merihim

That may be the problem.  I'm here for entertainment.  I live in an actual society.  So factories have been crippled.  Well, ok it was interesting to expand my factory and be able to create new equipment to expand my capabilities in the game but, babysitting a factory was getting a bit stale and probably wouldn't have held my interest for too much longer.  So now that has been hobbled and I'm supposed do what instead of managing my factory?  Mine?  No thanks.  Make screws and schlep them 30 km to the nearest lag fest that pass for markets?  Again, no thanks.  Maybe, take what little wealth I've accumulated and piss it away on PvP.  That could be fun but, the current combat mechanic is pretty much at the level of being a graphical text adventure.  There is so so much that needs to be added content wise before worrying about forcing specialization. 

I talked with many of the original core members of the Opean Federation almost immediately after the twitch stream from NQ yesterday, Monday December 7th. I wanted to raise many of my concerns revolving around what is going to happen in the game and the community and how it's killing the creativity that was originally offered to the community almost forcing players to come together in a senseless fashion. The new update is going to make small, medium and somewhat sizeable factories obsolete killing any kind of start up for small organizations that even range in the 100s making people incapable of getting off planet without participating in the in game economy and even larger organizations will have trouble surviving this update especially DSI who has recently lost a mega factory and suffered substantial losses on the battlefield putting them in a unrecoverable setback after this update. Taking away the creativity and inspiration that originally brought the community together in the first place is going to kill whatever community is still left playing considering the average activity rate on the server is 200 players. I originally came to the game because I loved the balance between the in game market place and the creative aspect of it. 
 
This update hinders so many possibilities small organizations are achieving and a timely basis and goal to goal trend and going to nerf the idea of small organizations or clans making a difference or becoming sizeable in game without having a massive player-base compared to organizations like the Empire which currently has 1.7K members in their community which compared to the game and what it is turning into solidifying their power (be aware I'm using the empire has an example) but small organizations competing with the giants is no longer a possibility but irrefutable and obsolete. 
 
The idea that I and my friends could log into this game and work on an ever expanding factory and going into space to form the empire we originally wanted too is now not a possibility that this update is forcing players to become Consumers instead of Creators like originally intended. The only organizations that will welcome and benefit off this update are the largest of organizations or the most well setup corporations that have little to lose except against espionage considering corporations at this point will become an essential piece of the game and will force players to rely on them monopolizing creativity in its process killing the game's freedom and expansion it offers severely limiting it. 
 
Yours truly - The Elector of the Opean Federation, Council members, and core members.

There is one major difference. We don't 'have to be' the cog in the faceless merciless machine in DU.
 
We have a choice.
 
We can quit.

To be fair towards JC mining in and of itself IS stupidly easy. Find node, dig to node, click for however long, rinse and repeat. What the problem is, is not that it is EASY but that it is tedious and boring as all hell and that there are limited other things to do. And this patch will likely have a negitive impact on those even without major changes to mining to start with.
 
PvP is borked and now ammo will be T3+ and likey cost millions meaning only orgs will have access to them intially and we all know it will be unlikely MOST regular peasants will get to participate beyond mining the resources for the "main teams".
 
Industry will be kneecapped so you have nothing else to do as managing one or two lines is not hard or time consumeing and only mega industrialists like alieoth market 17 guy will have large lines at first.
 
Ship parts are at least for the first while going to EXPLODE in price as everyone scrambles to get factorys produceing making produceing even small ships iffy unless you can spend 9-12 hours a day mining or have an entire org backing your projects (which 99% of us wont) so ship building is out and its likely ships beyond XS and S will be unobtanium for many and nearly imposible to maintain unless prices come down which is not assured, How many times have you seen a handful of players setting the price as high as they can in other mmos?. Hell even fuel will likely cost a fortune now as most fuel requires T2+ materials in large amounts. This combined with the pvp changes is likely going to kill pvp for a while beyond those who could afford it to begin with.
 
Building buildings will be avalible but same as ship parts it sounds most decoritive elements will explode in price and at least for this patch individual honeycomb to make nice interiors will skyrocket in price or be unobtanium for individuals or small groups meaning building will be limited at best.
 
Travel is likely going to die beyond org mining trips or for the rich. I cant see a warp cell line being less then 75 to 100 million which is going to EXPLODE the price of cells at least at first and its unlikely they will come down for a while. And MOST of us only get 1-2 hours a day to play at best. So interplanitary travel is going to be out for the most part, unless again your in an org that can take shifts to slowboat or your willing to risk your ship being idle in the pvp zone.
 
While i try to give NQ the benefit of the doubt and try to be optimistic in general...a lot of these changes are going to kill off small groups and individuals and even large orgs are going to suffer huge attrition rates for a long while after this patch at BEST. Afterall if stuff like ships and ammo are moronicly expensive then only your inner circles in most orgs are likely going to get to pilot ships and only your best builders are going to get resources to build. Everyone else will likely be mining serfs.
 
If you add mining nerfs without a full support system to make money ontop of that.....well i cant see things going well for the game long term and it worries me.

I'd hope the patch is up and running before that arrives as every day you wait will give the big orgs a bigger advantage now that they know what's coming, not that they did not already get the inside scoop from ATV. That NQ seems to not realize what they triggered on the Q&A today is possible the most concerning issue af them all.
 
But I have a feeling you will find out .. soon.. and by then it will be too late and the game will be pretty much in the hands of the big orgs.. But listening to JC, that may well have been the idea all along to be very  honest as solo players and small groups should not really wanting to buil.d their own parts of ships, they should just buy what they need instead is what JC pretty much said.. So the game is not for you, just for the big bois who will not be able to determine how you play and what you pay..
 
It's unfortunate really, I'll wait and see how the update plays out but I expect it will spell the end of the line for many players.

I think I might just come back to DU when there is a fully functioning civilization in place. Because building one sure as hell sounds a lot like a job now and not much like a game I’d choose to pay to play. 
 
Mine more so you can buy less. Sell to those who control the markets for a pittance. Then Rely on bots to sell magical slave potions at exorbitant prices to power the Ars Industria controlled by the mega corps. 

sound like the plot to the movie Brazil... or just real life in a few years’ time. And we all know how much fun that’ll be. 
 
jeezus the Bladerunner phrase “More real than real” just got really real. 

You're well on the path of going the way of Worlds Adrift.
 
You want to nerf industry because everyone is building their own 'Iphone' - fine - what are they going to do instead? What else is there to do instead? 
 
You want to add element destruction? Great - I'm with you. It needs to happen. But maybe just maybe pairing it with the removal of the Alt-F4 mechanic, removal of Discord support and on top of that nerfing production isn't the best idea? 
 
You think mining is too easy? Grea.....wait what....what? WHAT?! Have you mined in DU? How much? Look, ask anyone who has filled a 10L hub every two nights, there is nothing 'easy' about mining. It's boring. It's tedious. It's concentrated drudgery and one of the primary reasons I don't play DU anymore - but what it is not is 'easy' and never even in my most drunken state (and I admit I sure didn't mine sober) did I think that "Hey maybe if I couldn't link to my 10L hub mining would be better!" . In fact, when linking was broken, I just didn't play the game. 
 
Just the fact that JC thinks that linking is the issue with mining - not literally everything else - makes me lose all faith in his judgment. Of all the things wrong with mining - linking isn't  one of them. Nor is the lack  of "mining hazards"...
 
The community has over and over and over asked for constructs that can mine - empyrion style - give us drills we can put on hovers - give even bigger giant drills we can put on stationary constructs. Give us anything besides handmining because 'easy' it's not - it's at least 7th level of hell grade tedium - and 9th if you have to deal with phantom nodes and pending operations. Unless of course you take my approach, get drunk and watch netflix so that the next day you forget about how hellish mining for 6 hours straight was.
 
Unfortunately I've remembered enough of those nights over time to stop logging in to DU...and the upcoming changes and theroycrafting about the future of mining have made it extremely clear that JC does not play DU either...he may goof around in his castle - but he sure hasn't built a mega factory nor has he mined the ore to get the resources to build his giant fortress if he thinks all those things are too easy...
 
Seriously - JC just logs in - looks at all the stuff others built and his take away is that mining and mega factories are too easy? It took us weeks of drudgery......I can't even...
 
Edit: Also - cores not repairable?! Masterstroke....

I think this change is garbage. I really liked that I could jump into this game and do anything, with skills just making my chosen activity more efficient. If I had wanted to deal with schematics and skills to use machines I'd have just stayed playing Eve Online and dealt with their mess of skills. Your industry is already monotonous with an insane number of clicks need to create any part and limited by the number of links you can have. Should have just added higher tiers of machines for the different tiers of parts so the new folks could still easily build basic parts to fuel their creations and have to be more dedicated to build giga factories.

I'm a pretty new player and spent a few weeks getting to grips with the game and finding my way around.  Its taken a long time and a lot of work to build a ship, lots of money repairing after learning to fly through smashing up on Alioth time and time again, and spent hours looking for T3+ ores, which have been totally unsuccessful. Even after 3+ hours each way flying to other planets to hunt, only to find that theyve been stripped bare.
Im not interested in joining an org, I want to play the game as an individual, but this step seems to make it even more impossible for new players to get to grips with Dual universe, and I honestly think that it will totally ruin the game for players like me.  Ive worked really hard to build a small factory to produce a Territory Scanner with ores that Ive laboriously mined, which has taken weeks.Without the ability to generate decent income you are effectively stuck, unable to be able to move forward.  It not even possible  to mine for decent ore to generate income as its been completely hoovered up everywhere.  Wouldnt it be better to somehow impose a levvy on larger factories to limit their output or profits rather than punishing small fry like me?
I still havent been able to afford a warp drive, and building a factory seemed like the only sustainable way to acheive this - so I hope you put things into place to help newbie players, who, by the time they have learned the game will be doomed to a poor, boring life on Alioth & Sanctuary!  And what happens to all the industrial units Ive slowly purchased that I will now need a huge investment to use? I honestly think that I will lose interest, just at a point where I felt I was getting somewhere....... .   .     .        .           .                   .                                             !
 

How true.

Reasons for this changes in blogpost are just out of the reality . Clearly writer or gamedesignes have no glue what really happen ingame. Perhaps they should try to play it a while...

I wonder if/when I'll get my skill points back from all the skills I invested in under different pretence. Tho maybe watching my factory becoming a pile of rubbish might just be enough and the last drop for me to drop DU until it's final. I thought beta persistence meant that what we build and learn would mean something - now I feel like I've built the worst gimp character that wasted countless hours running around blindfolded in the dark.
 
On top of it all having to buy schematics multiple times at "substantial cost" feels like a slap in the face. One might assume that connected/linked industry might be able to link to a schematics hub, but narp... need to make that nerf a fatality and rip the backbone out Sub-Zero style.
 
At the same time my AGG carrier gets nerfed and is going to crash down - right on my industry junk pile. At least that makes for a good visual representation of what's happening, I guess.
 
 
This DevBlog kinda sounds like a good bye.

This update will only work if there is a full wipe or else big orgs just buy all recipes and dominate the game while the game gets even harder for small groups or solos who are struggling even now.

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

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.

please stop adding more time sink to compensate your lack of content 

That would be even worse. In PVP, during a Fight, your elements will blow up. Multiple times. And you will need people to run around and do repairs, on bigger ships. You cannot bring an entire second version of your ship into combat, just to replace Elements that have been destroyed. 1 Life, or 3 as planned by NQ, will make PVP an absolutely unenjoyable Nightmare. If you want Durability so much, give the Elements many more Lifes, so they can actually last an entire Combat Encounter, and be replaced afterwards. And preferably then, be salvaged by the Proposed salvaging Industry by OP.
A single life for Elements would be Nightmarish even outside of PVP. You entered a farout Planet, just burned in the atmosphere and destroyed a few adjustors. Don't have any with you? None beeing sold? Well, too bad, your screwed, go Force Respawn yourself and try to rescue your ship with another one, or spend Hours building up a Industry on that farout planet just to replace a few stupid parts.
 
1 or 3 or comparable low amounts of durability, or even durability at all, is detrimental to PVP, and as it is intended by you and Novaquark way too punishing for players.
Ship crashes, too, are already punishing enough. Your ships Elements are completely wrecked, and you are in danger of losing your ship to someone coming to salvage it.
 
In its current iteration, as described by NQ, it will also INCREASE the amount of trashy useless Elements you have lying around, because they are now useless with less than max durability, couldn't be reused without a element scrapping mechanic, and cant really be sold because nobody wants Elements that are about to be destroyed.
 
Your argument for just more HP for Elements is not a good idea too, since it will just unecessarily drag out fights, waste more ammuntion making PVP even less of an incentive, and bring the HP of Elements to an unreasonable difference in comparison to Voxels. Might as well armor yourself with just Elements then.
 
Either increasing lifes aka durability to much higher, like 20 lifes or more, with automated replacement(not manual), or completely removing it, AND the addition of scrapping elements into parts and scrap (with loss of course) is necessary. The way it is currently is planned, or how you suggest, is a detriment to the game.

So I'll start off with re-iterating what I've already mentioned in another thread - having "finite" Durability mechanic has been universally hated by gamers since the mid-90's, and is the worst possible step backwards for this game that I can imagine, that will:
- Turn off a large chunk of playerbase
- Make replacing destroyed elements hours long endavour due to "element already blocked by another element" error forcing you to strip half your ship before replacing the one thing in order
- Create an insane gap between large orgs and small orgs / solo players
- Make everything in the game less fun - from building, to general flying, to PvP
- Is a survival mechanic that people have repeatedly stated they did not want over the entirety of the development of Dual Universe. Both in forums, discord, private groups etc.
 
The only rational and viable reason I can see why durability would be introduced, is to provide a supply sink and increase demand for new elements, so as the economy does not collapse due to playerbase saturating itself with everything they need to build. (I do have to interject that there will always be players leaving the game, there will always be new players joining the game, there will always be existing players building and creating bigger and more things, the market is showing no signs of being unhealthy, there is absolutely no reason to.... ok /rant off, just had to get that off my chest)
 
Now rather than whining about it without offering solutions, here is a win-win alternative that would not require any massive amount of rework or alterations to the current gameplay that should NOT ONLY  appease both the people who want durability (I'm assuming for the following reason) and those who would rather run a cheese grater over their knees every time they wake up than see it ruin the game we are all passionate about - but also make the game more fun as a standalone mechanic, allow for easy balancing at a later stage, AND open up an entire new playstyle and career prospect in DU. 

So Anyway:

Problem: Economy saturation requiring completed element sink
 
Proposed solution: 
- Keep scrap and element repair functioning exactly the same as it is.
- Scrap will no longer be produced directly from raw ore. Scrap by ore will be replaced by scrap by tier (eg. iron scrap replaced with T1 scrap. Gold scrap replaced with T4 scra.)
- Introduce a "reclaimer" industry element (or add a recycler mode - the first just seems easier). 
- "Reclaimer" industry only has a "start" and "stop" switch. None of the whole industry of run maintain etc. That just seems to be more work and more difficult for the devs. Unless they want to use that system - in which case that would work just as well (we would just need more than one reclaimer for multiple elements)
- "Reclaimer" industry will yeet any fully assembled element from the [linked input] container - such as engines, fuel tanks, windows etc. - and process them back into a fraction of raw materials and a bit of each type of scrap
- The quantity and tier of scrap produced would depend on the quantity and tier of raw materials that were used to make the element in the first place. This means the game has already pre-balanced this system, as small components like lights that require T2 or T3 resources would yield less scrap but of higher tier, large components such as engines would yield a lot of scrap but at tier 1. Yeeting something like a warp drive on the other hand would give back a bunch of low - high tier components and low - high tier scrap. 
 
This also opens up the possibility to add new skill trees, as well as balancing the whole system by simply changing how much of raw materials are returned, how much is turned into scrap, and how much 'disappears' due to efficiency loss. Further, allowing the placement of this industry on dynamic cores, would open up entire career as scavaging ships that are designed to nom on other ships that have been captured or found derelict in space - as well as the dynamic gameplay whereby running out of scrap in the middle of space would require the pilot to make decisions of what components (if any) they can afford to recycle on the spot.

Overall you get:
- Economy sink for completed elements (which basically solves the problem that 'durability' is supposed to fix)
- Incentive for people to look for derelict ships - or create derelict ships from other people when it comes to PvP
- More engaging gameplay when it comes to repairing in the middle of combat
- Expands the salvaging profession into scavenging, as well as creating a salvaging sub-profession
- Creates the possibility of another class of ships being built that follow large org' fleets to "clean up" after a fight
- Creates options for new skill trees
- Allows for easy re-balancing tweaks at a later stage without drastically changing the system
- Is still new player and solo player friendly as there are always elements to recycle (considering you start off with a bunch of stuff)
- Uses existing already implemented and tested mechanics of linking containers and industry.
- Overall win-win for everyone as it expands gameplay and makes it more fun - UNLIKE durability which does the opposite for both accounts (yes I had to say it again).

Alternatively, if someone else has any ideas, that would be good too. Basically at this point, anything would be better than proposed durability changes. I'll go as far as to say that completely removing player markets and player driven economy would be better than proposed durability changes. Ok maybe not, but you get the picture. 

EDIT:
Also alternatively - a simple RNG for a % for an element to get perma-destroyed when your core goes boom - would still be a superior mechanic that creates whatever element sink and necessity the current system does with practically none of the disadvantages listed above. Hell, if there's a minimum % of elements destroyed mechanic - even if it's as low as 1% - would encourage people to actually put decorative elements and whatnot on their ships. 

This game is dead in 6 months tops if this system goes in.
 
Lol if this is what people in that "why did you quit survey" they are on meth or something and should not be listened to, and besides they are in a better place now.
 
Second NQ plans to take the 100k daily alloance away at some point so there is that too.
 
Not to mention finite resources. Non-renewable, non recyclable, non sift able resources.
 
Those three things aside just looking back at all the stupid mishaps along the way, the learning curve for plantary/space flight progression, atmo burn, in air collisions, pvp, lag, ships sliding or just mistakes up to this point could have been all game ending incidents until you can get built up enough to even really do anything let alone pvp. Hell the time we came back from a two week mining trip and gravity body slammed us from like 10km up straight to the ground and we crashed multiple other ships trying to salvage the ore, 1mil hp repair bill on top of it would have been completely game ending.
 
Hey NQ remember that time Alioth got blockaded and the other time the planet nearly got mined out? Those people are now going to have complete carblanch to just grief whole planets until they cant fly, then cant mine, and eventually just quit the game when they cant make anything. Sounds solid.
 
This sounds like a grief feedback loop. The first casualties are the newbies, the second casualty is the markets, the third casualty is the resources themselves, and when you cant fight back at all anymore you just quit lol.
 
RIPDU!
 
Its supposed to be a game not a job or some kind of masochistic self flagellation punishment scheme. I still remember the last dying words of EQN Landmark which was "It wasn't fun".
 
NO for me.
 

I agree with others, we need renewable resources before a resource sink comes into play. Resources going out without new resources coming in is a terrible recipe and will make the game unattractive at this time. I'd probably cancel my sub and go play something else until renewables are implemented.
 
Aside from that, the roadmap is starting to look more and more like Eve. If I wanted to play Eve, I'd be playing it.

This is worst idea ever.
It will be gamebreaker for me.
I will not pay any monthly fees from this game if this is implemented.
After my 4 Kickstarter pledges expires, Im out.

I think the 3 planet safe zone should just be safe from being shot at, a crashed ship should be claimable. But I like the idea of a compromise in the 3 planet safe zone, say a 2 hour hour window to reclaim then any one can attempt to salvage it.

This is a fiddly topic, as there are issues with things like people throwing walls of glass up (there are trolls out there than think it a good use of 7$ to greif until they get banned) or the terrain on Ion spontaneously loading mountains in to the same space you are currently flying through as you try to land. 

Sanctuary and Alioth should retain ownership for a large period as these are the starting areas for new players, perhaps two weeks, as it easily permits time to recover, but allows salvage on things when people crash and then quit or for some other reason dont come to re-collect it. Thadies and Madis probably need the same as it provides time for new players doing their first interplanetary run in the safe zone time to get back to their stuff after probably slamming in to a planet at top speed with their only interplanetary ship.

Other planets in the system should give you a few hours so you have time to contact an admin to deal with griefers, with the caveats that this grace-period be removed when the safe-zones are taken from those planets as it will officially be open pvp, and that there be a universal 24hr grace-period after any patch deployment to deal with bugs.

I agree, I wouldnt have come back to the game in beta and gone hardcore if there was going to be a wipe, I would have waited until launch, and would most of the others i have come to the game with.

100% if they full wipe now I am out, as are most of my org, as NQ would have completely gone back on there promises.