michaelk

"Being an adult" means recognizing that the honor system doesn't work in any meaningful scale. People think that "some will always cheat" because that's how humans work. If you want to make a society based on the presumption that people have self-control, that's just naive. A small minority of people will ever multi-box. It really isn't that big of a deal. However, if you consider multi-boxing cheating, you do have to just accept it. There's literally no way to stop it, because rules that can't be enforced don't work. That's not some childish sentiment, that's basic human nature and basic legal theory. The OPs point is that multi-boxing is "pay to win". My point is that yeah it sort of is, there's never going to be a way to stop it, and trying to figure out if its explicitly against the "rules" is a moot point because there's absolutely no technical way to stop this behavior.

I hate to be this sort of nerd.....but this is supposed to be a "civilization sim", so whatever... Talking about rules for the sake of rules is lawful-alignment BS. ? It doesn't actually matter what JC or NQ says about this. If they want to make a rule that's literally impossible to enforce (as many others have explained), there's no point in talking about what the rule actually is supposed to be. It's the same as use tax or anti-sodomy laws. Sure it's the law, but that doesn't make it moral and it doesn't make it useful because it can't be enforced. A law with no possible avenue for enforcement is a poorly written law that's effectively useless. Does someone playing on two machines with a demultiplexer and horde of macros have an unfair advantage? Sure. Welcome to capitalism where the rich have boundless advantages! In the same way, someone can ignore all the rules and keep buying accounts forever. Ban their IP? Buy a VPN. I'm sure there will be ways to buy quanta on the black market long-term. Streamers that show off their setup won't get banned, either. Frankly, NQ needs streamers more than it needs average players. Again, you can't escape real-world capitalism -- streamers make free press for the game, and NQ isn't about to scare people from streaming by dropping a big ban hammer. Not when they need to be growing subs month over month -- I highly doubt they are right now. They probably see streamers as their path toward growth. Good luck convincing them to punish those players. Capitalism always wins, yo.

Rules that are physically impossible to enforce are absolutely pointless. You can debate all day about what the rules are. It doesn't matter if it's literally impossible to enforce. When was the last time you paid use tax? It's the law. No one does it because it can't be enforced. What about one of those sodomy laws still on the books in some places? Still the law. It will likely remain the law because no one will get arrested on those charges. Enforcement isn't practical. You can't enforce a ban on playing the game on two boxes on two accounts. Simple. Maybe focus on why playing the game on two boxes / accounts is so wrong vs. appealing to the "rule of law" like one of those lawful good paladins that can't see beyond "rules for the sake of rules"

Yes, they should be explicit. Even obvious jerks have a right to know what isn't allowed in the game they've paid for. It's on NQ to spell out the terms of use, not on players to divine how the game is supposed to work. If they make prompt announcements, it is much easier to report and punish people...but punishment only goes so far anyway. Hardcore jerks can buy another account and become even better customers for NQ. The more vague they make the rules, the more cover they have to ignore reports. They'd rather ignore it because their support can't keep up. Honestly though...I think NQ should fix BaconOfWar's piece of trash racist neighbor, first. That's an important and super easy ticket...if they can't figure out how to deal with something like that promptly, their exact policy doesn't really matter...because they'll never have the competence to enforce it.

I get it....but "ex post facto" is a pretty well accepted legal and moral postulate...It isn't fair to dole out punishment in retrospect, after NQ declared this "forbidden". If that doesn't seem fair, the onus is on NQ to deal with this more promptly. That's extremely bad. For them to recognize the issue and ignore it is either incompetent in the extreme or outright racist. There's no place for racism anywhere; I don't care what level of employee you are or how crappy your job is, you don't ignore something like this. NQ needs some better leadership at the customer service level. If you think being blocked by walls or having your ship stolen is bad...it doesn't compare to racist idiots polluting the world with hate. If they can't address something that simple, good luck policing which walls are okay and which ones aren't.

Practically speaking, there's no way to enforce this. There's no way to differentiate between two people playing on the same network and one person operating two machines. Rules that aren't enforceable are great for the sake of rules and all, but not going to stop any "forbidden" behavior...

It's 100% an assumption. For me, the chances of a "must-decide-everything" borderline-arrogant leader rises exponentially with each title they assume. CEO, Founder, Creative Director, PhD. Also...it's the lack of a prominent designer voice other than JC. Who else actually works on the game design / gameplay mechanics? It's only ever JC talking about the game on the media I've seen. Frankly, the other thing that makes me think this is the lack of progress on the game over the past 6 years...If there were really experienced programmers and designers leading the development efforts, there'd be more to show for it and they wouldn't be surprised that gamers are naughty beasts that will actually use the tools you give them. ?‍♂️

It's NQ's game. People didn't "force" NQ to do anything. The people actually making the game are responsible for development choices. If they had actually thought out their design, maybe they wouldn't need to "react". This happens in organizations where the "CEO / founder / creative director" has to make every decision....JC needs to seriously delegate to those "industry vets" from Ubisoft and Sony he's got on staff or this glacial pace of communication will only get worse...

Expected, but really dumb. NQ can barely handle the basic support tickets, never mind policing player disputes about what is a "legal" use of the tools they programmed. The honor system doesn't work at any sort of meaningful scale. I also like how a GM gets to decide on what a player's intention is. I'm sure that will be super fair. I think they'd rather ignore the problem as "a few bad apples, we'll figure it out later" because they have no clue how to implement a technical solution without derailing their dev schedule. "We'll handle it case-by-case" is another way to say they aren't going to really handle it, lol. This "emergent" gameplay isn't going very well for them haha...it's almost like they didn't ever think about how players would use/abuse the tools they built, which is baffling for any MMO design.

It's almost like development is being led by someone that's never made a game before....yet has promised one of the most ambitious MMOs of all time...? ??‍♂️ To the OPs point, I think you should expect a good amount of abuse in DU -- because honestly the gameplay elements do seem like an afterthought. Letting players help balance things (figuring it out once the tools are in place) probably sounded better on paper than it does staring down the barrel of lost subscriptions... Unlike Worlds Adrift, at least DU is extremely expensive to run and has completely unpredictable costs since players can congregate en masse at any time...

PS I need to get back to this even if it is off topic. Whose job will this be? I am looking for part time employment and am very good at recognizing dongs from a distance. I promise to delete all but the most artistic of them.

My point isn't that everything you can do in the game is "okay" -- it's that if NQ doesn't want a player to do something, they can stop it by patching the game and fixing the game rules. IMO fixing the game rules is the only way to stop "exploits" -- because the honor system or GM enforcement isn't realistic or scalable.

A player taking advantage of how elements load into the game to construct an invisible wall of death is clearly exploitative. It takes advantage of technical flaws with the game, not an intended game mechanic. I don't really think NQ should step in, though. When issues like this are dealt with ad-hoc by GMs, it is sloppy and prone to inconsistency. It doesn't stop bad behavior, it punishes it after the fact. Frankly, NQ will never be able to afford enough GMs to monitor players for "good behavior". If they want to stop a behavior, it's easy -- just fix the technical issues or game rules that make griefing possible. The rules of the game shouldn't be a guess. If you can do it, it is legal. If you shouldn't be able to do it, the game should not let you do it...not an underpaid and overworked GM prone to human error.

I've never believed in a company banning players because of exploits, especially for an MMO...if you don't want players to exploit something, how about fixing it, instead...? It's your programming error and you shouldn't be surprised that the "honor system" doesn't work. Bans are a fear-based way to buy the devs more time to fix their mistakes, which NQ isn't very quick to do. I also don't agree with people arguing that something should stay in the game because it "makes it more realistic". Realism isn't the the main consideration for successful game design. There's always going to be lots of elements in DU that aren't "realistic" because it's a game, and it has to work as a game. Features need to have an actual purpose cohesive to the design of the game beyond "that's how it might work in reality". There needs to be a certain level of fairness that doesn't exist in the real world -- e.g. having clear rules for when your ships are safe or not. If parking in a random tile is a risk, that needs to be reflected in the rules/tutorials and balanced into the game.

Thanks for sharing! I think honest first impressions are totally valid and do hope NQ pays close attention when new players come to share their experience. Personally I always find it hard to join orgs/guilds in MMOs because I FEAR PEOPLE. I think a lot of new players are in a similar boat where they want to have a good understanding of the basics on their own before joining up with an org.

There are a lot of practical benefits when it comes to ship aesthetics. Well...sort of practical. Your fleet ought to be recognizable. Everyone knows a Federation ship when they see it -- if you attack it, you'd best be ready for war with the entire faction. They design ships to look pretty and consistent -- sure, they could pump out a bunch of war ships, but the design is a reflection of their values as an organization. If a Federation ship shows up to answer your distress call, you probably trust them more than a stranger. Even if you aren't familiar with their org, they don't look like warships. You wouldn't invest in pretty ships if your only concern is piracy/war. Cohesive ship design helps build the organization's reputation across the galaxy -- and this reputation helps each individual ship stay safer...or be more feared, or whatever values you want to reflect. For those of us that want to play a civilization sandbox, these sorts of things will hopefully be important. My hope is that generic cube ships (if they remain in meta) get treated as "pirates" on sight by more organized fleets -- e.g. if your ship looks like it is a generic cube built only for combat that doesn't belong to any faction...maybe you get treated like the dirty space rat you are by more civilization-focused orgs.

It's hard to make "promises" about a design detail when you're making it up as you go. They don't even know what they're going to do with Alioth now after 6 years of development, so I doubt they knew enough when they made "promises" to take them seriously...

This isn't always the case, especially with programming on a GPU. It is uncommon but plausible that they make a mistake writing a shader that affects newer GPUs far more than older ones. Someone mentioned that DU uses a mesh server to minimize GPU work (handles voxels server-side only) -- which if true means the client-side rendering shouldn't be anything especially complex or cutting edge.

IMHO, there is no realistic vision for the game. It makes me sad. The promises are so vague and grand, people see everything in DU. After six years of dev, the foundations for this game should be done and solid as diamond. You can't build a civilization on a cracked foundation, and this foundation is like a thick soup. If someone told me this game has been in dev for 10 months, I'd believe them. JC isn't a game designer. He's an ideas person. It's dangerous when someone like that is at the helm, because they have fleshed out exactly 0 real details about how the game will actually function. It is a collection of "great ideas" and "hey wouldn't this be so cool" without a comprehensive plan. A complex project requires a solid foundation. That means knowing exactly what's going to be built on top of it. The balance between building and PvP should have been hammered down years ago; instead, they seem to be completely winging it Humility is really important in development. Ideas that seem easy rarely are, especially at scale. Everything is soul-crushingly difficult. Being a brilliant roboticist doesn't mean you're going to be a humble leader that listens to designers and engineers that have been down this road countless times. If anyone remembers Lionshead and their propensity to overpromise...try "Civilization Sandbox". I do hope NQ can focus and make some definitive progress in the next few months. They need a veteran in the field with fresh perspective that can challenge JC's inexperience and hasn't spent 10,000 hours staring at the game...

"It's nice but pretty useless" could be a deep commentary on the futility of beauty... It's also a great tattoo to get right above your junk. ?‍♂️

There's zero chance that the game will be sustainable long-term if everyone that gets turned off by ever-increasing travel (as their first impressions) "just quits". Please understand that we need some level of casual player to sustain the game. That means understanding that new players will be going back and forth to the market often as they discover how to build industry and create ships. If you make that mind-numbingly boring, people will "just quit". It isn't like going back and forth in a hovercraft or aircraft is actually difficult, it's just time-consuming. Monotony isn't the same as difficulty...it's more a measurement of how much free time you have vs. how skilled you are...Nerfing monotony isn't "handing people everything on a silver platter". It isn't good when casual players "just quit". It means less hardware available for everyone else. Who do you actually think is going to pay for those massive space battles and big cities? Hardcore players on the game for hours every day? Subscriptions aren't based on usage...someone that plays the game less but pays just the same is NQ's best customer. They will be the ones footing the bill when hardcore players organize en masse. If everyone annoyed with ever-increasing travel at the start of the game quits, good luck sustaining a server load that will increase exponentially as players begin to organize...

Well just yesterday I found out that my work hours and pay will be cut in half. I could refuse to accept the offer...but then I would have no insurance and have "quit" the job, so I might not get unemployment. So...I get to lurk the forums as I work 1/4th as hard and update the ole resume. Oh, did I mention the startup I work for is in the fitness / health industry? They had just sponsored the USA wrestling team before Covid hit -- and a big part of their business was focusing on gyms and schools ?‍♂️

I'm using one of my precious likes to like this. Now that I know they are limited, you'd best be even more grateful.

My point isn't that DU must be AAA-level pretty...it's that their poor performance isn't a result of some mind-bending, cutting-edge tech that will make 30,000 person battles an effortless thing to handle. "Single-shard" is more of a marketing concept than a technical one; as I mentioned, most MMOs already use auto-scaling fleets of servers instead of singular machines. Server tech has nothing to do with client-side issues and GPU utilization that's far too high for the quality we see. The OP's point is that this isn't really a beta -- it has years before it is feature complete and a big part of that is optimization. Anyone that's worked in any sizable software project knows that optimizing after the fact is much, much harder than writing a solid core. If the game is struggling at this point when most the features aren't even implemented...that means a lot more dev cycles will be spent fixing mistakes vs. improving the game. If you're going to set extremely ambitious technical goals and sell those ideas as a core feature that's fantastic -- but it's 100% reasonable to be skeptical of grand claims, especially when the game struggled so bad to become stable even with a small beta launch. IMO the only reason it even improved is because people are farther apart and there's fewer players logging in... Of course DU has a lot of room for optimization and I have no doubt it will improve immensely in the coming years -- but it will be years of beta...and ultimately? Single-shard is just a cluster of servers like any other. It'll be subject to the same practical and financial constraints as any other IP...especially if the game continues to focus on a niche space.

Except that network performance and single-shard server tech has nothing to do with client-side graphics and GPUs choking on 1999-level rendering. That implies low level shader issues that have nothing to do with network optimization. Of course I agree that optimizing their core server infrastructure is important, but I'm not super impressed with their implementation of "single shard" as it stands. Especially for "beta", to the OP's point. Modern MMO servers aren't singular behemoth machines, they are often large clusters of hardware, clusters that can scale and split load just as a "single shard" would. The reason players are split into different servers is purely to limit how many people exist in similar areas at once, not because of some core technological inability to scale servers or add players. There's no magic way to easily render lots of people in the same location at once. Single shard tech doesn't somehow make this easy or cheap. From what I've seen, there's nothing all that special here. For example, splitting starting players into multiple clones of the same cities does exactly the same thing as splitting people across different servers. It distributes load so there's not too many people in one area at one time. Nothing will ever remove the challenge of syncing lots of clients sharing the same space, especially when hardware cost is a thing. There's no technology that will somehow make rendering lots of people in the same area a linearly scaling operation. Consider 500 clients battling each other. One ship moves. That one movement must be transmitted to the server and synced across 500 clients. If every one of the 500 clients is moving and shooting...that's 250,000 operations to sync in total. Every one extra player in the battle adds to this load exponentially. Believe what you want, but I'm really skeptical of the idea that NQ's tech is so cutting edge it can cleanly handle these large battles. I definitely understand how ambitious it is...that's why I'm a bit skeptical based on what I've seen of the beta so far. If they can't optimize the basics (there's clearly some sloppy stuff happening client side) I wonder how they will solve this most fundamental issue with multiplayer gaming (without merely throwing hardware at it, which affects their bottom line).