kulkija

Until right now I had impression that I own my land (tiles)
I've bought my land from a monopoly which owns all land in DU:s universe.
 
What happens at next patch is Nationalization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalization
Land which I own and had paid big quanta will be robbed from me.
 
 

Taxes for tiles is really bad idea.
To pay taxes is newer fun in real life.
It do not became fun if it is added to video game.
 
To play video game should be entertainment and create good feelings. Paying taxes does not.
 
This proposal of taxes also moves away from player driven economy.
If I have a tile, it should be me who is collecting taxes, not some super power winch owns all planets and property on them (aphelia)
 
This can be the last hit, and even worse than r0.23 was.
I'm seriously concerning about leaving this game for good.
 
*******
Edit:
To say this Territory ownership fee is a tax is wrong by definition.
Taxes are paid when there is income.
This proposal is rent.
It forces me to collect quanta for no reason... no .. no not for me..
 

- Call To Action – Say NO to territory taxes - 

Yes
 
I have real life and real Job
I work hard.
After workday I'm usually very tired.
I don't need a second job in video-game.
I want to relax and chill.
DU has been that place where I can relax after a hard day. Without any stress or obligations.
That is my play-style
Why can't I have it here anymore?
 
- Call To Action – Say NO to territory taxes -
 
 
 

I think your concerns are right.

Yes
 
I have real life and real Job
I work hard.
After workday I'm usually very tired.
I don't need a second job in video-game.
I want to relax and chill.
DU has been that place where I can relax after a hard day. Without any stress or obligations.
That is my play-style
Why can't I have it here anymore?
 
- Call To Action – Say NO to territory taxes -
 
 
 

@FerroSC
You have a valid argument though I kind of go on an average there ove rthe 7 years.. which actually is well below the 350K.. 

But we'll have to see how it all plays out.
 
 
 
Absolutely correct, the problem is that NQ decided to advertiser their game as beta while it was, and still is, really knee deep in alpha stage of development. Everything we're seeing right now is textbook Alpha stuff.. add or remove elements at will, break stuff, test it, take it out and rework it.
 
The major problem is that NQ choose to let the public in while they were (and are) far from ready for that, but they never even tried to make the case for that. They pretend they are actually in beta, a stage where the game is expected to be pretty much complete to the point you need/want it to be and you focus on refining, bugfixing, polish and generally getting it ready for release.

NQ could have put proper power management in place before beta, we as backers provided them feedback and sugegstions on that many times. A lot of the issue we have seen since "beta" were well known and provided feedback on. NQ thought they knew better (and still do), basically pulling the "you just do not understand, just wait and see" card many times.
 
Now, it's crunch time and they have a few months left to release the game.. As NQ-Sesch himself said "We've been in beta for just about a year and have a few months to go" .. Well.. we'll see where that will end up..
 

Oh and here too. Maybe tax would've been better to be implemented via power systems. Would've made up for MORE gameplay in the long run. And more fun. And, you know, balanced and not Just "hurr durr all have to pay because it's EZ to implement"

If only the tax or upkeep would've been something NQ could build upon to make even more content for the game like....uh.....IDK.....freaking power systems Like promised. But nononononononononono, they go the ez route

Territory taxes will kill this game.

- Call To Action – Say NO to territory taxes - 

If this change happens as it's currently implemented, expect similar limitations be set for Space stations down the road... Because it doesn't solve the issue of to many constructs, I would even go so far as to say it would increase the problem drastically. Tiles would still be claimed (for mining), but instead of a central factory on the tile, we just have necessary static cores (for mining units and storage), a flat area and a bunch of space elevators up to the 'permanent' factory space station. In the end that just means way more cores to create safety for players. That is more data to store pay for by NQ instead of less.

There has been also other features which has encouraged us to by our own land.
First territory unit / tile free at every planet and moon
Total 29 free tiles, before any payments were required. Now they cos 116 MIL per month!!
Next tiles were fairly priced
Connected tiles will boost energy
Connected tiles will boost mining units
Connected tiles will boost defense in Territory warfare
 
To first encourage player to do things and then punish about it is extremely bad game-design.

Territory tax is absolute bad idea and should newer go live.
If taxes are needed for money sinks, they need to be VAT type. This means that they will be due only if player does some actions to create value. Not automatically by timer.
 
Generally taxes should not be collected by "Aphelia" because "Aphelia" is not such an entity which should act actively in this game world. Its role must be limited to be a main actor in Lore.
 
How Player Nations may newer be able to collect taxes via RDMS if Aphelia is already  maxed out the reasonable amount of taxes.
 
- Call To Action – Say NO to territory taxes - 
 
 

Been on PTS now for 15 hours testing while collecting my thoughts. A lot of these changes will force players to /work/ to keep what they own in game... right now with rough calculations it looks like about /half/ of the ore dug may have to go back to paying taxes on the tiles, and thus players will need to work... to keep their land... to keep working to keep their land.

I say work, because these new loops, for many- will turn it into active work/tedium to manage. Plus, potentially half of your ore income is spent on the hexes... now you'll need to take a cut for fuel to transport/logistics. After the end of it, you're left with very little to build/expand with. For new players, it will be muuuuch harder to solo while getting a foot-hold.

So I ask, is this a move to slow players down and reduce overall server costs? As it stands this a soft-wipe of sorts, as many with "fun" projects people work on a few hours a week may now be forced into grinding to keep it going- or loose it... and if players don't come back, as it stands... you loose a tile, as it is on PTS... you also loose all the static constructs owned on that tile. 

So is this a change to reduce quanta/inflation? if so than look at the source, missions-alt runners to curb it vs creating a huge sink via land. Is this change for... data inflation? as more ore enters the game, more constructs are made- and in live(more data due to tunnels on top of that)  so more ore = data costs.  And I dare say this is the real reason for these changes, otherwise NQ will let up on them as player outrage seams to be more so than 0.23, and it hasn't fully sunk in yet for most players what these changes even mean... and while this post covers some core issues, it does not cover the ninja-changes to ship elements/flight mechanics or other core complaints.
 
Give us more ore via auto-mining - more charges, more ore to pull from per hex and... some way to skip the lame mini game.. please? minimum efficiency of 25% vs 0? Nobody wants to login once/twice a day to hop around auto-mining fields to play a stupid mini game. Least while mining traditionally I can tune out and watch Netflix, with autominers- it requires just enough attention you cant let your mind easily wander... but not enough satisfaction to make it.... enjoyable. 2x more ore may not be enough, 3-4x may hit a sweet spot for most. More Roids - All safe zone roids get mined out within an hour of discovery already. fix discovery timer of 20 minutes/middle Colum! Likewise, PTS seemingly won't spawn in asteroids in time for us to check the new spawn rates.... This change will /encourage/ more people into PVP space. Lower the taxes for tiles. This is a game that people pay monthly for- not a second job. 
  So say we all.

BlindingBright
-MTI Superlegate, Lodestar Chancellor

Questions:
1 If Territory taxes are not paid what are those “bad things” which may happen to my assets in that territory. 
2 Is releasing ownership one option? 
2.1 Follow-up: Will it create cheap and easy loot.
 
Assuming my Subscription still remains active.

>> The very first territory per planet per (paying!) player must be tax free <<
 
This is an easy way to preserve all the player created art and content all over the planets.
 
Everything else would be a digital middle finger raised towards the playerbase.
 
Thank you for reading.

Tell us what you think. Based on historic behavior from NQ I have my suspicions on what will happen for sure..

Problem with terraforming TAX is that it does not solve NQ's problem.
 
NQ simply can't handle long term growth in the game, and that is why they introduced territory tax. Their goal is not to limit the rate of growth, but to actually remove long term growth. So in other words, DU the MMO game with persistent building is dead..

The problem NQ has is simply that after 5+ years of development, they never managed to make the server architecture needed to deliver the intended game.
So all that is left for NQ to do, is to reduce the game down to something they can manage.
 
Meaning that starting with 0.23 and much more visible now with demeter, all so called 'updates' are designed to remove user content and limit player growth.
 
All nicely packed into a nice presentation about "reducing lag" and making a better looking game. And suddenly they also found time to make and release a vertex tool preview video, only the most requested feature in the game for as long as it has existed. Looks a lot like "Bread and circuses" for the masses to me.
 
 

From miners perspective:
Let's picture out how all would start when Demeter – Territory taxes and auto miners hit the fan. 
 
Day one:
First Taxes are due. You need to have Quanta reserves to pay taxes of all tiles you own. Or else they will be instantly confiscated. 
Then you need to have Quanta reserves to buy Schemas to craft your first mining units. Or need to have Quanta reserves to buy mining units. For that you need to wait for first units to become available at markets. … tick tock tick tock, next date for due taxes is closing.. Prices will be astronomical, because if you are not able to craft your mining units yon NEED to buy them before your property is confiscated. 
Then you need to place our mining units. Before that you may have change to reactivate those tiles which are past due of tax payments. 
Then you just hope that market bots are not removed, and ore prices stay high enough that you can afford the new cost of ownership for tiles. 
So, if you have more than one or two tiles total in universe, do you have enough quanta reserves to keep them before you are able to recreate your mining gameplay? 
 
-- Join the movement Say NO to Territory taxes --

Dear NQ,
 
Please stop breaking your players! I'm not talking about physically breaking your players or even breaking the Dual Universe game. I'm talking about breaking the spirits of your customers (aka. players), killing their motivation to play the game, and then shredding any future potential chance to return to the game at a later time (without loosing most of their work/assets). This is mostly done by piling on change upon change, often just eradicating an aspect of game-play that people enjoyed or even started playing the game for. Even one major change to the game can decimate the player-base (0.23 for example) and that was only ONE such a major change. The currently proposed changes to Demeter are multiple major changes. Doing away with mining outside asteroids (especially when asteroid mining is in such an abysmal state), doing away with permanent ownership of tiles outside of ground conquest, introducing taxes on land ownership, redesigning ore distribution in a major way.
 
Now let's talk about changes on PTS that aren't going to be in the Demeter patch: brakes. I can understand that sometime in the future NQ wants to overhaul how certain elements work, in this case the brakes. This of course needs to be tested before implementation. I absolutely understand! But who's bright idea was it to do it at the same time when NQ asked all players to come test Demeter when it goes in test on PTS? Does this person lack any insight and experience with regards to customer interaction, response, and retention? I have no experience in game-development, but 20 years of IT experience in customer support, (migration) projects, and changes. Rule #1 Do not pile a bunch of changes on customers without an absolute (technical) need. And never ever mix testing changes. If you disregard that and push it through anyway, chance are that your internal customers will rebel and the business will force you to roll back, say bye-bye to any promotion oppertunities. If you're dealing with external customers, you'll still have to roll back and they'll go shopping for a different IT provider (possibly even having grounds to break the contract in place).
 
Next thing: Communication consistency or lack thereof. If people are seeing unexpected changes on PTS and then notice that Space Cores can't run factories anymore, people will panic! When we're asked to give our feedback on the forum due to NQ reading that and Discord being a pain due to how it's structured (I agree), I expect NQ to also communicate via that same forum with us. You have pins on those sub boards, is a top posted pin with a list of known bugs on PTS to much to ask from NQ? Now there are luckily some posters that have other sources (Discord?) that are sharing that info. That is not our job, that's NQ's job. Why is that important? Because players who initially read that have (in most cases) a negative emotion associated with your product, that just doesn't disappear when someone yells "It's a bug!" later in the thread. This doesn't solve bugs, people's exposure to them or their initial bad reactions to them. But at least they aren't stuck with the feeling that they are posting their findings/opinions on a forum that NQ wants you to use, but doesn't use it themselves in any kind of proactive method. Now, maybe there is such a post somewhere on the forum by an NQ employee, but I couldn't find it! I do get alerts of achievements (first post, one year, etc.), but I prefer alerts on bugs (on PTS)...
 
When I first watched the "Inside Novaquark: Demeter Edition", I had this bad feeling, and I kept telling myself "Just wait and see the actual implementation...". I can see why mining on planets needs to go (from a cost perspective). I could life with that if another solution is found (I'll leave it for another thread my opinion if the in place solution is adequate, Spoiler: It isn't). But ontop of that major core game mechanic change, a couple of other core game-mechanic altering stuff is hitched, while imho those aren't necessary for the change.to happen, this makes the mining change feel far, far worse. But the participants of the video gave some hints for hope or at least just being so vague that I could file certain stuff under my misunderstanding the situation. No actual announcement of when the Demeter patch would go live on PTS was a concern, that concern became even greate when with very little notification Demeter went live on PTS, for less then three days... WTF! After all the pushing by NQ personnel to check the PTS test, how can it be live for less then three days with so little lead time? Another POSSIBLE test would be also less then three days... I wasn't able to test PTS yesterday, but I read the forums, more bad feelings. I was able to test today and the bad feelings keep getting worse, this killing the motivation to continue to play DU...
 
But that happens! You can't please everyone. People change, they might change their minds down the road, and come back to your game... But wait! That can't happen anymore due to tile taxes and people loosing the stuff they build on it, not to mention breaking most dynamic constructs due to continues construct breaking changes. We knew that the possibility of loosing your tiles outside of the core safe zone (Alioth/Madis/Thades) would eventually happen with the introduction of ground combat/conquest. Some of us took the long view and started making large infra in the safe zone and lesser infra on the outer worlds. No ground combat/conquest in sight, imho still years of. But we're loosing the ability to own the tiles we claimed everywhere (except the starter moon, which most of us haven't touched since we started over a year ago). So if I leave for six months or a year, I have almost zero motivation to go back because I either didn't build anything outside of the starter moon or I lost everything outside of the starter moon... If that's the case, many people will loose any motivation to play right now, because why start building when you're going to loose everything anyway to rent/taxes? It's not like in RL where you can't check out for a few months/years. The only way people check out of RL is permanently... We don't work for fun to pay rent/taxes, we do it to live, we play games to 'escape' RL to a different universe, and entertainment. We do not want another job to work in DU.
 
I currently run four characters in DU, not 'free' KS/promo accounts, but accounts I bought time for. Those accounts all run out at the end of the year, and with rumors abound these last couple of months I was wondering if I would extend my four characters for another year ($280). And currently, if those changes go live as is, that just isn't going to happen. Not even one account. I have many issues to a lesser or greater extend with the changes on PTS, but the one that breaks the camels back for me is the loss of tiles due to unpaid rent/taxes. I'm just not interested in playing DU for the next 15+ years on a continuous basis, there will be times when I loose interest (or hope in DU), but I expect to eventually return and resubscribe. We all know that a lot of inspiration was taken from EVE, a LOT of use played it or play it still. My main in EVE (same name as here) started in December 2005, over the years I've added many accounts and have taken many (long) breaks, but I always come back (you never quit EVE permanently). I was (until recently) convinced that DU was a similar game, you never quit DU permanently. But it seems I was wrong... Side-note: This year I've spent over $750 on EVE game-time and packs, because every time I come back to EVE I do not have to start from scratch...
 
NQ, please stop breaking your players, because after the Demeter patch, they'll never come back!

How long it may take util we get sick of grinding the same minig unit re calibration minigame again, and again and again and...
 
- Call To Action – Say NO to territory taxes - 

I agree by 100%

Game has lost its track and became punishing simulator.

NQ Game designers: please reconsider about what you are doing.
 
- Call To Action – Say NO to territory taxes -

It is NQ:s game designers and their weird believes about what is fun is what will kill this game.
 
- Call To Action – Say NO to territory taxes - 

Territory taxes will kill this game.

- Call To Action – Say NO to territory taxes - 

I agree by 100%

Game has lost its track and became punishing simulator.

NQ Game designers: please reconsider about what you are doing.
 
- Call To Action – Say NO to territory taxes -