Megabosslord

Sadly, for all my beta customers asking when my store will be back up, I can't just say "very soon". (PSA: Anyone looking to buy my stuff again, the store will go up when NQ fix BP snapping - so you'd have to ask them.)

Instead of a roadmap we have a list of things described as "rest assured this is one of our top priorities" with no timeframes, and despite it having already been promised before and kicked down the road.

You missed the part where - after a core group of loyal players carve out a cruel existence in a loveless world of spreadsheets and grind - they periodically smash what we've built.

That unobtanium woulda been super handy in the first week. Its just sitting there. On the other side of a thin red line. Grrr: NQ should just put a bunch of STUs on the market for 5m ea already - with a buy limit of 1 per player. Then give all the Contributors who didn't get one on launch, the 5m. Cos inflation. That way those who missed out can choose to just keep the cash now, and other players who want to try Sanctuary can get in on the action. Problem solved.

I know rite. My whole store I spent 3 mths building ready for launch is basically bricked. I'm sitting on my hands now waiting for them to keep this promise.

Nope. Look closer. It's possible to get so close on a XS core it looks okay at first, but it's not. On a larger core the alignment is harder, and the misalignment multiplied by the projection angle leaving cracks in walls, floors and ceilings: [EDIT: Don't make me show you a L core. We never got 'quick destruct' either, meaning they're a pain in the neck to tear down.]

3 weeks later, they're still "working on it": https://discord.com/channels/184691218184273920/307084295531659266/1032410850339848193

I hope someone makes a voxel STU for the Halloween contest. Like ghosts, not only can Contributors not find them, seems neither can NQ.

It only feels busier because it was so dead for 6 mths once wipe rumours started. You'll remember early beta was this busy, maybe busier. We definitely need new planets with better ore spawns to drive migration and sustain activity once the markets become saturated with player-made components on diminishing margins. A 'gold rush' to a new planet will be the only way to reinject life into the game in a few months, in the absence of any other major new content.

Still waiting on my STU too. It would have been a lot more useful at launch, but still useful now for some easy natron and rent-free mining units. More to the point though, NQs constant habit of promising things, not delivering, then just quietly hoping we’ll forget really has to stop. They did it with Demeter and the wipe. They’re doing it now with blueprint snapping and STUs. It’s gotten to the point we can’t believe anything they say - and no indication they intend to change.

For those who haven't yet experienced how badly broken blueprint alignment is, I've reposted the pre-launch explainer (I'd previously removed because it was meant to be being fixed):

It doesn't take 2 weeks to figure out who got a STU and who didn't, unless they're not really trying.

The biggest 'bang for buck' would be stop bricking our builds, do what they say they'll do, and don't say they'll do what they can't.

We don't even have building to strive for. Our structures were wiped. Our BPs can't be placed again because they reneged on core snapping and stealth nerfed building height. NQ have repeatedly griefed us on even this.

You missed the point on most of this. - Removing Malachite from Alioth (leaving scant T2) isn’t a ‘belief’. - Bricking AGG platforms, if intentional, is even more a stealth nerf. - It doesn’t take 2 wks to figure out who your contributors are and whether they got their STU. - Read it again. Forcing players to go re-enable HTML in settings solves nothing. - Exactly. They said it would be done for launch, took our money, then kicked it down the road. Your point? As for the audience for this post, I’d love to think devs actually listen but 3 yrs of evidence now suggests otherwise. There are several things here most players won’t have discovered yet, and in the absence of clear comms from NQ, no comprehensive change logs, information scattered across a variety of streams, I’m trying to save fellow players from wasting days making the same disappointing discoveries.

Let's set aside for a moment that wiping beta player constructs at launch was always unfair, given past commitments. NQ have now heaped insult on injury with a number of stealth nerfs at launch: Alioth T2 Distribution: I did 80 territory scans on Alioth at a ~3 tile spacing and found zero T2. None at all. Zip. Nada. No T2 - after spending 3 days building the XL assembler and scanner. This is a broken gameplay loop. Combined with the removal of Malachite from Alioth, the stealth nerf of ore distribution on Alioth resulted in a week of wasted effort. Forcing effort with no payoff is not gameplay. If NQ had been transparent with us before launch, said they were going to nerf T2 on Alioth, I wouldn't have wasted that critical week. I would also have rebuilt my base before launch so the BP wasn't made of 500,000M3 of Copper. Now, to deploy my BP I have to swap copper for another honeycomb, and then go back and untangle where the new material has blended with the same material already in the BP. More rework, on top of the wasted time. 1000m Build Height: This was self-evidently dumb. By choosing a 1000m cap instead of 1128m, it's impossible to build a 1000m AGG pad without placing your foundation core at an exactly multiple of 128m (since you won't be able to place the top core if there is less than a 128m gap.) Even then, you can put nothing on your 1000m pad, no elements, no structure. And you have to either use smaller cores for your top layer (increasing server load) or build your base from the top core, down - which means tall temporary scaffold structures first to place top cores and work back down - while others complain about griefing the entire time. A large number of pre-launch bases had AGG pads at or slightly above 1000m. All these pre-launch base BPs are now bricked. This misstep demonstrates a fundamental ignorance of their game's own mechanics by devs, and poor understandng of players. To make matters worse, the change wasn't even included in patch notes. The only place it was mentioned - just wks before launch - was in 'Ask Aphelia #12. Few players had any opportunity to fix their builds before launch. This mistake (1000m vs 1128m) would easily have been picked up if players had been warned. In summary, not only did NQ reneg on prior commitments to honour our builds in their 'persistent' universe - the only compensation being retained blueprints - they went on to stealth nerf the BPs we kept. [EDIT: Because this rule is not yet being enforced, and it is still possible to place a core above 1000m, this will create even more pain for players uncertain or unaware of the rule - should NQ decide to delete structures after they are built. And for as long as the rule is unclear, it is impossible to safely place the foundations of a tall structure.] Missing STUs for 'Contributors' (and Surface Natron): By making Sanctuary the only place with surface natron near Alioth, Alpha contributors already had a significant advantage at launch - since natron is needed to make many popular elements: screens, lights etc.. NQ then messed up further, by jacking up the distribution of STUs meaning only some Contributors received them. ~10 days later, this still has not been fixed. This means a small number of players, purely by chance, have the only access to surface natron near Alioth. HTML/SVG nerf and Indiscriminate LUA Changes: The disabling of HTML screens was long rumoured, but took so long to be done it appeared to have been abandoned. Waiting till launch to tell players all SVGs and HTML are also now bricked is also poor form and counter-productive. Because a large number of ship BPs from pre-launch contain screens using HTML, and virtually every factory monitoring set-up, any player flying these ships or running these factories, will now simply go to settings and re-enable HTML, to be able to play the game - undermining the point of the exercise to phase out HTML, and prolonging the inevitable pain and frustration when it is finally done. This pain is now unavoidable given the original misstep of building a new API with zero compatibility with HTML/SVG. (The new API should always have been implemented in a way to minimise the effort of reworking existing content for players - rather than forcing ground up rebuilds of all screens. Better still, existing content should ideally have been ported on behalf of players.) Combine this with the frivolous renaming of a number of LUA cmds, additional rework has also been created for players to reimplement scripts written before launch - for no apparent reason. STILL No Static BP Placement Snapping!: We asked for this in the Alpha Trello 3 yrs ago. It was poorly implemented on day one - snapping new cores only. Hundreds of players have asked for it to be fixed for static BPs over the years. It never made sense that new cores snap into place, but static BPs work of a bizarre raycast that doesn't even align with the player camera and - annoyingly - nudges by 2 voxels instead of 1. This feature was already long overdue, but now made more critical since it is essential to redeploying any mult-core construct after the wipe. Finally... finally, it was coming! In the launch livestream it was promised for launch here, at timecode 35:38: Instead, we now learn this was skipped, rendering all multi-core static construct blueprints useless. Summary: - Forcing players to constantly rework their builds is not gameplay. - Reworking existing content is a poor proxy for new gameplay loops. - Player input is invaluable. - Last minute, uncommunicated changes rarely if ever have a positive outcome. The culture at NQ of disregarding the time and effort of players, and lack of consideration of impacts on our gameplay, is worrisome. More worrisome, is the tendency to continuously rework existing content - mechanics, terrain, boolean noise - rather than develop significant new features, many of these features requested years ago. NQ are still missing the winning strategy of successful 'player generated content' franchises like Minecraft, where the focus of the first several years was on adding new gameplay loops - as opposed to continuously reworking existing ones. Reworking existing content decays player satisfaction by forcing the constant rework of our own builds. And making changes by stealth only magnifies the problem. Until this is understood, the future of this franchise is fraught.

Yeah, because the only surface natron is on Sanctuary, it's been significant setback not receiving the promised STU.

Still waiting.

The 'reverse dispenser' that has been coming Soon™ for years - and receives goods and returns payment - would have been far more helpful. Not only could you effectively put up a 'buy' order at your own facility and have multiple players come and fill it, but even better, if it also accepted blueprints, we could have used BPs as tokens to make pay-outs for games, competitions, salaries, interest on loans, insurance claims, org dividends, maybe even an in-game share market. Huge missed opportunity.

There are loads of ways NQ could have kept the ‘magic BP’ promise. Make them: - One-time-use with no removal of parts/honeycomb, or deletion on removal - Manual request as above - 1 repair ‘life’ left on elements - Honeycomb only - Static and space only But that’s not the whole problem. It’s the pretending they never promised it that’s even more concerning: Stage-managing us instead of just being honest. And muting those who remind them of it on Discord.

I used to like the Discord, but I just got banned for sharing a NQ forum post - despite it not being about the Alpha, and the NDA having been lifted 2 yrs ago:

Agreed. The reasons for the wipe are so vague: - They want to do another terrain reset, fine, no reason not to give the promised 'magic BPs' or just reset the terrain like last time, and let us decide whether to move/rebuild. - They want to declutter the world of abandoned constructs? As above. Not a reason to stop active players from rebuilding, and not give us 'magic BPs'. (Plus, the clutter only happened because they gave everyone HQ tiles even if they were unsubbed.) - They think new players prefer to start on an empty world? Speculation, and flawed - per your comments above. Also, making it painful for active players to rebuild only costs active players. - They want to fix exploits? NQ-Deckard is on record previously saying exploits were all corrected and a tiny part of the economy. There's no stated reason that goes to the reversal on 'magic BPs'. The only other possible logic is the fear players will stockpile mats/elements in 'magic BPs' which could easily have been addressed by vaporising anything removed from their "one-time-use 'Packaged blueprints'" so it can't be resold. At least explain why they couldn't keep their word, rather than all the obfuscation.

This, despite the NDA being lifted here: And the post I shared is available to anyone on the forum here:

I've said it before... but the decision to favour a hypothetical group of possible new players, over the existing loyal player base, is madness. With no 'sticky' collateral in-game to keep current players committed, the loss of existing players will likely outnumber the tourists who come post-wipe - just like every other game that wiped ever. It's possibly worse for NQ with the compounding factors (A) that they'd previously committed to avoid this, and retain constructs, and (B) they're wiping 2 1/2 yrs of gameplay for some players, which I'm pretty sure is an unprecedented long interval for a wipe in any IP, ever. There will be an initial buzz, the some new players will move on, and many existing players who try again will quickly lose motivation to rebuild everything they'd already built.