michaelk

Lol, people have some really weird ideas about privacy and law. 
 
This very forum uses Google Analytics...it's literally the first lines of the source code. You're being tracked as you read this very message. 
 
Collecting anonymous data without your consent isn't illegal in the US. 
 
Collecting data and selling it to third parties isn't illegal, either! You must provide an opt-out form per California's new law (CCPA)...that doesn't make it illegal to sell your information without consent, it just mandates a method to opt-out of such transactions and requires you to burry some text in your TOUs. 
 
Spamming people isn't even illegal, there's plenty of wiggle room in CANSPAM. Hate to break it to you, but the law in the US really doesn't care about your online privacy. 
 
I don't know what you think people will do with this data that makes it so invasive...

Contact Xsolla directly and tell them you need to cancel and will contest/chargeback any future charge. 
 
If they still don't cancel the sub, do exactly that -- contest the charge with your CC or bank explaining that their ability to stop a sub was confusing or not functional. 
 
 

And yes, Starbase uses a P2P distributed server model
 

Player numbers are my major concern for long time now, its obviously super-dangerous for MMO. For some reason NQ seems to be quite non-sensetive to this, crudly alienating a lot of people with 0.23 (and several smaller mishaps before and after) + not indtroducing long promised recruit a friend program (like 6 m now?), not making other visible steps, that can increase game atractivness for new people outside.
 
They maybe done some Twitch investment with court CCs, but looks like little of people want to watch them.
 

None of this actually ends in a healthy game world we can all enjoy. Let me add another option:
 
They could stone up and say there will be a full wipe near end of Beta where players can retain skill points only. Pretso chango , now people won't care to terribly much what they screw up along they way, and they can stop with all this secretive ATV insiders nonsense because who cares what people know is coming in a test environment Ah, and of course they would promise that after that wipe the ATV or insiders test server will be abandoned in favor of the public test server and the company will never give handouts to any players on the live servers be they streamers or best friends or whatever.
 
Then they can also make sure to give streamers goodies or handouts on the test server (so it doesn't affect the live server) to do their periodic "whats coming in DU" promo videos and whatnot. Aside from the few streamers that run orgs in the live game or whatever, most will only sweep in for major updates and move on anyway.

A simple commitment to a full wipe at or near end of Beta should be no issue then. Gives them complete flexibility to alter how the game works and screw up before the 'no wipe' period starts where they need to be ultra careful about their system in place to protect from this stuff they developed during this 'beta' test.

Yikes. This is the first I'm hearing of this...stupid work. Just like real life, my chances to become rich just slip on by.  
 
Does NQ not have dev/test servers...? Why are changes getting rolled straight into production without any testing, first...?
 
I feel bad for whoever made the mistake...but this sounds like a general lack of discipline/caring from the dev team. There should be protocols for touching production data! 
 
I just hope they don't blame the dev/devs that screwed up but instead ask why the heck they were allowed to roll a change like this into production without testing...or if they did test, why it wasn't caught. 

NQ had a very small window to execute a rollback. It might not have even been feasible if they didn't snapshot the data before the production rollout.
 
This decision had to be made minutes after they realized the issue -- I don't know NQ's internal decision-making structure, but my guess is that JC made this call. 
 
Please remember that NQ's devs are spending all day wrestling with an old codebase trying to implement features that were never planned for while also trying to fix six years worth of bugs. I do sympathize.
 
Morale is a huge deal in dev -- they're facing a narrowing timeline for releasing a big update, subscription churn, and mountains of tech debt. Disciplined release procedures aren't likely the top of their list.
 
They might not even have approval to run a dev/test server -- DynamoDB can get pricey. 100 TB of storage is about $25k a month -- that's over 3,000 subs worth of revenue. Spinning up a dev instance is material at that scale (I have no idea how much they stash in Dynamo vs. Mongo or how much data they really have). They surely have a test environment, but possibly not a replication of production data due to cost. 
 
A careful reversion where they query the DB to precisely target and roll back exploiters...? That isn't necessarily simple -- it may not even be possible. We can only guess about what data NQ actually logs or how it is structured! 
 
If they don't even have a real dev environment to test changes to production data, doing a reversion like this would only introduce more risk. 
 
I'd be very nice to know how widespread this exploit actually was -- are we talking a small handful of players, or trillions in schematics? I guess time will tell? 

It does matter. If terminology didn't matter and "no one cared", why would marketers be so eager to brand things as beta vs. alpha...? 
 
There's a reason the industry has abused these labels in marketing...they know that people will be more attracted to a beta product than an alpha. Not all consumers care about the labels, but enough do that it compels marketers. 
 
To be fair...if the point is "it's 4 months into beta, relax, it's not close to being finished" -- that point goes double for DU actually being in alpha. It'll take patience to see how the game evolves.
 
Just remember that the game has been in dev for six years already. Not like these are early days and they have barely had a chance to dig in. Don't expect the pace of dev to rapidly accelerate as it nears release, and expect that "release" actually will mean "beta". 

It does matter. If terminology didn't matter and "no one cared", why would marketers be so eager to brand things as beta vs. alpha...? 
 
There's a reason the industry has abused these labels in marketing...they know that people will be more attracted to a beta product than an alpha. Not all consumers care about the labels, but enough do that it compels marketers. 
 
To be fair...if the point is "it's 4 months into beta, relax, it's not close to being finished" -- that point goes double for DU actually being in alpha. It'll take patience to see how the game evolves.
 
Just remember that the game has been in dev for six years already. Not like these are early days and they have barely had a chance to dig in. Don't expect the pace of dev to rapidly accelerate as it nears release, and expect that "release" actually will mean "beta". 

After this mornings huge screwup and bot prices were reduced 100x, I've seen screenshots of 10s of billions in schematics, and have heard of people who bought items at the bugged prices and resold to players who made hundreds of millions in a few minutes. When is this getting rolled back?
 
At this point it is probably too late to just reverse the market transactions. People are trying to hide the money in ore or moving it around, so the only way to catch it all is to rollback. If you just remove the schematics and return the money, you screw over all the people who had their buy orders filled and the people who sold them bugged items get to keep all that money. The longer it takes to rollback, the more annoyed people will be, so probably best done sooner rather than later.
 
I won't speak for everyone, but if people are allowed to keep these items, or the money they got from selling them, then I'm personally moving on to different games. There is no reason to play if someone who logs in for 5 minutes at the right time makes more progress than others who have been playing for months.

There is a clear instruction on how to unsub in the email XSolla sends out on completion of the subscription. There is now a massive unsub button on the account page as well,  mainly because of the comments from people who were not reading the email they got from XSolla and blasting NQ for something they have no direct control over.

While yes, NQ's website design is very unstable and seems to have a lot of issues but suggesting that they removed that button on purpose for a while is frankly  speaking preposterous. NQ is and does a lot of things but this is not one of them IMO.

Eh.. you are not paying a sub but can still play.. So you play for free while it lasts and this is shady how?
 

Obfuscating the ability to cancel a sub isn't a best practice anymore and is increasingly uncommon. 
 
Most companies realize that hiding cancellation doesn't earn you more revenue -- it's counter-productive. If Netflix made me call in or hunt for a cancel link, the chance of my re-subscribing on a whim vanishes. It doesn't lower my desire to cancel, though. 
 
At the point where the customer wants to cancel, the only concern should be how to get them to re-sub later...if you make cancellation difficult when they've already decided to stop paying, you've shot yourself in the foot.
 
Customers that cancel are also customers that once had interest enough to pay...it's good business practice to treat them as potential future customers rather than obfuscate cancellation for the sake of eeking out another month's sub due to annoyance. 
 
Visa even has new rules governing subscriptions which would have already gone into effect already were it not for Covid delays. Among other things, it mandates an "easy" way to cancel subs and requires a reminder email 7 days before any trial subscription converts to a paid one. 
 
I think younger people especially might not be familiar with the old school "hunt for the cancel link" style of subs...that doesn't make NQ "thieves", though. I don't think it is malice, just that they have other things to do and haven't thought about this UX (they definitely should, though). 
 
If you really have trouble cancelling, email or call Xsolla customer service and threaten to contest or chargeback future charges if they do not cancel billing immediately. 

Probably one of the most positive things you have said on here lol.  I think it is a tone that suits you, you are clearly a bright bloke, with a lot of knowledge.  I have no issue with people criticizing the game, i have done it myself for many years. I just try to find the solutions, rather than hammering on about the problems / causes.

Personally i do see the light at the end of the tunnel (although it could be a train)............

This is probably true. I think I'm especially biased against JC.
 
It's just something about a PHD jumping straight into an MMO as their first ever game project and having a (perceived) lack of humility about the whole thing. I've said before that I can imagine exactly what sort of person JC is based on his titles ("CEO/Founder/Creative Director/phD"). Right or wrong, my opinion is that his leadership is a big driver of the game's issues -- and see it as an unsolvable problem because it's his company and he won't step aside to let more seasoned vets lead.
 
I also think NQ has run into some bad luck with their rollout -- there's no rulebook for how to launch a product during an unprecedented global lockdown where people are generally more pissed-off about everything. Sure people are consuming more digital media...but they're also losing their jobs or not finding work, which hurts subscription-based luxuries like DU. 
I 100% agree with this...there's a lot of people that are so hooked on the premise of DU and its very real potential. I'm sure some of the negativity comes from this fact, too -- after following the project for so long and being fairly hyped for beta, it is disappointing to see the actual product. 
 
Honestly I should try to be more positive -- I don't just come around to talk shit and I hope everyone realizes that it's 100,000x easier to criticize something than to actually do it. 

This is 100% part of the roadmap, REALLY looking forward to its additional, game changer for me, alongside the mission system.

To be honest, those point are far more valid than your original set of stats.  That wouldnt surprise me given where the game is though, the big push for the game was BETA launch, only they know where they are as far as their targets.  For all we know they are happy with the number of players for where the state of the game is.  They have one big luxury, all my anecdotal evidence says to me that even when people leave the game, a big chunk of them continue to monitor the game.  So if NQ can get it right, and I actually think there are some pretty simple ways they can fix a lot of the issues, then the game can move forward.  I do find a lot of your content overly negative though.  Like you are trying to beat the horse to death, rather than take it to water.  Might just be I am a more positive soul I suppose.

A lot of people talk about how DU is "dead" or "dying".
 
Unfortunately, I think that the few objective numbers we have tend to back up that claim.
 
I don't think there's been a singular "mass exodus" but a slow and steady churn:   
8 months ago (official trailer)
1.6 Million Views 7 months ago (pvp trailer)
742k views 4 months ago (beta trailer)
659k views 2 months ago (official building trailer)
167k views 3 weeks ago (DU: a look ahead)
10k views 1 week ago (DU Lost in transit event)
<5k views Reddit
~50 people online on average, 8k total members, low engagement  Twitter
15k followers, low tweet engagement all around  
  I get that many people don't use social networking at all...but a growing game has a growing social presence...certainly not a shrinking one.  
 
Also, NQ no longer has any job postings -- maybe they filled them all (in which case dev should be going faster lol) or maybe they realize their runway isn't going to last for as long as they first expected. 

A lot of people talk about how DU is "dead" or "dying".
 
Unfortunately, I think that the few objective numbers we have tend to back up that claim.
 
I don't think there's been a singular "mass exodus" but a slow and steady churn:   
8 months ago (official trailer)
1.6 Million Views 7 months ago (pvp trailer)
742k views 4 months ago (beta trailer)
659k views 2 months ago (official building trailer)
167k views 3 weeks ago (DU: a look ahead)
10k views 1 week ago (DU Lost in transit event)
<5k views Reddit
~50 people online on average, 8k total members, low engagement  Twitter
15k followers, low tweet engagement all around  
  I get that many people don't use social networking at all...but a growing game has a growing social presence...certainly not a shrinking one.  
 
Also, NQ no longer has any job postings -- maybe they filled them all (in which case dev should be going faster lol) or maybe they realize their runway isn't going to last for as long as they first expected. 

A lot of people talk about how DU is "dead" or "dying".
 
Unfortunately, I think that the few objective numbers we have tend to back up that claim.
 
I don't think there's been a singular "mass exodus" but a slow and steady churn:   
8 months ago (official trailer)
1.6 Million Views 7 months ago (pvp trailer)
742k views 4 months ago (beta trailer)
659k views 2 months ago (official building trailer)
167k views 3 weeks ago (DU: a look ahead)
10k views 1 week ago (DU Lost in transit event)
<5k views Reddit
~50 people online on average, 8k total members, low engagement  Twitter
15k followers, low tweet engagement all around  
  I get that many people don't use social networking at all...but a growing game has a growing social presence...certainly not a shrinking one.  
 
Also, NQ no longer has any job postings -- maybe they filled them all (in which case dev should be going faster lol) or maybe they realize their runway isn't going to last for as long as they first expected. 

Only NQ can answer if the daily login alone is enough "fresh currency" to avoid deflation...keeping in mind that the player base is churning (hard), not growing -- and each player that quits takes how many days of login cash with them into oblivion...? 
 
It is really absurdly baffling that NQ hasn't thought about the economy...like at all. 
 
I've never even heard of an MMO that lacks a way to print currency, but here we are. 
 
Considering how easy this test would be, I agree that they should rip out ore bots and see how it impacts the economy. If it really isn't working after a week or two, just put them back...
 
Frankly, I've given up trying to figure out what NQ's devs actually do all day.
 
It's been almost 5 months and there's been no major updates...yet somehow the game will be release ready by end of year...when they don't even know the basics of how freakin' currency works?!
 
But sure, keep spending time on those wonderful events -- gotta earn those 4,000 youtube views somewhere, right? 

Only NQ can answer if the daily login alone is enough "fresh currency" to avoid deflation...keeping in mind that the player base is churning (hard), not growing -- and each player that quits takes how many days of login cash with them into oblivion...? 
 
It is really absurdly baffling that NQ hasn't thought about the economy...like at all. 
 
I've never even heard of an MMO that lacks a way to print currency, but here we are. 
 
Considering how easy this test would be, I agree that they should rip out ore bots and see how it impacts the economy. If it really isn't working after a week or two, just put them back...
 
Frankly, I've given up trying to figure out what NQ's devs actually do all day.
 
It's been almost 5 months and there's been no major updates...yet somehow the game will be release ready by end of year...when they don't even know the basics of how freakin' currency works?!
 
But sure, keep spending time on those wonderful events -- gotta earn those 4,000 youtube views somewhere, right? 

You know you have nothing to say of substance when you resort to arbitrary judgement values like "carebear". 
 
If you care so much about PvP, how about playing a PvP game?! DU isn't a PvP game. It's a building game with PvP slapped on top as a crude afterthought, with core pillars of the PvP gameplay unknown or undecided by NQ...and with no known ETA on changes. 
 
Welcome to DU's Alpha. Be patient or just move on and play a game with actual PvP as a core feature. DU isn't that game.
 
Frankly I don't understand how they will ever create anything close to "civilization" if they attract that crowd of people that loves to throw around "carebear" like it's the ultimate pejorative. Bears are great. Just visit pride sometime.
 
Some people think combat is insanely boring (especially DU's version), others think coding in LUA all day is boring, others think mining and hauling is boring. If you can't get over the fact that different people like different things, why bother playing a multiplayer game at all...? 
 
Anyway....I'm over people whining because PvP doesn't yet work. Nothing really works yet. Everyone is in the same boat.
 
It isn't because "carebears" want to avoid danger -- it's because NQ hasn't come close to finishing their game. 
 
Get over it, be patient, or move on. 

You know you have nothing to say of substance when you resort to arbitrary judgement values like "carebear". 
 
If you care so much about PvP, how about playing a PvP game?! DU isn't a PvP game. It's a building game with PvP slapped on top as a crude afterthought, with core pillars of the PvP gameplay unknown or undecided by NQ...and with no known ETA on changes. 
 
Welcome to DU's Alpha. Be patient or just move on and play a game with actual PvP as a core feature. DU isn't that game.
 
Frankly I don't understand how they will ever create anything close to "civilization" if they attract that crowd of people that loves to throw around "carebear" like it's the ultimate pejorative. Bears are great. Just visit pride sometime.
 
Some people think combat is insanely boring (especially DU's version), others think coding in LUA all day is boring, others think mining and hauling is boring. If you can't get over the fact that different people like different things, why bother playing a multiplayer game at all...? 
 
Anyway....I'm over people whining because PvP doesn't yet work. Nothing really works yet. Everyone is in the same boat.
 
It isn't because "carebears" want to avoid danger -- it's because NQ hasn't come close to finishing their game. 
 
Get over it, be patient, or move on.