Ryotian

0.23 and What We Learned

In reading through the reactions from our community regarding the recent 0.23 update, we’ve gained some valuable insights. 

Before we talk about the changes we’ll make in our processes going forward, let’s get back to the fundamental reason behind the update itself. What we did in 0.23 is at the heart of the vision for a game where a society of players is interacting directly or indirectly with each other through an elaborate network of exchanges, cooperation, competition and markets.
 
As it was, the current state of the game consisted mostly of isolated islands of players playing in almost full autonomy. A single-player game where players happened to share the same game world but with little interactions.
 
It’s hard to imagine how the appeal could last for more than several months for most players once they feel they have “finished” the game. It is also a missed opportunity to try something of larger proportion, a society of players growing in a fully persistent virtual world. For this to work, you need more than isolated gameplay. Players need to have viable reasons to interact and need each other.
 
In many single-player space games, you have ways to make money, and the game then offers you ways to convert this money into whatever you need in the game to progress, mostly via markets. This is the state in which we should end up for Dual Universe once all the necessary ingredients are in place, You get into the game, you farm a bit of money in fun ways, and you buy more and more powerful ships, equipment, weapons, etc., to help your character grow. The difference is that here, the ships or equipment you buy have been made by other players, instead of the game company. On the surface and during the first hours of gameplay, to a new player it would look similar to any of those other space games, but it would in fact reveal itself to be much deeper once you spend a bit of time in the game. Everything you would do would be part of another player’s or organization’s plan, everything would have a meaning. And soon you would realize that you too could be part of the content creation and, somehow, drive the game in the direction you want.
 
In its current beta stage, DU doesn’t have enough ways for people to make money because we haven’t yet had the opportunity to implement all of the necessary features. There’s mining, of course. Trading is not as good as it will eventually be because markets are not really used to their full potential. As a consequence, players rightfully turned to a solo or small org autonomous game mode. 
 
We tried to nudge people out of this with the changes introduced in 0.23. While necessary, many players expressed that the changes of 0.23 came too soon because it lacked a variety of lucrative ways for people to make money outside of mining.

What We’ll Do Now
 
The vision expressed above still holds. We want people to consider going through the industry specialization only if they intend to become industrialists and not necessarily to sustain their individual needs; however, we understand that it’s too soon to press for intense specialized gameplay considering the lack of sources to earn money. 
 
Here’s our plan for now. We will modify the formula of the schematic prices to make it considerably more affordable for Tier 1 and still challenging and worth a commitment but less intense for anything Tier 2 or above. 
 
This will allow most factories focused on T1 to resume their activities rapidly while keeping an interesting challenge for higher tiers, spawning dedicated industrial facilities aiming at producing to sell on the markets. We will also reimburse players who have bought high-priced schematics since the launch of 0.23 (please give us some time since it may take a few days as we go through the logs).
 
We will keep monitoring the price of schematics to see if it makes sense to increase or decrease the costs. The right approach to set such a price would be to evaluate how much time it takes to recoup your investment by selling the products that the schematics allow to produce. It should be a few months so that the investment is a real commitment and it makes sense to plan for it.  We currently lack the metrics to properly assess this return on investment time. We need a player-driven market price for the components and a market price for the products to assess the profit made by each run of a schematic. This will come when the markets start to work as intended, and we can gather more data about them. 
 
Feedback and Testing

The release of 0.23 also taught us that we need improved ways to test new features, both internally and with community participation. The Upvote feature on the website was a good start, but it’s not enough. 
 
To address this, we have two courses of action that will be taken. The first will be to set up an open public test server, hopefully with shorter release cycles, for players to try out new features. This will also allow us to explore ideas and be more iterative. If all goes according to plan, this test server should be introduced for 0.24, the next release. It will mirror the content of the production server with regular updates to sync it. 
 
The second important initiative is to revise the role of the Alpha Team Vanguard (ATV), getting them more involved in early discussions about new features and the evolution of the game. We are still defining the framework, so more information will be released as available. 

What is to Come
 
In the short term, we will push a few corrections to improve 0.23, which include:
 
Ships will now stop (be frozen) when their core is destroyed in PvP, making them easier to catch. Element destruction will impact the restoration count only when it occurs through PvP, at least for now (not when the ship is colliding/falling as we want to avoid having players penalized simply for crashing their ships because they’re learning how to maneuver them, for example). Recycling of un-restorable elements through a recycler that will take an element as input and grant a small amount of the schematics required components as output.
The next major release is already in the making and will be about the mission system, a first step toward giving players more fun ways to earn quantas. We will reveal about it shortly so that we can get as much feedback as possible.
 
We also want to reassure you that the mission system is not the only answer to offering more varied ways to earn revenue in Dual Universe. Things like asteroid mining and mining units will be introduced in the next few months. 

This list is by no means complete, but should be a good jumping off point that gives players reasons to fight and to explore, opportunities for pirates, new ways of making money, and a plethora of other activities our creative community will think of even if we didn’t. 

That’s it for now! We want to thank you again for your support and patience as we progress along this beta road! See you soon in Dual Universe!

Want to discuss this announcement? Visit the thread linked below:
 
 

Several months in now but this patch has me looking for something else. Day before patch the game crashed on me while flying a load of iron to market. 3k from ground logged back in a instant crash again.  Total of 4 crashes before I got a relog to hold.  By then. Ship crashed.   This is my first crash induced by game crashing.  No errors.  Just instant poof. Windows screen. So I repaired the ship and core.
 
login today after patch. And learn.  No more repairs to core.... I think ok. Build extra.......36million for BP..    I have 45million total.   Doesn’t compute. I don’t mind repairing my ship for crashes that are my fault.  But it’s to much to ask me to try and do those repairs now with all the barriers.
so either make flying safer some how or easily repaired. When it’s not our fault.
 
I don’t mind the BP requirement now. But give us at least the tier 1 items. Things like ore scanners cores ect.  Then make better version of them for purchase.
my reasons for playing this game are about exploring so I am waiting to see a galaxy... not one solar system and I want to be able to fly to a distant planet and still manufacture items I need.
I will continue skills for a while. But will be playing another game
some pve  Would be nice. Like empyrion 
but I am not willing to fly one of my nice ships with the current game setup 

I see a lot of different reasons here for people quitting or thinking of doing so, and sadly that further strengthens the main reason for me quitting.
There is always a loss in player base when a game launches, and after major update player base influxes. All aspects of the game seem to be "loosing" players right now, and I fear it is more than just the normal decline that is to be expected.
Reading through this thread, and a lot of other threads on this forum, I'm gonna generalize and say... people quit because ALL features are at BEST in their infant stages, many not even conceived yet.
Which then leads me to say "This game should never had ben "launched" like this."
For me it all comes down to this.
Does this game/dev team have a trajectory to "success"?
Success is of course different from company to company, and person to person hence the ""
But one thing I deem a big parameter of success is financial stability, and as far as I can remember, I read or heard somewhere that that is one of the reasons for the subscription based model of the game, and I fully support that.
So, to keep a subscription based game a success you need x amount of players to be subscribed, and here is the first red flag for me. NOWHERE can I see or have ever heard of what NQ needs or expects player numbers to be to be financially sound, and that might be ok if I had heard something like "we would be happy to reach such numbers as EVE has over a couple of years", or "50k players would make us happy" ore just something. All I have ever heard is JC's "We are developing... with a possibility for... hundreds of thousands or even millions". I know, that is not to be taken as "we need millions of players to be ok", but in what ball park is the expected/needed number of subscriptions?
And here comes the reason for this wall of text...
What are you gonna do if you do not meet those numbers?
My fear, and one of main reasons for me quitting is the following scenario.
 
game launched as it did, and is now suffering for the unfinished state If they get updates out on a regular basis, an influx will occur, and then natural falloff at "launch" (my best bet is in 1-2 years)there will be a big influx in players especially if and when they launch on steam and other platforms My fear is here. A lot of those new players will drop of quickly, and many of them with a bad taste in their mouth du to the game "launch" they bought, is actually not a launch at all, that happened 2 years ago. specially on steam, this will leave a "stink" on the game, bad reviews, if not all out review bombing, refund claims ect. and halt the player influx. after that (if not sooner) we will be introduced to the in-game store, where items developed for the game, are kept out of the game for you to purchase. And despite it being a subscription based game, excuses like "its only cosmetic" or "not enough subs to keep development going, only maint." will be used. more people leave DU goes F2P to increase players, in-game store is filled to the brim of digital crap for you to buy, and not much development is going into the base game. This "fear scenario" is fueled by lack of communication from NQ, forum post going unanswered, tickets taking 2 months to answer (that is my own ticket for lost items due to the early inv bug where items just went "poof" when picking them up in build mode), "discussions" about updates, and upvote on features does nothing for my confidence in this project (that should have happened long before you "launch" the game).
 
So to sum it up for those not bothered to read the wall...
 
The premature "launch" of the game, and handling of the community since said "launch" has completely eroded my faith in team and game.
 
Thats why I quit

The issue is the game is at least 90% tedium no matter what 'path' you pick.
 
Industry?  90% tedium of fighting the lag of the link tool or the random breakdowns where some random element simply stops working. 
 
Mining? - mining is 100% tedious.
 
Pvp? 90% waiting around.
 
Ship Design? Voxelmancy is 100% tedium.
 
Trading? 90% tedium of flying around from A to B.
 
And the lessons haven't been learned.....
 
NQ adds 'wrecks' which are also 90% tedium of flying around looking for them....

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

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

Yeah... I had just gotten my talents where I wanted them for the new patch and they pulled the rug out from under me.

resetting talents again? It's F...ing three clicks per GD level to buy them back. My wrist has gone numb already. F this.
 
How about rolling this back and trying again after you give us 1 click to buy a talent and all its prereqs?

Oh...right.  I was all excited about the talent reset but had forgotten how terrible buying them back is...

That is a great concern of mine too.  One of my guys is a week into crafting a warp beacon.  Do we lose all that work and resources now?

So, judging by NQ's attitude in the Q&A thats me done with Dual Universe. GUTTED. This was the first game in 10 years that actually engaged and spoke to me. I dont want to pay to spend hours pressing 'W' and holding down the left mouse button.
This is NOT what I was sold, or what I pay for.
 
Such a shame, this move will ruin the game for me, and I genuinely feel aggrieved that such a fundamental shift will be imposed. Unless you are an established, large Org, this game will be tedious, dull and crap.
 
And great, Canopy Glass: if only I'll be able to afford to craft it or buy it....

Just read all 5 pages of concerns and gravitated to GaXXor's comments.  Here are mine:
 
1)  REMOVE ALL BOTS, ALL OF THEM!  EVERY LAST ONE.
2)  Add research for schematics and talents to improve research speed.
3)  Once you have researched a schematic you should be able to sell that research, or use the schematic to further your cause.
4)  Makes little since that once I own a schematic I can't use it repeatedly.  None.  What? photocopiers don't exist 10,000 years from now, or cloning devices?
5)  Forcing players to this degree of specialization is just silly for a sandbox game.  End point:  "Guess what Mom!  I'm now a master of making Advanced LED''s... I'm SOOO happy and fulfilled.  I don't know how to make a screw or pipe but man are my LEDs cool!".
6) The degree of specialization is currently excessive.  Example:  Having specializations for Carbon Refining that is separate from Iron Refining.  As laid out, someone smart enough might be able to specialize in making Warp Cells, and ONLY Warp Cells, efficiently after a real year or training time goes by (presuming the rules don't change during that year).  Then what are they suppose to do?  Start over with another specialty or just mine rock to feed their Warp Cell factory and presumably earn money?  Reality is they will reach their goal and likely quit the game, cursing themselves for wasting so much time.  People need to be able to experience different aspects of the game AND get good at them in order to have a sustainable game experience (and desire to continue to pay to play).
7) The markets currently sell products at or below production cost, so many just mine their own material and build up from there.  Making intermediate parts more expensive just forces us to do more of that (yeah, I'm a miner/industrialist).
8) Balancing a game is hard... really REALLY hard.  Please take on the task of admitting things are being tried for a period of time, and potentially backed out if they become exploits, with the end goal of having a wipe before the production release to level set everyone.  
9) Be honest with the player base.  Start engaging us in feature conversations instead of dictating and facing rebellion's.  10,000 heads really can be better than 1.
10) Be fair.  When features change, reset skills and allow us to redeploy our earned points.
11) I have NO problem with it taking a month of gameplay after a wipe to build up skills and equipment sufficiently to leave Ailoth.  I do have a problem with somebody else stumbling across a derelict and gaining that technology on their 2nd day in the game.  e.g.  Remove any feature that gives people that type of advantage post wipe.
12) Post a realistic new timeframe and focus on that, not on special events and other distractions.  The march needs to be getting to Release.
13) For GODS SAKE, please fix Zendesk.  That disaster alone might be justification for a wipe - allowing you to just delete the 10 week backlog of tickets you have.  Please stop all the "Due to unusually high ticket volume" bullshit statements.  They are insulting.  Its not unusual when its been happening since day 1 of pre-Beta week.
14) Make life simple for yourself.  When you wipe, make it a complete one with nothing transferring forward, and therefore no potential issues with such transfers that immediately overwhelm your newly refreshed ZenDesk crew.
15) Fix your debugging protocol.  Make people file tickets real-time, immediately upon finding a bug.  Make it F12 or something similar.  The game should freeze, screen captures be taken, log files pruned, a DxDiag run, and everything pre-loaded into a ticket where the player just needs to describe what happened.  Asking players 10 weeks after the fact to find, and prune (without any supplied tools), the log files might have been fine pre-alpha, but is just poor form now.
16)  This isn't your mothers house... have the game clean up after itself.  I noticed log files are finally being auto-purged (I only see about 10 days worth now).  Make sure all aspects of the game do that.  For example, allow players to specify how much disk space should be used for cache.  Clean up crash reports immediately after sending them.  Same for crashdumps.  Its just polite.
17)  If something like Markets are not being used as designed, ask yourself why and fix it.  Don't force people to use undesirable aspects of the game, instead make them better so people are drawn to them.  (But again, never by adding BOTs!)
18)  Be transparent.  No more ATVs or any other special group with inside knowledge.  Create an open Test server and make everything public.  Or, and here is a thought, declare the current servers Test and subject to radical changes as game balance evolves, with a promised full wipe for Release.

Our Warp Beacon couldn't even start because the assembler "ate" the ingredients. The support ticket was "relayed to developers" (idk what happens now). And now NQ puts 6 months between those with their beacons (and all the other stuff) and those without.
 
NQ put themselves in quite a conundrum by treating this game as a beta and a soft launch wherever it works the best for them.

Wonderful, now the people with billions in the bank will get even richer as they will be able to still have a whole factory producing everything and this change will mean very little if anything to them where as the little people who didn't game the system early release will get the shaft /golfclap

I wish somethings a little focus on content was also done as well.  Its a big nerf so those who have made billions can buy what they need and those just starting out are left in the lurch.  I get why your doing it.  It is just a big shame!

Hi NQ
 
Nobody can dispute making everything in megafactories was too easy, linear, and out of balance. But there are so many issues with your approach to fix it.
 
 
PROBLEM 1) You are putting yourselves in quite a position with treating the game as a beta and non-beta whenever it works. On one hand, with the promise of keeping our wealth into the release, we're expected to treat the game as it's an actual launch to compete with other players and organizations. But then there is no support, mechanics can change dramatically, etc. You're also putting at least a 6-months gap between those who could exploit the unbalanced mechanics early and accumulate wealth, and those who couldn't.
 
SOLUTION: I don't really have a solution to this. Perhaps the best way to operate right now is to announce a full wipe at the end of beta if you can financially handle it.
 
 
PROBLEM 2) This update leaked to lots of people for several weeks. The knowledge put those people further ahead.
 
SOLUTION: Either enforce your NDA, or do not disclose (economically sensitive) details of how you'll change things.
 
 
PROBLEM 3)  Completely unhelpful talents just to unlock elements are a bad idea. Eve Online learned this lesson over the years and they are doing away with artificial prerequisites to start playing the game. Industry is one of the rare domains where talents actually GREATLY matter. Most production will eventually become unviable overtime without respective talents. It's bad analysis if you thought the lack of talents was an issue.
 
SOLUTION: If you want to wall element usage behind talents, you should do so behind the existing talents. This way at least people get a benefit alongside element access. A sense of actual progression and no waste of days of training.
 
 
PROBLEM 4) I am quite worried whether the game actually has enough quanta supply recipes for sufficient production.
 
SOLUTION: The game needs isk faucets besides the honeycomb NPC order businesses. I have low-cost proposals for that in the idea box.
 
 
PROBLEM 5) Machine-based recipes create lots of issues. It'll be quite tedious to teach the recipes to every single element and to keep tabs on them even in non-megafactories. Moreover, how will our investments be saved? I hope (but am not certain) the recipes will be saved under "dynamic properties" of a machine. But then we won't be able to deploy the same factory from a blueprint. It'll be impossible to move factories. So you're not only investing in the machine, but also in the location of the factory. That'll have even greater repercussions with territory warfare. 
 
SOLUTION: You should have at least made the recipes character-based. Given that you don't tolerate account sharing and ban those who do, this would still achieve specialization, yet make it way less tedious.
 
 
PROBLEM 6) Cost is an artificial and unsustainable way to motivate people to specialize. Once people accumulate enough capital, megafactories will begin popping again. Then those who can afford them will be miles ahead of others.
 
SOLUTION: To achieve truly sustainable differentiation and specialization, there needs to be differentiation in the ways the source materials are acquired. Ore is equally available to every individual. It should take organizational level effort to access some building materials; it should take outside-the-box intelligently developed systems to access others. Moreover, it should make more sense to make one product somewhere and to make another elsewhere (geographically). 

Make the game fun again!
 
Mining endlessly and then waiting days or weeks for one component to cook is unacceptable and made me quit recently.
 
Fuel usage is also ridiculous.
 
Components are too big.
 
How to fix these issues:
- Add some kind of mining laser for ships so we can mine veins fast.
- Reduce time to make components.
- Make fuel more affordable, people living on Alioth are spending more ore to fuel than crafting. Fuel should be very easy and cheap to craft, even rocket fuel since we're using 1000x more rocket fuel for one trip.
- Balance components so we don't need so many for one ship. Ships look like pill of elements.

what happens to elements that have been cooking for 10 days when they are a 30 day timer when this patch is live?
 

Bye, bye self-sufficiency, even with small group. Good thing i got enough hours of the game to not be worried about money i paid for it. 

Dual universe crashed today at least 8 times, no crash report or error. Was just closed and you want to bring element destruction and remove flight stop on log out?  Just fix those annoying bugs before anything else...
 

The pattern NQ follows:
 
Start bringing up a new "thing" in interviews
Work out what they think will be the right way to go and start implementing it
Towards the time the patch is going to be released, post a devblog on it
Invite discussion which is pointless as the change is already set and beyond the point of making changes.
NQ also doe snot engage in the discussion nor actively work with the feedback they get.
 
6 months go by after patch
 
"We heard your feedback and are reworking the way this works"
Kind of work some of the feedback into the mechanic but as there is no actual structural record of the feedback it is mostly half done.


If NQ instead would allow for a discussion over the course of say 4 weeks shortly after starting implementation and then take 8 weeks to work in the feedback towards the first iteration they probably gain 6 months or more  of development time which then is available for other purposes. IMO a major cause for the delays in progress for the game development are the above. 
 
 
Why is this happening?
No centralized project management a culture of "what does this button do, let's try as it looks cool" "Pretend" interest in engaging with community Not taking feedback on board sub par communication insecure about critical feedback and how to take it on board "make it up as we go" style of development Not using the ATV resource to preview, no requirements for engagement from ATV members and not actively managing ATV (I doubt many of the ATV members are even still playing) No resources to mass test separate from the live servers prior to a patch being released  

this perm destruction of the elements.. there is way to much wrong with this game currently to even be considering this. 
 
1st      crashes do to server side related stuff. You dont have enough staff members to keep up with those complaints let alone right now.
2nd     Ive flown many variations of ships . and im sure others can agree because of current Hover height limits / wing limits its a royal pain to traverse even the easiest of bumps in the road.
3rd      flight controls.  its 2020   were is the controller support . i'd settle for attleast the Xbox controller support tho im sure most of use would love Hotas support.   Unless were flying something really      
            small  its rough flying period in this game.
4th      crafting times is a nightmare as it IS.. weather or not you have talents for it or not...  whats the point in even spending the time picking up the talents for this stuff when it still takes you hours
            to craft.   im going to spend half my time just replacing all the elements with 50 hp.  go 40 speed and glaze a hill im trying to go over and the and some random element on the other side of the ship
            that didnt get hit gets destroyed..
5th      see others are asking about a quick replacement element  tool to go with this update.  i highly doubt it was even considered.
6th      what about all the voxel traps people  been placing around markets ??????   so how it this patch really going to be fair to well   ANYONE??
 
Don't get me wrong. i like this idea. but the game is far from ready for this.  because of the lack of other solar systems its hard even getting to another planet outside the safe zone without being caught by PVP'ers , whens that balance going to take place i wounder.  its dangerous enough just trying to go to the market in one peace to attempt to sell stuff. and now soon due to other faults that need to be taken care of 1st slight fender benders due to bad element designs by devs and controls just trying to get to A to B on the safe areas can just wreck my day.  
 
Games are supposed to be FUN  not a JOB.   
 
future update folks    people can crash randomly into your parked ships while your logged out for the day and wreck your stuff while your away..
 
seeing this news about this change in elements alone.   Makes me feel like i was robbed a couple years ago when i bought my Gold founders pack .   litterly mined up about 3kt of ore today for a project now i feel like ive waisted my time.

Those changes are appropriate when the game is stable and almost bug free. In the current state it will just finish it off.
 
NQ Please wake up.

Maybe you should actually fix the AGG ships falling out of the sky before you introduce this change.  Some of us use this as a workaround to that particular bug, and this will make AGG more or less worthless. 

1) I pursue ship in PVP.
 
2) He logs off (instantly stops).
 
3) I slow down, turn around, approach it.
 
4) He logs back in and is flying at 30,000 km/h away from me while I have 0 speed.
 
ARE YOU NUTS ?
 
Does anyone thinks about those changes at all ?
 
Please make the ship at least stop if it was shot at in the last 10 minutes (shot, not targeted, targeting can be abused in the safe zone, shooting cannot)

If I can't maneuver tool the voxel board that Yeeted itself 10km away back to my base, then what do I do? Fix game breaking bugs before nerfing the tools we would use to compensate for those bugs.

The Alt-F4 was used to compensate for flaky mechanics. Fix your game before nerfing the tools we use to make this game bearable to play.
 
And nearly nobody travels at sublight speeds anymore, EVERYONE warps. So this nerfing of Alt-F4 only hurts those trying to not have to repair their ships over and over because of game-breaking bugs. And combined with the fact that elements will have a fixed repair amount, you are going to have people ragequitting in droves...