Eddard Flint
CarpeVisVires
6
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Posted - 2014.03.23 08:15:00 -
[1] - Quote
LetGÇÖs start with how DUST is in need of one of EveGÇÖs biggest pillars of gameplay, Industry. Industry is a really tricky thing when you first think about it in DUST but it isnGÇÖt hopeless, in fact, it might become one of the biggest parts of the game just like Eve itself. Now, how would Industry go about in DUST? Well, we start with the question, GÇ£Who do I sell to?GÇ¥
IGÇÖm addressing this question first because this is the very first thing that needs to be addressed for DUST, the creation of the beautiful capitalistic player run market. So letGÇÖs talk about this market.
DUST players have had a desire to sell some of the useless crap they have had since day 1, but how would they really go about doing that? Well, in a player driven market like the one on Eve it begins with player A having a product, paying a brokerGÇÖs fee, which should still be implemented, and putting a price for their item and the amount on the market. Player B then finds that item and decides to buy that item at the listed price. Player A then pays an income tax and receives his ISK. Player B getGÇÖs his item and both parties walk away happy. Another way would be player B putting a request for a specific item and the amount he wishes to buy as well as the price per unit they wish to pay. This way when Player A puts his item up for sale he can see a clear picture of what someone is willing to pay for it, now he can choose to put it on the market for a higher price, hoping someone comes along willing to pay his higher price, or he can sell it at Player BGÇÖs listed price and have an immediate purchase.
Now, while all of this seems pretty self explanatory we have to take into account of a few things. What happens if all the players who are selling decide to jack the price up far above its actual worth. Well, a couple things would happen. 1, Players donGÇÖt buy and maybe even decide to make them by themselves. 2. someone takes advantage of this and starts selling at a lower and more reasonable price. 3. This problem gets solved by buying from the market we currently have on DUST. I believe that keeping this market on DUST will help regulate prices, now obviously they canGÇÖt be exactly the same as they are or else it wouldnGÇÖt be fair to people selling items. So, as a regulation tool their price should adjust with the increase of demand. If people only start buying Assault Rifles off the NPC market, the price rises and the Player market takes over as the main sales of Assault Rifles.
ThatGÇÖs the market, letGÇÖs now move on to the production of the items themselves now.
First up is resources, how do we get them? Easy, we fight wars. DUST is and should always be a first person shooter. Their are a lot of people talking about free roam and missions exploring caves and having mining rifles, well that wonGÇÖt and shouldnGÇÖt happen. DUST in the end is pretty simple, simplicity doesnGÇÖt mean it canGÇÖt have depth though. For resources we should have an introduction of a new gameplay mode. A battle which pits two teams against each other as they fight over a mining Drill. Now this Drill will have a set amount of resources that it is gathering. It will drill until it has gathered 100% of the resources and the players will fight over the drill as it gathers, the team the gather the most amount of resources before it reaches 100% wins, but in the end the amount of resources gathered by your team is distributed to you like ISK, yes that means no ISK for these games boohoo, and the better you do the more you get of your teams collection. If a team runs out of clones then the opposing team gathers the remaining percentage. Now, Eve has many many resources to gather, so should DUST. 2 options are available for this, have the mining drill gather all the different resources, making it everyone just gets a little bit of everything, or even more complex but potentially fun, have a number of drills, just like skirmish, that each gather a different resource. This adds an importance to people to go after certain objectives and adds some incentive for you to gather a squad of friends or corporation members to aid you in getting the one resource you need. (Giving corporations another point in DUST! Woo!) Either way, in the end we then have to refine our resources. Refining them in the neocom will then be exactly like on Eve, some of the resources go to waste, some are kept by the corporation whose reprocessing center you are using. Now you have useable resources, to put them to good work though, you will now need blueprints.
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Eddard Flint
CarpeVisVires
6
|
Posted - 2014.03.23 08:16:00 -
[2] - Quote
In Eve you need the blueprints of a product to actually produce that product. The blueprints are an item unto themselves and tell you everything you need and how long it will take. After gathering everything you need to make the item you will then need to use a (Brand New) Industry tab, to find an open lab and send the blueprints and the resources to, dictate the amount of runs you would like to do, and pay the initial fee for the construction. It will tell you how long each run will take and give you a final time frame, their is also a much smaller fee per hour using this construction slot. Now blueprints are not set in stone, they can be upgraded. As youGÇÖre out gathering the materials it would be smart to upgrade your blueprints. The upgrades range from how long it takes to process the item to how much waste of a resource is being used. You can upgrade these using labs that work basically the same as construction slots. These things do take actual time! It may be hours before they are done, welcome to Eve. Now you have to note that blueprints have Runs on them. These Runs are how many times you can use this blueprint. This makes it so you canGÇÖt just use this one forever. Now you are able to Copy the blueprint and make a another blueprint that has less runs on it. You can even sell these copies of blueprints. (Upgrading the blueprints then selling them can make an even better price) The original blueprint is the best though because that is the only one you can copy. With this in mind we ask an important question, where do we originally get Blueprints? Easy, from the factions that made this equipment to start with.
Faction Warfare is a very iffy thing right now. It does have some growth to go through but it has so much potential. IGÇÖm going to come back to faction warfare in a moment.
After getting your BPOs (Blueprint Originals) from faction stores you can then use them for production and improvement. These blueprints arenGÇÖt just guns and vehicles though. Their is a lot that goes into those guns and vehicles, more vehicles, that require several parts and so you have to make those parts to put into the other blueprints until you now have your usable item. Now nothing stops players from manufacturing just those couple parts and selling them to people who make the actual item itself.
Now I know this seems like a lot of work! I understand, really. To address that I would like to stress how each run should create 1-100 items. If youGÇÖre making a standard scrambler pistol for example, the blueprint you have should make 100 of them and so you can now sell 100 scrambler pistols at a price of 350 a piece will pay out to 35,000 ISK. Now remember that while this doesnGÇÖt seem like much their will be a large demand for items that you make. We do lose them every time we die after all. The key to the Market in Eve is and always shall be supply and demand. Use this tool and you will profit greatly.
Now moving back to Faction Warfare for a minute. This is a vital and potentially amazing feature of Eve. Some of its issues currently however are, team killing trolls, repetition, weird and sporadic matchmaking, some might say the way to earn loyalty points is strange but I kinda like it. First team killing, while I understand friendly fire being a feature is suppose to make things feel much bigger and meaningful but IGÇÖm sorry it just causes issues and just shouldnGÇÖt exist. Forget punishing features or bans, just stop all team killing. Repetition, I like skirmish, but faction warfare should be more than the other game modes. My first thought is to raise the player cap, but I understand that that might not be possible, so I wonGÇÖt refer to that. My second thought is to make it a longer game, a game with 300 or so clones and it would be cool to have something other than, GÇ£Destroy Enemy MCC.GÇ¥ You could even implement a Tug Of War style objective game as the two teams fight across the map trying to push each other all the way to the end of the district, (ItGÇÖs like youGÇÖre literally pushing them out of the district!) Next thing to make Faction Warfare awesome is to have a better form of matchmaking. One idea is, and again this is to coincide with the longer games idea, to have matches for Faction Warfare start at a set time. This provides time for people to team up with Eve players and make Faction Warfare even more organized and Epic. The simplest idea would be to have battles start on the hour every hour. Not just one battle obviously but multiple ones simultaneously. It would also be nice to be able to have the list of battles about to start in Faction Warfare, this would provide a squad of players the chance to keep going until maybe theyGÇÖve lost or captured a planet giving them a bigger sense of achievement and consistency. As far as loyalty points go, I have no suggestions because I am pleased with how both the points and the standings work.
These I believe are the next step to Making DUST the amazing game that I truly believe it can be and was always meant to be. Their are so many more steps, so many more fantastic ideas to come and I canGÇÖt wait for them. |