NQ-Naunet

When you have to leave your house every day to go to work.  Not leaving your house for two days is the coolest of plans. ?
 
 

Knowing a second lockdown may be issued today, not really. 
I kinda enjoy this pandemic tbh (beside all the deaths ofc). Noone gets on my nerves, ppl don't come near me and don't bother me, I have time to read and everything is slowed down. Good times. If only it was all the time that way 

Oh yeah, shoot! Sorry about that, folks. Totally my bad. I shuffled a few things around as I was tidying up the forums, and forgot to create the new Alpha Goodies section. It's up now! ?

You'll probably see things moving around here for another month or so as I comb through posts and watch for your feedback. Nothing's going away permanently, though! I just need it to look and feel more organized for my brain's comfort.  I like to use an iterative approach in all that I do to ensure the best balance is ultimately reached.

 

Don't worry one bit - I always try to assume positive intent. ? The key functionality you described is fairly ubiquitous across a lot of MMOs, yes, but I just wanted to acknowledge your suggestion. Apologies if I came across as shallow/trite!! (I've gotta think up a better way to verbally 'thumbs up' something.)
 

You're welcome! Sorry for the mini heart attack, there. ?
 
 
I'm honestly quite touched by the high level of player passion I've seen around here so far! (Even the spicier posts demonstrate nothing more than a huge desire to see DU reach its full potential, to me.)

Thanks again for being great, blaze. It's been nice chatting/learning about what matters to you.

I think what they're saying is that IF we had the ability to adjust the position of, and rotate elements with more precision, then we wouldn't need the canopy glass triangles to "snap together".
 
Right now when you hold CTRL elements can be moved in larger increments.  What we really need is another modifier key, that allows you to move and rotate them in much smaller increments also.
 
Having elements snap together is nice.  But i think to most builders, that's a far less important feature then the ability to position them with precision.
 
The square glass panels we have now are already insanely frustrating to get into position.  So if it's just a matter of snapping together easily, i say let us have the triangles, we can handle a little frustration. ?
 
I'm super excited to hear more about this either way though, so please do tell us more when you can.
 
In general i would love to hear more about all the problems.  Understanding why we can't have stuff makes it SOOOO much easier to accept.  The biggest one for me would be the "voxel vector editor", why is NQ hesitant to implement it?

This is something I'd love to help with, if I can.  

Where are you seeing the lack of engagement currently? I know the joke around the forums is that nobody posts on the forums, but that has and will continue to be different now that I'm on board.

Please elaborate, and I will bring your concerns to the rest of the community and support teams.

I should give you a disclaimer: I'm attempting to understand this as a person on my third week at NQ and a non-programmer, so "snap together" is the best verbiage I have at the moment. ?

It's definitely more complicated than that, and I'm currently attempting to get a programmer to explain it to me in a way that programming-savvy players can appreciate.

I should give you a disclaimer: I'm attempting to understand this as a person on my third week at NQ and a non-programmer, so "snap together" is the best verbiage I have at the moment. ?

It's definitely more complicated than that, and I'm currently attempting to get a programmer to explain it to me in a way that programming-savvy players can appreciate.

That makes sense in a way but at the same time, it only takes a little bit of time to visit the way these are implemented in other games (like Space Engineers) to realize why this is. The solution to this is also not difficult, it just requires understanding that you can't have "one" element for a triangle piece but you need one for each possible orientation that can't be achieved by rotating.
 
Please do not take this the wrong way, but one of the things I personally find strange still is precisely the way you reacted to my suggestion of using the E key in selecting a voxel brush. I get you may not have played a lot of MMOs or know game design but what I describe is pretty much the industry standard for implementing the UX for things like this; Have the basic choices for a function using a (repeated) key press and bring up additional/more advanced functionality  by press-hold on the same key which then brings up a (radial) menu for this purpose OR have the press-hold of a key offer a function (radial menu) to select what a single press for the key does.
 
NQ suffers from what seems to be a feeling they need to reinvent the wheel on everything and hardly ever follow the generally accepted and understood way of doing things which is one of the bigger reasons why new players find it hard to get into the game. Things "do not work as expected".
 
 
 
Phew.. and thanks.. !! All good
 
 
Many of us have been around the game a long time and feel passionately about it which sometimes gets carried a bit far maybe but, especially when you have been around MMOs and see the way NQ often stumbles around and makes things way harder on themselves than needed can be very frustrating, especially when there is zero engagement with the community basically just trying to point these things out.

I posted on this idea before but since not everyone has access to it I thought I'd bring this up again.
 
Clearly, with NQ at least talking of energy management it's something that is coming but we have no idea how this will work and it appears neither has NQ yet really as they have pretty much said it's still in the "thinking about it" phase.
 
Here's how I could see power and energy work in DU:
 
Territory unit:
Has a built in power generator which is extremely efficient and can run a long time on a relative limited fuel supply. Once fuel runs out, it will be able to stay active for some time before it starts to decay. Once it decays below 50% the protective impact to static constructs on the tile will end and those can be attacked without the need to destroy the Territory unit. When power drops below 25% it becomes relatively simple to destroy the unit. Once destroyed, a 24H windows will provided a means for defenders to arrange such defense on a tile.
 
Static Constructs:
The core has a limited power supply relative to it's size which runs relatively efficient buit not as efficient as a TU will. As long as the core has power reserves it will boost the constructs HP value making it (very) hard to breach a construct which can only be done to begin with if the TU on the tile is destroyed or below 50% power. Players can place batteries to increase the constructs power capacity and use fuel or solar power to recharge the batteries which in turn recharge the core if it runs out of fuel (or is not fueled at all). As long as the core has power it will prevent dynamic constructs docked to (as permitted through RDMS)  it from being vulnerable to attack.
 
Space cores will have a similar mechanic but obviously without he dependency on a TU
 
Dynamic constructs:
The core has a more limited power supply relative to it's size which runs less efficient than a static core of the same size. It has limited capacity for additional power capacity through  batteries, which can be recharged trough the engines on the construct being used. By itself the power supply on a dynamic core offers no protection like a static core does.
 
 
What does the above achieve:
TU upkeep and maintenance with a decay timer Protection for territory and constructs placed on it Timers for attacks (a vulnerability window like EVE citadels have could be considered on Static constructs) Limit what can be placed on a construct depending on power capacity  
and more I have no doubt..

I baked Dual Universe because I looked for a building game where you can actually build good looking things (so not blocky like in Space Engineers) and do something with them.
I played in Alpha for a little bit, but stopped playing after I was unable to load the game for several month.
After the Beta launch, where NQ again expertly showcased their lack of communication skills, I started playing again, this time with a friend, for several weeks.
 
We stopped playing DU a few weeks ago, because the need to constantly mine in order to get resources and the total lack of enjoyment in that process combined with my realisation that we couldn't do anything with our L-size ship. 
 
I'm still angry that NQ dared to call this a beta. It's an alpha! Beta means the software is feature complete. 1: NQ is not feature complete. 2: "Feature complete" does not mean a given feature (e.g. CvC) just exists. It means that it's in a working state, where bugs needs to be fixed and the feature might need some adjustments. Not a total rework!
 
Regarding the feedback from NQ for our suggestions:
NQ can't respond to everything. This does of course not excuse the lack of communication for some of the serious issues.
I would suggest to overhaul and improve the suggestion page:
Clear all votes casted on the page In order to post and vote you have to log in with your NQ account (For NQ internal use) Make an overview of who upvoted what suggestions: What is their playtime? Are they still playing? Alpha/beta backer? etc.  Make it easy to comment on the suggestions, e.g. by being able to link the suggestion to a forum thread NQ need to respond to highly upvoted suggestions and talk with the community if their responds is not "We will implement this exactly as suggested" or "We will not because (very good explanation here)"  
Some comments/opinions from myself about some game mechanics:
Industry: While the concept is fine (see existence and success of Factorio and Satisfactory), the implementation is terrible. The linking system simply does not work with such many items. I would suggest introducing (covered) conveyer belts (see Space Engineers) which can transport solid items and pipes for gases and fluids. In both cases they just create a network, like in Space Engineers, which just transport everything connected. Throughput and max size per item are of course parameters. PvP: I haven't done it and I will not in the current stage. It must be possible to have a competitive ship that actually looks like a ship and not a cube. Otherwise every trailer where non-cube ships fight are just deceiving and a lie. Several people already posted  Please remove the ugly missile launchers and replace them with realistic missile launch bays. What you now have are RAMS and NOT anti ship missiles! Make everyone involved in space CnC decision making watch at least the first session of The Expanse. Thanks. I'm not an expert in physics but why are your railgun rounds exploding on contact? You use railings to make holes in things. And no. using anti-matter ammunition is not an answer, because using that is just so incredibly stupid. Matter will explode when colliding with other matter when traveling at high enough speeds, but I'm not sure at what velocities (are they achievable with such small railguns?) Mining: I hope I don't have to add anything here...

Hahahaha I can hear that image of Shia screaming "JUST DO IIIIT" ?

Glad to hear you're starting to monitor the in-game channel again. I hope that means the highly toxic environment that developed there as soon as beta was opened up to the public will get moderated a bit.

1. CS tickets are just ignored as far as I can tell. I reported a game-blocking bug on day one of beta (dynamic core exploding on deployment) which has yet to get a response. I assumed it had been fixed, but one of my org mates experienced this bug last week. (And you still owe me a Territory Scanner to replace the one taken by a container bug - I doubt anyone in NQ has read that ticket yet.)
 
2. NQ no longer monitors the badly mis-named support channel in game. Support used to actually be available there for critical game stopping bugs. I used to have pretty relationships with several NQ- people, but now they're ghosts.
 
3. Apparrently the only remaining channel for communication with NQ is a discord completely controlled by players who are hostile to me... so not even slightly useful. (And to be fair, I'm hostile to them too, but they started it.)
 
 

I bet it has a rectangular collision box, lol. I've seen some very strange stuff with collision boxes that are too big or the wrong shape.

Well, I haven't quit yet. But there are two reasons I might
 
1. NQ's complete lack of engagement with players. Used to be I could get help when a bug interfered drastically with game play. That's no longer the case.
 
2. Dumbing down of building. I used to build ships with working airlocks; functional engineering stations; bunks; bathrooms - but now I have to build for unwanted combat encounters. I can't afford to have to replace those things to re-deploy from a BP if I get ambushed. I also can't afford the extra mass that could be allocated to either armor or cargo. So instead of cool, fun spaceships, I'm building easy to replace crap. I don't even use doors on most of them. I no longer use windows.
 
Building isn't much fun any more.
 
Hmmm... I guess there's a third reason.
 
3. Lack of progress in Lua - actually regression in Lua, since we can no longer capture info from radar.
 
My big complaint on this is lack of access to orbital parameters. NQ said back in alpha that we would get this and I've been holding off on adding nav to my script set until with have them (rather than adding ad hoc orbital calculations in Lua that will fail as soon as the next star system is added). I'm assumed the game was calculating orbital parameters in C to draw the trajectory lines - but now that I think of it, if the orbital parameters are not really being calculated, that would explain the apparently unstable orbits.

I can put it quite succinctly why I decided to put the game on a long wait.
 
essentially the devs put themselves in a position where they can not keep/make anyone happy.   The people currently playing love the hell out of the building system (IE: aerospace expos), but content for updates require major overhauls.   Likewise there are a hell of a lot of PvP fans who’ve barely even gotten their systems implemented.   The devs don’t have the resources to keep both happy, and based on the design skills they’ve displayed whichever system they work on first will be pretty "off”/"wrong” requiring time consuming babysitting by the devs.

I could not agree more with you on this!!!

Well, to be brutaly honest, "exploration" aspect in DU always was practicaly marketing bovine manure (and probably stay so).  They added it to KS because every space game kinda needs this "stapple" -- no matter how true or not true it will be. Like every lame RPG states "deep character progression options" even its not so.
 
DU game disign at core level not support any meaningful exploration. Because on macro level, even with regular addition of new systems, for 99,9% players there will be nothing to truly explore -- someone already be there first. On micro, local level... well, tiles just basicly empty and relativly same -- nothing to see. Sure, you can find meganode with scanning, but I guess we safe to not count it as exploration most people want.
 
So, yeah, its painful to say, but some promised things were simply not exactly true (even with beta state corrections). This is contibuting factor to disspointments and quits too. 

I totally agree! I just watched another recent dev interview just before writing this and I don't think they see how important addressing this issue is. Most people who are not into PVP are builders. This is a civilization-building and PVP MMO! They have a priority in addressing the lack of PVP contents but what about what is lacking in civilization-building? The biggest problem is the building editor itself. Those builders would be more likely to stay, join this game, or continue playing for the long-term if the editor improve to be more intuitive (easy to use), robust, and productive, and the extensiveness to be available without the complicated and time-consuming method of voxelmancing. Nobody wants to put up with voxelmancy and creating voxel libraries from voxelmancy because of the time-extensive and difficult process. Please see the importance in this!
 
I used to be a hardcore and dedicated player. I've been following this game since 2017 when I first heard about it and I backed this game up 3 times. Furthermore I own 3 high-end computers on 1 large desk all capable of running this game. I've been playing/testing the game before for atleast 8 hours everyday and I do have a very demanding job. Right now, I've transitioned to being softcore (casual) because the building editor is terrible. What was once a male lion that will eat anything is now a pussy cat. This is not a good sign because I am losing my interest in the game. To restore my dedication, the editor needs to be improved so content creators like myself can produce designs and build at better quality without the ridiculous and unnecessary effort that it currently requires.
 
I'm still playing the game but I'm now playing it very casually. It is not that I cannot put up the time (I do have the time), it is that I'm losing my interest.

If the bot buy order 'exploit' described in the below thread is still viable, this is why: 
 
Also, one reason I quit is because NQ didn't seem to care at all about fixing exploits. When it literally took them 2 months to do the simple fix below to stop the linked container exploits, among all the bugs and mismanagement they invoked 'fixing' it, ... ones confidence is lost rapidly.
You only fix it now? *slams forehead into desk*
Why was that not how it worked from beta launch?
  
Same.
 

Good games are easy to learn and difficult to master.
DU is the other way around.
 
The is no real progression:
- mining: it doesn't get more complex / difficult, it' just more of the same
- crafting: it doesn't get more complex / difficult, it' just more of the same (requiring more and more sub components or more time to craft isn't complexity)
- piloting: it's harder to fly/leave/enter on the starting planets (Alioth and Sanctuary) than on all of the other planets.
- building: you can just place elements, voxels are a cosmetic option: there is no structural physics for ships and buildings leading to no real challenge in design.
- building: Voxelmancy is a joke': it's like forcing people to draw circles and curves without giving them a compass and then be amazed of what they have achieved with just a pen and a ruler.
- exploration: there is nothing to explore. The playable universe is simply too small.
- character progression: Talents should be a progression/reward of what you do. You should get better at piloting by piloting. That 'passive learning' system is just 'pay2win" disguised. It's not engaging and it will hurt the game in the long term (It separates too much vets from newbies). It rewards a meta (the longer you sub to the game) not something you do in the game. There is no 'joy' and fulfillment to obtain the highest rank of  a talent (other than having to wait 14 days or more ...).
- repeatability and differentiation: a 'Space Engine L' is always exactly the same whoever made it. There is no differentiation between players, between elements, between raw materials. There is no RNG (warning: too much RNG is very bad but a little might help). There only one way to make one thing. Study the Starwars Galaxy crafting system, there is a lot to be inspired by it (variations in ore specs, experimentation in crafting, etc).
 
What can be done:
- Surrogate is a fresh and new concept for MMOs but it is way underused and too limited. You should be able to 'pilot' with a surrogate and do more, may be have different talents for different surrogates. Leveling surrogates could probably be more fun than leveling a single avatar. Selling/trading surrogates could be fun too and a very new concept in MMOs (some players hate leveling , some love it).
It could be a way to engage in PvP (and the only way imho). See Ender's Game book/movie. Add IA/scripting/autonomy to surrogates ?
- more planets, more systems. it's too small for a 'space' MMO.
- not a  fan of the 'tile' system. I don't see why I couldn't mine everywhere I want nor place a static construct everywhere I want. I don't see the gameplay value of tiles. I'd rather have a 'zone of influence' around big structures (like Guild Halls in SWG (again!)) so Orgs can have big cities without grief.
- forced pvp: not a fan at all. You'll never get a general consensus here. You'll have to choose what part of 'potential mmo players' would have to give up on or split your single shard into 2...study more MMO "player profiles" . NQ clearly lacks knowledge of MMOs game theory and demographics. Don't ignore the silent majority to please a vocal minority or early backers (the person who can spent hundreds of dollars on backing a game isn't necessary the good final target audience for a successful long lasting mmo game).  
 

Why not replace that "safe area" with another game that is not advertised as "Sandbox MMO" ?
Like I get the the Madis/Thadis/Alioth is already safe and we need the safety for people do their first steps but why there should be any safety anywhere near t4/t5 resources.

The way NQ handled the M15 situation is what caused me to unsub my paid for alts for sure as I do not feel NQ is in a place development and  engagement wise where they can really expect people to pay for access to the game.
 
Naunet is doing what Naerais did before him/her (we don't know if it's a he or she).. building report with the community. It's all the basic stuff we've seen before, including setting up a survey and a lot of empathic wording. The actions from Naunet's side however are very much NQ and really not much has changed as of yet. To be clear, I respect and like Naerais generally but she has closed herself off quite a bit after coming onto the "scene" in a very open way and I have no idea where Nyzalter is at these days, if he still is with NQ even...
 
NQ will likely start a PR campaign shortly, leading up to a patch in probably 4 weeks and allowing for two weeks of "fixing" time before Xmas break. I honestly do not expect much to substantially change until probably end of February next year at the earliest.
 

I'm holding to a hope that NQ-Naunet is here because someone higher up has picked up on the theme of dev communication in so many of these quitting threads. Time will tell if this is real or a show to stem subscriber loss. He's done a good job of bringing people back to the forums for now.  
 
My impression of the dev team has been, that of a programmer led team - which means they do amazing things with code but completely fail to predict what players will do when set loose in their creation. I keep yelling about communication because,  from what I've seen, I don't think this team is capable of balancing all the parts that need to be balanced. 
 
For the short term, if they want this game to stop bleeding subscribers, they need to implement their PVP overhaul and then give us something to fight over.
It doesn't matter what. It could be resources, it could be unique base decorations. It just needs to be something players will want and that most players can get to. 
 
Alternately they could implement NPC enemies to fight - something to threaten bases or ships and provide a new dimension to building.  I know they have said no NPCs but everything should be considered at this point. 
 
As for quitting - I don't want to rekindle the argument here but it was the handling of the  Market 15 heist that was the last straw for me. Naunet's arrival provided a enough hope that I felt like playing a few hours last week but nothing like my activity before. I still think Dual Universe has the potential to be something great so I continue to linger on the forums and watch for some sign that NQ has learned something.