perpetuum-dev-blog
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Perpetuum coming to Steam, extensive PvE and world updates planned
Avatar Creations has updated its Perpetuum dev blog with a lengthy end-of-the-year read that touches on a bunch of behind-the-scenes stuff as well as the future of the sci-fi sandbox. First up is the title's debut on Steam, the preparations for which have been occupying the team as it gets the game ready to release to "such a broad audience." Along those lines, the devs are looking at amping up the game's PvE content, but as Avatar is still a small company, it's taking a bit longer than everyone would like. The good news, though, is that a lot of work has gone into revamping world content, the research system, and a new assignment system. Avatar has also been working on instanced content, and it will deploy the technology to improve the new-player tutorial experience as well as add small dungeons, PvP arenas, and events. Avatar acknowledges that some players may raise "torches and pitchforks and yell that instances have no place in an open sandbox world," but the dev blog explains both the benefits and the thought process behind them. Check it all out at the official Perpetuum site.
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!]
