Emptiness

You still need calibration charges to do that. If you're maintaining enough mining units, you won't have any extra.
 
It's a nice boost early game.

Just a quick thought on how to improve UX for factories owners.

- A new element: schematics bank.
- It can have infinite amount of links and can be linked with industry units.
- The element is capable of storing schematics and providing them to the industry units.
 
What's the point? Currently, when you have even a small production line, you are quickly overwhelmed by the constant boring operation of inserting new schematics into every single industry unit. Having a more centralized management of schematics will undoubtedly make lifes of productionists easier and improve the gameplay.

It would be cool to have an override rather then lifting it each other. That is unneeded taxation on the server anyways tbh. Just a random idea anyways  Or if you are like me you are just too lazy to be bothered by it period haha.

QoL - Improving the little things

Dissamble feature for player owned cores.  Some leftover voxel chunks cannot be found and the owner is not able to locate, it. It is forcing player to give up on their core or they need the help of an GM.

(QoL - Quality of life)
 
Please change the way the information are displayed in the construct information.
It is in the current state messy and we have to search for a long period to find the correct element in the list.
 
My proposition:
- The element names should be rather put in alphabetical order
or
- Put the elements of the same category in their seperate drop-down menu
 
 

The issue I have with this is that 0.23 was launched in December of 2020.
 
The fact that they are complaining about not having enough time when this change has been live over 1.5 years is very annoying.
 
Maybe if you actually made a real design and planned features, you wouldn't need to spend the last several update cycles reworking features!
Maybe if you engineered the game properly, it wouldn't take a year and a half to push such a simple change.
Maybe if you cared (at all) about making a good UX, this wouldn't seem tedious. Do they even have a single UI/UX person on staff? Very, very doubtful. 
 
It constantly feels like they are making excuses...nothing is their fault, so they will never improve as a company. Their bad choices and poor planning is brushed off as "not having enough time"...
 
This studio has zero capacity to learn from their past mistakes.
 
The choices they've made makes it hard to root for them as a player, which makes it hard to offer the "balanced" feedback they apparently crave. If NQ showed a dash of humility, it'd be a lot easier to be positive. 

May I recommend an adblocker? I hear they're all the rage these days.

Please, Thank You 

The entire economy has been broken from the beginning. Buying billions of ore just to process and sell it to NPC buy orders should never have been a thing.

The entire economy has been broken from the beginning. Buying billions of ore just to process and sell it to NPC buy orders should never have been a thing.

The entire economy has been broken from the beginning. Buying billions of ore just to process and sell it to NPC buy orders should never have been a thing.

The entire economy has been broken from the beginning. Buying billions of ore just to process and sell it to NPC buy orders should never have been a thing.

The entire economy has been broken from the beginning. Buying billions of ore just to process and sell it to NPC buy orders should never have been a thing.

I think the progress has been very impressive.
 
At this rate by this time next year NQ will have successfully reduced the player count to 0 and finally go the way of Worlds Adrift like I kept saying they would...

Now just extend that to the entire development period of the game, and you have the reason why this game is struggling.

The reason is simple, combined with the mining unit calibration, it will require aanyone who has even the slightest interest of playing to login very frequently and be active. NQ needs the statistics to show the game is viable if they ever have a chance of getting the funding they need to keep the lights on.

I don't understand why they put these taxes in. Of course they said that it would get rid of many areas and constructs that are no longer used by active players. Accordingly, it is also an austerity measure. (Is NQ really doing so badly financially?)
The problem could also have been solved by moving this process to an active subscription. Same result, except that you wouldn't harm very many players by doing this, because you are now imposing a game compulsion and style of play on the players. Where is the motto "Play how you want - be who you want and develop yourself"?
I have now tested the MiningUnits for a few days and the mini-game is already annoying! Just running back and forth to the ground ores, just the fact that you first have to level up for many weeks to enable progress.
It feels wrong to demand taxes from players just to force them into the game in terms of time. They wanted players to have more freedom and more time to "play" - so why weren't these MiningUnits completely automated? An area restriction on how many areas a player can have in each solar system would have done justice.
By the way, their system does not prevent that many players now create many alts to generate more ores. Let's see how long they will enjoy doing this.
In principle, it doesn't matter, since they apparently plan to do a wipe at the end of the beta anyway. So why invest time and money now and not just wait for the release? When it's released in 3-5 years, at least you'll see what you're buying.

I find it cheeky that inactive players from the beta will now lose everything and have to log in to save it. Some players have reasons why they don't currently play DualUniverse, but would have come back later if there was meaningful content. Telling these players to log in or pay a subscription to log in so you don't lose your areas and buildings shames me. It smacks of NQ currently begging for every subscription and not understanding that this way more subscription players will leave.
 

Excellent points made in a solid, wel presented video, some are a bit over amplified but valid nonetheless. @NQ-Abu and @NQ-Sesch should really be sat down and watch it.
 
The problem is that from NQ's perspective you "just do not understand".. /s
 
 
The part about the PVE content which in turn becomes a PVP opportunity where the reward from the PVE content is valuable and serves a purpose in the game overall. That is what sets a game like EVE so far apart from its competition since _everything_ in EVE has a meaning, a purpose and value, it may not be much in some cases, but it does. Everything in EVE matters in one way or another, _that_ is why EVE is still such a varied game appealing to many different player types nearly TWENTY years after it was released. The total lack of it in DU is why the game really is boring and pointless.

Oh, it's also why EVE, as a F2P game, brings in about €5M in revenue each month.. Just to put that out there.. Players understand and see the value in spending their money on the game, even when a LOT of them never actually do and pay their way with in game currency entirely.
 
I think basic survival mechanics would be fun, but I think not a requirement. I absolutely agree that immersive and engaging PVE content will be a requirement for DU to even stand a chance.
 
The Talent system in DU is pretty much a half-baked copy from EVE but there, it goes hand in hand with using your ships fitting, the availability of boosters and drugs and most importantly gaining actual EXPERIENCE playing which will make the learned skill meaningful. In EVE, you can compensate to as good degree for not having skills by using modified/faction modules which are more expensive but will offer some benefits otherwise available through skills. 
 
Industry in DU uses schematics but for the game, schematics really have no purpose but being a money sink. In EVE, basic tier 1 blueprints (which is what they are called there) can be bought yes, but you can also find them in the game, you can research them, improve them, boost them, invent better versions, and sell copies of your modified versions for others to use.
 
I do not want to turn this into a "make DU more like EVE" argument as that is not the point. The point is that NQ clearly draws "inspiration" from EVE but so far has failed to both understand and capture the essence of what they are going for.
 
 
I asked this question in the Q&A:

 
 
The answer that came back, really just shows NQ has no actual clue about where such a question come from and just gives a pretty stock answer

 
 
The answer shows that NQ has no eyes on the discussions going on in the forums (or if they do, the message is not transmitted internally), does not understand what is driving us to ask these questions nor do they show any interest in actually engaging with it.
 
It's just a bland, boring and lifeless response. Which unfortunately aligns pretty closely to the state of the game

So NQ needs a way to dump all this crap so when you fly over alioth the old crap is not loaded from DB and they don't pay AWS.
 
So they make taxes as 99% of playerbase already left and will just lose their "civilization building mark" as their terris will abandon.
 
 
Ok. I just usually see companies doing more than erasing people stuff to get players back. It should just be French logic that I don't get.

Ah, DU, the game that advertised that you could "build anything" and "be anyone". 
 
Can't build big factories, it takes a ton of schematics -- not worth the grind 
Can't build factory ships, because...
Can't build cities, because money (even though they talked about cities and claimed their tech was "cutting edge") 
Can't have massive battles -- if you try too often, they'll probably implement time dilation lol (because this is the nature of single shard, NQ wasn't being 'innovative', they just didn't understand the tech or its limits) 
Can't own a hex without paying a government that has no law or lore or NPCs
Can't even design a ship without them changing how elements work this late into a supposed "beta" -- doesn't bother me that much, but they've had 7+ years, people, they could have figured out how brakes work by now. 
Can't do territory war, who knows when that'll be a thing
Can't do AvA, maybe ever, who knows 
 
To be fair, DU still has some of the best building tools -- among my favorite things is simply flying around and seeing what other people have made. Even that might start to vanish as taxes kick in. NQ still has time to balance it, but no one knows if they will because they never bother to communicate.

I started up a month before 0.23 hit... I had a blast, but then I had to walk away; looking at my workshop and knowing how much effort it would take to get the blueprints needed to do my designs was just heart-breaking. But that's in the past.
My sub stopped that day, but I've kept an eye on the forums since.
 
When I saw the announcement about the changes there was one thought that went through my head: so they fixed one issue that spelled doom for the long term prosperity of the game (resource depletion) and replaced it with a new problem that threatens the short term life of the game? (taxation... now don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed in principle, but it doesn't make much sense lore wise, especially on the fringe planets)
 
The bit about the massive overhead of all the tunnels made me chuckle a little; I figured that one out 5 minutes into the game; It must have been a facepalm moment when the realisation finally hit home, but they could have fixed it easily by just having a process that runs at set intervals on the dataset and "collapses" tunnels. After all, you wouldn't open up a mineshaft in real life and expect it to stay open without reinforcing the tunnel system, it would just collapse. 
The rules are simple: "x" distance from surface collapses after certain time; If a player construct is close by then do not collapse.
 
I don't really understand what the taxation is supposed to fix, so I won't comment further on that. Most of my stuff was on sanctuary anyway. I did build a house on a nice beach property that I'll miss if it goes. the tile was hollowed out before I ever got there, but the view was fantastic ?

/Just another observer... for now

Been on PTS now for 15 hours testing while collecting my thoughts. A lot of these changes will force players to /work/ to keep what they own in game... right now with rough calculations it looks like about /half/ of the ore dug may have to go back to paying taxes on the tiles, and thus players will need to work... to keep their land... to keep working to keep their land.

I say work, because these new loops, for many- will turn it into active work/tedium to manage. Plus, potentially half of your ore income is spent on the hexes... now you'll need to take a cut for fuel to transport/logistics. After the end of it, you're left with very little to build/expand with. For new players, it will be muuuuch harder to solo while getting a foot-hold.

So I ask, is this a move to slow players down and reduce overall server costs? As it stands this a soft-wipe of sorts, as many with "fun" projects people work on a few hours a week may now be forced into grinding to keep it going- or loose it... and if players don't come back, as it stands... you loose a tile, as it is on PTS... you also loose all the static constructs owned on that tile. 

So is this a change to reduce quanta/inflation? if so than look at the source, missions-alt runners to curb it vs creating a huge sink via land. Is this change for... data inflation? as more ore enters the game, more constructs are made- and in live(more data due to tunnels on top of that)  so more ore = data costs.  And I dare say this is the real reason for these changes, otherwise NQ will let up on them as player outrage seams to be more so than 0.23, and it hasn't fully sunk in yet for most players what these changes even mean... and while this post covers some core issues, it does not cover the ninja-changes to ship elements/flight mechanics or other core complaints.
 
Give us more ore via auto-mining - more charges, more ore to pull from per hex and... some way to skip the lame mini game.. please? minimum efficiency of 25% vs 0? Nobody wants to login once/twice a day to hop around auto-mining fields to play a stupid mini game. Least while mining traditionally I can tune out and watch Netflix, with autominers- it requires just enough attention you cant let your mind easily wander... but not enough satisfaction to make it.... enjoyable. 2x more ore may not be enough, 3-4x may hit a sweet spot for most. More Roids - All safe zone roids get mined out within an hour of discovery already. fix discovery timer of 20 minutes/middle Colum! Likewise, PTS seemingly won't spawn in asteroids in time for us to check the new spawn rates.... This change will /encourage/ more people into PVP space. Lower the taxes for tiles. This is a game that people pay monthly for- not a second job. 
  So say we all.

BlindingBright
-MTI Superlegate, Lodestar Chancellor

I would argue the game is already dead. Everyone I knew that played the game, has gone.

JC sold his vision...and he sold it well enough to convince investors to sink $20+ million into a company with no gaming experience and no detailed plan. You have to realize by now that this vision was little more than smoke and mirrors. 
 
His concept was always nonsense. The idea that you could build with near-infinite scale, the idea of cities, the idea that PvP would look anything at all like trailers, the idea that DU had "revolutionary" tech that would allow millions of people to play in the same game...
 
It's too bad people still get suckered in by misleading ads claiming that this game is something it never will be. 
 
DU can became a lot of great things, but it will never become the game they push in the trailer -- which means most new players will always be disappointed.
 
I feel like NQ hired a third party to do their adverts / marketing and it works to bring people in, so they won't update them...it's a really counterproductive marketing strategy. 

I could not agree more.
Patch 0.23 were huge disappointment for me.
 
Pre 0.23 I had small industry running to manufacture things for myself and I were slowly expanding to be able to sell something.
Then NQ sent a message that I were playing industry "in a non intended way. "
I had played since day one of pre alpha and that "non intended small industry game play" were totally new for me.
It broke my confidence to NQ and created unfriendly feeling of game development intents and about developers.
 
Why no cities?
There is no reasons.
No benefits for city building.
There is no tools and game-features for city infrastructure.
No security about living in a tile owned by other player.
etc.