Emptiness

See this post here, specifically the last paragraph, from last Monday.
 

I really don't see a good reason for posting that in that context, unless you felt guilty.

Hey there, although it's the weekend I'm interested in looking into this. Stay tuned!

Everything is possible when your friend is an admin (:

I have yet to crash due to server problems tho since week 1.

All my crashes were me misjudging my trajectory. Any server disconnects suspend your ship for now anyways.

They said it was to 'save face'. They brutalized their own face with what they did, and it's about 80% of the reason why I quit. They had a chance to enshrine the broken market and make it part of the game's lore (no more wipes, remember? Using admin commands to restore it was a wipe, of sorts), and instead they acted like petty tyrants of a playground sandbox.

JC said something like it should take a month for people to get off the planet... as to the exact source, I specifically remember it was JC's first interview after beta launch. Sadly I can't find it now, maybe if you ask in du discussion discord channel someone might remember. A lot of what JC says is scattered all over the place, there is no compendium of what was said when unfortunately... yet another communication problem.

I definitely disagree, and I feel the stats available are fairly clear. 
 
Minecraft is still growing in popularity (24 million copies in a year alone...far more players than DU will attract across its entire lifetime). 
 
In other words, more people bought Minecraft in this last year than have ever signed up for Eve Online, by a massive margin. 
 
Yes, it being in a persistent online context is a very attractive feature for creative players and builders. This idea that a builder game can't be a success because there's just not enough to do or there's not enough interested players is not grounded in any real evidence. 
 
One of the most argued things on this forum is PvP -- if it were really so obvious that a builder MMO is "impossible" or inherently boring, this wouldn't even be a discussion. 
 
It's up to NQ to understand how these demographics work -- and that you aren't going to capture both the hardcore PvP demographic and the creative builder demographic in your first-ever title as a game designer.  
 
This mis-match of genres is a big reason people quit -- we all know there are lots of PvP players and lots of creative players out there....but both living happily in the same game? It's extra complexity that DU just doesn't need on top of its mountain of technical and design debt. 

Has NQ ever done any kind of reliable polling to see what percentage of the players don't like a certain mechanic? Seems to me it shouldn't be terribly hard to have an ingame poll thing for hard numbers. Tie it to some kind of reward so people are encouraged to participate. Like .. maybe the daily bonus?

It's stil interesting to realize NQ actually made "giving players something to fight over" a prime reason to limit Industry to static cores.. As in their literal reasoning for this..
Having slow, massive industrial ships in space with the potential of  a lot of valuable cargo was not something NQ considered "something to fight over".
 
Now, after the fact, I'd say that the sheer mass of Industry elements and the mass of the containers needed to run it alone are reason enough to keep industry planet side but NQ never actually considered that as such, at least not ever in a public sense.
 

I'd say the comments and discussion in this thread are more subtle than that though and polarizing it in the way you do IMO is not productive. I get your point though.
 
 
Community does not exclude being on your own or engaging in activities on your own. IMO the opinion that you _must_ engage with others to enjoy the game is noot a fair one. A hauler can be on his own mostly for sure and I see nothing wrong with that. Obviously it would benefit him/her if there is an organization supporting and clearly there would be an origin and destination interaction but overal their main activity can and should be possible to be conducted solo.
 
The frequently heard argument to "bring friends" or "have an escort" really overshoots the purpose and goals of the game. Arming your cargo ship and having X amount of people fly with you to defend should not be a requirement and for that purpose there needs to be options to minimize the risks such as ECM. NA has already acknowledged this and has said these mechanics will come into the game although that may take time. And I'm good with that.
 
Again "playing as a community" is not the same as being with around others all the time and always including multiple players in activities. And NQ has literally stated that DU needs to be a game which can be played solo, with obvious restrictions in what can be achieved, which makes perfect sense.
 
 
That is not the argument. Your initial post was "You say this,. I say that, you are wrong as I am right so get out". Bein involved/interested in combat is not a requirement to either have an opinion or discuss the pros and cons of PVP in the game. You pretty much are saying "you do not engage in PVP so you have no say in this".
 
I also do not at all agree that my comments are "Karen Level" and frankly, saying this pretty much invalidates your own argument as you show to not have any interest in actually addressing or considering other peoples opinion and simply dismiss them without any .. And in doing so the one being Karen is actually.. yourself.
 
I am actually very clear in that I see and understand how some will want to focus on combat as their main activity and have no interest really in the other components of the game. And that is fine but the same applies as with those who choose to go solo. You can't expect the game to bend towards your chosen playstyle which excludes some game pillars. DU is not about PVP, it is not centered around combat and conflict.
 
Does combat need some TLC and is it missing components to make it better? Absolutely and it is absolutely valid to make that argument. Denying that combat as it is will not be a mechanic which will be attractive to the general DU player base is IOMO short sighted and based around a blind desire to want to see it be functional and useful. While it remains to be seen how NQ will address the deficiencies in combat, the initial indicators are that they have an understanding of what they need to do and will start doing so in the next few weeks in applying three major changes:
 
Construct cross section will become a factor in hit/mis calculations Radar lock range will be the same for all cores vs all cores Weapon size availability will be dependent on core size  
I'd say a good start from a combat perspective. What needs to come in as well is both (warp) interdiction and ECM which we know will happen but not just yet. (likely towards autumn/summer 2021)
 
 
I expect the outcome of a "Good ol' boys PVP bubble roundtable" like you suggest will be preaching to the choir, predictable and not bring anything constructive for the game as a whole because your focus/objective will be to drive the game towards a combat/conflict oriented playstyle. You're welcome to surprise me and prove me wrong though.

Except the argument is not about the state of PVP from a PVP player perspective and not about being "boring", it is about how PVP is unbalanced and skewed towards PVP players when they target non combattant players. SO your argument here is void.
 
I'd say a big point is that PVP oriented players have the wrong expectations about  PVP in DU and ignore all the clear signs this is the case. And many PVP interactions are between "bored" PVP players and players who have both no interest in PVP and no real counter to it which afaik doe snot really include yourself and the crowd you fly with as you look for actual PVP which is a different subject. Buy arguing this though, you play into the hand of those who have a skewed expectation which in the process does not do you any favors either.
 
DU is NOT a PVP centric game and never will be. NQ clearly said that PVP has a purpose in game, it is not an (end)goal. That does not exclude the option to play purely in a PVP setting but it is the wrong expectation to have when you thing the game revolves around PVP which it does not.
 
 
Except there is _no_  requirement for the game to be played in a team/group and in fact, NQ has given off clear signals that the game should and will be playable solo. Will that mean some activity is out of reach? sure and it would be silly to deny or expect otherwise. Couples with the PVP part of your post, a Hauler who sets up a business for himself should not be _required_ to both fit armaments and recruit friends/other players to man them while hauling, he should have options to counter a possible attack like ECM which NQ has already said will come. Will flying unarmed pose a higher risk of ECM failing and you getting shot at? sure, but that is a risk you take when you fly solo and you should accept that while the point of it being fair to expect the options to do so is a valid one.
 
DU is NOT a "team base group based game" .. It is a civilization building game based around building communities and that does not exclude solo play at all. Playing solo does not mean you have no friends in game and/or do not work/play together on occasion and when the opportunity arises.
 
 
Frankly, most I hear is ppl saying Industry is too easy and seeing how, two months in, massive factories able to produce anything possible are not uncommon is a tell tale sign of that and NQ has already announced that this was not intended and that they will put measures in place to make (high level) industry complexes harder to achieve
 
 
Frankly, your comments boil down to this:
 
Them: X
You: Y
Them: no
You: if not Y then get out
 
And I'd say that is rather inconsiderate, egocentric and shortsighted. There is quite a bit more nuance to this (and I do actually expect you are well aware of this)..
 
 
  
And have a one sided, unbalanced outcome which will pretty much paint a picture for the game where you push it towards what are pretty much incorrect expectations based on what NQ has said is the purpose of PVP in DU? PVP is not a "stand alone mechanic", you can't discuss it and how it should evolve on it's own without considering the impact on the game as a whole.
 
If you are going to have a round table, have ALL voices/parties there. have an actual discussion on the pros and cons and weigh each others opinions and expectations. But my guess is you want to hear voices that align with yours , not those who may offer valid counters to it so to keep your bubble of expectations intact. I'd actually be more than happy to join such a discussion but pretty much expect that other opinion would simply be drowned out and pushed off the table to keep the argument focused on "how do we get our wants in a better place, no matter how it affects other views which we deem irrelevant"
 
 
 
I honestly believe DU will be able to stay alive without PVP, it will not be able to stay alive with just PVP. If you think otherwise, I can only  see an outcome where the game dies if you (and this those in the same mindset as yourself) had a say in its direction if you pursue this the way you seem to be.

Sees an Anderson Williams comment....

Scrolls riiight on by... (already knows pretty much 90% of what he'll say...) Probably taking a dig at "carebears" or builders... 
Hell, even DU voxelmancy and mining a supernode are more interesting.


Speaking of voxelmancy and mining:

Here is an anecdotal case I just experienced yesterday.

I have spent about 10 hours building a medium core, light and efficient freighter for short range Alioth/Sanc duties.  6 hours of that, I swear, was just trying to neaten up the corners between two diagonal planes.

We REALLY need some way to neatly reconcile two different surfaces in this game without magic and joss sticks!    
The finicky stuff is just too cumbersome and apparently needs some kind of blood sacrifice (or mood altering chemicals) to achieve perfection.

Speaking for myself (I don't like using "we" when I have no idea how others feel) It only takes one or two frustrations like this to put me in a sour mood... if I can't line up the vertices in this game between two different faces at odd angles, the whole construct looks pants and if I try and use the abomination that is the smooth tool, I end up with something that looks like a child's playdough creation.

As for mining, the other elephant in the room...

TO NQ:  Can anyone in your team honestly say that mining is going to become more sophisticated for the actual release?  And by sophisticated, I don't mean reducing the sensitivity of the angluar detector or making it slower. I mean actual new mechanics to make mining more engaging.

Is there going to be anything that will make hexes actually valuable other than proximity to the Seven Eleven?

As a backend / frontend developer myself for many years:
1) UI / UX for this game is... not made by designers but by engineers. In this regard it is horrible from a designer standpoint. Not to knock the work of the engineers but this is... not a game ui. I'm sorry. This is a product of a bygone era. Modular ui is generally cancer in a game. And when you're married to it, it spawns very very bad children.

2) LUA API is abysmally incomplete. Simple things like knowing what is in a container, or better yet, what is the actual capacity of a container WITH talents... is not a thing. Another example: for some odd reason getYaw() was removed from gyro api. And that was bloody useful... And the list here goes on and on and on. Features that are missing, features that disappeared, etc... Which leads to lots of arcane, frankly, bad code going around, some of which I myself wrote.

3) Market 15... was ... well.. that is a rather permanent face of NQ now. Not to mention poor communication. Not to mention grey rules that you twist in your own favor just to save face.

4) Game has no progression. Literally nothing to do. Players don't care, everyone is self sufficient. Markets are a joke, it's easy to get whatever you want pretty fast. Resources are uniform. All elements are the same regardless who made them, etc... everything becomes more of a chore rather than less, there is hardly any automation, and the stuff we do with LUA are just silly work-arounds that in the end are NOT automation. This game is the opposite of what MMOs generally are: the more time you spend in DU the more labor intensive and less automated things become.

5) Less Content, More Grind. NQ, especially JC keeps throwing around statements such as:  "we expected people to get to space from starting planet in X days" (took me 15 minutes, took other players even less). "Mining is too fast for our liking", "brakes are too effective".... these are all statements that lead me to believe JC didn't mine for his castle, and has probably never built an M or L core all by himself with his own in-game resources. All of this in summation is rhetoric that I interpret this way: We can't provide content fast enough, lets slow the game waaaaaaay down and make it more grindy, more time consuming, because well... uh... we don't have content for you...sorry. It would have been a LOT MORE helpful to the community if NQ actually was transparent as to what is going on there.
 
6) PVP. Geez.. so much to say here... a lot of it has already been said better than I could ever say it. Seems like from the get-go casuals weren't clued in to how to make transport ships viable for slowboating... like for example... putting some voxels on the boat for a start. There was so much whining about one shot kills that I believe NQ was pushed into the direction of not removing planet safezones. We need atmo pvp, we need interdiction, we need material variability, we need to fight for something. Radars need to be fixed. Guns widgets need rework (ui / ux is so terrible and non-ergonomic I can't believe this is 2020).
 
7) Lots more... but I will stop.

As the official ingame "Support" channel has been the unofficial general discussion channel, could we please get some more official ingame chat channels? I suggest: General, Building, Industry, Trade, and possibly a couple more I didn't think of just now.
 
The whole chat system really needs a rework, with customizable chat window sizes, positions, and more settings.

I hate when features like this are introduced and yet they have created no documentation... it has all these rules, it would have been GREAT if it would have had a wiki page with what you can't compact....

That..
 
I got mega nodes waiting to be cleaned out, but I just cant any more. Just the thought of the 'collecting ore' process removes any hint of creativity or will to join the game.

I mean....that alone would be a start.
 
You think mining would be what it is today if JC had to mine all the ore to build his castle?

As the official ingame "Support" channel has been the unofficial general discussion channel, could we please get some more official ingame chat channels? I suggest: General, Building, Industry, Trade, and possibly a couple more I didn't think of just now.
 
The whole chat system really needs a rework, with customizable chat window sizes, positions, and more settings.

Yes, the bot buy orders are indeed WTF level.
A better title would be "Artificially high buy orders created by bots are causing the price of T1 ores to remain ludicrously high and preventing the market from naturally stabilizing". 
 
Due to the nature of the pure ore refining, product refining, and honeycomb refining skills and the way they multiply together, with all relevant skills at max (which at this time since 'beta' launch is quite possible with a different character for each step), steel honeycomb bot buy orders remain profitable to manufacture for selling to, even with hematite and coal prices rising to ~35 quanta per liter. It's utterly insane.
 
NQ, when are you going to change bot order prices to sensibly scale to a rolling 7 day or 14 day average of player orders? My understanding was that they were to provide a last ditch way of making money or obtaining items, not to serve as the backbone of the entire damn T1 economy...

Currently, mega industrialists with good crafting skills are crafting various intermediaries and voxels, and selling them to bot orders for a profit. For example: Basic components, connectors, screws, or pipes, or steel voxels / honeycomb. 
 
Let's take a close look at Steel honeycomb.There are roughly 100 different varieties of steel honeycomb, and a significant fraction have bot buy orders. Let's take a look at .. galvanized beige steel. Every single market in game has a buy order for roughly 200,000 of this voxel, at prices varying from 338.84 to 361.11 per m3. For the purposes of this exercise, we will assume a sale price of 361.11 per m3.
 
We start with Hematite and Coal.
Given 100kl of Hematite (23q/l, 2.3m quanta), and 50kl of Coal (21q/l, 1.05m quanta), with level 4 refining skills, that becomes 65 * 0.88 input, 45 * 1.12 output, for 88.112% efficiency.
 
We get 88,112l Pure Iron and 55,056l 44,056l Pure Carbon. Now, for steel refining. Level 4 skills, 100 * 0.88, 50 * 0.88 inputs, 75 * 1.12 output, for 88 iron, 44 carbon, 84 steel output.
 
We now have 84,107l steel. Now, for honeycomb refining. Base honeycomb refining is 100l for 10m3. Steel honeycomb refining skills at level 4 give: 100 * 0.8, 10 * 1.2, for 80 steel input, 12 m3 output.
 
We now have ~12,600m3 of steel honeycombs. Let's go back to that bot buy order. 361.11q per m3, 200k quantity. We sell the 12,600m3 of steel honeycomb to the bot buy order, deleting those materials from the game, and getting ~4.55 million quanta injected into the economy from nowhere. At 3.35 million ore costs, that's quite a profit.
 
At level 5 skills, this profit becomes even more absurd, at ~5.7 mil. Even via crafting something like basic pipes, 3.3 mil of ore gets deleted/converted to 5.4 mil quanta...
 
Does anyone else think this is a problem?
 
TLDR: Good crafting skills lets you convert ore to parts and sell them to bot orders for crazy profits and also delete that ore from the game. Probably 20 million liters of t1 are being deleted per day, or more, and 500 million quanta added to the economy. Also, expect to see T1 ore prices rise to at least 35q per liter before people stop doing this.

All they needed to do was make glass clear and disable glass-glass collision.  Let glassbe intangible to other glass. 
 
Basically allow glass to overlap or be placed completely through other panes of glass and the problem goes away
 
—-
 
i stopped playing for a few months but just came back last week because I have built a new computer.  
 
For me, it’s the few, nonsense decisions in the physics/chemistry of the crafting that gets me 
 
concrete is T2

building building materials as opposed to requirements for spacecraft building materials are insanely expensive. 
 
T-zero building materials should be a thing. stone, rock, wood. Basically all the shit people used to build stuff with from the 20th Century BC should be mineable in open cast quarries. 
 
glass should be craftable from sand. 
 
mining coal for wood is just so, so stupid I’m inclined to use the r-word when I think about it. 
 
seriously, just no!
let us farm or plant renewable patches of land for wood harvestables. 
 
you can harvest renewable iron, coal, aluminum, chrome, sodium and others but trees and flowers are not harvestable... ffs!! 
 
Mining is an abomination.  
 
but for me, one of the biggest wtf moments is:

rockets are higher tier than Space engine....
 
what the actual... fudge!!?!!

I already shared this story in Alpha forums, but think in context its worth repeating for everyone.
 
There is indy game -- Holdfast: Nation At War, generaly napolenic wars fps focused on organized event-battles (up to 200 players now I believe). At start -- 3-4 people without serious prior gamedev experience (Mount&Blade modders), tiny budget of personal savings. 
 
Obviously, they stuggled hard. Constant tech issues, lack of content, bad balance, turtle pace development -- you name it. Classic indy collection.
 
Yet, once game hit early public access, they took unprecendentaly transparent, humble and, retrospectivly, pragmatic stance:
 
Hodfast devs were activly present on forums and available for questions and discussions (granted, with several day lag and limits, but still), so feedback loop on was extreamly fast and up to date.  Roadmaps were humbly cut/narrowed to things they actualy can do (without BS) + great deal of honesty with setbacks. This greatly increased trust of community, obviously. They played with players regulary (at least once per week) participating in event battles as common grunts. This given them unprecendented understanding how game actualy played in practice, not theory, balance, patterns, what is fun/boring etc. Some bright heads in community were allowed to tinker with game to some extent, that produced a lot help. One such enthusiast was so good with tech side of game, they invited him to join team as programmer. Extensive help of community also allowed to produce pretty top notch localizations with 0 costs. Well, they given participants free code copies of game (I was one of translators, so observed all this kitchen a bit from inside).  
Armed with such approch devs grinded way to release with greatly improved product. No chances for that wihout community support/participation. Sure, at the end game still far from perfect and probably never be unversaly known and popular, but it works decently well for niche dedicated community. Product made some modest buck for devs. If not epic win, not a failure too, considering horrible initial odds.
 
This is example of such thing done right in situation with very low resources. 
 
In can be said, that DU is much larger and complex game. True, it need own repecies. But DU also depends on much more complex systems, where well-organized involvent of community even more essential for any degree of success.
 
 
 
 

Simple solution for this problem is what EVE does with it's low level NPC trade goods.
 
After you have sold 1000 of that item to the NPC the price gets worse and worse and then stays that way for a week of time. You now need to find a new NPC to sell it to in another hub.
 
New players can use it to get a boost, older players ignore it as it is not worth the effort to visit that many hubs that many times.

That's funny I'm the total opposite here.
 
I think DU would be a hit if it had a 'solo, offline,standalone' version with a eventually a local server for small co-op. Integrate with Steam Workshop to allow players to share BP and lua and you have a clear winner that could bring cash to develop the mmo.
 
The MMO choice was (sorry 'is' !) too ambitious and cost too much in term of hosting to allow a free large scale public beta (not sure AWS was a wise choice but I'm biased here). And I'm not sure there are enough potential players for this kind of mmo...
Also technically the game is an mmo but with a too heavy client. Too much is done 'client side' to lower the backend opex but this lead to limitations, cheating issues, and imho very difficult tomorrows. 
For instance, I really really wonder how they will fix the 'alf-f4 , ship completely stopped'. 
 
Well time will tell but I'm very worried. Strike a deal with Stadia may be ?
 
Last point:  NQ should really try to use the community to develop parts of the game: open up the file datamining (at least recipe/talents json files, the current locked .ung files is just ridiculous ), add an API/XHR to the client (within lua as a webrequest method+event or make Dual.Exe as a local REST server) , make the whole game UI modifiable (like WoW) and you will see the community will help you code. This will save you dev resources to focus on backend stuff.