IvanGrozniy

Ahem... and there we have it... blame the players, not the game! Best strategy ever.

I see what you mean. That depends of course...
 
if we're talking pvp meta ships, no, this statement is not true. Those things are really expensive to build. And they are expensive to repair. I'm not sure people comprehend how much mining and man hours it takes to build one of the golden ships from Boo's Gold Armada. I'm not sure people understand how much it takes to repair them after a "battle". No one wants to lose one of those, so pvp battles tend to be more about whoever gets pushed out into the safezone first, battle of attrition. Additionally, if we talk about piracy as an easy win card, it's not like piracy is profitable, it mostly does not exist and the "piracy" you can do is very aids if you ask me, you'll spend more on fuel and waste more time and quanta pirating than if you were digging holes in the ground and selling to bots. I don't think it makes much sense to divide people into pvpers and builders... pvpers are also builders, whereas you're probably talking about a subset of players that are purely builders I'm assuming. PvP builders are just more specifically focused on indy buildings, ship building for pvp, and station building rather than purely builders who want to avoid pvp. Have you looked at the Foundry for example? That is a station built by a pvp group. There are also others, some really fancy. Talents don't matter too much in meta pvp, again it's mostly about ship stamina rather than who can shoot further. Repair talents help though, repair engineers are really important in fights. Smart pvp ship builders make ships that last longer and take more shots.... but they also mine a lot in order to repair.  
 
I see. And I agree. If that's where the conversation headed before I mentioned this was a civilization building game then no comment. If it was the case though... then... I think games should (and they do) take inspiration from real life but they should not mimic real life. And I'm mainly talking about the fact that in real life things are cohesive, there are causes and effects, stuff just doesn't appear out of thin air. In a game, this happens all the time, but it only makes sense if it is cohesive within the world it is trying to build. The cohesion is where I make the parallel between real life and games. I do not like that some games mimic real life where it becomes a second job. In terms of DU and civilization mechanics, this is why I already mentioned elsewhere on this forum that before you set out to make such a game with such "grandiose visions", maybe you should start with first principles and ask what civilization is, what are its characteristics, what are its causes. Once you have the key ingredients, then you think about choosing a few important ones that you can actually gamify and make a cohesive yet fun system out of. And I'm simply saying this never happened. It doesn't feel like it did anyway, since the game exhibits absolutely no civilization building mechanics or progressions. NQ should probably rethink that "vision"  

While I question a lot of answers given in this post, especially the two I posted on above, I do see first signs of some things that are really needed but at the same time it's a shame NQ stops short of actually taking ownership of these and come out clean and clear.
 
Also, the complete absence of anything related to the change in leadership is .. well.. questionable. I'd expect all of this is still up ion the air until the final word comes doen from the investors on the viability for NQ to continue and fresh investment to be made available.
 
 
Yes, it is good to see NQ finally letting go of the 2021 "release". But then you turn right around and set the expectation you are shooting for  a delay of about 6 months. No amount of " this is not a commitment" will stop that expectation from being established. The roadmap is obviously out the window and that is fine as it makes sense to anyone with a brain. NQ can't currently say anything solid as they are still trying to figure out whether they can actually keep going and then how much time they will need to get done what needs to be done. And until then, a new roadmap makes no sense. I mean just say it.. You should know by now your community is perfectly willing to accept reasonable and sensible updates whatever they are as we all see the signs.
 
And  thank you for taking the "no wipe" of the table, even if worded in a very cautious way.. that was needed and is sensible
 
Lastly:
 
 
Do you _really_ need us to tell you what we expect/would like to see here? Frankly, that you even ask tell me you are pretty much oblivious to what is happening on the forums specifically. Maybe if you  replace "communication" with "Engagement with your community".. Does that ring any bells?
 
DU would be a better game and further along if NQ actually took note of so many threads in the forums with some great content, suggestions and ideas. But not ever a beep from NQ, no idea if it is ever seen or taking on board/considered (from the lack of any follow up it appears not) and then we see NQ make mistakes or strange choices that we discussed and suggested for months prior all of which was for nothing and ignored. There was one CM who understood this and tried, she really tried (at least that is the impression we all got and we appreciated her for it) but NQ lost her for whatever reason. And I will leave it at that.
 
 

Constant communication to answer players burning questions is a monumental task that is required at any time during the release cycle, even if that answer is reiterating “We [NQ] don’t know yet”.  So keep up the great comms @NQ-Naerais !
 
On another note, if the dreaded schematics arn’t banished back to the pits of hell that spawned them, players should be able to create them... though science!

A lot of people have built a lot of cities, the problem is.... they are useless. And they are namely useless because they are not necessary. As long as DU remains a game where a stronghold / city is not necessary, it is not a civilization building game.
 
Civilization doesn't just come out of nowhere, there are some very important selective pressures that generate civilization: geography, weather, environment, neighboring tribes... war, scarcity, uneven resource distribution, etc etc... None of this is in the game. Placing higher tier ores on different planets is a bit of a lazy way of doing things, but so far that's the only attempt at a civilization driving factor, even that is done poorly. There is no danger at all, apart from game bugs or someone too asleep at the pilot seat to realize they're about to smack into a planet.
Cities don't just appear, there is a process by which they did appear out of necessity and natural growth. Just because someone placed a few constructs on the ground with fancy voxels and lua doesn't make it into a city. Empty museum, sure, not a city though. Moscow was not built as Moscow... it was an intersection of war and trade paths that necessitated a trade hub and then grew into a stronghold and then into a sprawling city, again, by natural necessity. The result of years and years of strife and trade was a bustling city with input and output, supply lines and social hierarchies and distribution etc etc.. Driving factors. Selective pressures... they don't exist in DU. It's mostly rp and rich players making "plans" and building empty voxel museums.

You would think that if the visionary scientist would have set out to build a civilization building game maybe he'd start off with first principles and ask questions like: what is civilization? what factors cause it? What are its characteristics? And when these questions are answered, maybe the important / realistic causes / characteristics can be picked out and gamified into a coherent system. Something screams at me that this process never happened. It was.... oui... cities.. civilization.... lessss goooo sacrebleu! More than 20 million dollars later we have what we have.
 
Fundamentally DU is a tech demo purported as a game because it's treated like a game (payed subs). There are expectations of a game that is treated as a game, especially when people are paying for it.... meanwhile still a tech demo. As far as I see it, the premise of this 50 concurrent player quota single shard mmo mining simulator is that its vision will be accomplished when there is a player generated city bustling with players, with supply lines constantly feeding it, and top tier production exported as product for the general population to use, organizational and governmental structures, etc. If DU can actually achieve that, it would be a good score. Perhaps it can't and the devs will hire level designers to "build" cities for the remaining playerbase. But at that point you can't call this game a "player-generated" content game... you'd have to clean out and erase a lot of marketing and the whole premise of the kickstarter.

All this to say, pvp is necessary as a driving force for civilization generation  Along with geographical differences that matter... along with weather... along with horny T-Rexes roaming the jungles of Alioth and eating innocent virgins...

Ahem... and there we have it... blame the players, not the game! Best strategy ever.

what would be nice is a dense asteroid field AND player made markets..... so that someone could plop down a space trade hub sorta near the field.

Seriously NQ, can we have those T-Rexes please?

I like to underscore this whenever I see it because it is true for any building game with claims that players can build cities. The ancient relic that is Terraria is more of a city builder than most because you have to house a few NPCs. 
 
Clever distribution of resources could bring groups of players together so they take different roles within the chain of production and distribution.  This will get us closer to cities though the end result will be more like interconnected factories within shared fortifications.  True cities will require some kind of NPC presence even if those are only background props that reflect the economy of the area they are connected to.   
 
More to the point of the thread.  PVP is the best way to motivate players to band together and the best way to drive an economy that gives those bands something to work toward and fight for. 
 
Should the game survive and keep going some years I would love to see different kinds of settlements emerge - High population centers - good for research and general goods production and then more frontier type settlements that could be wiped out in wars. 

A lot of people have built a lot of cities, the problem is.... they are useless. And they are namely useless because they are not necessary. As long as DU remains a game where a stronghold / city is not necessary, it is not a civilization building game.
 
Civilization doesn't just come out of nowhere, there are some very important selective pressures that generate civilization: geography, weather, environment, neighboring tribes... war, scarcity, uneven resource distribution, etc etc... None of this is in the game. Placing higher tier ores on different planets is a bit of a lazy way of doing things, but so far that's the only attempt at a civilization driving factor, even that is done poorly. There is no danger at all, apart from game bugs or someone too asleep at the pilot seat to realize they're about to smack into a planet.
Cities don't just appear, there is a process by which they did appear out of necessity and natural growth. Just because someone placed a few constructs on the ground with fancy voxels and lua doesn't make it into a city. Empty museum, sure, not a city though. Moscow was not built as Moscow... it was an intersection of war and trade paths that necessitated a trade hub and then grew into a stronghold and then into a sprawling city, again, by natural necessity. The result of years and years of strife and trade was a bustling city with input and output, supply lines and social hierarchies and distribution etc etc.. Driving factors. Selective pressures... they don't exist in DU. It's mostly rp and rich players making "plans" and building empty voxel museums.

You would think that if the visionary scientist would have set out to build a civilization building game maybe he'd start off with first principles and ask questions like: what is civilization? what factors cause it? What are its characteristics? And when these questions are answered, maybe the important / realistic causes / characteristics can be picked out and gamified into a coherent system. Something screams at me that this process never happened. It was.... oui... cities.. civilization.... lessss goooo sacrebleu! More than 20 million dollars later we have what we have.
 
Fundamentally DU is a tech demo purported as a game because it's treated like a game (payed subs). There are expectations of a game that is treated as a game, especially when people are paying for it.... meanwhile still a tech demo. As far as I see it, the premise of this 50 concurrent player quota single shard mmo mining simulator is that its vision will be accomplished when there is a player generated city bustling with players, with supply lines constantly feeding it, and top tier production exported as product for the general population to use, organizational and governmental structures, etc. If DU can actually achieve that, it would be a good score. Perhaps it can't and the devs will hire level designers to "build" cities for the remaining playerbase. But at that point you can't call this game a "player-generated" content game... you'd have to clean out and erase a lot of marketing and the whole premise of the kickstarter.

All this to say, pvp is necessary as a driving force for civilization generation  Along with geographical differences that matter... along with weather... along with horny T-Rexes roaming the jungles of Alioth and eating innocent virgins...

Slightly off topic but Im still heavily of the opinion that every NQ market should be deleted and replaced with player markets. Then limit the number of public player markets per planet so that way they become conflict drivers. Im sure theres something you could do with the safezone markets as well to make them competitive. 
 
Setzar is correct. Just follow Setzar. 

what would be nice is a dense asteroid field AND player made markets..... so that someone could plop down a space trade hub sorta near the field.

A lot of people have built a lot of cities, the problem is.... they are useless. And they are namely useless because they are not necessary. As long as DU remains a game where a stronghold / city is not necessary, it is not a civilization building game.
 
Civilization doesn't just come out of nowhere, there are some very important selective pressures that generate civilization: geography, weather, environment, neighboring tribes... war, scarcity, uneven resource distribution, etc etc... None of this is in the game. Placing higher tier ores on different planets is a bit of a lazy way of doing things, but so far that's the only attempt at a civilization driving factor, even that is done poorly. There is no danger at all, apart from game bugs or someone too asleep at the pilot seat to realize they're about to smack into a planet.
Cities don't just appear, there is a process by which they did appear out of necessity and natural growth. Just because someone placed a few constructs on the ground with fancy voxels and lua doesn't make it into a city. Empty museum, sure, not a city though. Moscow was not built as Moscow... it was an intersection of war and trade paths that necessitated a trade hub and then grew into a stronghold and then into a sprawling city, again, by natural necessity. The result of years and years of strife and trade was a bustling city with input and output, supply lines and social hierarchies and distribution etc etc.. Driving factors. Selective pressures... they don't exist in DU. It's mostly rp and rich players making "plans" and building empty voxel museums.

You would think that if the visionary scientist would have set out to build a civilization building game maybe he'd start off with first principles and ask questions like: what is civilization? what factors cause it? What are its characteristics? And when these questions are answered, maybe the important / realistic causes / characteristics can be picked out and gamified into a coherent system. Something screams at me that this process never happened. It was.... oui... cities.. civilization.... lessss goooo sacrebleu! More than 20 million dollars later we have what we have.
 
Fundamentally DU is a tech demo purported as a game because it's treated like a game (payed subs). There are expectations of a game that is treated as a game, especially when people are paying for it.... meanwhile still a tech demo. As far as I see it, the premise of this 50 concurrent player quota single shard mmo mining simulator is that its vision will be accomplished when there is a player generated city bustling with players, with supply lines constantly feeding it, and top tier production exported as product for the general population to use, organizational and governmental structures, etc. If DU can actually achieve that, it would be a good score. Perhaps it can't and the devs will hire level designers to "build" cities for the remaining playerbase. But at that point you can't call this game a "player-generated" content game... you'd have to clean out and erase a lot of marketing and the whole premise of the kickstarter.

All this to say, pvp is necessary as a driving force for civilization generation  Along with geographical differences that matter... along with weather... along with horny T-Rexes roaming the jungles of Alioth and eating innocent virgins...

If they don't stick to their original promise here then many many players will be out.
 
Thats why there are safezones. That's why you shouldn't be in the ffa Zone if you arent prepared to lose stuff. Dont really see how this doesn't work. With the right mechanics and a good and well prepared devteam.....oh, I see the problem now 

Coherent UI has databinding... But I doubt they'll go there... currently the html is redrawn every frame / tick, that is of course costly if there's a lot of it. Databinding allows the html dom to stay in memory and only redraw values that change. That's one of Coherent UI's powerful features that isn't being used. Of course you'll get bad performance redrawing the whole DOM all the time.

Could be. They did use TW in conjunction with space to feel the ground so to speak (pun intended). Nonetheless TW is delayed, AvA is delayed (not even happening ever I expect). Did they just realize that building an mmo on cloud flare is expensive?)
 
 
In terms of PvP idk... it's so broken that adding more systems to it will only increase bugs. If your baseline combat system is not smooth and, most of all, fun, then adding stuff to it won't make it fun either, only more tedious imho. When a rifle is trash adding fancy scopes, lasers, and pink guerrilla camo skins to it may deceive the average newb but it won't improve the rifle.

Lol Snipey... 
 
It's like you woke up, put on a left sock, got an alarm that the Staff of Wisdom struck again, and just ranted some crazy nonsense no doubt connected to your dreams of Blazemonger terrorizing you witb chopsticks and voxel checkerboard... and then you went to have a smoke on the balcony and realized you were butt naked.

Lol Snipey... 
 
It's like you woke up, put on a left sock, got an alarm that the Staff of Wisdom struck again, and just ranted some crazy nonsense no doubt connected to your dreams of Blazemonger terrorizing you witb chopsticks and voxel checkerboard... and then you went to have a smoke on the balcony and realized you were butt naked.

Lol Snipey... 
 
It's like you woke up, put on a left sock, got an alarm that the Staff of Wisdom struck again, and just ranted some crazy nonsense no doubt connected to your dreams of Blazemonger terrorizing you witb chopsticks and voxel checkerboard... and then you went to have a smoke on the balcony and realized you were butt naked.

Game will be better eventualy, sure, to level of quite (solo/coop) enjoyable bastard of Landmark and space simulator with some pvp for entusiasts. Yet bigger train of initial ambition likely missed forever.
 
I wanted to be wannabe journalist in dynamic, war-torn eve-like world, but ended up on some used cars shitty catalogue dump with all this amazing creations and impossibly boring nerds. 

About a year ago I fell in love with DU's tech and the promise. Launched my organization (DIA) with the beta. I have grown it to a relevant proportion. I then left the game due to what's basically a lack of content. This devblog series does not rekindle my hopes for the game. Here is what I think about the game's current state and my open letter to NQ and response to the devblogs.
 
Is DU a Tech Demo, a Beta, or a Full Launch?
 
Dear NQ,
 
A fundamental thing about why this game is losing so much momentum is you calling a tech demo a beta, then expecting players to actually play it like a fully launched game.
 
From a game mechanics perspective, Dual Universe is a tech demo. The only sustainably enjoyable and interesting gameplay has been construct building. Most playstyles this game should have been featuring are out of balance, boring, or nonexistent. Player support is a nightmare. The game regularly experiences bugs and exploits most of which affect the universe and enjoyment of all players, not just the ones who interact with the bugs.
 
From the your official perspective, DU is a beta, because you wanted to be able to charge the players for the game, yet make drastic changes to the game without angering the playerbase.
 
But from the player perspective, DU is a fully launched game, because you are letting players accumulate wealth, experiences, organizational structures; and carry it over to the actual launch. Let me explain why this matters so much.
 
Why Would People Play DU?
 
Your failure to recognize the fact that this game isn't a beta for the player showcases a fundamental lack of appreciation on why people play single shard sandbox games. People do not and will not play DU for the immediate experiences of mining, building, industry, ship flying, or PvP.  Your main problem isn't the immediate "gameplay loops" that the players are put into. These are not the primarily outstanding features of DU gameplay. There are much better games out there for each. I could play Star Citizen or Elite Dangerous if I was super into spaceship flying. I could play Satisfactory for a way better version of DU's experience of industry. Literally any game has better PvP than DU. 
 
[I exclude construct building from the above list of activities as it is pretty high level compared to games of similar nature, such as Minecraft. And guess what; it's your most time-invested and early-developed feature.]
 
We are early adopters of this game, because we want to play a game which we don't just log in and do our favorite activities, but we also want a game in which doing these activities matter in the context of the greater sandbox universe. The ore I collect could fuel a war. The PvP I do could save or collapse an organization. The ship or LUA I designed can be adopted by thousands of players, ultimately be used to tremendous ends. The factories I build could be the backbone of my space empire. We are here waiting for this emergent content to emerge. We are want to get ahead, be relevant, be famous, be helpful in our different ways in this universe. We want to be a part of something greater. That's what a single shard sandbox is about. The fact that whatever you are doing matters in a greater scheme of things, is why we are playing this game. This is also why game changes, exploits, lack of support and lack of content matters so much.
 
The Frustrations
 
We cared about playing in the context of a greater, living universe. So we sucked up the broken mechanics and the lack of content, and started seriously investing our time in DU. This is because if we didn't, we'd have fallen behind. In other words, we had no choice but to treat this game as a full launch in our time investment decision, because otherwise we'd be punished with respect to why we are playing the game. You basically forced yourself into a position which you constantly frustrate players, because you gave them a tech demo but pushed them to play as if it was a full game. Let me elaborate on concrete examples.
 
The vast majority of specific frustration cases in DU can be categorized into three.
 
Firstly, there are game design changes that invalidate people's hours. The industry patch, screen updates, and every other perhaps much-needed change that would invalidate hundreds of hours of people's time. Now since the game is mechanically a tech demo, you want to be able to make drastic changes. But since people play it as a fully launched game, they commit their full selves and do become frustrated when major changes that are very much necessary invalidate hundreds of hours of their time.
 
Secondly, there are bugs, exploits, and lack of support. People derived truckloads of money and benefits off them (e.g. the blueprint market bug, the initial T4-T5 bot ore purchases, old broken industry, and lots more). People who didn't get support fell behind (even in DIA we lost a warp beacon, and we didn't have DRM ownership of our factories due to the lack of support). These exploits and broken gameplay elements aren't things that you can shrug off when you fix them, because their repercussions in the DU universe (aka the illegitimate wealth people acquired, etc.) carry over even into the actual launch. And you didn't (in most cases couldn't) address that in most cases. You didn't remove the profits earned by the exploiters of the blueprint bot order fiasco, for example. When players earn billions off bugs and exploits, that makes the rest of us who has to do legitimate work to earn that income invalidated. That's game-breaking, because again, most of our enjoyment of DU derives from our activities in the context of the greater DU universe than just the activities themselves. Again, you launched a tech demo in which you didn't have the manpower to do cleanups (e.g. deleting the income) after exploits, and players playing it as a full game pay the price.
 
Thirdly, there is the lack of content because the game is underdeveloped. The path from a tech demo to boredom is pretty self explanatory with this category of frustration.
 
The truth is many players wouldn't have invested that much time and effort in trying to do things that matter in this sandbox, if the game reset once it's properly launched at an acceptable quality. And no, it obviously isn't enough to argue that "players knew that they were going into a beta" because you committed to not wiping the game, including designs. Because, again, people mainly play DU to matter and to be relevant in a universe, and you left them a choice of either falling behind of that goal, or playing a semi-working tech demo.
 
Emergent Content
 
The second big picture issue I see with your decisions is about your views and predictions of how emergent content emerges. Emergent content does not emerge unless the game creates the right conditions for it to emerge. The lack of conflict and content driving mechanics mostly made it impossible for it emerge in DU.
 
[I am saying "mostly", because the one playstyle which is an exception to this is construct building. Great construct creations (although only in looks, not as much in functionality) are the only emergent content this game provides so far. And guess what, the content around this playstyle (ships, stations, expos) are the only thing NQ Twitter can mention daily.]
 
For even a beta, DU should have emerged as many stories in war, piracy, theft, great empires, great trade deals, and so on. These are the kinds of things Eve players should be familiar with. The fact of the matter is that for any other single player experience, there is a better game. But for the emergent sandbox-wide content, DU could have been the best game. Meanwhile, we got JC's "puzzles" which were badly envisioned attempts to generate that content. They were one-time events generating one-time content. They were pretty exclusive in terms of the ratio of DU players engaging with it. They were probably a waste of your devtime. An elaborate "puzzle" is an example of how not to introduce emergent content to your sandbox. True sandbox content is typically unintended, unplanned. 
 
Here are some immediate choke points on the game design which makes it non-conducive to emergent content.
 
Industry: All processes in DU leading up to construct building are fully vertically-integrateable solo (if not with a small organization). If you have 10 people, no reason to not to everything in-house. The game should have been designed from very early on in a way which deep specializations are needed to prevent self-sufficiency. Instead, your "gameplay loop" and "DU shouldn't feel like work" worries pushes you to introduce even more self-sufficiency (aka mining units). In a true sandbox people who don't want to mine would have other opportunities of value generation to buy the ore. Moreover, this is a bad case of "listening to players". Most players have no idea what makes an overall high quality sandbox. A builder will just want free materials to build. That doesn't mean that's a good implementation for a sandbox MMO.
 
Trade: JC's allergy to API, ESI and such removes huge depth from trading for the sake of trading.
 
Organization-Building: There is no value organizations can provide to members which they couldn't have gotten elsewhere. There is no service and value-generator members couldn't have gotten elsewhere unless they join. And inversely, there is no reason why members should pay "taxes" or invest in their organizations. Thus, there is no point in creating a deeply structured organization. Anything can be done better as 1 or 2 dedicated players, without all the hassle of people management.
 
Consensual PvP:  There is no structure in which players can find PvP. Solo PvP isn't even viable (at least to most who don't use remote controllers) when 2 players can man an L core that can one-shot your ship. It is a huge deal-breaker for a sandbox game if one can't hop on their ship and find daily PvP at their small time window. Frankly I don't see how you will be able to circumvent this problem in the next year or years. The devblog certainly does not provide an answer here.
 
Organizational PvP: Can be summed up as "nothing to fight over". Even if you introduce territory warfare, huge mining and resource distributions revamps will ne required to make territories worth fighting over.
 
Non-Consensual and Asymmetric PvP: Piracy is near-impossible because avoiding potential pirates is easy. There is no mechanical depth to generate a meaningful risk/reward space in which some players die to pirates, but not in a game-disabling fashion. Similarly, there are no asymmetric (big org vs. small org) opportunities for the same lack of depth. 
 
No PvE Content:  You don't seem to have money for any.
 
No Exploration Content: You don't seem to have interest for much. One can do construct and planet exploration, but it gets old pretty fast without any reward. Moreover, exploration gameplay was a very low hanging fruit to generate right at the beta launch. Just sprinkle some exclusive rewards in a manner which someone roaming regularly would find these rewards at least once half an hour (and this is how you botched shipwrecks).
 
The Trajectory of the Game and DU as an Ecosystem
 
Reading the devblog does not excite me about the future of the game and on whether you learned meaningful lessons. Emergent content will not emerge unless you begin thinking about Dual Universe as an ecosystem. In a single shard sandbox, playstyles and activities should be interconnected in an ecosystem of relations. Yes, you do seem to realize that there is a lack of content, conflict driving mechanics, and more "sand in the sandbox". You don't however, seem to appreciate the role this interconnectedness plays in generating content. 
 
For example, you want to implement space mining, but you don't think about the demand-side. Ore itself is only valuable if there is demand for it. The lack of PvP losses, the availability of ore in safe-zone players, in the market, and in people's long term stashes won't make ore worth fighting over. So you need new things with demand. And even when you meet this challenge, you have to solve the n+1 problem. For players, the optimized way of engaging with big-reward mechanics is creating consortiums and monopolies. Good conflict drivers involve inherent game designs against these. There is nothing for example, that yields advantages to smaller fleets of ships over larger fleets in DU PvP. This example illustrates how sandbox conflict drivers are supposed to be grounded on mindful and deep PvP mechanics, as well as meaningful balance of risk/reward to drive the conflict and the fun. It is unfortunately predictable that you will put some ore (or new items) to PvP space, and wait for people to sustainably fight over them, which won't happen. The nature of the reward and the nature of the PvP to obtain the reward are as much inherent to content emergence as the placement of the reward.
 
I have a pessimist prediction, because any earlier game design decisions involving ore distribution to planets and hexes, territory scanning, bot orders, industry flows, etc; indicate a similar lack in conceiving Dual Universe as a single interconnected ecosystem. Earlier decisions could have easily generated a more meaningful distribution of value to territories (the most valuable hex is cleared in a day, which is also connected to mining mechanics), things to fight over (if we would have construct PvP on asteroids, there is no reason why we didn't have construct PvP on some planets), exploration (for example, it's not costly to add 10 valuable NPC ships with sub-par AI at a given time to orbits of planets), and so on. Similarly, some future plans show the same lack of appreciation to DU as an ecosystem; such as mining units which will predictably devalue mining by underestimating how much effort players (and botters/RMT'ers) would spend to create big passive income setups.
 
Overall this all just feels like different teams at NQ are given different aspects of the game and they are all implementing their individual designs. There is no wider orchestration from upper level game designers and producers who truly can conceive DU as an ecosystem, and who can appreciate the interconnectedness different systems in the game should exhibit. JC looks like a person who has a great big picture vision, who wants his metaverse, but who does not have the necessary specific visions and approaches to sandbox/ecosystemic game design and development to get there.
 
DU's Project Management and Finances
 
As a final remark, it seems that most of this "lack of content" and the launch decisions could be due to high level decision-making for financial or technological reasons. Perhaps you heavily needed the subscription revenue. Or you needed players to truly commit to the game so you can test the tech. Even if so, the plan seems to have failed. The people who pitched the game to investors should have conducted better expectation management and better financial/business planning. 
 
I am speculating JC was put on the bench for related reasons. If so, then that's perhaps a good call depending on who replaces him. If this is the most you could deliver given the money you have, I don't see how using the same money better would have delivered a timely product. The game might have just needed more money and several years more of development to reach a workable design and launch track. If so, then the responsibility is with those who planned DU and NQ as a business and project model.
 
That said, I hope the investors keep up with it, because I think the initial promise of the game (provided good future game design) is pretty sound. It might need two years more development and a bigger team though.
 
I'll keep following how the game progresses and I hope it succeeds. I don't find the money I spent on it a waste as I already played hundreds of hours.
 
o7
 
EDIT: Corrected some grammar and sentencing.

One of the worst looking ships I've ever seen. 

People lost all their container contents due to an exploit being used.. NQ did nothing, the response was mostly "too bad and we're sorry but nothing we can do"
People has their landed ships maneuvered and docked, then flown to PVP space and destroyed for loot.. NQ did nothing for those players, they just fabricated a change in process which in turn impacted a lot of players
People fly their ships to markets, lag out and crash, respawning far away from the ship. NQ advises them to find someone to help hem recover it
 
A member of a "high profile" org is dumb enough to not have a backup of code he is working on and NQ goes out of their way to get his code back. You have the same issue tomorrow and NQ's response will be "nothing we can do".
 
 
The problem for me is not so much that NQ acted in this case, it is that they act in an inconsistent manner seemingly using different measures for different players.

Large core Armoured Super-Freighter will be up for sale soon within the next week!
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Purpose-built space only Armoured Freighter, with a strong focus on secure transport.
Tired of berating greifers in discord? Aboard the Eye of Apathy, oppression becomes but a mere bugsplat on the windscreen.
If you think you wouldn't need an armoured freighter, you probably wouldn't need your cargo.
Specialising in high value transport, among other creative uses.
Lightly equipped with 4 L railguns for any necessary minor deterrence.
 
Visit the craft yourself, at APATHY VR.
 
Dry Weight: 10 KT
Forward Thrust: 612 MN
Brake Force: 510 MN
S sized rear dock for atmo shuttles/haulers
Cargo Capacity: 15,360 KL
Containers: 80 / 8 hubs
 
All elements have maximum placement talents
Containers and fuel containers all have -25% mass reduction.
 
Coming to the market soon™!
 
 

Hows that exaggerated when ppl post about lags in pvp with some constructs? And they literally need to "download" the damage? Or when I load my surroundings for 20min? 
 
Because it isn't. And NQ clearly have little experience with MMOs and how ppl use the systems and mechanics in place hence why others with more xp would certainly do better
 
Yup, I god damn feel that 
 
Not the guy for positivity, never was. Thats something for others, not me. Never wanted to be an ambassador of du nor is it my goal to get anyone playing the game. I just tell ppl how it is to play, how performance is and how mechanics are. And all of that was pretty bad the last 2 years and nothing really improved - still loading stuff for minutes, still lags, still very bad UI with basic functionality missing. So yeah, newbros deserve to know that too, if they leave because of that and can't handle a random guy on some forum then it's maybe best they don't play a mmo
 
Can see it but don't agree on anything you said. Ymmv 
 
Also, maybe quote ppl next time xD didn't see my first post and meant my second one with my statement, but hey. Still disagree