U114145

The points will be applied after a brief downtime starting at 9 am UTC | 4 am EST on December 17th.  
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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
 

Sloppy pilots should be penalized, but yea fair call, once the bugs that cause crashes are gone then crash damage should be a thing

Have your devs play the game , from the start with no god mode 
 
They will learn more from that than any hand picked forum

Good work guys!! I'm excited to see these improvements and I am very happy to hear that we will be reimbursed for the high prices schematics we have bought all ready.

The public test service is genius. So no one gets advantages via inside trading.
 

Let's have it, DU! Let's talk about NQ's 0.23 learnings.
 
 

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:
 
 

Same here, a very loaded survey.  Not many people can make a decent survey.
Subscription runs out in Jan.  I was ify before this patch.  I realise more patches like this will be necessary.   The patch itself wont make me quit but the chaotic decision making from NQ might.

You should put "POLL" in the Thread Title, if you want people to actually take part in the poll.

The questions are not applicable to me and I think many others..
 
I'm not quite ready to give up on the game but feel this update is not complete and will cause more pain that it needs to.

Because it will take a big chunk out of the economy of the game and further segment the game.. If NQ does this it effectively ends the single shard game they claim to be creating where everything you do matters as it no longer will.
 
In reality they already split the game into two shards, once entirely inside a safe zone and one not. But  at least what happens in the safezone can and would potentially impact the whole game still. This would add a third shard entirely instanced into it's own environment.

How is this a thing? It goes against everything NQ set out in their vision and actively counters the work they are putting into getting the economy going. What is this with NQ that hey seem to be willing very far in what they think is causing the economy to not start but at the same time pretty much announce they are going to introduce a creative mode which actively takes away a lot from the economy. Is NQ this desperate for funds that they are now on a path to throw overboard one part of the original promise and very string commitments to not ever do this to backers.
 
The fact JC mentions this concerns me greatly as the pattern has always been that once JC start talking about things like this and in this fashion, we see this appear within 6 months in game as it generally is something that is actually already on the table and in early stages of development.
 
NQPlease, do not do this. I figure by now it's safe to say that as the backers money has been spent you really do not have much of a consideration for your promises and commitments in the past and wil bypass us in your quest for new money. It's also obviously convenient that anything said during that time is NDA and so you can deny it easily and we have no recourse unless we break NDA. You are tearing down the framework your vision and pitch for the game was based on for the sake of winning over new souls and their money. If you are then just tell us and we can decide whether it is worth sticking around or move on.
 
Creative mode would pretty much split up the game into three.. The open world PVP game, the "no PVP please" safe zones and now the "I just want to build and not be concerned with cost and effort to get there" game.  I doubt PVP players would have objections against the introduction of PVE content (mostly) outside the safe zones as it will bring them PVP content as well, Creative mode wil not help the game, it will just help your bottom line and your are pretty much selling your soul for that purpose but I am guessing that is what this is all about and that is very unfortunate.
 
Over the past years many of us have given you a lot of suggestions and ideas about creating more faucets in game but you have not choses to listen if you ever actually bothered to even look at it (there is zero reason to assume you have outside of claims everything is seen, nothing to even slightly indicate this is in fact the case beyond reading the words maybe).
 
Why are options such as presented HERE not even considered when they will provide more gameplay, incentive to play, remove (financial) blocks and allow players to actually use their game time to build an in game presence outside of reverting to mining. 
 
 
 
Please NQ, don't .. 

Meh, let's get back to the topic. Who cares if Johnny is evading some forum rule because they used *gasp* profanity? Not gonna be a forum cop. Granted, I have read Johnny's posts...prolly a bit more involved than just the "f word", lol. 
 
At this point I think it is really clear that the community at large isn't a fan of these updates. Even the normally "let's just post pictures of the stuff we're making" reddit community is not happy, overall.
 
The community is making its voice clear-- now the question is if NQ will react in any way. 
 
Even a simple post saying "we know some people aren't happy with these changes and are keeping an open mind as we experiment with the game balance and carefully monitor these changes" would go a long way. They should have posted that everywhere as soon as the negative reactions started to roll in. "Calm down, we're listening". 
 
As always, it isn't just the game design decisions NQ is making...it is the poor communication and perception that they don't really care to understand the player experience. 

Well, that doesn't always relate to everyone else Bobbie. I am a beta subscriber, a couple of my new friends playing too, and we would be extremely sad if they 'shut down this shit show' tomorrow.
 
Please let us keep playing. The projects we are working on are fun and to lose all that work now would be horrible.

Such changes do make sense and I think everyone can see that. It does add a lot of gameplay (potentially) at some point. But just not YET. It only decreases gameplay options for now because DU is just not there yet. Smaller orgs and solo players who don't want to bother too much with others are severly hampered because they simply can't build the industry neccessary for their building endeavours.
That means they're bound to use the markets (which is good I guess, tho it's very forced) - which will be empty for some time until ppl actually start to sell stuff. And this also means that they need LOTS of quanta to even buy those elements which they can't produce which means they HAVE TO mine (only source of income) to get quanta.
But this also leads to even more non regenerating ore being deleted from the game. On top of that, many ppl don't rly enjoy mining. To most of them it's simply a thing that has to be done to do other stuff.
 
And before anyone screams "buuuuuut lethys, muh makes mooonies by trading/transport/insert random other stuff": that may be true but that's not what the majority of players will do. The majority will go the mining way - same as in eve. I told all my org mates that it's easy to daytrade in eve and that I can plex all 4 accs with ease that way. Did they try? Nope. They wouldn't bother. Cause Mining is "easier". When I took over a smaller trading hub (dodixie) I found that there were about 30 - 50 ppl trading there bigtime - the rest were just very small fish. Same will happen in DU. Some will trade/haul/do other stuff to generate their income and they will always tell others that they dont have to mine to get money cause for them everything is fine. While the rest of the playerbase has to mine (in their opinion) to get money. And tbh, that's why EVEs economy works. BECAUSE of ppl who mine (and all the bots ofc) - someone has to inject all that money into the markets. 
 
Such massive changes do make sense in an alpha and VERY early on when mechanics are implemented and when ppl have other stuff to do or when ppl CAN actually do something else (like specialize in research) - DU lacks nearly all of those mechanics to make up for it tho. And that's why ppl are complaining too

At yet you can still address the possibilities from the perspective of what exists, or will as of tomorrow, in the game, and not at some date on the calendar 2023.
 
The game does not become unplayable as of 0.23. Some may adjust their play style (I won't need to), but others might see an opportunity to make money via the market, when they were not already doing so.
 
I am not stating this is the best patch ever in the history of patches, but I am merely choosing to look to the future and not piss in the pool before leaving.

Analytics have been industry standard in games for years now.
 
Even single player games are heavily invested in analytics -- beating a boss or clearing a level often sends an event; devs needs to know what percent of their players are making it past the first levels so they can make balance decisions based on objective data, not a select few twitch streamers or hardcore fanatics. 
 
Analytics cut through the rampant speculative "I know so many people..." sort of statements by surfacing actual data. The hundred or so people you know aren't at all statistically relevant compared the whole of the beta test population...
 
NQ should already have a keen sense of how and when players are dropping off -- but they've made numerous mistakes that are typical for first-time devs with no experience in the field...so I honestly don't expect them to have reliable analytics despite the relative ease of implementation (if they are going to use Xsolla for subs, they could use many of the robust analytics providers out there). 
 
Solid analytics are even more important in a subscription model -- especially when you are a new developer with very (very) limited game design experience -- seeing exactly how design changes impact the economy and player base is absolutely vital. 
 
 Of course, if NQ does have data like this...they'd never share it unless it makes them look good. As the OP points out, it seems like they lack even a basic analytics framework and have had to rely on streamers, reddit fanatics, and JC's sacred "intuition" to stay informed. 

When making their plane design decisions during WW2, the US-army once concluded that the most-hit areas of planes should be the parts which must be improved by more armor. This seemingly common-sensical conclusion was proven to be false by the statistician Abraham Wald. The issue was that, the Army's conclusions were drawn from planes actually made home after sustaining damage. One would notice a way different damage distribution and draw very different conclusions, if one actually looked at planes that fell down in combat and didn't survive.
 
I suggest that a similar error might be beginning to haunt DU's developmental prioritization. NQ is beginning to take the feedback of the currently surviving DU community very deeply to decide which areas of the game they should improve immediately. While this might seem common sensical, it might also be creating a bias similar to the above example.
 
My (very anecdotal) experience of reading DU community gives me the impression that we have a lot of people here who enjoy making ships and constructs. I know this would be an oversimplication, but let's for the sake of argument categorize these players with othergames they might enjoy. Let's say current DU playerbase has a lot of Minecraft, Satisfactory, Factorio people. This would check out, because voxel building has been one of the most advanced and interesting aspects of DU since early alpha. So people who would enjoy this kind of gameplay came into DU and "survived". The game ended up being interesting to them at the current state.
 
Meanwhile people who would enjoy PvP, dogfights, exploration, empire building, creating huge organizational (managing real people, not factories) tycoons etc. either didn't come into the game yet, or didn't "survive". Eve, Star Citizen, No Man's Sky kind of players didn't fill DU's current playerbase. And I know many of them dropped out after the weak experience in their areas of interest after beta launch. Ofc, there is greater diversity in player mentality compared to alpha, but still insufficient.
 
I would argue in its full potential, DU should appeal to all these types for different reasons. But since the game is still in a very early stage, the population of DU is less diverse across these player mentalities and the effects of this bias are greater. Meanwhile, some developmental prioritization decisions are being made by the influence of the existing playerbase, rather than the playerbase DU should be appealing to. Here are some examples how this happens.
 
1) A feature upvote page was created with no regard to principles like "nobody reads the second page of search results". Then features were upvoted by mostly pre-beta players, cemented on top by the web page's design, and those began taking significant NQ attention. 
 
2) Due to surviving players, ideas like "voxel vertices editor" or "mining bots" are heavily upvoted. These are features which the Satisfactory and Minecraft kind of players would enjoy. They wouldn't enjoy mining so they'd seek ways to build without mining. But DU should be a game which should also appeal to people who like to mine. Bots would devalue their work. Instead of working on an improved mining experience, prioritizing bots is a clear example of survivor bias in development.
 
3) Similarly, voxel builders are already achieving greatness in DU. Instead of elevating their gameplay further, NQ's developmental prioritization should be getting other gameplays to that level of interestingness and fun.
 
4) The incoming PvP patch is grounded on solving shipbuilding problems. But meaningful choices in ship design isn't the only balance domain for a fun PvP experience. In a balanced single-shard sandbox sci-fi MMO there needs to be PvP commitment, non-consensual PvP, and a meaningful risk/reward spread. I would argue the lack of warp disruptors, warp bubbles, webs; the ability of PvP'ers to bail out of any fight even after engaging in it, are more important issues than borg cubes. I'm sure it'd be better for more people if NQ solved the core gameplay experience of looking for meaningful PvP for hours and not finding anything, or the ability to bail your ship out of engagements (thus economics, chance of death, consequences not mattering), rather than fixing the shape of my ship. 
 
Of course, in an ideal world, NQ should keep improving all aspects of the game. I am not arguing at all that the game does not need a vertices editor, nor that borg cubes aren't a big issue. I am just saying that NQ should be wary about de-prioritizing important developmental areas which also happen to have no voice in the community since people who would care about these issues aren't even playing yet.
 
The game is very early and I'm eager to see how things will develop. This post is meant to be more of an early warning to NQ and a conversation initiation. I hope they keep the great work up.
 
o7

“A sensor on the Arkship has picked up an ancient beacon from a ship. Her detected name is incomplete: “GO_D ST__”. 
 
Noveans,
 
I come to you today with intriguing news: we’ve been alerted to some kind of signal from what appears to be a ship. ?
 
This time, however… something feels… different. New. Odd. There’s a tingle in our collective space suits. This whole thing feels... simultaneously mysterious and exciting with a touch of, dare I say it, danger! ?
 
If you’re ready to embark on an all-new journey in search of loot and levity, we encourage you to suit up and head out and find the first clue.

That’s all, folks. Good luck out there...
 

Nice! I'm curious to see where this leads..

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! 

Interesting changes. I think this will indeed help to keep demand healthy. It may also create emergent play around trading worn-out high level elements. Space-scrapyards!