Sephiroth000

Exploring holes and tunnel systems are exciting the first couple of times, but since there is nothing in them it will quickly wind off.
The rest quickly becomes a routine chore instead, and after a while finding a new mega node is pretty much the only thing that is remotely exciting. And extracting the ore from a mega node is boring (pun intended) as hell.

You can remove the element and hit backspace to undo, this will apply current talents.
 
@Haunty I tested everything, it is apparently working.
containers:
 
fuel tanks:
 

Eh - I don't really agree with you.  Yes the game needs a lot of things. NQ/JC are aware of it.
 
There is quite a bit of unique tech in this game. You really think you can just log into AWS and setup a server mesh that 'just works'. 
 
What DU does is very unique - there isn't a game like DU today period.
 
I do agree that JC needs to stop looking at how a book about a fictional game did things and starts to look at how games that work today do it. Specifically when it comes to pvp, territory control and mitigation of griefing and handling other uhh 'open world pvp tactics'. I keep saying this over and over - JC really has no idea how hilariously grief prone DU will be with territory control.
 
I am not at all upset about the current state of DU.
 
I AM upset about the lack of communication and clarity about the future mechanics. Hell, explanation of exactly how current pvp mechanics work would be a start. Don't tell me players have figured it out, ask 10 different people and get 10 different answers.

Lets be real, this beta is going to last through 2021 and probably a large chunk of 2022 if not the entirety of it.
 
There is no way NQ will be able to chew through even just the current list of features on https://upvote.dualuniverse.game/ for 2021.

I wonder what percentage of the planet tiles have either been scanned or had at least one node mined from them. This week I've scanned over 100 contiguous tiles on Jago in the middle of the oceans, as far from any markets or obvious settled bases (multiple tiles claimed) as I could. Barely any high end resources and I've mined through at least 6 mega node empty caverns (and those are the ones I've randomly encountered). I kept going further and further to see if I'd get into an untapped area and just fell into another mega node cavern.
 
The problem with this mining experience is not only is it RNG to get the high end resource you might need, but the odds of finding them continue to decrease with time. We are barely into the launch of the beta here and great swaths of the planets are scanned and cleared of the best resources. Yes, I'm sure there are "many" untapped tiles out there but the odds of finding one are continuing to decline. This is not a good experience and will only get worse over time. 
 
Yes, new planets might help, leaving this system a resource desert. I really think some kind of ground healing, random resource respawn system is needed.

Theres been a lot of interesting discussion on options, and I hope they picked up a lot of the good suggestions. And Im thinking a good mesh of options is gonna be the way to go. My favorites:

- Power budget tied to core size. 
   + All elements that affect combat should draw from this, with a reasonable pool to allow for ships to function well balanced, but also allow for specialisation by trading off. ie. Cant plaster with brakes&engines and still field large weapons on a XS core. So you choose, slow with big weapons, fast with smaller etc.
- Rework on radar mechanics
  + dont know all suggestions here, but untie lock on range from core size, but rather move it to a formula based on Mass*power usage. Tie in some defensive systems that can reduce it (with the above tradeoff mechanic.
  + one sugestion I saw was to make radar size influence radar characteristics: Small radar has shorter lock on range, but is a lot faster locking on. Large radar has huge lock range but takes longer to lock. This encourages specialization again.
- Hit chance being influenced by relative speeds, influenced by ship rotation and distance and cross section. Shoot a small ship at high speed far away? big chance to miss. This mechanic should be the replacement for core size bias (ie. the need to not have L cores nuke XS cores with no chance at long range) 
- Weapons need to check for collision on receiving and firing end. Now they fire through other cores. If atmo combat comes, ground needs to collide weapons too. Else no use for closed carriers.

There was more but this is what was on my mind. Oh and remove magical brakes  They need a trade-off

There will always be some Meta, we just want it to be one that is fluid.

This is the core of the argument. NQ would love for everyone to buy into this and pretty much went out of their way to try and portray events to align with the sentiment this is/was an exploit. and pretty much spun the response in such a way that it appears to be a matter of an exploit being used and the players involved knowingly and with malicious intent sabotaging the market system and causing loss of data. Problem is that there is enough information available to at least poke holes in their response.
 
It's not an exploit and NQ did not create one by a dev being dumb and leaving a market with open access in RDMS. 
 
This is a case of players taking advantage of an incorrectly set RDMS. NQ has been hammering home the fact that they consider RDMS theft as perfectly fine. They drove home the notion that if you mistakenly set RDMS wrong and someone takes advantage that is your loss and they can't get involved. And that is actually fine for me.
 
Were the guys doing this wrong? yes
Did these guys continue to make dumb moves? certainly
Should there be consequences? yes
 
Is it good for NQ to pretty much play the victim and quite literally spin and twist their rules to fit justifying a permaban? No on many fronts
Is a permaban justified here? IMO certainly not
 
NQ could have benefitted from this positively in many ways, certainly publicly. Now and over the next few days if not weeks, the opposite will happen and they should have realized this action would not go down well. Many, many people who had never heard of DU or might have and were considering joining will at best have second thoughts and/or based on blown out of proportion hit piece videos and articles decide to stay away and "spread the word" which is not what the game deserves or what NQ can afford to happen. And all of that is entirely on them for not considering their options, not reconsidering as the first signs of this started to emerge and stating quiet hoping it will go away as they tend to do.

In less than two months they have now created two incidents which have been blow up in the gaming press with a negative image of them and reflecting badly on the game and that is a shame.
 
This situation is very much reminiscent of the recent incident with a CSM member for CCP/EVE, a knee jerk reaction before all the facts are in line and then a massive fallout as more details emerge. CCP was smart enough to recognize the situation, take ownership and correct it. It blew over and actually got them praise for being able to own up on their error, take the hit when they turn out to be wrong and overreact. I honestly do not see NQ be able to do the same, in fact I expect NQ just pressed delete on these guys and went back to sleep. I also expect NQ will just start handing out more bans and mutes as this continues to be a topic thinking they can make it go away in that manner. I think NQ has a lot to learn still and do wonder what JC would think f this as I somehow suspect he is not actually (fully) informed on this matter.

this sums it up quite well.
 
"instead of reporting the bug and waiting, dudes decided to actually disrupt market trading for anyone living around alioth 15."
 
its true partially, but it was never the intention of the players at any point to disrupt any trading (but a consequence clearly). and market 15 was incredibly far out and basically deserted, the devs have restored the market now and the damage was minor. but yeah definitely not the best approach on the players side, tho a reversible one. im fairly certain no one wouldve expected this kind of badly done storage of the data. if that wouldve been known to the players no one wouldve touched it. im also fairly certain damaging anyone was never the intention it was more the interest of disassembling the market and checking out the innards. like you would expect for a game thats full of engineers and builders. later on some other people came aswelll and took a bite after the whole thing was out in the open for hours and hours and NQ did not react to it.
 
"instead of a temp ban and a meeting with GMs to find out where player-dev communication broke down, permanent bans are issued."
 
especially considering NQ has been bragging about "being so close to the community" this point is very disappoiting as you can see theyre absolutely not close to the community, when it comes to their mistakes they get even unreasonable and defensive. officially starting to spread lies about "it wasnt reported" even tho there is clear evidence that it was. this redirection of blame is shocking.
 
Now NQ shrouds themself in darkness and expects the internet to forget.

instead of separating data from UI, market data was encoded into physical game objects.
instead of double-checking RDMS, NQ staff released an editable marketplace.
instead of reporting the bug and waiting, dudes decided to actually disrupt market trading for anyone living around alioth 15.
instead of a temp ban and a meeting with GMs to find out where player-dev communication broke down, permanent bans are issued.
 
Everyone sucks here.

"and makes NQ look bad" you actually made me laugh hard right there. Maybe its cause NQ actually did badly in this situation in every possible aspect. Oh dear. Yes the bans show clearly "players will pay for our mistakes, even if theyre within the legit game systems". Because of the inherent hypocrisy in their actions they havent achieved any show of power but shown that they easily panic and overreact.

Very good.
 
> How is NQ making changes to a market's RDMS any different then them making changes to yours?
 
 
It's not. But if NQ changes my RDMS to be public and someone else loots my stuff, who is to blame?
 
Even if it's part of their job, they made a mistake doing that job. They are to blame. If I make a mistake doing my job, I don't blame the clients....

Forgetting to set the permissions is a retard mistake by the developers. 
Are you going to call every mistake a bug now?
If you get drunk and piss your bed, was it a bug? 
They didn't need to "read developers mind" they read the TOS and it clearly states that permission based theft is totally permissible. 

There is no one central who is capable of managing this. JC is a naive researcher who thinks you can run a gaming company like a research lab. But as someone who has worked in both areas I can certainly tell you that's not the case at all. 

They have made great progress as far as server performance goes.  That only makes it more tragic that they are fumbling game play and balance.  The software is brilliant but the design is lacking.   
 
There were market problems on launch that players had been warning them about for months. It took a game balance disaster to make them see there was a problem.  Anyone looking at the way radar and weapons work could have predicted the borg cube infestation yet here we are.  Their element wear and tear plan isn't going to create nearly enough of a materials sink when planetary pvp launches. Then as we see here, the game has an easily exploited or overly complex rights management system. 

The devs have only admitted that one of these was a problem and that was after damage was done.  This game could be steered in a good direction if they would listen to their player base a bit.  This incident of banning those who brought attention to their mistakes (however extreme the method) has solidified my opinion that NQ are too prideful to take advice. 

I certainly believe the dev team can pull it off, the performance during the recent EXPO pretty much made that point very well.
 
IMO what is giving you the impression you have and the problem in general is the support and community team who seem to be understaffed, ill trained, lacking soft skills and empathy and are often both out of touch with the devs and the overall community. Not anyone in particular (as I am sure that most absolutely could and would do better if they had the opportunity) but as a team.  And it feels like there is no one central who can or is managing the project.

I see nothing that indicates NQ is changing. They pretty much act and react like they always have. they may have improved parts of DU, specifically voxel meshing was brilliant and an excellent improvement even when it's a pretty standard and well known technique, but hey are still generally hiding symptoms expecting to some day be able to get back to fixing the root cause. And I kind of get that but the amount of technical debt they will have built up by now is immense. 

Yeah so like - without the relational model of the DB you have no idea what how many tables you need to touch or what other restrictions are involved that may cause key dupes etc - I don't want to drag this off on to a tanget, but I've been in far far too many situations in RL where a 'simple db change' like the above is in reality incredibly complex to implement. 

If that is correct, and it sound plausible, then that is just very bad database design. If a market disappears, the linkID in he database should not be affected, it shoudl just throw an error when queried due to the destination not existing
 
 
But it should be obvious by now that database design for DU is "fragile" at best for a number of reasons

NQ can fix the orders - the issue as I understand, and this is really just me talking out of my ass (hurr hurr), is that once the market terminals were all gone, the DB that stored the orders for that market lost the reference to the market. So now you have a bunch of orders tied to a market that just doesn't exist anymore.
 
A 'replacement' market created in the game will likely have a whole different element ID meaning they would need to go through and take the old ID for market 15 and replace all the orders to the 'new' ID in the backend DB. It's work and it sucks and I'd hate to have to do it if I was in their shoes. Any and all DB changes like this are scary and error prone...

And if THAT is possible - and I am not saying it's not.
 
What is NQ doing about all the cases where players lost their stuff and NQ just went "lol git gud at RDMS scrub"

What grinds my gears is that player owned markets are coming.
 
It's only a matter of time till they do, and then an org will build a market - and sooner or later some org will setup a market and screw up their RDMS perms.
 
We all know what NQ will say when that org complains about their market getting looted.

Really sorry to disagree with you on this Vertex, but "have a negative impact on their gaming experience" really does need rewording. 
 
It's so vague that it becomes meaningless or makes rule-breakers of everyone (e.g. am I having a 'negative impact' on your gaming experience by disagreeing with you on a forum? Pretty sure ONIXXX had his game experience negatively impacted, I read about the theft happening on the support forum). 
 
This game has aspirations to be a PvP game, like EVE. Player conflict is actively encouraged. 
 
What DU are failing at is drawing the line between what is ok and what isn't. Between player and avatar. Between PvP areas and 'safe zone' areas. 
 
If the model they have drawn up for player run markets, at a time when orgs are stealing assets through both RDMs and exploit theft, can so easily destabilise more than just the voxels maybe they need to rethink that plan? 
 
It genuinely troubles me that this incident has raised an issue that could make player run markets not viable. 
 
Or do NQ have to add in a mechanic / rule that territory warfare is not allowed to happen in tiles with markets, because that could have a 'negative impact' on third parties trying to buy at those markets? 
 
That would be so open to abuse, everyone would just put a market in every tile.  
 

Once again NQ fails to learn from other games.
 
https://massivelyop.com/2015/10/03/the-game-archaeologist-the-assassination-of-lord-british/
 
This could have been the same epic tale - instead it's just stupid drama....

Whether this has happened due to a bug (i.e. Marketplaces were never supposed to use RDMs but be "hardcoded, which IMO is highly unlikely due to the fact everything in the game uses the same systems that players use, even market tiles are claimed using territory units) or due to incorrect settings in RDMs, the whole thing has been blown out of proportion. Did the players make a mistake by making and publicizing the "ultimate heist" on Reddit? Possibly. Most likely yes. However that only sets the scenery to what is essentially a "make or break" decision on the NQ's side.

Had NQ reacted in good humor, fixed the problem, and owned up to their mistake, they'd actually build and reinforce trust of their community. They would've come out on top, as a team that can take responsibility for their mistakes and fix them. As someone with years of community management experience, I'd go a step beyond that: I'd create a "ruin of a marketplace" with a memorial plaque that would say something along the lines of "MP15 has fallen prey to a legendary group of bank robbers", to make it part of the lore. Then I'd build a new Marketplace next to it, and recover lost items to the unfortunate players who had their stuff listed. The lesson is simple: Does it seem like bad press? Take ownership of it, turn it around, make it work for you.

It's very unfortunate that instead NQ reacted the way they have. Their response, and reaction of Discord moderators who started handing out mass bans for even mentioning the incident is what creates bad press. I mean, it's their choice to make. Just not a choice that I'd make as community manager.

Regardless they had an bug, we can atleast agree on that. If they knew about a bug for days and they don't tell their community that using the bug is an exploit or they don't fix it. 
Then it shouldn't be a ban for using something that could easily be a feature. Communication is key and they have failed over and over with it. For example, when they enabled force respawn = lose inventory, a lot of players force respawned before they even put out the patch notes about this change.