Sevian

So now it'll take even LONGER to slow boat? Because 4-9 hours of travel wasn't long enough?
 
No, this is stupid.

So now it'll take even LONGER to slow boat? Because 4-9 hours of travel wasn't long enough?
 
No, this is stupid.

So now it'll take even LONGER to slow boat? Because 4-9 hours of travel wasn't long enough?
 
No, this is stupid.

They should also reduce the amount of charges, 10 is extremely generous... you can go almost a full 2 days before needing to use your charges! Heck, they also need to reduce the time period between taxation cycles, it should be daily- not weekly!

You seem to be forgetting this: DU is not a game.
 
It started as a software test, disguised as game, that is flopping because nobody wants either.

You only skimmed the post, right?
 
Frustration with the neighbour (and it was actually several neighbours I'd tracked down, all who left a year ago with no intention of ever coming back - one who asked to be paid in Starbase to handover DU assets, all with very abrasive comments on DU and NQ), combined with waiting 9 mths for the solution, given hope, then having it deceptively taken away again, were only the final straw.
 
No. It was death by 1000 cuts. 
 
Demeter screwed me. It took away the ore I'd mapped but hadn't mined yet, took away my scans (another last-minute reversal, after doing MORE scans because we were told they'd be kept). It ganked my space elevators (Caterpillars thrown out of alignment by geometry reset combined with 'manual control' crash). It trashed my base (which was high on a terraformed ramp, meaning after the geometry reset it was left floating high in the air, inaccessible, for which there was no 'excavation request' type solution despite my raising it during PTS:
 

 
Then I wasted hours and millions in quanta setting up mining ops that got locked up by the core overlap bug, put in 2 excavation requests that failed, had a ship tokenisation error. All this after I'd been wrestling for weeks with problems trying to get a multi-core static BP ready for sale, and gradual realising there was nothing on the horizon to improve head-aches for builders like this:
 
I still had big plans, having spent months building the giant floating island with a system in mind to convert it to space cores and build this:
 

 
But my base and space elevators were fragged, my support requests were getting incrementally less helpful replies (like suggesting reinstalling the game to fix what was clearly a game bug) and there was no light on the horizon that NQ were ever going to do anything to make dealing with L static and space BPs easier. If anything, it was getting harder. 
 
I'd previously gotten rolled on the "new screen tech" API that mooted 3 mths of work on my multi-player roulette table, and still had a backlog of a months work updating ~150 screens in my store. 
 
The only thing I had left to look forward to, was the promised abandoned subscriber tile clean-up.
 
Then a worrying thought entered my head. "What if NQ back-flip on this, like they did on scans?" I mean, surely not twice in a row, right? But to be safe, I thought I better come here and say a few words about why I thought wiping unsubbed player tiles is a good thing: 
That post felt redundant, because it had already been decided. And there are obvious reasons for it, beyond my post: Like the performance improvement of not rendering abandoned constructs - which is inevitably only going to get worse. Or the disincentive to unsubscribe on a whim and mothball in-game assets till launch.
 
Anyway, Pann had liked my Tweet saying this was my favourite thing about Demeter...
 
  
 
Finally, a win.
 
Then, a few hours later, NQ steal-patched HQ tiles for unsubbed players. 
 
The several players around me who despised DU, who'd played for a few weeks and quit over a year ago, were protected. 
 
It was precisely at that point that I realised I had zero faith left in where DU was going. No way of knowing. No trust in any announcements made. And without that, there's just no way to plan projects on the kind of scale that I like to work. Projects that take months and hundreds of hours. 
 
That's what it really boils down to: WIthout at least a little predictability on what is coming next, or a clear process and probability for getting a feature request considered, there's no point investing any significant amount of time in the game. And predictability has dropped to zero.
 
 

I've been playing and enjoying du most of the time since early beta. When they announced autominers I was looking forward to the relief from the drudgery of mining by hand. In my mind I thought I'd be getting a few tiles here and there that would be limited due to them doubling in price with each additional. I imagined flying around collecting the ore and maybey someday needing to add fuel to them once the energy update hit in the future.
The way they were actually implemented made using them more of a grind than hand mining ever was. Spending hours calibrating units to make just a few quanta after taxes is not fun gameplay. The economy has crashed and will stay low for the foreseeable future due to the upcoming lootfest of inactive tiles. But the taxes keep coming on...
The strongest pillar of this game is with building. Ship building has been my favorite activities. With a lack of information about how the upcoming airbrake change will be implemented I can't upgrade current designs or want to waste my time making new ones.
All of these changes have made the game feel like a job instead of something I want to do for fun. I hope to return one day, but time will tell...

What I loved about this game and I really mean loved, is the fact I could start on a tile, mine the 4 basic rocks and turn that into a base, then that base could become a factory and start producing ship parts and I could build that ship and fly to space without ever leaving that tile. The only thing I would need is a core or 2 but really that's it. That concept is really attractive to me. 
 
In a sense, I am self reliant and I honestly dont think that's an issue. It's the way I wanted to play before 0.23 and I dont want to be forced to play together. (I'm not opposed to it, just the forced play style)
 
Either i can build "everything" myself or I wont play the game so is the game better off without me? Is NQ better off with one less sub? 
 
The mistake NQ makes is looking across the whole game and making decisions that fit their way of playing instead of a case by case basis. 
 
It really comes down to a player and if I want to build everything and I can't, is the game better without me? I'm not sure how it is but I'm sure many will disagree. 

it is almost like NQ dont want players to play the game

If I cant mine and reliably transport the goods I work hard to aquire and or produce and im paying a premium to do so im not just going to give it away to someone. If they go with no warp or at best a decent disruptor system Ill just say screw it and build rather than play the game which seems like most people do around here. Without warp im not transporting anything since the risk does not match the reward for me based on how long it takes to aquire ore or build the ships vs how easy it is for someone to blow it up in less than 5 mins. Or forcing people to walk.
 
Like I said, You cant have your cake and eat it too if I buy the cake and you want to smash it in my face and then buy you a new one then force me to walk to the store to get it. No thanks

Problem is that the process you just described sounds less fun then my actual real job, where I make real actual money. So why would I ever want to pay NQ just to be able to work a second boring job?

Player run game
Simple     NQ make changes and the players run   
 
EDIT.
OK, so I actually read the OP's post now.  Yes I think youre about right.

So some of you may (MAY LOL)  know me as someone who played pretty religiously pre 0.23 and up to just before the asteroid update.

Well I left for reasons and recently I thought "hmmm I really liked flying ships and DU really scratched an itch in that department".

So I gave some thought to coming back, I looked at the updates and imagine my surprise.

What the actual [filtered] has happened to this game ?

The asteroids seem fine I guess from what I have read so I will leave that.

But it seems like you have upped the price of a subscription to $9.99 or about £7.55, you are now 14 pence cheaper than Final fantasy 14 which is currently the most popular MMO out there.

I can see how people would say "doesn't matter I hate fantasy games" but this brings it into perspective, a BETA (even this title is arguably optimistic) is charging pretty much the same for a game which is fully released, stable and has more features in terms of mini-games than DU has in its entirety.

I would not care about the price update if I had not looked at the latest update....... "oh.....my....[filtered]ing......god, I'll have whatever NQ is smoking" I thought.

1. removed land mining (actually like this personally because it gave me the worst headache and was simply boring)
2. replaced with mining units, with some kind of calibration mechanism that diminshes if you don't do it daily, by all accounts this is not a fun mini game either.
3. added taxes (seems sensible on the face of it) but what the hell, the mining units will barely cover the cost of taxes in some cases unless you have skills and calibrate daily, this sounds awfully like a job to me NQ!

Then it hit me, I remember when the devs were talking about their data costs and how terraforming was a real costly thing for them and then it hit me: none of this was done for gameplay purposes, it was done as a massive cost-saving mechanism.

Now, all of this in isolation isn't necessarily a problem but when you raise the price of a game whilst at the same time removing a part of the game that was costing you money AND replacing it with a piss-poor implementation of a 'game' (READ: job) loop then you really are starting to take the piss.

If that wasn't enough I just read that your intention for surface mining (the little rocks you can get 20l at a time for) was that they don't respawn?????????? Are you REALLY expecting new players to jump into the game, take a hex in sanc, mine for maybe 10-12 hours until they have eaten all the rocks and then simply log in each day for daily allowance until they can get a few structures only to.....login once a day to calibrate. Is this another low-key cost saving exercise? [filtered] me, it is beyond belief.

New players are going to join and quickly leave after realising they probably have to wait a number of days just to be able to do the most basic thing, which is put down a autominer, then they will somehow (with crap skills) have to turn a small profit, after a few weeks they might be able to get up into space and do some asteroid mining and then they MIGHT have a shot at actually being creative.

I don't even want to think what it would take for a new player to get into even basic industry!

I am not being selfless here, I have billions in assets and liquid quanta, it is all meaningless if new players come into the game and just go '[filtered] this, this is boring' or 'no one has time for this' which I think 90% of people are going to do given they won't be able to start building for weeks on end unless they get lucky and join a good organisation.

Let's be clear here, a good organisation is no excuse for lazy, bland 'game' loops being introduced at a snails pace for what I can only see as being done for business reasons.

If that wasn't enough all I read is "They are laying the groundwork for a wipe", tbh I believe these posts, it is crazy to think I can benefit from pre 0.23 free for all industry and have all of that carry over to release, I will be running a sweat shop consisting of newbies if this game goes live without one......

So what you have is a game that is more expensive, where a whole release has been about business cost management rather than player enjoyment, where a good proportion of the game is now about scraping money together before you can get to anything fun.

Let's talk about the fun, I haven't seen anything, not a single thing in the last two updates related to making voxel building better, no snap feature for cores, no additional tools to help make voxel building less tedious.......nothing, even the best bit of this game is still a tedious slugfest.

Can I afford to play this game: Yes,
Can I justify paying for this game: If I play a lot of mental gymnastics maybe
Can I justify sinking time into this game: No, the developers don't value their players time, simple as that.

So I will continue to check in on the game and hope to god that somehow NQ turn it around but for now it's beyond a joke.




 

Nice work breaking it down. I appreciate the clear insight you've given and hopefully other people are able to replicate your success.
 
Even though I have an alt with almost max mining skills, so far I haven't broken even with my singular mining tile with 7 units. I don't have the capacity to baby 7 tiles like you've done, so I'll just have to do something else for quanta.

You'd run out of surface rocks before you would even get enough for a ship to take the rocks to a market to sell.
 
SM rarely has good buy prices, so they will get even less. Fun game!

They would never do such a thing. I'm pretty sure the devs don't actually enjoy the game anymore. They just implement what the business managers want and do their best. I hope, at least.

Right? If I do manage to claim a tile and the former-owner is absent for 2 weeks: I'm only taking the items and then unclaiming.
 
If NQ thinks everyone is just going to wipe clean the tile, then they're in for a surprise.

Right? If I do manage to claim a tile and the former-owner is absent for 2 weeks: I'm only taking the items and then unclaiming.
 
If NQ thinks everyone is just going to wipe clean the tile, then they're in for a surprise.

It's even harder to start from scratch, especially solo, now than when "beta" first launch.
 
Like many others, I don't really have the desire to do that again.

So when a tile becomes "abandoned" because they owner has a life and doesn't want to constantly pay un-needed land taxes for a space game: they still have 2 weeks to take all their crap back even though someone else claimed the tile?
 
So I claim an abandoned tile, pay the 500k, then pay 1mil for the next week taxes, and the midnight before the second week is here: they come and take all their stuff.
 
How in the world is that fair or fun or even logical? I claim the tile, I own what is on it. Have the devs or "project managers" never played a game before?

So when a tile becomes "abandoned" because they owner has a life and doesn't want to constantly pay un-needed land taxes for a space game: they still have 2 weeks to take all their crap back even though someone else claimed the tile?
 
So I claim an abandoned tile, pay the 500k, then pay 1mil for the next week taxes, and the midnight before the second week is here: they come and take all their stuff.
 
How in the world is that fair or fun or even logical? I claim the tile, I own what is on it. Have the devs or "project managers" never played a game before?

The last Q&A brought up the topic of the "wipe" again. I don't understand why this has now become the basis for discussion again. I decided on a 12-month subscription because it was supposed to be a persistent universe for us players and a "wipe" would be used as a last technical resort if there were no other options.
In no way was there any equality given from beta players to players who don't come until release. I would not have created my account and my children's if we had known there was going to be an economic wipe. At the time, NQ said that we beta players should already be building a society and civilisation so that players who will come to release will already see content and not arrive in an empty, dead solar system.
In short, I no longer enjoy playing something that I'm about to lose and then have to pay for. 
Would they go to the cinema and pay admission if after the cinema their memory was wiped only to be asked to pay again?
We would like to continue playing, so I hope that there will finally be a public and clear information if and in which form a wipe will take place. Currently, many players are moving their buildings to Sanctuary Moon in the hope that they will be safe there because it is (still) tax-exempt. Is it possible to save these many hours of rebuilding because a wipe will destroy everything?

Translation from German, I hope everything is translated correctly?
 

It's even harder to start from scratch, especially solo, now than when "beta" first launch.
 
Like many others, I don't really have the desire to do that again.

So when a tile becomes "abandoned" because they owner has a life and doesn't want to constantly pay un-needed land taxes for a space game: they still have 2 weeks to take all their crap back even though someone else claimed the tile?
 
So I claim an abandoned tile, pay the 500k, then pay 1mil for the next week taxes, and the midnight before the second week is here: they come and take all their stuff.
 
How in the world is that fair or fun or even logical? I claim the tile, I own what is on it. Have the devs or "project managers" never played a game before?

It would require a complete rewrite of the entire game core. 
 
The whole concept of DU was designed around the notion that "millions of players" would come and build. To accommodate the chance of that working, the core design eliminated all the things that make a MMO.. well.. a MMO... It removed all the things which would make DU tick as a game, and it was spun as "we're doing things differently".
 
DU literally is just a box with sand, that is all it is, and unless NQ finds the resources to go back and redo pretty much the entire thing that is all it will ever be. The big thing was that NQ said that they would bring the tools and give us the systems to then build the game, they never did. All that has happened and is still happening is they are cutting out more and more to be able to initially keep the performance up and now keep the cost at a level they can afford to pay.. until they can't.
 
DU will need many tens of thousands of players to pay subscriptions to stay afloat, problem is the game really has nothing that would allow that to happen, The momentum for the game to attract the players who will build out gameplay for other players simply is not there.