Cybob19

What is it with you guys and "PvP is too small and only visible at the edges"? PvP is the largest area in the game, so this small safe zone is hardly worth mentioning. 
The problem is not the size of the zone, but that there are too few interested PvP players. But that's not the fault of the PvE players.
What prevents PvPers from building up space bases in PvP and then simply defending them? That's right, you could lose them, which is why PvPers also prefer to build in the safe zone....
 

Great.. but ..
 
Why is this not integrated with markets? I made a detailed post on this three years ago with a suggestion of how to do this, keeping the market building at the centre of the "hub" and then create one or more "malls" on the outskirts of the market areas to allow players to place their market stalls, after vetting by NQ. Combine that with extended parking at distance and possibly trains going between parking, the malls and the market. All of this is possible in game now and all of it has been done already by players.
 
This idea creates commercial hubs and by possibly allowing bigger stalls up to S or even M size you could create a one stop shop area where players can come, buy constructs or services or whatever from stalls and then pop over to the market to buy the materials they need. It centralizes and solidifies this all-in-one organisational set of structures, and you could do this for maybe 3 or 4 of the current markets to spread it out a bit.
 
 
Right now, we have a place which showcases certainly goods in du-creators.org which is frankly a well-designed and managed site. Why does NQ not at least try and integrate this into their plans, talk to the creators of the site, give credit where it is due and pay the man. A lot of work has been done and it would probably be far easier to integrate that site INTO THE GAME.
 
Also, I could see potential for a "services" section on that site as an extension which then also get sin to the game as well as becomes available outside.
 

Basically:
Whoever makes the bigger decisions doesn’t see proper player markets or any other of the many ideas on the subject as priority.
Nicodemus thought he can help out by doing something that he can do almost by himself, with little need for any coders, game or asset designers to do anything, as he is pretty much just using the ingame assets, ingame mechanics, his GM tool set, and does nothing that could impact the economy. 
If you think "I could have done this" or "this has been done before", that is because you are right, one guy can do this, just that when Nicodemus does it and it is in the patchnotes it actually draws a crowd.
 
I see this as a "better than nothing" solution by one guy, while the rest of NQ does, erm, I dont know what.

oh man.... Ive read so many me, me, me, me posts from pvp lovers, its becoming embarassing to me. 85% of this game is PVP zone, but you still want more, up to 99% or even a 100% of all area MUST be pvp. Also the me, me, me, me, with the ores. Like special ore should only be availabe to people who want to pew pew or risk to pew pew. Builders cant make elevators or gates,! I could agree with 1 or 2 pvp planets, so there can be war in gravital air (thats why they could introduce gas-giant planets'') and could have, like 5 times more T5 ore in those zones.
And tell me, if there is no safe-zone, would you build a base, that will take 8 months to complete only to see it destroyed in 2 days by [fill in a name like Legion]?
The list of players that rage-quit because of the loss of 1 m-core while hauling or d/c while trying to land, goes on and on... losing a whole base WILL make people throw important stuff(read: desktops, laptops, deskchairs, keyboards, mouses, coffeecups, headsets) through unopened windows. I can assure you that
 
As a builder, I was satisfied with the way it was set up after 0.23. I could build and mine whenever and wherever I wanted. Never been into pvp territory in 16 months of playing. The fact that 'Legion had won DU' didnt bother me at all. I would never meet a Legion pvp ship because I do not come into their space. So I wont see their builds unless its on a tube video. 
 
And so, this game was fine as it was: a sandbox building game (with pvp possiblities) and expanding the building part would also benefit the pew pew people.
Because pew pew people also like to build a home base, they also like more cockpits, they also would like to colour their wings and engines on their ships.
This dumb focus on pew pew play is not the thing that needed attention.
I think having a pet would attract more players to come back than the 'pvp-improvements' they have made. They could have introduced pets, that have abilities that boast your character, like boast building speed or adjustor power(being explained as agility). Also let them have talent points also, maybe only develop when you take them with you. Just to display all the pets (read: DU pokémon) would be something people would visit (builders that visit pvp players, wtf???)
 
Character creation, is something that this game lacked for almost 2 years now, (there is a new update that adresses this, I think)
just a spacesuit colour,
in an mmo space game.
Please help me God, at least give us more humanoid races, like having a tail, or a shark's head
 
But as I was saying in my first post: nq is trying to proof me wrong, let see what will happen

Summer approaches and with it comes Mercury, our next update to Dual Universe.

As Cyrille Fontaine, our Creative Director, mentioned in his letter, our focus is currently on polish, and Mercury is no exception. This update also brings new features such as The Alioth Exchange, better lighting to improve visuals, Summer DACs, and more.

Read on for an overview.
 
THE ALIOTH EXCHANGE

We’re about to deploy a new installation in the heart of Alioth where players can apply to build a display to advertise and sell their creations. Applications will be open to all players who want to advertise their ship shops, markets, Lua Scripts, organizations, voxel libraries, or anything else that they create.
More details about, ‘The Alioth Exchange,’ will be available in an upcoming dedicated post.
 

 Note: constructs featured are samples only.

CONTINUED GRAPHICAL UPGRADES
 
We’re tackling illumination, vegetation, and explosion visual effects with the Mercury Update. You’ll find that the game world will be more radiant and realistic with our new global illumination, vegetation asset fixes will improve the look of foliage in the game, and whether you’re fighting or simply crashing a ship, you can enjoy more vibrant explosions.
 

 
SUMMER DACs
 
We’re implementing a separate, test version of DACs, allowing every active player to invite a friend to try Dual Universe free for one month. 
These Summer DACs are separate from real DACs, and will not impact your accrued pool of DACs from crowdfunding packages when gifted. 
One Summer DAC will be given to every active player and can only be redeemed by new accounts not yet subscribed to the game. They will expire by the end of the summer if not used. Summer DACs should allow us to test our web-based DAC system before the game’s release while offering your friends a chance to try the game for free!

NOVEAN OVERVIEW

We're adding an in-game interface which provides an overview of your general account information and unlocked possessions. We’ll expand this feature moving forward, but in Mercury, you’ll be able to see your unlocked cosmetic skins in a dedicated tab.
 

 
LUA API
 
Our vision for Lua has evolved over the years and with the new directions we’ve taken, it’s become necessary to entirely revamp our Lua API. These changes will future-proof the API and make it better serve the game by improving and tidying the system. We’re starting this process in Mercury. 
 
Naturally, such a major change will come with an enormous changelog, but to give you a brief overview of what’s coming ahead, we’re going to:
 
Restructure the entire Lua API Prepare an object-oriented approach to be ready for future evolutions. Reduce the use of JSON in the API to favor the use of real Lua tables. Rely more on event-driven code to reduce player loops and server requests. Reduce the complexity and size of scripts Add some of the, ‘nice to have,’ features Add further points of interest to some elements such as the telemeter.  
To summarize, our goal with this update is to reset the API and prepare it for future evolutions. Rest assured that your codes will still work in Mercury and that we’ll give you ample time to adapt your creations.
 
TALENT POINT RESET

Every character will have their talent points refunded back to their pool with the Mercury Update. While we must perform this reset for technical reasons related to upgrading our systems, this is also an opportunity for players to refocus talents into different areas and try new ‘builds’, or to simply correct training away from unwanted talents.
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As always, we’ll publish a series of articles delving deeper into Mercury’s features, but for now, thank you for reading, Noveans! We’re excited to move forward with Mercury and are eager to hear your thoughts in this forum thread.
 
 

This has to be some kind of record for how fast someone can make their own post worthless..

This game was fine as a sandbox building game, kind of a big empty LEGO world.
Lego builders dont need entertainment or gameplay, they just enjoy builds. Cities skylines players also just like builds, they like to just follow an npc and just look around.
Train-set builders also do nothing but to watch their builds.
I think this game would attract so many builders from every corner around the world, that it would always have enough ingame players, and maybe not too many at once as some would always take a break.
 
Too bad nq didn't focus on the building/trading part and give us more things to build and trade with.
They gave us a false start with unrealistic sized doors, couches and beds, 3 types of toilets, the most useless empty plantcase and no xs space fueltank. Also crazy core sizes which make no sense to me, why 63(127-255-511) voxels and not 64 (128-256-512)?
Instead of adding more types of wings, doors, cockpits, trees, npc elements (ive made these myself with voxels later on, even made them interactive with detection zones and transparent screens), nq cut down on builders. 
There is lua for ships on water, something nq should have implemented themselves. I know for sure people would start digging canals (because of the ugly random generated planet with puddles) and just sail on them for fun. Videos of ingame builds would flood the tube channels.
The builders needed more things to easily make quests so we could make more adventures, to aquire items to open doors in mazes and labyrinths. Now it was only possible in lua.
I think, that players would subscribe just to see the amazing world that has been build by players. 
 
Nq could have focused on building(what this game started with). Expanding the game with the lua-ideas, just like other games implemented mods from the community, and adding elements that have a proper function.
But nq focused on destroying. Pvp, limiting and wiping that is.
And now you are here, a full wipe (so no world) and a few players.
 
Pvp bashing by me:
Pvp in this game is the fugliest version of space combat i have ever seen, even space invaders is more dynamic, at least you can dodge in space invaders! Territory warfare in this game would be just as ugly, boring and untactical as spacewar in this game is. You cant hide behind an asteroid, so why would you be able to hide behind a hill?
Pvp in this state kicks out the creativity of building. 
Pvp in this game reminds me of those old atari 5600 games, where the box art was nowhere near the ingame screenshots or the gameplay.
Tactics do not exist in this game.
 
In the end, I am sure that this game had more potential for a sandbox building game, than a pvp game.
But hey, nq is trying to proof me wrong, so ill keep an eye out.
 
 
Edit after 5 likes:
Its about this game being fine after 0.23

So... lets see if I have this strait...
You're sitting here in this thread advocating for everyone that plays a game you don't intend to play yourself to lose all their stuff because this will somehow auto-magically cause new people to become interested in the game... and because you have decided the game is dying (it isn't great, but it isn't exactly gone yet either) this makes mocking/insulting the people that disagree with you because they don't want to lose all the work they've invested their time in acceptable?
...
 
Once lost, neither trust nor reputation is easily regained. NQ said beta was soft-launch. While they may lose some old players on a full wipe, enough will stick around (at least for a little while) that any new players gained will learn not to trust promises that their stuff wont be deleted. DU has its problems now, and a wipe might fix a few, but can it really afford one? "All your stuff that took hundreds or thousands of hours to get might be permanently deleted to try and fix a bug or two and undo some poor development choices regardless of the developers saying you'll keep your stuff" isn't exactly a great thing to have a reputation for.

I never considered that they might wipe talent points until yesterday.
 
But you've pointed out so many times that if they have good news, there's no reason not to share it.  The only reason to remain tight lipped is if they have bad news.
 
Why would they specifically mention that they won't be wiping core BPs, but not mention talent points?  Seems like an easy opportunity to gain a little good faith from the player base.
 
 

In before somebody says: restarting a game is the most fun aspect, I don't get it seems you guy just don't wanna play, seeing a ticker do 90 ticks a minute is the greatest gameplay experience I ever had. It can only be topped by watching a ticker do 90 ticks a minute inside the platonic ideal of absolute and eternal fairness.
 
 
You guys just dont want nobody to reach lvl 5 before NQ goes bankrupt.

Using a wipe to balance a MMO is fundamentally wrong. Treating the symptoms (wipe), without addressing the cause (unbalanced game mechanics and not properly dealing with exploits) will never be anything but a temporary fix.
 
And yes.. I imagine that some of the full-wipe advocates are not necessarily doing it for altruistic reasons, since it will enable large org to use their knowledge about the game to completely dominate and take over.
 
 

Hello, dear Noveans!
 
Let us know below your thoughts on the DAC status update!
 

Pretty sure he meant no light because exit velocity of black hole too high.

If alienated, I will certainly pay 1 month subs to pass my 12 DACs to someone to keep the debt alive 😜

Yes it will be most smooth and 100% guaranteed bug and exploit free. Your post is well thought out and realistic.

So is this going to be another on of those podcast where you answer the easy fluff questions, and pretend the hard ones does not exist?

I don't know how you Wipers develop this delusion that a wipe is going to miraculously bring in a bunch of new players who wouldn't play otherwise - aside from your own wishful thinking and a peer-group of likeminded friends probably reinforcing your bubble. There's just no evidence ever in any game that a wipe does anything more than swap out some old players for new less-committed players resulting in long-term decline. And those who are unhappy with their lot in the game - access to territory or resources - are just replaced with a different group of people who missed out on the latest land rush. Add to that it's also a reversal on a commitment made at beta launch ('magic BPs') and the result will be even worse. 

Problem is that many of those will be "I don't care about a wipe anymore, this was the last straw and I am done with this game". And they are going to be telling this to all their friends, and some of them are also going to be youtubers making reviews.

I don't care about money of my subs.
I don't care about talent points because they are 100% passive nonsense.
I don't care about quanta or constructs.
 
I do care about my time. Time I've invested to this game.
 
I'm 66 years old, my time is slowly coming short.
Life is most valuable asset I have. Ever day, every hour i spend in this game I have less and less of my time left. It is not infinite.
 
@NQ When considering this wipe issue, please respect your players time.

It's not really important what a player thinks is most important to keep (quanta, talent points, schematics, constructs whatever).
The important part is that players have been spending time and money playing the game, with assurances from NQ that their efforts would not be in vain.
 
And the only exception NQ made, was that they had to show us a clear and irrefutable technical reason forcing them to perform any kind of wipe. And even then they assured us that they would do their very best to make sure players would not lose resources in such a wipe.
 
So if players lose any of their resources after a wipe and NQ cannot even be bothered to demonstrate a clear irrefutable reason for wiping, why should players trust NQ to not break any more promises and do the same in the future also?
 
And any argument about re-balancing the game because of exploits is totally irrelevant for a wipe discussion, since there should NEVER be a need to wipe the game for all players just to fix exploits PERIOD.

The relevant point reads:
 
 
And yes, they mention talent points as part of the advantage veteran/experienced players have, sure. Your interpretation here is something I do not agree with at all and the general notion that  new players have an unsurmountable disadvntage over those who have been playing for longer is factually incorrect and easily proven worng.

Of course, having accrued more talentpoints is an advantage. But the way the talent system is designed (which is pretty much direcly lifted from EVE), that advantage actually get's less important very quickly and I have explained that several time now. Bottom line is that a new player will catch up to about 80% of the level a player who has been training for two year is at in about 5 months, as a new player trains several talents to L4 while  the more experienced player will train level5 of a single talent. ANd 5 months in a game like DU is really not all that long.

After some time, talents that are trained will be the ones with higher multipliers. Each talent has a base of 600,3000,15000,75000 and 375000 point respectively with a multiplier ranging from x1 to I believe x15 currently.
 
As you see from the above, the way talents work is that for the talent to be trained 100%, you spend 20% of the time needed to get to level 4 and then 80% for the 5th level. And a 2 year old player would generally be training talents with x5 multipliers and up, so the new player will be able to train their x1-x4 levels at a considerably faster rate relative to the time the tenured player trains L5 levels at x5 and up.
 
So no, talent points are not  a massive barrier for new players and so no, it really can't be used as an argument in this discussion.

Just  bringing the potential wipe on the table again is enough to instantly put me on a "pause" mode with DU. it just feels like i invested years of time on the single promise that there is persistence and a wipe would only occur if there is kind of a fatal problem that cannot be resolved otherwise, and even if a wipe would happen all progress and constructs could be taken over to the after wipe time..
so basically that was a lie (looking on all those options being discussed "internally" at NQ.)
- getting rid of schematics ==> do you know how much grind it was just to get there and obtain those schematics?
- the quanta i own was earned honestly. and yes that was another grind to get there, so why take it away? just because NQ did not react when some people took advantage. so let's punish all players instead.. no, does not sound very reasonable. i don't honestly care about the players that have "more". for all players except one, there will always be players that have more, so who really cares (except the new players joining and want to avoid the grind we all had)
- if you wipe  any of my quanta, exp, stuff, (without giving me all back via magic BPs, or the benefit of the grind by removing all schematics i see it as betrayal. will probably not return..
- even putting the long term players on an optional parallel DU is not an option.

what would be OK for me:
- planetary reset (all constructs as magic BP's)
- Ban of players that cheated before
- removing the requirement to own schematics for Tier 1-2 (or even Tier 3) items
- game play changes that do not in-valuate previous "grind"
- removal of all bot orders
- creating a new System with new planets and resources without the possibility to transport big amounts of mass there where different rules may be applied. maybe even having a new 2nd currency there, so you cannot bring your quanta with you.

So yes there are lots of options of adding new gameplay and mechanics even without having to betray all the beta players that spent an insane amount of time in game to get where they are today. But the 2 wipe options you described are not really satisfying in my position.

So please: reconsider
put your heads together again without just serving those people that scream wipe wipe in order to get an unfair advantage by purging a huge amount of time in grind for senior players who believed in past commitments that had been made by NQ.


 

 

I don't play the game anymore, except to fly down to Haven and check it out (just another rock with grass and trees).  However, I do recall suggestions I made a long time ago about mining.

I was one of the early people to suggest an auto-mining feature , however it was nothing like the current implementation.  I still wanted the digging but the only difference to mining was that you set up a machine on the node itself, not on the surface. Certainly did not want taxes. To deal with the problem of too many tunnels, there should have been a tunnel collapse mechanism that erases tunnels after no presence of a human after 60 days. 
 
Easy enough to implement, just keep a least recently used timestamp on each tunnel object that gets refreshed any time a player walks by.  In a nightly maintenance sweep, all tunnel data structures with old time stamps simply get deleted.

The other idea was that nodes respawn after a while of being dormant (like a month or two).  That would give incentive for people to fight for meganode tiles.
 
well since there probably be a wipe anyways, there is another opportunity to fix this mechanic. Or not.  I probably won't play again unless there is enough critical mass of players to make things interesting again. 

Here is the thing about voting on wipes that I have seen over and over again over 20 years of playing MMOs.
 
1. The people with nothing to lose and everything to gain always vote for a wipe as they have no skin in the game.
2. The people that were "betrayed" by a wipe stop playing. These are the true diehard, committed people that actually generate the content that NQ keeps talking about in their visions.
3.  The "betrayed" people leave with their amazing creativity to some other environment.
4. The people who wanted the wipe are left with the daunting task of creating a new content base.
5. However, the people who voted for the wipe are generally tourists, and are not the building personality type  ...  so not much gets built.
6. The level-the-playing-field tourists get bored and leave with a mild shrug. (They don't care - they had nothing to lose anyways)
7. Trust is broken for builder personality types. 10x harder to convince new ones - advertising not much help here - they go by word of mouth 
8. Ghost town
 

So you say that someone who is attentive, watches their radar and bails when they see a potential attacker approaching a problem? 
I'd say that if you pay attentiopn you should have the option to get away. As it  is now, even more than before, once a pirate shows up on radar, you are pretty much dead. Not sure how that is "fine".

Combat in DU as it is has no defensive strategy or options, any potential ones have been removed or nerfed to a point where they mean noting. Literally th eonly way is the long way around, which is both boring and basically removes possible gameplay.

And because of it, the majority of what is left of the non pirate playerbase just stays in hte safezones and has no interest of puruing anything outsid eof it as the rewards do not justify the risk, not even close.

I really just don’t understand why miners and industry territory beacons, weapons AGGs, warp beacons don’t require fuel to run. 
They are perpetual engines. 
 
even NMS has better fuel and power management gameplay than this game, and that’s a casual minecraft like game. 

imagine if it actually required copious amounts of energy to keep everything running. Balanced correctly that would keep things in check far more than stupid taxes and keep consumption rates high. 
 
element maintenance requiring bolts, pipes and chambers etc should obviously be a thing. Every x hours a component on your ship needs one or more of the parts it’s made from replacing.  Leaving it unmaintained would cause it to degrade and eventually need replacing. 
 
the gameplay could be simple like repairing but instead of just scrap, it needs the actual parts in your active container.
 
Or it could be more involved like swapping the parts with working parts (using a new swap tool) and taking the broken parts to a dedicated service station 

even these alone would ensure greater need for parts and services.