kulkija

Yeah, this may be a pretty rough change for casuals and especially for people who take time off from the game. My buddy and I have an org that owns 2 or 3 tiles total... We both have been taking time away since the original Industry/Finances changes about a year ago. If friends take time off, and their land is owned by orgs, they could come back to literally nothing left... A really terrible model if you want previous player to ever come back.

So, two week if paid taxes followed by two weeks before the tile goes unowned due to non payment?
 
The only real issue with this is timing. Your adding this system while removing mining as we know it. It will take a couple weeks for the economic engine of autominers to even begin to start.  For those that are less... wealthy, this change will hurt massively initially. 
 
Require players pay taxes on tiles... while taking away players primary method for obtaining wealth. This is the real issue IMHO.
 
Please give players a proper grace period if your NOT gonna lower the tax rate.  Two/Four weeks is a bit tight. 

Hi yama
 
I could not agree more.

There is a reason why ALL the tiles around the Alioth ring are taken.
 
It has been confirmed by NQ multiple times that the ring would be a safe-zone. So there is an strategic value there since you can take your time and not worry about future territory war, and at the same time have close access to central markets, mission hubs and other people. So in other words. People in the ring, are specifically looking for a permanent risk-free and persistent place to build.
 
And the persistent part here is important. This has always been a MAJOR selling point of DU. And demeter tax turns this up side down. Suddenly you have to play the game in a way dictated by NQ (which is completely opposite from the original premise of make-you-own-game), and do daily chores or else risk loosing tiles. I.e no longer persistent.
 
And it is true that we all knew that territory war was coming in the future, and tiles outside safe zones would be as risk. But that means that people who want to do t-war, are building strongholds outside the safe safe zones and preparing for that.
But as indicated by the popularity of ring tiles, there is also a demand for a stress-free alternative where people can relax and build at their own pace close to other people. And demeter completely decimates the stress-free scenario. Leaving only sanctuary and space stations where you are mostly alone and no longer feel part of a community like in the ring.
 
And to address the counter claim that tax is needed to remove inactive tiles. That is to put it frankly, bullshit. If the goal of demeter was to remove inactive tiles. Then all NQ would have to do, would be to look for inactive players. I.e. if the player is no longer paying the subscription and/or has not logged into the game in a long time (many months).
 
Demeter tax on the other hand feels more like an desperate attempt at generating player interaction by way of adding artificial scarcity to the ownership of tiles.
And to me this has all the trademarks of a classic NQ "quick fix" where they try to generate content with minimal effort. And look at 0.23 for an example on how well that usually turns out..

Oh yeah, land rush time. 
 
Taxes are still terribly timed as you are not really adding many new things for people to do and punishing those who are waiting for something more to play other than calibrate machines, run missions, and asteroids (old mining but in space) 

DU is becoming the opposite of the game we were promised in Kickstarter.

Anyone who backed this game before Beta knows exactly what I'm talking about.

@NQ-Deckard
I have only 2 ways that I can play DU. On Shadow.tech’s Shadow PC and Nvidia GeForce Now. Both are broken. For several weeks now. Really??

I have no way to play DU now. I know I’m not the only one. Many players can only play DU through either of those 2 ways. But not just those without a gaming PC. Many with PCs also rely on either or both those services to play their alts simultaneously too. 
 
Priority needs to be given to breakage on those services. As some have already suggested, it needs to be treated as Downtime and not a lesser priority issue bug. 

As alpha backer to keep the original vision strong is the most important value for me.

Feedback:
ok, so I've been prepping for the Geo reset and it has taken far too much of my time and hasn't been enjoyable.
 
Also, in the process I have had to redesign my workshop, which, since the schematics were introduced has grown as I've needed to add more different industry units so that in itself is a pain.
However, I have so many schematics now and finding which one goes in which industry unit is a very painful process.
 
I don't know whether NQ has given thought to the amount of enjoyment we are getting out of this game but I'm realising that I am more and more being dictated to by the game and I don't enjoy that in my spare time.
 
Every major update seems to reduce the fun of the game and makes it more like hard work.

This is what was at Kickstarter definitions:

 
 
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1949863330/dual-universe-civilization-building-sci-fi-mmorpg/description
 
 
 

I remember a few videos where JC said "No wipe." Then he changed his tune and said "We don't want to wipe." Then he got canned. So \o/. 
 
The game is definitely in an alpha state. I find the wipe/no wipe thing frustrating. First the game is either in a state right at this moment that it needs a wipe, or it doesn't. If it needs a wipe it needs a wipe. And only someone with dev tools can know if that is the case. Players can speculate at best. 
 
Then the question is simple. Either the devs want the freedom to screw things up like the economy and feel comfortable in trying different game mechanics; the freedom of knowing you can't screw up too badly while they're figuring out the basic game structure. Or the devs want the certainty that they have to get shit right now, because we're doing this shit live and second chances are for pussies! Both ways of rolling have their advantages and their disadvantages. Deadlines and do or die situations can inspire creativity. And so can taking off the pressure. 
 
The crowd demanding a wipe infuriate me because they seem to have very little sympathy for the people who have been doing stuff in this game, almost a hostility to the people who have had some degree of success. And they seem to struggle with the premise that this kind of MMO, when it launches, is not something that would wipe every 6 months or so. These games roll for years and years, the lifetime of the whole product.
 
Its as if the wipe crowd believes that NQ will wipe one day, and then never again ever make a mistake that will imbalance the economy. And wiping the game once will not solve the long term problem that new players will have dealing with entrenched interests. It will only turn you, the guy reading this right now into one of the old guard. But it won't make life comparatively easier for the guy who joins 1 year after release. Let me on the life boat! Screw the next guy.
 
On the other hand I remember when schematics went on sale for 1/10 or so the price they normally sell for and I missed out. I was mad. I'm pretty sure other "unfair" events like this have happened. It becomes a question of how borked things are, rather than if they are borked at all.
 
If they do wipe, paying subscribers will almost certainly get to keep their talent points. This is the most important asset you have. And if you have 50 million talent points, and actually enjoy playing this terrible game, with all the knowledge of how to do it, you will quickly climb back on top of the heap. With all the advantages in the world over the noobie starting with zero talent points and zero clue. 
 
Godspeed little noobie.

In the video someone said smth Like "If you properly mine a territory you will make more than taxes"
 
What does this entail? Using all your charges or whatever every day ? Using those charges only once per day/week? 
 
Because as i see it, this argument doesnt make any sense. You force players to do smth they don't want to do in order to keep their territory. Making it a job to login every day. Gg NQ
 
Also "move to sanc!" Is a pretty bad and useless suggestion either as someone said in that video. Moving 25 quadrillion elements, bases and whatever there......sure. hard slap in the face.
 
So glad i havent played at all, would be pretty upset if i had
 
 

This really resonates with me. I am mostly a solo player (was part of a small org at one point but they have all left).
 
I haven't felt the need to speak up on any updates in the past, but I do feel quite troubled by a few of the changes in demeter.
 
I have claimed a few tiles on almost every planet because the first ones were cheap. Built a few small bases so I can mine on different planets and store and transport things. 
 
As soon as demeter was announced I panicked:
 
Meganodes I spent ages trying to find so that I could lessen the grind somewhat, I now had to rush to mine (still haven't done them all because yeah, its boring as hell after a while - and I only had a couple). 
 
I started packing up all my stuff and moving it to sanc so I don't have to pay insane quanta a week just to keep my tiles and those of my org which, if any of them ever come back, will probably have to start from scratch, so just another reason not to. 1 million a week, managable maybe, but 20+ tiles, one player. Forget it, I am not sitting on billions of quanta like the orgs who exploited to get it, and I don't want to spend all my free time playing a mining minigame, on tiles which will most likely be suboptimal anyway.
 
I prefer to just build things, and ships. I used to like making factories too but let's not go there. The HQ tiles idea, I like it would give me something to hold onto, and somewhere I could build a base or a shop and it might actually stay there, but I am  concerned this will get exploited too. I think you should disable mining on these tiles. Otherwise once again the best tiles will get locked into player accounts forever (or until you introduce some other mechanism to unlock it).
 
Though I still feel there are better suggestions on this thread (e.g. deactivated accounts lead to loss, incremental taxes).
 
But I guess the biggest problem with demeter is I am not really sure what this game is anymore. Do you want a persistent world full up with player creativity? Because it feels like demeter will sap creativity from the game and will just end up as a big war between orgs with no real place for solo players who just want to make stuff.
 
Also keeping scan data just exacerbates the problem, big orgs, with large numbers of scans (if not now, then by the time demeter launches) will go straight to the rare tiles and lock them in, at least if you wipe the scans there will be a bit of a gold rush, with the possibility for solo players to strike gold. Even then the big orgs will still have a huge advantage.
 
 

Dear Novaquark,

Respectfully, you don't seem to know what you are doing at this point or the impact it is having on players. A good example of this would be the DSAT & Mining Unit Tier Issue, a simple yet botched  approach to development due to rush and lack of quality assurance discipline. Development that has created a divorce between community and the game developers that seems to be widening with each update. 

While the community at large is protesting many of these changes, you claim in your new vlogs that what you are doing is widely accepted and welcomed by community. This means you are either disconnected from reality, or you are being dishonest. Neither of those speaks to a good outcome for DU, the players, or NQ in the end.

If you are no longer willing to listen to your player base, maybe you should sell Dual Universe to a company that is willing to listen to the players so you can cash out and go do what you want vs. forcing things on us we never asked for, while at the same time refusing to fix issues we continually ask you to fix. The bait and switch development tactics over the past many years of development need to end. 

Please either stop ignoring us, or find another competent/capable developer with the resources to make DU a success that will listen to the community, vs. make 1-hour propaganda videos all the while marching the game to its death.

Respectfully,

Myself and anyone who agrees with me...

 

Why is creating stuff nearby each other against the eula? Civ building anyone? Cities ? is this forbidden too ?

Well its either direct actions now or they develop people out of the game over time. Bans are the least of our worries.
 
What are they going to do ban their whole playerbase?

Not sure being banning from the game is an effective deterrent at the moment..
And the threat of banning only works if there is a very small number of players, since banning a large number of players would affect NQ financially.

Problem is that the "official" statements for the game has now changed many times, so what you expect and what was promised all depends on when you joined..

But it gets harder and harder to guess what this "certain way" is. For a long time it looked like building pretty constructs is part of it. Now the builders get punished with a tax or expropriation. If everything that players do might finally be turned against them than they will stop playing at all.

But this is where I don't understand NQ's logic.
A flat time based tax will only hurt the small orgs and specialized solo players, and at the same time allow big orgs to cheaply acquire large amounts of tiles since they have the players needed to more easily cover the management overhead. So the change from the increasing tile prices to a flat tax, does the exact opposite of what you would think NQ wanted to achieve?
 
And once this plays out, it would not surprise me if we end up with having both an increasing one time cost and tax at the same time.

Watching the video, it would appear to me that there are so many, we don't knows, maybe after demeter, we are not sure yets and other phrases, that show this patch SHOULD NOT be released yet.
Not only is this patch VERY ALPHA, it is also very undecided. At this point you have to wonder if this is to save costs, maybe they should shut down the public servers for another year and restart with an alpha, when they are ready. 
Also wipe on release????? That has to be a mistake. How is the question of a wipe for release on the table? 

There is a wipe and then there is a wipe..
 
I would agree that resetting everything is not something NQ can ever get away with again. Once they started charging subscriptions that option really was removed and honestly it would not be needed.

Personally, I do expect there to be an eventual wipe where NQ will reset the world, including removing constructs. You would have a blueprint for the constructs in your inventory and your accrued skill points would be returned to the points pool and not be lost.


I'm pretty sure at the time NQ thought they had no choice but to start charging a sub while at the same time they knew full well the game was (and is) far from in a state where that is without its issues. The game really is still very much in Alpha and as we see now with Demeter, deep and impactful changes are being made. The "funny" part for me is that the way NQ talks about changes and how they implement hem really lines up perfectly with being in Alpha stage where stuff changes, gets taken out, will be unbalanced and generally not yet "come together". Their choice to go to "beta" with what really is an alpha stage development game was a mistake.

Demeter is a good example of why the choices NQ made were not the right ones. Had they still been in closed Alpha, it would have been trivial for them to implement these changes combined with a full wipe even. What is happening now is bad on several fronts, not in the least the one where those who benefitted from gain from exploits can now start using those funds to grab any and all tiles they can and have infinite resources for as long as they play. Some players have enough funds to pay takes for years and years on many tiles and hardly notice. Big organisations can, based on what NQ said, grab and hold massive numbers of tiles through their members and not pay tax on any of them ever.

DU is still very much in a phase where these things are planned and initially implemented, there is no balance and no cohesion yest. And that by itself really makes the "beta" label meaningless. once more there was a "we do not know yet, we have to see, we will refine after" in the vlog.. All that would be fine and expected during Alpha. For a game that is supposed to release next year sometime though, that is really not a good sign.


So yes, expect a wipe is what I'd say/suggest. But expect a wipe where may need to start over while you do retain your constructs as blueprints and will retain your talent points. And those two alone would give you a massive leg up when that wipe happens against those who join at that time which is fair enough seeing how you did subscribe early.
 

This is also a huge concern for me. All the assurances of the past are up for grabs. That combined with the announcement of price increases with the Demeter release (thus pushing to buy now for a year), that means alarm bells are going off, loudly! I can understand price increases to a certain extend, but if you want to inspire confidence, do that a month or two after the Demeter release. I was already hesitant to extend my four accounts for another year at the end of the year since the first Demeter video, that concern waned a bit as I saw options and the probable release before the holidays. I can no longer wait and see without a significant price hike. So I either take a risk now and spend money for another year for four accounts or just wait and see and either spend significantly more on subscriptions or just reduce the amount of subscriptions I have (or just quit all together)....
 
If a full wipe is done at launch, without compensation for subscription fees and time spend in game, I'm done. Hell, I might be pissed off enough to see if we could take legal action, based on statements made by the CEO in public videos at beta launch...
 

just watched video, still have concerns:
 
     HQ will not be rolled out at same time as Demeter,  so i will be taxed on my claim which i can not afford as i am not a miner.  So i will lose my current territory and have to move my buildings.   Can you roll out Demeter and set taxes to 0 until the HQ rolls out?  Then when you finalize the HQ portion you activate the taxes. 
 
You mentioned in the video that a  player can just move their static constructs to sanctuary if they dont want taxes, or if they come back after a break and find their land has been claimed,  BUT you provide no easy way for a player to actually move the static construct.  Placing down static construct blueprints in this game is a joke.  There is no easy way to see which way your building is facing or no easy way to adjust dept of the building bp.   If the building is very large you also run into problems with linked containers not being able to hold all the materials needed to place the BP.  You provide no easy way to remove the voxels and elements into a container.  How difficult would it be to add a selection on core menu that allows you to remove all voxels and elements into your linked container instead of making us slowly delete sections of the core until it is all cleared and hope to god you did not miss a microvoxel.  Please stop adding things to the game that will require us to move our static constructs without FIRST providing us with an easy way for us to accomplish
this.
 
 

It'd be great to post a short transcript of relevant Q&As. 
 
An hour long video is okay...but you can't really blame anyone for not wanting to sit through this.
 
If this is the only medium of communication, make it more to the point...do some editing. I'm sorry but it's not super entertaining or funny, it's meandering. Or keep doing it in this format, but give us a summary in text. 
 
Here's a not-so-quick summary, I'm sure others can do it better:
They don't want to reset all talents because "that would mean we have to reset talents all the time!" and they feel people should be "locked in"...Which isn't what the player base is saying at all, but okay.  New vertex complexity meter -- so more build limits coming down the line, but not here yet.  Brake change reverted (already mentioned), but changes will come. Seems like they have some branch management issues.  Scans will show old information (will show resources that don't exist anymore). So....all old scans are defunct?  No real feedback about mining -- not going to make it more intuitive (idk about minigame) and yeah resources are infinite which we knew. Chicken and egg with T3 ore and DSAT..."we'll get back to you" --> guess they never thought about this somehow lol Some whining about "we can't win with this" regarding scans is annoying to me they can find a solution -- it's called planning ahead instead of this "let's just push it out and see" approach. Take some responsibility for your poor planning -- that's the root cause, not that "players are divided about what to do" in regards to keeping scans or making them all worthless. It's their problem created from their radically changing design and poor plans.  They are increasing asteroid spawns in safe zones, but not the spawn time frame.  Surface mining on unclaimed tiles is fine (other than sanctuary)  Higher tier ore is not "deliberately excluded" from pools, "should be present on outer planets". More rare.  Any LUA APIs on mining units? 4 new functions (maybe) to query state/rate/ore/territory pool.  Taxes... They need the resource sinks they say, because "resources are now unlimited". I don't think they've actually though about what "unlimited" means, because they are rate-limited. They are unlimited like gold in WoW is "unlimited" --> it's still finite because time is finite, the well just won't tap out. The prices of ores will change of course.  They are considering some free "HQ" hexes that won't be taxed and can be used on any planet. That would solve a lot of issues. "We might add it to Demeter, maybe not". Clearly they need this for Demeter.  They seem confident that the revenue of mining will be plenty to pay for taxes -- seems they don't expect ore prices to change. We'll see if that's true. Static/Dynamic constructs will become salvageable if parked on tile that changes ownership after "2 weeks", could be changed -- so there's a bit of a waiting period before you can requisition constructs Future plans -- new roadmap in early 2022 Increasing the price of the sub. If you want to pay $6.99/month, you must sub for a year. But they are introducing a 1 month plan at $9.99/month   
I want to remind NQ that this is a paid game, so players don't treat it the same as they would a typical beta. Nor should they.
 
A lot of reminding us "this is just a first iteration" etc. -- well...throwing it up and waiting to see how it goes isn't a great idea for any paid game. Especially when you're increasing prices. It isn't like this "push and see how it goes" approach is how games are normally designed, especially an MMO! 
 
It would maybe be fine for closed alpha, but that's not where we are.