With the end of Dual Universe’s NDA and the start of beta later this month, you can expect to be hearing a lot more about this space sim sandbox. And at the forefront of the game’s chatter is the dev team, which hosted an AMA on Reddit this past Friday.
Speaking of the beta, Creative Director JC Baillie confirmed that there would be a new one-hour tutorial to get new players plugged into the game. Game performance should be improved over what alpha testers previously experienced.
Baille said that as of right now, there are no enemy mobs in the game, as Dual Universe is “more focusing on emergent player-driven combat” (he did allow for the possibility of PvE to come in the future, however). He stressed that unlike traditional MMOs, Dual Universe is focused on being a pure sandbox “with a bit of lore-oriented exploration.”
The current roadmap for the upcoming beta includes “PvP on planets (still not AvA, but territory warfare), a Simplified Mission System for players to create ‘quests,’ more mining options, planet upgrade (better graphics), more PvP capabilities for ships, ingame events,and many bug fixes and improvements.”
Other topics that came up included the energy system, space station defenses, joystick support, Lua tools, salvage encounters, atmosphere combat, daily gifts of in-game cash, and the safety to build on sanctuary moons. Baille said that initially, Dual Universe will launch with one solar system that contains 12 planets.
