Delove

I would rather kiss the money and effort I have put in goodbye than be subservient and chant 'thank you sir, may I have another.'  I am fully aware that using terms like gaslighting when referring to NQ's activities is incendiary and I do not use it lightly.  Of all the words I have rattling around my skull along side my last remaining brain cell, it is the most accurate from my perspective. 
 
I invite anyone to read through my post history, even the Alpha posts if anyone has access.  I sometimes use hyperbole for effect and I have dabbled in light hearted trolling but the majority of words are for the benefit of the game and community.  I challenge anyone to find any negative sentiment in my words that isn't tied to real issues past and present.  
 
Edit:  
I went digging, this is from the last page of my posts that I can still see.  As far as I can tell the Alpha forums are 'offline.'  This is from approximately a year ago and as far as I can tell the underlying issues that drove off Mega and so many others is still alive and in full control of DU.

I just visited DU Discord. What a CircleJerk that space is ... seems only the 10 or so players left (all PVPers of course) and the 2 NQ devs left there and all praising everything and talking as if everything was stellar .... echo chamber ...

Step 1 Fractualize the playerbase.
Step 2 Remove players from the playerbase
Step 3 Implement a game mechanic that only 2 percent of gamers have. 
Step 4 Put the cost onto the players
Step 5 implement a cash shop that will be circumvented by all the moding you are going to allow. 
Step 6 have the players create all the content. 
 
With these brilliant idea's I would say you already work for NQ. 

I got this great idea....  Lets do things to this game that will improve P2P interactions......  Pets and emotes....  Like we sit around and chit chat.  .....  I see people blazing by at lightning speed.  By the time I do an emote they will probably already be in a ship and gone. 

But new players can't even get paid or buy useful land to them now.    This game already end game and dying.  And I paid for a year!  T3 ore price has now killed what's left of the market for those that don't own t3 land.  A decent ship going ot run you 100mil and you can't even get a 100 mil in 4-5 months because there is no one buying stuff.  

 

This is probably the single best argument for keeping market bots in the game. No one's buying T1 ores, and people severely undercut the sell orders for everything else, to even their own detriment. I'm convinced the people who undercut so much have no idea what their time is actually worth.
 
That being said, I agree. eventually it'll take months to save up to buy a ship, or all the parts you can't make to build a ship, and even longer if you want to make all the parts. This game is a major grindfest with no real reward, and it makes me sad.

How are new player supposed to even get started with those ore prices good luck to anyone new trying to get a ship to be able to afford any items to get started

one word : uninstall.

NQ claims they are trying to fix the economy by removing bots from market, cause T1 ore is injecting too much quanta into the economy. Yet at the same time they leave alt mission running in which allows a handful of players to make billions of quanta a month. So it is essentially like they are putting a band-aid (T1 Ore Income) on a papercut, while ignoring severed limbs worth of bleeding (Alt Mission Running).

I believe ore prices will settle at around 5h/l. Which means a casual player has the following.
100k daily bonus + 150k from their Haven tile: This means a casual player can get around 7.5 million quanta a month. (10 million quanta a month currently).

Meanwhile alt mission runners can get 133 times the amount of a Haven Tile Miner.
(EVERY MONTH this player falls 11 YEARS behind an alt mission runner in income earned.)

This is where some players say... well hold on, there are other things to do!

Asteroid mining: If you mine around 100kl of T1 ore this is now impacted and it will be worth only 500,000h for around 2-3 hours of game time. approximately 30 minutes to fly there, 30 minutes back, and then time to mine, along with some time to wait for a fresh asteroid to spawn for discovery.

2-3 hours of asteroid mining can easily be a person entire evening of gameplay. So if they dedicate every night after work plus babysitting your MUs.

The monthly earnings of an asteroid miner also collecting Haven MU + daily login is only around 22 million quanta.
 
Meanwhile alt mission runners can get 44 times the amount of an Asteroid Miner.
(EVERY MONTH this player falls 3.7 YEARS behind an alt mission runner in income earned.)

Additional Arguments:
 
1. If you are going to an asteroid to mine T1 you are doing it wrong. (no guarantee T2 is there, or that T2 ore asteroid spawns in safe zone during player's gametime.)
2. Then shut up and go to PVP asteroids ( these are both further out, and a good likely hood you will lose your ship if you stay on the asteroid too long)
3. Then shut up and join an org! (Which typically exploit players for the benefit of org leadership, requiring the player give x% of their earnings to the org.)
4. Then shut up and alt mission run like the rest of us you loser! (which further breaks the economy, and puts casual players further behind.)
4. The shut up and quit the game! (which is what many players are doing in mass.)

You can't tell me this game isn't PAY TO WIN! 
You can't tell me NQ is trying to fix the economy whilst ignoring alt mission runners, and nerfing the base stable income of the majority of the player base.
 
  
I AM HIGHLIGHTING THIS...
 

This is heart breaking... 

Surviving... cause the system is now setup so a handful dictate who gets what handouts...
the scraps, the leftovers. we are hoping it gets better as long as the whales feed us.

I want the Developers to see this message. @NQ-Deckard @NQ-Sesch @NQ-Nyota

 

I wasn't going to write this post. It was also a post I never actually thought I would have to write, but events since release two months ago led me to this point. 
 
I don't post a great deal on these forums, but I'm an avid reader and professional lurker since joining at the Alpha stage. I try to keep my finger on the community pulse and to keep up to date on updates and the general buzz. I've played since Alpha and mostly enjoyed all the time I've spent. There has been many times when DU has fought against me and attempted to break me down. However I was always sold, like many others, on that potential carrot on a stick of "What if?".
 
Over the DU development since 0.23 and beyond, the community was gutted due to the introduction of schematics. As updates and patches were introduced to the game, I've watched with dismay the amount of players with high standing in the community, slowly turn on NQ and Dual Universe when they get that stark realisation that this game is never going to live up to that perceived potential. Some go quietly into the night, others announce their vitriol for a few weeks before quitting with much fanfare. 

Being a player since Alpha affords me an ability to see the bigger picture of what I perceive has been going on:
 
If you look at all the updates since Beta started and outside of some balancing updates to PVP and visual upgrades, everything else has been implemented to cut costs due to what I believe as woeful inadequacies at the design and concept level. The vision of this game and what was perceived could be done, didn't match the budget available and the technology. In short, the game that NQ wanted to make didn't match what they could afford to do. Hence, I believe, this is why JC was ousted and the company is now ran by the main investment company (who I feel wants their investment back). The game has had its life and soul gutted out of it, and with every "improvement" it takes another little piece of itself away.
 
When the announcement came that this game was going to be released, I'm pretty sure we as the community, were in the unanimous agreement that it was way too soon. The game was undercooked and needed a lot more time before it was ready. Any development company who wanted their undercooked product to survive would of released it as an early access product. However, Novaquark is a business ran by an investment company who wants to recoup. Keeping the game in another few years of beta or early access wasn't going to make them anywhere near the money needed to recoup. With no new investment, there was only one possible course of action, throw it out the door and see if it sinks or swims. Unfortunately they forgot to teach it how to swim or provide any floatation aids.
 
I don't want to be one of those doomsayers who, when they're not happy with the state of the game will immediately declare "zomg, this game is dead!" But It saddens me to say that, that is what I now believe. It died sometime ago when Novaquark realised that under the budget they currently have that there was no way they could afford the server costs to make it work as intended. It just took some of us longer than it should to see it for what it is.
 
So what is the immediate future? If you look at the current lack of content and updates, all that we're really getting is the completion of the supporter goals that should of been ready on release. Beyond that, as of writing this, nothing, no road map, nothing. No enthusiasm from Novaquark, no excitement, nothing. 
 
Can the game be saved? In short, no. To do this, the game would need a large, fresh influx of money, coupled with a long protracted development time to essentially re-release and reinvent itself. We are at the point of no return though. NQ, I think are running on fumes and they know it. Releasing the game, wiping and increasing the subscription prices and then going essentially dark speaks volumes to their future plans. 
 
I do wish it wasn't this way, and I am kicking myself a little for having to write one of these posts, but I felt it needed to be said. I know this game will still have its staunch defenders (I was one of them) who will go down fighting to the very last day. But this week the game broke me. As I logged in and did my busywork and realised I was barely able to cover my costs to keep the lights on with no real goal of progression any more, my love, passion and perceived potential for the game melted away. 
 
I appreciate my rantings here are purely opinion and conjecture, but if you take the time to take a long hard look at the past few years of this games development, the clues are there. Many of us already know it and made their comments known on the various channels. The tone and overall feelings of the community are at an all time low right now and that should tell you everything as to what the community is currently feeling. 
 
I'd love to be proved wrong, I still want the game to succeed, but my joy and passion, like many others past and present in this community, is gone and it would take a truly Herculean effort on the part of NQ to get it back again. However, judging by recent efforts I won't be holding my breath.

After skilling up in surface harvesting, I flew back to sanctuary and It took me 90 minutes to strip mine my hex. 
sold the ores to Aphelia (who else, ffs) for 2,000,000 ℏ and took the T2 back to Thades. 
 
there was about 3 or 4K of each T2 ore. I don’t even remember since it was such an inconsequential amount. 

The sky is still shitstain brown and the tile is now lifeless and dead. 

This game will be like starbase and that was a one time purchase price i wont be returning to pay $15 a month for this id rather spend $15 on a mmo that has content peace out DU 

The “(estimated)” is mind-blowing. 
 
The idea that they might not have built sufficient margins into their schedule to be able to guarantee meeting their own launch date - the single most important release in the game’s history - where do I even start?

This game is nothing more than a cash grab.  Taking advantage of the normies and the gamers suffering from SFB.  
NQ is cutting their losses and making back what they can and then milking this barren, lifeless, pay-to-wait, boring, non-sandbox sandbox game for the little it's worth.
The real entertainment will come from the reviews.  Watching the white-knights try to defend this game from real criticism is going to be fun to watch.
P.S.  all you plebs that said you where not going to play if there was a wipe... lol   Looks like you're all still here, lol
 
/feelsbadman   my saltiness comes from what could have been if the devs made an adventure game around the voxel building and industry, instead of treating the builders like the red headed step children and catering to the corporation and pvp players.  
/RIP what-could-have-been-DU

I am your alioth neighbour.
 
Msoul is completely right about your tiles and constructs.
 
Delove, your stuff is gone because I looted it due to the inactive asset system, you were gone months, you're tile is still there but all the cores on it are now mine.
(all your surrounding tiles tiles went poof cept one)
 
Its all going to be wiped anyway BUT if you want i can transfer all the cores back to you, i havent moved the ships or dismantled the base.
 
upto you
 
Although i did loot a lot of Core BPS gods knows why you put them in a container, they should be kept in your nano.
 
you were gone months, what was i supposed to do, let some random take it all, least you got a chance to get it back

This ain't eve you don't buy a ship and go pvp like it's nothing people spend hours and days making a ship for some scrub kid to come blow them up in a exploited cube these tpes are the ones that get beat up in school and gotta get there payback in a game lol