IvanGrozniy

They said it was to 'save face'. They brutalized their own face with what they did, and it's about 80% of the reason why I quit. They had a chance to enshrine the broken market and make it part of the game's lore (no more wipes, remember? Using admin commands to restore it was a wipe, of sorts), and instead they acted like petty tyrants of a playground sandbox.

JC said something like it should take a month for people to get off the planet... as to the exact source, I specifically remember it was JC's first interview after beta launch. Sadly I can't find it now, maybe if you ask in du discussion discord channel someone might remember. A lot of what JC says is scattered all over the place, there is no compendium of what was said when unfortunately... yet another communication problem.

JC said something like it should take a month for people to get off the planet... as to the exact source, I specifically remember it was JC's first interview after beta launch. Sadly I can't find it now, maybe if you ask in du discussion discord channel someone might remember. A lot of what JC says is scattered all over the place, there is no compendium of what was said when unfortunately... yet another communication problem.

As a backend / frontend developer myself for many years:
1) UI / UX for this game is... not made by designers but by engineers. In this regard it is horrible from a designer standpoint. Not to knock the work of the engineers but this is... not a game ui. I'm sorry. This is a product of a bygone era. Modular ui is generally cancer in a game. And when you're married to it, it spawns very very bad children.

2) LUA API is abysmally incomplete. Simple things like knowing what is in a container, or better yet, what is the actual capacity of a container WITH talents... is not a thing. Another example: for some odd reason getYaw() was removed from gyro api. And that was bloody useful... And the list here goes on and on and on. Features that are missing, features that disappeared, etc... Which leads to lots of arcane, frankly, bad code going around, some of which I myself wrote.

3) Market 15... was ... well.. that is a rather permanent face of NQ now. Not to mention poor communication. Not to mention grey rules that you twist in your own favor just to save face.

4) Game has no progression. Literally nothing to do. Players don't care, everyone is self sufficient. Markets are a joke, it's easy to get whatever you want pretty fast. Resources are uniform. All elements are the same regardless who made them, etc... everything becomes more of a chore rather than less, there is hardly any automation, and the stuff we do with LUA are just silly work-arounds that in the end are NOT automation. This game is the opposite of what MMOs generally are: the more time you spend in DU the more labor intensive and less automated things become.

5) Less Content, More Grind. NQ, especially JC keeps throwing around statements such as:  "we expected people to get to space from starting planet in X days" (took me 15 minutes, took other players even less). "Mining is too fast for our liking", "brakes are too effective".... these are all statements that lead me to believe JC didn't mine for his castle, and has probably never built an M or L core all by himself with his own in-game resources. All of this in summation is rhetoric that I interpret this way: We can't provide content fast enough, lets slow the game waaaaaaay down and make it more grindy, more time consuming, because well... uh... we don't have content for you...sorry. It would have been a LOT MORE helpful to the community if NQ actually was transparent as to what is going on there.
 
6) PVP. Geez.. so much to say here... a lot of it has already been said better than I could ever say it. Seems like from the get-go casuals weren't clued in to how to make transport ships viable for slowboating... like for example... putting some voxels on the boat for a start. There was so much whining about one shot kills that I believe NQ was pushed into the direction of not removing planet safezones. We need atmo pvp, we need interdiction, we need material variability, we need to fight for something. Radars need to be fixed. Guns widgets need rework (ui / ux is so terrible and non-ergonomic I can't believe this is 2020).
 
7) Lots more... but I will stop.

As a backend / frontend developer myself for many years:
1) UI / UX for this game is... not made by designers but by engineers. In this regard it is horrible from a designer standpoint. Not to knock the work of the engineers but this is... not a game ui. I'm sorry. This is a product of a bygone era. Modular ui is generally cancer in a game. And when you're married to it, it spawns very very bad children.

2) LUA API is abysmally incomplete. Simple things like knowing what is in a container, or better yet, what is the actual capacity of a container WITH talents... is not a thing. Another example: for some odd reason getYaw() was removed from gyro api. And that was bloody useful... And the list here goes on and on and on. Features that are missing, features that disappeared, etc... Which leads to lots of arcane, frankly, bad code going around, some of which I myself wrote.

3) Market 15... was ... well.. that is a rather permanent face of NQ now. Not to mention poor communication. Not to mention grey rules that you twist in your own favor just to save face.

4) Game has no progression. Literally nothing to do. Players don't care, everyone is self sufficient. Markets are a joke, it's easy to get whatever you want pretty fast. Resources are uniform. All elements are the same regardless who made them, etc... everything becomes more of a chore rather than less, there is hardly any automation, and the stuff we do with LUA are just silly work-arounds that in the end are NOT automation. This game is the opposite of what MMOs generally are: the more time you spend in DU the more labor intensive and less automated things become.

5) Less Content, More Grind. NQ, especially JC keeps throwing around statements such as:  "we expected people to get to space from starting planet in X days" (took me 15 minutes, took other players even less). "Mining is too fast for our liking", "brakes are too effective".... these are all statements that lead me to believe JC didn't mine for his castle, and has probably never built an M or L core all by himself with his own in-game resources. All of this in summation is rhetoric that I interpret this way: We can't provide content fast enough, lets slow the game waaaaaaay down and make it more grindy, more time consuming, because well... uh... we don't have content for you...sorry. It would have been a LOT MORE helpful to the community if NQ actually was transparent as to what is going on there.
 
6) PVP. Geez.. so much to say here... a lot of it has already been said better than I could ever say it. Seems like from the get-go casuals weren't clued in to how to make transport ships viable for slowboating... like for example... putting some voxels on the boat for a start. There was so much whining about one shot kills that I believe NQ was pushed into the direction of not removing planet safezones. We need atmo pvp, we need interdiction, we need material variability, we need to fight for something. Radars need to be fixed. Guns widgets need rework (ui / ux is so terrible and non-ergonomic I can't believe this is 2020).
 
7) Lots more... but I will stop.

As a backend / frontend developer myself for many years:
1) UI / UX for this game is... not made by designers but by engineers. In this regard it is horrible from a designer standpoint. Not to knock the work of the engineers but this is... not a game ui. I'm sorry. This is a product of a bygone era. Modular ui is generally cancer in a game. And when you're married to it, it spawns very very bad children.

2) LUA API is abysmally incomplete. Simple things like knowing what is in a container, or better yet, what is the actual capacity of a container WITH talents... is not a thing. Another example: for some odd reason getYaw() was removed from gyro api. And that was bloody useful... And the list here goes on and on and on. Features that are missing, features that disappeared, etc... Which leads to lots of arcane, frankly, bad code going around, some of which I myself wrote.

3) Market 15... was ... well.. that is a rather permanent face of NQ now. Not to mention poor communication. Not to mention grey rules that you twist in your own favor just to save face.

4) Game has no progression. Literally nothing to do. Players don't care, everyone is self sufficient. Markets are a joke, it's easy to get whatever you want pretty fast. Resources are uniform. All elements are the same regardless who made them, etc... everything becomes more of a chore rather than less, there is hardly any automation, and the stuff we do with LUA are just silly work-arounds that in the end are NOT automation. This game is the opposite of what MMOs generally are: the more time you spend in DU the more labor intensive and less automated things become.

5) Less Content, More Grind. NQ, especially JC keeps throwing around statements such as:  "we expected people to get to space from starting planet in X days" (took me 15 minutes, took other players even less). "Mining is too fast for our liking", "brakes are too effective".... these are all statements that lead me to believe JC didn't mine for his castle, and has probably never built an M or L core all by himself with his own in-game resources. All of this in summation is rhetoric that I interpret this way: We can't provide content fast enough, lets slow the game waaaaaaay down and make it more grindy, more time consuming, because well... uh... we don't have content for you...sorry. It would have been a LOT MORE helpful to the community if NQ actually was transparent as to what is going on there.
 
6) PVP. Geez.. so much to say here... a lot of it has already been said better than I could ever say it. Seems like from the get-go casuals weren't clued in to how to make transport ships viable for slowboating... like for example... putting some voxels on the boat for a start. There was so much whining about one shot kills that I believe NQ was pushed into the direction of not removing planet safezones. We need atmo pvp, we need interdiction, we need material variability, we need to fight for something. Radars need to be fixed. Guns widgets need rework (ui / ux is so terrible and non-ergonomic I can't believe this is 2020).
 
7) Lots more... but I will stop.

As a backend / frontend developer myself for many years:
1) UI / UX for this game is... not made by designers but by engineers. In this regard it is horrible from a designer standpoint. Not to knock the work of the engineers but this is... not a game ui. I'm sorry. This is a product of a bygone era. Modular ui is generally cancer in a game. And when you're married to it, it spawns very very bad children.

2) LUA API is abysmally incomplete. Simple things like knowing what is in a container, or better yet, what is the actual capacity of a container WITH talents... is not a thing. Another example: for some odd reason getYaw() was removed from gyro api. And that was bloody useful... And the list here goes on and on and on. Features that are missing, features that disappeared, etc... Which leads to lots of arcane, frankly, bad code going around, some of which I myself wrote.

3) Market 15... was ... well.. that is a rather permanent face of NQ now. Not to mention poor communication. Not to mention grey rules that you twist in your own favor just to save face.

4) Game has no progression. Literally nothing to do. Players don't care, everyone is self sufficient. Markets are a joke, it's easy to get whatever you want pretty fast. Resources are uniform. All elements are the same regardless who made them, etc... everything becomes more of a chore rather than less, there is hardly any automation, and the stuff we do with LUA are just silly work-arounds that in the end are NOT automation. This game is the opposite of what MMOs generally are: the more time you spend in DU the more labor intensive and less automated things become.

5) Less Content, More Grind. NQ, especially JC keeps throwing around statements such as:  "we expected people to get to space from starting planet in X days" (took me 15 minutes, took other players even less). "Mining is too fast for our liking", "brakes are too effective".... these are all statements that lead me to believe JC didn't mine for his castle, and has probably never built an M or L core all by himself with his own in-game resources. All of this in summation is rhetoric that I interpret this way: We can't provide content fast enough, lets slow the game waaaaaaay down and make it more grindy, more time consuming, because well... uh... we don't have content for you...sorry. It would have been a LOT MORE helpful to the community if NQ actually was transparent as to what is going on there.
 
6) PVP. Geez.. so much to say here... a lot of it has already been said better than I could ever say it. Seems like from the get-go casuals weren't clued in to how to make transport ships viable for slowboating... like for example... putting some voxels on the boat for a start. There was so much whining about one shot kills that I believe NQ was pushed into the direction of not removing planet safezones. We need atmo pvp, we need interdiction, we need material variability, we need to fight for something. Radars need to be fixed. Guns widgets need rework (ui / ux is so terrible and non-ergonomic I can't believe this is 2020).
 
7) Lots more... but I will stop.

As a backend / frontend developer myself for many years:
1) UI / UX for this game is... not made by designers but by engineers. In this regard it is horrible from a designer standpoint. Not to knock the work of the engineers but this is... not a game ui. I'm sorry. This is a product of a bygone era. Modular ui is generally cancer in a game. And when you're married to it, it spawns very very bad children.

2) LUA API is abysmally incomplete. Simple things like knowing what is in a container, or better yet, what is the actual capacity of a container WITH talents... is not a thing. Another example: for some odd reason getYaw() was removed from gyro api. And that was bloody useful... And the list here goes on and on and on. Features that are missing, features that disappeared, etc... Which leads to lots of arcane, frankly, bad code going around, some of which I myself wrote.

3) Market 15... was ... well.. that is a rather permanent face of NQ now. Not to mention poor communication. Not to mention grey rules that you twist in your own favor just to save face.

4) Game has no progression. Literally nothing to do. Players don't care, everyone is self sufficient. Markets are a joke, it's easy to get whatever you want pretty fast. Resources are uniform. All elements are the same regardless who made them, etc... everything becomes more of a chore rather than less, there is hardly any automation, and the stuff we do with LUA are just silly work-arounds that in the end are NOT automation. This game is the opposite of what MMOs generally are: the more time you spend in DU the more labor intensive and less automated things become.

5) Less Content, More Grind. NQ, especially JC keeps throwing around statements such as:  "we expected people to get to space from starting planet in X days" (took me 15 minutes, took other players even less). "Mining is too fast for our liking", "brakes are too effective".... these are all statements that lead me to believe JC didn't mine for his castle, and has probably never built an M or L core all by himself with his own in-game resources. All of this in summation is rhetoric that I interpret this way: We can't provide content fast enough, lets slow the game waaaaaaay down and make it more grindy, more time consuming, because well... uh... we don't have content for you...sorry. It would have been a LOT MORE helpful to the community if NQ actually was transparent as to what is going on there.
 
6) PVP. Geez.. so much to say here... a lot of it has already been said better than I could ever say it. Seems like from the get-go casuals weren't clued in to how to make transport ships viable for slowboating... like for example... putting some voxels on the boat for a start. There was so much whining about one shot kills that I believe NQ was pushed into the direction of not removing planet safezones. We need atmo pvp, we need interdiction, we need material variability, we need to fight for something. Radars need to be fixed. Guns widgets need rework (ui / ux is so terrible and non-ergonomic I can't believe this is 2020).
 
7) Lots more... but I will stop.

As a backend / frontend developer myself for many years:
1) UI / UX for this game is... not made by designers but by engineers. In this regard it is horrible from a designer standpoint. Not to knock the work of the engineers but this is... not a game ui. I'm sorry. This is a product of a bygone era. Modular ui is generally cancer in a game. And when you're married to it, it spawns very very bad children.

2) LUA API is abysmally incomplete. Simple things like knowing what is in a container, or better yet, what is the actual capacity of a container WITH talents... is not a thing. Another example: for some odd reason getYaw() was removed from gyro api. And that was bloody useful... And the list here goes on and on and on. Features that are missing, features that disappeared, etc... Which leads to lots of arcane, frankly, bad code going around, some of which I myself wrote.

3) Market 15... was ... well.. that is a rather permanent face of NQ now. Not to mention poor communication. Not to mention grey rules that you twist in your own favor just to save face.

4) Game has no progression. Literally nothing to do. Players don't care, everyone is self sufficient. Markets are a joke, it's easy to get whatever you want pretty fast. Resources are uniform. All elements are the same regardless who made them, etc... everything becomes more of a chore rather than less, there is hardly any automation, and the stuff we do with LUA are just silly work-arounds that in the end are NOT automation. This game is the opposite of what MMOs generally are: the more time you spend in DU the more labor intensive and less automated things become.

5) Less Content, More Grind. NQ, especially JC keeps throwing around statements such as:  "we expected people to get to space from starting planet in X days" (took me 15 minutes, took other players even less). "Mining is too fast for our liking", "brakes are too effective".... these are all statements that lead me to believe JC didn't mine for his castle, and has probably never built an M or L core all by himself with his own in-game resources. All of this in summation is rhetoric that I interpret this way: We can't provide content fast enough, lets slow the game waaaaaaay down and make it more grindy, more time consuming, because well... uh... we don't have content for you...sorry. It would have been a LOT MORE helpful to the community if NQ actually was transparent as to what is going on there.
 
6) PVP. Geez.. so much to say here... a lot of it has already been said better than I could ever say it. Seems like from the get-go casuals weren't clued in to how to make transport ships viable for slowboating... like for example... putting some voxels on the boat for a start. There was so much whining about one shot kills that I believe NQ was pushed into the direction of not removing planet safezones. We need atmo pvp, we need interdiction, we need material variability, we need to fight for something. Radars need to be fixed. Guns widgets need rework (ui / ux is so terrible and non-ergonomic I can't believe this is 2020).
 
7) Lots more... but I will stop.

This last quitting survey is good initiative -- great to see all this communication/info gathering lately.
 
And I believe we (forum trigger-happy people) can contribute more to it by more extended discussion why people quit (or have some thinking process about it in terms of "if" conditions).
 
There is demographic waves (from KS to Alpha to Beta) with some differences in "road to quitting", but still, core issues, I think, are remain same for most.
 
Ehh.. I already feel a bit as Captain Obvious writing this, but can't stop : )
 
1) Broadly speaking -- tech issues.  Game not comfortable to play still for many people (impossible to play for most unlucky). 
 
2) Choking lack of content/mechanics. 
- no pvp warfare makes game stale for huge demographic who whats some action and meaning beyond "landmark in space", this is principal killer;
- rudimentary economic narrows interesting things for another great many people (both in time to be occupied and width of engagement);
- severe lack of social features to keep people at least this way;
 
Some combo of this was reason for 95% quits I witnessed in my circle of known players (most damage from boring world without full pvp and politics).

This content thing actualy go so far, that I failed to recruit several of my more critical minded friends after they asked "what can I do in game now?" After listening my best efforts (I tried to stretch list as far as possible), they refused, stating that it will not do. Maybe in 1 year.
 
So generaly, for serious number people, after initial gorging of available things to try/achieve, there is not much to du in game. Sad, but simple as that. Or not?
 
 
 
 
 
 

I mean....that alone would be a start.
 
You think mining would be what it is today if JC had to mine all the ore to build his castle?

All they needed to do was make glass clear and disable glass-glass collision.  Let glassbe intangible to other glass. 
 
Basically allow glass to overlap or be placed completely through other panes of glass and the problem goes away
 
—-
 
i stopped playing for a few months but just came back last week because I have built a new computer.  
 
For me, it’s the few, nonsense decisions in the physics/chemistry of the crafting that gets me 
 
concrete is T2

building building materials as opposed to requirements for spacecraft building materials are insanely expensive. 
 
T-zero building materials should be a thing. stone, rock, wood. Basically all the shit people used to build stuff with from the 20th Century BC should be mineable in open cast quarries. 
 
glass should be craftable from sand. 
 
mining coal for wood is just so, so stupid I’m inclined to use the r-word when I think about it. 
 
seriously, just no!
let us farm or plant renewable patches of land for wood harvestables. 
 
you can harvest renewable iron, coal, aluminum, chrome, sodium and others but trees and flowers are not harvestable... ffs!! 
 
Mining is an abomination.  
 
but for me, one of the biggest wtf moments is:

rockets are higher tier than Space engine....
 
what the actual... fudge!!?!!

I already shared this story in Alpha forums, but think in context its worth repeating for everyone.
 
There is indy game -- Holdfast: Nation At War, generaly napolenic wars fps focused on organized event-battles (up to 200 players now I believe). At start -- 3-4 people without serious prior gamedev experience (Mount&Blade modders), tiny budget of personal savings. 
 
Obviously, they stuggled hard. Constant tech issues, lack of content, bad balance, turtle pace development -- you name it. Classic indy collection.
 
Yet, once game hit early public access, they took unprecendentaly transparent, humble and, retrospectivly, pragmatic stance:
 
Hodfast devs were activly present on forums and available for questions and discussions (granted, with several day lag and limits, but still), so feedback loop on was extreamly fast and up to date.  Roadmaps were humbly cut/narrowed to things they actualy can do (without BS) + great deal of honesty with setbacks. This greatly increased trust of community, obviously. They played with players regulary (at least once per week) participating in event battles as common grunts. This given them unprecendented understanding how game actualy played in practice, not theory, balance, patterns, what is fun/boring etc. Some bright heads in community were allowed to tinker with game to some extent, that produced a lot help. One such enthusiast was so good with tech side of game, they invited him to join team as programmer. Extensive help of community also allowed to produce pretty top notch localizations with 0 costs. Well, they given participants free code copies of game (I was one of translators, so observed all this kitchen a bit from inside).  
Armed with such approch devs grinded way to release with greatly improved product. No chances for that wihout community support/participation. Sure, at the end game still far from perfect and probably never be unversaly known and popular, but it works decently well for niche dedicated community. Product made some modest buck for devs. If not epic win, not a failure too, considering horrible initial odds.
 
This is example of such thing done right in situation with very low resources. 
 
In can be said, that DU is much larger and complex game. True, it need own repecies. But DU also depends on much more complex systems, where well-organized involvent of community even more essential for any degree of success.
 
 
 
 

I'm holding to a hope that NQ-Naunet is here because someone higher up has picked up on the theme of dev communication in so many of these quitting threads. Time will tell if this is real or a show to stem subscriber loss. He's done a good job of bringing people back to the forums for now.  
 
My impression of the dev team has been, that of a programmer led team - which means they do amazing things with code but completely fail to predict what players will do when set loose in their creation. I keep yelling about communication because,  from what I've seen, I don't think this team is capable of balancing all the parts that need to be balanced. 
 
For the short term, if they want this game to stop bleeding subscribers, they need to implement their PVP overhaul and then give us something to fight over.
It doesn't matter what. It could be resources, it could be unique base decorations. It just needs to be something players will want and that most players can get to. 
 
Alternately they could implement NPC enemies to fight - something to threaten bases or ships and provide a new dimension to building.  I know they have said no NPCs but everything should be considered at this point. 
 
As for quitting - I don't want to rekindle the argument here but it was the handling of the  Market 15 heist that was the last straw for me. Naunet's arrival provided a enough hope that I felt like playing a few hours last week but nothing like my activity before. I still think Dual Universe has the potential to be something great so I continue to linger on the forums and watch for some sign that NQ has learned something.  

Please ask this question: Will and when will we get recycling elements & honeycomb to base elements? Will there be a nerfed amount (not 100% of build input vs recycle output)? How will this play with damaged element mechanics on the way?
 
Secondary questions: Are any changes coming that will interfere with currently built stacked L core space elevators? For instance, will stuff built > 1km atmo be limited to tile owner? Will stuff > 1km be vulnerable to attack without considering territory warfare when atmo pvp is turned on?
 
Will there be an API released to let us access ship kill information such as winner(s) and loser, elements/honeycomb lost, POS in game (or something like nearest planet so its not too revealing), orgs each player involved belongs to, etc?

Other questions:
Will we ever get the ability to see the actual color of honeycomb before we buy/make it? Yes there are libraries of them, but will NQ specifically put out this ability?
 
Can you explain if mining efficiency is working as intended and if Territory Scanner results vs actual mega node sizes are sometimes inaccurate by large %'s (1ML vs 4ML as an example)?
 
Elevators are tagged as XS currently. Are there larger elevators coming? Do they have expanded purposes?
 
Lots of players have made dynamic core Doors and Elevators. In general, does NQ plan to add any support for this or in particular add the ability to change element size and shape for things like doors, windows, force fields and/or elevators?
 
Resnode cooldown, will this happen soon? PVP only cooldown?
 
What is something exciting coming that you would like this share which have not yet revealed to players?
 
Rotating engines when/ever?
 
Cockpit glass when?
 
Red or Blue pill?
 

Lol so NQ screwed up on their own RDMS but players broke EULA... mkay...
Move along...