FryingDoom

Yeah the Backers who paid more than the subscribers are now being screwed for gambling on a product that may never have existed if it was not for the backers.
 
Makes you so proud to be a backer, knowing NQ think you are worthless compared to a subscriber. 

Yeah the Backers who paid more than the subscribers are now being screwed for gambling on a product that may never have existed if it was not for the backers.
 
Makes you so proud to be a backer, knowing NQ think you are worthless compared to a subscriber. 

Knee jerk every time I read this.  Backers didn't "play for free", they played based on a one-time fee.  Think I was in it for $175 (ish) - the most I've ever invested in a game that wasn't playable at the time.  Now, I admit, I'll get DACs for that - maybe.  Perhaps will find out tomorrow - but they were silent around DACs.  And I did get to play alpha and beta for a lot longer than anyone (except perhaps Blazemonger) predicted.  But it sure didn't feel like "free".

While I don't disagree with you, NQ though has really skewed the lines on where the game is at.  They say its beta.  By their own admission its not released.  They are making what everyone in the industry would call alpha level changes by removing a core feature mining on planets/moons.  So this begs the question, why couldn't NQ release the new tile changes but say that the tax/abandonment wont happen until 3 months after release?  This would give players who want to support but wait til release to choose to come back.  Why are they doing this NOW?  Thats the big question.  Not that its happening, but why now.  I think the two most obvious ones are
 
1.) They are doing detemer and in addition the abandonment and taxes to remove as many tiles as possible because their money situation is more dire then they led on.  Otherwise whats 12 more months of a few static constructs on some hexes?  
 
2.) They already made up their mind on wiping, and doing this is a test, a 'Beta Test' if you will.  They know everyone is losing all their shit anyway, so might as well test out some future mechanics.
 
Those feel like the most likely to me as to why these taxes abandonment are happening now, and not shortly after official release.

...after >10,000 views on YouTube, and many hundreds of hrs building:
Death Star
https://www.reddit.com/r/DualUniverse/comments/j8zxhd/its_operational_death_star_test_flight/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DualUniverse/comments/jdc5st/districts_9_5_6km_11kms_visible_from_the_death/
Roulette Table & Poker Machine
https://www.reddit.com/r/DualUniverse/comments/k74cws/this_took_longer_to_build_than_the_death_star/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DualUniverse/comments/kotnkm/some_epic_code_optimisation_to_get_this_working/
Spinning Radar
https://www.reddit.com/r/DualUniverse/comments/n8fhou/megabosslords_infinitely_spinning_radar_no_fuel/
Emperator
https://www.reddit.com/r/DualUniverse/comments/o8z3xg/the_emperator_sneak_peek/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DualUniverse/comments/o4uev9/market_shown_for_scale/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DualUniverse/comments/o1xflv/no_other_game_comes_close/
Hologram Projector
https://www.reddit.com/r/DualUniverse/comments/ohzbvi/a_huge_thank_you_to_those_whove_stopped_by/
Stuff Like This
https://www.reddit.com/r/DualUniverse/comments/orvc46/todays_voxel_challenge_everything_about_this/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DualUniverse/comments/mwp6xw/til_voxel_landing_skids_work_great/
Giant Floating Island
https://www.reddit.com/r/DualUniverse/comments/pzntme/floating_island_progress_week_3/
...and a store with 50+ more DRM-free BPs.
It's NOT the constant bugs. This is a beta. They're a small studio running on fumes. It's no surprise having to fill in a dozen bug reports after every release: https://imgur.com/a/y4sPbpE
It's NOT the constant nerfs - losing our factories, HTML/SVGs, megas/scans, terraforming, LUA randomly deprecated, ship designs ganked by new element mechanics... also to be expected in a beta (even if it is soul-destroying.)
It's NOT having all my suggestions ignored - even the most basic QoL improvements which 50 other people also asked for since day 1, and still today: https://www.reddit.com/r/DualUniverse/comments/pu9eoc/watch_my_spirit_broken_in_real_time/

Sorry Xerrass. NQ just don't listen.
It's NOT the lack of vision or inspiration. JC's 'emergent gameplay' pitch was awesome bait. Now we're all being shoe-horned into a vanilla same-as-every-other-game meta, but maybe that's the price of doing business. If it means more players, also fine.
It's NOT the community. The community were awesome - although many good people have also left.
No, I loved this game - despite everything. Eyes wide open.
The issue is trust.
As a beta, the only point of investing time is if you trust the studio to respect your effort.
NQ have crossed from flaky to deceitful: showering us with platitudes while stealth-patching and quietly reversing stated plans.
If we can't trust them to respect our efforts, and we can't trust anything they say - any declaration now is potentially the opposite of what will happen. Every back-flip is attributed to some last-minute complaint from someone, but it's never clear who, or how many, or what the forum was to be heard, and how long discussion was open-then-closed-then-opened-again.
And because of the ham-fisted way they've handled letting players who quit long ago just leave their garbage laying around forever, tying up resources without paying a sub, there are absolutely no consequences to just walking away - which probably the dumbest design decision in the history of a game.
TL/DR: NQ caught lying. Again. No pre-nup.

What a stupid decision, so Aolith will still be crowded with off line players. Time to just do a wipe.

In the press release I posted above you can clearly see that NQ sent out press material which stated beta was in NQ's own words "the last planned wipe", which just so happened to coincide with charging a monthly subscription and also in NQ's own words "a great time to start...". A press release is just that; facts from NQ as a resource for game journalists, etc. All of that combined, at the time, made it very much sound like the "persistent" game was worth playing for those who don't like losing things they work hard to acquire/build/whatever.
 
Yes, it's not a "promise", that is the wrong word, but they clearly tried to encourage people who would have normally waited and not paid to work for temporary stuff to start then. I never play a game seriously before a wipe but that was convincing enough for me that I thought I might regret waiting a few years for "launch".
 
They did what they did, we are where we are, now we just need to sit back and wait for them to announce what they plan to do. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

1. Please make HQ tiles 7 vs. 5 so that way if we need to take a break we can maintain a bonus constellation of hexes if we can't be online to mine it for extended period of time. 5 seems like an arbitrary number out of kneejerk response to appease all the players with torches and pitchforks. 7 on the other hand creates a function & aesthetic number of tiles that feels complete, and allows players to take breaks in case you know their parents has cancer, or they lose their job, or both of these things at the same time.... kind of stuff in life.

2. Make recalibration & drop off after 7 days not 2... (keep the current recharge rates/cap etc.) If I have to login every day to spend my charges, I don't want to do it to nanny the same mining unit I just nannied 48 hours ago, to simply maintain efficiency rates. Some of us can only play on weekends, and work several jobs, so it feels like a punishment for being responsible in real life.

 @NQ-Pann @NQ-Deckard @NQ-Sesch

Will be interesting to see how this poll continues to shape out...

It's not a "no wipe" statement and we all know that.  It's "If we have to wipe, we'll do our best to get you your stuff back"
 
There is just no way they can fulfil that promise and also intentionally wipe progress for the purpose of wiping progress.  I'm not saying they can't break their promise, but they sure as hell made it.
 
By intentionally ignoring that you're doing some pretty heavy spinning yourself.
 
This is not a discussion about whether NQ said they would wipe again or not, it's a discussion about whether NQ said they would intentionally revert paying customer's progress or not.
 
You can keep trying to have the other discussion if you want, but you're just disrupting the real discussion because you don't want to have it.

But its like they dont want to sell anything worth buying. Subs only go so far in funding a game tbh. There are people out there who spend as much money on virtual clothing as real clothing. I know people who play video games and spending on virtual clothing to cut down their shopaholic tendancies.

Q: Was the wipe at the start of Beta the final wipe?
A: There are no currently planned wipes of Dual Universe, however, NQ retains the right and ability to do so for balance, technical or gameplay reasons, NQ will attempt to mitigate these effects through plenty of forewarning and various dev means so that players are quickly back on their feet. The only case of a wipe will be if NQ sees no other option.
 
 

Subs might be income but they are going to need to start selling things in a fluff shop instead of the recruitment pyramid scheme for getting skins. Sub models only work if you make a game worth paying for. I would pay money for things like skins or pets that auto repaired, auto harvested, auto refueled, or played mini games for me. I would pay for things like dyes to make my avatar glow. NQ is not doing themselves any favors with a sub based model.
 
I would prefer like some kind of golden XS core that you can fit whatever you can fit into it which wouldnt be much along with bps and exp.

Q: Was the wipe at the start of Beta the final wipe?
A: There are no currently planned wipes of Dual Universe, however, NQ retains the right and ability to do so for balance, technical or gameplay reasons, NQ will attempt to mitigate these effects through plenty of forewarning and various dev means so that players are quickly back on their feet. The only case of a wipe will be if NQ sees no other option.
 
 

https://www.gamespress.com/ANTICIPATED-SCI-FI-MMO-DUAL-UNIVERSE-REVOLUTIONIZES-THE-VIRTUAL-WORLD-
 
"The team is planning its final content wipe for the Beta release, making it an ideal time to start rebuilding civilization."
 
/Shrug

Since its suppose to be a tradeable item, they should never be automatically used.  At least thats how plex in EvE works and its been stated many many times DAC is the equivalent of plex.  Its an inventory item you can put on the market, or then "redeem".  All tho they would need some updates on the UI to show when your sub runs, and such.  NQ is pretty bad at UI stuff so we will see.

I think it's time for NQ and us all to accept that the DU sandbox is just to big. All these planets and moons, most of which serving zero purpose outside of containing an ore type. With that tiny player population thats left we are just never going to see anything but vast stretches of nothingness with a spattering of constructs in 95% of the game world.
 
Proposal : Keep the core 3 planets and moons and drop the rest of the planets for now. Ring the 3 planet area with a persistently spawning asteroid belt outside safe space. T3+ ores found out there.
 
Someday in the distant future if DU is ever a success and you need more room add the outter planets.
 
Obviously this would make the most sense with a wipe, but if it could be done without then all the better to not lose more of the few players that remain.
 
Then NQ can focus on giving players more tools for setting up their own cities / markets etc. Maybe just maybe, people would have a reason to build things and feel like they are not totally alone in the universe by moving 2 tiles outside of their org/home tiles.
 
Territory wars and all that jazz was a nice dream, but even if it was implemented tomorrow, no one would bother living outside the safe zone. You would have a few mining platforms spattered around with whatever defenses as no one would risk any big investments. Lets be fair the combat technology in DU is abysmal and will never be anything buy abysmal because of the way they handle the simulation with this engine. Leave the ship-ship pew-pew in the asteroid belt and call it a day.
 
I strongly suspect in a matter a few weeks we will see most planets barren of territory claims now that they actually have to be upkept.

With the 5 HQ territories for individuals, I am happy with the cost per week. This means everyone can gain a reasonable income at no overhead cost and only those who want to earn more must pay more.

Gets my vote.

Lol and the peanut gallery said we couldnt affect change.

I think NQ need to decide what wipe they will be doing at release and make that statement publicly available, before they charge more for subscriptions. 

Biggest bonus to AFK Mining as you call it is that it does not favour those who do not work over those who are time poor. Personally I do like the idea but I do hope they bring in more content to replace the time people spent mining. Better Mission for example.

This is an argument for NQ to stop advertising the game as in BETA and start advertising it as in ALPHA
If I had done thousands of scans, I would be pretty upset right now.  Even though I understand why NQ feel they need to do it.
Many players were very upset with .23 even though many understood why it was necessary for the vision of the game.
I feel much of the disappointment is justified because the game is in BETA.
As far as I am aware, most peoples expectation of BETA is that the game is complete but needs stress testing and final balancing which might take several months.  Then the game will launch.
So, if the game was in ALPHA, I feel that most players would have little issue with these changes because everything would be done with the expectation that it will probably change at some stage.
It seems pretty clear to me that the game is really in ALPHA.  ie. extreme performance issues, many features far from implementation, current major rebalancing with more to come, etc.
I feel that NQ should just say "everybody we stuffed up by launching BETA too soon.  We are returning to ALPHA.  Everything in the game is subject to change.  If your happy with that we are happy to have you"

Wipe em.. coming from a solo.

I think NQ need to decide what wipe they will be doing at release and make that statement publicly available, before they charge more for subscriptions. 

Good move clearing old scans!