Novean-61657

I was brainstorming a bit about expensive factories, their costs, their exposure to eventual pvp, their location, resource supply, etc. Before the the whole potential wipe announcement I was planning on building a Warp Beacon factory, and the safest place for that was on my tile on Sanctuary (no pvp ever). I never got that far due to that potential wipe announcement (I went pretty much dormant due to that). But the recent unannounced change to Warp Beacon building (plasma from the 10 alien cores), made me think that NQ might be pushing a ton of pvp related stuff. And having factories on the starter moons producing 'end content' stuff seems extremely counter productive. I suspect that NQ will eventually realize that as well and make that change at a later time, after folks have spent billions and 100s of hours on it building on a starter moon... As you can only mine T1 and pick up T2 ores, why not limit starter moon (Sanctuary/Haven) factory production to T2 elements max. That would allow people to make basic stuff, but nothing more. If starter moon space stations will also be in a pvp free zone for perpetuity, also give those space stations the same limitations. I know that I'm shooting myself in the foot by asking for this, but I prefer shooting myself in the foot now over NQ shooting me in the knee at a later date...

@blazemonger Are you sure about that 10 cores by default for players? That has changed a couple of times, it certainly wasn't the case when I last checked it... (which was before the recent patches)

Yes. Will they work? Magic eightball says 'unclear', as @Msoul said, the detection system is broken as heck. I had to move everything outside of other elements on most of my ships. But some players report, move something one voxel up and back down again, fixes it in the engineering report...

Depends on how you many people are willing to (buy and) sell DAC and at how much they'll value it... I can buy a year's subscription for $83.88, that is $6.99/month. With a single account, I can maybe make 350M quanta a month, with a ton of skills already in place and knowing how to do it... But that's like spending 80+ hours/month on just gathering resources to sell and make quanta... If I choose just the 'money maker', it's down to around 250M quanta a month, but the time it takes actively is about 20 hours per month, plus a computer running 100+ hours/week... A month of DU time is just $7 for me, so looking at what I make per hour in RL (after taxes) vs a 'job' in DU is... Making my head spin... But not everyone looks at games the same way... I can totally see myself buy DAC with RL cash at a certain point after launch and sell it ingame for quanta. But how much quanta is a DAC worth in the new post-wipe/relaunch game? Is it worth 4 million T1 ore or ~20 special missions? I could see designers eventually paying for the game via DAC, as their designs are make once and sell forever (besides the updates after patches). Maybe industrialists as well, if they scale up large enough or sell certain rare items at a decent rate... That doesn't mean that DU becomes a p2w game for me, it becomes a game where I set goals that once I achieve them and they work, I can retire them instead of grinding it till I break. I can focus on projects instead of constantly keeping up with NQ game changing/breaking patches... The the other big question will be, what will a DAC cost, will there be a difference in price between 1 or 10?

Think a bit outside of the box, you can totally have a garrison, just not how you think... The no shield issue is part of a previous conversation where someone pointed out that a big asteroid can't block enemy fire, nothing really can at the moment. I think that is bad on many different levels. But that isn't of particular issue here...

This is classically called 'overextending'... CVA currently has 4, Legion currently has 6, they had 8+... I'm also thinking of a lot of options not to have to fly 300SU or warp the entire fleet... It's called a garrison... If you don't have enough people to defend each alien core, you shouldn't be expected to hold onto all of them...

I vote to close this thread! Who is with me?

You were the one that they might be were 'lying', that is not an insignificant word to use...

DAC is not 'stable' in DU, it completely depends on how much quanta is available and how easy it is to earn. Just look at Plex, over the years it has inflated drastically!

Not really... It happens often within companies that people/departments are still 'discussing' issues, while the people making the decisions have already made up their minds. The marketing/communication department can't (yet) read minds, so what they are communicating is the 'truth' as they know it... I've seen a LOT of internal 'discussions' just being done for the form of it, to give employees a feeling of inclusion on the decision. But the reality is, that 95% of the employees are not able or capable of making business decisions, they can provide information to the people making the decisions, but that's it. I suspect that NQ is in a tight spot financially, so business decisions will be driven by that I expect... We have no insight in to hard numbers, so no clue if keeping the 'old guard' (that is still here) is even part of the financial equation. Imagine alienating the 'old guard', that means they do not use their 'free' DAC... $$$

When do you expect NQ to release?

wiiiiip You used to many 'i's and are missing an 'e'... 😉

What I'll complain about is that stuff is locked behind resources you can get from 10 places in the whole of DU, which are controlled by two or three huge pvp groups. While that might be an interesting change in itself, it's a huge change that (looking at the items) should have been announced many months in advance! I spend months gathering the quanta for buying all the Schematics for a Warp Beacon, the pre-announcement of wipe happened just before I started building, so I didn't spend the quanta on it yet. But I can see people being very pissed off, especially when they hope for a no-wipe scenario. I think that all the warp beacons will be wiped, just as all the Schematics/factories people already have, so in this case the discussion is mood in itself. But I do think that the core problem stays. #1 NQ making huge sweeping changes without proper warning/announcement, a change like this could easily destroy a single players entire wealth in one go, which he or she has 'worked' a year and a half on. This isn't even the first or even second time NQ has done this... #2 Locking an entire production line/item behind a 10 location resource that is being controlled by 1 group. You can expect that Legion will control all 10 after server wipe/relaunch, with such a major resource they won't allow any competition. The only way that would change is creating another pvp group, that doesn't have those resources from the start. Ok cool, but that's going to end up being another Legion, just faction B/C/D/etc. If those resources were used to create stuff to put on those alien cores, I have no issue with it. But Warp Beacons are used outside of pvp! I have very little interest in actively pursuing pvp, I'm totally fine with the risk of pvp, as I did whenever I slowboated stuff around DU outside of the safezones. If I can't get a resource without starting a war to get it... I'm just not interested in it. If that means no warp beacons anymore (because the groups in control won't sell THAT resource), I'll have to re-evaluate the DU 'endgame' for myself, as I expect many have already been doing. If I can't build those things anymore, why am I exactly playing DU? I have currently ZERO interest in joining the DU equivalent of a Null Sec Alliance, haven't done that in EVE in the 17.5 years I've been playing that and I've never felt that I can't do something because I'm not part of a big Alliance. I can do a LOT of things a lot less efficient then such a big group, as in the resources are a lot more difficult to get and the yields a lot less then doing then on a heavily contested prime spot. @PotatoMart I agree upto a point, in this case a Warp Beacon should not be restricted to a few massive groups. Maybe a stargate would, maybe a player run market would, but a Warp Beacon? No! If you want players that play in small groups of even by themselves to leave and play a single player game. You would remove most of the playerbase, and with it any viable way for DU to exist or NQ to exist. There just aren't enough DU players to make that happen, and NQ like money, atleast their owners do... @spainchaud Do you and your corp think they get to keep their Warp Beacons and their Schematics after the wipe/relaunch?

I agree, Asteroid mining is probably more fun then automining. But this is only in the current scenario, as ore is cheap and elements are cheap. Now imagine a wipe/launch, how are you going to build that ship? Picking up ore at Sanctuary? Not enough, as you'll have to sell ore for quanta to acquire the Schematics to build an DSAT, if Schematics are no longer part of the game, you still need to build the factory setup and build that DSAT. Do you have the right materials for that? Picking up ore is boring! I think you can do both, automine AND asteroid mine, especially when you get started. When you're rolling in the ore, you can do what's fun... But having both is giving us options imho...

No. By the time they are done, I've lost all interest in playing their game. The longer they keep us in a holding pattern, the greater the chances that people just won't be here when they finally wipe/launch... This continued Limbo is loosing more people then any wipe or no-wipe scenario!

EVERYTHING is negotiable... I've been saying that BPs are a huge advantage for those that spent time on them instead of other pursuits. There's a ton of other reasons, why it's unfair on many different levels to keep only that resource. The only resource that isn't impacted by misuse and only by subscription time is the Talent Points... But those give a huge advantage over new players... How important is that (to NQ)? If NQ removes my Talent Points, I'm out. Anything else... Depends on actual implementation...

People design ships, people sell those designs, generally one offs, but you could easily sell the original or back in the beginning of Beta when there was no DRM on craft and you could just make new BPs yourself from them... Time is quanta in DU, so whether you spend it mining, missioning or designing ships and bases, makes no difference. All can be traded for the other. So misuse one, you can use those gains to acquire the other... The only thing that should not have been misused in DU Beta are the Talent Points...

Blueprints can be bought with those abused resources...

Honestly, the vision of DU as presented in the KS are just not compatible with mainstream appeal.

If you think that DU is even in the same ballpark as Minecraft or Roblox, you're not looking at DU with clear eyes! DU is in a nich-nich, maybe even more limited in potential then EVE Online... DU will stay a niche within a niche, there are 8B people on the world, and that's increasing by the second! More and more are getting connected to the Internet. What NQ needs to concentrate on is player retention instead of competing with Mega IPs...

I absolutely agree! But keep in mind, that some actually might start playing due to a wipe on launch, but I expect it not to be the massive player influx that some people expect. What I find more worrisome are the exoduses that are going to happen one way or another. Previously I would have identified two major groups. Those that leave because there is no major (enough) wipe on launch and those that leave because the wipe is to big for their tastes. With us stuck in limbo for three weeks, I suspect we'll have a third and fourth group leaving: #3 People that are not playing (much) since the announcement and, have lost or are losing interest in DU altogether and moving to other games. No longer looking at DU at all, no relaunch is going to change that... #4 People that are currently in a holding pattern in DU, not doing any grinding due to the high potential of a massive wipe happening that will just leave if after weeks/months nothing changes (no wipe) at launch. Not because they initially wanted a wipe but because of all the trouble it brought and then nothing happens, while they have been sitting on their hands for potentially weeks/months. I suspect that these will be primarily paying customers that are paying for the subscription (non-beta key customers). At this point I think the not making a decision is doing more damage to the (potential) player base then an actual wipe or no-wipe...

And you think you didn't need all three before schematics? Ore = quanta and you needed quite a bit of that to actually make your factory. So you spend your time mining to build your factory, with Schematics you just did even more of that. Then we got missions, which eventually wound up being more efficient quanta makers. Then we got autominers and you could do both, missioning AND automining to make more quanta. If you had more chars/PCs you could even do automining, missioning, and asteroid mining... The problem with this imho is that to build that factory that needs massive amounts of quanta, you need good talents in flying/building ships (missions), good talents in automining, good talents in actual asteroid mining. And as these are all time gated, that's a a long, long training queue. That's not even talking about your manufacturing talents... To get even close to that, I have four characters, all four have max automining operational skills, only one has the automining placement skills maxed. Two are almost perfect flyers, on is almost a perfect ship builder (no weapon/radar skill yet), and the other is mainly the manufacturer with a ton of random skills I thought I needed at the time. I can do T1 manufacturing perfectly and T2 is close to perfect. No asteroid mining skills anymore, as I do not expect to be able to do that soonish (after wipe), I just queued the ore pickup skills to prepare for wipe. I started adding additional characters after I started getting bored with my mining/manufacturing stjick and realizing that I could not do much more except waiting for talents to train. That is similar what happened within EVE, but I hit that point far later into the game because you could do far more in the game. DU is imho still limited. And while you can go for help to others, when I play DU I'm often tired, wanting to relax, having had a busy workday interacting with others. Asking others for help/trading on their schedule is something I want to avoid if possible in those circumstances. Spending additional $$$ on accounts was just way more efficient use of my 'free' time=money, but not everyone is in that position, heck, I've not always been in that position. Some people just don't want multiple characters. Will such people just burn out on DU and play something that is more relaxing and doesn't force them into a straight jacked? I also think that gating the Schematics in DU behind massive amounts of quanta is artificially forcing players to continue the grind. Instead of creating additional game content that people can enjoy/grind...

[quote] Trying to make sense what people are talking about... [/quote] Maybe read a bit more? Understand a bit more? Not my problem though... Beta is the current production server we all play on, it tries to be on 24/7/365 (with the exception of patches). We also have PST, that's the test server and is only available during certain short test periods. Running two servers into perpetuity is insane! That's atleast twice the work for NQ! And most people wouldn't leave the 'beta' server, newbies would start on the new launch server, but see all the cool goodies on the old server as all the designers/designs are on the beta server...

Just bend over already! 😉 ==================================================== We need a decision asap otherwise people will be gone. I'm getting less and less motivated to do something in DU, except a few small projects. I already paid for a year for four characters, so can't really do anything much about that... Sure I can think up some nice questions for NQ, but honestly I do not care enough at the moment to take the time. First get me a decision, second get me a date, third talk to me again when we've had the wipe/relaunch! @NQ-Nyota Get back in there, use bat with some rusty nails and barbed wire, keep hitting them until they make a decision! Otherwise, anything you say is going to be met with a wall of negativity and apathy...

That's a horrible idea, it reads like "How to drive players away!"...