Deintus

Hi! New-ish player here with a question for the Devs. I wasn't sure where to post this exactly so, I figured I would drop it here and hopefully, they will see it. Anyway, as a female gamer, this is the first time I have played a Voxel type game and so far, I am fairly impressed. That being said, when I look at what is being projected for the future of DU, I am a little concerned about the game loop. This is my understanding of what DU will be in the future. Mine, build, make ships, fight other players constantly to hold on to that which I have built. Repeat. So far, no mention of NPCs, no real exploration, or jobs outside of always having to be prepared for war. I am not asking that anything necessarily be changed, I would just like to know if there are any plans in the works for non pvp players like me. Will I actually have a place in this game?
Again, this is a question for the Devs, not player speculation. 
Also, please do not just tell me to stay on Sanctuary. That is just demeaning and dismissive.
Thank you!

Large-scale PvP can't be the endgame. I don't mean it shouldn't, I mean NQ physically can't support it. 
 
As a select few corps become more and more powerful through inevitable consolidation and conquest, the scale of combat becomes harder to manage.
 
The "cutting edge" tech (lol) really doesn't help -- large battles will always require exponentially more server resources than small ones. NQ can't support huge daily battles without incurring considerable cost. There's a reason Eve does time dilation...if you think NQ has "solved" the problem of exponentially scaling multiplayer, try doing even small-scale PvP...works like a dream, right? 
 
I get that DU was pitched as this grand single-shard concept where player limits don't matter and everyone can come together in big cities and battles...but the tech just doesn't work like that and never will, no matter how "optimized" they make it...which, using an off-the-shelf engine and off-the-shelf AWS servers limits what you can actually optimize. 
 
The only way there's a massive PvP battle endgame is if NQ can throw an army of hardware at it -- which will only make sense if there's a large population of casuals/semi-casuals that help subsidize this expense...and so far, NQ hasn't seemed that interested in mainstream appeal. 
 
TLDR: large-scale PvP can't be the endgame because their implementation of single-shard isn't robust, scalable, or affordable enough to support it. 

The thing is unless they have the different solar systems as faction based systems with multiple solar systems fighting against each while working together with those that start there this galactic epic space war wet dream will never organically occur to where people are working together enough to wage a war against themselves vs turning all their power towards everyone weaker then them when it should be a civilization pulling together for survival with all orgs working to fullfull all the roles and making it so that anyone other than large orgs has enough disposable income to even fight in the first place. Who in their right mind is going to throw away potentially hundred of millions of credits night after night fighting a war when we barely even are given enough slack to make a small fleet to just perform daily functions that needs to last as long as possible before that 120+ mil in replacement parts hits.
 
There is never a point that I have felt with all the grind of grief loops under the gun to do anything that felt like I had enough of anything as a 3 man crew to sit back and feel like I finally have enough of a base, fleet, industry to say Ok cool now im ready to become a 3 man sar fighter wing to do anything. Since everyone is an enemy potentially I feel like I have only the allies in my crew rather than a civilization of allies for any need to work together. Since PvP is broken, years out of my price range, and trying to get an industry set up to make all parts to one day run a player hosted and connected market with market stalls is my only real long goal as I never see PvP amounting to anything more than lone griefers or at best when territory wars hit Zerg Griefers.
 
One the large orges take over all the bogarted juice tiles and caches of stockpiled resources of people who no longer play and finish taking over anything of value then nobody will likely ever build a base outside Alioth except large orgs and at that point PvP is totally dead no matter how much they revamp it since obviously they dont know what they are doing this far along in development to make it work.
 
But PvE will never work either since if they have weapons you will lose every time unless you get the jump on them and even still I expect nothing worth risking again potentially hundreds of millions for slight gains I could have gotten in technology know I could just as well let someone else take all the risk and that the market will likely be saturated with then soon enough and cheap enough to further not justify fighting npcs since it will take me years until I finally get around to PvP talents which will likely = PvE talents as well. Especially since i could just mine and buy it off the market for 0 risk.
 
But honestly tho there is no endgame in a sandbox game. Technically if you have all the new schematics and parts production you are already at endgame the same as the basic standard issue mining, same with pvp. This is pretty much 70% of the game being complete. It does not get much better from here it only get harder as resources become more scarce and grabbing ore just always stays just out of reach no matter if you have T5 everything its always just that much further away trying to break even once all the tiles are systematically strip mined or the mining bots clean the rest up in record time.
 
Missions wont help either unless it is in PvP protected areas just to add more cut rate abitrary tasks that likely wont pay what its worth to do with other players taking the same mission. It will be fun for a week.
 
NQ just does not have any reliable content built for longevity that isnt wrapped in 10 layers of sinks and grind that gets multipled by the requirements generated through your industry that keeps you chained down to the 9-5 mining job you are forced into.There is no other seemingly planned way of getting money other then mining, ganking ships, or perhaps grinding NPCs that will likely be 10x more grindy then mining or on top of it being griefed by space goblins every 5 mins which will make mining take 10x longer then it does now.
 
Endgame... Its not about how long youll play that defines endgame in DU is how much bad game design and grind/punishment/time&money sinks youll put up with before you hit your own personal endgame and find a better game. I dont think they ever thought that far out to create some kind of end game since they are essentially flying by the seat of their pants with a box of bandaids and elbow grease and some ductape to keep this thing from falling apart to just get to the grand opening.
 
Lol endgame... that was a good one. I didnt know I needed a good laugh this morning so truely thanks for that op.

I wouldn't say DU goes for realism at all for technical and gameplay reasons. The solar system and planet scale are shrunk way down, planets don't rotate or orbit the star, there is no physical star, and the lighting is not realistic.

Warp cells just need to be removed. Make warp drives have a cooldown after use or something instead. Or make it like Space Engineers and each warp drive can only haul so much mass so far. A heavy hauler would need a dozen or two.

These are my thoughts as well. Seems like something we could do, but I'm not sure what kind of effect it would have on those with a lot of quanta.

Hello.
 
I made a OCR parser bot for Dual Universe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUtrZ5NDXus
The program automatically grabs all the orders data from the DU markets.
OCR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition
 
I don't have the reverse-engineering knowledge to use memory access or packets intercepting, so I had to settle with OCR.
Because it's OCR, I would need to purchase a new computer able to run DU in order to automate the data collection.
 
If data collection was running 24/7,  there could be a website with the market information and history.
I've made this website for a game I work on: https://stonks.gg/product/BOOSTER_COOKIE
 
For now I plan on waiting for an official API from DU before setting up a website.
Just wanted to share the creation, I had fun making it and maybe someone out there is interested.

lol seems about right for sanctuary.  Take that as your warning, get off sanctuary ASAP, do not stay there for any reason.
 
If we had known at the begening what we know now we would have plopped down our S-TU in any random hex, mined just enough rocks to build a barely space capable puddle jumper and flown it to Thades or Madis within the first day to set up a permeant base. 
 
Sanctuary is the roach motel of planets.  So little ore it traps you there if you try to do anything other than immediately leave.  That place needs to come with a warning to all new players showing up.

Yep, NQ used outright false advertising on several ocasions (with different % of BS), its true. Reason is, that game is in raw Alpha state currently (not Beta, its joke), so they obviously uncomfortable to show things how they are in reality. This why all this trickery.

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Here's to a bright New Year and a fond farewell to the old one! Lets DU this!







o7

Could make penalties for orgs over a certain member limit. Let's suppose that for up to x members, upkeep on org owned territory is free. For every member over that limit, each org owned hex incurs a certain daily upkeep in quanta. 10 players? Fine. 20 players? Still fine. Cap is 25. At 30 players, each hex costs 1 million quanta per day fee. At 50, each hex costs 5 million quanta per day.
 
Would make life very interesting.

I think it's funny when people attempt to put a real world price tag on virtual items. You realize by the ToS you own NOTHING in game, have ZERO rights to it in any capacity whatsoever. It will at some point in the hopefully distant future be erased from the planet when DU servers shut down. 
 
Them wiping is not 'robbing' you of anything because you 'own' NOTHING.

Some good news. I got an email from Support telling me that everyone is on vacation for the holidays, but that someone should be getting back to me after 01/06/2021. Fingers crossed. 

I wonder where VMs fall into this.....Its technically one machine but its also technically not.

That sounds like a potential comprimise. But I wager people and orgs that have a.lot of quanta wouldn't like it.
 
I can see the good and the bad in it myself.

You are right, and I agree with you, but if you remember before .23 there were many (many many many) ppl complaining that there was almost nothing to do as the already built anything and blablabla.
Not that this was the best solution to that issue but I believe they needed to slow down most of the playerbase as new content wouldn't be available until waaaay later next year.

the funny part is this isnt over,wait till they implement power gens,all that work u just did with schematics goes in the trash,now ur building gens to maintain all this u built again, but wait there's more,stay tuned

Problem is, Minecraft, realisticly, has much more content and variety of gamestyles, then DU. Calling DU "Space Minecraft" is veeery huge compliment currently, even unjust thing to do. 
 

That's just the thing though.  I didn't support this game to become "game rich".  I joined to make friends, build, craft and work towards a common goal with my org mates.  But now this game is nothing BUT about making tons and tons of money even before you get to do anything else at all.  I already have a real job, thank you very much.  I don't need a game job too.

Like a previous poster, I suffered through all the grind we had before. I did end up building some cool things since pre-alpha.  But now I am told that's not how we play this game.  Instead, I am to choose one or two parts, spend millions of quanta to make them and hope that I don't choose something that gets saturated in the market.  And sell, sell, sell.  Or mine, mine, mine and then sell, sell, sell.  THEN maybe I can build something or fix something.  Meh.

I also did not sign up for Eve Online here.  I signed up for a sandbox where I could build anything I wanted.  That promise has been revoked.  No way in hell my small group of guys will be able to build what we have planned on now.  All we can do is try to make money just to keep the ships flying and the market making money for the rich guys.  I have not logged in for two weeks now.  I have cancelled all DU notifications.  I may or my not come back depending on how the next few updates are handled. 

If you guys wanna play "space billionaire," feel free and have fun.  That's not what I signed up for.
 

I couldn't agree with this more - there are a ton of players that play MMOs solo and do not have the time to join large guilds that make unreasonable demands due to their leader or leadership not having a job and playing from their parents basement.   I on the other hand (and I am sure many many more playing) have a 6 figure/60 hour professional career and family and very limited time to enjoy games like this,  and lets be honest its not fair to those that can play hours and hours on end in a group for me to try and join when I will have to cut it short or deal with life and/or work.  However by alienating myself and people like myself with large disposable incomes (whom are more than glad to or already have dropped serious coin into a good game) DU is shooting themselves in the foot.  Eve is a failed endeavor that should not be a "schematic" for how to build sandbox games,   the only reason it is still alive today is because of several extremely/filthy rich clients,  who from what I understand have left the game and that is the main reason it is now a sinking ship.   The only reason it isn't dead yet,  and we have all seen this before,  the longer an MMO runs the longer it takes to die.    The reason I bring up Eve is because this is a tactic that is used in EVE,  and it would be a horrendous shame to see such a beautiful and well designed game such as DU with its extreme potential turn into a bot riddled,  scam laden,  inferiority complex haven of a game that Eve truly is.   
 
There are several ways of doing this to allow all players to enjoy the game on all sides and that includes those that do wish to play multiplayer,  but to force multiplayer will kill the potential of this game and their profit margin.  Eventually large areas and portions of the game will be cut off to the general public as you will have to join one of a small handful of large corps and small businesses will never survive,  this will also kill the diversity of the game and with a game that is built on invention that is a death sentence.  
 
This is of course only beta,  and discussions like this are what is needed for the developers to read both sides of the coin and to see what their player base is looking for so I am sure that they will make the right decision in the end.   There has been way to much blood and sweat poured into this game to turn it into another Eve Online,  unless of course I was wrong about the leadership and developers and they are not the forward thinking, creatives that are pushing a new form of gaming on to the market but rather just a copy cat of CCP or Electronic Arts and others like them looking to just milk multiplayer for the cash.  

Thanks for this invitation Burble. I might come back to it because I by my self are interested in creating content. The problem with that is to generate the resources for it has become a problem. For the size of builds I do the login bonus is by far not enaugh. I´m not interested in mining a hour per day. Ingame I set up scanners and logistics to aquire t3+ ores. Because with them I could grind what I need to build in 20 minutes. This is all gone now since the market broke. My assets have become worthless at this point. I swapped to skill me towards handling to make a new income methode, just to figure out that everyone did the same and there is nothing more to upgrade. All of this together with the fact of the decreased player number and overall activity is simply frustrating.
 
I understand your argumentation and you are right that just crying and yelling wont help. This is the reason why I write the posts. To encourage the discussion. It is not meant to blame or to demonize. But  just to be silent as you mentioned does not solve the problem. Still, my major point is that there was no need for the patch before there are no other ways implementet to generate money, like missions. NQ shut down the game activity without offering alternatives. To do this in christmas times and while in a pandemic was a big failure. People left. The game suffered.
 
The reason that I´m still here is simply because I hope the best for the game. But NQ should talk and listen to the players. Now more than ever. Because without us this universe does not live.
 

It would be interesting if NQ released exact numbers of logins for the game at the end of each week. I know some people are still playing, and I know some people aren't. Much more said than that by anyone not a part of NQ is speculation.

Honestly i think the current "low player" count and people "fleeing" is a mixture of things going on. Even if we assume towakins interpitation of the OP is correct just saying "durr NQ R SUXZOR No R CANZ DEVEloPE game" is not the answer. However handwaving the mistakes away and claiming the game is just a rough diamond and that JC is god and the NQ staff his angles is also not correct.
 
The truth lies in the middle. This is obviously a first game for NQ, while they have made many mistakes they have also done many things right as well. As this is there first game they have many advantages and disadvantages. I.E not having a loyal fanbase with expectations ah la FO76. However they also lack the experince to know how to best handle the players or what will ballence vision/gameplay/player expectations/communications ect the best for the type of community they want to create. .23 being a perfect example, good patch on paper for what the game is advertised as. Bad patch in practice due to lack of other content and investments by players with limited other choices.
 
This is before you take into consideration the fact there are also external and internal factors at play as well for the state of the game as it sits. For example using towakins interpretation of the OP as my base for answering here. I.E lots of players have left in favorable conditions for NQ just for clarification.
 
Its plain and simply not as straightforward as that, sure many people are stuck at home bored out of their everloving minds. Many normal activitys are cut off and so they turn to gaming as a last or first resort in the masses, meaning the pool of players DU stands to attract is fuller, deeper, and wider then ever before. However many other much larger better known less niche companies know this as well. You are seeing vastly deeper and longer running discounts then is the usual, many epic exclusives are migrateing to steam and many long anticipated games have released back to back to back.
 
This means while the conditions are massivly in NQs favor, they also have a ton more competition for players attention. Additionally many players wallets are being squeezed hard by the lockdowns due to reduced or eliminated hours, positions, jobs. So money is much tighter and more grudgeingly handed out. DU is a good game, even acknowledgeing the glareing issues and planet sized holes in the game. Its at least on par with other sandbox games like space engineers.
 
However, due to the aforementioned issues and holes. I.E .23, the bugs and lack of features as well as the seeming disconnect between the devs and players over the vision. As well as the aforementioned competition. This means DU has a much narrower margin to ballence the game on.
 
Every mistake they make is more heavily resented and amplified by players due to the competition they have and how precious money is for many players. Additionally those same players are far less likely to be patent and stick around as there are just so many other "better" more content filled games to chose from. Adding to this chaos is how much they will resent spending money for A and decideing they got B out of it. A perfect example of this is the carebear vs rustys fight going on I.E pvp for pvps sake and screw anyone not tough enough to survive or highly limited pvp and vast pve and world building.
 
If you mix all of this with the holidays and people being home and likely spending more time with families and playing with new gaming systems/games then throw the resentment from the old guard who dislike the direction NQ has gone with things or feel NQ has ignored their advice....well you end up with what we are seeing now.
 
A lot of the more casual players leaving for "greener" pastures with no one able to tell if they will come back when DU is more feature rich or if DU has driven them away for good. Angry old guard who are yelling "we told you so", rustys demanding no safe zones and orbital bombardment 24/7 without any consideration towards longevity of the game. Carebears wanting expanded pve and screw the pvp griefers amd trolls. Anyone in the middle who just enjoys the game for what it is and trying to make constructive suggestions getting attacked by all sides and accused of everything under the sun and the game getting a broken nose and two black eyes.
 
And keep in mind this is really only the footnotes version of events. There is a LOT more to this then that. But i already had a wall-o-text that most will ignore and cherrypick apart to support their own arguments so meh.