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Novean-61657

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Everything posted by Novean-61657

  1. Sorry, but with all the changes on PTS for Demeter, that will NEVER happen. We saw a ton of builders leave after 0.23, DU never recovered from that. Even the last couple of months many long time builders have gone on a break from DU. When their subscription expires and they try to return, all their bases will be gone. Folks in the know already will not resubscribe (EVER) and folks that didn't know will charge back their subscription fee via their credit card company (besides the subscription fees there are added costs for that for NQ). NQ might eventually wind up with a monthly active player-base of maybe a few hundred-thousand, just like EVE. Just like EVE, DU is a niche MMO. But if that would ever happen, they'll need to be around for a decade and a half, just like EVE. Development of DU goes slow, has many ups and downs, many winding paths, and many backtracking. The strength of EVE was always that you could come back, your stuff would always be there, except of course if you build in PVP space, but all your stuff in npc stations would always be there. Your ships would always fly, the meta might change, you might not have the most optimal fits, but it would work. With the Demeter changes we would only have the stuff left on your starter tile (if they don't change that as well) and any ships there might very well no longer fly and any scripts on it might be broken, even if it flies, it might crater at any moment... But wait you say, what about Space Core Units? Currently they might be fine (but also broken on PTS), but if everyone moves to space, NQ is going to do the same thing to Space Cores as they are doing now to Static Cores...
  2. Dear NQ, Please stop breaking your players! I'm not talking about physically breaking your players or even breaking the Dual Universe game. I'm talking about breaking the spirits of your customers (aka. players), killing their motivation to play the game, and then shredding any future potential chance to return to the game at a later time (without loosing most of their work/assets). This is mostly done by piling on change upon change, often just eradicating an aspect of game-play that people enjoyed or even started playing the game for. Even one major change to the game can decimate the player-base (0.23 for example) and that was only ONE such a major change. The currently proposed changes to Demeter are multiple major changes. Doing away with mining outside asteroids (especially when asteroid mining is in such an abysmal state), doing away with permanent ownership of tiles outside of ground conquest, introducing taxes on land ownership, redesigning ore distribution in a major way. Now let's talk about changes on PTS that aren't going to be in the Demeter patch: brakes. I can understand that sometime in the future NQ wants to overhaul how certain elements work, in this case the brakes. This of course needs to be tested before implementation. I absolutely understand! But who's bright idea was it to do it at the same time when NQ asked all players to come test Demeter when it goes in test on PTS? Does this person lack any insight and experience with regards to customer interaction, response, and retention? I have no experience in game-development, but 20 years of IT experience in customer support, (migration) projects, and changes. Rule #1 Do not pile a bunch of changes on customers without an absolute (technical) need. And never ever mix testing changes. If you disregard that and push it through anyway, chance are that your internal customers will rebel and the business will force you to roll back, say bye-bye to any promotion oppertunities. If you're dealing with external customers, you'll still have to roll back and they'll go shopping for a different IT provider (possibly even having grounds to break the contract in place). Next thing: Communication consistency or lack thereof. If people are seeing unexpected changes on PTS and then notice that Space Cores can't run factories anymore, people will panic! When we're asked to give our feedback on the forum due to NQ reading that and Discord being a pain due to how it's structured (I agree), I expect NQ to also communicate via that same forum with us. You have pins on those sub boards, is a top posted pin with a list of known bugs on PTS to much to ask from NQ? Now there are luckily some posters that have other sources (Discord?) that are sharing that info. That is not our job, that's NQ's job. Why is that important? Because players who initially read that have (in most cases) a negative emotion associated with your product, that just doesn't disappear when someone yells "It's a bug!" later in the thread. This doesn't solve bugs, people's exposure to them or their initial bad reactions to them. But at least they aren't stuck with the feeling that they are posting their findings/opinions on a forum that NQ wants you to use, but doesn't use it themselves in any kind of proactive method. Now, maybe there is such a post somewhere on the forum by an NQ employee, but I couldn't find it! I do get alerts of achievements (first post, one year, etc.), but I prefer alerts on bugs (on PTS)... When I first watched the "Inside Novaquark: Demeter Edition", I had this bad feeling, and I kept telling myself "Just wait and see the actual implementation...". I can see why mining on planets needs to go (from a cost perspective). I could life with that if another solution is found (I'll leave it for another thread my opinion if the in place solution is adequate, Spoiler: It isn't). But ontop of that major core game mechanic change, a couple of other core game-mechanic altering stuff is hitched, while imho those aren't necessary for the change.to happen, this makes the mining change feel far, far worse. But the participants of the video gave some hints for hope or at least just being so vague that I could file certain stuff under my misunderstanding the situation. No actual announcement of when the Demeter patch would go live on PTS was a concern, that concern became even greate when with very little notification Demeter went live on PTS, for less then three days... WTF! After all the pushing by NQ personnel to check the PTS test, how can it be live for less then three days with so little lead time? Another POSSIBLE test would be also less then three days... I wasn't able to test PTS yesterday, but I read the forums, more bad feelings. I was able to test today and the bad feelings keep getting worse, this killing the motivation to continue to play DU... But that happens! You can't please everyone. People change, they might change their minds down the road, and come back to your game... But wait! That can't happen anymore due to tile taxes and people loosing the stuff they build on it, not to mention breaking most dynamic constructs due to continues construct breaking changes. We knew that the possibility of loosing your tiles outside of the core safe zone (Alioth/Madis/Thades) would eventually happen with the introduction of ground combat/conquest. Some of us took the long view and started making large infra in the safe zone and lesser infra on the outer worlds. No ground combat/conquest in sight, imho still years of. But we're loosing the ability to own the tiles we claimed everywhere (except the starter moon, which most of us haven't touched since we started over a year ago). So if I leave for six months or a year, I have almost zero motivation to go back because I either didn't build anything outside of the starter moon or I lost everything outside of the starter moon... If that's the case, many people will loose any motivation to play right now, because why start building when you're going to loose everything anyway to rent/taxes? It's not like in RL where you can't check out for a few months/years. The only way people check out of RL is permanently... We don't work for fun to pay rent/taxes, we do it to live, we play games to 'escape' RL to a different universe, and entertainment. We do not want another job to work in DU. I currently run four characters in DU, not 'free' KS/promo accounts, but accounts I bought time for. Those accounts all run out at the end of the year, and with rumors abound these last couple of months I was wondering if I would extend my four characters for another year ($280). And currently, if those changes go live as is, that just isn't going to happen. Not even one account. I have many issues to a lesser or greater extend with the changes on PTS, but the one that breaks the camels back for me is the loss of tiles due to unpaid rent/taxes. I'm just not interested in playing DU for the next 15+ years on a continuous basis, there will be times when I loose interest (or hope in DU), but I expect to eventually return and resubscribe. We all know that a lot of inspiration was taken from EVE, a LOT of use played it or play it still. My main in EVE (same name as here) started in December 2005, over the years I've added many accounts and have taken many (long) breaks, but I always come back (you never quit EVE permanently). I was (until recently) convinced that DU was a similar game, you never quit DU permanently. But it seems I was wrong... Side-note: This year I've spent over $750 on EVE game-time and packs, because every time I come back to EVE I do not have to start from scratch... NQ, please stop breaking your players, because after the Demeter patch, they'll never come back!
  3. #1 If the 'chosen' method is Discord, why are there so many other official methods still in use? Things like the forum, News section, ingame channel, etc. #2 Don't force stuff down your customers throat when you don't have to. If people have to do things (out of game) that they don't like, that will weigh in when it's time to renew the subscription. #3 Discord in an 'ephemeral' medium, finding specific information is a bloody pain. That is great for the instant gratification crowd and things happening now, things that were announced a few hours or godforbid, a day ago are a pain to find!
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