Palad1n

This is just another example of over complicating things. I am 100% convinced now that the community has far superior game development common sense and understands things better than the devs. This new schematic system is for the very tiny percentage of hard core player groups while making it extremely difficult for solo and small groups. Schematics should only be for the fully completed item, IE: Engines, Thrusters, Shields, AG, weapons, etc. All components should be a simple drop down for each machine and you could even add a small reasonable amount of currency over time as a means of "maintenance / upkeep".

This is, once again, NQ overthinking and over complicating things. The direction they continue to go will simply destroy the game before it even launches. (IF it even makes it to 1.0 which I feel is in serious peril) They continue to make this game for a very small "niche" group of players who are hard core, have all the time in the world, and doesn't care about all these extreme timers, limits, etc. The average player who wants to experience all of these things on their own or in a small group of friends, will have big issues and setbacks with these proposed changes. So what is the point to all these systems when you push the solo and small groups out of the airlock? NQ is essentially forcing players to play a very specific play style with what they are doing, which will turn off a lot of previous, current, and future players. Schematics should only be used for completed items, such as when making engines, thrusters, weapons, shields, etc. All the components and the components to make those components should be unlimited use via a simple drop down menu, select what you want that machine to make, and make them. Having longer times to make higher tiered components and eventually the final product makes sense, as that is how it was before. I swear this community understands game design far more than NQ does and it shows.

No offense, but this is pretty much the norm for NQ. They tend to severely break things pretty often and it takes a long period of time to fix. I have lost count on how many major market breaking bugs, exploits, incidents that have taken place over the past few years. On a side note, when myself and a few friends logged in a few times over the last few weeks, we have noticed there is very little activity in the actual markets themselves. IE: a lot of components or finished products such as engines, thrusters, heck pretty much anything, is either non-existent or there is very few items to be found.

Its been a while, and I didn't realize that you no longer mine up voxels? o.O Wasn't the whole mining thing a big part of the game? So your saying folks just set up auto miners on the surface and then go collect the stuff periodically? I guess their voxel system is more broken and limited than I thought, as mining was one of the more enjoyable things I liked, hunting down ores deposits, creating data pads with results, selling those to the market.

While this sounds good on paper, it will not be easy to really assess how successful this change is because you do not have new players joining the game to get a proper reality check. Also of note, because you do not have batches of new players joining, you also run into issues with many resources being exhausted on starter worlds already in large areas. There have been tons of heavy mining going on for 12+ months now and the last time I logged in, I found dozens and dozens of huge underground caverns where ore use to be. You cannot expect or demand that new players or even returning players who lost everything due to other NQ major mistakes, to hop to other planets right away in an attempt to find and get the needed ores / resources, etc. With several mega corps and certain player groups that exploited the heck out of the economy from day 1 and took advantage of ongoing broken systems and methods that were never intended in certain ways, these folks have unlimited quanta to obtain the new schematics and thus, will not yield correct data feedback. The only viable way to truly test this is to simulate a full wipe on a test server and ask players to log into that test server to help get a more realistic idea of how this might work. You might also consider giving all accounts complete "FREE" access to the game for a month in order to entice players to return, as frankly put, the large majority of players who have to pay a sub fee have stopped playing because of the current "Alpha" state the game is really in. NQ continues to make major changes to their systems and how things work and requires a lot of additional testing in the right environment, IE: setting up a new fully wiped test server for players to join and thus you will get better results. Too many other factors in the current live "Alpha" test game that would skew data otherwise.

I don't understand why NQ is charging any monthly fees for an "Alpha" experience. They are getting closer to an actual Beta, but not there just yet. I really wish developers would quit claiming they are in "Beta" when they are still working on core features and making huge sweeping changes. Beta means they are "feature complete" and are now in the final processes of ironing out the bugs, doing some balance passes, etc. If it's due to a real need to generate revenue then they should be open and honest about it. I honestly could not in good faith, promote the current state of the game beyond a free 1 month try out of the current Alpha stage the game is actually in. As things are now, mile high stringy voxel webs continue to insta-destroy ships, as you do not even see them most of the time, as they either do not render in, or render in just before or right after you hit one. There is NO structural integrity on structures, and thus, no collision damage or breakage. Get to "feature complete" status first along with fixing the major game breaking issues that still exist with many being present since day 1 of Alpha, then maybe we can talk about better supporting NQ with monthly subs.

We have to be honest and understand where the game actually is in terms of development. While NQ may try and call it "Beta" it is actually very much still in Alpha and will hopefully be in a true Beta state by years end. This game is no where even close to an actual 1.0 launch, not with so many core features missing or broken. Schematics really screwed over a lot of solo and small group corps, it was a bad play that only hurt the economy and desire for many to build factory setups so they can enjoy, build, and play the game without making the process a micro managed mini game of craziness. Building ships to this day is still very challenging for most players. The whole "voxelmancy vudu" required to make voxels play nice with each other is still a major issue. This is the only game that makes building things a real pitta and not user friendly by any means. Sure, you will get your small crowd of die hard fans that love the ability to manipulate voxels and vertices and use a crazy voxel library system to build with; I mean holy hell! I don't believe you have these kind of issue if you learned 3ds Max or Maya. Development team seems to be in a conundrum ever since JC was forced to step down for the good of the company. Unfortunately it feels like development is still stuck in the JC bubble of thought and not sure how to overcome many of the ongoing issues. I look at the over saturation of light they are looking to introduce with this Mercury .30 update coming soon. Those screenshots made me cringe because it just doesn't look right to me. They seem to be in a long debate of how to wipe and what will be wiped when the time comes. I honestly do not feel they can make the hard decisions needed to move forward, time will tell, but if they try and do something outside of a full wipe, 100% guarantee whatever "hybrid" wipe they attempt will be met with tons of issues and they will end up spending way more time all over again trying to fix things when a full wipe would be optimal and give them a fresh new start, which is what the game needs. Honestly, they should have already made that hard decision to do a full wipe at launch but not say anything until they were a few months out from actual 1.0 release. I understand they needed more money, and thus, a lot of folks had to pay a sub fee every month during this "Alpha Test" phase, because lets be honest, that is the legit phase the game is in right now. How they will handle accounts that have paid should be a no brainer, they simply add that time to their accounts once they game is in full release 1.0 status.

I think you are a little bit delusional for attempting to back up NQ when these videos they produce actually look like "in-game footage" to me. Everything in that video looked very convincing to myself and many others that it was the real deal, and it looked like target lock to me, which is fine. What is NOT fine is when the target lock system becomes nothing more than a super long range simulator with very little graphical fidelity / interaction. Beginning to think you are a paid advocate for NQ with much you defend their actions. I 100% guarantee that nobody thought that the combat we have today would be what we actually got after all the videos NQ released. That is not a special cinematic, that is actual in-game footage with possible cinematic effects to enhance it a bit, but should have been the actual combat the players actually saw and got.

I have to agree, as the current PvP is mostly about "up periscope, lock on target with long range weapons 50k+ KM out, and push the engage/fire button" - then you get to watch on your little scope things just explode over and over and over, waiting for pixels to update and show all the damage and destruction which you won't really see until you get up close to the ship, but it's mostly gutted out by then anyways. This was not the vision many of us old school alpha testers had, nor was it what was initially displayed in the original combat videos. The original combat videos made it look like ship battles were much closer range, and the damage was updated as things happened and you could see most of it with visual range. It wasn't this long range periscopic view like I am playing some submarine sim. I don't believe NQ knows what they are doing with the tech they have. I do not believe their game engine tech can handle all the features of what they wanted to do. I am not sure if they can fix the issues surrounding many problems we have now regarding PvP or even mining for that matter, as even to this day, you get 2-3 players trying to mine in the same area, you get all sorts of desync issues and suddenly you can't mine anymore for a long period of time. This all ties back into how their voxel engine works with combat, so they will most likely need to come up with a new system / new way to handle combat in a voxel heavy simulatory.

And if you do any type of real research, having a full or mostly full PvP game, thus limiting players from exploring other systems without being subjected to the standard PvP-Centric try hards, then you will have seen that those games do not last very long, and the population becomes diluted very fast. Once that happens, all you see are PvP players complaining all the time about not having enough people to gank, erm, fight/kill. There are plenty of ways to provide meaningful PvP, but to force others into it is the certain way to flatline any MMO. Regarding what the OP stated, they must be new to how these type of MMO games work, as you cannot maintain 2 different types of servers with the small team NQ has and expect them both to get quality content updates based on PvE or PvP. Their vision is straight forward in terms of a single shard server shared by all. That said, unless they make major changes to their core game play and get things locked in, they will have a very small population at full release. Time will see which way the devs go.

I just do not see anything "new" to what has been repeated over and over for the past many months, especially regarding a decision to wipe. Frankly put, wiping the server AFTER you have full release and locked in all your core gameplay mechanics should be a no-brainer, but that seems to be something your team just can't sort out. It's baffling to read such uncertainty with what you devs want this game to be, with more big changes that need to be made, reverting other big changes made (like the schematic system that just over complicated everything and added thousands of more items to have to worry about). I just do not see any confidence from the developers when they can't make real decisions and keep stating "we are still discussing" with regards to the wipe. You already listed all the pros and cons and how the pros to wiping just made sense already, so why are you still dawdling around on this subject? 1. Get your core game play mechanics done and in game 2. Finalize these core game mechanics after lots of testing, iteration, bug fixes, etc. 3. Once step 1 and 2 is done, focus on polishing up the game, and then and ONLY then, do a full wipe. There are a lot of old school backers in this community that simply haven't played, or only played for a short amount of time, and then have been waiting for NQ to finish the game and complete the 1.0 launch before starting in. NQ has already acknowledged that a full wipe would level the playing field for everyone, and it would not be fair to tell long time backers (or new players) they aren't able to start out on an even playing field when the game fully releases.

Currently, space combat is nothing more than a spread sheet sim in which you have a "periscope" type of screen to view your target that is 50-100+ Kilometers away, and then fire a barrage of missiles and other long range weaponry. Then you watch your tiny periscope screen of the ship take "hits" and at some point decide to stop firing. Next you fly up to the now heavily damaged / destroyed ship and try and loot and salvage whatever you can from it. I recently tried a little bit of dog fighting, but found it to be quite janky and a frustrating experience because again, the game engine seems very limited on handling hit locations while updating moving ships. So my question, what happened to actual space battles being close and within visual range of other ships? Dog fighting doesn't seem to be a real thing. The combat systems feel very clunky as a result, and most likely due to the limitations of the game engine itself since this is a 100% voxel game. Also noticed that ships are still being destroyed instantly when flying in lower atmo of planets in which these long voxel poles are simply not being rendered in and all you get is a message that your ship has been destroyed and then requires a GM to intervene to fix it and also bring the ship down from it's now fixed location of where it was destroyed. Will these issues be addressed by the time 1.0 release and full wipe?

Typical response again, from the very small minority of players who doesn't care about the community or large amount of players who got screwed by NQ with this decision that they should never had made in the 1st place. lost some assets? LMFAO! a large amount of players lost everything, not just "some" assets. A lot of players who supported this game from back in the early Alpha stage, like myself and many others, tend to play at various times and then come back every 3-6 months to see where development is. Regardless, you try to claim a full wipe will not fix certain things, but are unable or unwilling to expand upon that statement. Why is that? What specifically does a full wipe NOT fix or help address for the community? I would welcome your list of reasons why a full wipe would be non-beneficial vs the list of why it would, seeing as NQ as flat out produced solid reasons why a full wipe would in fact be very beneficial for its community.

This is a typical example of someone who may have had major advantages / exploited economy and other game breaking bugs who simply does not care about the greater good of the actual game or its community. Use a little common sense and understand that NQ should never have made a statement of this being a "Soft Launch" as frankly put, this game is still considered my a large amount of players as being in "Alpha" and NOT Beta. What does Beta mean? It means that ALL main systems and core elements of the game are 100% locked in and all they are doing is finalizing bug testing, fixes, etc. Beta is NOT for going back to the drawing board Beta is NOT for adding in major core systems and making massive game changers that effect the entire game on major levels NQ is now finally realizing it royally screwed up and if they have any chance at all to save its community, a full wipe is 100% required. That said, NQ needs to completely finish the game 1st, make final decisions on what core features they want in their game. Do they keep the controversial schematics system that hindered so many players? Do they remove the schematics as there was nothing wrong with how the crafting system worked previously? Finalize their core game decisions, lock them in, and focus on completing 1.0 Once this is all done, then, and only then, should they do a full wipe. The current way things are right now only benefits a very small amount of players and orgs that amassed major advantages over everyone else due to major bugs and a poorly thought out economy from day 1 of "early access". The right thing for them to do is wipe everything and put everyone on an even start once the game is fully 1.0 release candidate.

NQ made some big time mistakes during this early access time period and a full wipe is 100% required. Not everyone stays up to date on the forums, and like many, will be dormant for 3-6+ months at a time. NQ has lost a large amount of players back when they decided to give other players their bases and resources after those folks spent months gathering and setting up their base. (fact) I know of at least 30+ accounts from friends who will never come back or give the game another try unless a full wipe takes place, as like myself, a great many players are burned out after losing months of time and effort we put into our company/orgs, only to come back and find it all was taken away. The very small minority of hard core players who threaten to leave is such a tiny number compared to the large amount of players who would return, but then again, it's this very tiny minority of players that make the most noise. These folks have no care about the game itself or the longevity of it. They only care about keeping what they exploited through various methods through out this early access learning period that NQ has been going through. I would very much like to give the game a 2nd chance, so here is to hoping NQ can make the tough, but fair decision to do a full wipe after learning everything they have, especially with so many major changes made over the past 12+ months.