complexity, scripting, etc. Fuel, radiation shielding, scanners, life support, medical... all systems have to work.

NQ has already hinted that managing the resources necessary for interstellar travel sans Star Gate will be difficult. Fuel storage, food storage, etc will all be challenging.

The ships will have to be designed to deal with those challenges even if they don't primarily engage in combat. Some might have the added challenge of maintaining cloaking systems.

 

An organization focused on pvp combat might make great battle-cruisers heavy on shielding and weapons but have poor designs for fuel efficiency or cloaking.

So, having their own builders won't necessarily mean they have no interest in obtaining designs their own Builders can't manufacture.

 

I typically don't buy from other players. Most likely, I will either barter with friends or settle for prefab dev designs.

 

1)you cannot build in a safezone, just design.

2)The features that we will have in the game will decide if it will be "hard to build". So you don't know yet if a skilled builder will be able to build a significantly better ship than an average one. 

3)Building is not hard, corporations will be made by a lot of players, there'll always be someone skilled enough to build a good ship. Often a good and trusted design, is better than a really good but risky one. 

 

 

There will be enough safe zones for those who want one.

 

No, this game isn't builder simulator 2017, arkification has not been confirmed, and in case there'll be, they said already that safezones are going to be rare. 

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1: Two out of the three examples we have for building in safe zones allow building constructs in open world areas that are untouchable by pvp mechanics. One of the three examples is a virtual sim, similar to creative mode. If they implement virtual sim, we may not be able take the constructs built there out of the sim. But, that's a 33% chance at this point. 66% chance that they will go with contructs being built in safe zones where the pvp modes have been deactivated similar to the Ark safe zones. (And we can, of course build in the Ark safe zones free from pvp).

 

2: It's not necessarily the features that we will have in the game that will decide whether constructs will be "hard to build". 

"Better" is subjective. What is "better" will depend on the interests of the specific consumer/client.

 

3: Again, "good ship" is subjective. There may be many people who in an org who know how to build a ship with powerful shields and powerful weapons - but no nothing about building ships with cloaking devices and fuel-efficient engines. That's not simply going to be a factor of being a great voxelmancer. That's going to be dependent upon who discovers the tech for cloaking and how the blueprints for that tech are shared. Fuel-efficiency may be more about engineering piping elements than voxel manipulation. An org might have excellent voxelmancers and average engineers or vice-versa.

 

4: Arkification has been confirmed. The specific method of Arkification has not been confirmed.

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I can see why maybe some of the "best stuff" isn't on an open market. But a large organization could have its own internal market where it sells its builders' stuff to its own members. "Jim, you lost your uber-fighter? Another one's going to cost you..."

 

Or perhaps corporate espionage will be a thing. You go to a "black market" and shop for the best stolen designs.

 

And I'm thinking that the best designing will take place in the form of "ideas." Where all I need to hear is the idea, and I can begin building something great. Like Thoger mentioned, the idea of weapons range rather than placement of weapons.

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Hmmn.

Velenka's post (along with today's Q&A response and people speculating about skill levels) has me thinking about diverting energy to different systems in the ship.

The crew of the USS Enterprise would often divert extra energy to shields or extra energy to shields or life support.

Another factor in coveted designs might be the linking of energy conduits in a manner that most efficiently diverts power to key systems in crucial moments.

 

https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/841-ask-us-anything-event/?p=9215

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1: Two out of the three examples we have for building in safe zones allow building constructs in open world areas that are untouchable by pvp mechanics. One of the three examples is a virtual sim, similar to creative mode. If they implement virtual sim, we may not be able take the constructs built there out of the sim. But, that's a 33% chance at this point. 66% chance that they will go with contructs being built in safe zones where the pvp modes have been deactivated similar to the Ark safe zones. (And we can, of course build in the Ark safe zones free from pvp).

 

2: It's not necessarily the features that we will have in the game that will decide whether constructs will be "hard to build". 

"Better" is subjective. What is "better" will depend on the interests of the specific consumer/client.

 

3: Again, "good ship" is subjective. There may be many people who in an org who know how to build a ship with powerful shields and powerful weapons - but no nothing about building ships with cloaking devices and fuel-efficient engines. That's not simply going to be a factor of being a great voxelmancer. That's going to be dependent upon who discovers the tech for cloaking and how the blueprints for that tech are shared. Fuel-efficiency may be more about engineering piping elements than voxel manipulation. An org might have excellent voxelmancers and average engineers or vice-versa.

 

4: Arkification has been confirmed. The specific method of Arkification has not been confirmed.

 

1)Safezone, that's not relevant to what I was saying. Still, I doubt that safezones to build stuff will be in the game, and even if they'll be, maybe just one on the arkship, not over the entire universe. You'll not have one at your disposal all the time, unless you just don't care about anything else than building.

 

2)No, because if the best ship is made by 10 blocks, 2 thruster and 1 pilot seat, everyone can build it, so there's no competition. Skilled builders wouldn't have place in the game. If ships are hard to build, then only a few people will be able to create something really interesting. What you're saying comes next.

 

3) Good ship relatively to the use you want to make of it. I'm not comparing a fighter with an exploration ship. I'm comparing fighters with fighters, exploration ships with exploration ships.

 

 

Hmmn.

Velenka's post (along with today's Q&A response and people speculating about skill levels) has me thinking about diverting energy to different systems in the ship.

The crew of the USS Enterprise would often divert extra energy to shields or extra energy to shields or life support.

Another factor in coveted designs might be the linking of energy conduits in a manner that most efficiently diverts power to key systems in crucial moments.

 

https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/841-ask-us-anything-event/?p=9215

 

That could be a way to increase the depth of the building system. Actually in eveonline, elitedangerous, or similar games there's already this feature, and it is quite easy to add to the game, so I'm confident. We just need the elements that consume energy to be able to absorb more or less energy, and we could use lua and pipes to divert the energy quite easily. 

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1: It is relevant to what you were saying. You stated that we cannot build in safe zones. The devblogs state that we will be able to build in safe zones - the safe zones are specifically for Builders to be able to build without being interrupted by pvp. Constructs will remain in the safe zones until the Builders move them out of the safe zone... or until the safe zone is deactivated. Builders are unlikely to remain in safe zones forever - they will likely want to travel to other locations for advanced resources, etc. And, whenever they move to a new location, they will have to create a new safe zone. Yes.

 

2: Best is still going to be relative. 10 blocks may be perceived as best to some and not best to others - 2 thrusters and 1 pilot seat do not indicate "best". That just indicates personal preference. You may prefer to pilot alone, I may prefer to co-pilot. But, again, those cosmetic designs won't be what determines "best" for individuals. Personal interests will be what determines "best" in terms of ship design and those will be subjective.

Some people may perceive speed to be "best" while others perceive fuel efficiency to be "best". The Builders who are great at maximizing speed in their designs may not be in the same org as the Builders who excel at maximizing fuel efficiency.

 

3: You may not be comparing fighters with exploration ships; but organizations will be. If the org decides they want some of their fighters to have greater speed than what their Builders are capable of creating, they will have to find some means to obtain those designs. They may have to people outside of their org.

If the Builders who maximize speed demand payment for their designs.

 

4: Well, hopefully, the engineers will need to have some player understanding of how to fit the conduit elements together and advanced character engineering skills. Perhaps a bit of LUA knowledge and perhaps a decent amount of voxelmancy.

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1: It is relevant to what you were saying. You stated that we cannot build in safe zones. The devblogs state that we will be able to build in safe zones - the safe zones are specifically for Builders to be able to build without being interrupted by pvp. Constructs will remain in the safe zones until the Builders move them out of the safe zone... or until the safe zone is deactivated. Builders are unlikely to remain in safe zones forever - they will likely want to travel to other locations for advanced resources, etc. And, whenever they move to a new location, they will have to create a new safe zone. Yes.

 

2: Best is still going to be relative. 10 blocks may be perceived as best to some and not best to others - 2 thrusters and 1 pilot seat do not indicate "best". That just indicates personal preference. You may prefer to pilot alone, I may prefer to co-pilot. But, again, those cosmetic designs won't be what determines "best" for individuals. Personal interests will be what determines "best" in terms of ship design and those will be subjective.

Some people may perceive speed to be "best" while others perceive fuel efficiency to be "best". The Builders who are great at maximizing speed in their designs may not be in the same org as the Builders who excel at maximizing fuel efficiency.

 

3: You may not be comparing fighters with exploration ships; but organizations will be. If the org decides they want some of their fighters to have greater speed than what their Builders are capable of creating, they will have to find some means to obtain those designs. They may have to people outside of their org.

If the Builders who maximize speed demand payment for their designs.

 

4: Well, hopefully, the engineers will need to have some player understanding of how to fit the conduit elements together and advanced character engineering skills. Perhaps a bit of LUA knowledge and perhaps a decent amount of voxelmancy.

 

1)No, that's not relevant to my main thread, it was just a correction i made to a guy's post. Safezones or not, the arguments i made initially are the same. Still, to answer you: The devblogs doesn't state that you'll be able to build in safezones, that's just one of the option. There's still the option to just design in the virtual simulator (and not to build). Other than that, we know for sure, that safezones are going to be rare, so even if it is possible to build in safezones, the chances are that a small percentage of builders will be able to use those. And no, you'll not be able to create safezones, said that, there are not going to be too many nor private ones beside the extremely rare arkification.

 

2)Nope, you just didn't understand what I was saying. If the game will not feature a good amount of "elements", with sinergies and stuff like that, the designs are going to be less complex. In that case, the difference between designs made respectively by a good and an average builder, would be smaller. If you imagine that we would have just common blocks, thruster and a pilot seat, and no other element, the a good builder wouldn't be rewarded, because there's a "cap" on designing. Of course I know this is not the case, but the elements we'll have could be still simple enough, to reduce this difference too much, that the competition would be higher than expected. "Best" has a meaning. It means "effective", and it is the balance between cost and power. In a rock-paper-scissor system, what's "best" does change, to adapt to his opponent, but it does exist indeed.

 

3)You changed the argument. I was referring to your "good ship" is subjective. It is not. There is a "meta" in every game. There'll be in DU specifics designs offering a relatively low cost for a good amount of power and utility, and that's what is going to be used mostly. In case you'll face a strong opponent, you may want to spend more resources, to add additional power, even if the amount of power per money goes down (inefficient), but still in that situation that would be the "best", because is what makes you win. So there's a best, it changes, but if you have to design a ship in a specific situation vs a specific opponent, the skill of a builder would only be rewarded with a deep building system. Again, I'm not talking about the best ship in general, but about the best design FOR A SPECIFIC ROLE.

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1: The devblog specifically states we will be able to build in safe zones. That's the primary reason for having safe zones. Two of the options for the safe zones are open world. One of the safe zone options is to build in a virtual sim.

Can't design without building. It's possible that the constructs built in the virtual sim won't be able to leave the virtual sim, but that's really meaningless when we're talking about ships. Just need to have the resources and the blueprint.

 

2: Your usage of "best" appears to be "cookie-cutter, flavor of the month". But that is still subjective... even if there is a majority consensus. 

Your cosmetic example is completely irrelevant. Parameters which will effect perceptions of "best" will include weapons, shielding, speed, fuel-efficiency, engineering, life-support, scanning/communications, cloaking, etc. And those will be based on a variety of parameters, such as advanced character skills and discoveries of new elements - as well as player LUA scripting. Different orgs are going to be more interested in some systems than others. Orgs focused on exploration may have weapons lowest on their hierarchy and upgrade weapons by trading or purchasing them from other orgs rather than designing weapons systems themselves. Exploration orgs may also develop or discover the best designs for cloaking and scanning. While battle-focused orgs develop and discover the best designs for weapons and shielding.

 

So, it's not really about the "best" ships. The best systems will be objective. Some org will have designs for the most powerful weapons or the strongest shielding. But some other org may have the designs for most fuel-efficient engines, most powerful scanners or most powerful cloaking devices. That's what people will be buying and selling - along with ships and designs that have a variety of configurations of those systems.

It may also be that we will discover designs from a variety of alien races that people will want put on the market. Seems likely since there will be alien ruins.

 

a} Many people don't care enough about rock, paper, scissors for that to be a factor determining what is best. If they love rocks, rocks will always be best. That's an aspect of roleplaying that is different than competitive gaming. For instance, my Ice Wizard in NWO only uses Ice spells. Doesn't matter if a particular Repel spell is more powerful than a particular Ice spell because Ice fits my character's theme, interests and personality while Repel doesn't. Roleplaying always trumps combat, so in that case Ice spells are always better than Repel spells. Repel spells have no value for that character.

 

b}  If a character in DU is a peacenik, carebear who refuses to use weapons, weapons have no value for that character. A ship with no weapons will always be better than a ship with weapons.

But the examples that will be more common is those peacenik explorers for whom weapons have had low value may find them selves in a predicament where they suddenly want/need to upgrade their weapons and they don't have anyone in the org who has sufficient weapon skills to build those upgrades.

Likewise, an org that had a low value on stealth may find themselves in a predicament where they have to rely on cloaking to successfully maneuver through a hostile solar system, but they don't have Builders with sufficient skills in cloaking to provide the needed cloaking devices.

 

c} "Simple enough" is unlikely to really be a thing.

People are going to want better systems that support their interests.

"Good enough" will very likely be a thing. As in some people will think that a ship with maximum speed, maximum cloaking and minimal weapons is "good enough for now". And good enough that it actually is considered to be best for now, especially if they are peacenik, carebears.

Some people will think that superfast, fuel-efficient solo scout ships are the best - some people will think that battlecruisers with the most powerful weapons are the best.

Rather than rock, paper, scissors - it will generally be the arms race of better rock, better rock, better rock (where the rock is a specific system like weapons or engines)

 

3: There really is no "meta" for "good" ship. What there is in many MMOs is a consensus of a cookie-cutter, flavor-of-the-month, best-in-slot build (for combat). I don't believe that really applies in voxel games. And won't apply with the kinds of designs we'll have from players and devs in Dual Universe.

But, even so... you may tell me that you have a ship available that is good because it has the most powerful weapons, heavy-duty shields, decent speed, decent fuel-efficiency but no cloaking.

If I'm a peacenik, carebear explorer who refuses to use weapons and who relies on maximum speed and the most powerful cloaking to survive, your ship is not a good ship from my perspective. Because what I value as good is different than what you value as good.

 

Where your org is focused on the most glorious military battles and my org is focused on the most knowledgeable exploration, our Builders will very likely have very different skill sets. As unpredictable challenges arise, we may need to rely on each other in order to meet that challenge. 

 

Bottom line is: there will be ample opportunity for people to buy and sell and trade - because there will be a constant flow of new discoveries from different individuals and different orgs. And those discoveries will have significant impact on how we navigate through the game... as opposed to simply building constructs that look nice, but don't actually do anything.

 

 

And...I'm done.

You can have the last word if you want.

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