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Perpetuum Online plans a Steam-based marketing push via Early Access
While Perpetuum Online has already been Greenlit on Steam (and was launched almost four years ago), a recent forum post by DEV Zoom states that the team plans to re-brand on Steam as part of the Early Access program. This has caused a bit of a stir in the forums as some players believe this will send the wrong message. "Since the game's been released for 3-4 years or whatever," player Norrdec observes, "isn't going early access kinda... fraudulent?" DEV Zero later clarifies: "The main reason for it is because we have no idea what to expect regarding player numbers and how the servers will take it. We need to warn people that there can be server issues, lag, etc., in the beginning and stuff can break badly. And right now on Steam, being early access is the best way to bring this to people's attention. Obviously we'll tell them this in the developer's notes box and that we've been out for years already." Be sure to check out the entire thread for more on the Early Access plans and a proposed Gamma wipe in the near future. [Thanks to Anon for the tip!]
Perpetuum blog outlines summer development schedule
Hot on the heels of some unfortunate mass bannings, Avatar Creations has posted a more upbeat Perpetuum blog entry. Dev Zoom takes us through the planned content updates for the next few months, and despite the title's PvP nature, there are PvE-focused patches coming. "While our sandbox storyline assignments may not turn out as grandiose as those in other dedicated themepark MMOs, they will still be a nice breeze of fresh air for those interested in the lore and the ones looking for non-standard objectives," Zoom says. There's also a blurb about some new career advice functionality (which will basically be an add-on to the existing help system for players who want to do XYZ but don't know how to begin). Outpost maintenance fees are also in the works, as are tweaks to the friend system (to make it less trivial to spy on your enemies). Finally, Zoom talks a bit about the energy credit system and how it will affect the world of Nia. Read all about in on the official Perpetuum dev blog.
Perpetuum dev blog outlines upcoming tweaks
There's a new dev blog floating around the Perpetuum website, and it's got quite a bit of interesting info to share with players of Avatar Creations' mech-based sandbox MMORPG. Avatar's Dev Zoom writes that while most of the team is hard at work on growing the world of Nia, there's also room for "a few small but rather important changes, which we intend to implement in smaller patches before and around the world expansion patch." Chief among these updates is a global storage listing. Zoom says that this new asset list functionality will allow players to browse their items in both local and remote terminals. Avatar is also removing NPC buy orders for kernels, leaving the kernel market totally in the hands of players and dependent on player research needs. Also scheduled for a revamp are geoscanner folders, the market rates graph, and the game's event notification system, which the dev blog labels as an "age-old fossil." And that's just the tip of the iceberg, as Avatar has several more items on its to-do list. We've only got so much space though, so you'll have to head to the official Perpetuum dev blog to read the rest.
Perpetuum reels from robot insurance fraud
In an MMO so dependent on its economy, it's crucial to keep a tight rein on the flow of money so that the whole mechanism doesn't spin out of control. Unfortunately, it appears this started to happen in the relatively new Perpetuum when a number of profiteers began to unbalance the economy by manipulating the market on insured robots. According to a Perpetuum dev blog, the fraud came about when players figured out how to game the insurance system. The game's robots are insured not according to a fixed amount, but in relation to the global market average. Developer "Zoom" explains what happened next: "Due to some additional flaws in the mechanism, with good skills and good facilities it became very profitable to manufacture robots with the sole purpose of insuring them and blowing them up as soon as they roll out of the factory." While the dev team initially sanctioned the action as part of a free market economy, this post represents a changed stance toward such practices. Players have written to Massively telling of how their wallets were sucked completely dry by the company after months of what they assumed to be legitimate market techniques. The team retrieved over a billion NIC (Perpetuum's currency) from players and called out a number of corporations involved in these actions. Ultimately, the team elected not to ban any of the associated parties for the time being. Instead, all players should be seeing a modified version of this insurance feature within the week. [Thanks for all the tips sent in on this one!]
