Emptiness

Or maybe NQ shouldn't make stupid rules.

schematics turned the game from an open building game in tot a mining grind fest survival simulator, which for me is just a big no.
So patch .23, combined with all the other errors and DU apparent meeeeh good enough attitude was the nail in my coffin

You never get such explanation because its not something they want to say.
 
NQ started Beta absolutly naked assed without content or mechanics (they barely made shy steps in this regard 1 year later), so to "strech" this blatand emptyness, they retrospectivly increased grind x10, locking everyone out of already achieved progression. Its 33%.
 
Whole idea "not everyone need to be able to craft everything" also was very hard lobbied up to JC face by particular people with access to his ears. As good idea, presumably. This another 33%.
 
Final 33% -- its all aligned with JC's own bullshit of constantly talking about player specialization, but giving them zero mechanics or reason to actualy do so (beyond small cast of builders of decorative voxels).
 
So it happened.
 
Yet, people not that stupid and refused to eat this shit and dropped DU in rows.
 
Fundamental reason of failure not even schematics (they just made things degrade much faster), economy of DU, even with them never happening, -- fundamentaly flawed. Its one big afk overproduction (with huge additional megaload of exploits) against tiny-tiny, irrelevant sinks. Its hopeless formula.
 
 
 
 
 
 

It's all in the title, I'd love to play again and so does people from my group there were about 15 of us. Schematics made us all leave. We are just waiting for you guys to remove that bullshit and obviously add more content and stuff to do wouldn't be that bad. Like more star systems, random ship crashes to harvest, random NPC ships to take down transporting ressources from planet to planet...

There are 2 things I like from Starbase that I believe could be a great addition on DU : A ship building program within the program that's working a bit like the Unreal Engine (being able to make blueprints without having what is needed yet is a must honestly) and the FPS part with weapons that would be amazing on DU. 

Hello all, I purchased DU when they first announce. I played for a bit and then I felt my first go was just basic learning and mistakes where made.. great, time for me to start over and do things right the second time... and then my first gripe was found... I have only one single character, I can not delete it or reset it.. I am stuck with this guy and the mistakes I made.. that alone made me want to quit so I did for a bit...
 
After some time, maybe a year I came back and said, fine I will deal with it and just try to recover and go from there.. and when I log in... what is this I see in the starting city? POP UPS.. All over, advertisings, player built structures... recruiters, people selling their ships like I just walked into a car dealership... I swear; I felt like I was running windows 98 with a bad virus and malware. I was VERY overwhelmed by all of this. 
 
Why in GODS name would you allow players to build in the starting cities? I imagined if I wanted to go to their shop I would explore Their city.. go to their plot, see their venders etc..... but nope. no need for that. they brought it to me in my face with HUGE monitors, flashing screens, arrows pointing me left, right up and down! 
 
oh and do not get me started on all these abandoned constructs all over the place. I know people been complaining about this alone... 
 
well. I am quitting again for the second time, and YES I will leave m y construct on that starting city with all the others as that is the thing to do. But I am sure some people will build around that to recruit more members with their flashy signs and the next ship dealership will move in next to it... its chaos and very dirty feeling. I have to go, this game is NOT what I was expecting and hoping for..
 
that is my rant and if you made it this far. thank you for allowing me to vent.. I was wanting a better game and that is why I am angry.

I've said it before and I'll keep on saying it, I really don't like NQ when they use the word exploit.... It's a weasel word that attempts to shift the blame from the devs' own mistakes onto the player base when it's actually a bug.

In fact in this case, it's not even a bug, but an as yet completely undeveloped aspect of the game.

Also, non consensual boarding has got to be one of the lamest things I've heard all day.

This just seems weird to me. if someone leaves the doors open and you enter the construct, that is an exploit now? Feels like a rather broad stroke solution to the problem of mass/locator alts being logged off on construct hulls. I can think of a good number of situations where this approach would actually hinder normal gameplay if this "rule" is upheld. There are fairly easy solutions which have been suggested here and elsewhere for months by several people and yet, NQ ignores any and all of these and just carpet bombs the issue, hoping it will just vanish. 
 

The changes are good in themselves. The problem though is that NQ has allowed expectations and situations to evolve which will now be run into the ground. The victims are the ones using the abilities they had to create solid and interesting projects as a fallout of NQ dealing with wild growth of massive towers and waterfall orgs consisting of Alts because "Jonnie wants his own little tower all to himself", and allowing that.
 
While the community clearly told NQ this would not end well since well before beta, NQ thought they know better and it would not get as bad. Currently we see one thing after another come to actually happen as many of us said it would and NQ now having to resort to measures like this in the hopes of fixing it. Thing is, if DU was in a state where it should be, early alpha, you can make the changes and wipe, no questions asked, and move on. NQ thought they'd see masses and masses of players come through the gates from the moment they went "beta" but instead they saw their bank account get drained by a massive spike in server cost and so have been in emergency mode, trying to fix the plumbing, since August last year.
 
So they have neither the player base nor a stable and sustainable game at this point
And that is a real shame.

TBH. I don’t care when their “real” release is. So long as the game keeps moving forward at a reasonable pace. 
 
that is really the only thing I care about: visible and palpable improvements coming regularly (I mean regularly in the colloquial, non-scientific sense) giving the player base a sense of progression and hope for the future. 
 
A gaming audience can suffer either a relative lack of communication or a relative lack of progress without too much pushback . The trouble starts when the gamiers suffers both of the above simultaneously. 
 
look at NMS as a shining example. Shoddy af on release and has just released ANOTHER massive patch. 3.50 Prisms, addressing some of the criticism thrown at the somewhat aged rendering and iffy art style (which I personally like, but hey ho). Finally the game will use some of the modern horsepower of those beastly PC graphics cards that some lucky folks were able to buy before the stupid-assed crypto bubble. 
 
 

That’s because their “small team of staff” would be more accurately described as “team of small staff” since they appear to be about 13 years old judging by some of the decisions taken on graphic design textures and UI. 

Am I the only one who want an XS Space fuel tank? I'm fed up of having to cart a massive barrel of lard around with me just to use Vertical Thrusters.
Also, while you're at it, could I have some super cool XS hover pads... Maybe half the size and power of the current ones (say 2 x 2 voxels or something)  so we can put one front and back or on each corner of a transport and not have it look like a meth cooking-spoon?
This would be great for some truly minimal, and maybe even speedy, personal transport!
 
XS size components

— XS Size space fuel tank
— XS Size hover engines
— XS Brakes
— XS Space Fuel Tanks
— XS Rocket Boosters
— XS Space Brakes
— XS Control seat for motorbike like constructs
 
M Size
 
— full sized M wings for M construct. 
 
L size components
 
— L Ailerons and Compact Ailerons
— L Wings
— L Stabilisers
— Full sized wings for L construct.
 
MOAR XL size components
 
— XL Atmospheric Engines
— XL Hover Engines
— XL Vertical Boosters
— XL Wings ailerons and stabilisers. etc.
 
— XL Cores? YES PLEASE.

I think its unfair too! An L-core ship can have over thousands of elements, with buttons, relays, small windows, doors, beds, chairs, steel beams for stairs, lights, adjustors etc. (and Im talking about a Space-only L-core atm)
I crashed my M-core ship once due too lag (So it wasnt really my fault). I was able to hover back home and park it, I repaired it by doing 20-30 minutes a day of repairing. My aim at first was to just build another ship and leave the crashed one to be, but after a few days I got to my senses.
 
This game already has a huge impact on your life-time, so I also think there should be a 'repair-all' button.
Even if i have to wait a day or two, or even a week (L-core) for it to be repaired, I can do something else in the time. We are 10.000 yrs in the future and we have to repair every single element by hand??? Come on man!

I see very few people whine about DU actually and the concerns about NQ I have and I read about seem to be mostly based in facts and conclusions drawn from existing and verifiable events
 
 
And?
NQ made promises and set expectations on how they would develop the game and how they would engage and work with their community. They have not kept those promises so far and frankly have a very questionable way of trying to deny their commitment even exists.
 
 
And that game has a massive, well organized and very active CM team, they produce several weekly videos, they have live shows, their devs are both approachable and responsive
 
And no, no one here is expecting that level of activity from NQ
 
 
The way they are going, I expect they will, yes. If they will even continue to even just be ..
 
 
 
Sure
 
 
Please tell us.. in the past .. say .. 24 months, what actual core improvements have we seen in the game. I can tell you which one that was.. voxel meshing
 
 
And that is fine and understandable if you are open and honest about these things like you promised you'd be when you started
 
 
That is as much an assumption as you seem to accuse others of making so pot .. kettle
 
 
No one is doing that though
 
 
The have never shown any interest in engaging to begin with (and have actually confirmed they have no interest in doing that) so what's changed?
 
 
 
Not the point, not the ask.
 
 
Making mistakes is part of the process
 
No one here is saying NQ should not make mistakes. In fact IMO they do not make enough mistakes and when they do , they linger on them for way to long trying to fix something that will not  work to begin with
 
Software development on a massive and innovative project like DU is all bout trial and error, about seeing what works or not. The trick is that you must be able and willing to fail (which I sometimes feel NQ is afraid of doing) and fail fast (meaning you notice you fail and you drop what you are trying to do and move to the next option to try again).
 
Any and all successful innovations and paradigm shifting processes and developments come from failing often and fast.. until they do not.
 
DU IS project that has the potential to change the way many play games. It is for that very reason that some of us are here as we recognize that. It is also why some of us are as vocal as we are since it seems NQ is not actually able to see that.
 
 
 
It can be an amazing game one day yes. And also if it takes NQ four more years to make that game happen, I am actually very much OK with that. If the next NQ would start a kickstarter today for a concept similar to DU I'd probably back it again... even when I see NQ not getting to where they envisioned they would go. And I would do so because I actually understand what "fail often, fail fast" means..
 
 
 
Again, not he point of this entire debate but I do not blame you for not understanding that.
 

Gee. The game has an ingame codex with info; surely it could be updated each patch, right?
 
NQ: Hint, hint, hint.

I will not answer this question and leave it as it is. Instead, I'll just list things so that everyone can draw their own conclusions since the soft launch in August 2020 (yes, a version that has subscription packages is a soft launch). Otherwise people might get the idea that I'm always negative and push my opinion on people. Also, I want to avoid sounding like an endless loop because otherwise people will think I can't think of anything else to say.
 
Here are a few things since the soft launch:
- Since August 2020, viewership has steadily dropped from 1000 average viewers to a staggering 60. The average channels have also dropped from 10 to 2. I've already noted this in various other forum posts over the last few months, of course with the current numbers at the time. I am sure that one or the other still remembers and if not, you can search for it in my posts.
 
My source that I have always used for these figures:
https://www.twitchmetrics.net/g/493826-dual-universe
 
- Speaking of which: There hasn't been a Twitch stream or AMA event since August that showed players anything new or streamed events. Instead, we have a (cheap) workforce that diligently tweets everything the players build in the game on social media. There is a deliberate lack of communication, let alone trying to say something with Devlog that should be long term but doesn't capture the spirit of the present, what is on the players' minds.
 
- As a final point on streaming, I would add that markeedragon has gone back to EVE and the last video I find is just a review of patch 0.24. Otherwise, his Twitch library is filled with EVE and Valheim. Worth mentioning for me because he was mentioned by NQ in the news every now and then.
 
- In the New Year video there was the outlook for this year that a lot of things will come like bugfixes and features that were not mentioned in the video. Nevertheless, let's take a quick look: 
1. first major release: Graphics improvements (more to come later in the year), mission system, wallets
2. early in the year: Already working on pvp overhaul
3. energy system, asteroid mining
4. later in the year: territory warfare
other features mentioned: voxel vertices, mining units, new solar system with new planets
 
We are now in April and have only received part of the big patch of 0.24. In four months we will be a year into the soft launch.
 
- With patch 0.24, things were introduced that were not there or communicated on the PTS server. They had to be deactivated on the same day on the live server because they had bugs. It can be assumed that it has not been tested.
 
- Players use the PTS server to do calculated mining, because the ore spots are on the same spot as in the live server
 
- Players were able to play free days in December and January because the billing didn't work. I don't know if the other players were compensated accordingly because they had already paid in advance. But it can be assumed that this is not the case because NQ has not communicated publicly.
 
- 2 community managers (Naunet and Nudbrokk) left after a few months at the end of 2020 / early 2021
 
- there is no support anymore on weekend, on the grounds that they can provide better support. No ingame gms either, everything has to through support tickets.
 
- 0.23 is a chapter in itself, you read and hear a lot of opinions that people have stopped playing and you are practically alone in the game. I won't say much about this because instead of cooperation, this patch has created dependency. That should not be the case in a mmorpg, according to my basic understanding.

Phew, actually I didn't want to write that much. I'll save this in case someone gets the idea of deleting it, like the 0.25 meme thread.
 

Get the core mechanics right after all those years and im order for EVERYTHING  to work they finally need a working server tech which doesn't shit itself when more than 10 constructs or players are involved. If that works then change studio and let others with knowledge and experience get game mechanics right. 
 
Oh and hire a god damn UI dev

Whose great idea was it to have the edit and share buttons at the top of the post?
 
Say I write a post, I then proofread it a few minutes after posting (need time to reset the brain to notice one’s own mistakes)...
 
Then I have to scroll all the way back to the top of the post and click on a pull down menu button to reveal the edit function, then click edit. 
 
or say I read a post and want to share it... I have to go back to the top of the post and click. 
 
yeah, I know it’s not a big deal, and the white knights will say: but you’re just lazy. 
 
Still, the point stands that it seems as little thought has gone into the forum ui as the skills ui. 
 
At least the quote button is at the bottom. Lol. 

Simple, put in a timer on ALL ship that if they are parked outside an territory owned by that player (or org) then they unlock in 7 days and can be salvaged.  Removes spam and creates a really cool gameplay paths for players.

I would like to put my thoughts on the CEO change out there as I actually feel a lot of this aligns with what I have been saying would be good for the game for a long time.
 
Right now, DU was forced into an early public release for what many expect will be funding needs. And it did not work out. The short-term thinking and rushed implementation of features has only done one thing, cause more delays and waste dev time because a lot needs to be redone.
 
NQ, by means of JC, kept a brave face, and kept saying that all would be well, that there were no signs that they would not be able to meet the end of 2021 target for a full release. The list of features to be done as well as the immense mountain of technical debt, bugs to be squashed, optimization and polish to be done simply make a release in the true sense of the word at best unlikely for the end of 2021.
 
Now, the vision of JC for the game is great but poses a lot of challenges that are extremely hard if not impossible to overcome. The idea of implementing several vastly different playstyles and preferences in one world by itself is tough, the technical challenges remain huge. JC the visionary could and did dream of his game and how it would all come together while JC the CEO of NQ needed to temper expectations and bring that vision down to a manageable and viable level. And that IMO is where things went wrong.
 
 
When I backed the game, shortly after Kickstart ended, I was certain (and had no issue with) that NQ would not be able to hit the December 2018 release as it was clearly unrealistic for a game this scale. When Alpha opening to backers was delayed by several months and we then found ourselves in pre-alpha and under NDA instead at the end of September 2017, it should have been clear it was never going to be possible to get a release done in about 12 months. Yet, it took NQ nearly a year to announce an updated roadmap which pushed release to the second half of 2020. That new release date was clearly still overly optimistic at best seeing the state of the game at the time.
 
Then a new studio opened in Canada, we can only guess as to why but a combination of using a better tax environment for software development, more access to talent and yes, they speak French there. We do not know the ins and outs of how the management structure worked/works but it seems that much of the decisions were made in Paris still. When the first studio lead left the same year JC moved to Canada.
 
With some fanfare a new backing round by investors was announced by JC in June 2019 and when looking at the normal timeline for Venture Capital investment this was a pretty standard Round A option that was taken after the initial seed. Crowd funding never played much of a role in all this with the eventual 2.5M or so being spent before it was received basically.
 
Around November 2019 and honestly very little actual progress later, still under NDA a new roadmap was released pushing the release out for another year to end of 2021. That roadmap still read more as a wish list of features and still seemed very optimistic to me as NQ still had to implement all main features outside of mining and building.
 
Then, 30th of April 2020, JC announced that the game would come out of NDA and go to public beta with subscriptions instead of the planned closed development up to release for backers only. That was the moment where some of us backers started to see signals that NQ was not doing great and needed to start generating revenue which was never the intention. Meanwhile NQ had been operating on a total budget of around 25Million since end of 2014 so it was only reasonable to assume they were running on debt which in itself is fine as long as you can pay interest and keep paying your bills.
 
In December the 0.23 patch dropped which caused much discontent and an exodus of players with changes which were really not bad in themselves, but the implementation was terrible and very superficial. NQ, again by means of JC, blamed the need for the changes on the small groups and solo players who did not use the markets and did everything themselves so that needed to change. Add several badly handled exploit fallouts to the mix and the fragile player base shrunk at an alarming rate. To me, this was a massive signal that JC the visionary was not able to separate from JC the project manager or JC the company president/CEO.
 
JC also said on several occasions that he saw no reason to assume that it would not possible to meet the release date on the roadmap of end 2021, anyone understanding the amount of work left to do and especially the list of feature JC brought in as “coming in the next year” towards the end of 2021shoudl have been a clear sign of the many red flags regarding hitting a 2021 release.
 
Then, as the next major update came around it was underwhelming at best and NQ had to spin missing their milestone by announcing that 0.24 would arrive in “phases”.
And so, here we are start of April and we know that JC has resigned as CEO with anew CEO being appointed in the person of Nicolas Granatino who also is the CEO of the main investor in NQ. And from here all we can do is speculate on what is next.
 
 
 
My hope is this:
Under new management the potential and promise of DU is acknowledged while at the same time the need for more time is established. A big factor in the assets of the game is the server tech which can be developed and licensed to third parties with potentially considerable revenue. For that reason, Novaquark will be receiving a fresh investment injection with a business savvy and financially qualified CEO at the helm. 
 
To achieve this, the company will need to go through a restructure and cut a lot of mid level ballast. I would really hope that NQ will have the balls to relabel the development to where it is, alpha, and postpone the scheduled release with a TBD new date.
 
Then spend time to fix what they have, work through the technical debt, stabilize the backend and improve their community facing communication to a point where we do not need details but do find NQ to actually listen and be responsive and not “be heard” and then hear nothing back. So many great suggestions and ideas have been lost because NQ has shown a chronic lack of engagement and interaction at even the most basic levels.
 
I have always said and still feel that DU has such massive potential and promise as well as will be able to appeal to many different play styles and ideas but NQ as it was, has never really shown the ability to make that happen. I hope that this change is not the end of the company (despite the "letter", I would not disregard that option yet) but a new start in making that potential come alive and a reality.
 
 
I really feel NQ (and with it DU) has a chance here to recover and grow. From where we now are and for it to work, NQ needs to do their part in showing progress and improvement in many ways while we, as the community, need to start with giving them the space to do that and then get past what was and work with what is to come..
 
 
Let's have a good discussion here and not dwell on the past, we're all here because we have a passion for DU and the only way DU will stay alive is for "new NQ" to be able to make it happen. 

Gee. The game has an ingame codex with info; surely it could be updated each patch, right?
 
NQ: Hint, hint, hint.

Unless the situation affects NQ directly, due to, (say, off the top of my head) incompetent RDMS settings getting used against them without exploiting any bugs whatseover,  just after shouting that they would absolutely NOT assist players who fucked up their own RDMS settings, then I wouldn't hold my breath for an NQ response of any consequence.

Question: Why do CAD and simulation software exist in real life? Why do humans IRL not just slap stuff together and see if it will fly?
 
If the game still required balancing thrust around center of mass (like I hear it did way back in early Alpha), this becomes even more important.
 
People should be able to learn game systems without needing to risk days, weeks, or months of grinding if they get it wrong.

Good? Why do you want to gatekeep the ability to build creatively without needing to grind for materials? JC said only blueprints will be able to be taken out, and I see no problem with that.

No, the end goal of this game is to build a thriving civilization.
 
Pvpers are the emotionally disturbed and should be rooted out and exterminated with prejudice.

Warp cells just need to be removed. Make warp drives have a cooldown after use or something instead. Or make it like Space Engineers and each warp drive can only haul so much mass so far. A heavy hauler would need a dozen or two.