Competitive/Conflict Survey

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Hi there! I’m Dusk.
I recently ran a community poll regarding whether players would like to see more competitive/conflict mechanics added to the game in the future. If you have a moment, I would love to invite you for a short interview to hear your in-depth thoughts on this.

The poll has now closed. The data shows that in the Chinese community, 38 out of 58 votes (66%) supported introducing more competitive/conflict mechanics; in the international community, 18 out of 31 votes (58%) were also in favor.

  1. Which option did you vote for (if you don’t mind sharing)? If you missed the poll, which side would you lean toward?

2.Following up on the previous question: If you voted “Yes,” what specific types of competitive/conflict mechanics are you hoping to see? If you voted “No,” what were your main concerns or reasons behind that choice?

3.As the community grows, player conflicts and griefing become inevitable. It is basically a community consensus that the current game system lacks effective mechanisms to address these issues. Given this reality, do you think future solutions should rely more on hard restrictions at the system level (underlying rules), or should players be given more tools to achieve community self-governance and mutual checks and balances?

4.Regarding the game’s ecosystem, some believe that competitive mechanics are the key to maintaining community vitality, while others argue that they would ruin the existing game atmosphere. Which viewpoint do you lean toward, and why?

5.Assuming that more competitive/conflict mechanics are indeed introduced in the future, what do you think would be the most appropriate “unit of competition”? Factions, Corps, or Individuals?

6.When designing these conflict mechanics, do you think it is absolutely essential to “ensure that the interests of players who do not wish to participate are completely unaffected”?

7.The core of Prun lies in its underlying economy, production, and logistics networks. If more direct competitive or conflict mechanics are introduced, what specific positive or negative impacts do you think they would have on current market prices and supply chain stability?

8.Finally, do you have any other thoughts, opinions, or suggestions you would like to share on this topic?

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If anyone does not wish to reveal their true identity, they can send me a private message.

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note: the votes only reached the organized (and thus more likely to be for cooperation) part of the community (Discord and QQ)

Yes combat or other forms of competition would be a real endgame resource sink at which big players could throw money to move something. The actual combat wouldn’t even be too hard to implement (for example a simple turn based auto battler) but the connection to the rest of the game like for example how to innitiate combat, what happens to civilian ships in the system and so on would be the more complex part. And of course the balancing of where combat is allowed and the actual combat (defense vs offense) and the new recipes (armored / military grade components, weapons, ammo, …).
I have a bigger idea for a combat system but here the short version: fully opt-in PvE in the void sectors to take and hold further out systems with the current systems working as a safe (easy to defend) backline sector with headquarter, shipyard and limited productions depending on local resources while the frontline systems are just to mine and when the system is lost the base is either lost or locked down. Headquarters could for example include intelligence gathering (requires upkeep) so that attacks are known early enough so that systems can be evacuated but not so early that big fleet movements are possible (combat ships are expensive to move and big combat ships are slow but specialized lighter ones (more speed, less combat power) can help with defensive operations)

I also asked a newer player why they were leaving, here the answer:

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voted ‘no’ because ‘conflict’ is not constrained in any way, shape or form.

there are aspects that i could support, but most forms of conflict i would be against.

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Same here, I did sign up for text-based EVE.

PvP, the griefing would be insane.

If it were PVE/community conflict events, I could get behind it. Something like devote X resources in Y amount of time (maybe even ships as a way to get rid of unwanted/mothballed ships) to stop some sort of invasion or get penalties on certain production or resources.

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I consider myself on the more active part of the community, even if it’s mostly reading and sometimes writing. As far as I can recall, I have not seen this poll. seems not to have been very openly communicated.

And 89 ppl is not representative at all compared to the total amount of players.

PPl leaving because there is not combat: yeah. maybe, but they will leave after driving away everyone that does not want it anyways, becasue then there’s nothing to do again.

pvp added to a game that startet pure pve and build a community that is mainly pve has killed that game in almost all to me known cases. And with 30 years of online gaming, I have seen a lot come, add pvp and die.

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I apologize for the poor outreach of the poll; my personal experience is limited, so I can only submit it to the more active players for now and cannot conduct a census. However, I believe there will be opportunities in the future! This is also my first time trying to conduct a survey in the community, so please bear with me if I haven’t done it well.

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My survey’definition is indeed very broad, but that was intentional because I wanted to keep the definition generalized.

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The poll was made on the UFO discord (official community discord of PrUn) though not too visible and also not very concrete. Not sure about the QQ part.
So no it isn’t representative but it can be used as a rough indicator to gauge interest in the topic.

And direct PvP or even completely free PvP doesn’t suit the game at all, it would likely only be opt-in PvE with maybe later opt-in PvP with the highest change being who you pay taxes to and what color the system has on the map.

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I’m going to note the very small sample size for this poll. I’m not on Discord, I didn’t hear about it. In game, I would contend that most would consider me in the “very active” category.

The game was apparently designed with a high trust environment in mind. Piracy happens, and is rare. Community shunning tends to be the way it gets resolved and forgotten as the person finds themselves unable to participate in the game in a way that allows them to apply their will onto other people. The number of times the devs have needed to step in can probably be counted on one hand.

A key part of that is that there is no way to “get back” at a person who has done wrong. This is an issue with piracy. There is no way to “steal it back” from a player if that pirate doesn’t participate in shipping. This can also be seen with the Promitor debacle. There is no way to sanction a player or group of players.

The game has evloved to one where we all play in the sandbox nicely. And while there are ways to spoil someone else’s fun, we don’t do it because we like playing in the sandbox together. We may have different ideas for the sand castles that we build, and that can interfere with someone else’s plans, but there’s nothing fundamentally conflicting with those two things.

On the other hand, if the goal is to be able to impose one’s will on another and in doing so make the game fundamentally less fun for them without repercussions, that ruins the game. If there’s one person in the sandbox who intends to do nothing but smash other people’s castles or steal their toys that makes the game unfun for those who have built what is there now.

In order for there to be conflict, there needs to be repercussions for that conflict. If one wants to have even more sanctioned priacy, then the corresponding repercussions need to be available to the agrieved - beyond LMBL.

Direct PvP style conflict has the possibility of ruining or greatly disrupting the game that exists now.

I would contend that if one wants to impose their will over the game (other than setting the price for FOO to 420 across the universe by putting buy and sell orders pinning it there because LOLs) is PVP in that it imposes one’s will on everyone else… but I don’t think that’s what people who answered they want PVP in the game desire.

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The BS on Promitor that most are still aware of shows what will come of this. The only ones hurt were the new players, every established player simply shut their base down for a month and were done with it. if you have only one or two bases, then this is not possible. if we even have more possibilities to make that happen everywhere, there won’t any new players and without new players, games die.

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Not sure where the similarities between “optional endgame PvE / PvP” (outside the core systems) and the Prom takeover are.

And btw the actual taxes weren’t so high that they actually made a serious dent into the profit of new players, even with experts the fees were only about 100 extra per farm per day while the profit per farm per day was multiple thousands.
Big players shutting down their bases was only a political move, faction planets have tax limits and starter planets have pretty tight tax limits (which weren’t raised in a good while).

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It’s a leap of a connection, but it’s more around the griefing that’s happened recently. It’s not even a PVP game, imagine the craziness if it were PVP.

I do agree a PVE (like the community type event I mentioned earlier) would be much better than PVP type move. Even if it’s not opt-in, it could be benefit only/no penalty type event.

And I agree that the poll was not advertised well and likely is not representative. We also have to consider that the polls aren’t as visible because plenty of people play this game like an idler - log on once a day (or less) and manage what you need to. This needs to be considered as forced PVP inclusion will force people to be more active and could lead to people quitting.

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We currently have a mostly co-op game and community with very little direct PVP - the most I usually see is indirect, by influencing market to prop up and/or tank the price of various materials, which I find interesting. There are consequences to our actions, and we can’t just plop down bases wherever we want in a true Creative Mode/sandbox fashion: When deciding how to build a base, I need to think about stuff like “Will I be able to sell what I produce? Will I be able to source the inputs at a reasonable price? What’s the ROI on this plan? Can I manage the logistics?”, and plan accordingly. There are ways to be more competitive! Optimizing your company’s production, looking at market moves, taking market bets, reading between the lines in the patch notes, banding with other players, etc.

What I don’t currently need to think about is “What if someone takes over the planet and raises taxes and/or warehouse fees? What if they mess with the POPI to disrupt production? We should keep the government’s money in private hands to protect it”. It’s not that it can’t be done, but people generally don’t. “We’ll make your experience worse unless you join us” fortunately isn’t something I’ve heard much. While the game supports this, as we’ve seen in that Promitor episode, there’s very little that individual players can currently do to counter this if/when it happens. This leads me to agree with @shagie here:

The existing game systems do indeed reflect this, IMO. The good news is that we currently do have a relatively high-trust environment, and in my experience those are pretty few and far between in online games. It’s why I’m here! I can chat with people and make plans together, and focus mostly on “what can I do to build something” rather than “how can I make sure that what I build isn’t taken away/destroyed by others”. It’s a nice change of pace from what I see in a lot of other games - and from my job in software engineering, too.

Prosperous Universe was described to me as “OGame without the PVP”, “EVE without the fights”, and this mindset is what’s keeping me here. :smiley:

This resonates with me. Given that the current community was attracted by what the game currently feels like, however, I don’t think making a transition to more PVP would be good. Even if it’s solely through using the current game structure without the devs adding PVP-focused features, it would still be a transition from the current (and precious to me) high-trust community mindset to an adversarial one that’s IMO already common in games online.

It’s not that “Prun but with more PVP” is a bad idea, it would probably be an interesting game just like EVE is. But yeah, there’s a reason I’m playing Prosperous Universe and not EVE. :wink:

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I’m not sure I recall seeing the poll. Thirty-one non-Chinese players sounds like a minuscule sample size though, and fifty-odd Chinese players isn’t a whole lot either. My vote would definitely be no though. I play this game to cultivate something, not to feel stressed about missing some threat mobilizing against me. Sim City or Transport Tycoon aren’t flawed games for lack of warfare either.

There is already plenty of room in the game for competition. Achieving monopoly, developing a new planet into an actually important production center, growing a large bank, or carrying out legendary market dumping are only some of the things people can do to win bragging rights in this game. I don’t think there’s a need for any fundamentally different competition than that. If people mean they need a form of conflict that allows them to kick over my sand castle, I am emphatically opposed. I could play EVE instead.

There may be room for PvE type conflict, but I think megaprojects already fill that niche. People make big, collaborative efforts to build gateways. Even shipbuilding involves (usually) large-scale cooperation toward a larger goal. There may be room for more outlets for this kind of cooperative effort (terraforming? player-built space stations?), but I don’t think the fundamental nature of these group projects needs to change.

As far as policing power goes, I would like to see players given more power to minimize their exposure to bad actors. After the sacking of Promitor, there was interest in the community to organize an embargo against certain parties involved, but there’s no way to exclude a player from interacting with one’s CX listings. If we’re going to allow players to attack each other, there should at least be some recourse included in the game itself.

Regarding people who think the game will stagnate without combat, I cordially invite them to find a new game to play. Every game doesn’t need to appeal to every player. I’m here because I like a relaxing game that allows me to grow my numbers. There’s already enough obnoxious drama lately to detract from my enjoyment of the social aspect of the game. I don’t need to be subject to enemy attack to any greater degree within the game itself too.

As far as the affect of increased conflict in the game goes, I think that disruptions to production are likely to reduce the quantity and variety of goods available on the market, and that’s without mentioning the loss of production from people leaving the game.

This is a production and trading game before all else, and I would hate to see it get sidetracked into trying to be something else.

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The lack of combat or PvP is a big reason why I play this game in the first place. It’s a nice peaceful little game where I don’t have to worry about my stuff getting ganked by someone who has more time to play than I do.

Also, for anyone leaving because there isn’t combat…fine? There are a million games out there if you want PvP, there are far fewer co-op games with a chill player base that dweebs in their 40s like me can play on a potato laptop.

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In my opinion, if this game wants the bureaucratic / economic type of competition/conflict implemented, that it seems to want (see roadmap), there need to be effective systems to counter aggression.

I am hoping for the 48h day to arrive because I believe this game really needs faction governments to regulate/rule over that stuff.

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And what would be if it would only change the color on the map with no real impact on yourself while giving old and bored players something to throw their money at?

Agree there but having military industry as another production tree and as something where the products actually change something (and be it only the color of a system) would be interesting for many players.
Though I think PvE on the edge of the map where you have to take and hold systems to get new resources would be the better option.

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I think this conversation is failed by the premise being too vague and it would be better if we had more concrete ideas of what form the PvP could take. You could argue vying for the leaderboard positions is PvP (or at least competitive).

As scientists are fond of saying, more research is needed. Maybe set up another poll that explicitly lists forms of PvP and ask people which they think would be a good fit for PrUn? Some ideas that come to my mind:

  • Sabotaging other peoples production lines
  • Space piracy (attacking other players’ ships in transit)
  • Blockades (preventing ships from taking a certain route to a destination, forcing detours)
  • Being able to file lawsuits
  • Resource/production races (bring X of Y to Z, win a prize)
  • Better planet-landing denial methods
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And that is one of the core aspects that potential PvP (or even PvE) should have: if you don’t want to participate you don’t have to. The core systems should be a save zone while neutral sectors outside faction are could be fought over by corps but even then the only thing that should happen is that the person you pay taxes to changes, your base stays untouched.

Like mentioned, hostile actions in the faction controlled area (which would be bigger than now as the faciton could claim more systems) is a no-no.
But outside that area (at the outer part of the galaxy) I could image blockades with the inclusion of a “blockade runner” ship (fast, sturdy / stealthy hull and limited cargo), but nothing of the rest.

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