michaelk

LOL. The blame should be on the devs that allowed this to be possible. The "problem" is that NQ has never made a game before... Let's review: - They can't optimize the game; don't tell me "it's beta" -- they've had 6 years to develop a solid core and failed. There's almost zero chance this game could support millions of players. Any actual dev will tell you optimization can't be an afterthought. Simply doesn't work like that. - They can't develop core features like PvP -- they still have no clue what they will do. It's been 6 years and they are in the design phase. Design comes before alpha, and they don't even have that done. - They can't communicate with players -- JC likes to go on streams but only deals with ass-kissers. Why is the CEO spending time on streams, anyway?! - They can't fix basic bugs and exploits. - They can't enforce the rules they created because they can't fix basic bugs and exploits... - They can't create a permissions system -- even NQ can't seem to set this up properly. These are devs. That can't create a permissions system. - They can't even be bothered to make a subscription system (which takes a few days and a Stripe account)...Xsolla is for lazy companies that don't care about UX DU still has so much potential. If I didn't love many aspects of this game, I'd be gone by now. They can 100% fix the direction of this game...but they need major changes in leadership, which likely won't happen. Hopefully events like this encourage them to quit going on streams and doing stupid easter eggs...and focus on making even one feature in this game actually work.

I've read the forum. Very true.

Space suit should rust when it gets wet. Caverns should sometimes collapse when weaving tunnels like a bunch of cokehead moles. Add cokehead moles that attack you sometimes.

It is an assumption, but not one formed in a vacuum. I am likely biased, but it takes a certain level of ego to even attempt to make a game like DU as your first ever game project when you have zero experience in the field...that's like me attempting to make Data as my first ever robot. Would it be "ambitious" or arrogant? (P.S. I have never worked in robotics) A few other reasons I have this opinion: Not interested in mundane things like detailing core features Very interested in being on streams and being the visible face of the game (most game companies don't have their CEOs spending so much time on streams because they are busy leading the company) Not that interested in negative feedback -- not eager to apologize, admit fault, make changes (e.g. "sorry we know we need to communicate better") Running an event that he cares about but doesn't really help the community; is a distraction to the many other things to do Obsession with RPO (sees himself as Halliday?) Life experience? I'm sure there's humble PhD/CEO/Creative Director/Founders out there...I'd love to meet one someday!

If this game is supposed to be a community-driven civilization sandbox, making an event that caters to a tiny minority of players (and JC's apparent Halliday-inspired ego) isn't very interesting or useful. It makes me think that the "civilization" they want to create will mirror all the boring issues of RL society where only a select few get to do anything. Yes, it's a competition, but not a fair one. It seems like it was more engineered for press and to satisfy the CEO's obsessions. Honestly...I don't care about the easter egg very much. It just isn't that interesting to me. What is interesting is that they thought this was a good use of anyone's time considering the state of the game. Maybe JC is leading NQ based on his personal whims...he's not interested in what's best for the game, his company/employees, or the community because he can't see the product objectively anymore. It's his oasis and we're all just lucky to live in it. Happy to change my tune and admit how wrong I was....just need some evidence to make me believe that JC isn't a stereotypical egotistical academic narcissist. ?‍♂️

I hate to be this person, but it isn't so obvious there's a story or lore in this game... Earth decides to build this massive humanity-saving Ark in a feat of unparalleled cooperation, but they all agreed in advance that as soon as people thaw out it'll be a free for all with no government or law? Well, first they decide to build like 20 copies of the same city...then it's time to start thawin' people out and letting 'em do whatever the heck they want. The real dark theme of DU is that humans aren't capable of learning from their mistakes and will be locked in eternal pointless conflict forever.

You definitely have a thing for space casinos and I'm all for it. Personally my goal is to become one of those cage dancers in some shady space casino nightclub. Ah, to dream.

100% that's just incompetence. See this thread here: NQ's mods spend so much time on basic BS, they don't have time for much else. I don't think they made an actual decision to not punish these people. Hanlon's razor: "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence"

I don't understand why this is still a discussion to be honest. Ex post facto is a solid legal postulate for a reason. You shouldn't punish people retroactively. If you want people to not do something, say so. That's among the most basic legal principles ever -- for a good reason. Players clearly intended to harm other players, but that's ostensibly part of this game. You think that religious cult on Alioth is going to devote themselves to charity?! Players shouldn't have to guess as to what NQ intended to be a valid mechanic; NQ has to do enough guessing about that, themselves.

this topic is a duplicate, I think the OP figured it out: - use maneuver tool to redeploy - use mouse-wheel to control throttle, the 'W' key will just tilt your nose down

The creator of the oasis was a power-hungry eccentric that didn't remotely care about humanity. The easter egg was a selfish, irresponsible vanity that was all about Halliday's narcissism and ego. Even on his deathbed, he couldn't summon enough moral fiber to consider how his creation affects others! Instead, he wanted to make a contest that of course favored the powerful players that could afford virtual currencies...people that crave this sort of attention even in death are the worst sort of evil. The point of RPO is not "the oasis is so neat". Halliday is the villain, not the hero. If you want to mold a digital society, you should probably be able to understand the theme of a fairly one-dimensional pop-fiction book... ?‍♂️

I did the same exact thing when I got my first air construct I am very good at learning how to quickly crash things.

Are you hitting "W" to move forward? Use mouse wheel to go "forward" (control throttle) and W/S to tilt the nose down/up.

True, but I'm not convinced the tech they've made actually works at scale. I'm not saying it is easy, but they've certainly had ample time to develop this core concept. How this fundamental concept performs at scale pretty much is their game. You can't have civilizations and battles without this core being well-optimized and robust. From what I can see, they've been trying to optimize and fix for years now. It is because it is so complex that I am so cynical. Actually no...I'm cynical because life made me like that lol. Yeah, this....like, I get it if the tech isn't there yet. It's hard. But you should be able to talk about your game and know where the heck it is going! If they aren't eager to communicate with their players about basic things, it makes me think they are actually afraid. Like they don't want to take a strong design position because they don't want people to freak the eff out (which to be fair...we do all the time about everything lol)

Yeah ? DU can be a lot of great things, but it isn't going to live up to the rambling ambitions of an inexperienced developer. The pitch was a "virtual civilization"...after all these years, we can mine stuff, make buildings, and make ships...that's great, but stop promising a "civilization sandbox" as if there's just a few more things it needs. I've seen so many players buy into it without question. "Well eventually players will control x, y, z...and eventually crime will something with patrols something..." Eventually the world will melt as the sun explodes...it ain't happening in my lifetime, though. They didn't make their own engine (Unigen2). They didn't invent their own server architecture (runs off AWS). They clearly didn't write a solid core (client and network issues through all of alpha and into beta). Yet...here we are 6 years later wondering how the game is supposed to run at the scale proposed in their marketing materials...? It can still be a great product, but not if JC insists that DU will become "ready player one". Have some freakin' humility...understand the limits of the shoddy tech you've hobbled together using a second-rate engine intended for benchmarking.

They've yet to prove that it will work in a real-world setting. They've done simulations/benchmarks, which mean very little... Network ops scale exponentially. There's 10 people moving around a room. Each of those 10 clients must sync their position with the server. To show other players moving, each client must synchronize the positions of the other 9 players as well. If another player walks into the room, it requires exponentially more resources. Obviously this is a very simplified example, but shows why massive player interactions are difficult. There's a reason they split people into 10 different starting cities....their promise of huge battles and big cities shouldn't be taken that seriously IMHO...I've yet to see any evidence for this being realistic (yes even post-beta which is only expected to last a year).

I know it's been discussed a lot, but no, you're not crazy...performance is really bad. It will improve as you leave starting areas, though. Overall, I would be extremely surprised if they were capable of optimizing the product at this point... By all means check out the other very complicated projects built on the Unigen engine...like that one tower defense game or that other puzzle game...or the seven games other than DU ever deployed with this engine since 2010 (at least one of which was made by Unigen itself lol) I'm sure it'll be just as advanced as other commercial engines...despite the fact that Unigen mostly focuses on benchmarking and no MMO title has ever released using this engine ...

I'm not so sure about their technical ability to trace this. I'm highly skeptical that they have the metrics in place that would let them do meaningful analysis, programatic or otherwise. I'm curious why people think a wipe will improve performance...? Wiping pre-release has a negative impact on performance. They only have 10 or so starting cities. Every new player gets funneled through those cities and Sanctuary Moon. They have no way to distribute load across more starting areas, which is highly amusing. Wiping guarantees that more players have to share fewer areas out of the gate, and that's a massive performance bottleneck. Network traffic scales exponentially as players share the same space. Beta launch showed just how much this impacted the game. If they do wipe, they probably need to double the number of starting cities or more. I know people imagine this game changing so much in the year they plan to keep it in beta...there's no evidence that a wipe will magically enable them to improve performance or implement sweeping changes. How will they handle gameplay changes and optimizations in production? Wiping the server every few years? Now is the time to test those mechanics as if this were production...a wipe is a poor choice to test how gameplay updates break things. There's absolutely reasons to do a wipe...but it won't fix performance. It won't enable them to make sweeping gameplay changes. Again, they only plan to keep the game in beta for a year. Whatever changes you imagine that would require a wipe probably won't arrive for years....

I like how everyone else is stupid, but this explanation makes no sense... Exactly how does a wipe solve this problem in production? If they didn't consider how to make updates to the gameplay without breaking content, a beta wipe won't save them. They only plan beta for a year...it isn't a lot of time to make all these sweeping changes you might imagine that would require wipes. Some patches will 100% "break" structures, but wiping them all isn't a viable solution in production...so why would it be for beta which needs to test every aspect of production -- including how players respond to "breaking" changes...? The time for periodic wipes to do all these "upgrades" was Alpha... EDIT: I can see how playing the game, you'd think they have years to go before release and a few wipes wouldn't be a big deal, but I do think they're striving to meet that 2021 release date....which means they need as much time as possible to test how things scale and a wipe could be counterproductive. What you're playing now is probably a lot closer to release version than players imagine lol.

I think NQ should do what they said. If they do a wipe, it should come with refunded playtime -- it's a massive bait-and-switch otherwise. You can't promise one thing to get people to open their wallets, then decide that actually that was a lie so sorry. Attracting players is not the most important thing for an MMO! Going free to play would "attract new players". The key is actually retaining those players. A reset doesn't fix anything...it literally just puts the game back to where it was at beta launch. For what reason? A few months later, people will still be like "well I'd play...but I don't want to be behind". Actually no...you wouldn't play. You'd build a speeder, get bored, and leave like many others. No one is entering DU and leaving because they feel like they can't catch up on talents...there's a billion and one other reasons they are leaving that need to get fixed first.

And that's a big "maybe". Cost will depend entirely on how players interact -- it will get more expensive as the game evolves and people cluster into orgs or cities because no amount of tech defeats the exponential growth of network traffic with more nearby clients...then we get to experience time dilation because they can't afford to spin up a few dozen servers when orgs want to fight.

The thing is...there's not that many votes lol. It'd be rather crazy to drive your dev priorities based on this (*cough* especially when they are planning on a 2021 release *cough*). It also gives them a lot of cover..."don't blame us for x,y,z feature or dev priority, that's what the community said in a vote that didn't reach statistical significance". Now players can blame each other for not voting for the right feature instead of wondering what the heck NQ is doing to assert leadership over their own design.

This is why I don't screw around with Lawful Good alignments.

1. There's a link in the signup email from Xsolla -- search "Dual Universe subscription activated" and you'll find it! 2. Call or email Xsolla -- they are a trashy company that doesn't let you cancel online except from that email link EDIT: just realized you wanted refund not to cancel nm, lol

It's only early beta and they seem to be very reaction-based in their design philosophy. ? "We see players are building a lot of industry, we need to add stuff so that you have to go to markets. Maybe if we add power that'll fix it?" Their entire plan is to not have a plan and figure it out based on what players do...I'm sure someone once said "the key to successful game dev is to not plan anything out and figure it all out later". Like, this guy is the lead level designer and he's making guesses based on what he's "heard"...? Currently it says that DU will have its commercial release in 2021 -- it'd be really funny if NQ thinks they're at the point where they are just finishing up and adding balance/polish and that's why they don't have solid plans...cuz personally I think they have like 3-4 years of core dev left lol.