Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Imofexios]

Jeez...i was giving example.
Maybe read once more what i wrote and drop the hostility thank you.

[Seraphim342]

The depth of the programming potential in this game is exciting, but I am really disappointed things will be largely pre-fab as opposed to destructible voxels. When I first heard of this, I thought it would be based on destructible voxels.

Somewhere between Scrumbleship, corneroids, and 0x10c is a magical game.

Yeah, was a little disappointed by that myself.  Now Notch is considering making it more like Guild Wars 1 or some other co-op game rather than an MMO... and still charging a sub, which would be a the stupidest thing I've ever heard, and a total waste of potential.  =/

Hope for the best, I guess.

Incase you havent noticed, but paying for a server that simulates 100 million star systems simultaneously is kinda expensive. You try to make a game that big and not charge for subscription.

It has an offline singleplayer mode.  The system only has to simulate the areas players are actually in.  The standard Minecraft world is approximately 6 times the size of the planet Earth, but it's not all being processed simultaneously.  Now, if I can run one copy of the world on my laptop, I can run one that supports 10 players.  I'm also sure I could find a server capable of hosting 100 or so. 

Am I the only one that is perfectly fine with a small monthly fee?

I'm 100% fine with paying a subscription fee for a wide-open, massively multiplayer environment, as the game was originally described.  That game is the game I've been waiting for for over a decade.  That's not what we're talking about, though.  We're talking about an instanced game, where you're only with a certain number of players at any given time.  For a "massively multiplayer" styled game, you need major hardware to support thousands of players at a time, which is much more than a player or group of players could reasonably operate, hence the company hosting the servers for a fee.  But if the average multiplayer experience (a handful of people hanging around with their friends, as is being discussed) could be hosted on a player-operated dedicated server at the players' own expense just as easily, then forcing the players to play on a company-hosted server for a subscription fee is unethical. 
 

[RedKing]

Jeez...i was giving example.
Maybe read once more what i wrote and drop the hostility thank you.

It was an example pulled out of thin air. And Japa's not the one being hostile, mate.

[Imofexios]

Sorry. Im so wrong here. I apologize to all.
Now carry on.

[miauw62]

Alright, it's nothing.

One intresting question: Would getting a server emulator and hosting our own server with clients that we bought be considered pirating? After all, we are hosting our own server, so they don't have expenses, and we paid for our clients. (Even if the clients have to be modded to allow connecting to non-default servers)

[JWNoctis]

It would not be significantly different from running an unofficial server of WoW or alike, which will rend profits off Blizzard and is pirating.

And games like this would very probably have required dedicated server software in any case. A simple emulator would be very difficult, if not impossible short of reverse engineering the entire code to write if everything is done at server side.

[Rose]

Am I the only one that is perfectly fine with a small monthly fee?

I'm 100% fine with paying a subscription fee for a wide-open, massively multiplayer environment, as the game was originally described.  That game is the game I've been waiting for for over a decade.  That's not what we're talking about, though.  We're talking about an instanced game, where you're only with a certain number of players at any given time.  For a "massively multiplayer" styled game, you need major hardware to support thousands of players at a time, which is much more than a player or group of players could reasonably operate, hence the company hosting the servers for a fee.  But if the average multiplayer experience (a handful of people hanging around with their friends, as is being discussed) could be hosted on a player-operated dedicated server at the players' own expense just as easily, then forcing the players to play on a company-hosted server for a subscription fee is unethical.

Where does it say that this will be the case?

Everything we've seen so far indicates that you can play either on a lan, or on the multiverse, and only the multiverse, which is massively multiplayer, will have a subscription.

How will multiplayer work? Do you all have your own spaceships? Or are you encouraged to form crews together?

The idea is kind of to allow for both. It’s still not clear how we’re going to monetise the game – but the rough idea I have right now is to have an MMOish part called the multiverse. It’ll probably be monthly subscription because of the cost of running all the [spaceships’ emulated] CPUs on the server. The idea is that one subscription gives you one generator. If a CPU in the game costs us this much money to emulate then it has to consume an equal proportion of the wattage from the generator. So several people could play on one ship with one generator if they wanted. I think that’d be the most fun, but I know a lot of people just want to pilot their own ship. That part of the game kind of grew stronger after we played the Artemis Ship Simulator.

My best guess is that, as long as you don't connect to the multiverse, you can either play single-player or on lan (weather with one ship or many is unclear) and, if you want to, you can bring your ship into the multiverse and play there, which will keep your ship running online weather you're connected to it or not, which is where all the coding comes in. But even here, the payment model is such that you don't play per player, you play per ship generator, so you can have 10 players on the ship, but only one of them is actually paying, and he owns the ship.

[miauw62]

This makes fighter swarms alot less plausible.
(Unless a sort of "ship class" system is introduced?)

[Imofexios]

Alot speculation regarding the game and so little information on game content.
I understand when reading some reviews that Notch himself even don't know what the finished game would be.
Hoping they will succeed but i am not too hyped out of this yet. Waiting some more information on what game features.
It is hard to even discuss the payment method when game is on early alpha.
Sorry but i see it pointless at this stage.
 

[miauw62]

Discussing it is still fun tough.

[Imofexios]

Sure it is fun. Not so fun when it comes something else what hoped for

[Seraphim342]

Notch said in a fairly recent interview (PC Gamer one, I believe) that he was considering following the Guild Wars 1 model for the multiverse, with stations and such being persistent, but the rest of the universe being instanced to your "party," basically.  Has a lot of people on the official forums up in arms. 

I think that the best, happy medium would be to have SP and player-hosted MP, like in Minecraft, available to people without a sub. Then you'd have a fully persistent, single-shard "multiverse" for a sub.  Keeps just about everybody happy, I feel.  The main argument in favor of the "sharded" or "instanced" model seems to be that solo players or small groups would get dominated by larger groups.  Now, I don't feel that will be the case, as the universe is purportedly massive (with 100k+ star systems, I think it'd be pretty hard to even get found if you didn't want to), but I can empathize with people who just want to play with their friends and be left alone. 

I still feel that anything less than a single persistent universe would really be killing the potential for the game.  Things like economies, player government, all-out wars, and whatnot simply can't develop in that kind of instanced system, and that would be a real shame.  It would also seriously hamper player-to-player interaction, in my mind, as well as really killing the "exploration" atmosphere. 

Still, we won't know more until we know more.  I personally hope Notch doesn't go the instanced route, but other people might feel differently.  Just worthy of discussion, I think. 

[Imofexios]

Pretty sure most agrees that persistant multiverse is best for the game idea.
But aint it good if solo players and small groups can put up their own game too. all happy.. screw the instances?

[JWNoctis]

This makes fighter swarms alot less plausible.
(Unless a sort of "ship class" system is introduced?)

Fighters that run on batteries might work, though.

Actually, I'd expect a lot of smaller ships to do the same too, if the MMO things are going somewhat EVE-style. If there are batteries to start with and they have significant capacity.

Notch said in a fairly recent interview (PC Gamer one, I believe) that he was considering following the Guild Wars 1 model for the multiverse, with stations and such being persistent, but the rest of the universe being instanced to your "party," basically.  Has a lot of people on the official forums up in arms. 

I think that the best, happy medium would be to have SP and player-hosted MP, like in Minecraft, available to people without a sub. Then you'd have a fully persistent, single-shard "multiverse" for a sub.  Keeps just about everybody happy, I feel.  The main argument in favor of the "sharded" or "instanced" model seems to be that solo players or small groups would get dominated by larger groups.  Now, I don't feel that will be the case, as the universe is purportedly massive (with 100k+ star systems, I think it'd be pretty hard to even get found if you didn't want to), but I can empathize with people who just want to play with their friends and be left alone. 

I still feel that anything less than a single persistent universe would really be killing the potential for the game.  Things like economies, player government, all-out wars, and whatnot simply can't develop in that kind of instanced system, and that would be a real shame.  It would also seriously hamper player-to-player interaction, in my mind, as well as really killing the "exploration" atmosphere. 

Still, we won't know more until we know more.  I personally hope Notch doesn't go the instanced route, but other people might feel differently.  Just worthy of discussion, I think. 

Personally I do hope that Notch will keep the entire thing persistent. But from my experiences of Shores of Hazeron, some people do have a point.

And no one has said that Minecraft-style dedicated server and massive MMO server can't co-exist but disconnected from each other, either.

[Seraphim342]

Far as the fighters go, we're kinda operating on the assumption (drawn from previous interviews) that you'll only get one fixed-output generator per player.  Batteries have been confirmed, but we don't know what kind of capacity they'll have or how much they'll mass.  Notch has said that the batteries will be useful for land vehicles or robots or turrets or w/e, but I don't know how much delta-v you'll be able to get out of them in a fighter.  Hopefully, a lot. 

Now, it currently seems like you'll be able to "pool" your generators to make larger ships with more power available.  Basically, you have three guys with their own little ships, and they decide to make one big ship.  They build one big ship with three generators, but can't have their own little ships without removing them from the big ship.  Hopefully batteries will be some sort of answer to this. 

Another little plan I had was to include big banks of batteries in a ship that trickle-charge from the generators and would only be used for high-powered stuff that won't be used all the time like weapons.  Seems the biggest bottleneck in ship design is going to be your power grid, so that might be a solution to get "more bang for your buck."  Still, without knowing how much space they'll take up, how much mass they'll add, all relative to how much power they'll store, it's a little too soon to make plans based on them.  Can always speculate though