Zarcata

There's no other place to go to read statement's from NQ's leadership or learn about the company's objectives...
 
As for it all being fabricated for marketing hype...well, name one concept in DU that isn't stretched to the point of dishonesty for marketing hype  
 
Besides, the way that NQ's leadership is presenting the company is very relevant -- it shows that their focus isn't really in finishing this game to the best of their ability...it's in trying to lob a bunch of buzzwords at the ether in desperate hopes of an acquisition or investor. In other words, they can't stand on their own and they know DU isn't going to make the company solvent. 
 
That matters...it means they are likely all-in on these "other projects" and only giving DU the bare minimum to push it to release. 
 
Finally...there's reasons to believe the CEO when they post about how great web3/crypto/metaverse is -- there's every indication that they were all aboard that bandwagon well before they started at NQ.
 
Their efforts here go beyond just some lazy hype/buzzwords. They've presented at conferences, are lobbying the french government about crypto and blockchain, and they were executive producer for Ghost Recon's infamous "Breakpoint" title, which included NFTs (recently it was announced that Ghost Recon would phase out these NFTs because no one used them, lol).  

@Zarcata Us Europeans start to get antagonistic when papa US wants to tell us what to do, but that's also the case vice versa.
Also keep in mind that these are time codes for MMOs, these might very well fall outside of the VAT requirements (just as giftcards apparently are not included in these rules).
 
https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/taxes/tax-on-digital-products#digital-goods-in-the-european-union
https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2022-03/Indicative list of electronically supplied services.pdf
 
Honestly, there is a LOT of information out there, not all of it is correct as many have their own business interests to promote and often that is directly linked to the pro-counter arguments. But honestly, It's not our business how that business is run. To date Markee has honored all things I've bought there, N=1, but in my book that is trustworthy. Might that business run into issues down the road with VAT owed to the EU, possibly...

Keeping our talent points would actually be a complete game breaking for old players.
 
For example on the objective of going for an Aphelia mission run:
- A ship without handling or pilot talents requires 4 times more flight elements than a version with maxed talents.
- Items to craft with industry cost 2 times less in quantity of ore if you have maxed talents.
 
To put it simply, a new player will have to farm 8 times longer than me to achieve the same result if I keep all my talent points.
 
And I'm not even talking about PvP, or in addition to the PvE advantages you have all the management of weapons and radars.
 
It would be totally unfounded for us to keep our talent points.

It's even worse as he is pretty much making claims this is already part of DU, as in comments like how great of an example the DU economy is with regards to blockchain when it has nothing whatsoever to do with it and all it does is show he is angling for buyers with hype words that do not mean a thing.

A major reason for NQ being where it is has been the consistent overpromising and under delivering. And that has not changed at all. They are still trying to sell something they do not have and try to make claims about their project which are simply untrue and easily debunked. 

Well, let's assume that Sanctuary will also be completely erased, although a few days ago NQ was still saying that everything is safe there, including ships that are located directly on their own territory. Then the moon Haven would also have to be "punished" with a wipe, although it wouldn't be necessary there because of the planetary structure, but it is necessary because of the fairness of the players? What does NQ want to achieve with the Recruit a Friend programme? Come on, get your friend into the game, pay the subscription and have fun until we delete everything again?
What about space stations then - could they stay because they are not linked to the revision of the planets? Or does everything just have to be taken away? (So everything except skill points? or BPs? or Quanta? or....?)
What exactly is the point of logging into this test version and paying for it?
I am very curious to see what else NQ is working on besides DualUniverse.

The alternative is to be completely open about the dev process with your community and explain what is going on, and why things turned out the way they did.
If you do this correctly there is almost no limit to what a community will accept and still be positive towards the game and company.
 
But instead NQ has been the poster child for how to NOT interact with a community.
 
And the truly tragic thing in all this is the "for sure" promises they made during the kickstarter, which is a big part of why I no longer have any respect left for NQ.
 
 
 

Experience... Game development while interesting, is probably the worst type of job I could imagine from a professional viewpoint. Lousy hours and if you want creative freedom doing indie games there is no job security. Only thing worse would be to slave for a crap company like EA, shudder. And frankly the worst costumers in the world, is probably gamers..
 
Nope, I am happy where I am (industrial automation/robotics) with stability, good hours, salary and professional costumers.
And if I ever was to make a game in my spare time (as any software developer I have plenty of ideas, and there is still some niche possibilities in VR for games possible to make by a small team), it would be on my terms doing something under the radar until it was proper done. Then release on steam and only to do bug fixes as needed.
 
But the thing that makes my blood boil with regards to NQ, is all the things and problems that would have been relatively easy to avoid if they just applied a tiny bit of introspection, listen more and used some established dev processes.
 
And yes, I fully realize that this is armchair develupment and that I don't know what goes on behind closed doors. But after all these years there are patterns that are impossible to ignore. And no matter how you look at it, there is and has always been a big discrepancy between the size of NQ and the rate and quantity of features being put into the game.

Ridiculous! It makes no difference whether a solo player builds a huge factory or whether 5 players build a big factory together. The 5 players manage it much faster and more effectively. Especially since you also have to supply the industry permanently so that it remains in continuous operation. That's exactly why players pay, so that you can play.
If the subscription costs do not generally cover this, then the price of the subscription is not right or the game is too cost-intensive. It's scary how much freedom NQ takes and every time just to get these costs under control, even though they supposedly don't have a financial problem. So the game itself is becoming smaller and smaller and more limited in what a player can do and how he can develop. What's next in terms of reduction? Will the planets all lose 20% of their mass? Are you only allowed to have a maximum of 10 dynamic cores? Will L-cores be abolished? Will there be an element limit for cores?

For me this new schematics system is a terrible mistake, I guess I will discover it wen it comes live, since yes I know it will be forced to us, but so far I can only imagine it as a mindless repetitive task, another way to charge us a taxe.
 
at this point the only thing I want to know, when is this wipe going to hit us, or are you guys traying to make players abandon the game update after update so that once no one will be left ppl won’t be upset to lose there stuff?

I'm not sure if these questions or the answers are really what players are currently concerned about.
I often have the impression with all the Lua questions that you didn't want to create a game, but a playground for Lua writers, whether professional or as a hobby.
The question about Sanctuary and Haven was unfortunately uninteresting for me. It would be much more important how a game release looks like with these two moons and the players. In the event of a "wipe" for all players, will there only be Haven or do you "have" to keep your Sanctuary tile? If we were to lose everything, does the new system with the base and launch plane also come to Sanctuary with landing and choosing what to build?
When will there finally be information for us players on how DualUniverse will continue? Fewer and fewer are playing because hardly anyone is motivated to play or even log in anymore due to the wipe idea. It's a terrible state of affairs at the moment - why are you delaying such information?

I'm not sure if these questions or the answers are really what players are currently concerned about.
I often have the impression with all the Lua questions that you didn't want to create a game, but a playground for Lua writers, whether professional or as a hobby.
The question about Sanctuary and Haven was unfortunately uninteresting for me. It would be much more important how a game release looks like with these two moons and the players. In the event of a "wipe" for all players, will there only be Haven or do you "have" to keep your Sanctuary tile? If we were to lose everything, does the new system with the base and launch plane also come to Sanctuary with landing and choosing what to build?
When will there finally be information for us players on how DualUniverse will continue? Fewer and fewer are playing because hardly anyone is motivated to play or even log in anymore due to the wipe idea. It's a terrible state of affairs at the moment - why are you delaying such information?

A proper menu for factions is generally missing. Not just an organization (although even for orgs the menu is ridiculous).
It also lacks the possibilities of diplomacy among the organizations and the factions, it lacks an election system per faction that is founded. It lacks possibilities to create more ranks. I just don't understand it, there are games that are already much further and have great content, there you can see how it works in terms of content. With NQ and DualUniverse, I have the impression that they have developers who are stuck at the 1999/2000 level. Does NQ even know the current game market, what is offered there? In what form, quality with what content for players and its possibilities?
 

I'm not sure if these questions or the answers are really what players are currently concerned about.
I often have the impression with all the Lua questions that you didn't want to create a game, but a playground for Lua writers, whether professional or as a hobby.
The question about Sanctuary and Haven was unfortunately uninteresting for me. It would be much more important how a game release looks like with these two moons and the players. In the event of a "wipe" for all players, will there only be Haven or do you "have" to keep your Sanctuary tile? If we were to lose everything, does the new system with the base and launch plane also come to Sanctuary with landing and choosing what to build?
When will there finally be information for us players on how DualUniverse will continue? Fewer and fewer are playing because hardly anyone is motivated to play or even log in anymore due to the wipe idea. It's a terrible state of affairs at the moment - why are you delaying such information?

I'm not sure if these questions or the answers are really what players are currently concerned about.
I often have the impression with all the Lua questions that you didn't want to create a game, but a playground for Lua writers, whether professional or as a hobby.
The question about Sanctuary and Haven was unfortunately uninteresting for me. It would be much more important how a game release looks like with these two moons and the players. In the event of a "wipe" for all players, will there only be Haven or do you "have" to keep your Sanctuary tile? If we were to lose everything, does the new system with the base and launch plane also come to Sanctuary with landing and choosing what to build?
When will there finally be information for us players on how DualUniverse will continue? Fewer and fewer are playing because hardly anyone is motivated to play or even log in anymore due to the wipe idea. It's a terrible state of affairs at the moment - why are you delaying such information?

I'm not sure if these questions or the answers are really what players are currently concerned about.
I often have the impression with all the Lua questions that you didn't want to create a game, but a playground for Lua writers, whether professional or as a hobby.
The question about Sanctuary and Haven was unfortunately uninteresting for me. It would be much more important how a game release looks like with these two moons and the players. In the event of a "wipe" for all players, will there only be Haven or do you "have" to keep your Sanctuary tile? If we were to lose everything, does the new system with the base and launch plane also come to Sanctuary with landing and choosing what to build?
When will there finally be information for us players on how DualUniverse will continue? Fewer and fewer are playing because hardly anyone is motivated to play or even log in anymore due to the wipe idea. It's a terrible state of affairs at the moment - why are you delaying such information?

It was that initial idea that drew me towards this game also. And with JC coming from a science background I suspect he took inspiration from something called a "complex system", where the sum of many simple mechanics emerge into something much more complex like a complete ecosystem.
 
So while a complex system had never been proven as the fundamental design in a MMO, there was ample precedence for it working in nature, economics etc.
But all this was made completely and utterly pointless when NQ could not even bring the basic tools (simple mechanics) required for this into the game.

I have commented on this earlier.
And my opinion is that a year is about the shortest time it takes for someone who has just reallocated to a new country/job, to go "ooooshit" and then find a good job (at their home country) again before leaving.
 
And this is one of the many, many things I hope we get to know the truth off once NQ goes belly up (most likely) and past employees can speak out.

Just to put this out there....DU has a 3-person design team as of now per a video put out by their design lead. 
 
The design lead's design credits include:
1993's "Pac in Time" by Kalisto 1993's "Fury of the Furries" by Mindscape 1997's "Nightmare creatures" by Activision 2015's "Trivial Pursuit" by Gameloft S.E. (yes the board game) The mining mini game starts to make sense, doesn't it...?
 
This is a designer with more experience in simple/arcade style games...so simple timers and mini-games probably feel very comfortable.
 
I don't want to be too harsh...but is this really the right experience for designing an MMO? 
 
Compared to the former Eve online designer who quit after <1 year...which, we still don't really know the story of why they left. 

Well that may be true, I just can't envision a big group of people wanting to play the game with that we have. And are people gonna wait around for 2-3 years after release for more real content? I just don't see it happening.  This game should of been the way of space engineers and have players rent out servers then can mod and play with rules.  NQ doesn't even utilize the single shard they just make boring afk mechanics. 

Yes, add in a sims update and numbers will be reached. 
 
There is literally nothing to do after you build something.
And all ideas from the past that can still be found on this forum to include stuff to do are just ignored.
 
we have showers and beds but cannot shower or sleep
we have toilets, ok lets skip that.
there are vegetables but we cannot harvest or eat
we cannot cut trees and use them
 
we cannot listen or dance to music or even entertain friends
 
and no a build puzzle is no direct entertainment.
 
add a sims update and they will come

That this game is dying is not because of the players or a possible wipe or not wipe. The game is dying because of NQ's policies and rowing back and forth with no real plan of where to go.
The game is dying because there don't seem to be enough customers attracted and engaged by the content in the game to fill their valuable free time with DualUniverse.
The game will not get better with a wipe or by taking away earned items and values in the game. It will just get emptier, and the planets or moons aren't even designed to be lively or interesting. I think that many of the new players will stay for 1-3 months and then leave the game again. 
You just have to look at the game market, what is offered to you there in terms of leisure activities. Value for money is a magic word, but so is exactly what you get for your free time. The standard gamer comes home after work/school/training and has limited time to recover and play....
 

There is no way to "compete" in this game when it comes to industry. There is no way to get any kind of differentiation. All ore is the exact same quality, everyone has access to the same talents, every element output is the exact same. People who claim the current system promotes "competition" simply do not understand how business works. Businesses don't just sell the exact same item as each other, they all sell slightly different items. The only place competition on the PvE side really exists is in ship sales (and to a lesser amount, storefronts like Gottmart and SVEA), not on the actual industry side.

How is it that you can get the message that the crafting system you implemented that had so many players stop playing because of how restrictive it was and how the barrier to entry was too high and decide the solution is to take the prohibitive system you have and then TIME GATE that construction process?

Like lets look at FUEL. A ship needs 10kL of fuel to fill a tank, each 100L of fuel needs 1h to create the schematic and around 3h of pures schematics to produce the hydrogen and fuel metals needed to craft that 100L of fuel. So we are looking at ~100h of timers to be able to fill a fuel tank which will run out in less than an hour of active flying.

How does this system make the game more accessible or more enjoyable? What purpose is this system supposed to serve? When is the game going to "find the fun" it spoke of rather than just continuing to make every system that is actually implemented more and more tedious and restrictive?

Should have clarified...I'd be looking for other options if I were an employee at NQ. It's maybe a mean thing to say, but that's just how I see things. 🤷‍♂️ 
 
Especially with leadership so focused on other projects (likely web3/NFT in nature based on the CEO's recent posts), I wouldn't feel optimistic about NQ's long-term prospects. 

NQ also sold the game as NOT a combat PVP centric game and combat being a means to en end and not a goal in the game.
 
The aggressive and hostile attitude from many in the "combat PVP" community within the NQ community, with comments like "Wait until the safezones are gone, we wil lcome and trample all over your precious sandcastles" when addressing buildiers and designers, led to NQ changing their position on the safe zones and create the massive central one aroudn Alioth, Madis and Thades.
 
Too many creatives and builders felt that without this precaution, they woudl not be able to do their "thing" and so NQ stepped in.
 
At the time NQ said that AvA was the easier of the two and so they were going for CvC first. Obviously that was not exactly the truth and soon enough AvA got pushed out past "release" as one of the frst main mechanics to meet that fate. By now both AvA and Territory Warfare are all but a distant memory. There is no indication at all whether NQ will still bring both and/or when.
 
The choice to go for CvC first was very publically announced so all of that is not under NDA at all. In fact, NQ mostly just bypassed NDA and talked openly about these things.