Emptiness

That aside, a-hecking-men.
 
With the advent of Beta, I was expecting to get a massive windfall of requests for help so much so we'd be having to do bulk runs where we load up on a dozen or so people going to one planet, then fly around and hit them bing-bing-bong-bong-bing-bing-bong. Our number of requests was fairly nominal as we became more well known through advertising on the forums, in the DU-scord, and from advertising at marketplaces. We're not yet advertising at the markets because DU Classifieds isn't yet fully operational, and I don't want to plop just a lonely screen there anymore.
 
Instead, what have we gotten, barely a trickle. It started out good early on with a high of 26 in the first two weeks, then it fell to seven in the next two week period, and for the previous two weeks, only two rescues. I watch the troubleshooting channels, and I just feel dissapointed. I want to help out, but that would likely be interpreted as unwanted advertising with how the rules are set up. All in all though, I really feel like support is playing a game of twister with one player, itself. They say it's exhausting and stressful at times, I've asked if I could help in-game and I'm in a queue for discussion but my confidence is fairly low at this point.
 
In the event of legitimate problems, I can see the need for GM's to assist, but if this is something that another player can do, then a player should be required to do so. While I can understand the issues regarding favoritism, I do believe that NQ needs to turn off easy mode support and tell these players to get their feet wet with the community, because the response I've received so far has been not very appetizing.
 
When NQ (hopefully) stops this come release, a lot of people are going to be stuck and not know what to do. If they quit, it's unfortunate, but this pre-"release" state is where organizations can really grow their roots, and I feel like I'm being hamstrung. I don't like waiting in this queue to hopefully get seen by NovaQuark, but that's what I'm left to do for now. 
 
Come to think of it, wasn't this supposed to be a more of a player driven game? Wasn't that puzzle supposed to take years to solve, and here we did it in a couple weeks? Yes there was stuff before beta involved, but I think this player base has been vastly underestimated.

And no, I'm not here to pick on NQ. I'm pointing out a problem, in fact, I knew this would be an issue a long time ago which was why I started E&ESAR to begin with. I'd like to solve it on my own as a member of the community, but I'm not being allowed to, so we're here with support because this was allowed to happen. Like a lot of people, I would have blazed a different path than NQ did, probably starting in Alpha 2. I'm not a developer though so the best I can do is offer my support, well wishes, and hopefully this can be taken as somewhat constructive feedback.

....and if it were - that would NOT be a good thing!
 
Alright, this is something that's been bothering me for some time from JCs interviews - and yesterday's Easter Egg interview pushed me over the edge to where I really have to say something...
 
First and foremost - lets face the reality that Ready Player One would be a horrible game for most people nor would the events of the book be enjoyable for the majority of the player base.
 
If you're looking at your game and going "Hey look it's just like RPO!" - what I hear is "Look just a handful of no lifers got to have all the fun!". That IS the plot of RPO. A tiny group of players who take the game WAY WAY WAY WAY too seriously get to enjoy the content while the rest may as well not exist.
 
The puzzle fit this perfectly. A tiny group of players with tons of NDA covered information going back to pre-alpha solve a puzzle while the rest of the community doesn't even know it exists. Yup  - very RPO.
 
JC - The takeaway from the puzzle event should not be that "Look it was just like RPO! I did a good job!" - it should be that "The event was a complete failure and did not involve the majority of the community in a meaningful way, and was solved largely due to a bug and alpha knowledge that was not available to the bulk of the community."
 
Please please please for the sake of DU - stop trying to make this game like a fictional book about a fictional game. You need to take a serious look at how other games have done community events and have managed to involve much larger groups of players. Everything from opening the gates of Ahn'Qiraj to the Elite Dangerous Alien events - yes they were flawed in their own ways - but by and large involved more people.
 
 
Finally, this doesn't just cover events. The general game mechanics cannot be based on the mindset "Just like RPO!" - because I repeat - RPO would be a horrible game. In fact, I would go as far as saying if you are looking at any upcoming part of the game like AvA or Territory Warfare or Atmospheric combat and can say "This is just like RPO!" - then it probably needs to be reworked to NOT be like RPO but to be like an actual game that would be fun for more people.
 
Once again - face reality - RPO was a no life simulator where only the no lifers mattered.
 
This means designing things in consideration of players who are not willing to play DU 16 hours a day - and entire teams of such players.
 
Players are not going to want to spend hours waiting for an attack on a territory to man the manual guns because you refuse to consider automatic defenses.
 
Players are not going to want to fly dedicated gunners or escorts for every single hauler just because they may get attacked.
 
Players are not going to want to sit in their ship for hours watching the radar while their orgmates mine out an asteroid.
 
I could go on and on, but the core point is that the game mechanics need to be designed around giving people who do not no life the game a chance to have fun and stand a chance in pvp vs those that do.

Been thinking about posting this for a while but thought NQ would have done something already.
 
Going to post this as politely as I can but the support giveaways are a COMPLETE JOKE.  50% of people are lying, this is obvious because they say things like:

"I crashed when coming into atmosphere, logged back in and my ship was destroyed" - bullshit, you crash your ships stops what they actually means is "I have a really heavy ship, I crashed the game coming into atmosphere because i couldnt slow down, logged back in with zero momentum and my massively overweight ship fell like a rock"

"I just died on XXXXX insert planet and have magically teleported to Ailoth, can you port me back" = I was mining and tried to use the force respawn to cheese back to my ship, but didnt check my node before I used this soft exploit
 
This is causing a LOAD of problems, firstly you are completely shielding these new players from any survival elements of the game, experienced players know to fly with good scrap and extra fuel.  New players arent learning these lessons because when they make mistakes (and most ARE player mistakes) they get freebies.

The worst part about all this is that they are making a huge section of gameplay / career paths completely redundant.  In alpha there were loads of players planning to set up as repair / refuel crew or taxi services, I have reached out to several of these to see how business is and there ISNT ANY.  The game has limited career paths as it is (without really knowing the game) these are some of the more obvious ones and you are making them irrelevant.  The longer this goes on the worse it will get.

My solution - send out an email saying that the daily quanta is being continued but it is being called BETA SUPPORT INCOME, it is paid to ensure players have funds in case of emergency.  You then reach out to verified support services orgs and bring them into support via some additional channel, where you can send people who need there services.
 
This needs to be done soon, as you are making a massive rod for your own back by giving this crutch to new players (although seen several vets abusing it too).

My biggest issue with these bot orders is not the quanta, quanta is easy to make and there are more profitable ways to make it that this cheese.  My issue is that it is stopping products from getting to markets to be sold to players.  All these lazy players SHOULD be making things players wants to buy, as it is they are just sitting there outside the 'player made universe'.  This is happening in too many places, like giving free repairs and teleports in support.  All players get 100,000k a day for nothing, tell the this is beta compensation of issues and pass them to a community support team to do ingame repairs / refuel / transportation.  Currently NOONE is pushing these services at all because there is no point.  You crash, NQ will fix it........ a bit disappointed tbh, you are making decisions that go against what you are trying to create.

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.

I think these calculations are just completely wrong? interesting how you make 55kl pure carbon out of 50kl coal ore... and that's just one mistake I guess?

EVERY UI needs work....

NQ, really, please!
The market UI is ugly.
- 6 rows and too much free space on screen - it's terrible.
- Add price/market/etc filters for a sell and buy screens (independents)
- Remove the default 0.01 price in a sell order - you force 99% of traders press to delete every time
- Add default 1 quantity for a buy order - we newer buy 0
- Give us the opportunity to fully use the market warehouse - this saves us from hundreds of containers installed around the markets.

?

Whats with these oversized furniture? 3 meter(12 blocks) long beds, 4 meter wide couch, 1.5 meter wide doors??? A normal chair is 50cm (2 blocks) wide, so why jumping to these "big mom Olin" sizes?
Not  really possible to make normal crew-quarters on your ship now. Or a high building with appartements, or a hotel.
 
There is no reason for NQ to make these mistakes and I think it is really stupid that these elements have these stupid sizes. 

@Cytoxx thanks to you too for the edit and you're welcome. As mentioned above: feel free to contact me directly next time. But having this here (in this case) ain't too bad since I got here rather early for a change, so it might even guide others  
 
@LouHodo yeah, I admit I struggled a bit pondering what your intent was. Sarcasm can obscure that - even now with your clarification, for a short while, I wasn't sure if the use of sarcasm was meant as provocation or just advice to trust a moderator's decisions. In case of the latter: thanks! And if you want to help even more I think it would be good to either keep the level of sarcasm down a bit or add a nicely phrased explanation in addition, so the other party has an easier time to relate and see your point. That other party being me in this case - not speaking for Cytoxx - as it was me who was a bit puzzled by that  

This is correct. The reason for the delay is that it's currently a bit hard to keep up - some people don't seem to have read the forum rules and working through reports takes its time.
The forum rules can be found here:
 
Excerpt
This is the most relevant forum rule and reason why that thread was hidden. @Cytoxx please remove the link and title-quote from your original message - thanks! The only two things to do with exploits are 1. report them to NQ and 2. avoid using them.
 
I'd like point out this recent announcement by @NQ-Naerais
 
A bug or exploit does not need to be listed there in order to be prosecuted if used, so I'd strongly advise to always report at support.dualthegame.com if there is any doubt. I'm not familiar with the development schedule, but I'd think that every issue gets tracked, assigned a priority and will be taken care of as soon as possible. If the support is delayed or the issue doesn't get fixed within a day, a week or even a month it doesn't invalidate the forum rule posted above: promoting exploits is prohibited. As posted by @NQ-Naerais: exploiting is prohibited as well.
 
I'm not a GM or CM, but as it's hard to keep up with the frequency of forum rule violations, I imagine it might just be as time consuming to keep up with in-game rule violations - so I'd personally advise to not mistake it as okay or not prosecuted to use an exploit, just because there's no notice or sanction shortly after. Analog to this I too have my todo list for threads and members to address/sanction for spamming, trolling (provoking), flaming (insulting, attacking), profanity and so on. Meaning: better not let yourself be inspired by other's violations  
 
If it's just one answer on a thread the moderation team would just hide that one answer. But if others already quoted and commented it can get very difficult to clean up. If it's too difficult or the original posting already violates the forum rules (which can't be cleaned up either) the according thread will be hidden entirely. Sorry for the resulting inconvenience - in order to avoid it I suggest to just report clear violations of the forum rules and not engage the violation on such a thread.
 
If there's a valuable discussion to be had in line with the rules it's always an option to open up a new thread for this. But as thread starter be mindful that if it's a sensitive topic it can easily get out of hand and might be treated as mentioned above - so it's in the interest of everyone who wants to have a friendly and open discussion, to not engage to provocation, but just report the according comment and keep it calm and polite otherwise. Thanks!  
 
@LouHodo no, he just wasn't sure why that thread was gone and made a suggestion for improvement. Your posting reads as if you think this was wrong, but please try to see the positive side of it and keep it constructive, as I take the positive from your posting and agree that issues with moderation should be taken to moderators and not discussed directly on the forums. Two reason for this are that 1. the moderation staff can miss such topics while 2. members on their own can't answer the question "Why?" or solve issues or change how moderation is done without talking to us, the moderators.
 
Next time something vanishes and it's unclear why, please just send a private message to me and I'll look into it to provide an answer  
 
Mellow greetings
Mondlicht

Remember, it's far better when only a certain subset of the players get to use an exploit. That way it maximises the differential and disparity caused by the exploit so that only those in the know get to benefit from it..

If the news of the exploit became widespread then everyone would benefit from it and the sudden player parity and fairness would destroy the status quo.
 
/s
 
IMO, if NQ has no intention of winding back the earnings of players who use an exploit then the only fair course of action is to give everyone access to the exploit until it is fixed.

Otherwise NQ are just entrenching the winners and condoning the behaviour as a valid machanism to get ahead of others.

In short;
 
It is quicker, easier and more reliable to just use bots to get enough money to buy expensive gear like Territory scanners and large space cores.. No need to progress in game, just sit on the market and shove boxes..
 
Working as intended I guess..

Until I read this thread, I did not realize derails could be perfected into an art form. {sarcastically} Congratulations, @FryingDoom

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.

"Oh it's you..."
"Fenton..."  
Doesn't DU have an in-game achievement for that?
So you're saying the moment an unborn human starts consuming its mothers resources, that they've entered PVP space? Damn, and here I was thinking 16 to 18 years old (or in some cases younger) was where PVP began...
 
Actually, come to think of it, Mum can get PVP'ed out of the game world before your unborn self starts consuming her resources because they're already inside the PVP space.
 
It's almost like there is no natural or truly safe space in the real world. The only temporary safe spaces are the ones we create ourselves in the form of housing, when we bear arms to protect ourselves from others (yay 'murrica!), and when the people of society abide by a set of rules.
 
Such rules are of course made to be broken and they frequently are, just watch the news; how many arsons, thefts, shootings, assaults, etc happened today, last week, last month? Of course, those are the most flagrant examples, but lets go by what you suggested.
 
I'm inhaling oxygen which is useful to me, and exhaling carbon-dioxide which is a waste and not useful. This simple act of life, breathing, is PVP according to you. Drinking water, something useful to continuing my own life, is PVP according to you.
 
I haven't met a single person in my neighborhood or local community that doesn't breathe air and drink water. With this knowledge, I can deduce that breathing air and drinking water is a normal function of society, both acts being PVP.
 
I could go on and on and on for the next hour and hope that the last bit I quoted was an argument of some kind, if it wasn't, I'll be somewhat dissapointed.
 
PVP is everywhere, and while there's a lot that needs fixing, remember that this is still beta. Organizations will get cleaned out, and people will get shot. I paid $500 for a lifetime subscription, so it sure shit better not stop me or that is money not well spent. I came here to be entertained and have fun, if you're seeking the same thing but not having fun, then what are you doing here exactly?

I think NQ should do what they said.
 
If they do a wipe, it should come with refunded playtime -- it's a massive bait-and-switch otherwise. You can't promise one thing to get people to open their wallets, then decide that actually that was a lie so sorry.
 
Attracting players is not the most important thing for an MMO! Going free to play would "attract new players". 
 
The key is actually retaining those players. 
 
A reset doesn't fix anything...it literally just puts the game back to where it was at beta launch. For what reason?
 
A few months later, people will still be like "well I'd play...but I don't want to be behind". Actually no...you wouldn't play. You'd build a speeder, get bored, and leave like many others. 
 
No one is entering DU and leaving because they feel like they can't catch up on talents...there's a billion and one other reasons they are leaving that need to get fixed first. 

How about: No.

There is an actual issue with that? ? So far I have only seen people not realising that the grey text says "saved name" and "saved password" and that they can just click the login button.

No RDMS exploit used I had full rights to containers and industry machines - they just hadnt set it up!
 
I'm unsure what you mean by linked container exploit? I have 2km link container range, I spent a couple of days gathering up 100 odd L containers and burying them underground within link range of the factory on a tile I had claimed in my own name.
 
After a couple of days of observing login and log out times of the org, alarms were set to get us all up at 7am BST.
 
I was linked to one container hub of 10 L, as I filled up the hub, org mates moved the contents out into the other stacks of 10 containers and deployed more containers as needed.
 
I dont understand what about using your link range is an exploit?

You do not have to have a claimed tile. Just drop a core and strap containers to it and do not share it with the org that you are stealing from.
 
There is no recourse. What are they going to do? Push it off the tile? Oh no..... 
 

Why lift off the planet?
 
You just need to dump it into a tile or construct that is not org shared.
 
You steal core, place core and make it not shared, dump containers on core, put loot in containers, you won.
 
 
This isn't eve where to steal you had to also get your loot OUT of 0.0 space to really succeed.
 
 

Do you really think, that 5 years from now, every element that has ever been created, should still be in the game, and fully functional, regardless of how many times it has been shot, blown up, repaired? 

With the current 100% repair rate, PVP will not be the resource sink the game needs. Instead, when territory warfare begins, it will insure that the groups who win in the beginning will gain a materials advantage that will only grow with each new, easier, win.  
 
I made the suggestion that elements damaged by weapons have a less than 100% repair chance and submitted it to the voting list. It never got moderator approval in spite of there being no similar suggestions.  I thought my suggestion might have been overlooked or worded incorrectly so I rephrased the suggestion and submitted again. This time it was simply deleted. 
 
Now I am very worried. Is the current repair system meant to stay as it is?  If so, the game will not be worth playing shortly after territory warfare and atmospheric PVP are introduced. A few groups will dominate and only grow stronger in relation to everyone else. 

Well, what he is saying makes very little sense and it seems he really does not know much about this at all as he is clearly guessing. He does not know emotes are in, he even says he is "theorizing" and "heard where it is being used" so he has no actual information.. Hence making it up as he goes along
 
He seems to have "talking points" prepared or given but his responses are really of the mark overall and make little sense.
 
I'd say it's potentially dangerous to let a level design lead guess in public on game mechanics which may have a big impact.