michaelk

Okay, but the graphics should also match the required hardware. Players that have issues are comparing it to other games they can run and wondering why DU is struggling. In other words, If DU is going to require a powerful rig, it should look like it. I think "bad performance" is totally fair -- if the game looked a lot better and lagged I think people would be more sympathetic. "Okay it lags, but that's because it looks wonderful" is easier to swallow than "it lags and the terrain looks like it came from 1998"

Software developers know what "beta" means. When they decide to use that label even though the game is definitely alpha, it's a marketing ploy...the terms have lost meaning because devs decide to use the term to present their game in a more finished state than it is. Personally, I think DU has several years before it will be "feature complete" where the core elements are ready for the mass public. I'm not shocked that NQ would be interested in making a buck or two -- I think they will start losing subs when the first waves start to renew, but who really cares? Those people might come back in a couple years, and the 1.0 launch will be expected to attract a much larger, fresh wave of new players. Also, NQ was founded in 2014 -- after 6 years, I'm sure it reassures investors a lot knowing the product is in beta and collecting paying subs...would you want to keep bankrolling an alpha product going on 7-8 years?

This will only get worse, but hopefully they start deleting claims from people that played for 20 minutes and stopped right after they plopped down their territory unit... "Well the rest of the game is even worse" isn't really a great angle, here. If new players have to spend longer and longer to get started, that's definitely a problem. Can you imagine how bad it will be in a year? Or if the game actually became popular? Complaining about ever-increasing monotony at the start of the game isn't demanding "instant gratification"... no need for value judgements, especially at the point where players haven't yet experienced other parts of the game. Personally the reason I find travel via Speeder at the start of the game so bad is that everything is so incredibly ugly. There's nothing to look at during this phase of the game...just 90s era terrain textures, tree-like models, and unroofed mini factories.

Yep, very different requirements. Voxel-based games also tend to offload a lot more to the GPU, so even with simple graphics, it can be taxing in a way that SC will never be. Static assets with physics are really well understood -- and extremely well optimized by GPUs. People have been working with static assets for decades; optimization techniques and hardware are highly evolved and baked into any commercial engine like SC's Amazon Lumberyard. DU has to do a lot more math to represent objects of less detail because they are represented with voxels. Their collision and geometry is far more complex...plus they have to stream to your machine via network. It's a lot easier to make mistakes working at that low level of GPU/shader programming, even before networks come into play...so plenty of room for optimization!

I think NQ needs a webdev Subs are so easy to manage nowadays without resorting to processors like Xsolla... Or...if I'm being cynical it's because Xsolla is hard to cancel. Anyone on the fence might feel it isn't worth the hassle...plus, laziness. Which reminds me, I need to cancel Hulu.

100% If you check NQ or JC's twitter, the ongoing media for the game hasn't yet showcased PvP. It's been completely focused on the awesome things players and orgs have been building...or people blowing themselves up due to pilot error. It's like they know that PvP isn't ready to be showcased yet and want to highlight the part of the game they know will attract the most players...wild concept! If PvP were really so important to NQ, they'd have iterated on it more before public beta. They know their demographics better than anyone. That's reflected in their advertising and development schedule. If they wanted to advertise it like rust in space, they'd actually do that. People come here and fear something that isn't even a big deal yet -- just focus on building if that's what you want to do, because NQ knows their game. They've spent a lot of time on building tools for a reason...and it isn't so they can make it so everyone's creations are easily lost forever. Don't listen to people that believe NQ's top priority is making this a PvP experience or that "everyone" wants PvP to be a higher dev priority. Just isn't the case.

This is a reasonable perspective. Stop attacking people that ask or complain about PVP...it really won't help if the DU community has a bad reputation before the game even launches. Someone shouldn't post here expecting to get attacked for stating their opinion about a game... If the way PVP will work in this game was really so obvious, people wouldn't be here complaining or asking questions. Consumers don't do in-depth research before they buy, they buy from emotion. Plenty of players have only ever watched the beta launch trailer...if they churn and subs plummet because they fear how PvP will work, it's everyone that suffers. IMHO the discussion should be steered to "what happens after you blow up"? There's plenty of ways to make being ganked a less soul-crushing experience without making the game "easy" -- I'm sure NQ will figure it out, but if this is a community-driven game, it'll be hard to grow if the community has a toxic rep...

I really wish everything here could be about how PvP should work instead of shock that PvP will be a thing! The reason why messaging is so important in the context of investors is that it's a subscription-based service... Their core metric is churn -- if revenue drops, the question on any investor's mind will be "what's the churn rate" and "why is churn so high"? If the messaging is wrong, they'll be inflating their initial subscriber count at the cost of higher churn rate when the first wave of renewals hits. Suddenly high expectations turn pessimistic, and investors want to understand why churn is so high. The easiest way to understand why churn is high is to ask people that cancel their subs. Now you're getting feedback based on a demographic you never wanted to target in the first place. I hope I've explained my point -- it takes more than interviews on youtube channels; they need to make sure people that aren't as invested in the game still understand what they're buying or it might be a tough year on the business side. Of course we can only ever guess on subscriber metrics...I'm only saying this based on the fact that so many people are here complaining about PvP as a concept, which likely means even more are churning because of it....

NQ's marketing could be much, much better. Many players will see text like this: Most people won't go digging through forums or interviews to try to understand some guy's vision (they don't know or care who JC is) -- they'll watch the one trailer and read marketing text like this (if their attention span is that long), then get angry when they realize that DU isn't the vision they expected. The fact that many new players seem to be mad about PVP is really telling about what players are expecting and how those expectations aren't being set. If you set an expectation and fail to meet it, people tend to get pissy and bomb you on review channels. No one comes into Rust expecting a peaceful builder game. That's because they are upfront about what to expect: Naked + Rocks + Violence. Yes, JC has made it very clear many times that the game will have FFA PVP, but is that really reflected in the 30 seconds of adverts someone will watch before opening their wallet? Blame whoever you want for idiots with no attention span, that's just how consumerism is today. No matter what vision is communicated publicly, JC has investors and employees. So...my worry is that NQ's marketing will attract a lot of people expecting a sandbox builder. Then they get mad for not having immortal pixels. Then they bomb the game. Then NQ's investors get antsy and demand that NQ do what it can to build its "mainstream" appeal. Andurance Ventures and Azom Partners do not really care about JC's vision...they didn't pipe in well over $11 million to create a niche product with 100,000 subs.

Great...completely agree! Just...next time maybe stop before becoming super angry and calling people dog shit...? Let's show NQ that players can handle building autonomous civilizations by acting like civilized people. People can be wrong or misinformed without being trash (especially when we're talking about a video game and not real life).

Nothing excuses childish tantrums. It's very likely that their detailed plans for PVP will evolve as the game does. There's nothing wrong with people expressing their opinions, even if you think it runs counter to what the game should be or a vision communicated early in development. If you don't like an idea, you don't have to agree with it. People have every right to demand whatever they want. The game is still in development. They paid. They can say what they do or don't like about it. NQ can agree or disagree. What's the big deal? Anything is open to change, and NQ is going to make changes based on a mess of factors from investors to server costs to subscription churns.

What turns me off from the community is people like this... In the same breath that they call someone "dog shit" for having "bias or feelings about how a game should be played"...they express their personal feelings for how a game should be played. Strongly. Calm. Down. This isn't your personal game. You can't possibly speak for the devs. This whole post drips in hypocrisy. "How dare you demand the game suits your needs...it should suit people like ME" is just...it sounds like a tantrum, frankly. NQ's poor communication is a big reason people are so unreasonably angry. They haven't really communicated a clear vision for PVP -- probably because they don't even know yet because the game is still in beta. There's many, many factors that will determine how PVP plays out from investors to server costs. It has jack to do with you. If you're going to argue about something that is truly unknowable, at least do it with a shred of dignity. If you aren't going to provide something useful to the forums, you're the one that should "please fuck off". It isn't helpful. It's just aimless rage.

What is really tiring is people not understand one of the most basic concepts in human decency: different people like different things. This isn't directed at anyone specifically, but something I've seen in most recent PVP-related threads. You can call people that want building (in this civilization building sandbox) to be safer "carebears"...but that just makes you look like angsty teens that get enraged by the concept that some players like different things. "Those weakling cowards don't want to take risks or have conflict" -- it's often a baseless value judgement about their character or masculinity. Really tiresome and boring. Them doing what they want doesn't take anything away from you. Do I think PVP should be a big part of the game? Obviously. The fringes of space should be dangerous and wild. If you want to create a violent pirate cult, great. Should said cult be able to attack people in the core of civilized space with impunity? Uh, no. The thing is...this conversation about PVP is going to keep going for the life of the game. PVP isn't bad. Building isn't bad. Both are required for the game to work. If you don't have an open mind about the balance this game needs to strike, you're going to be sad. If you don't have an open mind in general and become hostile because this video game company isn't doing what you want...well, DU would be much better without you...

People liking different things isn't a crime. Space is supposed to be huge. This game is supposed to be huge. There's plenty of room for people that gain enjoyment from different styles of gameplay, especially since that's how the game was actually advertised. Not as a piracy sim, as a civilization sandbox. That implies some level of civilization. These two concepts aren't mutually exclusive at all. Who cares if some people prefer to build instead of fight? Why should that bother anyone? Similarly, I like the idea of a dangerous frontier where anything can happen. There's no reason why the game can't have both. It's called space for a reason. It's 2020. If I want to be completely isolated in an underground moon lair I spend years carving out with a spoon, I think we can all understand.

Games like this attract wildly different interests. Some people want to build and create. Some want to RP as a lonely miner or trader making a life in some quiet of the galaxy. Others want to be space pirates and live and die for competition and political conflict. The challenge with PVP is that it can easily make every other interest or activity irrelevant or annoying... If NQ wants to build a rust-style game because they believe player conflict will drive engagement, so be it...but then they can't really advertise it as a "build civilization and be whatever you want" sort of experience. It's really silly all the people like "this isn't minecraft go play something else"...okay...? Sure, blame us for advertising this as a massive-scale build your own civilization game. Go figure, many people actually want to build stuff.

1. Repeatedly saying "bad idea" without explanation isn't really providing anything useful lol -- I think by 'creative mode' the OP probably just means having some way to build and test constructs, not a full blown server running creative mode rules. 2. There's a big difference between difficulty due to complexity vs. difficulty due to a lack of information / clunky presentation. Having a design mode to figure out how building works would motivate new players to grind the materials required. That doesn't make the game effortless or not rewarding. 3. NQ should be open to any good idea, especially in regards to retaining new players. Arrogance isn't a good look in any community or business. Honestly considering an idea you initial dislike is a sign of intelligence...discarding an idea because "you say so" really isn't... 4. This game is advertised as a sandbox. Creativity is a challenge that can never be "mastered". Helping people get to the point where they can actually enjoy the sandbox seems like a good idea to me. There's plenty of ways to do that other than a design / creative mode, but this part of the game needs major work. If this is supposed to be a cool space adventure where I can adopt any role and be any specialist, it'd be nice to see some of that potential even starting out -- vs. "actually no you're stuck on this moon and i hope you like digging and setting up the same factory as everyone else..."

I think "it will never work like they promised" is going to be the case. The entire point of traditional MMO servers is to split player load. They decided to invest a lot of time on something that defies this convention...but for what? So that everyone can build a mega-city together? So there can be huge mega-battles across vast organizations? That's only going to make reliability worse. No matter how much you pay for AWS, when players decide to wage the next war you'll need to pile on so many servers so quickly...scaling just isn't that fast. If players decide to all live in the same city together? Like they advertised? Doubting it... I get that's its beta, but they've had ample time to fix issues relative to any tech company whose core product is having scalability issues with a public launch. Maybe they realize the core premise of a single shard server is counter-productive and don't have a way to get out of that box.

I hate to be like this, but the fact that we start in many cloned versions of the same starter city kind of made me laugh at the "single shard" concept in general. So we don't start on different versions of the same world separated by server, but you do start on different versions of the same city...it's still an experience where load is distributed and players aren't sharing the same space. I can only imagine how this will play out at scale when organizations want to play together or battle each other and the ability to force players into distinct regions to reduce load is limited...to be honest I think they overstated the novelty and capability of their tech, but I hope I'm proven wrong in time.

It's like people think it's the customer's job to find updates about a product...many people won't even check the forum, never mind discord. NQ has everyone's email. It isn't hard or expensive to set up an email blast. I don't really care if NQ only wants to use discord...but it isn't good business. If they can't figure out something as fundamental and important as "how to communicate with their players", it's hard to trust that they will be open-minded enough to adapt to life beyond their most loyal and defensive player-base...

Not everyone is in Discord for a host of reasons -- it's up to them to provide messaging on more than one channel. Can you imagine a real company being like "oh well we only talk about stuff in discord what are you doing on our forums or twitter?" It's called "basic engagement with the community". They have time to post tweets to promote the game; they can post a simple announcement or acknowledgement here. It's up to NQ to set expectations for the beta -- there's a big different between tolerating a few bugs and new player feeling like they can't even start the game. Personally, I've had a few good experiences in the game. I can see how it has potential. I'm eager to keep trying. I can 100% understand how other customers won't be and how that will negatively affect the game. "it's a beta, it's your fault for expecting a playable product in return for your cash" is not something I agree with. "It's beta" is not the end-all excuse for poor communication and instability. It really sucks that people are like "it's your fault for buying a beta of course it isn't going to work right". That's not what people were expecting, and it is 100% reasonable to expect a somewhat playable product for the price vs. basic content like tutorials breaking and not being fixed for weeks! DU isn't going to die, but it seems like NQ wants it become a really niche product. Many people joining beta now have been following the game for years. These are the most interested, qualified customers they will ever have coming into the game. They avoided alpha specifically because they wanted to wait until the game was at least somewhat playable. Instead they got a worse experience than alpha, apparently. Beta shouldn't be less stable than alpha in any universe...and if they are, it should be a temporary issue due to hardware/infrastructure needing to scale which is an operation that takes minutes in 2020, not weeks. Instead, people are left to wonder and speculate that there's core problems with their technical design.

Yes, fantastic! ? Although I do suspect this roof was designed as an elaborate cat perch...which I also support.

Good to know, thanks! My relationship with physics even is rocky even in the best of circumstances. I can 100% see myself as a pile of ash on the desert floor, destined to be vacuumed up and recycled into the system

I finally got a little helicopter jet thing. I immediately figured out how to park it upside down, but it still beats flying commercial. I flew around for a while, scoping out my neighbors like every pervert with a drone. I quickly adopted a quest to find someone...anyone...that had bothered to build a roof. Are there no HOAs in this game? Personally I don't like being neighbors with people that don't construct roofs. It's unsightly. It will probably be a while before I have the time to invest to figure out how to get off this damned-dirty sanctuary moon...but I'll admit I had a lot of fun flying around looking at people's roofless hovels and wondering if THIS is our grim future: we came so far from the destroyed earth, just to build concrete floors decorated with heavy industrial equipment? Sounds about right to be honest.

I totally get that...but I think NQ could manage expectations far better. They said "hey the game is now in public beta, come sign up for a subscription and play!" -- I think many players expected a more stable product in return for their money. You can't really blame people for "expecting too much." It was up to NQ to set those expectations and communicate the honest state of the game. How they present the product to the consumer is 100% up to them. They could have called it a public alpha and not done so much press -- they still would have attracted a lot of new players for funding and testing, only without souring the first impressions for so many new people. They presented it as a beta with some bugs, not "help us be our alpha QA, and pay us for it please"... It is a public launch -- no matter what label you slap on it, when you charge for a product and present it as being usable in your marketing, you can't blame the customer for being disappointed. I will absolutely be coming back and playing ( yeah i paid for a year ? ) -- hopefully this influx gives NQ the funding they need, but I worry they're going to need to earn back the trust of a lot of players...and that instead of doing that they are going to dig in and become a super-niche product that never has the resources it needs.

I appreciate patience, but this just isn't the case anymore. Dual Universe uses Amazon's Cloud (AWS), the same core service that powers massive applications like Netflix, which consume thousands of times more bandwidth than DU ever will. Adding hardware is not time intensive for any reasonably designed stack on AWS. It is slow in the context of responding to spikes in traffic -- but in the order of minutes, not weeks. There's no reason whatsoever why DU can't add hardware beyond not wanting to pay. Autoscaling fleets of servers can be extremely expensive. These are not the days of old where MMOs run their own servers and have hordes of poor nerds trying to sling up more servers in the dead of night. If there is a hardware issue, it isn't because Amazon lacks the capacity or they can't add servers quickly enough or their bandwidth is being bottlenecked. In the context of a product launch, 2 weeks is an extremely long time to not address issues with scalability -- especially with a modern infrastructure design, and especially when one of your core promises is the scale of the universe and the cutting-edge tech you've created to allow them to play on a continuous server. TLDR: if AWS can run Netflix, it can run DU