michaelk

Care bears didn't ruin anything. 
 
It's NQ's game and they are responsible for development. 
 
The burning urge to blame a group of players for things that they have zero power over is baffling. 
 
The constant whining from people that complain about "care bears" is hypocritical to the point of absurdity. There's no greater group of whiners than these antisocial people that insist that only some people are "real" gamers. 
 
Your entire post is moaning about a group of gamers you hate that has zero control over development that you decided to blame for NQ's mistakes long ago.
 
If you think NQ is being influenced by a shadowy cabal of "care bears"...well, the idea that NQ listens to any player group at all is a bit amusing.
 
Enjoy your mindless ganking, but no one really cares about your boring whining and blaming random players that have zero control over the game's development.  
 
 

Efficiency and Pooling is something my group is good at... and we are fine with a long deep grind...
This game was already looking slow paced... which I was fine with... -- However these these changes... now glacial pace...

Even at 100k a day... I can do Iron for 70k... spend an hour mining and flying to market to make a lousy 30k....  even if Im dedicated... its another three hours to get a second schematic.... great I can do Iron and Aluminum....

Tomorrow I can then make Iron/Aluminimum Alloy.....   Perhaps by the end of the week I can make screws ???  

Im no rookie kid gamer... I happen to be new to this game sure...  And as a seasoned vet gamer... who happens to be new... Im providing immediate feedback....  After the patch I can now do a fraction of what I could do yesterday... thats a pretty hard hit to take... and the pace that I will now be limited to... considering I had an idea it would be a week or two until I could fly something anyway...  Crazy slow for new players....  99% will be bored long before they see content worth sticking around for...


 
 

I know this is JohnnyTazer haha. It's like...who else? 
 
Sorry Johnny, but you do have a reputation for being quick with the F-word and "opinionated" about the game. ?

That's the biggest issue in DU.
 
Here's a joke for you - know why the game is called Dual Universe? Cause there are two universes, one that NQ thinks the game is and then one that the game actually is.
 
 
You can talk all day about planned features, planned player roles, and things that players could do in the game - but if you actually truly take an honest look at what the players really do in the game  - it's a distinctly different game.
 
If you talk about the mythical vision of building a society in space and all that - you get lost in the hopes and dreams. Do not make this mistake. Look at the game as it is today and how it works today, with the player options available today, and tell me that you still think that the patch tomorrow is the right patch at the right time.

That may be the problem.  I'm here for entertainment.  I live in an actual society.  So factories have been crippled.  Well, ok it was interesting to expand my factory and be able to create new equipment to expand my capabilities in the game but, babysitting a factory was getting a bit stale and probably wouldn't have held my interest for too much longer.  So now that has been hobbled and I'm supposed do what instead of managing my factory?  Mine?  No thanks.  Make screws and schlep them 30 km to the nearest lag fest that pass for markets?  Again, no thanks.  Maybe, take what little wealth I've accumulated and piss it away on PvP.  That could be fun but, the current combat mechanic is pretty much at the level of being a graphical text adventure.  There is so so much that needs to be added content wise before worrying about forcing specialization. 

If this was an Alpha patch and NQ would wipe servers to get  good data on how the changes impact the game there would not be any issue. The ideas behind most of the changes are good and some of them are fine as they are.
 
The problem is that NQ is introducing massive change with far reaching impact into an unstable and underperforming live game or which they require payment from players to gain access.
 
It feels like NQ really has not yet realized that they placed themselves in a position where the game can't be manipulated like this anymore but pretending it's beta and expecting payment for access. The focus is so narrow and centered around what JC thinks the game needs to be that there is no awareness of the actual state of the game and what makes it go..
 
 
It's like when the CCP CEO (while mining himself!) found out that players had started using a developer tool (eject cargo) to jettison containers as a means to eject ore when mining and the hold was full to then get haulers to come in and scoop up the ore, thus creating logistic operations (you know, this thing called emergent gameplay). CCP realized the innovative and creative use of this and build on that, making it a full feature in game. NQ would have removed it as it was "never intended this way and made mining too easy".
 
For all it's flaws, these are the (small) things why EVE is still around and going strong two decades later and we will have to see if DU makes it to release. 
 

Sometimes its not so nice to finally be right. I am telling this for a long time already, but most people didnt care or ranted. Even the texts on the website have been altered to fit the current game, building your dream stuff, and think big as there are no limits to imagination...all gone. And some nice restrictions came inplace.  Still waiting on that 2 and 4 km core we were getting. There is only one thing to do online, mining. DU started out very promising but at the present rate of adding restrictions even faster then new blocks or solving bugs it is starting to look like keen where every new patch is a new set of bugs, dc and once in a quarter a dlc with nice colors.
 
What happened to freedom to build whatever you can think of, and do not start with "thats possible just need a large org" Then tell me what large, 1000 plater org builds 100 dreams simultanious, or is it some players who rule the org and the rest, well they can always mine

Such changes do make sense and I think everyone can see that. It does add a lot of gameplay (potentially) at some point. But just not YET. It only decreases gameplay options for now because DU is just not there yet. Smaller orgs and solo players who don't want to bother too much with others are severly hampered because they simply can't build the industry neccessary for their building endeavours.
That means they're bound to use the markets (which is good I guess, tho it's very forced) - which will be empty for some time until ppl actually start to sell stuff. And this also means that they need LOTS of quanta to even buy those elements which they can't produce which means they HAVE TO mine (only source of income) to get quanta.
But this also leads to even more non regenerating ore being deleted from the game. On top of that, many ppl don't rly enjoy mining. To most of them it's simply a thing that has to be done to do other stuff.
 
And before anyone screams "buuuuuut lethys, muh makes mooonies by trading/transport/insert random other stuff": that may be true but that's not what the majority of players will do. The majority will go the mining way - same as in eve. I told all my org mates that it's easy to daytrade in eve and that I can plex all 4 accs with ease that way. Did they try? Nope. They wouldn't bother. Cause Mining is "easier". When I took over a smaller trading hub (dodixie) I found that there were about 30 - 50 ppl trading there bigtime - the rest were just very small fish. Same will happen in DU. Some will trade/haul/do other stuff to generate their income and they will always tell others that they dont have to mine to get money cause for them everything is fine. While the rest of the playerbase has to mine (in their opinion) to get money. And tbh, that's why EVEs economy works. BECAUSE of ppl who mine (and all the bots ofc) - someone has to inject all that money into the markets. 
 
Such massive changes do make sense in an alpha and VERY early on when mechanics are implemented and when ppl have other stuff to do or when ppl CAN actually do something else (like specialize in research) - DU lacks nearly all of those mechanics to make up for it tho. And that's why ppl are complaining too

This right here is problem number one. 
 
Telling your customers that they should do what you want. 
 
That is disgusting and disrespectful customer service. 
 
It is also 100% incompatible with the 'emergent' gameplay he claims he wants to see. 
 
Problem number two is they are increasing barriers to entry into a full game experience before they are building enablers that allow people to overcome the barriers. 
 
They need to rebrand this game as DON'T. 

Indeed. At this rate, your statement will be the reality....

Thing is though, it's always about possibilities. Nothing of that actually reality in DU. And that's the way it is and was for the last 6 years - endless possibilities IF X was implemented and IF Y was done. But none of that exists atm nor will for a very long time. Same with schematics and research gameplay. Endless possibilities. None of it in game 

Survivorship bias.
 
I see the same thing on the official discord and reddit - the numbers are way down, a lot of the names I'm used to seeing are just gone. The two orgs I played with are dead, 60 players in one and 20 in another - and the discords are silent.
 
But hey the people who are still playing are OK with it...
 
Once again, my biggest issue with the changes is that they are putting up barriers and adding extreme levels of grind without adding any additional content.
 
JC keeps saying that industry isn't for everyone without grasping that the only reason everyone is doing industry is that industry is all there is to do. 
 
Raising the barrier to entry into industry will indeed make fewer people do industry - but there is nothing else to do. So what are they going to do? Same thing I'm doing - playing a different game.

The problem is not just ignoring the player base but always trying to fix issues from the wrong end. This is just another example. NQ realized that players don't use the markets as much as expected (this is the good part). But instead of fixing the markets they are nerfing the industry (and maybe even mining if I read the previous posts correctly). That's an awful idea. Fixing the industry because the industry is broken would be OK. But it is actually is one of the very few working gameplay loops. Yes, there is a small chance that both, the industry and the markets will be saved. But it is more likely to lose both and in the result a lot of players. Good luck with civilisation-building without a population.

We didn't start out with the idea of building a megafactory in DU.
 
We wanted to PvP - but it was awful - so we decided to play the game that we got even if it wasn't what we really wanted. 
 
We build up our industry. With all the hell that is - with the awful hundreds of transfer units, system errors, horrific lag when you whip out the link tool and it took weeks.....as in about 8 weeks total.
 
Of those 8 weeks I spent basically all of them underground constantly mining to keep the factory producing the factory....
 
When wrecks got added - I figured I'll log back in and do something besides mining - flew around - found nothing all night. Logged out. Haven't logged in since.

Odd. 
 
It is very concerning that these updates seem to be mostly geared toward existing players. Why? Existing players aren't the issue -- they are so diehard they'll keep playing even if the world was literally aflame lol. 
 
Nerfing industry to make it harder for new players is incredibly counter-productive. 
 
Frankly, NQ's primary concern right now should be improving the new player experience, because that's literally the only way the game will grow.
 
If they engineer the game's design around today's niche player base, how will this reduce the churn rate? The beta launch showed how much work there is to be done to fix the new player experience (count those ghost speeders -- there's massive churn) -- with release being <1 year away, the focus should be revamping tutorials, reworking UI to make it more clear/clean for new players, and cleaning up the new player experience overall. 
 
Who freakin' cares if the diehard players have all the stuffs...? Fix that later or wipe pre-release. The harder it is for new people to "get established", the more the churn. There's a lot more money to be made attracting new players vs. trying to prevent existing ones from churning.
 
They'll come back after updates if they buy into the core premise/promise -- but they won't come back if they churn after a day of play because they don't believe the game will ever live up to the trailers. 
 
IMO, this should be a much more urgent thing -- they don't have much time before release based on their dev velocity. 
 
They need to sit down with a notepad and watch completely new players try the game and set their dev priorities accordingly. That means having the humility and wisdom to take a step back and look at where the game is actually weak instead of trying to push forward with features that won't make the game easier to swallow for new gamers that NQ needs to survive. 

Unfortunately, I don't agree with this sentiment.
 
These emergent gameplay concepts don't happen spontaneously. No, these niches will not appear "naturally" simply because some players "don't want to do stuff". No, it isn't just "up to us" to create roles and build emergent gameplay concepts.
 
It isn't up to us to "mesh" with what NQ is creating, it's up to NQ to create something that works with these gameplay loops and has a structure that encourages specialization. Emergent gameplay doesn't just happen out of a void. That's not what "emergent gameplay" really means. 
 
It actually is up to NQ to cultivate these concepts.  
 
The idea that specialization will happen naturally isn't grounded in any evidence. The fact that the game as it exists now doesn't "mesh" with the NQ's vision is on them...players won't conform to this vision just because, it requires careful rules to create this virtual galaxy which NQ doesn't seem to understand...which is the OPs point. 

Do you have people you hate so much that you'd refer them in?
 
Such cruelty....

Analytics have been industry standard in games for years now.
 
Even single player games are heavily invested in analytics -- beating a boss or clearing a level often sends an event; devs needs to know what percent of their players are making it past the first levels so they can make balance decisions based on objective data, not a select few twitch streamers or hardcore fanatics. 
 
Analytics cut through the rampant speculative "I know so many people..." sort of statements by surfacing actual data. The hundred or so people you know aren't at all statistically relevant compared the whole of the beta test population...
 
NQ should already have a keen sense of how and when players are dropping off -- but they've made numerous mistakes that are typical for first-time devs with no experience in the field...so I honestly don't expect them to have reliable analytics despite the relative ease of implementation (if they are going to use Xsolla for subs, they could use many of the robust analytics providers out there). 
 
Solid analytics are even more important in a subscription model -- especially when you are a new developer with very (very) limited game design experience -- seeing exactly how design changes impact the economy and player base is absolutely vital. 
 
 Of course, if NQ does have data like this...they'd never share it unless it makes them look good. As the OP points out, it seems like they lack even a basic analytics framework and have had to rely on streamers, reddit fanatics, and JC's sacred "intuition" to stay informed. 

Many trials require a CC to activate -- so that they can sneakily auto-bill as soon as the free time has expired. 
 
People might have unlimited different emails (thanks gmail aliases), but few have unlimited credit cards or billing addresses. It wouldn't be hard to lock this down to prevent players from abusing a trial.
 
Also, trial players wouldn't need the same level of persistence.
 
If you fail to activate billing by the time your trial is up, why persist those assets? Remove them from the game after their trial expires. No abuse, no clutter. If they want to pick up where they left off, activate billing within a certain time or start over.
 
They already sorely need garbage collection in general. Trials might reduce this clutter by letting people play DU and decide they hate it before littering the world with speeders. 
 
If the "civilization" is already so toxic and the game so ripe for abuse that new players "must" pay money to make the design work....well, then it really isn't going to be an "MMO", it'll be a niche online game full of toxicity and NQ will have a hell of a time attracting new players. Or is that already where we are? I can't tell sometimes :D 

I would say the opposite, let's hide the game under a rock until it fixed so it has a chance once it is worked on. People will not play what it is now. Getting people "back" is much harder than getting them "in".

Great. If you're so keen to help NQ, you should have no issue paying for the OP's month of sub.
 
Otherwise, I don't think it is worth the $7/month. The value of $7 varies a lot based on each person's life situation and geography.
 
It isn't our job to keep NQ's lights on or to invest in their game so they can make it better. That's why they did a kickstarter and obtained millions of dollars of investor money.
 
We're paying for a product, not running a charity. 
 
I also don't see any time credited to my account. The fact that the player base has to complain just to get what NQ promised because of their major mistakes is just business as usual -- NQ has earned a rep for bad communication and not caring much about their own community...forgetting to credit people like they said they would only reinforces this reputation. 
 
I hope this time they at least offer an apology...somehow I doubt they will. 

I agree, I do statistical data analysis and data segmentation as part of my job.  I would be very surprised if NQ didnt have these stats, the fact they sent out the questionnaire suggest they should. 

I wouldnt be surprised if my 'sample' audience isnt far from the truth though.

If DU actually lived up to the hype, it would be my dream game, the sort of game that I'd spend the rest of my life playing (or so).
 
The reality has not lived up to the expectations. Too many systems dumbed down and simplified; and mining is utter tedium. I basically just wanted a Space Engineers MMO with Factorio / Eve / and stuff elements.
 
And if you ask me why I'm sticking around the forums despite rage-quitting over a month ago and not really playing since? It's because I'm desperately hoping for a compelling reason to dive back in.

Back to the original topic, why people are quitting DU. 
 
People like this, frankly. The discussion about PvP becomes instantly aggressive if not hostile. 
 
It isn't about articulating an opinion, it's about insisting over and over and over that the only opinion that matters is their own and that anyone that doesn't understand how important PvP is just needs to "deal with it". I've seen a lot of name calling and ranting without articulating anything of substance beyond a demand for PvP and an insistence that the game will die if their whims aren't met. 
 
I don't really see the point in trying to create a society with people in this demographic. I know there are plenty of PvP players that aren't like this...but there's too many that are. 
 
The PvP mentality seems to extend to every interaction they make with players in any context, and that just isn't fun or interesting for me. 
 

Back to the original topic, why people are quitting DU. 
 
People like this, frankly. The discussion about PvP becomes instantly aggressive if not hostile. 
 
It isn't about articulating an opinion, it's about insisting over and over and over that the only opinion that matters is their own and that anyone that doesn't understand how important PvP is just needs to "deal with it". I've seen a lot of name calling and ranting without articulating anything of substance beyond a demand for PvP and an insistence that the game will die if their whims aren't met. 
 
I don't really see the point in trying to create a society with people in this demographic. I know there are plenty of PvP players that aren't like this...but there's too many that are. 
 
The PvP mentality seems to extend to every interaction they make with players in any context, and that just isn't fun or interesting for me.