Dimencia

Long quote, trimmed it out but.  I understand that they have an obligation to release the game due to Kickstarter, and an obligation to vaguely include the concepts they claimed on the page.  They have done so, and will continue doing so, or face legal action (of course).  There is no obligation for these gamedevs to listen to non-gamedevs about how to make their game, though, just because those people paid money.  
 
Now I do understand the feeling that, NQ is not listening to anyone's feedback, for anything, ever.  Because they're totally not.  
But they're not obligated to, either.  They are gamedevs who assumedly have some experience in this field, those of us who are not MMO gamedevs need to extend a bit of trust.  If it's frustrating for a kickstarter backer, because something is not implemented the way they wanted, as long as it is implemented, then NQ has fulfilled their obligations.  
 
Hopping onto the kickstarter, beta, etc early doesn't make opinions about gamedev any more or less valid.  New players are just as useful for getting feedback, if not significantly moreso because they don't have a lot of hangups and old grudges about things NQ has done in the past.  
 
So yes, if we want this game to be good?  Ignore the old players who are just grumpy old men (I'm one of them most of the time), bring in new players, and see how they like it.  The old players in a beta are never going to be happy - an MMO is a huge investment of time and effort, and even a small change will mess something up or invalidate someone's efforts.  Eventually all of the old players will be salty about something, or will get bored, and that's that, and NQ is under no obligation to do what those cranky old men want when they start wishing for the good ole days where they didn't have to buy schematics. 
Any game, especially an MMO, needs a constant influx of new players to provide fresh feedback and to offset the number of players that finished or got bored with the game.  
 
Only thing is, I'm pretty sure NQ won't listen to new players either.  So, let's just hope they know what they're doing

Well yeah, I also have several hundred hours of playtime.  I still don't think anything he said was wrong or inaccurate.  I mean, what even are the proposed problems with what he claimed?  He says the planets are more alive than ever, well, they are - there are more constructs and signs and org advertisements than ever at the markets.  Big orgs with production lines and mining trips?  Yep, those definitely still exist, and definitely grew over months.  If he is even aware of the die-off (may have been a solo player), it doesn't invalidate any of the claims anyway

How are you supposed to bring people back?  They played, they got bored, they quit.  They paid their subscriptions while playing, and afterward, sure you could say their money is being used to make a game for other people.  But I mean, they paid for the subscription knowing it would expire.  There was no guarantee that paying means the dev team will do exactly what they want.  And I am quite sure that if the game were rolled back to prior to 0.23, it wouldn't help the player counts, because prior to 0.23 is when most people quit.  We got to endgame easily in days, within weeks had a factory producing every item in the game, and within a month we were finished and had experienced all content in the game.  In the orgs I was in, there was one or two people upset about schematics - the rest were gone before they ever came out.  
 
If the industry and PVP updates weren't enough to bring them back, then what next?  Let the game continue to die, not bringing in any new players, while we wait and see if atmo PVP convinced them to come back?
 
Or, just advertise to new players who haven't already experienced the whole game

Some cranky old people in here.  How he described DU is the same way we all saw DU when we started in it.  After months, we become jaded, we start to realize that all those ships at the market are still there because, their owners don't even play the game anymore.  We realize that these massive orgs are actually mostly empty.  Nothing he said in the article is really inaccurate - the numbers of members in the org list has definitely grown over the months, and so has the number of ships at markets.  The guy just hasn't played enough to realize that they are empty growth.
 
And regarding the schematic changes, those are the only reason I came back to the game - they have revitalized the markets and made it possible to make money without mining, finally.  I've been buying ore and reselling elements and have finally saved up enough to start pushing toward some of the bigger industry units, without ever touching the mining tool.  The markets are stabilized and profit margins are slim (but positive) on easy to make items like containers, and big on hard to make items like AGGs - exactly the way it should be.
 
And, probably most importantly - if you don't like the fact that the game is dead, maybe let people make reviews without shouting shill.  For one, NQ should invest money into advertisement - more advertisement means more players, and that's just, how you sell a game.  But NQ didn't even pay this one, and they came away with a good impression of the game.  The game is in a better state now than it has ever been, except for lack of players - too many people got upset over 0.23, or got bored before it.  But, bring in new players who didn't lose anything in the patch, and they've got a full and alive (seeming) world with multiple options for how to make money.  Bring in enough of them, and it will become truly full and alive again

Oh did I forget to include politics in my paper again, woops.  Maybe next issue

Some cranky old people in here.  How he described DU is the same way we all saw DU when we started in it.  After months, we become jaded, we start to realize that all those ships at the market are still there because, their owners don't even play the game anymore.  We realize that these massive orgs are actually mostly empty.  Nothing he said in the article is really inaccurate - the numbers of members in the org list has definitely grown over the months, and so has the number of ships at markets.  The guy just hasn't played enough to realize that they are empty growth.
 
And regarding the schematic changes, those are the only reason I came back to the game - they have revitalized the markets and made it possible to make money without mining, finally.  I've been buying ore and reselling elements and have finally saved up enough to start pushing toward some of the bigger industry units, without ever touching the mining tool.  The markets are stabilized and profit margins are slim (but positive) on easy to make items like containers, and big on hard to make items like AGGs - exactly the way it should be.
 
And, probably most importantly - if you don't like the fact that the game is dead, maybe let people make reviews without shouting shill.  For one, NQ should invest money into advertisement - more advertisement means more players, and that's just, how you sell a game.  But NQ didn't even pay this one, and they came away with a good impression of the game.  The game is in a better state now than it has ever been, except for lack of players - too many people got upset over 0.23, or got bored before it.  But, bring in new players who didn't lose anything in the patch, and they've got a full and alive (seeming) world with multiple options for how to make money.  Bring in enough of them, and it will become truly full and alive again

Schematics are actually really nice.  They provided content and a reason to play the game again by stabilizing the markets, as well as a way to make money without mining.
 
Now, if you're a new player, sure.  Go mining.  You can make about 1mil/hour by digging in the ground, and in 1-2 hours you can setup your first refineries with basic schematics.  After a day or so you can start producing and selling something profitable - for example, let's say refiners.  Then each ore you can mine, you can shove into your factory, and sell the resulting refiners for 15% more than the ore would have cost alone.  The schematic setup is very cheap, and you can very quickly and easily start producing hundreds of refiners per day, and even buy ore from the market if you hate mining, and still make profit.  Obviously, you still have to pay attention to market demand, though, which is the second interesting part about schematics - 
 
Schematics also provide a very interesting investment/loss strategy, making it much more interesting to play on the markets.  Each schematic is an investment.  You must be able to sell enough of the product to break-even after buying that schematic, before that item goes out of demand on the market. For an AGG-S, it may take 60 days before it starts to break even, but then makes 2mil/day/industry constantly, pure profit.  For smaller, cheaper schematics, it takes far less time, of course - but you can also produce many many more of them, and flooding the market with hundreds may reduce the demand.  This makes it both extremely important, and interesting, to pick the correct item to produce for the market.
 
Now of course, when you first start, you won't be able to process all your ores, so you'll still be selling most of them.  But then, eventually, you save up some money.  You can finally buy all the required pieces to produce an AGG-S.  Congratulations, you never have to mine again.  You don't even need talents.  Because the schematic is so expensive, very few people are producing them.  Because of this, they sell at 90% profit margin.  You can buy the ores from the market, shove them into your industry, and passively make 2mil per day - on top of any ores you mine and sell to the markets.  After 60 days (a very long turnaround time due to its very large buy-in and very long processing time), you have paid for all of your schematics.
 
Or, if you prefer, maybe instead invest into L containers.  They're much cheaper to invest into, and you can make many more per day and will break-even sooner.  However, these only have a small 10-15% profit margin, and are only profitable if you have the talents to produce them.  You will have to sell these differently than the AGG, which would go straight to the market and be sold - L containers would require you to undercut, buy out others, or just settle for a very low profit margin, and you have to be careful not to oversaturate the market.  But it's a cheaper setup cost and less risk, for less profit.
 
And finally, the biggest and most important thing schematics did for us, was make sure that players actually buy from the market.  Previously it was nearly impossible to make money on the market; if you could even find a buyer, within a few days they'd have the industry setup and would produce it themselves instead, and prices were at all-time low margins for every item.  Schematics act as a gate to prevent new players from going straight to the biggest, best selling items, which in turn ensures that the biggest and best selling items, remain the best selling items because participating in that market is expensive to buy into.  

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.  

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

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

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

The 50m distance limit on the maneuver tool seems really arbitrary and I don't understand the point.  Not freezing if the player isn't touching the ground is good enough, it solves all the problems mentioned.  Why also impose these weird artifical limits that do nothing but cause problems? 
For example, we have an 'elevator' that uses vertical engines to go up/down from where it starts without a shaft.  We maneuver-tool this elevator throughout our base to reach tall things or build up high - it can only fly straight up.  We will now have to redesign this if we can't reliably move it around our tiles.  
 
Moving something long-distance with a maneuver tool isn't fast or desirable except in extreme cases when it's the only option, because it takes a very long time.  Why would you remove this option?
 
 
It now occurs to me people are apparently salty about not being able to alt+f4 to come to a stop anymore, so I guess it's just me worried about this.  But I'm good with the removed instant-stops.  Sure it'll take some fine-tuning to really get it to work, but for a vast majority of people, it solves a problem (having to accelerate back up to speed if you disconnect).  The only reason to complain about it is if you were abusing it (or are worried about PVP implications, not that PVP exists right now)

The 50m distance limit on the maneuver tool seems really arbitrary and I don't understand the point.  Not freezing if the player isn't touching the ground is good enough, it solves all the problems mentioned.  Why also impose these weird artifical limits that do nothing but cause problems? 
For example, we have an 'elevator' that uses vertical engines to go up/down from where it starts without a shaft.  We maneuver-tool this elevator throughout our base to reach tall things or build up high - it can only fly straight up.  We will now have to redesign this if we can't reliably move it around our tiles.  
 
Moving something long-distance with a maneuver tool isn't fast or desirable except in extreme cases when it's the only option, because it takes a very long time.  Why would you remove this option?
 
 
It now occurs to me people are apparently salty about not being able to alt+f4 to come to a stop anymore, so I guess it's just me worried about this.  But I'm good with the removed instant-stops.  Sure it'll take some fine-tuning to really get it to work, but for a vast majority of people, it solves a problem (having to accelerate back up to speed if you disconnect).  The only reason to complain about it is if you were abusing it (or are worried about PVP implications, not that PVP exists right now)