Jump to content

Selena

Alpha Tester
  • Posts

    10
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Reputation Activity

  1. Like
    Selena reacted to Aaron Cain in PREPPING FOR THE GEO RESET - Discussion Thread   
    And indeed, please info on HQ tiles and please introduce before we need taxes as most here probably invested all quanta into schematics or other stuff
  2. Like
    Selena reacted to FalloutWB in PREPPING FOR THE GEO RESET - Discussion Thread   
    Will the HQ option, in regards to taxes, be implemented in time for the Demeter release?  This is the "make or break" as to whether or not I will return.
  3. Like
    Selena reacted to Hagbard in Demeter will probably Kill the game if it goes to live servers..   
    Ok, usually i am not negative but the balance of Demeter on the PTS server has some severe problems.
     
    1. Territory costs of 1m per week:
    this will lead to almost nobody claiming any tiles any more outside of the sanc moon unless the territory can produce some serious income. so all "player made content" will disappear after some time
     
    2. Scanning results do not get deleted and show l/h for mining units
    this will lead to ALL really valuable tiles being claimed within the first 24h after demeter goes live, as it is really easy to identify  the most powerful tiles for mining units if you have containers full with scanner results.
    so after day 1, the fun is over and the "mega tiles" will be claimed by those players/orgs that have all the existing scans.
     
    NQ, as demeter is balanced on the PTS, it would kill the game if it goes to the live server
     
    - New players some days later would not have a chance to find income opportunities despite missions.
    - earning quanta will be a lot harder, so people would stop spending.. this would kill industrialists workflow.
    - the imbalance between experienced players/orgs and new players would get worse and even more players would demand a wipe or simply not enjoy the game

    please reconsider your decisions.

    Hagbard.


     
  4. Like
    Selena reacted to Xarius in DEMETER PTS PREVIEW - Discussion Thread   
    NQ: We want your feedback!

    Players:  Ore yields are too low, taxes too high. Here are several different ways to make this update viable. 

    NQ: PTS Open again! With no changes to anything players were worried about not being changed.

    I mean, I have to give credit where credit is due, they are freaking experts at just ignoring feedback and pushing things anyways. 
  5. Like
    Selena reacted to Hachiro in DEMETER PTS PREVIEW - Discussion Thread   
    My opinion about the update:
    I like the idea, but not exactly how it's done.
     
    The main issue I have with this: The Taxes are far too high for people who are more interested in planetary building. The average Tile on Alioth gives you about ~500l/h, so ~84kl/week and most of this is T1
    Even with talents it may be 150kl/week (not exactly, but just for demonstration). This is an amount you can currently get in 1h mining. And you have to sell at least ~1/2 to pay the taxes. The amount you'll receive in the end is way less than what you can get now if you are ready to invest some time.
     
    If you are someone who likes to fly to other planets and build a base there this may be okay. I've heard about tiles with 300l/h T3 ore and more, so the taxes would not be an issue. But players who like the planetary building on alioth and not space travelling, will be extremely slowed down and I think this will cause more frustration in the playerbase.
  6. Like
    Selena reacted to le_souriceau in DEMETER PTS PREVIEW - Discussion Thread   
    Its actualy most problematic conflict of DU disign.
     
    There is still very hardcrore part of players, who play A LOT (some 24/7 basicly), have sometimes up to several dozen alts, also made fortunes on early NQ mistakes or outright exploiting (exploit-aquired capitals still bulk of some big pockets). They filthy rich, have everything and pretty much invulnerable to any balancing, while obviously gladly rape game overall and economy especialy, if allowed (NQ kinda trying meekly limit them, but mosly failing). 
     
    And there is more casual, with less free time or competitive mood crowd, who want to fool around, build etc, without running some economic empires. They not rich and, in contrary, vulnerable to all sorts of limits, taxes and assorted NQ shennegians (0.23 as best example how deadly "innovations" can be for this strata of players). They, as real life poor, usualy on recieving end.
     
    NQ kinda in impasse to "balance" these two categories of players.
     
     
  7. Like
    Selena reacted to WylieFox in DEMETER PTS PREVIEW - Discussion Thread   
    I've been super excited about this new Update, and really ready to toss out the manual mining picks and shovels...

    I am highly concerned however, after seeing some of the specific numbers and contemplating the consequences...
     
    I'm glad taxes will clear up some of the unused tiles for more serious expansion.. but the taxes have to be lower!
     
    Without constant upkeep, even dedicated players will find themselves homeless on the tiles they worked so hard to acquire.
     
    The main reason I was excited for this update was to hopefully see a larger surplus of ore for the community to process, build and blow up... you know.. the fun parts of the game. For this, I think the rate of extraction needs to be higher!
     
    Even tiles with low amounts of ore should be able to pay for themselves when furnished with mining units.. at the current rates, it is unclear if we'll be treading water, barely staying afloat, even with mining units that we've somehow pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps to afford.
     
    I love the performance improvements that are already apparent from not making my graphics card process every single mining expedition every player has embarked on around my base, and really appreciate not having to spend my precious free time mucking about like a slave in the mine pits.. so bravo on making the bold move to leave manual mining to asteroids.

    Everything else I've seen in this update on the PTS looks and feels great, but my main concern is the arbitrary scarcity of resources NQ is maintaining via low productivity of mining units and high taxes. To really build cool stuff, and have enough resources to risk PVP encounters, we, as a player base in general, need a lot more resources pouring out of the system to really have a good time, and show the rest of the gaming world how cool DU can actually be.

    Do you really want to keep players running back and forth between mining units in perpetual tax holes to maintain scarcity, or do you want grandiose and beautiful constructs, enough quanta and ore to build, buy and showcase them, and actual space wars? What do you think is going to make for good twitch streams and actually draw in a sizeable player base? We need plentiful resources to actually make this game fun and exciting!
  8. Like
    Selena reacted to TonyTones in DEMETER PTS PREVIEW - Discussion Thread   
    My 2 pennies:
     
    Taxes too high for new players. Don't tailor the game to billionares. Also wasn't the point to have all of these lasting constructs? That will go away.
     
    Hexes and mining units too low yield. Again billionares will be fine but new players? If it takes weeks to get off sanc; is that fun?
     
    Some of the new obstruction (brakes for example) seems arbitrary and unclear. Brakes obstruct in a different direction than their effect arrows. 
     
    Really take a minute to think about the population because the lower it gets, the harder it will be to attract more given this game has nothing without players. No NPCs no events, just players. At this rate, on release when people aren't playing for free, there will not be many
     
     
     
  9. Like
    Selena reacted to EvilestOverlord in DEMETER PTS PREVIEW - Discussion Thread   
    The Evilest Overlord Speaks On the Subject of the Suicide pact known as Demeter.
     
     
     I like to mine.  In fact I am miner 49er (cause football), miner 69er (cause I dig on chicks), and miner 89er(cause gummers)  all wrapped up in one.  When I get home from work, I like to settle down with a beer and mine for a couple hours.  It is relaxing to mine, get my dopamine hit, mine some more, get another dopamine hit, repeat.
     
    The video used the excuse that people do not want to mine as a primary reason for the mining change.  Then later it was brought up there is a serious technical issue invoving the growing tunnels from all the minning that the players are doing.    So now we are looking at one of the most important aspects of the game being RADICLY Changed.  
     
    Since NQ gave us access to preview, I decided to take them up and set up some auto miners on the PTS.  
     
    First, I have to congradulate who ever made the  "mini game".  I have never see a interface that had absolutely NO intuitive controls and added nothing to the over all game.  I think we should rename it from the "mini game" to "Mini Tourture Device".  It is so bad, I think it may have broken the Nuremburg laws.  I know I am keeping a copy to put right next to the pear of discontnent in my personal dungeon.  The MTD does not make autominners anymore entertaining or even worth it.
     
    Second,  I have no real objection to the auto miners as a secondary way to mine, or an alternate way for people who do not like mining.  However they need to be able to mine all tiers of ore no mater what tier the auto minner is.  This is to give everyone parity, I can currently go to any planet and mine any tier of ore if I can find it.  That can not be done with the current auto-minner set up.  I do think that one should get a bonus for having higher tier machines.  Say either a quantity bonus, a speed bonus or both.
     
    Third, get rid of the max draw for the pool.  Make the quantity mined based on the unit tier and skill levels of the player.
     
    Fourth, I never got a surface ore deposit while I was using the AM's.  Unless each rock is several hundred liters, don't bother, If I wanted a day one minning experience, I would walk out and pick up surface rocks for a couple hours.
     
    Fifth, While I was using the auto minners I placed links to a single container from three minners each mining different ores and only the first one got deposited in to the container.  The second and third miner both went in to negative time for the next cycle.  It was very weird.  I also had problems making my miners work on top of my mountain base.  When i put it on the snow cap, it would not start since it was not with in 50 meters of the ground.  I would find ores while mining the snow so why does the auto miner work in the same ?   Do I have to dig down to dirt to make these work.  I am happy to mine out a big tunnel to set up my autominners.
     
    Lastly, I think you should solve the technical issue instead of changing the mining.  I think if a tunnel has not been used in a week it should "collaps" and refill with what ever material it originally had during maintanence.  Larger ore cavities should take longer and be replaced with ore laiden soil.   So as we mine out the original ore we can set up auto minners to mine the trace ores.  And you reduce the load on the servers all at once.
     
    All voxel based games have three pillers, Mining Voxels, building with Voxels, and doing things with the Voxels you built.  Take any part of this a way and the game will fail.
     
     
  10. Like
    Selena reacted to Oborion in DEMETER PTS PREVIEW - Discussion Thread   
    Sone Observation/Comments
     
    1) I have 3 miners in this tile all reporting a production rate of 86.34L.x 3 = 259.02. If you look at the pool of 301 then there should still be an available balance for extraction of 41.98L but it says 0 available 0/301.
     
    2) Maximum of 10 charges and a rate of 1 charge for per 4.25 hours (with talents) if it was a fresh tile and the person started with 0 charges and a tile needed 15 miners (as an example) that is 63.75 hours to get all the miners going. Degradation of charges starts after 48 hours and we are only looking at 1 tile.
     
    3) Ore extraction rates of 100L. There are rocks around me on the ground and they each yield 20L. I'm not going to do the maths but I can pick up a hell of lot of those in an hour in comparison and this even pales compared to the amount minable from an asteroid in an hour or just the current underground mining.
     
    4) When MU's were first mentioned I thought they were going to provide a small supplemental supply of ore to just bring in some of those tier 1 items that are needed for manufacturing. I thought they were going to be additional to current underground mining. There are only so many hours in a day and if a higher tier resource is valued at 900q then mining that product for an hour is obviously a better return than an hour spent mining something worth 50q.
     
    The market to me suggests the health of a game and it is fair to say there are MASSIVE ore shortages currently with prices gradually creeping up. It wasn't long ago the ship builders who advertised on DU-Creators a badass M core hauler for say 150m and they could turn a profit and prices were stable enough. If you look at what's happened one by one from the smallest solo builder to the largest suppliers the narrative has changed. If you want to go and buy a ship now the response is its going to take days to get the parts AND we aren't sure of the prices. I predict that the amount of ore available to manufacturers will be a LOT lower than is even currently in the system, especially while the replacement to underground mining gets under way. One example of inflation the Alioth price for Warp Cells used to be down around 9k each now they are 32.5k
     
    In view of your technical issues with holes in the ground and planets being turned into swiss cheese perhaps a good balance may be to have the holes refill after a month for unowned tiles. That would mean underground bases would remain while also provide a renewing amount of mining resources without the need to store the huge amount of data as is currently the situation.  Scans could remain current for untouched tiles but those that have been mined the scans could be flagged as expired and require rescanning.
  11. Like
    Selena reacted to Dracostan in DEMETER PTS PREVIEW - Discussion Thread   
    This has been done, here -> (props and credit to Gottchar for running the numbers for us)
     
    and the numbers say that each player character will be able to get only ~150kL of ore total of all tiers per day - and that is after 145days of talent training to all L5, and assuming you 'win' the rng of the calibration mini-game.
    This specific limit on ore extraction rate will kill the industrial game and cause such ore market price inflation, as to effectively shut out all small orgs, individuals and new starters.
     
    And this completely ignores the effect of keeping scans valid, which allows large orgs to cherry pick the best tiles to TU in the first day of the patch, denying everyone else even a chance at getting a somewhat reasonable tile set to extract from.
  12. Like
    Selena reacted to DarkEvader in DEMETER PTS PREVIEW - Discussion Thread   
    I confess I'm quite disappointed by what I saw in PTS regarding the implementation of mining units. 
     
    1- Ridiculously low ore yield. Half an hour of manual mining will yield more ore than I could get from an tile's MU extraction in a week. So why even bother investing the time, quanta and talent points if there's no significant return? It barely covers the cost of fuel to travel between planets just to recalibrate MU's every 4 or 5 days. Tiles should have a far higher yield in order to make it worth the effort.
    2- Calibration mini game is based on luck and not the player's actual ability to infer the best place to start extraction - seems pointless.
    3- Regenerating calibration charges? Why not just stipulate a total amount of MU's a player can own (affected by talents), just like Core Units?
    What to expect when Demeter lands in the live server? 
    1- Ore shortages, leading to product shortages in the market. I doubt that MU's will have the capacity to produce an overall equivalent amount of ore as is currently produced by planetary mining.
    2- Players actually having to dedicate more time to mining. MU's wont provide enough ore, and with only asteroids to mine, which have smaller ore nodes, mining is less efficient than current planetary mining, so more time spent. I expected the implementation of MU's would actually reduce the amount of time we would need to spend in manual mining, but I guess it's going to be the opposite.
  13. Like
    Selena reacted to Tional in DEMETER PTS PREVIEW - Discussion Thread   
    I think you're doing it wrong. You can absolutely claim 3 hexes, deploy 3 static cores, and deploy 3 mining units. Then calibrate each of them (using charges), and run them. All 3 will get adjacency bonuses, and all 3 will produce ore.
     
    This is why we have a test server, so you can test the functionality and see how it works before it goes live.
     
  14. Like
    Selena reacted to Briggenti in DEMETER PTS PREVIEW - Discussion Thread   
    When implementing the ore extraction rates and territory taxes, please just start with higher numbers for ore, and lower numbers for taxes. You can always adjust toward stricter later.
    A slope, versus a cliff.
  15. Like
    Selena reacted to jkspartan in DEMETER PTS PREVIEW - Discussion Thread   
    Oh no I get that and I there on all of them LOUD and PROUD voicing my concerns right along with everyone else and in game as well. I too feel the taxes are outrageous and I am pretty sure Entropy said monthly taxes not weekly 
  16. Like
    Selena reacted to Xarius in DEMETER PTS PREVIEW - Discussion Thread   
    1: The numbers are way too low. They need to be upped significantly to be viable even without taxes. To make up for this you would need to up Asteroid Ore Nodes a lot, and greatly increase the number of safe zone asteroids, and start including rare ore spawns into the safe zone. There is a problem if you can mine more ore in less than a minute by playing cookie clicker surface mining then what using a powerful technological mining marvel can pull out in an hour.

    2: The ore Market is already inflated, and that's with the ability to mine more Ore in an Hour Currently than you could in a couple weeks with a mining unit.  As it stands with current values, you will continue to wreck the player economy and market.

    3: What's the point of adding adjacent territory bonus of 10% per territory, if you have to pay a heavy territory tax for that small boost to ore extraction. As with point 1, the numbers are way to low to justify this.

    4: While I am a fan of using some elements in ship design to give them that rugged Sci-Fi look, forcing people to have to show every single element on a ship is just a bad decision. Some elements it makes sense. Hovers, Boosters, Engines being obstructed, makes sense. But when you need 50 brakes, and 100 wings to make a large ship flyable with cargo, not being able to hide some of those elements is just dumb.

    5: I am glad the Space Industry not working is a bug. Taxing PvE Space Industry/Activities is another way to drive off more players. 
  17. Like
    Selena reacted to Bolomorte in DEMETER PTS PREVIEW - Discussion Thread   
    Territory taxes of 1,000,000 seem a bit high after paying for the territories the first time.  Like I don't like the entire mission running system, and don't want to constantly have to do missions and mine for 1,000,000 quanta per territory each week.  Seems a bit like you are trying to make us play the game constantly.  I personally have 6 territories on Alioth that I have worked hard to get, and I don't see why I need to pay such a high upkeep cost on them all the time.
     
    I think a reasonable cost associated with the slow pace of Dual Universe would be something like 1,000,000 every month or so.
     
    Considering most missions to make quanta pay below 100k quanta for safe zone travel, this means I would have to spend time doing at least 10 missions per territory per week in order to pay for a territory if the cost of 1,000,000 quanta is carried to the live server.  Even to pay for one territory you would have to login at least 7 times per week in order to pay for the cost associated with 1 single territory.  At least other games are monthly or bi-weekly taxes, instead of weekly.  
     
    If the economy was in significantly better shape in terms of the ease of making quanta by selling goods, then I could go along with a 1,000,000 quanta tax every week, but you can't even kill NPCs for quanta in this game yet.  
  18. Like
    Selena reacted to CptLoRes in Demeter will probably Kill the game if it goes to live servers..   
    What NQ/DU needs more then anything else is more customers/players. So not even NQ would consider making the game worse on purpose..   right?
     
    On the other hand, what really get to me is their inability to execute anything in a sensible fashion.
    Having some kind of mechanics that will free up inactive tiles is actually a good thing. But their implementation is truly and utterly bonkers, and riddled with so many obvious problems that it is mind blowing they are even considering it for the live servers.
     
    1. As long as players are paying the subscription, they should own their own constructs. This was after all supposed to be a persistent building MMO universe. In fact this was the number one selling point of this game during the Kickstarter. An inactive tile means the players has stopped paying a subscription, not that they have not logged in the last week and done their daily chores as dictated by NQ (which is something that goes directly against the "make your own game" motto of the initial game premise).
     
    2. The main feature of this game is building. So please NQ, for the love of... Stop making road blocks for people who actually want to build. You are now directing a large percentage of player time and building resources into just maintaining tiles.
     
    3. Not everyone is a billionaire. I have been playing this game since day one, and currently I have something like 20mill in my account. I don't care about building a financial empire, running missions or grinding just for the sake of it. I just need enough resources to do my building experiments, enjoying the game the way I want, when I want to. All in accordance with the "make your own game" premise you said we should be able to do.
     
    So any frequent login requirement for chores and territory tax above some symbolic sum, means I cannot play my game. And is in effect a death sentence for me and I suspect a lot of the solo creative players. You know.. The people who actually make interesting content for the game. Content you are now trying to remove from the game..
     
     
  19. Like
    Selena reacted to Alias in Demeter will probably Kill the game if it goes to live servers..   
    I also need to raise my voice against the planned demeter update.
    I also try to give you some example that comes in my mind how to handle it on another way.
     
     
    1. bringing in Mining units (yet buggy) and removing the ability to mine ressources on planets
      what content you create for those many miners out there? - the would leave the game also those guys who doesnt want to craft or play industrialists would leave the game, casue you force them to craft to get ressources   you bring so much advantages for pvp-orgs cause they can control and own (similar to known recent big org domination) the   asteroids which give good amount of ore   for everybody, once they have an okay-amount of mining units they can not do much more but wait; maybe till they got enough extracted ore to build anything, or quit game cause of boringness   mining units should be an addition to get passive income (with maintaining costs and the minigame if you like)   IF you are 100% sure to remove the ore veins on Alioth and want an surface-wipe, then think about other options like having 2-3 pvp-zone-  and 2-3 non-pvp-zone-planets where you can still mine ressources but for example arent able to place static constructs (advantage: bringing people together to go out mining with one big ship, bringing in more playermissions to bring their mined ressources to alioth, giving more pvp activities if they risk to mine at pvp-zone-planets
    2.  tax of 1m per tile is too much
     thinking about IF you stay with the 150k/day (which was said is only for christmas time 1 year ago )and IF a player is able to log in EACH and EVERY day, then this player can BARELY pay the tax for just ONE TILE                                                       how would a player be able to maintain his tile when he doesnt got much time to play throughout a week or doesnt have any  industry? (is the only answer and option here "mission running"/1-5hours flying through void to earn some money on the  other side if he doesnt get shot?)  taxes for tiles are good and needed, but not like that.     maybe with an percentage towards the amount of tiles you have in total  
    3. brakes changes
     you advertise a game with being able to do and build all you want to.... sadly -you force people to rebuild whole armadas of ships -you force people that way to make ships ugly again -to have an element-meat-shield in space -to not be free in your designing....     The initial thought is fine, that also brakes, airfoils, also the end of an engine, needs to be free of obstruction to work. BUT then give players the ability to enhance one element. e.g. if an players crafts 20 stabilizer L and merge them into 1, this 1 should get around 70-90% of the total stats of the 20 merged stabilizers. This brings so much more freedom of designing ships.. also a good minigame(wheel of luck) and ALSO an consumption of elements - which is so much needed for an mmo with its own player-driven-markets!!  
    Finally i need to say its cool and positive that since some weeks/months we can recognize an ongoing change in the development of the game and mostly with positive (longterm) changes, thanks so far, but
    Please overthink these big points before you just launch it and AGAIN not listening to the community (like its handled since alpha (premonitions about wipes/markets/ores))!
     
    Thanks for reading and sorry for my bad english
    Greetings Alias (playing since Alpha)
     
  20. Like
    Selena reacted to Novalok in Call for Demeter-related questions   
    While I don't disagree with the changes to Airbrakes, can you explain why Demeter is the time to implement this? A time where we are all already experiencing a game changing shift in the way we will play Dual Universe, with entire systems being implemented and changed, why would adding an previously un-announced change that will go and cause the majority of constructs to not function properly, be something you thought should be included with Demeter? 
  21. Like
    Selena reacted to Gottchar in Call for Demeter-related questions   
    So, here are some questions. This time I even spent time on the PTS and watched the full video first

    -Demeter fees will pull a lot of money "out of the system" and slow the inflation or even reverse it (deflation). The 1M per week fee is set now, at a time when it is equivalent to only 10kl or hematite, or one t2 engine L. Will you adjust the fee should the buying power of the quanta change significantly? The whole "player driven economy" is, by far, not really player driven anymore, and this patch is yet another step in that direction, the fixed rates for schematics, missions, other bot buy and sell orders, and now territory fees see to that.

    -I generally like airbrakes now finally getting an obstruction zone, however the current direction indicated by the yellow arrows is not only unintuitive but would also just lead to players stacking them on the inside of the craft pointing outwards to the sides. On the current PTS it appears the obstruction is checked above the brakes (if placed on horizontal surface). What are the plans for the direction of the obstruction directions for the airbrakes?
     
    -This is a nice reminder that plenty of items have obstruction zones which dictate a certain usage, which is often not visually pleasing, intuitive or, for better lack of word, "feels right". Any plans for an overall overhaul of obstruction mechanics and directions?
     
    -To use mining units to their full potention, by at least never wasting charges because the charge pool is already full, you have to log in almost daily (every 30h with no talents, every 35h with full charge gain and pool talents). It feels rather tight. Do you think DU is a game for casuals, RP players, weekend warriors and others who are not playing in a regular profit oriented way? (So not like me   ).
     
    -My first ever ship sale was to a player who just travels the planets and maintains a little base on almost every planet and moon. Quite serene and dreamy actually. He will now have to set up mining units and get into business, or collect rocks, or quit. He is not allowed to continue the way he is used to play. The fee is too high for that. Patch .23 stopped groups of people from having autonomous outposts and building civilisation away from alioth. Demeter now stops another group of players from playing their way. What is the intended and therefore likely future-proof way to play DU? 
     
    -With planet based mining gone, yet another thing to actually do in the game is removed. For players who have time on saturdays there is still asteroid mining, for the rest there are AI missions, which consist of taking off and waiting for 5h to arrive, assuming you do one that actually pays something. Player made long distance haul missions can not compete with AI missions. Any plans on revisiting Apelia missions, their payout, or the fact that the long distance ones are overly profitable with multiple accounts or "car sharing" via VR?
     
    -Related to above: Any plans to add anything to the game that is fun to do and at the same time brings an amount of resources?

    -In order to find asteroids you need access to a DSAT which is t3. In order to mine t3 via units you also need t3 ore for the advanced autominer. Will it be impossible to get t3 ore without already existing t3 ore?
     
     
     
     
  22. Like
    Selena reacted to Dracostan in Call for Demeter-related questions   
    This is going to be a long post!
     
    Questions
    1.       Is this the ore pool balance per tile we can expect when Demeter goes live? A ‘primary’ ore with a relatively large pool, then moderate to minimal pools of the other planet ores types.
    2.       Is this the ore distribution pattern we can expect? Many I have spoken to have noticed ores in ‘Zones’ across the planets, where swathes of a particular ore is the primary ore pool per tile over significant numbers of tiles.
    3.       Is the ore pool shared across tile boarders? Some have noticed ore pools being impinged on by extraction from neighbouring tiles.
    4.       Are higher tier ores (T4 + T5) being deliberately excluded from planetary ore pools, and into asteroid mining gameplay?
    5.       How is NQ planning to prevent large organisations from claiming large swathes of tiles, from the advantage of current territory scan libraries held by them & huge wallet balances, thus disadvantaging the rest of the player base from finding ‘good’ extraction rate tiles?
    6.       How is NQ going to prevent the control of the mining unit manufacturing market by larger organisation that have access to the higher tier ores needed to produce the higher tier MU’s, that can then restrict open market sales of those MU’s, thus restricting the access to the higher tier ores and effectively controlling the higher tier ore market?
    7.       How is NQ going to manage the expected significant reduction in ore availability to general gameplay, whilst the player-base train the required talents and set up their allowed number of MU’s, to restart the flow of ore through the game economy?
    8.       How is NQ going to manage the expected significant ore price inflation that will result from the changes to mining, first from the near dead stop of ore production while MU’s are set up, then from the artificially capped extraction rate of ore, from the use of calibration charges?
    9.       Will the number of asteroids, both in PvP space and the safe zone, be increased and if so by how many? And will the spawn time of asteroids be staggered over the week, rather than all at once on a weekend?
    10.   What is NQ’s expected time frame for the new player experience, going from first spawn-in, collecting surface rocks, setting first base, creating/buying first ship, claimed tile expansion, reaching space, inter-planetary travel, asteroid mining?
     
    Problems
    1.       Having a primary ore, especially T1, severely restricts the ability of new & solo players from establishing a ‘home base’ from which they are able to grow from and then expand to new territories. It confines them to simply extracting the primary ore, then having to sell enough of it to buy the other ore types needed for expansion. This will limit how quickly a player is able to progress in the early game, thus reducing the likelihood of player retention.
    2.       Having zones of primary ores places another limit on new and solo players, like in problem 1, that they are not able to gain the resources needed to expand in what would be considered a reasonable gameplay time frame. It also allows larger organisations to claim large swathes of territory, potentially shutting out new / solo / small org players from large regions of the planets, forcing them away from markets, so increasing fuel cost and playtime to reach said markets to sell goods and progress.
    3.       Allowing neighbouring tiles to pilfer across tile boarders will obviously reduce the ore pool for the tile owner. This will only lead to the reduction in the overall ore extraction, as people will not want to waste MU’s on tiles with only partially remaining ore pools, and it will also create player animosity to the game mechanic, especially in densely claimed areas, like the market rings.
    4.       By moving higher tier ores off planets, this restricts the higher-level gameplay attainable for players not wanting to be involved in asteroid mining. Even by retaining a small amount on planet, akin to rare mineral deposits, these tiles will quickly be found by large organisations with their territory scan libraries, and so claimed within days of the update, shutting new / solo / small org players from that level of gameplay. Forcing a gameplay loop is not a sandbox.
    5.       While the implementation of a tile tax is intended to prevent players holding tiles without ‘using’ them, or at least incentivise their use for mining or industry to cover the tax, large organisations have the wallet resources to maintain their hold over significant swathes of multiple planets. These orgs also have the player numbers to rapidly data mine their territory scan libraries to find the best yielding tiles and immediately claim those tiles within the first days, if not hours of the update. This will shut out all other players from decent yield tiles, effectively producing two tiers of players, one who scrapes by on low yield tiles and purchasing ores from the large orgs or open markets, and the large orgs who will be able to control the ores market setting whatever price they want.
    6.       Having MU’s require the tier of ore they extract in order to build them will allow player groups who have access to those tiers of ore to control the production and sale of the mining units for those tiers. Combined with the level of control large orgs can bring to bear on the ore markets, this has the potential to shut out new / solo / small org players from that level of gameplay. It also goes against the current manufacturing meta of a ‘Basic’ industrial element can produce the ‘Uncommon’ version of the element being made, the ‘Uncommon’ industrial element can produce the ‘Advanced’ version of the element being made, etc. This meta allows progression up the industry gameplay levels, whereas the manufacturing requirements of the MU’s does not.
    7.       The expected significant reduction in the ore extraction rate whilst the mining changes take effect are already impacting the gameplay, with speculative market price inflation and ore hoarding taking place. With scarcity comes restriction of growth and knock-on price inflation across the market, restricting gameplay options and progression.
    8.       The introduction of Missions showed the impact that can be inflicted on the game market by the reduction in the global ore extraction rate as players moved away from mining to a more afk and profitable gameplay loop. At first the scarcity of ore will drive price inflation way faster than the spike seen with the introduction of Missions. Then by putting an artificial cap on the global extraction rate, ore prices (and so all other market prices) can and likely will be controlled by the few large organisations that establish territorial hold over large swathes of tiles with good pools.
    9.       The number of asteroids currently spawning at any point in the game, be it PvP space or Safe Zone is insufficient to ‘fill the gap’ expected in ore supply whilst the new MU’s are being established. Additionally, given the potential for significant territory control by large orgs on good yield tiles once the MU gameplay is established, even T1 ores will be in demand from asteroids. With the low spawn numbers and the ‘all-at-once’ spawn mechanic, this severely limits the player base to where and when asteroid gameplay occurs disadvantaging those players that cannot for whatever reason play at those times.
    10.   If the new player experience takes ‘too long’ to reach the point in gameplay where they are able to choose what sandbox play they want to pursue, then player numbers / retention will suffer, especially if the opening gameplay is days/weeks (/months?) of just collecting surface rocks and hoofing them to market before they can even afford to expand beyond their Sanctuary tile.
     
    Possible solutions
    1.       Have T1 ore pools be more balanced in each tile. While a primary ore type can still be present, the other T1 ore pools need to be similar, in order to allow new / solo players to establish a ‘home tile’ from which they can expand, without reliance on ore markets that have the potential to be controlled / dominated by large organisations.
    2.       Reduce the size of planetary ore zones or completely randomise the distribution of higher tier ores per tile – though while keeping the per planet ore type distribution currently in game. This will prevent the domination of ore types by larger organisations and allow new / solo / small org players to find higher tier ores nearer to their home bases, whilst still incentivising players to expand to other planets to find ore type not available on their home planet.
    3.       Ore pools must be restricted to the tile they reference in the territory scan – anything else will just encourage griefing across tile boundaries. And if NQ think ‘our player base is better than that…’ I encourage you to look at the amount of ships with glitched element still being sold / used in PvP, the number of players with large numbers of alts abusing the Mission system to gain massive wealth, the players using the terraforming tools to grief their neighbours, etc.
    4.       Retain the small chance to find higher tier ores on their respective planets as currently. This is still potentially subject to large orgs finding and claiming these tiles immediately following the update, so shutting out higher tier extraction by new / solo / small org players. A possibility is a rng spawn of higher tier ores in the extraction cycle of a lower tier MU.
    5.       a) Implement the increasing pricing scale for the tile taxation amount, as is currently used of the TU deployment cost. Currently the TU deployment cost is of little significance to the large organisations, as they have the wallet resources to soak up the one hit up front cost of deploying high numbers of TU’s. Implementing rising tax rates for the number of claimed tiles would go some way to limiting the reach and control of large orgs over swathes of territories, as the cost then become recurring currency sinks.
    5.       b) Wipe all current territory scans – it is the only way to set a level field between orgs / players with large scan libraries and the rest of the player-base.
    6.       Implement the manufacturing meta seen across the rest of the game to the manufacture of the Mining Units. This will allow progression of mining tiers, as is currently available to industry progression.
    7.       Temporarily introduce market bots to sell ores at ‘reasonable’ market process to cover the scarcity gap. Reduce the quantity available on the market as the MU gameplay becomes established, then remove them at the 45day mark when most invested players will have the MU talents trained to Lvl4.
    8.       For long term MU gameplay loop either remove the calibration charge cap, allowing charges to accumulate unrestricted, therefore allowing as many MU’s to be used as can be started with a charge per player – or allow the charges to be traded on the market, so players that do not get involved with the MU gameplay loop to sell them and make money, and also allowing players involved in MU’s to increase the amount of MU’s they are able to run.
    Or a more drastic change – just remove the charges all together and use the calibration mini-game to determine extraction efficiency. This will then put the global ore extraction rate burden back onto the player-base, as determined by the amount of game time they are willing to spend on servicing their deployed MU’s.
    9.       Increase the overall number of asteroids spawning in the game, both in PvP space and Safe Zone, and stagger the spawn times throughout the week to allow players to choose when they involve themselves in the asteroid hunt gameplay loop.
    10.   The tile tax burden must not be set so that it restricts the new / solo players from expanding from their first tile. This leads back to the solution of a rising tax rate per number of tiles claimed. The principal limitation of a player’s expansion, should this update be implemented as seen on the PTS, will be the dominance of large organisations over the ore markets. If the ore price burden is too high for players to progress to building / buying their first / next ship or tile – due to the rate of which ore can be collected from the surface, verses the amount of time required to collect sufficient ore to progress – then the majority players will not continue and the game will stagnant, or worse….
     
    I hope NQ realises the scope of the changes they are proposing and the potential damage to the game that can come from them. It will only take small tweaks to existing gameplay mechanics and the proposed numbers of the Demeter update to ensure the damage is mitigated and we are presented with a well-structured game that fulfils NQs vision and give players a rich and enjoyable universe to explore and build.
  23. Like
    Selena reacted to Creator in Call for Demeter-related questions   
    Auto-Mining:
    Before I get into my major concerns I would like to say thank you for replacing the current system of mining underground with something better than "click, watch circle get big, release." I think the system holds a lot of potential if balanced right, will be more rewarding than the current mining system, and I am glad that it can help NQ unburden some overhead cost, especially as the player base must be much smaller than NQ's business model accounted for.

    My only concern with mining-units is the "chicken or egg" dynamic of need to have same tier ore to build the mining unit. Where I feel it would be more sensible to require T2 ore for a T3 unit, T3 ore for a T4 unit, etc. Otherwise NQ risks progression locking players with a mechanic that subjects them to predatory exploitation of players who have gotten to T4 and T5 already. 

    If players are willing to exploit mechanics to gain billions in quanta they will not hesitate to exploit players to stratify the economy and widen the gap between a few with everything and the mass majority with the left overs.


    Territory Tax:
    NQ claims that a player driven economy and player made content is the backbone of the game. Yet builders who are working hundreds if not thousands of hours over the past two years risk losing the most with projects that are focused on building unique locations for others to visit.

    Building and selling blueprints is simply not competitive with the earnings made through current mining, and with changes to the economy sales of ship and building designs has gone off the cliff as everyone hoards currency and materials to survive upcoming changes.

    I also feel that a clear and final tile tax rates MUST be announced 30-60 days before Demeter release to give adequate time for organization of assets to prevent huge and punishing loses to the creative community within Dual Universe.

    People simply need to know what they will and won't lose and what to do to safeguard their hard work, NQ's ambiguity simply drives ambiguity, and snarky responses from support team when players want to know if they can reasonably expect to earn enough from auto-mining to cover taxes for the number of tiles they own is simply inflammatory.
     

    In-Game Abuse Reports:
    I am hoping bans won't become automated, and will also have a review system that takes context of the situation into account. It is well known we have members of the community who bait, troll, and instigate to produce reactions that they can then report to weaponize the NQ support staff against players.

    Some of these people are the same individuals who have exploited, and abused mechanics to gain advantage over the players they taunt and bait with their comments.

    Also feel rule #10 of the Code of Conduct should be removed from the CoC, as the demographic of the player base on average is well above 30 years of age, and there are things that 8 year old's say these days that make me blush. It is no secret that colorful language is often present in passionate expression ideals, dissatisfaction etc. 

    The rule is ambiguous as to how much profanity is excessive, and it is well known players purposefully instigate and antagonize others into the point of frustration where profanity is used and then weaponize abuse reports against them. 

    It is a highly dishonorable tactic that needs addressing.

    My use of a four letter word, or expression of frustration is by no means as harmful to the community as the exploits, use of alt accounts, etc. for players to manipulate the economy, and gain huge material advantage over those they taunt and troll.

    This while seeming off topic I believe will become highly relevant with in game abuse reports coming in Demeter.


    Voxelmancy Tools:
    Last but not least I want to thank you for working to provide tools to make building more accessible to everyone, I think this is awesome. My only concern here is will this cause more "invalid cell error" issues in the future?


    Closing Summary:
    Thank you very much for the work being put into DU, I know I am critical of some of the decisions. Mainly I just have a huge fear of losing hundreds if not thousands of hours of work. Dual Universe is the one place I feel I have my little slice of peace to escape from RL stress. 

    I don't need to be rich, or have the best guns, or even biggest ship... I treat my tile territories as a carefully maintained zen garden, and right now I see fire burning all around that garden threatening to take it away. To take away the very little peace I have some days.

    I work with victims of violent crime, sexual assault and domestic abuse with my job as a government contractor, trying to help them rebuild after horrible events. It is a job that is emotionally taxing, and Dual Universe is how I cope with the stresses of that job, and the risks of harm and even death from violent people who would do me harm to get to the survivors they have victimized.

    Respectfully,

    Creator

     
  24. Like
    Selena reacted to Orth_Tanic in Call for Demeter-related questions   
    Is Biden running the show? 1 M a week for tax's that is way to high do away with tax's and keep it how it is I would rather pay a high price upfront to not be taxed. That and people have real lives sometimes people might not be able to get logged into the game and then when they come back they will owe millions in tax's 

    Not good tax's suck in RL no need to have them in a game. I have played other games that required tax's to be paid to keep land and it killed not only me but entire clans from playing it.  Looking at that I have I am not sure I would even be able to afford keeping what I have had for over a year now. I don't really see myself playing a game where all my time is used up to make sure my "tax's" are paid. I been all in 100% with DU but this change may make me rethink playing. 

    Tax's can be a HUGE game braker. The only way you will be able to survive is if your in a large Org with a large cash flow the solo player and smaller orgs will die and people will stop playing. 
  25. Like
    Selena reacted to CMDRTaco in Call for Demeter-related questions   
    The L/hr seem too low even with talent and adjacency bonus for the 1 mil/week tax. Either the rate needs to go up or the tax drastically reduced. The brake change is horrible. I know the current implementation was temporary, but requiring the entire brake to be exposed is going to usher in the golden age of freaking ugly ships. Please change the requirement to be only the front surface to be exposed.
×
×
  • Create New...