Warlander

A lot of people talk about how DU is "dead" or "dying".
 
Unfortunately, I think that the few objective numbers we have tend to back up that claim.
 
I don't think there's been a singular "mass exodus" but a slow and steady churn:   
8 months ago (official trailer)
1.6 Million Views 7 months ago (pvp trailer)
742k views 4 months ago (beta trailer)
659k views 2 months ago (official building trailer)
167k views 3 weeks ago (DU: a look ahead)
10k views 1 week ago (DU Lost in transit event)
<5k views Reddit
~50 people online on average, 8k total members, low engagement  Twitter
15k followers, low tweet engagement all around  
  I get that many people don't use social networking at all...but a growing game has a growing social presence...certainly not a shrinking one.  
 
Also, NQ no longer has any job postings -- maybe they filled them all (in which case dev should be going faster lol) or maybe they realize their runway isn't going to last for as long as they first expected. 

Well, all three entries were removed so I guess NQ has no interest in anything like this..

Adventuring in Dual Universe
 
The forrest.... I love this place. And yet there is no reason for me to be here. I went here today looking for idea's and inspiration. It's a really nice place. Just to stand still, look around and listen. Everyone is in a hurry to gather resources as quickly as possible and amass fast amounts of quanta to become the best industry mogul or richest person in this universe. I've been there already. I've seen the numbers go up in many other games and it can work very well, to get people addicted. It's what many mobile games do. But it's not really what you want to do. You are compelled to do it. Having things is not fun, using things is and discovering and creating things or achieving something to a smaller degree. So why am I standing in this forrest? I know new trees and biomes are comming and I'm exited for it. But I fear it won't change much. We need something new and different. Something that triggers a more primal desire... discovery. When I stand here I feel like this is the place to be. This is where I will find something, and I did...

 
I found a tree and a plant that I don't think I've ever seen. It might be the light though. I also found some T2 ore in seemingly higher concentration than outside the forrest. But that's about it.

 
I want to walk around this place without a scanner and stumbple upon a rock that is really rare and expensive, relatively.
I want to find a rare tree, indicating there is a resource nearby that I can't scan for but may have to dig for.
I want to find a rare mushroom and sell it for quanta.
I want to climb a tree and gather berries, coconuts or catch a squirrel for a pet, it might be a rare color, and sell it or keep it myself.
I want to find a rare plant that is used as a component to make a different or better type of ammo.
I want to find a strange rock that turns out to be a golem that drops rare resources when I kill it.
I want to catch bees or butterflies with a net and have them as a pet.
I want to find a bee hive and risk my life trying to get it and sell it for quanta.
I want to hear the sound of crackling wood and discover that a tree just fell over nearly missing me as I jump away.
I want to get stuck in mud or quicksand and have to use my tool and a tree to get out.
 
I could probably go on for a while but I think you get the gist of it.
 
Caves... one of the most epic and scary things in the game. Yet there is nothing to be scared about.(I know this is not a real cave, use your imagination )

When I discover a cave I expect some danger and reward.
I want to see a cave full of shiny crystals to harvest like surface material.
I want some of these crystals to be dangerous and look almost unnoticably different and shoot lightning at me.
I want to see seaweed in places or more alien plants that obstruct my vision in my attempt to look for things that might be hidden here.
I want to discover ancient seamonster skeletons I can gather and sell for quanta. (They don't have to exist and could just be extinct like dinosaurs)
I want to have to use a grappling hook or tractor beam to pull me to the ceiling where I see a patch of gems that would get destroyed using the dig tool and requires the use of the gather tool instead.
I want to see rocks falling from the ceiling that could crush me or they are a signal of more rocks following that could do that. The rockslide may have a small chance of exposing something but won't change the geometry.
 
Snow... I just want to be able to make snowballs and throw them at players to stun them for a second or make them fall over  and have a fridge to store them in.

And people like you who see things in black and white and make up their own facts ruin the world.

The point is that we _know_ that the safezones around planets are going away and also what conditions wil need to be met for that to happen. Still people keep rehashing this in what I really consider an attempt to shoehorn in easy kills more than anything else. And with hat happening, tis year, the pewpew brigade looking will get heir chance provided NQ brings in the needed counters to that. In fact, using existing options to circumvent getting caught  it wil remain fairly risk-less to warp even when the cost may remain relatively high. Set up off the main warp lane entry with a safe corridor through claimed tiles and the chance of getting shot is only slightly more than what it is now.
 
 
The security argument here is in line with the "bring friends/guns" and pretty much shows a lack of understanding of how hauling as a profession in game works and what the margins are that allow that gameplay.  In a game like this, hiring anyone to "protect" you inherently hold the risk of being double crossed and attacked which generally is greater than the advantages it brings. What we need is mechanics that mitigate the risk of slowboating to a point where it becomes worth the risk and we're not quite there. Using throw away ships, calculating in a 10% loss due to piracy and using Warp are the only currently available options that there are. Escorts are not a risk worth taking besides the fact the game really has no (fleeting) mechanics to properly use such options. 
 
We need ECM, possible stealth and decoy mechanics and similar to be able to leave the warp drive and it's cost at home. NQ has said those are coming so why don't we wait for that to happen sometime this year. The continuously whining and complaining by some about temporary restrictions is getting both old and serves no real purpose as, again, we know once certain conditions are met, this will happen this year.

For me it is the BIGGEST issue with the game, internal comms.  I read over and over again that all there is to do is mine in this game.  When actually that is totally not true.  The problem is that you need to search for all the other options.  You can be a prospector (but you need to use another discord), or ship sales (but again, really need another discord), you can have your own shops (but noone know they are there), you can offer refueling / repair services (again though, noone can contact you about it in game - discord again).  I have a list of 15 different Career paths you can currently take in DU, only 3 of them are really viable without having to work outside the game.

I really think that once NQ allows us to share / advertising what is going in actually IN the game, then we might start to see the civilisation start to emerge, not the current sandbox of hundreds of seperate orgs that barely interact with each other.

Its just the nature of element based lighting vs voxel luminescent lighting. The element lighting does not stop when it hits a wall since its just a big sphere of light though if you build around the light it will direct what light can pass through to some effect. But even so it still is allowed to luminate in its sphere of influence that also seems to multiply if you add more lights to an area to make voxels inherantly luminescent to some degree with non blinking light sources. The voxel lighting however does apprear to illuminate an area and stop bleeding light through other voxels.
 
For example I have a ship with 2 large verticle lights as the blinking element. I built around them to cast specific light patterns. I usually park it next to my shop that also has a static non blinking light. That light affects the ship and makes it glow as it does the voxels in and around the shop and if you fly above the shop at night you can see the sphere of light it casts on the ground around the shop. But also that the two flashing lights slightly timed differently react off the reflective surface of the shop and the elements inside also flash when the ship blinks. Its just the nature of lighting.
 
It does seem like the sun however is somehow not bound to element lighting and casts shadows and light shafts that is meant to not effect the other voxel or element based lighting. Its no surprise that the red color is more neutral and looks like it does not bleed as much as it is not the standard white but it is likely there regardless or that somehow having red might act differently then a pure RGB color value white, red, yellow, blue light would produce.
 
Honestly I wish there was an option with a slider for light intensity or reach so you could better affect how the dynamics of the lights react to the different sources.

Yep. All that's true. Still want to crash their script if I can. (I'm very hostile to scammers and advertisers making it hard for me to use the market.)

If you dont see that orgs are breaking this game in every aspect of the game I dont know what to tell you. They need limits. Thats all there is to it in order to create any form of balance or its game over in like 5-10 months if things dont improve. Believe it or not idc.
 
Hey it used to be 15 friends at one point. Trying to build an org but people quit the game quite frequently. All im saying is my perspective. It doesnt matter if im 3 or 300 the scale and quotas of the machine scale to what you can produce. Its the only frame of refrence I have and judging by the demands im supposed to have a bare minimum of 10-25 people. We roll with the punches like everyone else. /shrug

There's not enough buyers of the stuff...bottom line.   I agree with out decay there probably wouldn't be anyways though.  More people = more builds (dynamic and static) = better economy.  With that being said, a secondary to make money other than mine would be awesome, too...

exactly - which your magnetism = gravity theory doesn't
indeed, but rn and with all the things we know right now - one of us is wrong. and that's fine
 
has nothing to do with anything so idk why that's here
 
yes, that's called progress. backed up by the scientific method and not some random YT videos
 
AGG needs fuel, that's a given. that's called balancing the game. Has nothing to do with your claim that magnetism = gravity tho. Even as an ingame explanation that doesn't make any sense. 
 
thing is tho, you started the whole RL thing with some random and bad explanation why it may work. 
 
Had to laugh so hard because it reminded me of some old CoolHardLogic video on SpiritScience lol

All current markets are owned by NQ, so it falls on NQ to police them.
Once we get player driven markets, I assume that we also get the tools need to dictate how to run them (yeah I know, but one can hope..).
 

The issue is supplying the high atmo stations.
 
We put ours up 5.5km. It takes a lot of fuel to get heavy freight up to the station from the surface. For space travel we just land or fly from space so it cuts out nitron. We also have bases on the ground as well. The problem still is that anti-grav only works at 1km up and only with the flight scripts out there that it allows it to be used like a hoverpad. Since NQ nerfed the speed to about 4mps it creates the need to have a pedistal in order cut that time down. To get up to 5.5km it takes 30-45 mins to rise up that high. So we are forced to build a pedistal that uses the container range to your advantage so that you can just put mats from the ground 2km up and just float up from there cutting off roughly 5-10 mins. We are also considering making another pedistal that is 4km up to make that trip even shorter or that at that point we could just direct transfer to the station from the second pedistal.
 
The problem comes when you want to get people up there from the ground base. In which you could easily exploit the rez pads but how much longer until NQ nerfs that so you cant really count on that staying around much longer with some kind of limits like the maneuver tool nerf. Most people spring for the teleporter tower route or the space elevator route and building up Static cores. For us 5.5K will take a min of 515 L Static cores to get there and more like 525-50 if you consider the overlap between cores to be able to add the teleporters. The real issue is the lack of being able to teleport from 1 core to another even within your own 1 tile territory let alone adjacent territories you or your org own.
 
So the only real solutions is towers, pedistals, and space elevators because NQ for whatever reason hates Sci-fi tech in a Sci-fi tech based game.

They could likely disable screen scripts while in the market.
 
NQ should really put up a bunch of billboards for rent. You want to advertise you put the money in for how long and it goes into a que by who is waiting. There should be something like 100 billboards for reent at the districts or outside the parking zones in the grassy areas. Sounds fair to cut down on the cores and the rest of it. Just image money and length of time put into a que. Where every market has advertising. Charge like 1mil credits per week. If its paid and run through NQ they should enable gifs or other simple animations. If people dont like your ad there should be a report feature. Not 10 votes and gone if people dont like you for having an ad. But a legit person checking the ads if reported and using common sense.

As it does in mine... and in mathematics. Your second "or" is apparently right according to this below.
Seems that it was an intentional balancing leading to JC wanting to deliver more content... I mean wanting to slow down the fastest players.
 
 
Yes... Those were the two skills that I presented and it is obvious how they work...
Just like how +5% ore extracted  means plus five percent ore extracted.
 
But how do you THEN say that +5% ore per level equates to speed? How does your curious interpretation of the skill's meaning mesh with the two skills you yourself defined identically to how they actually work, given the tweet from NQ.
 
 
This is just so wrong I can't even...
 
You even literally used 1+5/100 in the next part of your calculation.. i.e. +5%
 
 

We do not know if it really is a compound multiplier or a linear multiplier, leading to two different answers.

compound  1 * 1.05*1.05*1.05*1.05*1.05  =  (1.05)^5  = 1.276
linear: 1 + 0.05 + 0.05 + 0.05 + 0.05 + 0.05 = 1.25
but given that things like container capacity bonuses, fuel tank capacity bonuses, weight reduction, thrust bonuses etc are all linear and not compound, I'd go with the latter.
 
Heck, as mentioned by someone in the thread, it could even start from 75% of the max extraction at L0 and go  from 80% at L1,  85%, 90%, 95%, to 100% (full extraction) at L5.
This would lead to relatively larger percentage increases of 85/80 (6.25%) for L1... 90/85 (5.88%) etc... 

It would be nice to actually get OFFICIAL information in the OFFICIAL forum and not have to trawl through the morass of umbrage that is Twitter, like US citizens used to have to do to find official information until last week.

It is intentional. I consider mining to be the root of all evil in this game.
 
You cant point to any one system and fix it that does not directly lead back to mining. Every single system in the game is impacted by mining. How much you can produce, build, fly, fight, etc is all based on how much you can mine. You cant change those systems without changing mining. Or if you do it just adds more mining and tedium. You cant lessen it or the mega orgs just get that much stronger with more cash in their pockets saving up for TWs. You give them any incrimental increase and it comes out to millions/billions down the road for mega orgs and hurting everyone else even more. It always comes down to mining. And NQ has developed themselves into a corner because of it. And instead of putting hard limits on the top end and chopping from the top or decreasing their ability with scaling systems that hurt the megaorgs the most while still allowing everyone to progress and catch up to them they are designing a game against the majority of players instead of the mega orgs.
 
MegaOrgs should not be able to scan whole moons in about a day. They should not be able to scan a planet in a weekend either. 50 people scanning to do that is ludicrous. Why is there even tile scanning in a finite resource game anyhow? Why shouldn't they have to go out and just mine? Or be required to drop 2 mil per TU drop and be required to own a tile to see whats in it in the first place? Or just not having it at all because it breaks the game? And because they can see all the juice tiles and tiles containing rare ores they have full carblanche to rape the resource pool with superior numbers and then turn around with all bonuses and flood the markets with low cost undercutting measures that in turn take away peoples production at a potential loss to break even.
 
And because all that shit is downright broken to all hell they have to tune the industry to their resource aquisition rate. Since it takes everyone much longer to do what a megaorg does it adds so much more punishment, time, resources, tedium, and general grind because there is no limits. Because there is no limits there is no limit to the measures they think will fix the market but it just cuts everyone out of the market just that much more when you suddenly drop things like schematics that just drops 100s of millions of credits hostage on normal players while to a megaorg just jumps over it like a hurdle as it creates a content barrier for no reason. Why because mining is fucked.
 
And because mega orgs can just pump out unlimited products because they know where all the ore is and have been mining since day 1. Like the thread a while back where the people watched some other org steal billions from them. BILLIONS. At this point NQ probably should just consider giving them Free Build Mode because they honestly have gotten to the point they dont actually need resources anymore. They have so much mats, ore, parts, items, and overall oppulance that it kills the market its so incredibly saturated and the only illusion keeping it up is the same people also manipulating the market so it looks like there is one. They have so much that it boxes everyone else out. Why? because mining is fucked.
 
MegaOrgs dont really need to fight they are all in competition against us not each other. Sure some people pvp or they roll out their North Korea style military parade to flex their muscles with a blockade every once in a while but they dont even really need to we know who runs everything here. Why because mining is fucked.
 
It makes losses for the rest of us huge since it takes us a lot longer than a 500 person org. There is no chance to catch up because they have been at it for so long in a finite resource driven game to catch up. The tile scanning alone might take 50 a day to scan a moon but it takes smaller orgs with smaller scanning crews 10-100x longer. Which takes finding what is left of the dead tiles 1000x longer which takes mining longer which makes filling daily machine quotas longer our parts output longer, building longer, ship building longer, and selling for no real profits on the back end making things take even longer.
 
You cant make this a viable game unless there are hard limits or pop caps on orgs. As much as JC wants to turn them into their own factions they just arent. there isnt enough division of power or the ability to slow them down from destroying the game for everyone. No one single group of unified individuals should wield that much power without setting hard caps to org populations and forcing smaller orgs to work together which will create different leadership heiarchies, sister orgs, and stife to create conflict. Factions are multiple allied orgs working together not just 1. It lends to rivalries or hatred of each other to be organic then 500 people exploiting everything as one unit because the devs dont see it as a problem. Its the main problem with this game.
 
100 people base should be a pop cap with talents. They should have to work with other 100 person orgs and create an alliance that turns it into a faction. It does the same thing but it gives more chances for other to lead sister orgs and not any single emperor. Each alliance faction should be able to vote. Each alliance should have hard market buy/sell limits. Each org should have a set role structure required to run the org based on talents and roles as qualifications for those jobs they need to fill so that every org has what it needs to function. Orgs should have scaling costs that get worse the more you push vs hurting everyone else. That means scaling taxes, TU drop costs, rent, upkeep on their fleet/industry by wear and tear, and the total they can list in the market. They can buy all they want. But something drastic needs to be done to put them in check and allow people to catch up. It should not be an easy ride to stay on top. It should give them more work the bigger they get not the rest of the playerbase.
 
NQ/JC has no clue where this thing went wrong in the systemic flaws in this games design. Its all because mining is fucked and they cant stop rewarding megaorgs with every handout. Its too late to change any of it since its their "vision" and people have worked too hard to just make them all start over. Im sure some would be up for it but it needs to happen.
 
NQ has developed themselves into a corner with the base pass of mining to the point where if they even remotely think about improving mining it will destroy the rest of the game. If you change mining in any way it effects every aspect in the game down the line and the overall ability for scanning crews and mega org mining crews to profit even more, produce more, and not have to fight more. You cant change mining at this point unless the whole game changes in the process. You cant point to any one system and say hey this has to change without some way leading back to

Hey now you are opening up a new job opportunity. Towing and removal services!
 
Someone's automated store sitting on your favorite landing pad? Just call on CGI's towing and impound yard! Great rates guaranteed?

I dont see why NQ does not have billboards and advertising space all over the districts players can pay a premium to rent in a que for however long?
 
There is no need to have potentially hundreds of advertising barges all over the place if they just had boards set up all over the place or above the airspace of the market or going down somekind of restricted travel airspace.
 
I think that anything over an M screen should be bound to Static Cores and not Dynamic. Just big enough to use screens in ships.
 
Anything else you should rent at a premium reoccuring weekly fee or paying for a set amount of time to give others a chance to advertise as well.
 
 

Mining is broken, Mining talents are broken, the actual content of materials per m3 is broken, But this seems all to be intentional since debating it since day one did absolutely nothing not did we get an "I hear you"response.  So: Yes it is all broken and NQ is aware but its most probably intentional like this and will not change.  Its sad, on a good day i might see 2 people active. It used to be so many. Now? Feels like DU itself has Corona infected and everyone ingame is in ingame-quaranteen.  Sadly though, since du to the lockdowns people should have so much time to actually play.

It’s not player vs player when one person is flying a murder ship and is skilled out in combat skills and the other is just a hauler. Real PvP is a challenge fighting people in ships which want to participate in PvP.
 
if you are not finding enough people who want to participate in PvP with you than the problem isn’t warp destroying PvP, it’s a lack of people that want to be involved in PvP.
 
Warp isn’t free, it has a cost. These traders are making a decision, risk getting into a fight they have no chance of competing in, or add the cost of warp to there overheads.
 
combat ships murdering traders rather than offering them a charge to escape etc., that’s what is killing PvP as everybody has to use warp or just be killed.

I want to be honest, I feel exhausted.
I've tried to adapt to this new system but it's too much. I've been working towards a few goals but every step involves more and more mining, first for the schematics and then for the materials, I've basically been only mining since .23 landed.
Yesterday I was again mining on alioth when I realized the closest order available with a reasonable price was like on madis, I don't know wtf is wrong with NQ but they'd better hurry and fix this game before it's too late.
 

You're not helping anyone. Parasocial? Naw man, all business contracts (like subscriptions) are a relationship. I pay you money, you make a product that I want. I signed a contract and paid a sub to beta test a game and I get alpha changes being made that break gameplay in major ways. I consider that a breach of contract. They knew before going into this patch they were going to piss people off. Weeks before .32, there was a suggestion similar to the way schematics were actually implemented and it was met with pretty cold reception. They knew it was a shit idea at this time and implemented it anyway. When .32 dropped, they broke my confidence and trust right then and there. It proved to me that NQ has no idea what the majority of their player base wants or what the game actually needed before hand.
 
Listen, I know you have no real clue that you're not helping retain this customer over here for NQ, otherwise you would've just shut up and continued on with the crap sandwich of a game you paid for. If you really like being crapped on, hey man, stick around and they'll do it again and again.
 
HERE IS WHY I'M NOT HAPPY: I signed up for a game that advertised that I could do anything, even alone. Great! I signed up. Then, after months of me putting in time to build a small basic industry just to I could toy around with ship building, THEY BROKE THE GAME WITH SCHEMATICS. AT THIS POINT, it was no longer the game that was advertised to me. SO THERE YOU HAVE IT. IS THERE ANYMORE CONFUSION IN YOUR MIND?

Jankies they would have gotten away with it too if it wasnt for those meddling open beta testers demanding content.

I share your view on this since the planets and moons are the real prizes and they arent set up to be sustainable since you might have T1-5 or like T1-T3-T5 mats on the same planet but no real means to sustain a long war. Once mega orgs take over the top planets and cut off top tier tech or graded items its pretty much game over until the 2nd most powerful org can no longer produce that tech and gets steamrolled and the top mega org just goose steps down the planetary line down the Tiers and controls everything with no equals. Its just the natural order of how that will go.
 
Since planets dont have everything they need on planet to be self sustainable to some degree as I think planets should have exclusive abundant resources but also that they should have some basic amount of everything with more random variety between moons or planets so that a war can actually be fairly waged and balanced so that 1 org cant reliably cut off whole tech trees and their grades.
 
Or that owning a planet is basically just becoming the government of that planet with a voting system of rulesets on that planet where the controlling mega org is bound by law to the citizens/residents of the planet if they are part of the org or not and more of a temporary land lord than a warlord. Where other systems of planetary governments also are part of a forum or solar system set of laws that each planet can come into conflict over if it deviates from the solar senate.
 
But that the ruling org of a planet can set zoning, taxes, put of a vote to declare war, evict people, or use their numbers as leverage in votes but still giving everyone that lives there a vote. Since the ruling org is a temporary landlord in the cosmic game of musical chairs it does not mean that citizens wont be targeted in cosmic wars it just means that all the ruling orgs territory and infrastructure needs to be destroyed to claim the planet. But I do feel as though there should be OTUs or organization territory units that claim a cluster of 7 tiles at once or larger zones, districts, regions that cost 10s to hundreds of millions to claim vast areas at once with wherever you drop it. If a tile in it is claimed then it should be at a loss or pick another random tile around it.
 
But with all things considered pvp is a trainwreck, it will continue to be a train wreck for a long time to come and kill off more players then incentivize them to fight rather than quit when they lose everything in a non stop mega zerg once the taining wheels come off.

As we were discussing this on another thread I kind of refined this idea and posted them on Upvote. Not yet approved so not visible..
 
First off, I'd suggest adding a consequence to a respawn that deters from using the mechanic. The suggestion is to remove a day's worth of talent points when you respawn in addition to losing inventory. This would mean it becomes less attractive to respawn for no reason and at the same time it adds significance to getting killed.
 
In case of the need for a respawn due to a glitch/bug.. There is always the ticket system and NQ can review logs and reimburse when shown to be the case.
 
 
Second, a standing system which would mean that based on interaction with other players you build standing with them and/or their org (either positive or negative). Completing missions and trading could be such actions. At the same time, killing another player or failing missions will reduce standing. It shoudl not be an option to manually add standing either way, it needs to always come from (inter)action with players.
 
 
Lastly, a capture mechanic. When you get captured, the mechanic will run a timer during which you are unable to move while you can stil interact through chat or emotes. The duration of the timer will be dependent on your standing with the captor, if your get captured while you do not have a negative standing with them, their standing with you decreases. The duration of capture will be a set timer multiplied by the opposite of your standing so a good standing reduces the timer, a bad one increases it. Once the timer runs out, you can't be recaptured for X amount of time allowing you to move away.
 
At any time during capture you can opt to respawn. Doing so will cause loss of inventory and talent point and when respawning during a capture timer the loss of points will have a multiplier based on your standing with the captor. The duration of capture also has the same multiplier from standing.
 
Links to upvote (not yet visible):
Respawn causes talent loss - Dual Universe
Standing system - Dual Universe
Capture mechanic - Dual Universe