admsve

Not like this. They chose about the most tedious possible way to implement it.

For now, more than a space or flight game is a mining simulator. Without even the proper tools (drills, vehicles, automated unit, etc.) to make it funny.  
 
Let NQ first introduce some new stuff,  improve the general visual performance and game stability.

Yeah, that's the usual response: "The game must be very "realistic", except it mustn't have the boring parts of RL that make up 90% of our daily lives"
 
Cities in RL exist for reasons that cannot be duplicated in an MMO. In RL, people live in cities because it's the most likely place to find work (within a reasonable travel distance) and/or a mate. Neither of those needs exist in an MMO. The need to socialise in an MMO is easily met by a voice chat channel, there's no need for physical proximity to other players. Global chat takes the place of going to a bar and chatting to strangers.
 
In RL, industry clusters around cities mainly because it's the best way to gain access to a big pool of labour, and because there's some economic benefit in being closer to the dozens of other industries that supply them with things they need. None of those reasons apply in MMO's.
 
That's why MMO's have to provide specific (usually artificial) incentives to encourage players to concentrate together in the game world. Players are usually highly mobile, and they're playing because they want fun action, not because they want to RP an office cleaner on nightshift.
 
In MMO's, players don't need to commute to work every day, or sleep 6 hours every night, or worry about freezing to death if they can't pay the heating bills in winter. In MMO's, players don't go home every night and watch some TV after a hard days questing... 
 
In MMO's, cities are mostly the equivalent of RL shopping malls, players go there briefly when they need to buy stuff. Then they leave.
 

To me, It's not a game, it's a simulator.  A very cool simulator, definitely, and multi-user too, which is cool.
 
I know they said no PVE, no missions, no story line to interact with and progress thru.  To me, they'll have to add those things before I'd call it a game.  I do hope they reconsider.  If they do, and add PVE, then it not only becomes a game, but could be a great game.

That's nothing! Imagine if we could have proper voxels loading without this drunk LOD rendering and things randomly popping in and out, that would be huge!

I do understand that a promise made should be a promise kept however, I wouldn't be too upset since this game is extremely cheap relative to MMOs over the past 20 years. DU should be $14 a month and not a measly $7 and the game should be atleast $25 up front instead of free. Keep in mind that a free month lost is the cost of one pizza. Just think, that month that might not come back to the player base is more capital for NQ to invest in servers and other improvements. 

The Cockpit is really terrible as far as the HUD goes, it's a very crude, ugly and hard to modify HUD. Making it functional and nice to look at is near impossible.
 
If creating a basic CSS covering the actual areas in the existing design is too hard to implement, please redesign the cockpit to use flat displays which can be programmed instead.. How did we get to two ugly and vision restricting boxes from this (I know this was never a functional display, but the point remains valid) :
 

 
 
I don't see why the CSS basic template would not be able to provide this style of display..
 
 
 

Sad pirate noises.

Pineapple on Pizza, yes or no?

Greetings, Noveans! I'm NQ-Pann, the latest addition to the stellar (see what I did there?) Dual Universe Community team. It is my esteemed privilege to be here, entering into my second week at Novaquark. 
 
Some of you may know me from previous projects. My MMO journey began as an Ultima Online player. It wasn't long before I began writing for game sites (mostly UO Stratics) and joining the UO volunteer program. This led to my first "real" job in the industry as the original community manager for EVE Online. I've also worked on Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault, Imperium: Galactic War and, most recently, Crowfall. 
 
I'm a native Texan, living in the Austin area with my husband (whom I met in UO!) and our very large, spoiled rotten cat. 
 
My role here will mostly be behind-the-scenes, writing news and blogs. I'll also be the primary point of contact for content creators, so if you stream, make videos, or resources for Dual Universe, I look forward to meeting you soon. 
 
Head over to my AMA thread and let's get acquainted! 

This is why surrogates should be able to train skills and gunner ships. Imagine if you had a surrogate pod on your ship with access to gunner stations, and your buddies could be off doing their own thing with easy access to a VR station, and when you find a target, your buddies could just hop in the VR station and surrogate spawn on your ship and gunner your stuff. Or you could open it to public asking for gunners (why not? options for emergent gameplay are good)

This one is rather easy, if you want to share your chairs with everyone, you can go to the RDMS and set up a policy.
Actor: All
Right: Use element
Tag: .. here is the magic, do not use a tag, but search for chairs and select this item group. This will unlock all chairs (not command chairs, cockpits, only the ones to sit on) for everyone to sit on. No matter if you have set them up now, in the past or anytime after you have set this policy.
 
This will have to be set up for the organisation too, if you are using any organisation constructs with chairs to transport new players.

make asteroid mining great again....or just make it happen .

this perm destruction of the elements.. there is way to much wrong with this game currently to even be considering this. 
 
1st      crashes do to server side related stuff. You dont have enough staff members to keep up with those complaints let alone right now.
2nd     Ive flown many variations of ships . and im sure others can agree because of current Hover height limits / wing limits its a royal pain to traverse even the easiest of bumps in the road.
3rd      flight controls.  its 2020   were is the controller support . i'd settle for attleast the Xbox controller support tho im sure most of use would love Hotas support.   Unless were flying something really      
            small  its rough flying period in this game.
4th      crafting times is a nightmare as it IS.. weather or not you have talents for it or not...  whats the point in even spending the time picking up the talents for this stuff when it still takes you hours
            to craft.   im going to spend half my time just replacing all the elements with 50 hp.  go 40 speed and glaze a hill im trying to go over and the and some random element on the other side of the ship
            that didnt get hit gets destroyed..
5th      see others are asking about a quick replacement element  tool to go with this update.  i highly doubt it was even considered.
6th      what about all the voxel traps people  been placing around markets ??????   so how it this patch really going to be fair to well   ANYONE??
 
Don't get me wrong. i like this idea. but the game is far from ready for this.  because of the lack of other solar systems its hard even getting to another planet outside the safe zone without being caught by PVP'ers , whens that balance going to take place i wounder.  its dangerous enough just trying to go to the market in one peace to attempt to sell stuff. and now soon due to other faults that need to be taken care of 1st slight fender benders due to bad element designs by devs and controls just trying to get to A to B on the safe areas can just wreck my day.  
 
Games are supposed to be FUN  not a JOB.   
 
future update folks    people can crash randomly into your parked ships while your logged out for the day and wreck your stuff while your away..
 
seeing this news about this change in elements alone.   Makes me feel like i was robbed a couple years ago when i bought my Gold founders pack .   litterly mined up about 3kt of ore today for a project now i feel like ive waisted my time.

Thank you to Haunty above for the contribution.
I have completed my space station so can now answer some of the questions myself in the hopes it assists others.
 
CORE:  Yes, we need a space core and yes the core effects gravity direction.  My suggestion for your 1st station is to ensure the arrow is above the core and that the core is above the planet so that the gravity of the planet matches the gravity of core.  So, then if we build the landing platform between outer space and the planet gravity will assist landing.  So, gravity will pull us down onto the landing pad.
 
What happens to my ship whilst I'm building or placing the core:  A kind soul in support chat told me to log out and back in again so my ship would remain stationary.  Then I placed the core whilst standing on my ship.  Once the core is placed, we can go into build mode so we can move around the build area freely.  My ship stayed in place whilst I built and when I was half done I just used the move tool to place the ship.   Its hard to believe that the Devs planned for us to log out to get the ship to remain stationary.  Somebody in chat said maybe the remote control or emergency control could be used for this purpose (if you want full immersion).
 
ORBIT:  So, the core and therefore the station does not orbit the planet  (you dont even need to place them anywhere near a planet).  Space Stations are stationary objects.  A Space Core behaves just like a Static Core.  I'm telling you this because I originally thought they had to be orbiting a body.  
 
PREPERATION:   Make sure you take a Space Core with you (obviously) and its a good idea if you carry enough materials to build a basic landing pad.  I just used my personal transport (no container) and my suit had enough room for a small core and honeycombe for landing pad.

Back to the original topic, why people are quitting DU. 
 
People like this, frankly. The discussion about PvP becomes instantly aggressive if not hostile. 
 
It isn't about articulating an opinion, it's about insisting over and over and over that the only opinion that matters is their own and that anyone that doesn't understand how important PvP is just needs to "deal with it". I've seen a lot of name calling and ranting without articulating anything of substance beyond a demand for PvP and an insistence that the game will die if their whims aren't met. 
 
I don't really see the point in trying to create a society with people in this demographic. I know there are plenty of PvP players that aren't like this...but there's too many that are. 
 
The PvP mentality seems to extend to every interaction they make with players in any context, and that just isn't fun or interesting for me. 
 

The game has an extremely high initial bump which, combined with the very rough state of the game's development and rushed move into open and paid "beta" makes it hard to get into. Much of what is missing or what is not working well has been brought up and discussed long before beta started. NQ has never acknowledged any of this and has never shown any indication of being able or willing to adjust their development plans to accommodate this.
 
Most of the game is very much still in Alpha state, if not pre-alpha. When a "major overhaul of the UI" is announced, what basically happens is a reskin of it. The core UI is very basic and not suitable for several of the intended uses cases, most obviously the talent system. It does not appear there is any central management of the project and it appears "coding" devs are tasked with designing the UI and UX which leads to too much information and overly complex actions with too many clicks and important detail 2 or three levels down where they should be at the surface. The general UI design really has not changed at all, except for a different theme, since pre-alpha.
 
It's not helpful when, from the occasional communication, NQ paints a picture which wants to tell a story of "everything is great, we're pretty much on track and where we need to be" when the facts in front of us show that that is not the case.  And now we hear JC pretty much roll back core promises and vision for the game where "unlimited possibilities" have now become "we will limit what you can do to preserve performance". The amount of work NQ has set up for themselves combined wit he mountain of work that needs to be done to clear technical debt and core issues in the game should be a guide in understanding that it is not possible to get to the state NQ claims the game will be in a year when they intend to "release". The stubborn attitude of not wanting to move the roadmap out and by now plain unrealistic expectation being set by NQ is just not good and will make (new) players tag off and disengage.
 
I get that much of this will probably be due to the fact that NQ is not in a very good situation financially and needs to work on a very tight and limited budget, but it's hurting the game's progress quite obviously. The amount of work needed to be done to work around the roadblock of "no wipe until absolutely required" for the sake of keeping people subbed is causing ore pain than NQ is letting on. Th underlying tone of NQ having pretty much beg for players to get back to the game or fill out a survey where NQ should and probably does know very well what the pain points are is rather obviously  a PR stunt more than anything else.
 
From podcasts it seems that NQ in general overthinks what we, as the community brings up in the rarae cases there is a response, which is generally only happening on an ad hoc basis when confronted with a live question, and the "solutions" are often overly complex and in effect miss the mark as far as addressing the intended problem. IN general, NQ seems hellbent on reinventing the wheel over and over while solutions are often readily available.
 
An example is the call for better building tools, NQ will mostly translate this into "we want a vertex editor" and then go into detail on how difficult that is and how much resources it takes. What we actually need is more options to build without resorting to voxelmancy.. More brush options like slopes broken into two voxels, corner pieces and things like that. Making smooth and beautiful ships using voxeltech is great and some designs are amazing but there is no middle ground here between that and basic blocks/boxes. Why can't we have basic shapes like the ones we see in (or instance) Space Engineers? Why is there no single voxel size tetrahedron making it possible to make corners. here's basic block which IMO should be readily available in game (old SE source but valid here)..


 
 
 
The "general" public is not looking for a vertex editor, they just want/need more variation in basic blocks and would be perfectly happy with these. The argument "use a voxel library" pretty much rolls back to my earlier comment about NQ (and a good number of experienced players) not seeing the issue of  this being to complex for an entry level player.
 
What we need is:
In build mode, select voxel placement tool press E to cycle though basic shapes press-hold E to bring up either a radial menu, use scroll wheel to cycle through all available blocks or the option to "click and pick" from a more varied choice of block "brushes"  
Another example is power management. It has been discussed with some good suggestions provided since Alpha but NQ never acknowledged any of it or engaged with us on these ideas.
 
Then, while it's unfortunately a meme by now, the question is a valid one, where is the canopy glass? Why has NQ not ever acknowledged this and why is this element on display in game but not available to players? It is another simple option to make designs easier to make "pretty".
 
 
Lastly, it is _very_ disappointing and a tell tale sign of how NQ thinks that the NDA forum section has been archived and is no longer accessible. It means a wealth of information and content which could be reused in beta is now lost. Arguments to maintain access to these clearly, and frankly expectedly, fell on deaf ears as NQ does what NQ does regardless of what we, as a community think. Why make a post in the tone of an invite to discussion when you really just make an announcement?
 
If you, as NQ, intent to do things your way anyway, why pretend to care enough to ask for our input/feedback. I know this post will no doubt trigger the fanbois in the community once more but he fact I get quite a few messages from community members when I make posts like this saying how they agree tells me I'm not wrong. What we're seeing now is pretty much what happened when Naerais joined and it lasted for maybe a month or two before NQ fell right back to being their usual self. I hope I am wrong and this time NQ will move in a different direction but I reserve the right to expect they won't and it's just a temp  band-aid before it's back to business as usual. I'll be happy to be proven wrong though, we'll see.

Sounds like one have to mine even more now, sure it might work for larger org with more combined time. but for the little guy not so much.
 
They also reference "the real world" a few times, well that place sucks for fun and games. Should we also add food and sleep requirements?
 
mindlessly reparing and mining is already a drain, hell most of my ships a smoking because i do not have the resources or time to put in the effort of reparing them.
Perhaps improve the repair gameplay first. for me i put something heavy on my mouse and go away, making the player leave is the first step in losing a player.
 

Do you know how many time in the last two days bugs and glitches have caused people to crash ships ?  I mean a speck of dirt in the sky so small you cant even see it  will completely obliterate a whole ship.    Flying along with noting in view then; a tower loads in 10m ahead of you.   
Thruster locks, brakes not working, and a host of other things that happen.  Which we pay for in scrap now, we should not have to pay more for parts being destroyed after three of these.  If the limit was set to  30 or 40 it would be okay.  
The PVP thing,  yea I see 3 times otherwise you can sit there and repair things over and over never loosing anything. 

Given the comments on implementing a replacement tool for swapping engines etc in without having to re-do all the links etc. Will this tool also allow replacement of existing industry units for the new higher tier variants?

Generally this looks like good game design to me.
 
I have two concerns about it:
With bots no longer selling basic elements, it's already difficult to put together parts for a ship. It requires flying to 10-20 markets on 2 planets to get everything needed for a M core ship... and some things, elevators, T2+ elements, T2+ honeycomb are often not available at all. Except for honeycomb, element destruction will exacerbate this problem. I am definitely seeing T3+ ore drying up on several planets. It's taking 5 times as many scans to find it now compared to about a month ago. We will need renewable ore sources.

With a tool being added to "replace an element" (replace broken with brand new), does this open up the possibility to have that "replace" tool work to replace/upgrade elements for current talents?
 
 

I agree with this +1
 
I have an eye disorder (RP) that is making me go blind. I still manage to play most MMOs just fine, but in DU its like its either pitch black or its insanely bright in terms of the textures and the mass abundance of snow everywhere, ice underground, etc but also just adding lumi glass or some actual lights into an area have a super fine line between being pitch black, just right, or eye bleedingly bright in most circumstances. Or even more with the flashlight.
 
There are many things that need an opacity slider option in conjunction with the black card or shadow to read text.
 
It would be nice if like the hint box just off the right of top center of the screen was the same as the options right next to that that tell depth, speed, etc. When everything is like blindingly bright in snow or luminence its also a lot of times impossible to read and should be made to look like the other info window.
 
Just as the mini map should be given an opacity option. I dont know how many times I would be flying back during high noon and not be able to see the mini map waypoint or the actual ground waypoint. If hover text is on the table things like the mini map or the way point should also get a black border to make them better seen.
 
And unless im mining in dark soil I can never use the flashlight underground and in fact most times I have to turn down the brightness just to see the outlines of the ore since for whatever reason digging underground is like digging on the sun with blindingly bright texture choices when the flash light is on. So the actual angle guage that pops up when you hit "L" needs to have this black border as well. Not to mention either being always on or added to some part of the hud that does not require the use of the flashlight whatsoever.
 
There is other things I could bring up but that is my main gripe with 90% of this game.
 
 

Or semi-transparent black background under text/UI.

What's shakin', Noveans?

I'm here today to present you with a big, juicy player survey. ? Want a taste of the action? 

Whether you're a veteran player that's been around since the beginning, or you quit the game after a couple of minutes, your feedback is crucial to pinpoint where our team should focus its efforts to improve your experience.

Help us bring DU to the next level by clicking ▶ HERE ◀ !
 
Once you've completed the survey, let us know how you found it by popping a comment right here in this thread.

Happy surveying, folks!