NQ-Naunet
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Posts posted by NQ-Naunet
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This is the place to discuss your thoughts about today's DevBlog.
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Hello Noveans,
With release 0.23, we have introduced a long-due system to protect and manage the intellectual property rights of construct creators. This is not just a variant of the existing . Rights and Duties Management System (RDMS), which is mainly in the hands of the owner of a construct. Instead, the Digital Rights Management (DRM) system is in the hands of the creator of a construct, who might be another entity than the current owner. Let’s have a look at how it works.
Creators and DRM flags
When a construct is created from scratch, that is, when someone deploys a core unit, whoever deploys this core unit becomes the construct creator. This can be an organization, if the deployment is done in the name of the organization. This notion is crucial because when interacting with a construct being the creator will give you certain privileges.Note that if the creator is an organization, any legate of this organization will be considered as the creator. It’s a great way to share “creatorship” between several players and be more resilient about people not being in the game for whatever reason.
There are four things you might want to protect as a creator when somebody else is going to buy/use one of your constructs (with the caveat that we may add more things in the future if needed):
- The creation of blueprints
- The copying of voxel structures out of the construct
- The edition of Lua code in Control Units
- The edition of HTML content in Screen Units
However, we wanted the creator to be able to select which protection to activate or not, to give them more control, and also to allow to make a distinction between Control Units/Screen Units that might have been added after the purchase of the original construct (and which should, obviously, not be subject to any protection). So, we needed flags on elements to be able to say yes/no regarding each of the above protection abilities. That’s the purpose of the DRM (which is a commonly used acronym for copyright protection of digital assets in the real world).
The DRM flag for blueprint and voxel copy protection is held by the Core Unit. Otherwise, each Control Unit and Screen Unit has its own flag.
From there, the rule for accessibility of any of the above four actions is defined by: 1. Is the player performing the action the creator? If yes, authorization is granted, if no: 2. Is the DRM flag of the corresponding element activated? If yes, authorization is NOT granted, otherwise it is.
Note: Historical constructs, created before the introduction of the notion of creator signature in construct (roughly around April 2020), do not have a creator. In this case, we chose to disable DRM entirely. Since there is no easy way to guess who was the creator (we can’t easily trace back the history of a construct, originating from several blueprints, etc.), we will leave it at that.
Blueprint creation and DRM managementHow do you set the DRM flags? It is done automatically for you when you create a blueprint of the construct. By default, all DRM flags are set to “activated” on the Core Unit, all Screen Units, and all Control Units; however, you have a relatively hidden (because relatively dangerous) right-click menu option in “Construct/Advanced/Create Core Blueprint without right protection” that allows you to create a Core Blueprint that has no DRM flag activated, which means no protection at all. We will see below in the “use cases” section that this is not quite as useless as it sounds.
It is important to understand that the flag configuration is held by the Core Blueprint. Any construct that will be spawned from blueprints originating from the Core Blueprint will inherit the flag configuration: either all activated or all deactivated.
Once a construct has been created with such a blueprint (or even on the original construct if need be), the creator can still individually unflag any of the flagged elements (with the right-click menu “Advanced/Release DRM Protection”). Unflagging the Core Unit will release the DRM protection for blueprinting and voxel copying. It does not mean that anyone can now blueprint the construct, since now the owner (who is not necessarily the creator here) can use the usual RDMS restrictions on blueprint creation to define who can use this ability. In the same way, a DRM-free Control Unit is still subject to the RDMS as for who is allowed to edit the Lua inside it. But again, this is now a consideration for the owner, who is managing the RDMS, rather than the creator.
Once unflagged, a Core/Control/Screen Unit cannot be re-flagged by the creator. So, be careful when using this, it cannot be reversed.
Now, if the owner of a DRM protected construct decides to customize the construct and add some Control Units or Screen Units, these elements will be deployed without the DRM flag activated. In effect, it means that the owner will be free to edit them, as expected. There will be two types of Control/Screen Units in this construct then: those coming from the original DRM-protected blueprint, with their flag activated and therefore not editable, and those coming from the owner’s personal additions with no flag activated and full edition rights.
Use cases
Let’s be practical here and see some patterns of usage that we believe will be quite frequent.1) The ship designer: This player/org typically intends for their constructs to be sold and fully protected. A Core Blueprint will be created with full DRM activation, and constructs made from the Blueprint originating from this Core Blueprint will be ready for sale and fully DRM-protected.
2) The org internal ships: Those ships are meant to be used by org members and should be created in the name of the org. A special blueprint without DRM would be issued to create ships for the org’s internal use. RDMS would play its role in managing internal org rights as usual.
3) Voxel library designer: By definition, selling or simply sharing a voxel library construct would imply the creation of a blueprint without DRM, otherwise the voxel copying will not be possible.
4) Special customer deal for a ship designer: It could be that the designer of a ship accepts to unlock some aspect of the DRM for a given customer. In this case, the creator will have to access the sold construct and operate on it to deactivate the flags wherever needed.
Still to ComeWe are still missing some important features to fully cover the DRM mechanism. In particular:
- We need to improve the way to find out who is the creator of a construct and provide an easy way to contact them. (You can currently find this info in the “Construct Information” tab of the Build Helper, but it should be easier to find.)
- We need a way for a creator to be able to transfer their “creatorship” to another player/org.
- We may need a way to separate DRM protection for blueprint and for voxel copy.
- We may need a way to allow the creator to activate the DRM flag, not only to deactivate it. (This means the construct should remember what was an original Control/Screen Units in the list of elements of the construct.)
This will come in future updates. Until then, we hope you will enjoy this new addition to the game mechanics related to constructs and that, in particular, ship sellers will now be able to mass-produce and sell their creations without fear!
Want to discuss this? Visit the thread linked below! ?- FireSoul, merihimRefin, Ater Omen and 1 other
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@Chalana I love the colour of your ship!! ?
@Krapylius Your mansion is wonderful!!! Can we have an interior tour sometime?
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On 12/17/2020 at 10:49 AM, Warlander said:
The PvP in this game is so far beyond broken with no actual defense mechanisms to speak of, I would like to propose a Self Destruct Sequence Button like a switch that would allow players to just blow their ship up completely and permanantly in order to prevent PvPers from stealing cargo or all the hardware off the ships they steal. Seeing as they just dump all the items on the market for cut rate prices as they do not have to mine or craft the items, it does not matter what price they list the items for. And, Seeing as the devs are hell bent on creating hype inflation this is win/win to take tons or items out of the game.
Self destruct is an interesting concept, to be sure! I'll share this idea.
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Hey AGramzylife,
We did have some brief, scheduled downtime at 10:00 UTC on Wednesday (the day you made this post).
Have you been having any further issues logging in? -
19 hours ago, Rhotan said:
I am aware NQ-Naunet, I was helping in the discord help chat when it went down. I put a lot of time in the help chat to unbury GM's from responses and to allow them to possibly correct in game issues. On this day the server crash did come right before the scheduled downtime. I know I have hammered management, and will continue to do so probably. I know my expectations will not align with others. The restrictions placed on the front line guys have decapitated one of the best things i have ever saw in a game though. Frontline, we can help you in just a second support.
Reverse the keep the port in support until devs get a handle on spontaneously combusting ships. THAT, at least allows response to players and eliminates a break in information about a lot of other things. The bugs are overloading the CS team with tickets, slowing response, players are getting the smelly end of the stick. I do not play much anymore due to staying in the chat room helping people, which I do not mind at all, but at times it takes 3 ppl to answer the questions.
From my perspective, I am just a player... from that perspective, I humbly request you return the power to get these other players back into the air and underground. Allow the GM's discretion or even free will to fix destroyed ships with a ticket number and logs. CS can set some of these off to the sides and work on other issues such as the talent points and so forth. Even recruit some players to be able to do it if nothing else. We are in Beta as you well know. Paying to play a Beta... when it gets hardcore and we get close to launch, bring back the restrictions. We all come here to have fun and destress. Recent changes have taken that fun away from a lot of people. Please, for the good of the community, press this return GM's being able to fix and teleport folks. We are not ready for such restrictions to be implemented due to the "shoddy" patches what are spawning more issues than they are fixing. I would be having a strong talk with the dev team to get feedback as to why things are getting broken.
Like I said, I volunteer my time in the help chat in discord... I see the issues, help find workarounds, and get people to ticket their issues. I am there frequently I am commonplace. The being able to fix ppl's ships that detonate when sitting down on the controller seat is imperative to maintaining a player base and promoting community - NQ relations. Open it up... let's restore the faith and joy people had before that directive.
If anyone wants to have a debate about it.... I am GAME.
Gah, you're awesome. Thank you for lending your support to other players!!
I understand what you're saying about the teleportation changes, and I will share your write-up with the team. As always, I can't guarantee anything (especially given how recently this particular decision was made), but I can at least re-open the discussion and see if we need to make any adjustments.
Thank you for spending the time to type that out, Rhotan! -
The points will be applied after a brief downtime starting at 9 am UTC | 4 am EST on December 17th.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________Hello Noveans,
December is halfway over, meaning the arrival of the new year is tantalizingly close! 2021 is sure to usher in some big changes, and we couldn’t be more excited to experience those with you. ?
While we were rolling out 0.23.1, we noticed that players who had talents in training lost what was accumulated during our downtime. So, in the spirit of bringing out the old and ringing in the new we would like to offer everyone 1 million talent points (~1 week’s worth) to not only replace lost points, but also as a bit of a holiday gift! Build, explore and be merry!
Thank you for your continued support. We sincerely hope that you and yours enjoy a restful holiday season!
Sincerely,
The Novaquark Team
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Hi guys,
Just popping in to say thank you to everybody who took time out of their days over the past couple of weeks to write extensive feedback here on the forums.
The community team was able to collect and present your thoughts to the rest of the NQ which ultimately led to this evening's write-up from JC.
Even if you're not 100% satisfied with the changes we're making to 0.23, I hope that this at least demonstrates that we do indeed read, digest and execute on your valuable questions, concerns and suggestions. -
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0.23 and What We Learned
In reading through the reactions from our community regarding the recent 0.23 update, we’ve gained some valuable insights.
Before we talk about the changes we’ll make in our processes going forward, let’s get back to the fundamental reason behind the update itself. What we did in 0.23 is at the heart of the vision for a game where a society of players is interacting directly or indirectly with each other through an elaborate network of exchanges, cooperation, competition and markets.
As it was, the current state of the game consisted mostly of isolated islands of players playing in almost full autonomy. A single-player game where players happened to share the same game world but with little interactions.
It’s hard to imagine how the appeal could last for more than several months for most players once they feel they have “finished” the game. It is also a missed opportunity to try something of larger proportion, a society of players growing in a fully persistent virtual world. For this to work, you need more than isolated gameplay. Players need to have viable reasons to interact and need each other.
In many single-player space games, you have ways to make money, and the game then offers you ways to convert this money into whatever you need in the game to progress, mostly via markets. This is the state in which we should end up for Dual Universe once all the necessary ingredients are in place, You get into the game, you farm a bit of money in fun ways, and you buy more and more powerful ships, equipment, weapons, etc., to help your character grow. The difference is that here, the ships or equipment you buy have been made by other players, instead of the game company. On the surface and during the first hours of gameplay, to a new player it would look similar to any of those other space games, but it would in fact reveal itself to be much deeper once you spend a bit of time in the game. Everything you would do would be part of another player’s or organization’s plan, everything would have a meaning. And soon you would realize that you too could be part of the content creation and, somehow, drive the game in the direction you want.
In its current beta stage, DU doesn’t have enough ways for people to make money because we haven’t yet had the opportunity to implement all of the necessary features. There’s mining, of course. Trading is not as good as it will eventually be because markets are not really used to their full potential. As a consequence, players rightfully turned to a solo or small org autonomous game mode.
We tried to nudge people out of this with the changes introduced in 0.23. While necessary, many players expressed that the changes of 0.23 came too soon because it lacked a variety of lucrative ways for people to make money outside of mining.
What We’ll Do Now
The vision expressed above still holds. We want people to consider going through the industry specialization only if they intend to become industrialists and not necessarily to sustain their individual needs; however, we understand that it’s too soon to press for intense specialized gameplay considering the lack of sources to earn money.
Here’s our plan for now. We will modify the formula of the schematic prices to make it considerably more affordable for Tier 1 and still challenging and worth a commitment but less intense for anything Tier 2 or above.
This will allow most factories focused on T1 to resume their activities rapidly while keeping an interesting challenge for higher tiers, spawning dedicated industrial facilities aiming at producing to sell on the markets. We will also reimburse players who have bought high-priced schematics since the launch of 0.23 (please give us some time since it may take a few days as we go through the logs).
We will keep monitoring the price of schematics to see if it makes sense to increase or decrease the costs. The right approach to set such a price would be to evaluate how much time it takes to recoup your investment by selling the products that the schematics allow to produce. It should be a few months so that the investment is a real commitment and it makes sense to plan for it. We currently lack the metrics to properly assess this return on investment time. We need a player-driven market price for the components and a market price for the products to assess the profit made by each run of a schematic. This will come when the markets start to work as intended, and we can gather more data about them.
Feedback and Testing
The release of 0.23 also taught us that we need improved ways to test new features, both internally and with community participation. The Upvote feature on the website was a good start, but it’s not enough.
To address this, we have two courses of action that will be taken. The first will be to set up an open public test server, hopefully with shorter release cycles, for players to try out new features. This will also allow us to explore ideas and be more iterative. If all goes according to plan, this test server should be introduced for 0.24, the next release. It will mirror the content of the production server with regular updates to sync it.
The second important initiative is to revise the role of the Alpha Team Vanguard (ATV), getting them more involved in early discussions about new features and the evolution of the game. We are still defining the framework, so more information will be released as available.
What is to Come
In the short term, we will push a few corrections to improve 0.23, which include:
- Ships will now stop (be frozen) when their core is destroyed in PvP, making them easier to catch.
- Element destruction will impact the restoration count only when it occurs through PvP, at least for now (not when the ship is colliding/falling as we want to avoid having players penalized simply for crashing their ships because they’re learning how to maneuver them, for example).
- Recycling of un-restorable elements through a recycler that will take an element as input and grant a small amount of the schematics required components as output.
The next major release is already in the making and will be about the mission system, a first step toward giving players more fun ways to earn quantas. We will reveal about it shortly so that we can get as much feedback as possible.
We also want to reassure you that the mission system is not the only answer to offering more varied ways to earn revenue in Dual Universe. Things like asteroid mining and mining units will be introduced in the next few months.
This list is by no means complete, but should be a good jumping off point that gives players reasons to fight and to explore, opportunities for pirates, new ways of making money, and a plethora of other activities our creative community will think of even if we didn’t.
That’s it for now! We want to thank you again for your support and patience as we progress along this beta road! See you soon in Dual Universe!
Want to discuss this announcement? Visit the thread linked below:
- Daemortia, Oran_Gootan, Metric and 33 others
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Just now, Bobbie said:
To be honest i feel the same way about "likes". They don't promote quality, just popularity. And no, those are not the same. More often than not it's lowest common denominator.
I've been on forums where the "likes" option was actually removed at some point, and people reported how their experience of the place had improved, as they realized how they were (mis)using the number of likes on posts to judge them, instead of actually reading and employing independent critical thought.
Hahaha I realized that I 'liked' your post out of habit upon reading - oh, the irony! ?
This is good to ponder! A post with a high number of 'likes' may discourage people from voicing opposing opinions lest they earn the ire of the 'popular' group. I haven't seen anything like that take place here (that I know of), but I'm definitely going to keep it in mind.
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I love this so much! You've done a fantastic job.
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13 hours ago, Rhotan said:
Here is a good example of a lapse in communications. I post it here due to the fact the community is still reeling from the issues caused by the .23 patch, my previous post calling out the communications issues, and the continuation of those issues.
I argue that the Keeping the "PORT" in Support should be relaxed for GM's to be able to repair the carnage caused by such instances without lengthy processes. If a player can submit the ticket, with log files, they should not be have to wait to get back running in game. The ticket and logfiles would be for review of possible exploitation by players. If they are exploiting a situation, for example, they file a ticket to get a repair supposedly due to a crash caused by NQ through some means, and did not suffer damage from the event but are seeking to get elements lives restored due to another cause of damage (PvP, bad pilot), they should be held accountable. Once NQ has that ticket number and verifies the existence of the ticket, GM's should be allowed to get a player back in the game.
Also, the fetch tool is another way to help players help themselves until a sense of normalcy is restored. Unless it was causing huge server performance issues of course. Changing it back to constructs lose all velocity in the event of a disconnect would be another thing that would be imperative to assist in the lessening of requests for repairs and teleports. Tie in something to ALT+F4 to stop exploits (if you have not already).
@NQ Management, it is ultimately on the leaders to whether their nations or dreams thrive or fail. This may be a paycheck to some, but it is outlets for social interaction, enjoyment, relaxation, and the creations of empires for so many more can live out their dreams.
'Do not walk in front of me, I may not follow. Do not walk behind me, I may not lead. Just walk beside of me and be my friend.' - Albert Camus
Hi @Rhotan,We take your requests for more timely information very seriously. Despite doing our due diligence by posting Monday downtime information on Sunday, it seems that a server crash thwarted our original plans somewhat.
Please see the screenshot below for the full sequence of updates:
Having said that, I can certainly identify a gap here. Another announcement reminding players that the scheduled downtime was about to begin would have been helpful - next time, I will assign another colleague in a different timezone to keep watch and ensure everyone is informed at all times.
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Thank you for your suggestion.
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On 12/12/2020 at 5:58 AM, CptLoRes said:
I am not trying to start something here, but that is a fallacy. The person most unlikely to look at the complaint impartially, is the person who applied the ban in the first place.
I can see why one might feel this way, but I can promise you that all moderation cases are documented and saved in a space where all staff are able to review them. Nothing is enforced in a vacuum, and there's no short supply of objective perspectives.
I hope that's reassuring.
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Glad to see this was resolved, Kirth.
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On 12/13/2020 at 3:30 AM, Emptiness said:
@NQ-Naunet You said you were looking at that more than two weeks ago. We are still limited to 10 reactions per day. Any news?
With the preparation for and release of 0.23, the task of finding out if we can raise the reaction limit on the forums has creeped down my personal priority list.We are still planning to update the overall look of the forums, and I suspect once we get our designer on that job we'll revisit the matter of reacts.
I will say that, upon pondering it further, I do wonder if giving people the option of a "dislike" will be detrimental to the overall quality of discussion. I see it frequently on places like Reddit, where the 'downvote' button is supposed to be used to dampen irrelevant content but is, unfortunately, frequently used to 'brigade' people or express discontent/anger instead. (@vertex makes this point very well in their post further up this topic.) -
On 12/11/2020 at 6:30 PM, GraXXoR said:Quote
**EveManny: Can JC meet us out in the PVP zone after this AMA so we can uh "speak"**
NQ-Sophon: Sure. I'll bring my "godmode" powers and we'll have a friendly chat :slight_smile:
That figures.
He was teasing. He's not actually going to show up to a player PvP event purposely overpowered.
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On 12/12/2020 at 8:18 PM, Deintus said:
Yes thanks for the transcript, for me it is hard to find RL time to pop in discord whenever and my schedule never meshes with them.
Change the way you advertise the game NQ. What I am seeing here is nothing like the imagery or web site promises I saw. The only excuse given is that "it takes time", and this is given as a sort of catchphrase for several current issues such as PvP, Dev Diaires, Mining Units, and many, many other topics.
Any long time gamer isn't an idiot, of course it takes time, all this is telling me is that this game was released waayyy to early. This is still a very obvious Alpha game and it looks nothing like the grandiose vision JC has painted above. I see ore replanting, server wipes, bot market manipulation mapped out and while not directly stated in some cases, most definitely hinted at and I do not feel like starting over again with some job-like tedium grind everytime a major patch drops like this latest one. I would still be playing WOW if that was my cup of tea.
You're welcome! I like having things on the forums, too.
Thank you for the feedback on our general messaging. I understand that "soon" and "it takes time" are a bit of a meme these days!
In a perfect world, how would you like to be communicated with when we aren't able to share a definitive date but still want you to know that certain things are looming on the horizon?
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On 12/11/2020 at 6:19 PM, OverLordByron said:
Is it just me or do the responses seem to show frustration, with just a hint of resentment? Each answer seems to show an increasing level of anger, like he's mad at the players for what they've done with his game. ?
Aw, that's certainly not the case.
I was on voice while he answered each question - there was no anger present at all.
We were all a bit anxious given the new Discord AMA format we were trying out, so perhaps that's what you're picking up on. Otherwise, please be mindful that JC's first language is not English. Some things may sound more 'blunt' as a result, but he appreciates players more than anything. Never hesitate to ask for clarification if you're unsure!
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On 12/12/2020 at 7:49 AM, Deintus said:
If I may ask, WHEN will this update be? Is there a short term quick fix for those considering leaving the game?
0.24 (the next update) isn't set for release for some time - we've got to get beyond the holidays, first!
We have been carefully considering everyone's feedback about 0.23, and have used it to make the following adjustments:
- A full talent refund. All of your talent points will be refunded and your current talent training queue will be cleared!
- A temporary Holiday Bonus Daily Reward increase to 150.000 quantas!
- Fixing honeycomb schematic prices. For reference, here is the exact formula used for schematic price calculation: Price = 500 * 1.5^Tier * max(100, schematicRunTime)
- Market bots will now temporarily buy your T1 ore for double the usual price. (They will also purchase T2 ore.) This is to compensate for the absence of other income-providing methods that will be introduced early next year.
Please keep your eyes peeled in case we announce additional changes/updates.
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Hello.
For those that were unable to attend (or simply prefer the forums over Discord), here is a transcript of the AMA JC held on Thursday, December 10th to field questions about the 0.23 patch release.I would like to issue a very big and special thank-you to a player by the name of The Chargent on Discord for compiling this information! If you see him around, please let him know he's an asset to the DU community. ❤️ (Note that the entire AMA is available to read on Discord as well for posterity.)
Here we go! Blue responses are from JC, default text colour are the questions:
**Asteroid mining before or after territory warfare?**
NQ-Sophon: before!
**VarietyMMOs: Jc. The element destruction and core replacement in the latest patch has made pvp and Lose-lose situation. Even if you win a fight you still lose in overall resoureces. How will this be addressed? is asteroids nq response to this? if so when will they be implemented**
NQ-Sophon: The key idea in the evolution of PvP that we have in mind is to allow you to better target parts of the ships you want to target, and also have different types of damage for different types of elements/voxels in the ship, so the current situation where you have to obliterate a ship to "win" should go. But this is not for "right now".
**Akthurya: Could you say more about other income-providing methods and what are the NQ plan to incent players to explore multiple carrier and path to generate quanta? (Not having every player as an industrial man/woman)**
NQ-Sophon: It's indeed at the heart of what we have tried to do with 0.23 to make it more like the game is a "society of players" rather than solo/small group self sufficients entities. That does not mean you cannot play solo, but you will use the markets to interact (anonymously) with thousands of others. Now, the key to this is to be able to make money and it's true that right now, it's mostly mining. In fact, there is also trading, but for various reasons this has not been used so far (mostly because the economy was not igniting as everybody almost was playing in isolation). The next step is for us to introduce a mission system where you will be able to make money, and (this is still in discussion) possible competitive arenas (for PvP) where players can face each other (without risks for their real ships). This would be an extension of the current tutorial "instance" mechanisms, but you will be able to bring a ship along with you. These are just example, we are working hard on the pb of "how to make money without mining all the time"
**NQ-Sophon: Why was the update brought now and not next year? => **
the reasoning is that the game is currently getting people to reach end game way too fast. Once you have been to endgame, it's hard to go back. So, it's better to fix this asap so that new players to not be impacted and have the proper experience. It's not cool, we get it, but this is the way the game should have been from the start. Now on the bright side: think of all the business opportunities in the game right now. Lots of people with lots of needs, and lots of trade/cooperation/exchange possible. This is a new challenge, and we believe it is surmountable. We might have to do some minor adjustment over the coming weeks, so we stay listening to you guys, but the core idea will remain.
**CDEEKS: So, what are NQ doing to improve the solo player experiance and small group as often many mmo games cater too much to the larger groups and oprgs and the little guy is left behijnd.**
NQ-Sophon: Extension of the above answer, to clarify: 1. mission system (more about that soon, in the next release), 2. more events, 3. arenas/sandboxes based on the tutorial system but more "open", 4. asteroids yes!. A bit later we will have a revamp of the PvP and territory warfare.
**InfoDeath: Question: How are you going to address the fact that some organizations that had members in the Test Server, and were aware of the latest changes ahead of time, Used that insider information to stockpile various endgame items before the patch was announced?**
NQ-Sophon: We are going to introduce a much larger public test server soon. And we will keep working with ATV with a different approach that will be more about discussing future evolution ahead of the push in the test server. We want to avoid pushing completely new stuff in production as we have done so far.
**Virtual: Question: Will the ability to blueprint anyone's ship you have build mode on from before the update be fixed?**
NQ-Sophon: Yes, this is a problem that will be fixed at the latests by next week. The fix is in QA.
**WhiteMeat: Hi JC, I really don't have any issues with this update at all honestly, and a lot of unnecessary complaints. However what I love about this game is that you can be creative. What I don't like is that it takes quite a bit of work for you to excersize any type of creativity. Are there plans to give us a bit more freedom for this, rather than spending months to get the right color of honeycomb trained for your building, etc. ?**
NQ-Sophon: We are really considering the possibility to introduce a form of sandbox mode: like a tutorial, but with infinite stuff in it and persistence. It would not be in the real world (so all you can bring along from there is a blueprint), but it would allow you to build, test ships, etc, with no strings attached.
**NoRezervationz: Hi JC! I have a background in real life manufacturing. I know for a fact that manufacturers use their own R&D to make their designs (you call them schematics) and use that single design/schematic across all their machines. Why did NQ decide that the same schematic needed to be bought multiple times for multiple machines? Related, why wasn't there a system in place for players to do their own "R&D" on schematics instead of buying them bots? I ask this, because you made many references to real life comparisons in your last Q&A**
NQ-Sophon: The proper way to look at a schematics (the name is perhaps misleading) is that it's a whole factory in fact. It's a thing that allows you to produce complicated products in mass volume, from components. A factory is usually worth millions or billions $ in real world, to produce goods that are way cheaper that the cost of the factory. This analogy can help to understand the prices here and the metaphor. And R&D on schematics: yes this is planned, I don't know when we will have time to implement it, but it's a good idea. And perhaps we will introduce also way to earn schematics without necessarily buying them on the markets, but for now this is the first step we had to take.
**Odendis: Will NQ consider a more agile process of development where patches are generally smaller but more frequent. Can we also have Dev Dairies return so we know what is being worked on and can weigh in on it.**
NQ-Sophon: yes, we plan to be more agile in the future: sharing our design plans with the community more in advance and engage in discussion ahead, plus using the future public test server to push smaller iterations more often.
**MalphasWats: @NQ-Sophon Hi, What roles do you see more casual players filling in the next 6 months or so? What content will there be aimed at 'shorter' play sessions?**
NQ-Sophon: As I said in a previous question, there are a lot of things cooking that will address precisely that. One example is the mission system. You'll be able to fulfill small missions (issued by other players, or by Aphelia) with a clearly stated difficulty (mass to transport, distance, etc). This is a cool way to go around in the game world, to make a bit of money and to build relations with other players (the mission issuers). Always this idea of a society of players.
**XKent: Why you advertise game as PVP and don't care about PVP ? You do advertise NOW as PVP, not in 2 patches. You nerf it over and over to the point that it's impossible to PVP. DU is fake news ?**
NQ-Sophon: PvP is probably going to be the biggest overhaul of next year and it will change it deeply in a super cool way, introducing a lot of tactical elements, and more roles, more options. I'm really excited to talk about it with you and we should probably to a dedicated live session on that. Rest assured that we care a LOT about PvP. Things take time however.
**Alias: 2. please bear in mind that not all noveans read patch notes. So my suggestion is to implement more popups for every player to highlight the biggest changes (like alt+f4, industry changes..) and make patch notes readable ingame :slight_smile: **
NQ-Sophon: 2 => We are actually putting the finishing touches to a new launcher, which will allow us to push news about the game directly to the players, and also will have a dedicated section for patch notes. It should come for 0.24 or before early in the year.
**McSoon: Mining unit soon ?**
NQ-Sophon: mining units are tied to Territory Warfare, because TW is also about giving more value to territory tiles, some of which will be related to their capacity to be mined with those mining units.
**_Kiwi_: When are we going to get a second solar system?**
NQ-Sophon: the plan is to have that somewhere in the second part of 2021, definitely for release
**copperlein: Will it be possible to use the recycler in the future to recycle elements?**
NQ-Sophon: The recycler is in discussion yes, no shipping date yet, but it will come
**smurfenq: How are we as pirates supposed to earn anything when we have put all our efforts into one specific area of the game that now can't earn you anything as the stuff we shoot will be deleted? There is currently no way for us to communicate/surgically destroy enemy ships, so isnt the consequence for bad decision making rushed as there is no decision for us to make, i.e. AVA or specific elelemt targeting.'**
NQ-Sophon: First, there is the points I mentioned about the future of PvP where you will be able to be more surgical in attacks. Also, the idea here is that a ship can be partially destroyed (with restoration points remaining), so it's not clear that you will necessarily run it down entierely each time. But the recycler would help to make sense of that, I agree
**3ApNTerra: What lead you to the decision to increase bot ore prices. This is just removing more resources from the game rather than encouraging those resources to be used.**
NQ-Sophon: It is meant to be temporary until we introduce more ways to make money (next release with mission system). We will see how that flies and we might revert anything related to bots at any given time.
**Alias: 3. ammunition schematics are all at 168.750Q ?! why all same price? and why so cheap? compared with other things its just a drop onto an hot stone ? - must be changed - ammo shouldnt be that easy to have/get in mass!**
NQ-Sophon: 3 => the schematics price formula is P = 500 * 1.5^Tier * max(100, SchematicsRunTime)
**Catavarie: Are there any plans for providing analytical market data such as price history and volume moved of each individual item so that players can better determine what to specialize their production towards and an API with which market data can be analyzed outside of the game? And any timeline on when these market features can be expected?**
NQ-Sophon: Definitely, as we know this is crucial for traders to do their (very important) job. However, this is also a lot of work for the team. Right now, we are discussing the much easier option to introduce a market API so that you guys are not stuck for too long times.
**Dr. Dehydration: Hello JC, I see many players calling for a wipe. Instead of a wipe what if a element decay system was implimented? This could clear up a lot of abandoned ships and other various buildings and elements from the servers, as well as open up territories which were claimed.**
NQ-Sophon: there is a detailed plan we have to introduce "garbage collecting" of abandoned constructs but this is not a priority. Element decay sounds like something that could be seen as too harsh if it's generalized.
**Dropdeadfred: Could you please consider adding all of the T1 schematics, and Kergon, to every planet? There are a ton of players in the outlying planets that were unaware that a change like this was coming. Some of us are looking at a 10-12 hour round trip, plus fuel expenses, simply to have refiners making iron again. We can't even make the fuel needed to make the trip.**
NQ-Sophon: We will see. But what you just said sounds like a fantastic business opportunity for "entrepreneurs" in the game to provide you with a market-efficient solution ? People say there is not much to do, but each of these design choice are made to trigger indirect opportunities for some players to address needs of other players and make a business out of it. Let's see how it evolves.
**TacticalDonut: Has these last 24 hours given you any insight into your industry changes, for instance schematic prices? Will we be compensated for any changes in prices if we already bought in(with every quanta we have)?**
NQ-Sophon: We are aware of that and honestly we don't have an answer right now. We need to look into what's possible to do and if we can compensate players without leading to abuses. We have a meeting planned to discuss it but I don't have an answer right away, I'm sorry.
**Regarding Meganodes** (This issue has since been fixed.)
NQ-Sophon: Yes, we know. This is a tricky problem. We tried to fix a bug around territory scanner results and it introduced this issue on mega nodes. The plan is now to fix the fix, but it will reshuffle the ore distribution in any "cell" not yet mined. That means: more mining opportunities (good), but also all scanner results on untouched territory tiles will become invalid. We tend to think it's better to regen the ore and invalidate the scanner results, but we know some players made a business out of those scanner results, so...
**ChaoticOne: You say people are reaching "end game" too fast. What is even end game in a building game? As long as I have ideas, there is NO end game. So how do you get to determine that for us? Can we just admit that this was a back end way to save the servers from not being able to handle what you thought it could? I don't play games to spend years trying to just build a box. Sorry this was alot, but all questions are of same caliber.**
NQ-Sophon: The changes made in 0.23 have nothing to do with server limitations. When I talk about end game here, I was mostly talking about the industry gameplay. And, as a consequence, the isolationism that impaired the economy.
**BonemanJones: Will we ever be able to create mining ships with drills on them to allow us to mine more efficiently?**
NQ-Sophon: Not in the short term, but it's not out of the question in particular for asteroid mining. Note that we can't also have mega chunks of stuff mined in one shot, because of server calculation costs involved.
**CedriVastal: A pressing question among many builders and architects is would it be feasible under the current engine to implement finer controls or more sensitive incremental rotations for precision placement in build mode as well as core placement/blueprint placement?**
NQ-Sophon: Definitely, and it does not seem like a huge addition to put on our side. Like everything else, we need to balance priorities here.
**McSoon: Mining unit soon ?**
NQ-Sophon: mining units are tied to Territory Warfare, because TW is also about giving more value to territory tiles, some of which will be related to their capacity to be mined with those mining units.
**Forodrim: 1. I see that on the Start Screen there is the exploration and shipwreck now ticked as finished. Does that mean the current version of it is the final version? Because I think it is rather underwhelming as it involves no real game mechanic, like scanning or similar. **
NQ-Sophon: 1. => most feature like that is never really finished, so we could invest more and more time in it forever. We will continue to make small adjustment and iterate on it, but we can't invest vast amount of time in it anymore (hence the ticked box), at least for now (until release is done)
**Noddles: Why not introduce power mechanics first and see how the effect industry before these changes?**
NQ-Sophon: power (or, "energy management" as we call it) is tied to territory tiles, hence it is also tied to the big "territory warfare" update, which include a lot of work on making each tile more valuable, including related to their energy production capacity. We could decouple it, but this is not the current plan.
**EveManny: Can JC meet us out in the PVP zone after this AMA so we can uh "speak"**
NQ-Sophon: Sure. I'll bring my "godmode" powers and we'll have a friendly chat :slight_smile:
**Kurock: With players mining big holes in the planets, is there a plan to do anything with the tunnels and new cavities formed?**
NQ-Sophon: Not at the moment, but there is a possibility one day that we regen underground areas that are not under claimed territories, to save on resources on our side.
**GraySeeker: ‘ think of all the business opportunities in the game right now. Lots of people with lots of needs, and lots of trade/cooperation/exchange possible.’
All NQ talk seems to be centred around this business premise. It seems that you are overlooking one important factor: People like to build stuff themselves.Creative people aren’t driven by economics, power etc. The driving force is to create, to build. And DU is awesome for this. A primary reason the market hasn’t been used as you would like could be because people love to make the stuff themselves. Are you concerned that people will sink all their money into schematics to carry on building as they have been, buying little else from the market which could end a potentially worse situation? If you think mining to buy a mass produced component is more interesting than making it yourself then you are in danger of purposefully killing the fun of the game**
NQ-Sophon: We don't expect all player to "sink all their money into schematics" in fact. We expect a minority (10%?) to go into the industry gameplay, and compete on the market to provide low cost "products" to all the other players. It will be vastly cheaper to go buy on the market, than trying to produce yourself (like in the real world). We will how that works, but this answer is a call to arms for industrialists: you have a lot of customers out there waiting for you! Also, about the more creative side: as I said above, we are really thinking about creative sandboxes. More to come soon.
**Nemaca: Hello, as a new player, how can I learn the new ways? Are the Turtorials updated? Thanks!**
NQ-Sophon: I know we have spent a lot of time updating the tutorials but I'm not sure it's completely done (and, in general, we would like to add way more tutorials). I need to check that with the team. Hopefully also we will see some videos coming out with more details. About the new industry, I would recommend: if you want to become industrialist, start small, pick a slice in the production chain, buy the components, sell the products, and iterate. Soon enough you will have a pretty large factory, especially if you start with T1
**Regarding Support**
NQ-Sophon: We tried to explain the situation in the AMA on Monday. The truth is that we got absolutely overwhelmed by the amount of tickets we received at the launch of the beta, despite the fact that we had ramped up our support team in preparation. We had a exponential effect between the number of new players and the number of bugs and issues, which flooded our support channels. So what we did is we prioritized the tickets, first with the ones that were preventing players from playing the game. For the past few weeks we've been going back to the backlog, with most tickets now honestly obsolete. It's really not ideal, and a lot of tickets got answered very late, admittedly. I can ensure you though that we've ramped up our team even more (but it takes time to train the teams on a game like DU), we are building more tools to help the team, and we're almost done with the backlog of tickets at this point.
[Discussion] DevBlog: Rebalancing the Universe
in DevBlog Feedback
Posted
NQ-Stormeye is a GM, Rhotan. We do not have an official application for community helpers yet. This is a project that's in the works, however.
We'd like to start up an official program now that the game is out of Alpha. Thank you again for what I am sure is tireless dedication to helping your fellow players. ❤️ As soon as we fire up an official program, you'll be among the first to know.
Quick note: I'm going to leave your original post up for posterity. However, a quick reminder before I go further - please refrain from posting screenshots of communications you have with NQ staff or other players to make a point. We understand that the 'no screenshot' rule applies mainly to private conversations, but your post is in danger of crossing the line of naming and shaming as you are publicly critiquing a response you received from an NQ staff member. While it's perfectly fine (and even encouraged!) to voice your discontent so that we have the opportunity to learn and improve, airing targeted grievances with the use of screenshots brings the post a step beyond constructive criticism and into potentially harmful territory. In conclusion, if you're neutrally sharing information (an announcement, a feature clarification, etc.), a screenshot is fine to include. If you're using screenshots to 'build a case' against someone, reconsider creating a public post and instead bring that information directly to an NQ staff member for review. We are always happy to help.
Now that that's out of the way, here is the community structure you requested:
When we say we are bringing information back to the team, this is what we mean:
Please note:
Our volunteers and staff members alike are wonderfully diverse, meaning not everyone speaks English as their first language. For this reason, you may receive responses that seem unexpected to you (like what you quoted re: "false positives"), so please keep this in mind at all times. It's always okay to ask for clarification if you're confused due to an unexpected response.
Try to assume positive intent whenever possible, as our helpers and staff (as you would well know, being something of a helper yourself) are only here to assist to the best of their ability. What NQ-Stormeye was saying is, essentially, that we have to follow procedure lest we create a "too many cooks in the kitchen" situation.
What I mean by following procedure is this: Helpers, Mods and GMs can keep an eye on emergent situations (bug related or otherwise) and compile player reports. Those reports are then summarized and placed in an internal space where CS and CM can take action. CS takes action by prioritizing those bug-related tickets and tackling them, and CM takes action by creating messaging to be spread to the various community spaces. If each tier of community attempted to act independently to get to the bottom of an issue, we'd risk losing important information or communicating the same thing too many different ways, resulting in more confusion.
In conclusion, nobody is trying to give anybody the brush-off. ❤️ Rather, we're all working together in an attempt to form a more efficient chain of support.
As promised in a previous reply, I have reviewed our reasoning behind this recent "keeping the port in support" change.
We ask that players use in-game support chat or an official ticket to request a teleport to avoid visual clutter from building in Discord's help channel. This is all part of the aforementioned process we're developing to ensure scalable efficiency & speed of responses. (No, we're not perfect yet but please bear with us! We will get there!) Outside of bugs or glitches, players can assist one another in getting from point A to point B. NQ-issued teleports only make sense when an issue within the game renders a player unable to play properly.
Additionally, I can see that you are frustrated by the current support backlog and I would like to touch on that. We are addressing it and, as JC mentioned in his most recent DevBlog, we have learned a great deal from the rollout of the most recent game patch. Going forward, we will be changing our tactics to avoid some of the pitfalls you mention. We care a great deal about providing a great experience for our fans.
I hope this was insightful! Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any other questions.