Thoughts about Infinity:Battlescape and the Kickstarter project

Hello

First, forgive my turns of phrase a little bit “barbarian” sometimes, English isn’t my native language.

I’m a newcomer, but, if it’s the first time I write here, I sometimes had a look at the I-Novae website. How could it be otherwise !? The I-Novae Engine is wonderful, amazing ! It creates the most beautiful real time computer generated images of space I have ever seen ! As the final goal is to create a game, I could only be very interested by the project. I saw and admired the aesthetic of the game (ships, stations,…), all the images and all the videos I can found, and, of course, I became logically more and more thrilled.

Until I read that :
Thus we’ve decided to build a game with a heavier focus on space combat.

Again…

Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, Infinity: Battlescape,… all heavily focused on combat, a very great disappointment for players like me !

In fact, I’m really very disconcerted to see that all the beauty that I-Novea engine can create is destined to the people who, after all, will have their attention focused mainly on their “target”, without really worrying about the beauty of the environment. It’s my very personal opinion but I think such “graphical quality” deserves another “thing” than “an arena shooter” (TerranAmbass’s definition).

Despite this opinion, I understand that I-Novae is, above all, a company, that has the purpose to make profits. The Star Citizen’s Kickstarter project seems to show perfectly that a game project shaped for “players who love combat experience” is surely the best way to achieve the goal of a Kickstarter project, as they represent the largest group of players, so the largest number of potential contributors.

Unfortunately (for me), I’m classified as “minority gamer” (a very small minority, it seems) : I’m 50 years old, and because of what’s in my “old gamer head”, I generally don’t have “expectations” about a new/recent game. I much prefer something with a (big) pinch of “simulation”, interactions, reflexion,… No need to say that this sort of games is an utopia nowadays… Because “most of today’s gamers want 1) a smaller learning curve, 2) faster results, and 3) less and less reading” (copy-paste from another forum, not my words, but I’m agree), I can’t be in line with most of the recent games/gameplay concepts (which can be summed up by “pew pew”)

I’m not nostalgic and I’m confortable with technological progress, but I’m not often agree with the ~use~ of the technological progress. I wouldn’t return 20 or 30 years in the past, at no price ! But having now the technology we dreamed to have in the past, at hand, and see, let’s say, the “simplistic” use of this technology, is somehow very frustrating (at least for me). To make a parallel, it’s like Star Wars movies: The first trilogy suffers from old bad special effects but compensates with good scripts and charismatic characters, whereas, in the new trilogy, there’s a huge amount of high-quality effects which masks a poor story and mediocre characters. I begin to wonder if original concepts and amazing visual effects wouldn’t be incompatible, for mysterious reasons…

So, and I am very sorry about that, I probably won’t be a kickstarter of I:B, for the reasons above (and the fact that I was very disappointed by the result of the majority of crowdfunded game projects in which I was involved). No matter, because, as said before, I belong to a minority of player. I think that “old fashion gamers” and/or “simulation lovers” won’t be the biggest contributors part… at least, I-Novae had the honesty to inform early on what will be the gameplay, unlike Frontier Development, which baited old Elite fans as me, who expected a lot of “things”, especially something more “simulation” then “arcade” (I am one of the disappointed contributors of Elite Dangerous, if you do not have guessed :smile: )

But may be there’s 2 glimmers of hope, and it’s the main reason which urged me to write :

About the single-player “exploration mode” (“allowing players to view and explore the Battlescape solar system without fear of getting shot.”), if the exploration mode is just to fly to the planets and land, without any other interactions, it will be closer from a “demo” than from a game (or closer to Space Engine, which is free), so it may be necessary to clarify a little what will be this exploration mode (for me at least).

I read this on Keith Newton’s blog : “If we raise enough with our Kickstarter there will also be plenty of support roles combined with deeper strategy and tactics for those of you who aren’t so keen on combat.” That’s funny and very ironic to think to the money of “combat fans” could bring in the game the “things” that my kind of players likes : strategy, reflexion,… And may be pretty hard to believe too… Again a clarification about the “life with less combat” could be useful.

Kind regards

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Welcome to the forums and thank you for making your first thread such a meaningful set of questions. My understanding is that the game you would ideally like us to make is in fact the game we would prefer to build as an MMO called Infinity. Unfortunately at this juncture we do not have the resources to build that MMO and we’ve reached a point where we just need to ship something. While choosing a game to build that would represent this something we had a couple of goals:

  1. We wanted whatever game we made to be within the Infinity universe
  2. We want the code we write for this game to form the foundation of what could become the full MMO
  3. The scope of this game needs to be small, somewhat easily attainable, and as broadly appealing as we can make it while staying true to our roots because…
  4. We need to generate enough revenue from it to, at the very least, continue development full-time

In answer to your questions:

What you’re able to do in the single-player exploration mode will depend heavily on how much money we raise during our Kickstarter campaign. Currently there is a tremendous amount of internal discussion going on about what the full scope of this single-player mode will be. The current plan is that, as far as the Kickstarter campaign is concerned, we will only promise to deliver a sandbox mode that lets you fly around a single solar system and play around with various ship/weapon combinations. The reason for this is that Battlescape is primarily intended as a multiplayer space combat game.

That being said we recognize there are plenty of players who want to visit other solar systems and have a more meaningful exploration experience. We would like to be able to provide that experience but at the moment we can only say we might be able to provide it as a patch or DLC at some point after the game ships but no guarantees.

To provide some additional backstory the reason we decided to build a space combat game is because we already released a small space combat game called the Infinity Combat Prototype (ICP) some years ago. It was incredibly simple however, with no marketing whatsoever, it was quite well received. We already have experience building a space combat game and we hope to build on that by creating something larger in scope and polish with Infinity: Battlescape.

The game we are going to pitch in our Kickstarter campaign is our ideal Infinity: Battlescape. We’re still running the numbers on exactly what we think this would cost but our current estimate is $2.5 million or more. Our minimum Kickstarter is going to be for ~$500k. Obviously that is a rather significant difference in funding and unfortunately the difference in gameplay will be reflected accordingly.

The game we build for our minimum Kickstarter will be pure arena based space combat closer to the original ICP. You spawn into a “battlescape” that has been pre-selected by the dev team with the goal of destroying the enemy ship/station and then you just fly around with guns ablaze. Not a very deep game but our goal is to make the experience of space combat very well polished because, as mentioned above, we want to reuse this code to build our actual MMO at some point in the future. A key difference between I:B and the original ICP is that these battlescapes will take place in an actual solar system so players will be able to experience and explore a wide range of environments made possible by our planetary tech.

As mentioned in my blog if our Kickstarter raises enough money we want to begin adding more gameplay elements that bring us closer to the MMO we would ideally like to build. In the context of Battlescape this will be in the form of deeper tactics, strategy, and the concept of battlescapes will be replaced with a truly open solar system across which this combat will take place. The game will also include a resource system that encompasses ammunition, fuel, and a collective pool of money distributed equally among members of a team to build infrastructure, upgrade weapons, and buy better ships.

Specifically players who aren’t interested in combat will be able to scout, build forward operating bases, build factories to generate money for their team, and fly special ships for rearming/resupplying/refueling their team mates. To use a Team Fortress 2 analogy think of the support role in Battlescape as the engineer and medic classes in TF2. One of the major design issues we are currently facing is how to create a graceful transition in gameplay complexity from our minimum funding milestone of $500k to our high level funding milestone of $2.5 million as the scope of the two are quite different and some of those gameplay elements are all or nothing.

Lastly I would like to say that we hope to make modding a central part of Battlescape. There is a tremendous amount of creativity and enthusiasm within our community that we would like to nurture through a proper set of modding tools. It’s our hope any gaps in the content we are able to provide will be filled by enthusiastic groups of modders. We also want to build a platform that allows modders to be properly compensated for their work. Essentially we want to create an ecosystem around Battlescape where everybody wins:

  1. Players continually get new content that we don’t have the resources to provide from modders
  2. Modders can charge for their content so that they are properly incentivized to continue generating great content
  3. Our technology and tools get better through supporting the modders
  4. We get more time and resources to focus on building the game we really want to build - Infinity the MMO
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@Pumpkinman, Keith has given a great answer but I wanted to add my own simplified one:

The game you want was the original plan… Infinity the MMO. However that goal is unobtainable with a small team of people working on it in their spare time.
The arena shooter, Battlescape, is a more feasible project which will bring in money which will hopefully enable the development of the MMO we have all been dreaming of.

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I don’t believe @Pumpkinman was asking for an MMO. I believe he was simply asking for something more than an arcade shooter. The visuals inspired him - like many - to imagine gameplay that was equally as refined and sophisticated. Something that would challenge him and his abilities. Strategy. Simulation. Reflection. Interaction.

I think that’s what he wants. Not an MMO, but gameplay that can match the promise of the visuals. If it must be shooter gameplay, don’t make it the same hackneyed arcade structure that gamers have seen a hundred times. Come at it from another angle. Innovate on the gameplay as you have innovated on the visuals.

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I appreciate he’s not asking for an MMO, but the ‘planned’ MMO would hopefully deliver what he is asking for.

Battlescape is going to be focused on combat. Even if they innovate beyond the common arcade shooter mechanics that we’re tired of, it’s still going to be focused on combat and I don’t think it’ll provide what @Pumpkinman is after.

I don’t believe an MMO will get anywhere near what he’s after. He’s after gameplay depth. Gameplay that is more interesting to him than an arcade experience. Any given system in an MMO is an arcade experience. Developers do that in order to broaden the reach of their games. World of Warcraft (WoW) is the poster child of this technique. They got the presentation and the gameplay matched up just right so that the players built certain expectations and the gameplay was able to deliver on them.

When @Pumpkinman saw the graphics that I-Novae Studios (INS) has put together, he immediately went beyond WoW. WoW has arcadey graphics and arcadey gameplay. So if INS is creating sophisticated graphics, surely the gameplay will be as sophisticated. The graphics inspired @Pumpkinman to hope for gameplay that is rather more of a simulation, requiring interaction and “reflexion” on the part of the player.

Flavien’s push for realism in the graphics has inspired many people though the years to seek out realism in the gameplay. I believe @Crayfish was the one who went through the old forums, encapsulated a bunch of the gameplay discussions and presented them to @INovaeFlavien for his consideration. Flavien was shocked, saying something like “There’s no way I could ever implement all that”. The point here is that the fancy graphics inspires dreams of fancy gameplay.

Blizzard succeeded with WoW because they matched graphics and gameplay. INS may have set up a bit of a bear trap for themselves if they mismatch the two. @Pumpkinman’s post is an indication of that.

That said, INS can’t make everyone happy.

Er, what? That doesn’t make sense. Of course it is possible to have a non-arcade MMO.

While implementing all of the features discussed on the old forum is obviously not feasible, I’m still under the impression that the style of gameplay would be far beyond that of WoW and far closer to the more intellectual experience desired by so many of the community.

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“Any given system in an existing MMO is an arcade experience.”

It is certainly possible to have a non-arcade MMO experience. A very few of them exist. EVE Online’s game of conquest is one example. In contrast, Dark Age of Camelot also contained a game of conquest, but its experience was arcade-level.

You’re welcome. I’m not sure my questions were so “meaningful” but thanks a lot for your very precise answers.

For me, that means a “glimmer of hope” again. Not the fact that there will be possibly an “single-player exploration mode”, or “this feature” or “that other feature”,… but the fact that you have in mind there’s “plenty of players” interested by other aspects than space combat. If you never forget this idea during the development of games, Infinity-MMO (The Quest for Earth ?) would surely manage to interest me and “plenty” others, I’m sure, and, why not ? Battlescape too eventually (according to the amount of money you raise, I know :wink: ).

I’m conscious that I-Novae is a small structure, thus doesn’t have (yet) the means to create a “blockbuster game” and have to built a solid “base”. So I won’t expect from you “promises” that you wouldn’t be able to honour, it would be stupid to do that. But I just expect, let’s say, “a certain mindset” and your words seems to suggest that you have this mindset. Then it’s up to me to “bet” or not on the future by participating in the Kickstarter (remember, I wrote “probably” :wink: ).

Yes, I’m obviously interested by Infinity-MMO but the path to reach it runs obviously through Battlescape. Let’s be pragmatic : you expect $2.5 million and you announce 40,000+ global enthusiasts in the front page of your web site. It makes $62.5 per “enthusiasts”. Yet, I spend (almost lost) ~$130 in a game that goes wrong, by basing me only on the name of the author. If I become convinced that you and I-Novae team have a certain mindset (cf. taking into account people who are not fans of combat), I would be happy to invest in your project.

Brilliant idea ! I’ve seen how modders were able to change an “imperfect” gameplay (polite term if I speak about Silent Hunter 5, for example) or add numerous new features to gameplay. Personally, if I’m quite good in 3D modeling, I have a serious lack of aesthetic (according to the topic [“Developer Discussion - Infinity Fan Art/Developer Inspiration”][1] ), so don’t count on me :slight_smile: ! But if you provide a scripting langage, it might interest me, and some others, for sure.

Nice idea to give reward for the work of modders, even if most of the modders I know don’t work for a reward. I strongly believe that their main incentive is the passion. My own experience : I never received any reward (and rarely a “thank you”) for all the tutorials and scripts I wrote, but I don’t care, the only motivation is that it’s usefull for many and appreciated by many. Something linked to the “Community” and/or “Sharing” concept (I still have a kind of stupid idealism rooted in me)


I am perfectly aware of this. If I decide to participate in the making of a game that couldn’t really interest me at first (the I:B kickstarter), it will be because the dev team has a certain mindset, as explain to Keith Newton. If I’m convinced that the dev team will attempt to create something… let’s say “original”, not just copying an announced success like Star Citizen (this example is not accidental), I will participate. As said, it’s a bet on future.

[quote=“hrobertson, post:5, topic:828”]
Even if they innovate beyond the common arcade shooter mechanics that we’re tired of, it’s still going to be focused on combat and I don’t think it’ll provide what @Pumpkinman is after.
[/quote]What I’m after, no. But if I-Novae “innovate beyond the common arcade shooter mechanics”, who knows if the game will please me though ? But I notice this important words : “…that we’re tired of”.


One question : how long you train yourself to get this level of telepathy ? :slight_smile: Joking aside, you’ve perfectly got the point. In fact, the combat aspect doesn’t bother me if the gameplay is “interesting”. To take an example, I like very much the gameplay of ArmA, because, even if it’s “combat” and if you may be killed by one bullet, strategy, a little reflexion,… allows you to survive, fight a numerically superior enemy or theorically more powerful. Games like Battlefield are the antithesis, and are very boring for me.

I don’t think @hrobertson means that a MMO will bring me what I want, but I think he means that I will found the elements, the gameplay I want in the future/planned I-Novae game : Infinity-MMO. For all the rest : you’re right (again ) ! It’s true that the MMO isn’t the main parameter at all for me; the game could be an offline game, or not, no matter. But nowadays, I think the project of I-Novae to create a MMO is very clever : a MMO is more likely to be successful than a pure offline game. Finally, you’re right again when you say that I linked inextricably the “sophisticated graphics” with a gameplay of equal “quality”.

I will never suggest something to I-Novae, I would rather prefer to be surprised. In a way, as I-Novae is a game company, I could say that it’s their job to have a brainstorm and to amaze me with wonderful game features and a attractive gameplay. Of course, there’s things I would like to see in such a game, like landing on planets (that’s ok, I believe :slight_smile: ), and may be a first person view (idealy the possibility to wander “on foot”, with a character). For all the rest, I’m open and don’t have particular wishes.

I read this on wikipedia : “Infinity (MMOG) : Gameplay is inspired by the 1984 space simulation Elite…” I consider Frontier: Elite II was the best space simulation of 90’, mainly because both graphism AND gameplay were very innovative - in 1993 ! -. IMO, Elite Dangerous completly failed to be the successor of Frontier: Elite II, just considering the gameplay. On the contrary, I think Egosoft with X3 serie managed to improve the gameplay of old Elite in an interesting way, even if the interface wasn’t “optimal”. But it was just -a way-. I’m sure there are many other ways, waiting to come out the brain of game developers. Nobody can deny that the I-Novae engine provide a 21 century graphism, and if the team is able to create sort of “21 century gameplay”, it would be wonderful.

Just a remark however for I-Novae devs (for Infinity-MMO): Don’t forget to show “characters” with whom the player interacts, even a simplistic way. As you know, I played at Elite Dangerous and something was wrong (not only one, in fact…), without really knowing what. I discover it was in fact the lack of characters to deal with, and this prevents, among other things, a good “immersion”. It gives the game a very “cold” feeling. The interaction with other players doesn’t remedy this lack, it’s a little bit the same thing when you’re on the road : you aren’t with other people, you’re with other -cars- : you’re near a Chevrolet, a Toyota,… never near a driver, a person. Even the simple drawing of a character, in the missions of Frontier: Elite II, was enough to feel that you were dealing with “humans”. In the Egosoft X serie, a simple little animation of the characters in the screen corner had the same result : the feeling that you aren’t dealing only with “machines” or spaceships,…

Of course not. But there’s a way to make many players happy : to really give players several possible roles. The best exemple that I have in mind is Skyrim : if I can endorse the role of a warrior (with a pinch of strategy and reflexion, not the “hack and slash” primary barbarian :wink: ), my wife really hates combat, but she can be an “invisible” magician who attack his opponent by far and become invisible when opponent is near. Even when we play at Arma, she’s a sniper and she rarely tastes close combat (never in fact… when some enemies are close to her, she screams and she calls for help :slight_smile: ). Applyed a space game, for example, this could be a good variety of spaceships (some ships with heavy weapons/shield but slow and with a short range, and fast ships lightly armored with few light weapons,…) with a marked difference in their role, or it could be specific devices (a cloaking device for “rabbits” like me,…). And, no, they aren’t suggestions, they are just examples ;).

Best Regards,

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I tend to agree. Elite, SC are based on mostly combat models. Now I find that infinity is to be a combat game first. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the need for an income and having all the work done already on the engine, it makes sense. However, I sincerely hope that the full Infinity will feature the combat as a secondary part of the game with the emphasis on construction rather than destruction.

Not being a great fan of PVP since, as a 55 year old, my reflexes are not up to it. I prefer to fight against NPC’s if at all. When it comes to the game itself, I like a challenge to be mental rather than physical. Finding and extracting the right resources to build your station/outpost/planetside base or whatever. Hauling the resources to where they are needed and putting them together to create something useful, maybe something that creates another resource that has to be used further down the line during the construction. Balancing power drain with power output by either upgrading or building more power output systems or powering down unwanted units. It would be even better if all this could be done in first person (similar to Rust but with far bigger constructions and much longer time frames for building).

Ultimately, with enough resources and money earned from trading etc, you could build a shipyard to manufacture ships too. Of course these ships need plastics, refined metals, wood, animal hides, an engineering plant and workshop etc to turn them into the necessary parts. You either buy the resources or build manufacturing plants and farms to obtain them yourself from raw materials.

Now imagine a game that combines all the elements of Sim Farm, Sim Forrestry, Rust, Elite Dangerous, and Eve all into one game. It will take a very long time to build a self sustaining planetside system that can produce ships. Of course all these components don’t have to be controlled by you alone, you can take part in one of them but the rest are assumed to be done by other inhabitants of your growing community. Maybe you would even have to hire workers and transport them to your planet to do this.

You start with a small ship and a modest amount of money and how you choose to spend that money and make more in order to upgrade your ship to something that could go out and ultimately build a planetside base is entirely up to you.

The steps would normally be:
Ship. Something that can transport moderate amounts to use as building materials.
Outpost. Somewhere to store a modest amount of materials to continue building.
Station. (upgrade from outpost) Somewhere to store a large amount of materials for production of planetside base.
Warehouse. Planetside storage facility with large storage.
Power plant. …

From there you could decide whether to refine raw minerals, farm, cut down wood and so on, in order to advance further with your planetside base. You still have your station where you could create a market if there are enough people (players or NPC’s in that part of space to buy your stuff and sell you the things you need). It can also be used as a staging area for minerals you’ve mined to be transported to the planet for refining.

See how it works? From a humble beginning, you can build an entire planet based system and take part in daily routines or hire workers to do it for you. Of course there would be people trying to stop you as well, ruthless pirates and such. Risk/reward comes from doing it with far more risk of attack closer to the hub systems where trading would be considerably more likely, or far lower incomes from trading in more remote areas with less risk of attack. With a large enough player map, you could go right out into the fringe where you would have no trading at all other than what you can haul yourself but zero chance of attack. A map as large as the one Elite uses (400 billion stars) would allow you to effectively disappear and do your own thing in peace if you want.

It would really be a welcome change from the usual pew pew space games we normally get.

I tend to agree. Elite, SC are based on mostly combat models. Now I find that infinity is to be a combat game first.

The original concept from Flavien from way back when has always been for the Infinity MMO to be just what you’re describing - a more involved game with the ability to do anything you choose, be whatever you want and would have no focus on any “branch” of the gameplay (i.e. pirating or diplomacy or PvP or construction or transportation etc). He wanted to build the world, complete with these game mechanics and more, then let each player decide what they want to be within it, what they want to get out of it and how they want to go about achieving this.

To my knowledge, the Infinity MMO was never conceptualized as a combat first game at any point in it’s long journey so far, for as long as I have been trawling through it’s various incarnations and forum discussions (going back 8-9 years now). I believe that your fears, while valid, should never really apply to the Infinity MMO because that’s not what it’s creators set out to create from it’s inception.

If ever I had seen Infinity peddled as a glorified space shooter in MMO robes, or even had an inkling that it would become more so, I would long have joined up with EVE Online because they do it better than everyone else and it is already a finished product. Or any number of other space MMOs including the Star Trek Onlines or various Star Wars MMOs of this world.

From my understanding, Infinity: Battlescape is it’s own self-contained game separate from the eventual MMO that, while it will share some code/ideas/development with the Infinity MMO proper, will not guide it’s development into a more combat focused MMO.

Thankfully, because of Flavien’s original and ongoing vision, I am still here and patiently will continue to wait for the day that I can finally play the MMO he envisioned because, truth be told, that’s exactly what I’ve always dreamed of as a space MMO, as I’m sure many others here would agree.

Of course, there is always the chance that the i-Novae team may in the future lean towards this combat focus for whatever reason or a chance that I have been living in an idyllic dream world and therefore, may be clearly and categorically wrong. But, at the moment, I believe that this is the current state of affairs. And long may it remain.

So long and thanks for all the fish!

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[quote=“Draylax, post:11, topic:828”]
He wanted to build the world, complete with these game mechanics and more, then let each player decide what they want to be within it, what they want to get out of it and how they want to go about achieving this.[/quote]

I believe @INovaeFlavien wanted to build an Elite MMO with modern visuals. Elite was a single player sandbox where you could do whatever you liked. The great problem with an MMO is that other players may want to oppose what you want to do, so you can’t do what you want, how you want, etc.

So while the goals and ambitions are lofty, the devil is in the details. The goal may be to avoid becoming combat-centric in the MMO, but if the gameplay isn’t designed “just right”, combat will rule.

The cautionary tale here is Ultima Online. It should have been a wonderful game for just about everyone who ever wanted to adventure in a fantasy setting. It had a sophisticated ecology, monsters, gold, dragons, a vast wilderness to explore and myriad game systems to enjoy. All that was required for it to all work was for the kids to play nice together.

Well, the entire ecology got wiped out because all the players went out and killed everything in sight. The myriad game systems were only accessible after fending off the assaults of muggers and thieves. If you weren’t interested in dealing with combat, the game wasn’t for you. This, despite the game not having been designed around combat.

The problem is not the gameplay, but the players. If the game includes any combat system, the combat-loving players will come and use it to the maximum extent possible to dominate, to win. That includes military combat, economic combat, you name it. If I can struggle with you and come out the winner, then I will seek you out and desire to struggle with you, whether you want to or not.

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Reasoning against MMO would be money and lack of experience.
Therefore Inovae came up with simpler game.

MMO featuring whole galaxy would be quite an undertaking.
That is understandable.

But when you making game about whole solar system…hmm
I would say that is still quite a big place.

I don’t know perhaps i mentioned it before somewhere here, but… had anyone thought about old game called Hardwar ?

With scale of a Solar system ?
If Inovae don’t do that i bet modders will. (If it will be modable that is)

Perhaps it is their plan all along.
But even if it was, they would not say it now.
Just not to get our hopes up… they are and always were scared of failure.
Lets be patient a bit more, it is close after all… at least i feel it :slight_smile:

This is correct. Battlescape is meant to be a single component, the combat, of what we hope will eventually be the full Infinity MMO. It will be a self-contained game and while we would like to reuse a lot of the code in Battlescape for future products, which hopefully includes the MMO, there will likely be a fair amount of additional tweaking. Battlescape itself is actually not intended to be a pure combat game. If we raise enough through our Kickstarter we will actually integrate a simple economic model to try and capture some of the deeper tactics and strategy that we want to be available for combat in the full MMO. Unfortunately raising the money we need to do that is a big “if”.

Playing early days UO was actually the most fun I have ever had playing an MMO. There was a real sense of discovery and danger. If/when we have enough resources to build the full Infinity it’s certainly a goal of mine to try and recapture that feeling. The beautiful thing for us is that we can create entire galaxies. A galaxy obviously has more than enough room for everyone to carve out their own niche however we don’t necessarily want to make that trivially easy. We want exploring the uncharted areas of space to be legitimately challenging and therefore rewarding when you make a discovery.

Of course I am getting a bit ahead of myself. We are focusing on Battlescape right now and that represents 1 small piece of what we eventually want to build. This piece needs to be done well so that we can use it as the foundation toward our larger ambitions.

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I think that in any game where combat is both more fun and more capable of giving people control over the world, it will be used for it, but at the same time how much in comes into play is decided by how important the mechanics allow it to be, not the players. Players, especially those who want to win, will do the most efficient things. Whether or not combat is the best way to a goal is defined by the game not the players.

This is the reason I exist. I live just for the joy of crushing those who would crush others without a though. Espionage, subterfuge, skulduggery, blatant abuse of power, nothing stands in the way of pure lunatic justice! That being said I also love charting out and finding resources. I can point out a few instances in a couple of MMO’s where I’ve found (And not shared) the location of rare materials that supposedly you could only buy via vendors. Good times, good times indeed.

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In contrast, I returned the game for a refund.

The more the game is a sandbox, the less that is true.

I feel so loved.

The size isn’t the issue. The I-Novae engine is capable of procedurally generating whole galaxies. It’s just as easy to generate an entire galaxy as it is to generate one planet.

The issue is developing the gameplay to make use of that environment. - Creating just combat gameplay is obviously easier than creating a game including combat as just one facet.

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