DecoyGoatBomb

What happened with LUA? Was there some major change with LUA that screws up people's current scripts?

For once I am just happy about all of this. These sound like amazing additions and new ways to play. WP NQ!

So just to recap. You are wiping all of our player made content and progress from the last two years, going from Beta to Launch with almost no real new content/systems ready at launch (only quality of life improvements) and now you are more than doubling the price of the monthly subscription? Do you guys say these things out loud in meetings before you announce them? You know it sounds crazy right?

It is possible but not by NQ. They have a terrible track record on putting in new systems like this. They put in framework, unbalanced and highly exploitable systems into the game. They take a very long time to address those issues. Players exploit the hell out of it or leave the game because it breaks so many things. So yes possible but highly unlikely. This is why a wipe at launch is so dumb as the econ and all the things they want to wipe to fix will be busted again 6 months in.

It seems the wipe is actually so NQ can destroy all the player made stuff that does this exact function and put in their own. But for real 1000s of hours making this type of content for the game and NQ makes their own version of it rather than keep our stuff around. NQ, maybe instead of wiping the content people spent years building for your game you could keep that content around and give us better tools to make our own "exchange" have more functionality. The game has player made content that has so much purpose and variety we just need players around to use it and better backend functionality. No one cares about these bs additions until you say if you are going to wipe or not.

I can't wait till they release without the energy system in. They will put it in post release and it will break the game in a post release environment. They will wish they waited get a core systems like this in before they "reset" or launch the game.

Four things: 1. Very little matters until you make decision on a wipe. 2. the construct tear down feature could be added to the recycler element along with the proposed recycling features mentioned in the recent CEO letter. 3. Instead of XL cores maybe give us a way to permanently "link" or "group" cores that act as one core in that you can have multicore BPs and their Rights and Tags are all linked but as far as the game loading them is concerned they still act as individual cores? 4. As for Player Markets being super complex. It seems that the dev team's aim is to make a player controlled market that mirrors the Aphelia Markets which make it far more complex than it needs to be. I would propose the idea that the "Player Market" could just be an element that acts as trade hub for local dispensers. When a player market is put down it gives the owners of dispensers in a given radius (radius could be determined by rarity or talents) to list their goods on that player market. You could even have multiple terminals link to this hub via the code system used on dispensers. This would put all local goods sold via dispensers into a UI that resembles the Aphelia markets. This allows for players to have their goods listed in a central location but avoids some of the overly complex design hurtles with making Aphelia style markets controlled by players. Another downside this avoids is making dispensers and physical stores being obsolete. You can have dispensers located in a physical store but also have your goods from that dispenser listed on a centralized market. I think this is much more useful than a copy of Aphelia markets which can easily be exploited and take considerable amount of development time.

I like the changes. I agree with others. The warp effect could benefit from being toned down. One other major visual thing that I would love to see tweaked is toning down the shield visuals. Like having it only highly opaque when you are taking fire / in combat. It makes the game look really bad when you have a bunch of parked ships with giant glowing bubbles. The general look is okay just it is so evenly opaque and very bright. So much so that you can't even see how cool the ship designs are. I feel like most of NQ's art decisions would benefit from a pass that just reduces the contrast, brightness and opacity of many effects by about 50%. Good effects like sound design, if you do your job well players do not notice your work. It just feels right as a whole. Less is more IMO.

All that is well and good but you are not looking at the cons side of this. It is not just the Rich trying to stay richer. There is content that is currently built by players in the game that is completely unreproducible even with magic blueprints. The game does not benefit from being empty at launch. I promise you this.

One of the first things they teach you in game design (in college) is there is a list of things you do not take away from a player at all cost. In approximate order of importance: Name/Identity Unique Achievement Progression Time Currency NQ attempts to prevent the loss of 4. Time with talent points and BP retention but with a full wipe they would take away almost everything on this list except for 1. Name/Identity. Maybe we can hit that one too by making the name database reset to give a fair playing field on names. Super unfair that beta players got an advantage on reserving names

Sorry this is going to be long... NQ's approach towards the live server has been one of this being a live game for the entire beta: Players that have to pay monthly to play a game (not a test) No major wipes or even reversions of the server to fix major exploits (not a test) A promise of no wipes unless there were catastrophic and unavoidable issues (not a test) Changing game design to make the game more grind oriented in order to slow player progression (not a test) NQ's Pro and Con list is so bias it is a joke. One of the major Cons they did not mention (or possibly erroneously put in the pros) is making DU an empty world for launch. How this could be a Pro is beyond me. You have had veteran players who have the most game knowledge building content for your game over cumulative hundreds of thousands of hours through bugs and changes. You have had free content created for your game that has virtually no inerrant content and you want to delete it? This brings me to another point of NQs complete lack of understanding of the scale of their own game world. You have had the entire DU player base building stuff in this game world for multiple hours a day since the start of beta and we have only built up things on a tiny fraction of it. Also, this is in your mind on an accelerated timeline because of exploits and game design flaws. You want to reset everything and everyone on a slower progression because you think you will bring in more players because of a "clean slate" at launch? Even with 10,000 active players working 5-8 hours a day to build things it would take them years to cover even a large portion of just Alioth. If the balance of current construction and accumulated wealth is so game breaking that you need to wipe then you have almost 0 hope of keeping it balanced with a healthy population of players. The game's scale is massive... Is the aim to have an empty solar system forever? Barren, virtually untouched nature preserves? That seems to be the goal if you are truly worried about wiping based on current economic progression. My personal experience is I have been playing this game since Alpha 1 with a group of 10-20 players. We built up a lot in Alpha but held back as we knew there would be a wipe at the launch of Beta. When we were told there would be no wipe unless things went completely off the rails we put our strongest effort in building a city and progressing in the game as it was designed using 0 exploits. Over tens of thousands of hours we built a unique city, space station and community. We took all of the changes through Beta in stride as we knew in the end we would keep our progression and our hard work was still worth something. With a wipe our completely unique and unreproducible city (Freeport, Teoma) will be gone forever as it will be impossible to recreate even with magic blueprints. It would even take NQ a massive effort to put it back together as it currently is. The city is fully functioning and all it needs is more players in the game to flourish. With a wipe it will just be gone forever. NQ has all of the tools at their disposal to be accurate and concise about fixing any problems keeping current progression would cause. They could use a scalpel but it seems they are leaning towards using a sledgehammer instead. If you wipe the game I will say best of luck and watch it fail from afar but that is okay as it makes the decision for me to play the game at release very easy.

Energy systems for ships should be very simple. They need to add a point system similar to gunner chairs to dynamic cores. Every core size has a certain number of points to be spent and every element costs points. Example: Small Core - 10000 pts 3 Large atmo engines = 3000 pts 1 Large atmo tank = 1000 pts 10 Large adjusters = 1000 pts etc..... This may seem like a nerf but what would happen is NQ could now actually balance the game where you only need a reasonable amount of elements to make a viable ship. The current system rewards just sticking as much stuff on a core that can fit. There is only one downside to adding more and more elements to a ship... fuel efficiency. That is not a big enough downside to able to make all in one/hyper capable ships with very little effort in engineering. This would also make elements of higher rarity become exponentially more important to ship capability. They could even introduce rarity to cores that have higher core point counts or add a new element that is extremely heavy but add to core point count making heavy/tanky builds possible but niche. They will never be able to balance the game without some sort of limiter like this in the game. Imagine gunner seats with no point limit. It makes about as much sense to not have it on cores.

Honestly this is a half measure to what really needs to happen. They need to add a point system to dynamic cores. Every core size has a certain number of points to be spent and every element costs points. Example: Small Core - 10000 pts 3 Large atmo engines = 3000 pts 1 Large atmo tank = 1000 pts 10 Large adjusters = 1000 pts etc..... This may seem like a nerf but what would happen is NQ could now actually balance the game where you only need a reasonable amount of elements to make a viable ship and parts of higher rarity would become exponentially more important. The current system rewards just sticking more crap on a core. There is only one downside to adding more and more elements to a ship... fuel efficiency. That is not a big enough downside to able to make all in one ships with very little effort in engineering. They could even introduce rarity of cores that have higher core point counts or add a new element that is extremely heavy but add to core point count making heavy/tanky builds possible. They will never be able to balance the game without some sort of limiter like this in the game.

Space Wrecks should be done through DSAT. To be found the same way as asteroids (maybe with more steps) but then are also broadcast after found creating POIs for pvp. Alternatively they could just spawn on and around asteroids with RNG based on asteroid rarity. This would give reason to discover asteroids beyond just mining. The current state of the wrecks mechanic is not a "way to play" it is a weird novelty that people may do out of complete boredom and then give up after hours of no results. The only new "way to play" outside of Mining/Manufacturing/Building is to run missions. That is only a thing because of people using alt armies to mass run NPC missions. There needs to be a gameloops. The current implementation of wrecks is not a "loop" it is a broken circle. This is an overall problem I have with NQ game design as they think that Sandbox/Emergent gameplay means you can't direct the flow of player activity. Just making a massive empty space and peppering in mechanics does not make a game. There are plenty of ways to direct player movement and activity. The empty space is too big and the RNG elements are too few and far between to work the way they are attempting to design the mechanics. Give incentives for players to interact/play together through bonuses, player exclusive utility benefits (Tile bonuses to manufacturing/mining etc ,player markets that aggregate dispensers into a NQ Market style UI). Please please please look at games that do this well: Sea of Thieves, Star Wars Galaxies, Survival Games and even Battle Royale. Yes.. Battle Royale. It is a large "empty" map but a good Battle Royale uses map design and weapon spawns to direct the flow of players. This has to be done even in a sandbox MMO. Right now this is like a Battle royale map where there is no map flow and the guns spawn like the mining skittles on planet surfaces. Perfect example. Why do mining skittles spawn evenly spread all over the planet surface every 2 feet. It is just lazy or bad design.

Thank you for the communications! It I'm s much appreciated. still find it odd that most of your hurdles seem to be from how your own mechanic works. Seems like an overly complicated solution that you are fighting to fit the design/balance need. My hope is one day the dev team has the opportunity to revisit this from an org talent perspective. It is very odd to me that an org's limitations are defined by the talents and actions of individuals including non org members. This will be weaponized no matter how inconvenient it is. You can't give non members that type of power without it being abused. Also, I hope there are plans to do something more nuanced and strategic with nations/alliances/cities in the future. There has been no mention or seemingly no consideration of this in the game design so far. Seems like the org system functionality is currently very limited but it is being used as a core pillar of balance. If there is a larger plan for the game where balance actions are taken in Panacea to fit the larger game design the players have virtually no visibility into that process. Speaking to how balance and mechanics play into the long-term design may help us understand your decision making. What is the harm in showing your thought process and work in progress design ideas?