Megabosslord

Agreed 100%. 
 
another “1st alpha” backer here where most of our time initially consisted of waiting for the servers to open up. 
 
I remember at one of the first Alpha resets where inventory was introduced, spawning on the arcship, literally hundreds and hundreds of nondescript (no colors yet) players constantly pouring out and flowing across the bridges like somewhat low frame rate water. 

there was a sense of eagerness and we honestly felt like pioneers on a search for a grand vista to place down our first cores. I remember bumping into a then promenent backer called Yamamushi and we chatted about how groundbreaking the game was and how it was basically a cross between Eve and Minecraft and how huge it was going to be… and with the sun shining down from bright blue sky and the snowy mountain peaks glistening in the distance, and seemingly endless players flowing past us over the bridge and away from the Arcship in every direction, we could believe it, too.  

Cut to the final release, and the fifth reset for me and the feeling of pioneer is just a distant long forgotten memory, like a dream of a dream…
 
every release has been a diluted, lesser version of the one before to the point where this time, the “release” came and I couldn’t even be bothered to place my STU. 
 
For many, STUs themselves arrived far too late to make them relevant either ingame itself or as a valid player number counter. 

the old guard are generally tired, disaffected or outright bored. 
 
NovaX was on MP2 on Alioth for the first Alpha release, then for the Balpha (alpha masquerading as a beta) we were part of the MP3 development on Madis, along with MTI which was, AFAIK, the biggest Madis development that spread 15km end to end and consisted of perhaps 500 L cores by the time the suspicion of an incoming wipe knocked the wind from our collective sails. 
 
Madis was never a busy place, even MP3 but you’d always see a yellow marker or two at any time of day or night. People visiting via surrogate pods or dropping in at the market to buy something. 
 
numerically, there were I think six first wave backers in NovaX.  Of those two of us remain, but by the Beta we had grown to pushing 60 players (not alts) of which 20 or 30 might have been on at any one time. 
 
now there are four of us and I am usually on by myself, much like the last half of the Beta. 
 
damn, I’m getting the feels now…
 

The game did not die because of players. The game died because NQ sucked the life out of the game alienating players at every step, to the point that not even the hard core fans would stay around any longer.

I've been trying to stay positive about this but it's getting more difficult:
 
You see, in beta - after NQ said they wouldn't wipe, and with the only way to paste voxels out of a BP was to make it DRM free - I made all my money selling DRM-free BPs. Like, ALL my money. I did a little mining, did a few asteroids, but I never flew a mission. I just sold voxelmancies. A LOT. Like, ~3 billion quanta worth of BPs.
 
When NQ back-flipped on the wipe, it wasn't so bad (losing 2 yrs of earnings). I could always just open shop again, and start selling my BPs from scratch, right? And there would be a bunch of new players to sell to as well. Wrong. On both counts. As predicted, there weren't a bunch of new players sitting out there just waiting for a wipe to begin playing. And barely any marketing for launch. Worse, because my BPs were DRM-free, folks got to keep my creations, even though I lost the money they paid for them. NQ gave 2 yrs of my work away at launch. I can't sell those BPs again now, as they're already out there, folks were 'born' with them at launch, and increasingly they're being pirated and distributed. If NQ had been honest about the potential for a wipe from day 1, and that they didn't really care about the value of players in-game IPs, that they'd just give our stuff away for free, I would never have sold DRM-free BPs during beta. 
 
It's harder now to invest the same time and effort again given NQs track record of shanking players - especially those who put serious effort in. 
 
Discuss.

At this point, it's a really bad idea to put a lot of effort into DU in general...there's no reason to invest a bunch of time in a subscription game where there's only a few hundred people playing at a time. 
 
If NQ has 10,000 subs (which they likely don't even have that), their employees would make about as much revenue as DU delivering DoorDash 8 hours a workday...likely more.
 
When it comes to picking where to invest your time, I don't think DU is a great place...because there's no way they can hold the current player counts and stay online forever.
 
Yeah the company has made really bad choices that have frustrated and annoyed players like the OP...but even if you put that aside, it would be a weird choice to invest a lot of time in a game that is not sustainable. 

Its absolutly nothing new here. NQ "shanking" hard different playstyle players from 2016 pretty much. Its just people sometimes tend to be dismissive over issues initially, that feel like not theirs or overblown etc. Then its proverbial knock on their door. Because with style of how NQ tries to develop this game no one is "safe".
 
 
Only demographic mystery how Steam accs correspond to non-Steam accs (where more of "old guard" players concentrated). Proportion.
 
On Steam layer game pretty much dead with miserable 100-150 concurrent accounts most of the time. Out of Steam I guess its bit better, but still nothing to write home about. Maybe additional 250-300 concurrent accounts (not players).

I've been trying to stay positive about this but it's getting more difficult:
 
You see, in beta - after NQ said they wouldn't wipe, and with the only way to paste voxels out of a BP was to make it DRM free - I made all my money selling DRM-free BPs. Like, ALL my money. I did a little mining, did a few asteroids, but I never flew a mission. I just sold voxelmancies. A LOT. Like, ~3 billion quanta worth of BPs.
 
When NQ back-flipped on the wipe, it wasn't so bad (losing 2 yrs of earnings). I could always just open shop again, and start selling my BPs from scratch, right? And there would be a bunch of new players to sell to as well. Wrong. On both counts. As predicted, there weren't a bunch of new players sitting out there just waiting for a wipe to begin playing. And barely any marketing for launch. Worse, because my BPs were DRM-free, folks got to keep my creations, even though I lost the money they paid for them. NQ gave 2 yrs of my work away at launch. I can't sell those BPs again now, as they're already out there, folks were 'born' with them at launch, and increasingly they're being pirated and distributed. If NQ had been honest about the potential for a wipe from day 1, and that they didn't really care about the value of players in-game IPs, that they'd just give our stuff away for free, I would never have sold DRM-free BPs during beta. 
 
It's harder now to invest the same time and effort again given NQs track record of shanking players - especially those who put serious effort in. 
 
Discuss.

Haha, oh god. Elevators the size of DSATs. Hillarious.

We've been saying this for years: stop releasing stuff, waiting till everyone assumes it's permanent (in this case, even telling people calibration spam isn't an exploit), then stealth-nerfing it (dropping it in a patch with no forewarning), and being surprised players are annoyed/leaving... and NOT adding anything new. Far better to address inflation by giving players more stuff to spend money on than constantly dialling up the grind! It would be super easy. Add some more expensive lumi colours or semi-transparent lumi, some more coloured force fields, ways to earn/buy old collectibles, element skins, XL elevators (that can cross a whole L core)... new money sinks instead of forced poverty equals fun/gameplay. I wish they'd show some imagination.
 
PS: I spent most of my 3 mill bonus loyalty TP on maxing out calibration points that I'll never now be able to use. I refund would have made sense. But hey, we're used to getting stuffed around. 

We've been saying this for years: stop releasing stuff, waiting till everyone assumes it's permanent (in this case, even telling people calibration spam isn't an exploit), then stealth-nerfing it (dropping it in a patch with no forewarning), and being surprised players are annoyed/leaving... and NOT adding anything new. Far better to address inflation by giving players more stuff to spend money on than constantly dialling up the grind! It would be super easy. Add some more expensive lumi colours or semi-transparent lumi, some more coloured force fields, ways to earn/buy old collectibles, element skins, XL elevators (that can cross a whole L core)... new money sinks instead of forced poverty equals fun/gameplay. I wish they'd show some imagination.
 
PS: I spent most of my 3 mill bonus loyalty TP on maxing out calibration points that I'll never now be able to use. I refund would have made sense. But hey, we're used to getting stuffed around. 

I'm going to give NQ this one time and this one time only.

STOP CHANGING EVERYTHING AND ACTUALLY ADD CONTENT...

I (and many others maybe) have been taken by surprise with the latest mineral buy order removal. I understand the change but I guess I am frustrated with the lack of timeline or communication. Had I known what I know now I would have made very different decisions regarding talent training or territory claiming. I feel like had I saw this coming I might have either invested less talents into mining unit gameplay or rushed to get premium tiles with better ores elsewhere in the universe (which is now likely too late as they are claimed). I feel like most other games I play when such a large change as this is made, especially with the poor communication and considering the expectations that talent points are refunded. 

Please consider a Talent Point refund =)

How can you abuse what NQ said was acceptable gameplay?

+1 please remove. It is an incredibly bad change. No point in 2L/h tiles. There are not enough T2/T3 tiles for everyone. The "sharing" of tiles between players was just killed.
The amount of calibration is already limited by charges/player and day.
Make more T2/T3 tiles
Make more asteroids.
There are SO MANY things you NQ can do to actually improve game quality and this thing you're trying to kill. It's called "fun".
 

Epically stupid change. Especially after saying calibration mining was valid.

As others have expressed, waiting 24 hours to calibrate a mining unit is a completely unnecessary and game-breaking change. What's the point of "trace" tiles now? Why even put tiles in the game with 2L/h?
Please do the right thing and reverse this change. There's no need for this
 
Edit: Alternatively, how about just giving all the T2/3 tiles equal amounts. The competition is over, just let us have some resources

I got an email saying it was delivered but still not there.

Simple poll as I still did not get my rewards and I am out of patience cookies.
When answer is no please reply with rank (gold/patron/sponsor/etc)

Indeed Contributors should get 1

Just checking, but you only had the Alpha backer contributor pack correct?  If that is so, according to the alpha backer rewards, this is all that you should be getting (some of which isn't in the game yet, like the pets):
About the only physical item you should have gotten was the extra resurrection node.  Then again, I could be wrong especially if you have something other then the contributor pack.

I’ve had a (pubic) conversation with a NQ dev on Discord where they said server load is the reason we don’t have XLs. And we know the difference on terrain/surface construct load vs space from the cache file size. 

Is it?
I know some people think so.  (me included)  🤐
 
And reading about the game on https://www.novaquark.com/homepage I found this gem:
 
Dual Universe is currently in public beta and reaching the final stretch toward launch.
 
I spat coffee over my monitor laughing ☕🖥️🤣

Yeah i also expected some kind of announcement ahead of time, there isn't even a mention in the patch notes.
I've heard they sent out an email but not everyone (myself included) checks them on a regular basis.

Hey NQ, I'm sure not everyone will agree with me but there is a fair amount of us that really want to love and believe in this game. 
 
I am worried however, I like to think I'm one of your biggest supporters, and i am working hard to keep that positivity alive. I try to look to the positive every chance I get... and I try to give you guys the benefit of the doubt because I can't imagine the strain and difficulties you guys face. 
 
Despite my dedication has been shaken a few times, I'm still here. I still am a supporter. Proudly. 
 
However, I am asking/begging you to give the members of this community the voice they want to talk to NQ and know that they are heard. CCP did this with the interstellar Council.... give some of us the chance to be involved to represent the player base.. to give our teammates the answers they want and desire, to raise the concerns we have to you and know they are being addressed. It's one thing to say these things and occasionally get an answer or a side step, but we could do so much better. Admittedly without someone even acknowledging our posts in here we don't even know if you guys read them.
 
I want to believe in DU... but the relationship between NQ and the player base is becoming more like a tumultuous relationship between management and the employees. The player base isn't going to feel represented by a Shamsie.. or someone who is out of touch with most aspects of the game. I mean, when asked about issues regarding pvp a rep of NQ seemingly had no idea how pvp even occured. I don't mean that disrespectfully... but let us help! We want to... and if this game is going to succeed we can't be treated or be made to feel like employees who are gonna stick by the company. Which we are not. 
 
My solution. 
 
Implement a 5 person council of sorts that meets occasionally. Has a direct line to NQ and you can ping your updates/changes off. Like for instance you guys are talking about tactical map... I'm concerned as far as what that could mean or be used for. It makes me concerned over a pvp disconnect here...
 
This council would be active members of the community or are apart of larger organizations and bring thier perceptions from those organizations to NQ. This may mean some more secret new directions being revealed but also could be a saving grace if the plan is absolutely terrible and not going to be well received. It may help to have insight from those of us who actually play. We want to help and support you.
 
I beg you to take this request seriously. We are still in your corner. 
 
 

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. 

I like it and have thoroughly enjoyed the launch so far. I was furious over the wipe. Still a bit disappointed. That said, it has been refreshing to be poor and manage through rebuilding.