Bazzy_505

I believe each and every customer has every right to express their concerns and grievances for the product they have paid for and in no mean resembles project advertised in kickstarter much less anything akin to what you see in videos and early pre-alpha previews.  Additionally majority of the issues with NQ's product were well known and documented all the way back 
in early alpha, and very little was done in terms of remedies to these issues. What's even more interesting to consider is the fact the NDA we had to agree to was never lifted, not even after beta launch. I've been in quite a few alpha programs, both paid and free  and i have never ever encountered such draconian terms.
 
Now before you resort to pejorative expressions like "whining" let's put a few numbers into perspective and compare them with other past projects of the kind. 
 
First of all NQ is not indie developer by any meaning of the word.  The moment you have venture capital involved, you're not independent anymore. It's not necesarily a bad thing, quite the opposite.  But even if you were to broaden the definition to anything self published on a dime 20mil+KS money+Alpha backer money gives you a number which is very much outside of realm of what is generally considered indie community backed project.
 
Now let consider past project that bears the closest semblance to DU and even JC's original pitch can be summarize as "that game" but bigger and in voxels.
 
CCP developed Eve Online in 2.5 years  with a team of 35 developers on a buget of 2.6 mil euro in a small country of Iceland the pool of available developers of which is a fraction of what you'll find in Île-de-France alone and where everything is pretty much 2x as expensive as anywhere else in Europe.
 
With those 35 people  and 2.6 mil in the pocket  CCP developed their own 3D engine from scratch, developed the full server stack from scratch, built all 3D assets in house and has it run on their own metal server housed in datacenter in UK. 
 
NQ with 35 people (if the number is to be believed) and 20.6 mil in the pocket , merely licensed Uniengine2, licensed core of the server tech,  purchased most 3D assets, and leased server capacity in AWS.   
 
Now granted, CCP initial development window was in the period between 2000-2003 so it would be just fair to adjust the budget for inflation which puts it just to little above 4mil in 2020 money.
 
I rest my case
 
As i've mentioned in my previous posts, i have no regrets about forking out for being alpha backer, i did get my money's worth out it. It is but a pity that it did not go much beyond that.
I still hang around DU for tiny slim off-chance NQ gets its house back on track,
But I will not be throwing any more money at DU unless NQ can, through their actions prove, that they can get out of that development ruth they've been stuck in for past 2 years and i would caution against newcommers commiting to paid beta access until they do. There simply isn't enough value on the table for the time being.    
 
 

Am I the only one who want an XS Space fuel tank? I'm fed up of having to cart a massive barrel of lard around with me just to use Vertical Thrusters.
Also, while you're at it, could I have some super cool XS hover pads... Maybe half the size and power of the current ones (say 2 x 2 voxels or something)  so we can put one front and back or on each corner of a transport and not have it look like a meth cooking-spoon?
This would be great for some truly minimal, and maybe even speedy, personal transport!
 
XS size components

— XS Size space fuel tank
— XS Size hover engines
— XS Brakes
— XS Space Fuel Tanks
— XS Rocket Boosters
— XS Space Brakes
— XS Control seat for motorbike like constructs
 
M Size
 
— full sized M wings for M construct. 
 
L size components
 
— L Ailerons and Compact Ailerons
— L Wings
— L Stabilisers
— Full sized wings for L construct.
 
MOAR XL size components
 
— XL Atmospheric Engines
— XL Hover Engines
— XL Vertical Boosters
— XL Wings ailerons and stabilisers. etc.
 
— XL Cores? YES PLEASE.

Something I have wanted for several years. Apparently "scale = 0.5" is a difficult parameter for a model. Just like halving the values.

I dunno, to me its more of situation akin to such as when you break up with your crazy girlfriend and realize the next day,
that you left behind your favourite Phillies t-shirt you have had since highschool and she's been using it as PJ for the last 2 months and you really
wish you could find a way to get it back without a scene ?

too bad it's absolutelly the worst time to buy SSD right now due to the bloody chia coin craze.
 
most worth-a-while SSD's  are either hopelessly sold out or selling for insane prices.
 
example: Corsair Force MP510 (nvme) 1.9TB drive  which until recently had very much one of the best  price/size/tbw/speed ratios
which i used to buy for about 240E a pop till late april, now sells for 440E... same situation with 1TB+ samsungs

Problem is, Minecraft, realisticly, has much more content and variety of gamestyles, then DU. Calling DU "Space Minecraft" is veeery huge compliment currently, even unjust thing to do. 
 

So why do they then keep doing the same type of mistakes? Learning from past mistakes and improving is a fundamental skill that any dev team should be very aware off.
 
Here is the typical pattern on how NQ 'interacts' with the community.
 
---
NQ: We are going to do A.
 
Community: That will cause problems with B, and C and D,
 
NQ: No response..
 
Community: Lots of speculations and frustration because there is no response.
 
NQ: Releases original feature patch with no regard to community feedback
 
Community: Generates lots of feedback, mostly about the predicted problems that are now turned into reality
 
NQ: Silence...
 
Community: Problems are now so bad that people are starting to riot.
 
NQ: "Don't worry guys, we know there is a problem and we are looking into this."
 
NQ: Long silence, while community continues to riot and point out ways to avoid said problems
 
NQ: Release some quick and dirty patch that half solves the problem, and causes unplanned collateral damage
 
Community: Continues to point out problems with patch and quick-fix, and how they could have been avoided
 
NQ: Very long silence before announcing next feature, and everything starts over again..
---
 
So if people are wondering about the current state of the game and the bad mood in forums, it is because this release cycle accumulates lots of bugs and fundamental game issues over time and at the same time manages to alienate the community.

i7 960  belongs to bloomfield family (Nehalem)
AVX support wasn't implemented till a generation later with Sandy Bridge (AVX),  and  AVX2 support came 2 generations later with Haswell

I gotta say, the topic title is a little clickbait-ey, so i'll allow myself a little indulgent jab in a very general direction ?
 
Spaghetti Code
 
https://medium.com/swlh/stop-writing-spaghetti-code-a-brief-introduction-to-clean-code-part-1-81977f62e478
 
 
 

I gotta say, the topic title is a little clickbait-ey, so i'll allow myself a little indulgent jab in a very general direction ?
 
Spaghetti Code
 
https://medium.com/swlh/stop-writing-spaghetti-code-a-brief-introduction-to-clean-code-part-1-81977f62e478
 
 
 

Like, how do we measure the fun level experienced by a gunner? 
Task 1 press reload
Task 2 press identify
Task 3 press lock
Task 4 press fire. 
Task 5 watch the battle happen as a total spectator that was not needed in anyway for this battle....
 
And you think someone will pay a subscription to spectate battle? Ppl already know the existence of youtube.... 
 
Just calculate how big will be the frustration of a lost battle for the gunner, having no input what so ever in the battle, seeing things unfold before his eyes powerless to do even a small effort to change the outcome. 
 
Now compare that with the joy he will experience having no part on the victory. 
 
Do you think this is sustainable? 
I dont.... 

At current state of affairs, the most sensible thing NQ can do with DU is what  Square Enix did with FF XIV, which to this date is considered the biggest and probably only truly succesful comeback of a mmo in history. For those who are not familiar with the situation, the initial release in 2010 was an utter broken mess despite 5 years of development, In 2012 Square shut down all the servers. After complete redesign and another year in closed alpha testing they came back in 2013 with what had become as the most successful mmo besides wow (22 mil copies sold)
 
If NQ is as commited to the DU project as they're declaring they are, and if NQ can secure sufficient funding,  instead of patching a one hole to have two more sprout in its place, give the current iteration a closure in a grand world ending event and close this current technical alpha test.
 
In followup to that, spend whatever time you need to parse and process all the feedback us, dedicated customers have been giving you for the past 2 years.  There are some great ideas there, they really bad ones, and even some that are truly out there.  That please take you time to research those that came before you such as Freespace, Elite, Earth and Beyond and Eve just to name a few. See what made them great as well as what made them fail in their respective ambitions.
 
I believe you convinced most of us you can make the technology work.
 
Now is the time to convince us all you can actually design and make a game.
 
And please, please for the love of Spock, hire actual Producer, and a Creative lead that has shipped at least one game in the last 10 years.
 
If you can credibly show us you can do that, i'm pretty sure most of us who stuck around would not hesitate to throw another 60 bucks your way at the right side of the tunel

At current state of affairs, the most sensible thing NQ can do with DU is what  Square Enix did with FF XIV, which to this date is considered the biggest and probably only truly succesful comeback of a mmo in history. For those who are not familiar with the situation, the initial release in 2010 was an utter broken mess despite 5 years of development, In 2012 Square shut down all the servers. After complete redesign and another year in closed alpha testing they came back in 2013 with what had become as the most successful mmo besides wow (22 mil copies sold)
 
If NQ is as commited to the DU project as they're declaring they are, and if NQ can secure sufficient funding,  instead of patching a one hole to have two more sprout in its place, give the current iteration a closure in a grand world ending event and close this current technical alpha test.
 
In followup to that, spend whatever time you need to parse and process all the feedback us, dedicated customers have been giving you for the past 2 years.  There are some great ideas there, they really bad ones, and even some that are truly out there.  That please take you time to research those that came before you such as Freespace, Elite, Earth and Beyond and Eve just to name a few. See what made them great as well as what made them fail in their respective ambitions.
 
I believe you convinced most of us you can make the technology work.
 
Now is the time to convince us all you can actually design and make a game.
 
And please, please for the love of Spock, hire actual Producer, and a Creative lead that has shipped at least one game in the last 10 years.
 
If you can credibly show us you can do that, i'm pretty sure most of us who stuck around would not hesitate to throw another 60 bucks your way at the right side of the tunel

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.

I've been playing EVE at varying levels of intensity since launch.  Whined and cheered through CCP's numerous highs and lows but overal have had a great time.  But EVE's been around for 17 years,  and as time passed ships  have steadily grown bigger and space smaller, i found myself sometimes wishing back for simpler times where battleships were big, hacs were scary  and any +5 sec mach pilot was a poser that needed to be taught the right place at the earliest chokepoint. (frozen and tucked away in your collection). 
 
When i first noticed DU sometime in late 2018, the narrative was filled with all the right buzzwords that somehow clicked with my early memories of begginings of EVE when everything was new, mysterious and ready to be discovered.
 
I was intrigued, resitered on forums and started reading passively to see what's what.  I remember was drawn to all the buzz but slightly off-put by the lack detail on how all these wonderful bulletpoints would turn into my next space faring fix. I've put it on a backburner thinking NQ is probably still fleshing out the design and put it on a back burner and went back to EVE, just peeking back occasinally to see if anything changed. As i've noticed alpha tests frequency and duration increasing, i thought i'd wth i'll throw in the 60E to get into alpha. After all it was only bit more than what i would have spent on eve each month.
 
After my initial shock how little there is to be seen after so many years of development, and few hours of bumping around speeder graveyard and was ready to write it off. But having spent 60E on DU already i was determined get at least a few good hours out of it. 
In the end i did, in spite of all DU deeply rooted flaws, i really enjoyed building and crashing my ships. 
 
For all its stumblings  and development dead ends over the years (Dust514, Vanity items crap to name few), EVE has always had very strong fundamentals upon which all its systems have been designed. 
 
DU unfrortunatelly doesn't have that, and the lack of proper design shows in all aspects on the game.
 
 
 

dude, whatever you're smoking, please share some with the rest of us ?

More like replacing the guy who has never flown a plane with a guy who can crash-land it with broken off landing gear, scraped off belly and mangled propellers somwhere reasonably close to the recycling center.
 
 

More like replacing the guy who has never flown a plane with a guy who can crash-land it with broken off landing gear, scraped off belly and mangled propellers somwhere reasonably close to the recycling center.
 
 

Well about 18months too late, 
most likely appointed by principal creditors prior to liquidation proceedings

Well about 18months too late, 
most likely appointed by principal creditors prior to liquidation proceedings

It's the old story: droid meets droid, droid becomes chameleon, droid loses chameleon, chameleon turns into blob, droid gets blob back again, blob meets blob, blob goes off with blob and droid loses blob, chameleon and droid. How many times have we heard that story?

It's the old story: droid meets droid, droid becomes chameleon, droid loses chameleon, chameleon turns into blob, droid gets blob back again, blob meets blob, blob goes off with blob and droid loses blob, chameleon and droid. How many times have we heard that story?

It's the old story: droid meets droid, droid becomes chameleon, droid loses chameleon, chameleon turns into blob, droid gets blob back again, blob meets blob, blob goes off with blob and droid loses blob, chameleon and droid. How many times have we heard that story?

probably against the rules, but fuck it....Valheim is fantastic. 
 
shows how important it is to have a quality game design and experience, not jumping into your first ever game project with no plan and no vision. 
 
they spent half as long making Valheim with 1/10th as many people...and will probably sell 10x as many copies as DU will ever have players. I get that it is exceptional, but really drives home how bad NQ is at game dev, haha. 

I love EvE, played it for 10 years.  And I do have a lot of problems with some of the decisions that CCP has made in the past.  But it would be stupid of NQ not to take note of some of the things that work well for a "single shard Universe".