NQ-Naunet

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Valuable feedback, michaelk! I've been hearing from a lot of community members that they'd prefer another Reddit AMA instead of more Twitch interviews - is that something that would interest you?
 

Good evening Noveans,
 
This weekend, people from near and far will be participating in Extra Life, and we'd love to showcase (and support!) our DU players that will be streaming. ❤️

What is Extra Life?
 
"It all started with a little girl in Orange, Texas. Extra Life unites thousands of gamers around the world to play games in support of their local Children’s Miracle Network Hospital.

Since its inception in 2008, Extra Life has raised over $70 million USD for sick and injured kids. Right now, children's hospitals need YOUR support. Be a hero. Sign up today and raise funds for the Children's Hospitals COVID - 19 Impact Fund."
 
Essentially, it's all about playing games to raise money to help sick kids. A pretty worthwhile endeavor, if you ask us!   

How can I participate?

If you'd like to sign up officially, click HERE. Once you've registered, tell your friends! Spread the word, raise some money, and enjoy the community.
 
What's going on in DU?

We're glad you asked!  It just so happens that a streamer known as gottchar has a really neat charity raffle lined up for those interested!

For more information straight from the source, you can check out his Reddit post about it. You can also go straight to his donation page on Extra Life featured HERE - you'll want to keep this link handy, because...

- You will need to donate in order to participate in this player's raffle
- You must provide this awesome player with your Discord name and/or in-game name so he has some way to connect your donation to you (in other words, make sure he can verify you)

And that's that, for now! If any of you have any other streamers/donation pages you'd like to share, we encourage you to post them here in this thread. ?
 
 

You're the best, @le_souriceau - this is so key. Thank you for kicking off this discussion!
 

Don't stop! Never!  

I'll be watching this thread! I sure hope it generates lots of great insights. C'mon quitters, let's have it! 

 

Good afternoon, everybody!!

If you (and/or your Org-mates) are a fan of Lua and you've used it to breathe life into a creation you're dying to show off... now's your chance.  

For a chance to be featured in our Lua Museum (ooooh, ahhhh!), please submit your builds using the handy dandy form we've put together. 

? Click HERE to access the form! ?

Thank you for taking the time to check this out, and happy building!! We can't wait to review your submissions.

~ NQ-Naunet

For those not in-the-know, Lua is a lightweight, high-level, multi-paradigm programming language designed primarily for embedded use in applications. This video contains more information about the ways in which you can use it in DU!

I can See how XS and S cores come in handy as intruder vehicles so you Just Arm them with enough to crack Open a door and have the Guys do their worst otherwise crippling ships is tricky in Terms of balancing as this could get Out of Hand in large Engagements real quick 
Take EvE as a reference Here where new Players get custom F2P doctrines that specialize in ewar and do massive damage to hostile fleets by Just supporting the Main fleet.
 
 
Still i feel a Battleship on a L core should be a Statement on the Battlefield and Push Back the smaller cores ( XS & S ) unless they have a significant Numbers Advantage ( Like 50 : 1 )

As others have said, tech issues and tedium (lack of content) are big deals...but I think some users aren't even playing long enough to be bothered by lack of content. 
 
Following DU for years, I tried to get my partner hooked on the game because he loves building games and will spend hours and hours constructing monuments to OCD. ?‍♂️
 
For him, it was presentation and initial UX. 
 
1. Initial impressions are really important...the tutorial was not a great first experience. It bugged out and required him to reset and he got annoyed navigating the starter area and listening to the voice over.
 
2. Initial UX...The UI simply doesn't look like it belongs in a professional game -- it creates a perception that the game is very "indie", as the UI was clearly made by engineers and not designers. It also makes it harder to learn the game -- clunky UI/UX on top of an already complex game. 
 
3. Initial speeder...when he finally got to Sanctuary (I had to help him find the drop ship because of all the market clutter ?) that first speeder visit to unclaimed territory was...not great. The visuals greatly reinforced the idea that this was a niche/indie project and not a "real game". I got him one of the starter flying ships, but still a lot of travel time to get back to his hex because he re-spawned at some point (for some reason ?‍♂️). 
 
4. Initial progression...breaking surface rocks and being told to go back and forth to the (rather far) market didn't help him understand what to do or how to get starting building, especially since the tutorials were very broken back when he started. I tried to help him get started mining but he basically quit after digging a hundred or so meters lol. Mining rocks is monotonous enough without digging through hundreds of meters of flat polygons.  
 
I'd bet a healthy number of those ghost speeders belong to similar players that never truly gave the game a chance because it simply doesn't feel like a professional, modern game should for a paid monthly sub.
 
It is hard to reconcile the promise of a vast space sandbox builder where you can craft and manipulate civilization itself with tutorials not working, simple visuals, and a clunky UX...and all this is just to give the game a chance...never mind some of the content/tech issues that are usually only relevant after you've bought into the premise and played for a bit. 

Planetary system is not implemented, there are planets but no planetary system, everything is just static, not even the sun is real.

Spaceflight is boring, mining is boring, building is super complicated, PvP is boring, industries are just unnecessarily complicated like TU and the links.

There are also technical problems on both the server and the client.

Surrogates are crap, why can't you steer a ship with them? Reason? So that you need 2nd accounts? And if u use them for a travel the ship will stop.

There are too many glitshes, just the Alt F4 issue, the client calculates the physics, no client = no physics, if you die, the ship stops immediately from 30000 to 0, in pvp too, force respawn, engine stacking, many duplication bugs.

Then there is the social issue, how is there supposed to be a "brisk trade" with these auction houses when you stand at the machine, why should I build buildings that nobody sees in the end because there is no reason to fly to anyone except trade .

The only thing that works really well is wasting time - it works great.

And with the whole background there is a PvP on top which is extremely unfair like XS Cores with L weapons/radar and engine stacking (u can stack all parts).

I can hardly imagine that someone who ignores all the points listed above and then still has the desire to continue after losing his ship in PvP, especially at the beginning, this can be fatal.

Quite simply, the game is far from having a large player base, as it is now, it will lose a lot of people, mostly forever.

Translated with Google if someone asks

The issue is the game is at least 90% tedium no matter what 'path' you pick.
 
Industry?  90% tedium of fighting the lag of the link tool or the random breakdowns where some random element simply stops working. 
 
Mining? - mining is 100% tedious.
 
Pvp? 90% waiting around.
 
Ship Design? Voxelmancy is 100% tedium.
 
Trading? 90% tedium of flying around from A to B.
 
And the lessons haven't been learned.....
 
NQ adds 'wrecks' which are also 90% tedium of flying around looking for them....

Tech issues can be a real killer for many people, there's no doubt about that. I have one friend that gave it a shot but was unable to play effectively due to his computer specs. Admittedly, he could use an upgrade, but the point remains that optimization is a breaking point for many people.
 
But with that said, I think the existence of content that people are actually able to commit to in meaningful ways (e.g. multi-faceted player-driven economy, territory warfare, and exciting/rewarding exploration) will keep people coming back and renewing their subscriptions. DU already has a fantastic construct building system, and while that alone is enough to keep many people engaged, the above mentioned features ought to drive even greater retention.

Thank you!
 
I'm glad it worked for you! You're very welcome!

Maybe this can be "fixed" a bit so that the actual command seat / piloting chair does not blow up so easily.. Because then we would not get teleported to allioth, but to the Res Node instead which is on the ship.

It is even weird that the command seat gets utterly destroyed when it is inside the ship and protected by at least 50cm of metallic walls (iron / copper) - so if I graze the mountain with my right wing, then the right wing should be destroyed, maybe some other elements, but why on earth would the command seat get destroyed which is in the middle of the ship as mentioned inside and protected by voxels and many other elements?!

It's nice to see you all helping one another out! Kudos to you, @NoRezervationz!  

I noticed, that "Organizations" section was moved much deeper into pits.
 
This section already experienced almost hopeless depression, with absolute majority of orgs abandoning any pretense to post updates/pr content here, save for some rare and totaly technical bumps. So, question is, do we need to somehow salvage this section by adding incenetives to be more active, or to hell with it, let it be survival of fittest medium of communication? 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Good shout, totally agree that organisation promotion is a vital part of the fourm, I would like to see categorisation.  This not only makes it easier to find orgs that fit, but also showcases the wide range of roles available to players
 
Orgs are not only about recruitment, they are also about services, showcase those too!

This last quitting survey is good initiative -- great to see all this communication/info gathering lately.
 
And I believe we (forum trigger-happy people) can contribute more to it by more extended discussion why people quit (or have some thinking process about it in terms of "if" conditions).
 
There is demographic waves (from KS to Alpha to Beta) with some differences in "road to quitting", but still, core issues, I think, are remain same for most.
 
Ehh.. I already feel a bit as Captain Obvious writing this, but can't stop : )
 
1) Broadly speaking -- tech issues.  Game not comfortable to play still for many people (impossible to play for most unlucky). 
 
2) Choking lack of content/mechanics. 
- no pvp warfare makes game stale for huge demographic who whats some action and meaning beyond "landmark in space", this is principal killer;
- rudimentary economic narrows interesting things for another great many people (both in time to be occupied and width of engagement);
- severe lack of social features to keep people at least this way;
 
Some combo of this was reason for 95% quits I witnessed in my circle of known players (most damage from boring world without full pvp and politics).

This content thing actualy go so far, that I failed to recruit several of my more critical minded friends after they asked "what can I do in game now?" After listening my best efforts (I tried to stretch list as far as possible), they refused, stating that it will not do. Maybe in 1 year.
 
So generaly, for serious number people, after initial gorging of available things to try/achieve, there is not much to du in game. Sad, but simple as that. Or not?
 
 
 
 
 
 

Good points. XS and S cores would ideally have a role in fleet combat, even when L cores are on the field. While I don't think a smaller core should be able to 1 v 1 a larger core, it should be able to harass or cripple the larger ship.  It would be cool to see smaller cores getting in close and disrupting engines or weapons. 

These would be very cool hidden behind armored base doors. 

As much as I hated the alpha trees and their invincibility, I do actually like this idea.
Seconded destructible trees! If only for revenge's sake for all the alpha players.

Time to learn about the wonders of symbolic / hard folder links.
I just tested this and it works great.
 
What you want to do is move the Dual-Universe-Cache folder to where you want it, let's say from C:\Games\Dual-Universe-Cache to D:\SpaceHog\Dual-Universe-Cache.
 
Then, open command line (win+r, cmd, enter) and type the following (as an example using the above locations)
mklink /J C:\Games\Dual-Universe-Cache D:\SpaceHog\Dual-Universe-Cache
As per the guide linked, paths with spaces will need " around them.
 
This will create a hard directory link in the original cache location pointing to the new location. To Windows / the game, it's as if the folder were still in the install location.

Many people want to have a warp disruptor in game. I watched some videos and realized that the game needs a Stasis Webifier  to reduce the speed of a targeted object. Speed affects tracking and can affect the ability to warp jump. If the warp happens at maximum speed, then Stasis Webifier will work against the jump. It is important to make it impossible to jump if there are objects near the ship. Speed and agility will decide the outcome of the battle. Cargo size vs engine power. Greed vs mind...
warp disruptor is not needed as a separate module

I think that would work much better -- it would give more players a chance to ask questions (vs. a few streamers) and would hopefully let the dev team take more time to write detailed replies.
 
That said, the AMA would only really be helpful if there's new information -- the medium isn't as important as the content to me.
 
For me, the most important information is the roadmap: what's changing in the next 3-4 months...but I know people have a billion very specific questions, so it'd be great to have more engagement on reddit in general (if not here). 

Hey NQ-Naunet,
 
thanks a lot for taking the time to listen to us and investing it to explore viable options for the scavenging profession going forward. This is really very much appreciated no matter the outcome.
 
That sounds about right. The only thing we could argue over is the timeline of the change ("Once Beta hit, this mechanic was changed so that only ships taken down in PvP could be claimed the way that's described above. This fundamentally shifted the way players like you were able to enjoy DU.") - as we observed/noticed/witnessed it this change happened, or only came into effect, about 2-3 weeks ago. Other than that your summary looks solid to me.
I also fully understand the reasoning behind it, even though I do not agree with actually implementing the change (or at least on how it was done - silently and to an extend removing scavenging from the game). It somewhat sends a wrong signal removing any risks from the game as there is no "risk vs reward" anymore - only reward (consensual PvP combat in the 100% avoidable PvP enabled piece of space is not really a risk but a choice). Which, obviously, has a big impact on the player behavior (recklessness and ignorance towards flying mechanics/physics, learning that choices in game do not really have consequences), how the game is observed and viewed by the community/new players (PvE gameplay only) and the in-game economy (if you never lose anything there is no need for continuous production; demand dies down and the only reason left to play in the current beta, mining and production, is gone).
And hopefully just as a coincidence, but at around the same time this, and excuse my wording, carebear change has been introduced, NQ starts spawning artificial wrecks with artificial salvaging mechanics (limitations in amount salvageable) - which makes it look even more like the strategic direction is away from any emergent, sandbox and PvP centric content (scavenging essentially is PvP gameplay) towards artificial, PvE based theme park organized content. This felt like: Hey, we take your profession away, we remove the last bit of emergent gameplay left in the game currently and give you artificial wrecks with artificial salvaging mechanics. But, hey, you won't be able to see them on the radar so you got to check every hex "by hand" - have fun!
 
 
Not sure I'd call it my version, this is more of a result from talking to various (former) scavengers and taking into account how it used to work before the change. Nevertheless, yes, I think introducing a version of the mechanic which would look like the following could do the trick:
 
When a player crashes their ship in a way so that the core gets destroyed (essentially any core that gets destroyed in any way), said ship (construct) should be salvageable by any other player anywhere in the universe (all planets, moons and in space). With the _exceptions_ being:  - On Sanctuary (and sanctuary like moons added in the future) - cause it's the "safe zone" by definition and a place were no bad things should ever happen to you  - Within the wider "safe zone" (as announced by JC in recent interviews - obviously also on "safe planets/zones" in solar systems/galaxies/universes added in the future) - namely Alioth, Thades and Madis - nowhere but on tiles owned by someone else (another player or an org you are not a member of) and which are not owned by NQ/Aphelia (markets and such) Requiring players to "abandon" a destroyed construct/core manually is not emergent gameplay and should not be required for constructs with destroyed cores in order to make them salvagable.  
Thanks again for your time and support!
Bobbylord
 

Yeah. you seem fun, you can stay......

You bet your boots I am!