Dhara

Most of my org quit because of the schematics.  I quit after the "great schematics exploit" when nothing was done about it.  I used to LOVE industry, which is surprising.  I don't normally play with that kind of thing but I found I loved trying to build the most productive lines I could, seeing how many different projects I could keep running at once, and so on.  I would tweak for hours on my factory.  All that fun disappeared in a day by NQ disabling my entire factory and pricing schematics so only large orgs could afford a factory.  Meant I was now nothing more than than a miner who had to hustle ungodly amounts of ore - which is the most boring game-play ever.  Still a little salty about it.  ?

That's just the thing though.  I didn't support this game to become "game rich".  I joined to make friends, build, craft and work towards a common goal with my org mates.  But now this game is nothing BUT about making tons and tons of money even before you get to do anything else at all.  I already have a real job, thank you very much.  I don't need a game job too.

Like a previous poster, I suffered through all the grind we had before. I did end up building some cool things since pre-alpha.  But now I am told that's not how we play this game.  Instead, I am to choose one or two parts, spend millions of quanta to make them and hope that I don't choose something that gets saturated in the market.  And sell, sell, sell.  Or mine, mine, mine and then sell, sell, sell.  THEN maybe I can build something or fix something.  Meh.

I also did not sign up for Eve Online here.  I signed up for a sandbox where I could build anything I wanted.  That promise has been revoked.  No way in hell my small group of guys will be able to build what we have planned on now.  All we can do is try to make money just to keep the ships flying and the market making money for the rich guys.  I have not logged in for two weeks now.  I have cancelled all DU notifications.  I may or my not come back depending on how the next few updates are handled. 

If you guys wanna play "space billionaire," feel free and have fun.  That's not what I signed up for.
 

Most of my org quit because of the schematics.  I quit after the "great schematics exploit" when nothing was done about it.  I used to LOVE industry, which is surprising.  I don't normally play with that kind of thing but I found I loved trying to build the most productive lines I could, seeing how many different projects I could keep running at once, and so on.  I would tweak for hours on my factory.  All that fun disappeared in a day by NQ disabling my entire factory and pricing schematics so only large orgs could afford a factory.  Meant I was now nothing more than than a miner who had to hustle ungodly amounts of ore - which is the most boring game-play ever.  Still a little salty about it.  ?

If they make it so I have to mine less so I can build more and ALSO wipe the server so we all start on an even playing field, I "might" consider trying this game again.  
 
And that's no small thing for me, I have about 12 cores up across two planets full of buildings and landing pads, ships and runways.  But as it is now, no way I'm going to spend 90% of my game time mining anymore in an economy that is ridden with players who took advantage of so many exploits.  My org is a business and we got screwed because we weren't online for any of the shenanigans that screwed the economy up and gave out almost free schematics to competitors. We're at a severe disadvantage through no fault of our own I'm not mining for a year just to catch up to them (if its even possible now). 

Can confirm all it did is drive me away and I've been here since alpha... DU had something good going, such a shame. Peace out.

i started beta two days ago and was absolutely loving this game until i found out i cant make ANYTHING with the medium factory gear i bought without first getting a schematic for EVERY recipe. I cant even make the same pure iron that i make in my pack. Grind should have a purpose... this is like buying a dishwasher and taking it home only to find out you need a schematic for every type of fork, glass and plate you have before you can use it.

And the 'toxicity' you see comes from having asked questions like those above, over and over again for years without ever getting reasonable answers.
And worse having to watch NQ do the same types of mistakes over and over again, despite being told beforehand what would happen.

While you remain civil sure, you certainly are making an effort to enforce your opinion on others here as you simply refuse to accept that yours is not the only opinion by basically labelling those shared by others as negative and toxic and thus invalid.
 
DU has problems, major ones. And IMO those generally originate in the inability of NQ to both communicate on an deal with them. I love that we have a CM come in and say that "we are planning quite a few communications about the state of the game and where we're going over the next while.". However well intended this comment is I'm sure, historically this is NQ-speak for "we will start announcing new stuff soon".
 
Over the past 3.5+ years, I have yet to see NQ actually come in, sit down with us and have an open and frank talk about al that we feel is wrong, why they do (or don't) agree and how they intend to handle those issue going forward. Most of us here _really_ want DU to be the great game it can be and would love to see NQ actually engage with us to talk through how that can be made a reality. Instead, NQ just tends to talk at us, ignoring all the issues (at at best mention them, then brush them off and move on), many of which have been around for years.
 
just a few..
What about backend performance, how will NQ improve that? It would seem the game server itself is actually doing pretty good. The backend is what is causing a lot of pain. What can NQ share with us to relief the concern and worry many have over the financial situation of NQ Where is JC in all this? Why does/did NQ continue to prioritize "pretty" over function when pretty is in the eye of the beholder and many features that could be implemented fairly easily would actually benefit the game and drive gameplay/bring in new players. Why does NQ remain adamant they can deliver a release ready game en dof this year with everything still to be done? how is it not possible to provide a realistic outlook on this and possible push release to create the time to make that happen  
IMO all of these are valid questions to ask and all of these are questions that have been asked by NQ has never even closely bee willing to provide sensible answers.
 
And none of this is negative or toxic, it is realistic and objective outlook on expectations for the game and how NQ deals with them. And I think honestly that anyone with a sense of reasoning can see that questions like this come from a desire to see a game do wel, not to see it fail.

If they make it so I have to mine less so I can build more and ALSO wipe the server so we all start on an even playing field, I "might" consider trying this game again.  
 
And that's no small thing for me, I have about 12 cores up across two planets full of buildings and landing pads, ships and runways.  But as it is now, no way I'm going to spend 90% of my game time mining anymore in an economy that is ridden with players who took advantage of so many exploits.  My org is a business and we got screwed because we weren't online for any of the shenanigans that screwed the economy up and gave out almost free schematics to competitors. We're at a severe disadvantage through no fault of our own I'm not mining for a year just to catch up to them (if its even possible now). 

Dhara, your telling exactly that what we are indeed all telling And facing. I cannot wonder to think maybe the whole thing was deliberate to kill off all veterans who invested so much time and cash into DU. What other reason would there be to do this and not even make an attempt to fix it.
Doing Nothing showed enough reasons for any serious player why Not to invest Any time in DU, and they all left. Its clear to me that some players have more rights then others and its clear that the developers have no tools to clean up accidents or close exploids and actually ban players that broke the eula or tos
 

If they make it so I have to mine less so I can build more and ALSO wipe the server so we all start on an even playing field, I "might" consider trying this game again.  
 
And that's no small thing for me, I have about 12 cores up across two planets full of buildings and landing pads, ships and runways.  But as it is now, no way I'm going to spend 90% of my game time mining anymore in an economy that is ridden with players who took advantage of so many exploits.  My org is a business and we got screwed because we weren't online for any of the shenanigans that screwed the economy up and gave out almost free schematics to competitors. We're at a severe disadvantage through no fault of our own I'm not mining for a year just to catch up to them (if its even possible now). 

If they make it so I have to mine less so I can build more and ALSO wipe the server so we all start on an even playing field, I "might" consider trying this game again.  
 
And that's no small thing for me, I have about 12 cores up across two planets full of buildings and landing pads, ships and runways.  But as it is now, no way I'm going to spend 90% of my game time mining anymore in an economy that is ridden with players who took advantage of so many exploits.  My org is a business and we got screwed because we weren't online for any of the shenanigans that screwed the economy up and gave out almost free schematics to competitors. We're at a severe disadvantage through no fault of our own I'm not mining for a year just to catch up to them (if its even possible now). 

If they make it so I have to mine less so I can build more and ALSO wipe the server so we all start on an even playing field, I "might" consider trying this game again.  
 
And that's no small thing for me, I have about 12 cores up across two planets full of buildings and landing pads, ships and runways.  But as it is now, no way I'm going to spend 90% of my game time mining anymore in an economy that is ridden with players who took advantage of so many exploits.  My org is a business and we got screwed because we weren't online for any of the shenanigans that screwed the economy up and gave out almost free schematics to competitors. We're at a severe disadvantage through no fault of our own I'm not mining for a year just to catch up to them (if its even possible now). 

If they make it so I have to mine less so I can build more and ALSO wipe the server so we all start on an even playing field, I "might" consider trying this game again.  
 
And that's no small thing for me, I have about 12 cores up across two planets full of buildings and landing pads, ships and runways.  But as it is now, no way I'm going to spend 90% of my game time mining anymore in an economy that is ridden with players who took advantage of so many exploits.  My org is a business and we got screwed because we weren't online for any of the shenanigans that screwed the economy up and gave out almost free schematics to competitors. We're at a severe disadvantage through no fault of our own I'm not mining for a year just to catch up to them (if its even possible now). 

If they make it so I have to mine less so I can build more and ALSO wipe the server so we all start on an even playing field, I "might" consider trying this game again.  
 
And that's no small thing for me, I have about 12 cores up across two planets full of buildings and landing pads, ships and runways.  But as it is now, no way I'm going to spend 90% of my game time mining anymore in an economy that is ridden with players who took advantage of so many exploits.  My org is a business and we got screwed because we weren't online for any of the shenanigans that screwed the economy up and gave out almost free schematics to competitors. We're at a severe disadvantage through no fault of our own I'm not mining for a year just to catch up to them (if its even possible now). 

I like how people defend their "there's plenty to do in the game right now" with market stuff and building. I see that only as settling for less and just a workaround around the current lack of game content. "I mined only once and never again"... sure you can do that but your gameplay then revolves around min-maxing market tables. There are way too many niche justifications for the current "game loop". And they all suck.
 
"Just build something and sell it", "Just start an org that does x or y", etc etc... that's it... that's the whole game. Meanwhile someone has to mine the mats for the ships and buildings... What is happening here is what happens in the real world... not everyone is a business man who doesn't have to mine for money. The people who "don't mine" in DU are riding the pareto distribution wave  on the top end and fail to see the actual boring grind of the game... all they say is "there's plenty to do, you don't have to mine if you don't want to, markets are easy". Mmmkay. This is it.. this is the whole game.

RIP Dual Universe. 
 
It was fun while it lasted.
Kind of?
 
I remember accidentally stumbling across a video of Dual Universe, the alpha feature showcase running ~50 minutes long. Boy oh boy was I impressed. In the past I've played things such as starmade, and empyrion, and always loved the idea of a space sci-fi and as a star wars fan myself, always building large scale stuff like star destroyers and blah. As fun as these games were to play, they always suffered from having next to no major interaction in multiplayer. As you can guess, the whole idea of Dual Universe being a space sci-fi sandbox in an MMO setting was an incredibly grand and alluring idea. I had plenty of fantasies and imaginations of how awesome DU could turn out to be, as many many others had too. Unsure of what exactly I can say without breaching NDA, I'll keep it vague. Playing the Alpha build was pretty frustrating lol. However, the community made up for a lot of DU's pitfalls. I had discovered a sort of 'role play' civilisation building community that spanned over years of living under a shell of tight NDA alpha development, which was quite interesting. Everyone was eager for DU to enter beta, and to get serious. To let go of needing to 'Role play' and just be able to take their metagaming to the next level in the persistent world of Dual Universe.

The Beta launch was certainly a real mouthful. Everyone rushed out the gates to make their mark in the world, a race to cement their existence into DU's solar system. Damn were there a lot of people, compared to the current population it's almost unbelievable. Even NQ didn't expect such a huge influx of players to jump in. This caused a lot of dumpster fires during the start of beta, and a lot of NQ's efforts were directed toward putting them out. It was choppy as hell, but it seemed like DU really had a major ingredient to succeed, player population. Regardless of the hugely buggy nature of the game which many people criticized as being no way near beta ready, especially paid beta ready, people still trucked on hopeful of what DU could be. One extremely common phrase among critics and players alike, was that DU had so much potential, and every one of them were right. 
 
With the introduction of larger than alpha resource nodes amongst all of the planets, and meganodes for each ore, DU experienced a huge boost in progression, as everyone grinded their brains out to collect as much ore as they could. Mega factories popping up left and right, in every nook and cranny. Production and resource exploitation at an all time high left NQ worrying about the fast paced progression they seemed to be quite uncomfortable with.
 
The idea behind DU was that it was oriented to group play in such a way that people would build organisations, alliances, countries, and civilisations. Unfortunately, apart from marketing efforts DU wasn't really setup to encourage any of this. Being weary of needing to RP to really do any of this, most older groups began to grow uneasy. The cause for this controversially being the implementation of safezones, and lack of territory warfare, which was a desired addition for the beginning of beta. Initially, the idea was that the only safe place in the solar system would be the Sanctuary moon. The absolute only reason for its current existence. Instead of a creative solution to allow organisations/nations to create their own safezones, their own mark in the solar system, we were given a very, very lenient absolute safe space. In my opinion, the sole existence of any safezones aside from the sanctuary moon works only to remove any incentive or encouragement for a nation or country to emerge in any part of the solar system. Everyone joined into DU with their own dreams, and their own desires of creation. And everyone was very much free to move about and do as they wished, on their own. It's likely NQ were forced along this path due to simply not having enough time to develop critical gameplay mechanics, coupled with problems among the studio itself, with none of the original team who initially worked on DU no longer even working at NQ. DU now has effectively turned itself from a promising civilisation building MMO, into a quiet, enormous and extremely overpriced museum for sci-fi voxel creations.
 
The PVP, and effects of it are nothing short of Pitiful.
 
NQ's move to stifle progression and control it's rate among DU, backfired miserably and completely decimated DU's saving grace, its player population. The introduction of update 0.23 unsettled and enraged SO many people, eesh. If you're reading this and your opinion is that 0.23 was a great patch, you clearly don't see the incredible damage that it's done to DU, NQ, and their PR. Enjoy your giant space museum while it lasts. NQ certainly took a major step back in communication in the aftermath of update 0.23, which only further annoyed the playerbase.

Recently a new Community Manager that went by NQ-Naunet was hired, and made strides in engaging with the remaining DU community. Only just recently, after only 4 months of working at NQ, Naunet has left NQ without a word. Naunet was much appreciated by the community, and her departure left a gaping hole in the communities confidence in NQ's ability to manage a community, sparking a recent freefall dive (absolute shitshow) in NQ's temporarily completely unmoderated Forums, with only NQ-Naerais left to hold the reins on a fragile and wavering community.
 
Another recent incident involving NQ deciding to completely remove ingame support, and discord support has also caused unease and frustration throughout the entire playerbase. Leaving the only form of support to the ticket system, which is famous taking up to a month or more for a response, and often the responses were extremely unhelpful. The removal of NQ's ingame support system basically blew up any players hope for help in navigating DU's buggy and problematic nature.

The ingame support team did an incredible job of handling many of the problems thrown at players, most of which simply made no sense to wait months for. Most of the tech support workers have left NQ after this move.
Their names are:
NQ-Wokk
NQ-Blacksun
NQ-Gallion
NQ-Astratum
NQ-Samaritan
NQ-Stargazer
NQ-Orion
NQ-Reaper
NQ-StarFire
NQ-Xeno
 
Apologies for anyone I've missed, but they've singlehandedly been through the rivers of buggy shit to ensure that players had the best possible experience in DU.\
 
Now that the support team is gone, Naunet is gone, any Liason between community and NQ non-existant, most people just want to see DU put out of its misery. Was a fantastic concept, but it seems like it'll just never work. With the whole idea of DU having millions of players, but only being attractive to a very niche group of resilient and hardcore players, and the recent decision of NQ, DU has just lost it's much needed momentum, and as we can see with numbers pulling out of NQ's roster, including more prominent and notable names, faith in NQ's ability to deliver DU as advertised, promised, and pitched, are at an all time low.
 
Even JC's in rough shape after 0.23, poor dude.
 

 
As for JC himself, mad respect for the dude. Starting a brand new company to develop and handle his dream game (as was ours), was bold and brave of him. We all wished him the best in his endeavours, and are all sad to see what is to come of DU.
 
If you're new and wanting to get into DU, I'd advise against it. If you have friends to play with and wanna muck around DU, all power to you. DU isn't really that pricey, probably won't last for another 3 months anyway.
But for anyone looking for what DU was pitched as, it's looking like a hard skip. 

And now some random memes to dust off the post.


 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


RIP, nobody wanted you here. Except for maybe your competitors, although they probably feel guilty about it now.

After years of playing with voxels, even though I love it, I have only reinforced my opinion that building for no purpose is just not fun.  I don't want a "look what I can do" building sim where the only reward is a like on twitter.  I wanted to build to withstand attacks, build stores that people would shop in, build buildings that we could have AvA battles in, etc.  But it just takes too much grinding to do that in this game. 

I'm looking forward to Ashes of Creation now. 

After years of playing with voxels, even though I love it, I have only reinforced my opinion that building for no purpose is just not fun.  I don't want a "look what I can do" building sim where the only reward is a like on twitter.  I wanted to build to withstand attacks, build stores that people would shop in, build buildings that we could have AvA battles in, etc.  But it just takes too much grinding to do that in this game. 

I'm looking forward to Ashes of Creation now. 

After years of playing with voxels, even though I love it, I have only reinforced my opinion that building for no purpose is just not fun.  I don't want a "look what I can do" building sim where the only reward is a like on twitter.  I wanted to build to withstand attacks, build stores that people would shop in, build buildings that we could have AvA battles in, etc.  But it just takes too much grinding to do that in this game. 

I'm looking forward to Ashes of Creation now. 

What?  She hasn't even been here that long!  I didn't talk to her a lot personally but she seemed to be doing a great job! 
 
Too bad they are letting the only person left at NQ that talked to us walk out the door.  What a shame.

What?  She hasn't even been here that long!  I didn't talk to her a lot personally but she seemed to be doing a great job! 
 
Too bad they are letting the only person left at NQ that talked to us walk out the door.  What a shame.

What?  She hasn't even been here that long!  I didn't talk to her a lot personally but she seemed to be doing a great job! 
 
Too bad they are letting the only person left at NQ that talked to us walk out the door.  What a shame.

Well time to wait for starbase and ashes of creation.