Bazzy_505

The only point to playing is to throw money at NQ so they can spend it elsewhere 🤷‍♂️  Not exactly the most honest way to run a studio, but I guess that's how they approach PR in general. 
 
As for their other project, here's what their CEO posted a few hours ago:
 

 
NQ's higher ups don't view DU the same as players.
 
To them, it's still a stroke of genius and all about "breaking boundaries" and innovation. This is how web3/crypto people think, though -- they don't care about use case or implementation or game design or anything else that exists in the real world. These sorts can't distinguish between "innovative" and "good" -- novelty isn't always intelligent. 
 
This general lack of humility is why NQ's next venture will turn out no different than their previous one. They still don't understand why game design matters more than tech or innovation...and it's shocking to me that they'd actually work on another game with this mindset, having learned nothing from the last 8 years of failure. 
 
If all you can see is how great you are, you'll never learn from past mistakes -- and NQ has shown over and over that they don't learn from past mistakes. 

There is A LOT that went wrong. But the fundamental problem has always been communication.
 
Here is what NQ said during the kickstarter.

 
But as we all know, this lasted only a short time before they went the complete other way and started to ignore the community instead.
And remember this was back when the community was under NDA restrictions and played with the sole purpose of testing and giving feedback on early game play no less!
 
And NQ was never able to receive constructive criticism. If you played the cheerleader and told NQ how great they where, they would interact and be all smiles and thumbs up. But any type of constructive criticism or legitimate concerns with the game design and it would be radio silence or at best some boilerplate  "don't worry guys" and "we know best" type of answer. And when things would boil over and the entire community would rage, we would get some "we hear you" type of deal with promises to do better. All promises that where broken over and over again..
 
And that is why the community turned toxic against NQ, and things are the way they are today.
And it is basic math really. When testers are telling you that things aren't working, but you ignore them and keep doing the same things. Then chances are that you will fail.
 

not good at all.
 
like others pointed before me, the difference between fantasy and science fiction is that fantasy, as genre, is for the most part, free of any constrains ; with author pretty much free to think up whatever plot device he deems necessarity to support the narrative, be it a telekinetic priest, flying elephant or whistling shrimp, it's all a fair game.
By comparison science fiction, by definition strives to interpolate possible future events, technologies and context based on current knowledge and trends; even if it is acceptable to do so  with ample dose imagination.  In this respect science fiction is very much in line with futurism.
 
Dual Universe, is very inconsistent and arbitrary its tech. There really no coherent vision of anything. Even on visual side, ( while there should definately be some flash and flair to make things look great) it can't even get the basic engine shape or plumes to resemble anything that makes remote sense. 
 
DU has this short tired ol , we trashed the planet so we got on the ship to find a new one.  there's really no world building there, no real back story, and quite frankly no context or backstory to build any story on,  science fiction or otherwise.   For all means and purposes DU is just about being a tech demo, very interesting one, but just a demo

Let's be honest here, DU never really stepped out of Landmark's shadow, with only exception being VPT.  And that shadow wasn't even that long considering that besides voxelmancers, nobody really even took notice it ever existing.
 
And when it comes so called "web 3.0" it is little more then bunch of irrelevant academics riding the current facebook meta shtick, The reality of it all is that after years of wasting billions Facebook has very little to show for it and in light of falling revenue has been cutting staff and funding left and right, particularly in their metaverve bits.  It did not even manage to match Second Life-s feature set and that was at the time touted as "web 2.0".  Back in 2007-2009 a lot of big corps rushed into SL to build their presence in the "next big thing"  and were mostly gone 2 years later and SL returned to its previous size and scope of catering mostly to creatives and sims online crowd that has found new home ther after EA shut the service down.
 
Second life really does fair job at what its name says, to many it offers a chance to live an alternative lives unbound from harsh realities of their "real" life circumstances. But it has always come with caveats.  Having a presence in SL can run you into hundreds in monthly fees to own your dream virtual land and hourse and plants;  into thousands when you're a creative building an experience for others to enjoy within its ecosystem.  Moreover it still requires  relative expensive hardware to have a decent experience inworld.
 
And hence the problem,  web 2.0  never really solved the hight barrier to entry to take part in, nor did it ( for the most part) offer general performance sufficient to really gamify the in world experience enough for mom and pops dropping their plants vs zombies on the phone and dive neck deep into their virtual lives.  As a result it quietly flizzled out and second life/active worlds and few others  returned to player populations they have had in years prior to the whole media frenzy.
 
So called facebook's web 3.0 doesn't even have that media frenzy behind it, barriers to entry are pretty much the same and user experience  shallower than 15 years prior.  Voxels are not exactly an important part of the equation here.  Voxels are a very old tech first showcased On Siggraph in late 80's. While i find working with them in game an interesting challenge, they do not really make creative process particularly more accessible for Joe Average, they don't scale particularly well and certainly don't offer more immerive user experience. It's just pixel art in 3d.
 
I'm sure there are few people of the sort listed in that NQ post who will make a nice buck "consulting" and land a few gigs speaking on dev panels, but that is far as it goes.  You can certainly make a career of spinning that water in the bucket but it's certainly not the next digital revolution, not unless it will work on joe's 250 buck laptop and using it is not as simple as playing with a lump of clay.

the noticing part was was about landmark, as for DU, more than a few EVE players noticed, hoping for the sort of experience with bit more tinkering and creative edge to it,  we tried it, discussed it death for years on forums and discord but most of us just  shugged and moved on.

Ahhh, DU the game meant for a million but designed for a dozen. 

Let's be honest here, DU never really stepped out of Landmark's shadow, with only exception being VPT.  And that shadow wasn't even that long considering that besides voxelmancers, nobody really even took notice it ever existing.
 
And when it comes so called "web 3.0" it is little more then bunch of irrelevant academics riding the current facebook meta shtick, The reality of it all is that after years of wasting billions Facebook has very little to show for it and in light of falling revenue has been cutting staff and funding left and right, particularly in their metaverve bits.  It did not even manage to match Second Life-s feature set and that was at the time touted as "web 2.0".  Back in 2007-2009 a lot of big corps rushed into SL to build their presence in the "next big thing"  and were mostly gone 2 years later and SL returned to its previous size and scope of catering mostly to creatives and sims online crowd that has found new home ther after EA shut the service down.
 
Second life really does fair job at what its name says, to many it offers a chance to live an alternative lives unbound from harsh realities of their "real" life circumstances. But it has always come with caveats.  Having a presence in SL can run you into hundreds in monthly fees to own your dream virtual land and hourse and plants;  into thousands when you're a creative building an experience for others to enjoy within its ecosystem.  Moreover it still requires  relative expensive hardware to have a decent experience inworld.
 
And hence the problem,  web 2.0  never really solved the hight barrier to entry to take part in, nor did it ( for the most part) offer general performance sufficient to really gamify the in world experience enough for mom and pops dropping their plants vs zombies on the phone and dive neck deep into their virtual lives.  As a result it quietly flizzled out and second life/active worlds and few others  returned to player populations they have had in years prior to the whole media frenzy.
 
So called facebook's web 3.0 doesn't even have that media frenzy behind it, barriers to entry are pretty much the same and user experience  shallower than 15 years prior.  Voxels are not exactly an important part of the equation here.  Voxels are a very old tech first showcased On Siggraph in late 80's. While i find working with them in game an interesting challenge, they do not really make creative process particularly more accessible for Joe Average, they don't scale particularly well and certainly don't offer more immerive user experience. It's just pixel art in 3d.
 
I'm sure there are few people of the sort listed in that NQ post who will make a nice buck "consulting" and land a few gigs speaking on dev panels, but that is far as it goes.  You can certainly make a career of spinning that water in the bucket but it's certainly not the next digital revolution, not unless it will work on joe's 250 buck laptop and using it is not as simple as playing with a lump of clay.

Which basically is a remake of what had already been done previously in Landmark. Take a look at this 8 year old video..
 
 

Imma comment on this one, it's my namesake! DU was better in Beta, minus some small QoL changes. I'm glad I at least got to play the suppirior version of it before release, even if it had its issues it wasn't nearly this time gated/grindy to start and was easier to establish yourself.
 
Plus DU has better support response times and was cheaper in Beta with... more planets. Better mining rates. Even roid mining was a bit better because of respawns every weekend... they did no real balancing of the game before release... and it shows. 
 
If Empyrion had DU's voxel(it does, just not as detailed) tech and larger server size it'd be pretty much be what DU promised to be... at a one time buy in price. Playing both at DU launch and... kept feeling like I was playing what DU was attempting to do. Even the start with the landers are nearly the same. 
 
Fun part? I bought empyrion year+ ago for $15, it added a bunch of features and updates(still active development, arguably faster paced than NQ dev team) 
 
Funny enough the industry in that game is more like what DU announced for kickstarter, using factory units without the need for tooons of machines. Can even have your factory make the parts/deploy a blueprint of a ship/base That can take hours for it to manufacture all the parts. So many free BP's on steam workshop. 
 
So you started singleplayer? Well you can spool up the save on a dedicated private
Server and build a community as others have and even charge access to via patreon. Putting the server owner in control of their game world. 
 
Every feature DU has, arguably Emperyion has and soooo much more. 
 
Need quick ore? Use a mining hover vehicle with drills on it to mine underground like DU used to have, but you can hand mine them or use constructor blocks. Want to automine? Its there!  Asteroids?! Takes a few minutes to find one... although you can go hunting for rich roid spots in a near limitless amounts of solar systems to explore... that have game related POI's to find and explore. 
 
 
My eyes are wide open after trying the latest version of Empyriom during DU's launch. 

Are you guys ( and girls of course ) asking for consistency ? Seriously ? Are you asking for stuff that makes sense ? Wrong game ...

They killed planetary mining to save their servers. Asteroid mining is just the dregs of that system tossed back in with some additional "Good for PvP" sauce and reheated.
 
And planetary mining killed their servers because of deep flaws in the game/server mesh architecture that will continue to hinder the development of the game.

UPDATE
Given a conversation with NQ this weekend and expected rule clarifications next week (not sure which way, just clarified rules) I plan to continue playing for the moment. This might end up being like when you plan to quit a job, you are offered some so you stay, and you end up quitting 6 months later, but we will see. I honestly do want DU to work out, I didnt put 2 years of coding into it because I want it to fail. When you have a game with GM enforced rules, they must be clear and they must be enforced, especially in PvE areas where all other players have no recourse. If we had territory warfare and could have dealt with this on our own, it would be a totally separate situation. Anyway, ArchHUD will be maintained and continue to be improved for now (as much as I was ever able to improve it).
 
 
 
It is with some amount of deep regret that I say goodbye to DU.
 
I have tried to support the game, beyond ArchHUD, but NQ's attitude to blatant griefing is just too much.
 
This is not how you help a game grow.  We all know there are lots of issues, but I was hoping that the wipe and release would be a nice fresh start.
 
I want to thank everyone who has supported ArchHUD (and ButtonHud before that) and who have provided support and kind words over the 2 years.
 
I hated the fact we have T1 bots buying ore injecting unlimited quanta into the economy (why should coal be worth anything if no player willing to pay for it).
I hated there are bots selling elements (takes way player market niche setting ceiling prices)
I hated the fact that there is no decay of elements (life count is bugged, nothing on my ship goes below 2 lives left, and of course static elements never run out).
I hated that we didnt get Territory Warfare (original promise)
I hated that their solution to pvp problems was a stupid floor max speed no matter mass of ship.  (And floor burn speed no matter size of ship).
 
I was willing to overlook it, and hope they would make the game better, but ....
 
I cannot continue supporting a game where the dev's ignore blatant griefing and refuse to enforce their own rules.  (see below post).
 
So I am done.  I wish you all well, and will see you around the pond.
 
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
 
Archaegeo
 
(Regarding ArchHUD - I will leave it up for the time being.  I will not be providing support for it though going forward.  There are many who will, and someone might pick up the mantel).
 
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The problem with this analogy is that i honestly don't care if NQ "survives" if they can't fulfill their end of a transaction that we entered into.
 
It's sort of like if i walked up to a Lemonade stand and ordered a glass of Lemonade and they were like "Ok coming right up" and then took my money.
 
And then after considering the cost of lemons, and sugar, and the labor it would require to juice the lemons.  They came back and said
 
"Oh boy we're so sorry but our business just couldn't survive if we made you a glass of lemonade, so here's a nice glass of water instead.  Now could you please step aside so we can sell some lemonade to the next person in line.
 
I get it that it's more profitable for NQ to launch the game again, but what about the launch that i already paid for?
 

Agreed.
 
The reasons for the wipe are so vague:
- They want to do another terrain reset, fine, no reason not to give the promised 'magic BPs' or just reset the terrain like last time, and let us decide whether to move/rebuild.
- They want to declutter the world of abandoned constructs? As above. Not a reason to stop active players from rebuilding, and not give us 'magic BPs'. (Plus, the clutter only happened because they gave everyone HQ tiles even if they were unsubbed.)
- They think new players prefer to start on an empty world? Speculation, and flawed - per your comments above. Also, making it painful for active players to rebuild only costs active players.
- They want to fix exploits? NQ-Deckard is on record previously saying exploits were all corrected and a tiny part of the economy. 
 
There's no stated reason that goes to the reversal on 'magic BPs'. The only other possible logic is the fear players will stockpile mats/elements in 'magic BPs' which could easily have been addressed by vaporising anything removed from their "one-time-use 'Packaged blueprints'" so it can't be resold. At least explain why they couldn't keep their word, rather than all the obfuscation.

I can't help but laugh at peoples saying "Now this is the release, there wont be another wipe !" or "You really thought there will be no wipe after a beta ?"
 

Beta release :
NQ - "No more full wipe now, we PROMISE !"
Players - "Yeay ! Let's play for real now, invest our time in it !"
 

Re-release :
NQ - "Here is the final full wipe !"
Players who played years - "F"
Players who have not played - "Yeay ! Get rid of all those beta cheaters ! Now I will play !"
 

Also NQ in this annoucement :
"We hope to have only one release"
 

It's HILARIOUS.
Good bye everyone. 

quite frankly, i can't be bothered to watch yet another of those videos. It doesn't answer the most important question that sits  above all other questions and  unless that is taken off the checkerboard all other topics, to be blunt, are inconsequential. NQ should not have opened that can of worms until they had a clear idea what to do with it. But than again NQ has seldom had a clear idea about anything related to Dual Universe. Episode 9 was yet another clear example of a proverbial monkey throwing random items at the wall to see what sticks to it, i have no reason to consume more of those "community engagement [filtered]-bits"
 
I have much better things to do with my time , and i'm well beyond any attempt to provide feedback back to NQ, they may hear everything, but they seldom, if ever truly understand the words being said.

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.

Right, I forgot the sarcasm tags... I should go edit the original post so people don't miss my intent.
 
My point isn't that there are mega-factories, it is that someone is still complaining about them because they can't accept that it is possible for people to work together enough to amass the supplies to build them. There are mega-factories, there will be mega-factories, they will be operated by a small number of people on behalf of larger groups for the sake of avoiding "too many cooks in the kitchen", and the only thing a wipe will do to inhibit that is annoy people in to quitting and thus reduce the possibility that the game would continue long enough for another mega-factory to be built.
 
So, please don't start with the absurd "objective must wipe" bologna. DU is an mmo that involves amassing stuff, building, trading, pvp, and generally competing with each other in ways that have permanent results for every action anyone takes in a persistent world. Someone will always have more stuff than someone else, people can and will cooperate with each other in large groups in ways that allow them to wildly exceed what solos and small groups do, and the only time this game will ever be fair and/or equal for everyone will be when NQ pulls the plug. 

I deleted a wall of text.
 
NQ you suck at communication and customer insights. @NQ-Nyota You're a community manager for *bleeps*sake, did you read the message before you posted it? Did you not see the issues a mile away? Why have you not send @NQ-Wanderer back to his corner and think about his many, many sins (looking at that April 14th post)?
 
This 'announcement' is way to vague, leading to interpretations by customers who'll blow their top. Creating more and more negativity. TIPS: Make the system directly available on the test server so people can see how it works themselves and test it. Create a YouTube video that shows how it works. And create a list with items that you are still working on and aren't final.
 
My initial reaction: NQ sure is good in making a game more and more unfun!

I have been saying that DU should be "Easy to understand, hard to master" for years. And if you look at the things that actually work in the game, like building, scripting (to a certain degree), piloting etc. they are exactly that.
 
Take for example building. Anyone can easily build something in this game since it is easy and relatively straight forward. But making something that make heads turn and players open up their wallet, requires dedication, skills, know-how and creativity. And this is the type of game mechanics that is rewarding and makes players come back for more year after year.
 
But on the other hand there is running around like a headless chicken pressing the same buttons over and over again to complete some pointless task, that does not make players want to stick around.

The problem with the now coming is that it tries to showhorn an EVE style BPO/BPC system into a factorio style industry system.
 
The blueprint system work sin EVE because there is no differentiation between compenents as to where they are built. It also works because in EVE people playing theIndustry game will generally focus on making X by buying what is needed to make X an ssell it back to market, And X can be anything between a ship and a subcomponent used to make modules.
 
Research blueprints in order to optimize them and maximize their yield and cerate copies of these optimized blueprints with Y runs is a separate loop entirely.
 
 
DU however is designed for players to always work towards an endproduct by producing everything needed for that in a chain. And simply copying the base system EVE uses is not going to work for that.
 
I also found the post on this to be very misleading. I do not see where at any time, NQ listened to feedback or came to their current new implementation based on feedback. The seeming emphasis on reduction of schematic cost mere days after intrroducing them, due to the fact players abandonned the game in droves, was a knee jerk reaction to stop the bleeding, not "listening to feedback". It was self preservation which effectively took away most of the purpose and effect schematics were to have.
 
And it sound like this is yet another "play in the UI" change, moving more action away from the actual world and just use an interface without the need to travel and get the schematics you need. Another boring greenish UI box .. yay /s
 
 
But as I expect that the 4 hour maintenance coming tomrowwow will drop the new system on the game and throw it into turmoil and chaos once again, mere weeks before a planned release, will only backfire in a big way. INdustry is becomeing a chore even more than it allready was, it becomes tedious and a job. And with it a good few sho are still around will decide it's not worth their time and move on.. again.. 
 
 
Yes, a game like DU needs quanta sinks and faucets. But this is not what should be a sink, this is what shoudl be part of the buy and sell economy and as it seems to be designed now, it wil not be.

I would, if there were any fun to be had.  For flying and killing stuff, there are much better games out there,  feel no desire to sodomize myself with DU's take on PVP 

I would, if there were any fun to be had.  For flying and killing stuff, there are much better games out there,  feel no desire to sodomize myself with DU's take on PVP 

While it's hard to say how much of that LinkedIN clutter is up to date, but at a glance it looks very much like another Turbine Games, which started out as very lean, almost flat org structure and about decade in turned into army of those who watch those who watch.  Where 2/3 of staff was very good at keeping their job, and not good at much anything else; with the remaining 1/3 working on underfunded and understaffed projects.

The only thing these two projects have in common is mismanagement. But unlike DU, SC is reasonably good at keeping it's balance sheets heathy.
It is important to note the two games are not even in the same genre. SC for all fluff one may see in promotional videos is basically a  rendition of Freelancer with online multiplayer.   Depending on your expectations, this can equal parts exciting and dissapointing, but on the whole the project already achieved what it set out to do. Yes it basically 40 million game that cost in excess to 400 mil to make to date.  It is certainly plenty buggy and probably we never reach "released"  status, but what's on the table now is pretty much what all those Wingcommander boomers wanted all along. 
 
DU on the other hand is more akin EVE online with voxels.  It certainly did not improve on EVE formula of spreadsheets on space in any measurable way, and whatever systems they might have borrowed from eve, had been implemented without deeper understanding of what makes them work or fail within eve's own ecosystem.  The biggest strenght of DU is its voxel buiding tools. But at the end of the day, what matters most is how much of "game" du really is. After 8 years of development i must say, not really much of game at all.  It's certainly pleases the Landmark crowd, which was never a large crowd (even before its cancellation by SOE Ladmark hardly ever crossed 1000 concurrent logins).
DU is certainly not the PVP game backers ( with many eve expats among them) asked for, and at the same time it's not even PVE game the peace loving, mindless NPC murdering crowd could get behind. Reasons why the way things are is besides the point, the point is, based on it's ever dwindling population one must ask the question, what is the the actual "niche" DU tried to cater to ?
 
With SC it's quite obvious what its niche is, with DU, after all these years, i cannot really say.  So in response to OP question i gotta say, no there's no chance DU outliving SC, much less killing it. That would be like asking if DRDOS 6.0 could kill MaOS 7.0