Tional

RIP Dual Universe. 
 
It was fun while it lasted.
Kind of?
 
I remember accidentally stumbling across a video of Dual Universe, the alpha feature showcase running ~50 minutes long. Boy oh boy was I impressed. In the past I've played things such as starmade, and empyrion, and always loved the idea of a space sci-fi and as a star wars fan myself, always building large scale stuff like star destroyers and blah. As fun as these games were to play, they always suffered from having next to no major interaction in multiplayer. As you can guess, the whole idea of Dual Universe being a space sci-fi sandbox in an MMO setting was an incredibly grand and alluring idea. I had plenty of fantasies and imaginations of how awesome DU could turn out to be, as many many others had too. Unsure of what exactly I can say without breaching NDA, I'll keep it vague. Playing the Alpha build was pretty frustrating lol. However, the community made up for a lot of DU's pitfalls. I had discovered a sort of 'role play' civilisation building community that spanned over years of living under a shell of tight NDA alpha development, which was quite interesting. Everyone was eager for DU to enter beta, and to get serious. To let go of needing to 'Role play' and just be able to take their metagaming to the next level in the persistent world of Dual Universe.

The Beta launch was certainly a real mouthful. Everyone rushed out the gates to make their mark in the world, a race to cement their existence into DU's solar system. Damn were there a lot of people, compared to the current population it's almost unbelievable. Even NQ didn't expect such a huge influx of players to jump in. This caused a lot of dumpster fires during the start of beta, and a lot of NQ's efforts were directed toward putting them out. It was choppy as hell, but it seemed like DU really had a major ingredient to succeed, player population. Regardless of the hugely buggy nature of the game which many people criticized as being no way near beta ready, especially paid beta ready, people still trucked on hopeful of what DU could be. One extremely common phrase among critics and players alike, was that DU had so much potential, and every one of them were right. 
 
With the introduction of larger than alpha resource nodes amongst all of the planets, and meganodes for each ore, DU experienced a huge boost in progression, as everyone grinded their brains out to collect as much ore as they could. Mega factories popping up left and right, in every nook and cranny. Production and resource exploitation at an all time high left NQ worrying about the fast paced progression they seemed to be quite uncomfortable with.
 
The idea behind DU was that it was oriented to group play in such a way that people would build organisations, alliances, countries, and civilisations. Unfortunately, apart from marketing efforts DU wasn't really setup to encourage any of this. Being weary of needing to RP to really do any of this, most older groups began to grow uneasy. The cause for this controversially being the implementation of safezones, and lack of territory warfare, which was a desired addition for the beginning of beta. Initially, the idea was that the only safe place in the solar system would be the Sanctuary moon. The absolute only reason for its current existence. Instead of a creative solution to allow organisations/nations to create their own safezones, their own mark in the solar system, we were given a very, very lenient absolute safe space. In my opinion, the sole existence of any safezones aside from the sanctuary moon works only to remove any incentive or encouragement for a nation or country to emerge in any part of the solar system. Everyone joined into DU with their own dreams, and their own desires of creation. And everyone was very much free to move about and do as they wished, on their own. It's likely NQ were forced along this path due to simply not having enough time to develop critical gameplay mechanics, coupled with problems among the studio itself, with none of the original team who initially worked on DU no longer even working at NQ. DU now has effectively turned itself from a promising civilisation building MMO, into a quiet, enormous and extremely overpriced museum for sci-fi voxel creations.
 
The PVP, and effects of it are nothing short of Pitiful.
 
NQ's move to stifle progression and control it's rate among DU, backfired miserably and completely decimated DU's saving grace, its player population. The introduction of update 0.23 unsettled and enraged SO many people, eesh. If you're reading this and your opinion is that 0.23 was a great patch, you clearly don't see the incredible damage that it's done to DU, NQ, and their PR. Enjoy your giant space museum while it lasts. NQ certainly took a major step back in communication in the aftermath of update 0.23, which only further annoyed the playerbase.

Recently a new Community Manager that went by NQ-Naunet was hired, and made strides in engaging with the remaining DU community. Only just recently, after only 4 months of working at NQ, Naunet has left NQ without a word. Naunet was much appreciated by the community, and her departure left a gaping hole in the communities confidence in NQ's ability to manage a community, sparking a recent freefall dive (absolute shitshow) in NQ's temporarily completely unmoderated Forums, with only NQ-Naerais left to hold the reins on a fragile and wavering community.
 
Another recent incident involving NQ deciding to completely remove ingame support, and discord support has also caused unease and frustration throughout the entire playerbase. Leaving the only form of support to the ticket system, which is famous taking up to a month or more for a response, and often the responses were extremely unhelpful. The removal of NQ's ingame support system basically blew up any players hope for help in navigating DU's buggy and problematic nature.

The ingame support team did an incredible job of handling many of the problems thrown at players, most of which simply made no sense to wait months for. Most of the tech support workers have left NQ after this move.
Their names are:
NQ-Wokk
NQ-Blacksun
NQ-Gallion
NQ-Astratum
NQ-Samaritan
NQ-Stargazer
NQ-Orion
NQ-Reaper
NQ-StarFire
NQ-Xeno
 
Apologies for anyone I've missed, but they've singlehandedly been through the rivers of buggy shit to ensure that players had the best possible experience in DU.\
 
Now that the support team is gone, Naunet is gone, any Liason between community and NQ non-existant, most people just want to see DU put out of its misery. Was a fantastic concept, but it seems like it'll just never work. With the whole idea of DU having millions of players, but only being attractive to a very niche group of resilient and hardcore players, and the recent decision of NQ, DU has just lost it's much needed momentum, and as we can see with numbers pulling out of NQ's roster, including more prominent and notable names, faith in NQ's ability to deliver DU as advertised, promised, and pitched, are at an all time low.
 
Even JC's in rough shape after 0.23, poor dude.
 

 
As for JC himself, mad respect for the dude. Starting a brand new company to develop and handle his dream game (as was ours), was bold and brave of him. We all wished him the best in his endeavours, and are all sad to see what is to come of DU.
 
If you're new and wanting to get into DU, I'd advise against it. If you have friends to play with and wanna muck around DU, all power to you. DU isn't really that pricey, probably won't last for another 3 months anyway.
But for anyone looking for what DU was pitched as, it's looking like a hard skip. 

And now some random memes to dust off the post.


 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


RIP, nobody wanted you here. Except for maybe your competitors, although they probably feel guilty about it now.

lol "paid shill drama" should have read "made up forum BS"

Additionally, as this thread was shared internally I have received a response regarding the validity of the claims presented here: "I can confirm that we did not pay anything. We're not even in contact with this journalist."
 
This publication created a feature without our involvement, and it's clear to anyone reading that they're not up to speed on what's actually happening inside of Dual Universe as of 2021-02-16. ?‍♀️

Feel free to disregard the article, or just enjoy it for a laugh if you'd like.

This thread has been locked: do not put NQ staff member LinkedIn profiles here! I shouldn't even have to say that. I'm really disappointed.

You can express your upset with the game and speculate about us all you'd like, but leave windows to our personal lives OUT of this arena. Please.

I don't want to come to work worried about what I'll see of myself here - some of us may be public facing, but I implore all of you to treat us with respect. Respect our privacy, please.

Pick apart problems, not people. 

This is just a terrible decision in so many ways.
 
First of all, tickets aren't made for immediate, game-impacting issues - tickets are great for tracking bugs, and long-term issues.  But when it comes to something happening right here right now, neither forums nor a third-party ticket system are the right places to handle them - in-game, with GMs, is the right place.  
 
The removal of discord presence is also insane.  For many people, Discord is our primary information source for the game.  We are not interested into checking some forums (haven't done that since like the 90's) every day for announcements and server notifications.  I've already got Discord open to participate in dozens of other games and communities - it was very convenient when we could get notifications there.  A modern game without a discord presence is unheard of and is throwing away a free and popular source of advertisement and news distribution.  Does NQ even have a social media manager?  Anyone who can tell the rest of the staff that Discord is the biggest communication platform a game company has to get feedback or communicate with players, and that it's free and effective to 'advertise' there?  Anyone want to run the numbers and figure out how many users are active on NQ forums per month, vs NQ discord?
 
For example, many people came back to DU after 0.23 - because we saw the announcement and were interested in the new things.  If I stop playing again, I can assure you I won't remember to even think about checking these forums - I'll never know if/when there's an update, never know if there's new content, and honestly never hear about the game again except from maybe any org discords I'm in.  Anyone who drops subscription now is likely never coming back, since there is no Discord presence where we can easily check news and announcements via notifications, to see if [reason we left] was ever resolved.
 
And of course, there's the idea that maybe, just maybe, announcements will still be made on discord - but this certainly wasn't announced there, which, is hilarious because, that's kinda the one place it needs to be announced.  It doesn't even need to be announced on the forums.  
 
 
Anyway, as a whole this is clearly just, cost-cutting, championed by someone who looked at a lot of statistics and didn't understand what they meant.  Despite the amount we pay monthly for this beta, we can't even get support on weekends.  NQ is dropping a major player hub for the game, in favor of an outdated forum board and red tape to reduce the number of incoming tickets.  I was particularly entertained by this line from the announcement:
> In recent months, the Customer Support team has made great efforts to improve their processes, resulting in a significant upswing on ticket turnaround times and resolution. A major component in this success has been to put more focus on the ticket system. 
Why yes, if you have staff focus on the ticketing system instead of Discord, you'll close a lot more tickets than get opened - because players are still trying to use Discord, or in-game chat, and don't know how to open tickets, or that they're required.  There's nobody in the support channel telling them when or how to do so.  There's no announcement in the discord, telling players that support is no longer offered.  
 
So this, to me, is a great way to make players put in fewer tickets - with no discord support, they may not even know how.  And NQ is going to see a massive surge of 'completed' vs 'waiting' tickets, because nobody's putting in tickets anymore, and they're going to pat themselves on the back because they have successfully reduced ticket response time.
 
 
It's not like ranting about it matters, though.  NQ have never listened to their playerbase and have never been any level of transparent about anything they're doing.  We can complain all we want but, as long as we keep paying the subscription, we're supporting this anti-consumer behavior.  Unfortunately, that means many people may drop subscription purely because NQ is no longer offering game support - which means NQ makes less money, has less staff to handle tickets, and things only get worse.  
This is just a result of an overarching problem - NQ can't keep players in their game, and so they don't have the money to continue support.  

Quitting discord support, and in-game support, was one thing.
 
Not answering tickets on the weekend, AT ALL, is another. 
 
We pay to play this game. They should f'in support the game.

A classic case of vision getting in the way of good game design (also known as fun). This is a post about what civilization is / can be in Dual Universe, and perhaps what went wrong. Before diving in, here are some of my assumptions:
 - JC is a scientist, not a game designer
 - JC is a micromanager
 - JC does not want to listen to his devs (some of which worked for Ubisoft and know a thing or two about good game design and mechanics)
 - Because of the assumption above, I also assume there's a degree of conflict between devs and JC
 - I assume a lot might change up to release since this is a beta, but something tells me... not really, given the track record so far of very good ideas being thrown away or not listened to (classic examples include bot market orders screwup in beta, this was talked about extensively by Blazemonger and a slew of other people in the community, was completely ignored, and the results are clear)

Lets get the whole "but it's a beta" shtick out of the way... if you can't, just pretend that you can.
 
To the point:

The game suffers from very bad game design choices. My stance is, if this game was really about civilization building, the mechanics of the game would be very different than they are now. What is civilization?
organization of individuals into social bodies due to selective pressures characteristics of civilization include: social structure and hierarchy, efficiency, work organization, supply of needs, development of more efficient technologies selective pressures that create civilization include, but are not limited to: resource shortage, non-uniform resource distribution, geography, weather, proximity to neighboring civilizations, war, dangerous environment, dangerous neighbors  
I'm sure a lot of you have seen (or were part of groups that tried to build) cities in DU. Some have actually done so. The problem is, they are completely useless and empty. They look nice, there was tremendous effort in making them, but they are completely nonfunctional because no one needs to be in a city. And that is due to the fact that there really are no selective pressures for civilization at all. There is no reason to be in a group because there is no danger. There is no scarcity of distribution of regular ore. We have safezones on all planets, and a big giant safezone around three planets. Why would anyone live in a city? There are no "white-collar" and "service" game mechanics that characterize cities.
DU has no danger element at all (even in pvp zone, if you don't fly in the pipe, you're pretty much golden) DU has no progressive tech tree DU has no progression, it has quanta gates for elements that anyone can acquire and use given they have the quanta for it I can go on, but for an analysis of "civilization" just read this discord post: https://discord.com/channels/184691218184273920/304455542162587649/80629454165311491
I know this is wishful thinking at this point, but DU would be much better off with actual game design:
Better Talent System: scrap the Eve talents system (some things should really not be copied), instead have a tech progression tree where you unlock technologies you can use. And have the skill grow based on your activity in the game, not a set amount of points per hour. It's gamey , it's simple, it's fun, it's very intuitive. And you can always add more tech to the tree indefinitely as the game grows. This will allow whole orgs to gravitate towards a direction in the tech tree so we actually get diversity in org playing styles. For example, one org can develop their pvp armadas with ballistics (machine guns, gattling guns, big bertha weapons), another org might focus their armada pvp tech research into laser or electonic warfare. The same can go with unlocking building technologies. The same can go for politics and leadership styles within an org. Have it all be a research tree. There are countless ways of adding diversity and different paths to a game using this mechanic instead of the Eve Talent Points system. Safe Zones: seriously.. is Sanc Moon not enough? The game lacks any danger and people just stop playing because of tedium and burn out. You won't believe how hard it is to convince people to gather into PVP events in this game because they're just too bored of it, it has zero consequence. Sanc moon is a sanctuary moon. That is its purpose. Better Consequences: This game has the wrong consequences. What seems to be happening is a bunch of nerfing to create more consequences in the game, such as talk about nerfing linked container distance, brakes, mining, this whole permadamage to elements, etc. How about actual danger, not the tedium of fixing and replacing parts? How about lowering the cost of building guns and ammo? Halfing most of the voxel HP? How about designing the game so that more people can get into pvp easier, and if they lose, the cost isn't too great that they are discouraged from ever trying it again? JC should actually listen to his devs and game designer (if he has one): lets face it, economists, mathmeticians, scientists, or whoever NQ may or may not consult about their game.. they are not playing the game. WE ARE. What we are witnessing is the result of the disconnect between how gamers play and how JC thinks a game should run. And it is our wallets that are paying. This means JC should listen to his devs. This means JC should really hire a game designer, they are a rare species and it's difficult to find a good one, but if you do, please listen to that person. JC may know stuff about robotics, but as I see it, he has no clue about human psychology, especially gamer psychology.
My rant is over. Catch me outside how bout dat.

Quitting discord support, and in-game support, was one thing.
 
Not answering tickets on the weekend, AT ALL, is another. 
 
We pay to play this game. They should f'in support the game.

Quitting discord support, and in-game support, was one thing.
 
Not answering tickets on the weekend, AT ALL, is another. 
 
We pay to play this game. They should f'in support the game.

Quitting discord support, and in-game support, was one thing.
 
Not answering tickets on the weekend, AT ALL, is another. 
 
We pay to play this game. They should f'in support the game.

Can't access the Public Test Server feedback forum.
https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/forum/50-public-test-server-feedback/
 
 

So, for example, the Legates are in charge of purchasing, relieving that task from the Superlegate.
 
But they can't send members out to the markets to pick up what they purchased? 
 
That sounds like an additional layer of RDMS should be added, to designate access to the org market containers for specific members.

I see why we wouldn't want to give everyone in Org access to Org market Container, but please expand on this by making Access to the Org Market Container an RDMS permission.

Nicely done, we've been needing a lot of this for a while - having a centralized org wallet that multiple people can use will finally relieve SuperLegates from having to be available constantly to handle money
 
But the devblog mentioned
> It includes buying, selling (and paying taxes by doing so)
 
What taxes are being paid, and to whom?  
 
 
Also I'm very happy with the ability to send quanta wirelessly to people or orgs and have it logged and tracked appropriately - and not even in the alerts menu, a real tracker.  Nice

So, for example, the Legates are in charge of purchasing, relieving that task from the Superlegate.
 
But they can't send members out to the markets to pick up what they purchased? 
 
That sounds like an additional layer of RDMS should be added, to designate access to the org market containers for specific members.

it looks that way, and IMO that is a huge mistake - the buy / sell / browse / transfer permissions should be separated out
 
currently if you want someone to collect from your market container it's impossible
 
this system should allow you to give secure collection only access
 
I hear people say 'missions will allow that' - but why should I pay extra mission fees if all I want is an org buddy to pick up my stuff from a market he lives near, without giving him full access to spend all the org's cash?
 
speaking of - there should absolutely be a daily maximum withdrawal allowance that can be set per player (per initiating player, and maybe also per recipient) - if you need inspiration for how to do that, check out the guild bank system in neverwinter 

So, for example, the Legates are in charge of purchasing, relieving that task from the Superlegate.
 
But they can't send members out to the markets to pick up what they purchased? 
 
That sounds like an additional layer of RDMS should be added, to designate access to the org market containers for specific members.

So, for example, the Legates are in charge of purchasing, relieving that task from the Superlegate.
 
But they can't send members out to the markets to pick up what they purchased? 
 
That sounds like an additional layer of RDMS should be added, to designate access to the org market containers for specific members.

Can we get an RDMS to let people use warp beacons to

If an item is purchased with the org wallet, can any member of the org pick up the items from Market Container?
I'm assuming the buys can be done remotely like now.

When will NQ realize that they are providing a subscription based live service game which was released 27th August in "beta" and they need to stop acting like it is september 2017 and they are about to start closed pre-alpha with backers?
 
It would appear NQ will never learn .. By now this is a chronic and structural problem that I feel is fed by a company culture of "if we say nothing, maybe it will just go away" which frankly is an insult and sign of disrespect towards your player base and a reason many games have failed and disappeared.
 
 
All this talk about how important the economy is and when shit happens, which it will and does, NQ does nothing and says nothing. It seems like they still do not understand that communication in a game like DU is key and that this is not limited to a marketing/PR sprint around a patch release. They jump the gun if someone abuses a mistake they make and insta ban these players but continue to refuse to own up to their own massive mistakes.
 
 
NQ seems oblivious to the fact they need to protect the economy in the game, it's very fragile and stuff like this does massive damage. They continue to allow the orgs with big money to get stronger and more powerful, not by playing the game but by taking advantage of the blunders and loopholes NQ creates. Mind you, I do not blame them  as they get handed what is pretty much a freebie so hey.. why not. But NQ seems to not realize what they are allowing to happen and that is at best strange.
 
 
People bought stuff from bots en-mass and sold it back at several times their buy price.. money out of thin air.. Players got their hands on high tier schematics at prices below the cost of producing the items with them. The amount of damage and unfair advantage that has been allowed to happen is astounding by now.
 
 
Frankly, NQ needs to take back the items bought with refunds.  They have been repeatedly and consistently told they need to improve, they have committed to doing so once every 6 months or so for the past2 + years and still.. nothing changed. How can @NQ-Naunet and @NQ-Naerais do what they should be doing, being CM and communicate on these things,  when it appears NQ leadership/management pretty much does nothing to enable them to do their job.
 
DU has so much potential and promise but it seems NQ continues to be the big factor actively holding the game back from getting there even when the player base seems to try and stay loyal and pull the cart for NQ. They claim to be ready for release within 8-10 months from now.. a big LOL is IMO very much justified regarding that unrealistic and naïve expectation as it stands.
 
 

Hi guys,

Just popping in to say thank you to everybody who took time out of their days over the past couple of weeks to write extensive feedback here on the forums.

The community team was able to collect and present your thoughts to the rest of the NQ which ultimately led to this evening's write-up from JC.  

Even if you're not 100% satisfied with the changes we're making to 0.23, I hope that this at least demonstrates that we do indeed read, digest and execute on your valuable questions, concerns and suggestions.

ffs. They provide evidence they listened and have announced a response to player feedback.  The market is unreliable because of what was explained.  Small groups or soloists not interacting. Give it little time for people to catch up. Right now, many are running around moaning about not being able to play.

I don't think the durability changes go far enough to be honest - though it's a major step in the right direction. You are still discouraging player interaction as any element with less than 3 lives is worthless as an element to the victor of pvp. While at the very least they get some sort of compensation - like schematics back - it's still a matter of diminishing returns and a discentive to take your ship out.
 
Needless to say, you still - under the proposed changes -
 - Have the issue of decorative elements being completely discouraged, opting the pvp meta to be empty box shells of ships
 - Player interaction for pvp is still discouraged
 - Moving further into the future, expanding gameplay options for salvaging and exploration are limited and discouraged

I sincerely urge NQ to scrap the "limited lives" durability model and re-evaluate better alternatives to how element destruction and the need for new elements from the market is handled. There are a multitude of better alternatives suggested across forums - I won't do a self promotion plug again since I don't care what it is to be honest, as long as it's not the restrictive and gameplay penalising system that exists at present. Once again, to re-iterate - the present choice of limited lives of elements has been universally the least popular mechanic for durability in every multiplayer game that has tried it since the 90s. And for very good reasons.

EDIT: The DRM introduction also makes capturing ships not feel like... captured ships. Half of the appeal of pirates to capture ships was for underground lua script market. If you want player interaction, you need to want player interaction - not attempt to socially engineer what kind of interaction you want the players to have. Can't have it both ways.