Sabretooth

You may believe it or not, but there is a world outside DU. Many players don't want to waste their time following news about the 'game' in the forums or social media. They just login every few weeks to see if there is any progress that would make it worth playing. When they realize that DU is not just developing backwards but that they also lose their assets to the changes, most of them will never log in again (and not even think about renewing their subscriptions).

The whole MU system is starting to burn me out. The problem is that you are implied to use all your charges and not waste any. It's a dopamine trap like many mobile games are. With the current implementation that means you have to calibrate every single day. I experience this as a somewhat stressfull time pressure. Ofcourse I have 3 alts so I have to spend more time on doing all the calibrations. Since the start of Demeter this is pretty much all I've been doing in DU and I didn't spend any time building. It's really difficult for me to ignore the addicting dopamine triggers but I managed to stop picking up all the surface ores because that was an incredible time sink. I really kinda want to stop mining like this all together but that also means no resources unless I go space mining which requires a very expensive scanner on a ship large enough to support it which I don't have yet and I'm also not looking forward to doing that because it's an even bigger time sink before I can start to mine anything. This mining mechanic is in my opinion compromising one of the few good gameplay systems DU has which is the building system.
 
The simplest solution or at least a better implementation of this system would be to lower the speed at which MU's lose efficiency and also slow the speed at which we get charges so we only have to calibrate every few days or so. That opens up time to do other things.
 
@anyone: How do you feel about the current state of gathering resources? 

I cannot agree with you here.
Like ALL STATIONS are build so the gravity pulls you. I have mine set up so you have the best view. I dont use planet gravity for this and never thought that way.
My space station is kind of cube. But since you can flip space cores, you can land of the sides too! So my base has 5 sides that are flipped and can be landed or walked on. (Thades best views video on YouTube, in the last 20 seconds or so the entire base is in sight so you can get an idea of what I mean)  
Maybe you base is flat but mine is not. 
 
You can VR to Meranda Xirsea Store and check the base out yourself and experience how transition between flipped cores are done. Walking down the stairs to another flipped core requires looking down or youll be pushed into space.
 
Also not adding a small downward thruster to solve your irritation, but choose to be stubborn and complain  (which has taken up more time and energy already than just adding a almost none visible thruster) to me is a strange decision.
If you could add 4x4 for almost no costs or room, why dont you do that?
 
Try to relax and look at these pics (s & xs core) and try to spot the downward thrusters. (MEX or Meranda Xirsea on DU creators)
And I think you will admit that something this small should not be a problem for any ship builder. Rebuilding a multicore space station is!
 

I cannot agree with you here.
Like ALL STATIONS are build so the gravity pulls you. I have mine set up so you have the best view. I dont use planet gravity for this and never thought that way.
My space station is kind of cube. But since you can flip space cores, you can land of the sides too! So my base has 5 sides that are flipped and can be landed or walked on. (Thades best views video on YouTube, in the last 20 seconds or so the entire base is in sight so you can get an idea of what I mean)  
Maybe you base is flat but mine is not. 
 
You can VR to Meranda Xirsea Store and check the base out yourself and experience how transition between flipped cores are done. Walking down the stairs to another flipped core requires looking down or youll be pushed into space.
 
Also not adding a small downward thruster to solve your irritation, but choose to be stubborn and complain  (which has taken up more time and energy already than just adding a almost none visible thruster) to me is a strange decision.
If you could add 4x4 for almost no costs or room, why dont you do that?
 
Try to relax and look at these pics (s & xs core) and try to spot the downward thrusters. (MEX or Meranda Xirsea on DU creators)
And I think you will admit that something this small should not be a problem for any ship builder. Rebuilding a multicore space station is!
 

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.

DU is not a "PVP only" game, It is a sandbox MMO with PVP combat as one of he game's components.

You seem like the kind of guy that doesnt need voxelbuilding in this game.
Do you have a DU creators page? I would like to see what builds you want to wipe.
 
Or maybe understand why some dont want a wipe. Has nothing to do with money!

You seem like the kind of guy that doesnt need voxelbuilding in this game.
Do you have a DU creators page? I would like to see what builds you want to wipe.
 
Or maybe understand why some dont want a wipe. Has nothing to do with money!

As in the other thread i posed this question, but wanted to see more.  I know we are waiting on NQs new roadmap, but with what we currently have, why does this game need to be a single shard universe? What does it provide?  If i can't effect other peoples gameplay then whats the point?  There is no bonus for cities, or carrot on the stick.  I can create whatever I want on any planet safely, I can run missions free from anyone else in the safe zone to make more quanta.  I can run all my mining units free from any interference.  I can build without any regard from someone else.  I can even crash my ship into the planet going 30k speed and it wont die or explode, no one can take it.  I just use some scrap.  Sure i can buy blue prints from someone but that could be easily transferable even if people owned their own private servers they payed for.  So once again, where does having this a single shard universe come in and give us unique gameplay?  If you say building you are terribly wrong, as I can just look at someones screen shots of what they build.  Going to someones base doesnt add to it.  But if I really wanted to they would leave their server address so I could connect and go see, but thats not really gameplay is it.   Seems NQ wasted a huge ass portion of their 25mil + on servers costs when that single shard hasnt provided us with anything a server like Space Engineers could provide you.  

Docking shields are just yet another example of a quick fix doing more damage then it fixes.
 
- It completely ruins any immersion in the game. Landing on a market pad now feels like you are in the middle of a dancing game with blinking lights everywhere.
- You can no longer just land on a big ship just to say hi to someone, decreasing immersion as mentioned above.
- The entire dynamic and satisfaction of being able to precision land between other ships is gone.
- I had to double the size of my HQ landing area just to be able to land without activating "disco party" mode.
- You can no longer use dynamic constructs creatively for decorations like statues etc. without causing lots of problems
- You can't click the rapport abuse button on a construct parked high up in the air, because you are unable to land on it
 
.. and so on.
 
So in short it causes problems for all, and was done this way just to try and avoid dev time by reusing/misusing the PvP shields instead of making an actual fit for purpose patch for the involuntary boarding/docking problem.

Yeah NQ cant keep losing people like this who are the people they wanted to build the game for NQ. We can do a lot but it would seem the exodus has started.
 
Hopefully NQ comes to the table before its too late.

...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.

Its NC Soft all over. I regret the money I invested in an early stage as what we will get is not even getting close to what was told. This is about the same as buying something online for a good deal of money and getting sent a brick. Like most people here i have sent loads of positive posts or ideas in the past, but well i doubt any idea from the community was ever actually added and is still in the game. There was a time JC talked about millions of players and it actually made sense,  now with the cost reducing development plan and it looks like indeed the players are the only ones getting the negatives of the cost reductions, the whole kickstarter money asking just feels like a big scam.  

I don't think it is a scam, just a mix of over ambition, and some mistakes along the way. We may not get what we were initially promised... But maybe we can make what we have suck less, and built on that? First step, stop the bleeding...

Whilst I agree with your pragmatism (that if this game is to continue then player numbers either need to be high or the sub needs to be high) I would say the reason they are not attracting many new players is because their game lacks anything remotely rewarding for the new player, it only becomes rewarding if you like to horde wealth or make things, both of which aren't going to bring in the numbers needed to make this game sell.

Also remember that a new player has no knowledge of how building with voxels and all the different elements work in the game. And the element descriptions in the shop has absolutely no helpful information. I.e. before they can build a useful ship, they will need resources just to learn and make mistakes.
 
As am early test player I got the learn the fundamentals of this game with a inventory that had 9999 of everything (most fun I ever had in this game btw, but that is another discussion). And I can't even imagine how overwhelming this would be for a new player today. Having to grind quanta for every single voxel and element purchase and not even knowing for sure which elements you want and how they fit together etc.

I have.  I agree.  NQ wants a "player controlled" space but doesn't allow players to much affect said space.  Even terraforming on any kind of large scale is frowned upon because of out game costs.

But ... but ... that would mean the developers would have to actually develop and not expect players to do their job? .... /wink --- see my YT Video

What is with space games and grind as gameplay?  Elite Dangerous is just as bad and even Eve has only about four game loops of various grindiness.
 
I suppose it's the natural consequence of having engineers create a story, which works as well as a bunch of artists building a practical engine.
 
The writing in the wall came way back when they decided to limit the game to one solar system killing, at a stroke, any exploration and discovery gameplay ("we've hidden a...oh you found it already?)
 
And it's bad for newbies AND older players who spent money on doing what they enjoyed (which in DU is building things). I ddn't play to make money.
 
So, I can make the money to keep my modest four hex area active if I sacrifice one session (of my spotty amount of game sessions) a week hauling ore to the market and checking in my mu's.  
 
This isn't play, it's work.  Every time I log on, the urge to play something quicker rewarding gets stronger.
 
Improvements?
 
More more planets, with more geography
 
allow planet features to be named by whoever holds the most hexes on it
 
allow free for all scavenging on unprotected ships (and allow protection)
 
Build NPC cities run by npcs to begin with, replacing them with players with enough vicious ambition to do it and hold onto it
 
Pay (variable) taxes to those cities that control your hex
 
Allow PC cities to set their own tax
 
Allow independent hexes (with a downside because choices)
 
Rename everything with actual names for the sake of immersion.
 
Allow players to hold the reins more and not just be fleas on the horse
---
Just off the top of my head.  Nothing above is difficult to implement.
 
 
 

So some of you may (MAY LOL)  know me as someone who played pretty religiously pre 0.23 and up to just before the asteroid update.

Well I left for reasons and recently I thought "hmmm I really liked flying ships and DU really scratched an itch in that department".

So I gave some thought to coming back, I looked at the updates and imagine my surprise.

What the actual [filtered] has happened to this game ?

The asteroids seem fine I guess from what I have read so I will leave that.

But it seems like you have upped the price of a subscription to $9.99 or about £7.55, you are now 14 pence cheaper than Final fantasy 14 which is currently the most popular MMO out there.

I can see how people would say "doesn't matter I hate fantasy games" but this brings it into perspective, a BETA (even this title is arguably optimistic) is charging pretty much the same for a game which is fully released, stable and has more features in terms of mini-games than DU has in its entirety.

I would not care about the price update if I had not looked at the latest update....... "oh.....my....[filtered]ing......god, I'll have whatever NQ is smoking" I thought.

1. removed land mining (actually like this personally because it gave me the worst headache and was simply boring)
2. replaced with mining units, with some kind of calibration mechanism that diminshes if you don't do it daily, by all accounts this is not a fun mini game either.
3. added taxes (seems sensible on the face of it) but what the hell, the mining units will barely cover the cost of taxes in some cases unless you have skills and calibrate daily, this sounds awfully like a job to me NQ!

Then it hit me, I remember when the devs were talking about their data costs and how terraforming was a real costly thing for them and then it hit me: none of this was done for gameplay purposes, it was done as a massive cost-saving mechanism.

Now, all of this in isolation isn't necessarily a problem but when you raise the price of a game whilst at the same time removing a part of the game that was costing you money AND replacing it with a piss-poor implementation of a 'game' (READ: job) loop then you really are starting to take the piss.

If that wasn't enough I just read that your intention for surface mining (the little rocks you can get 20l at a time for) was that they don't respawn?????????? Are you REALLY expecting new players to jump into the game, take a hex in sanc, mine for maybe 10-12 hours until they have eaten all the rocks and then simply log in each day for daily allowance until they can get a few structures only to.....login once a day to calibrate. Is this another low-key cost saving exercise? [filtered] me, it is beyond belief.

New players are going to join and quickly leave after realising they probably have to wait a number of days just to be able to do the most basic thing, which is put down a autominer, then they will somehow (with crap skills) have to turn a small profit, after a few weeks they might be able to get up into space and do some asteroid mining and then they MIGHT have a shot at actually being creative.

I don't even want to think what it would take for a new player to get into even basic industry!

I am not being selfless here, I have billions in assets and liquid quanta, it is all meaningless if new players come into the game and just go '[filtered] this, this is boring' or 'no one has time for this' which I think 90% of people are going to do given they won't be able to start building for weeks on end unless they get lucky and join a good organisation.

Let's be clear here, a good organisation is no excuse for lazy, bland 'game' loops being introduced at a snails pace for what I can only see as being done for business reasons.

If that wasn't enough all I read is "They are laying the groundwork for a wipe", tbh I believe these posts, it is crazy to think I can benefit from pre 0.23 free for all industry and have all of that carry over to release, I will be running a sweat shop consisting of newbies if this game goes live without one......

So what you have is a game that is more expensive, where a whole release has been about business cost management rather than player enjoyment, where a good proportion of the game is now about scraping money together before you can get to anything fun.

Let's talk about the fun, I haven't seen anything, not a single thing in the last two updates related to making voxel building better, no snap feature for cores, no additional tools to help make voxel building less tedious.......nothing, even the best bit of this game is still a tedious slugfest.

Can I afford to play this game: Yes,
Can I justify paying for this game: If I play a lot of mental gymnastics maybe
Can I justify sinking time into this game: No, the developers don't value their players time, simple as that.

So I will continue to check in on the game and hope to god that somehow NQ turn it around but for now it's beyond a joke.




 

For example, I've been building a base for almost a year and a half. Since the launch of the beta, this is a huge HQ measuring over 80L of cores. After the terraforming changes, I still have 2 months to work on the land to fix this "soft wipe of the land" .. But if it happens that I lose all my progress, then in fact I will not build it a second time. Too much time spent and money (paid subscriptions) to build it. And why should I, as an honest player, suffer because someone accumulated something or did not use exploits? Let them roll back, let them withdraw, let them write off the balances. Why should I suffer, someone who pays money and plays fair ... and spent thousands of hours building their base. This is complete nonsense with this "next" wipe.

That is, the main problem, not in the wipe as such, but in the fact that NQ is not able to track some "X" of the player's values per day, relatively speaking, a system that evaluates all the player's property once a day and sends messages with suspicious players for manual moderation , in which, for example, in 1 day "X" has grown, say, 2 times. Next, NQ looks at the player's logs and finds out why and where he got the "doubling" of the state right away .. This is a simple system that helps to track RMT and people who use Exploits ... and Make adjustments to the accounts of those who use bugs, give them warnings repetition - ban. But why should we suffer?

And also one more moment, suppose NQ will wipe the server.
Ask yourself why?
- Because they made mistakes and made bugs on which someone earned?
- They wipe the server
- They start it up again, so what? Where is the guarantee that they will not make a mistake again a month after launch, which will allow players to enrich themselves in a matter of hours? So what ? cleaning again?
Stupidity and nothing more. It is necessary to treat the disease and not the symptoms. And I do not believe that NQ cannot fail to make mistakes. And this is normal, but there should be tools for the correct and quick elimination of these errors, including tracking those who used the errors and punitive measures for these players according to the EULA, period.
Otherwise, all this cleaning will be in vain, and does not make any sense. Except it will anger many honest people, and rather lose them. And these are not just signatures, these are people who have gone through all the hardships with NQ and loyal fans. Such people cannot be lost.

P \ s .. It was my personal opinion.

Im sorry, but 10 hours to rebuild an m-core? I think YOU are trolling.
Even with the ore present, you would still have to fabricate the elements. On a decent m-core that would be at least 10 L engines for atmo alone. Never mind the other elements.
An L-core takes 3 days to produce and thats just the core.
Impossible to do in 10hrs. I would say. I have lots of L and XL containers, please tell me the amount of elements you have and do a realistic calculation of how long it will take you to rebuild them. Your base, storage, ships.
Im sure it will take you at least a month of subscription.
 
So it seems you dont mind paying for a game and waste your time doing the same stuff twice. Thats not something for me to be doing. My time is precious to me.
 
Its these 'positive lies' of players like you that try to convince people that the game is still simple, easy and the same as NQ is advertising, while it is not.
This mining system is only nice if you are into making money.
If you entered this game a year ago to be an artistic builder, then the game has now changed for the worse. 
That is a fact.
 
 

Get ready for my rant.... 3.. 2.. 1..
 
Hi there, I am wondering if the community has changed.
From artistic builders to people who only want to make money or destroy things.
 
I see a lot of chatting going around, it only is about how much money you can make with the new mining units. Nobody talks about a building project or anything. New players come into this game and I only see them chat about how to make quanta. Its all about which tile brings in the most quanta, not even if it has a great view, a nice river or anything. They might as well just have flat surface planets because people dont seem to care. I have NEVER seen anyone chat about how this unlimited ore can help you with your giant build project.
 
Its all about quanta, quanta, quanta. People who are making billions, and for what, retirement?
This is a voxelbuilding game with superior voxel-tools and lots of players are only talking about how to make quanta.
And what will they do with all that quanta? Nobody knows
With all this unlimited free ore, sanct should be looking like coresant in a few months, but Im sure that will not be the case. People will only sell ore, it is not meant for building anymore. 
 
Talking about making money so much, that NQ is even considering a wipe now, and lots of peeps are like: no biggie, as long as i can keep my bp's (and with bp's, they mean a bp for a hauler to make money). NQ can consider a wipe, because the majority dont seem to care about builds.
In that perspective, NQ was right to implement taxes. If that is what the majority of the community wants to do (make money), then NQ has given those players a purpose.
 
And this is a voxelBUILDING game, so whats this complaining about PVP? Why do people enter a building game, only wanting to destroy things?
Because it is not about building or design, its about assembling the most powerful destroyer possible. Not even the best looking or anything, just to be useful and destroy as much possible.
 
And that is, for me, the reason I cancelled my sub. Not just because of how demeter or NQ changed the game, but also because I do not feel at home between these money grabbers and destroyers. This is just not my kind of game anymore. Im sure that if I come back and take a peek after 8 months or so, there are less builds then there are now! And thats a very amazing trick that NQ has pulled of in a persistent voxelbuilding universe!!
 
No offence to anyone, we are all different people.
 
 

with 0.23, they at least gave us in return: more daily quanta, and bots were buying for double the price. The said focus of 0.23 was to bring more stuff to the markets
 
Well, they should have shown ingame PVP. This pvp video makes it look like the intro of Star Wars clone wars and its even within the 2SU safe zone around a planet.
And yes, you are right. They do lure destroyers into this game, what is the NQ marketing strategy anyway?

Get ready for my rant.... 3.. 2.. 1..
 
Hi there, I am wondering if the community has changed.
From artistic builders to people who only want to make money or destroy things.
 
I see a lot of chatting going around, it only is about how much money you can make with the new mining units. Nobody talks about a building project or anything. New players come into this game and I only see them chat about how to make quanta. Its all about which tile brings in the most quanta, not even if it has a great view, a nice river or anything. They might as well just have flat surface planets because people dont seem to care. I have NEVER seen anyone chat about how this unlimited ore can help you with your giant build project.
 
Its all about quanta, quanta, quanta. People who are making billions, and for what, retirement?
This is a voxelbuilding game with superior voxel-tools and lots of players are only talking about how to make quanta.
And what will they do with all that quanta? Nobody knows
With all this unlimited free ore, sanct should be looking like coresant in a few months, but Im sure that will not be the case. People will only sell ore, it is not meant for building anymore. 
 
Talking about making money so much, that NQ is even considering a wipe now, and lots of peeps are like: no biggie, as long as i can keep my bp's (and with bp's, they mean a bp for a hauler to make money). NQ can consider a wipe, because the majority dont seem to care about builds.
In that perspective, NQ was right to implement taxes. If that is what the majority of the community wants to do (make money), then NQ has given those players a purpose.
 
And this is a voxelBUILDING game, so whats this complaining about PVP? Why do people enter a building game, only wanting to destroy things?
Because it is not about building or design, its about assembling the most powerful destroyer possible. Not even the best looking or anything, just to be useful and destroy as much possible.
 
And that is, for me, the reason I cancelled my sub. Not just because of how demeter or NQ changed the game, but also because I do not feel at home between these money grabbers and destroyers. This is just not my kind of game anymore. Im sure that if I come back and take a peek after 8 months or so, there are less builds then there are now! And thats a very amazing trick that NQ has pulled of in a persistent voxelbuilding universe!!
 
No offence to anyone, we are all different people.