Xennial

Show me your database information about circulating quanta before declaring things as fact. I have written earlier extensively as to why deflation is not a problem in DU and the core economic issues are the inclusion of bots at all.

I can say for sure, I will never consign anything of value to some random player to transport I don't care what some reputation rating says.

Quanta is not dangerously low because people happen to have something to spend it other then scrap and whatever flavor of the week ship design . Prices are falling due to oversupply and lack of demand. They will stabilize over time. Warp cells are a prime example, prices bottomed and are rebounding to pre 0.23 levels just fine. Panic about deflation all you like but deflation is NEVER a problem in MMOs.

This is what happens when game dev insta cave when adding elements that provide challenge. They couldn't even get element destruction in for a full week before insta cave to whining. If they allow themselves to get caught in the age old trap of shoveling out "content" to the solo/casual ADHD crowd you can just kiss the game vision goodbye. Next we will be shooting bunnies that have magical $$ or drop super spiffy engine +5. Keep on caving to those whom came to a unique game only to cry for mainstream 'features'. We will end up with generic sci-fi MMO with an indi short on funds end product. Make the game hard. Take the training wheels off and let those that can't hack it go back to whatever SP game that will spoon feed them do X to get loot Y quests and other nonsense. Frankly same goes for a wipe. If its needed to reset the progression curve after a few major feature let the "omg! I paid money so you can't wipe" crowd go away. Bring it back from such a wipe with hard mode on, no bots , pull the safe zone buffer outside of atmosphere from the outter planets, drop the link range , the whole 9 yards. People act like $70/year is some sort of blood contract to have the game cater to their every impulse.

There are no boons smaller ships provide over M/L ships. Name me a game mechanic where that is the case that is actually in the game. You are hanging your hat on the idea that the energy system is going to overcome this. The only way I see any energy mechanic making smaller core ships viable is if larger ships are literally forced to be engineered large by requiring them to X number of heavy generators , thus forcing their engineering up scale. This could be accomplished today by making the core itself absurdly heavy for a M or L core. You would have to engineer a L core differently if it weighed 10Kt by itself. Any combat system where L core outranges / single shots smaller ships makes smaller ships unviable in combat situations. Most games take a more naval warfare approach to this. A Battleship in WoWS for instance is very slow with big guns that turn slowly. The battleship actually fears the small destroyer because that small destroyer has a weapon system that can sink the battleship and maneuver advantages that make it very hard to hit. This typical scale representation in a wargame is non existent in DU. I can effectively take that battleship main gun , strap some engines to it on a L core, make it highly maneuverable and gain all the advantages small ships are supposed to have with the advantages afford the large weapons. I didn't say people shouldn't be able to have luxury ships, I said at the rate things are going those will be common place not something achieved by all the effort you describe here. There is no 'balancing' if everyone skips small ships. There is nothing currently that prevents an L core being engineered to go into atmo. I can't even imagine with the client/server setup they are using how atmo combat would be anything other then L cores raining death to anything while floating around with AGG. This right here is where the disconnect on the economy comes from. People seem to think $$ must rain from the sky in some form or another while we walk around the game world. You don't need 'faucets'. Daily rewards inject the cash, the free market would then decided the value of said cash. If everyone only had the daily injection then the prices would be based off that standard if there was no bot interference. People would price their time spent in game based on this and thus the only thing that would fluctuate over time is how much that 100k or whatever per day would buy you. People say "add more ways to make money". Thats not the problem of the economy. Different ways to 'grind' more money is just a different way to get a daily award that happens to require you to do a task first. Selling ore to bots is not even a faucet as it takes something out of the game in exchange for the quanta it poofs into reality. I would argue every single time someone sells to a bot , that is gameplay being sold out of the game. That is ore that did not go to another player to make something with. That is money that other player didn't have to 'spend' in the market to acquire said ore. I won't even argue the whole finite resource being thrown out the window because we all know they will make infinite resources with asteroids / automated mining. What is really being sold however is gameplay and free market forces. Of course people view the game as a grind. The bots are perpetually shoveling quanta with no value into the game. The player base is perpetually chasing a goal post that is forever moving. The more effort people put into the grind, the more sums of money become worthless. You have runaway inflation built on the back of mining that every scoop you take and sell to a bot actually makes your grind worse. The devs will have to constantly think of more and more expensive ways to try and exit quanta from the game. Why was a warp beacon schem priced at 11 BILLION quant? Because people actually HAVE that much money. That being said, I do agree that schematic price walling industry was certainly not the best approach. Running costs to industry and adjusting the time/quantity of sub components produced would have likely been superior ways of going about "nudging" people away from omni factories. Here is a not seeing the forest through the trees example. Basically EVERY MMO out there forces you to specialize via some 'class' system. You missed the entire reason I used screws as an example. Engaging in industry at scale is about making industrial gameplay more rewarding to the player and the player base as a whole. It's not about "I want to make everything all in one building , by myself". If people were setting up industry with the mindset first that it's another way to make money in game and engage with the player economy then it doesn't matter what they are mass producing. The fact that people only think in terms of industry means I make 200 different finished products so we never have to buy anything, rather then I engage in industry to interface with the market is the root problem they tried to address in 0.23.

I feel that many can't see the forest through the trees as it relates to a wipe even perhaps NQ. When I say wipe I mean the only thing that can be retained is skill points and empty blueprints (magic blue prints negates a big point to a wipe in the first place). Also a wipe MUST come with 0 bots active in the market save to sell schematics. The question of to wipe or not has 0 to do with 'fairness'. Anyone can objectively see groups will have advantage in any system related to the scale of their operation. Solo players who crying foul is just a rehash of the casual vs hardcore gamer arguments found in EVERY MMO. To be blunt any such concerns of it being unfair that 100 players can achieve or access more content then 1 or 10 can simply be dismissed. What NQ need to considers is what they want DU to be. Do they want to spend the next 12 months having to balance everything against the norm of everyone flying around in invincible M -> L core 'luxury' ships , tricked out with T5 everything? Do they want there to be any place in the universe for XS or S ships? When my org thinks to build a hauler they think in terms of how many KT they want to haul as a standard metric. Whats the point of XS, S , or even M weapon systems or ships in a universe filled with L core battle boats? I know I know, energy system will solve all that!! No they won't. It is common place for people to use M or L cores "just because I can". What happens when the population is threatened with the idea that "gasp" they might have to replace the elements after casually smashing into the ground because they never learned to fly because gold scrap was everywhere? They explode in outrage of course! Never did it occur to anyone that these over-engineered ships might actually someday cost something to maintain because it never dawned on them these are supposed to be capital ships. Why NQ should wipe: You want a wipe, then wipe for the right purpose, to overhaul the progression curve from SP sandbox to an actual MMO. The schematic prices in 0.23 were fine. If anything the non finished product schematic prices were to low, and the finished far to high. You want someone to specialize in screws, then you need to not setup the price structure that someone able to afford the end schematic would obviously be able to afford the sub parts. You could have also gone ahead and made the sub component part recopies not produce a gaggle at a time and have them take far longer to make. You want to break omni factories, then you have to break the efficiency found in setting one up in the first place. If I need 100 machines to produce the number of screws needed to make 1 large engine per day(extreme example), I'm going to seriously ask myself if it's not far more efficient and cost effective for me to buy the end assemblers to make 10 per day if I buy the screws from other players on the market. You do this by making the end assembly comparatively far cheaper to set up compared to actually supplying that industry time/cost wise with parts to keep it running. This spurs people to make the sub parts as a business and prevents even groups from being able to just outright out produce the little guy in end products. To extend this the little guys could then actually afford to setup end assemblers and make their stuff for themselves affordably. The industrialists would all be competing against each other on sub component parts. The crafty businessman would be making deals for bulk orders on sub parts to establish a profitable line of end products. Then there would be more people making end products then 'industrialists' holding mega factories just to produce enough screws etc to keep the market demand supplied. The little guy who just wants to start in industry then has a place because even though his screw factory line might only pump out 10 screws per day, their value is maintained. He doesn't have to feel like he has to make Tier 5 military engines to even find a profit margin. If you want a DU where it's not everyone running around in M /L ships then you adjust the difficulty of making and maintaining those ships appropriately. You naturally start this paradigm with Medium ship parts and up of all tiers. Make it so the average player has easy access to XS / S ship parts, containers to M for example. All Medium ship parts require uncommon sub components, all large advanced etc. I know people will flat panic at the idea of not being able to cart around 10Kt of ore effortlessly. With 0 bots the ore prices would stabilize such that even mining in small ships would be profitable. The orgs trying to stay 'self sustaining' would find themselves fighting an uphill battle against the participation of many more actors of all sizes in the market forcing them to ask is it really worth the expense to make our own end goods when we simply can't find some major market edge because we can't produce screws or whatnot any cheaper then mass offered on the market from the general populous can. This entire concept ONLY works with 0 bots in the market. You need to frankly force people to sell their ore to other people. A game where people receive money every day for logging in NEVER has a cash flow problem. Quanta is a medium of exchange and it's value should be determined by the free market not some arbitrary idea that people have that you need XYZ 'faucets' for people to earn money. You can faze out the daily award as you add alternate ways for players to make the same given X effort per day. People have this bad habit of thinking the game has to provide $$ from heaven of the economy will fail. The 'value' of that money is not in it's generation but in how much the average player has and is thus willing to pay for things. That value can only be set by a free market where bots are not constantly perverting it's perceived value. .You only have to balance that daily cash against how fast you want schematics to be bought. You have the nanocrafter in the game to allow people to make XS ships anywhere without touching a market. The only way DU will ever have a functional market is if people start to relate the time they spend mining to some value received. Why are goods sold at less then ore value now? Because you can mine at such a rate and haul so much so easily that no one perceives the value of that time spent. If most people were using the capacity of small ships , and medium or smaller containers to haul things around that time would have to weighed far more seriously because of the logistics of how long it would take to bring that 2Kt you just found worth of ore back to market 100t at a time and the time it will take for it to sell to other players given current demand / price. Shift your thinking NQ from SP sandbox to MMO. L core ships should NOT be the norm. Even M ships should be purpose built major investments. If you do not shift your thinking on this I fear DU will forever be plagued by having to balance against everyone always having everything and XS/S even M ship parts being utterly worthless.

Yes yes, naturally because you don't like the idea the game would insta die because of a wipe. Naturally 99% of the playerbase simply must be in your camp on the issue

Well which is it then? I hear solo players scream all the time they are the majority thats why everything has to be in their reach. Your argument that a large org can extricate themselves from the economy shouldn't be an issue then because if the 'majority' are solo or small group they can't full leave the economy. Groups will always excel by virtue of people working together rather then solo to achieve the same goal. That is not the issue for the economy. The issue for the economy is the fact that bots exist at all and there is 0 running cost to industry past the schem gate now witch is only a small part of the equation. The fact that bots were in the game at all has lead to a lot of the problems due to allowing people to exploit their way to a sum of money that would have required them to interact with the economy without bots. I only support a wipe if there are 0 bots outside of schem selling when the wipe is done. NQ's fascination with bots is a broken concept and preventing an economy from forming not bootstrapping one.

Not yet but the fact that they even are shows to me complete panic on their part. They would do themselves a service to do a little more "well it's beta guys , bugs will happen but we press on!" and little less "we are soooo sorry for making you work for anything, and we deeply apologize for you using a ship that is WAY bigger then your means to maintain it, lets just make that invincible for your".

I think the biggest economic surprise would be for them simply to stick to the entire point of the patch and not basic roll the whole thing back with dropping the schem prices through the floor and removing element damage. All this entire 0.23 experience has taught the player base is that if they cry loud enough NQ will make the game 'easier'.

Honestly the only people I see obsessed with no wipe are the ones who have exploited mechanics to this point to get what they precive some permanent advantage. When this topic comes up in my org everyone is perfectly fine with the idea old and new alike. Almost everyone also agrees Bots have been and remain the biggest mistake DU made and continues too make. But let's just keep on plugging away giving some merit to people that exploited bots to gain the "wealth" and epeen in game and now their entire argument revolves around keeping those gains. If those players quit over a wipe which they wouldn't no matter how much they scream , we would probably be better off as a community anyway.

Hate to say it really but all I see at least in this page of this thread is people who don't want to have to overcome challenges in game, who want their private SP experience forced on everyone in the name of 'balance & fairness". Frankly if NQ alters its plans to cater to all this complaining about "oh its to hard for me to do xyz" we will not only end up with more roll backs of needed game features , but whats left will be some cookie cutter boring ass "MMO" where there is no TW, no risk, no adventure. Seriously, just go play play minecraft with a space mod, or SE if all you want is some sandbox where the only effort to achieve something is in reaching for the on button to your computer. I mean really , its fever pitch ADHD instant gratification around here.

There are legitimate reasons for a wipe. Restart with no bots , just let people keep their skill points thats it. Still to wipe now means you can justify wipes later for other big systems introduction. The people who' drank the no wipe cool aid heads would explode. The safe zone being limited to Alioth and its moons only works if pvp is entirely revamped. Currently its totally broken and everyone knows it. Sanctuary moon only is a no go. Can you imagine the tools sitting around in large cores blasting every newb that makes into space the first time for kicks? I am all for a hard wipe, but I can see the value in putting a few more core system in place before shattering peoples delusions who missed the whole "unless unavoidable" qualifier to no wipe statements. Any wipe needs to have no magic blue prints , and NO bots that buy anything, and only sell things players are cannot craft yet like schematics. I understand the sentiment, going full carebear and even rolling back element destruction due to whining has me concerned as well the devs will ever take the training wheels off.

Anyone having played before retains the knowledge of "what works" so letting people keep empty BPs does not prevent said players from having to participate in the new progression curve to be able to actually build said BPs. So that is really a straw man argument. I watched JCs interview before 0.23. He said no wipe "unless unavoidable". If you are operating on the idea they won't wipe before release no matter what I'm not sure you have reasoned just how many core systems are going to be changed in the next 12 months. I reason there will be at least one regardless and view all projects as simple learning best practices for release. Forming some deep attachment to virtual assets is setting yourself up for a profoundly unessisary sence of loss in the future if they wipe or not. NQ obviously decided not to wipe at this time. When they eventually do they should put some real mental capital into the simple idea of doing that restart with 0 bots participating in any good made by players or any resourse present in the game. Otherwise they will never reach a point where it time to remove them.

Ah I see. So your entire argument is based around you keeping your stuff. I have hundreds of hours into extensive projects as well. It has nothing to do with 'what is fair for blah blah'. You paid to join a beta so I have no more sympathy for you then you have for those who join post release if they were never to wipe. If you were afraid of losing your effort you should have waited for release. That being said my advocation for a wipe is purely from the point of view that a player based free market needs to start from scratch elsewise the progression curve they sought to implement with this rather drastic change in 0.23 is forever crippled by the glut of resources acquired in the easy mode and basically free production that came before it heavily influenced by the excessive cash exploited from the bots. Your personal sense of loss is to be frank, is just as irrelevant as any other players "if you do X I quit" statement.

The reason I don't have an issue with bots being used to sell schematics is because game economies naturally inflate over time due to more and more money generation systems and fewer and fewer money sinks. So if it's not schematics it will be something else like pretend 'taxes' to take money out of the economy. Since players cannot craft schematics and acquire them in some other form at this time then that is all it works as is a way to take quanta out of circulation for the time being. Again, my premise is that games never suffer from not having enough money but quite the opposite. So until schematics were turned into a player created item , or other money 'sinks' added to the game world they simply function as that. Are they the solution to the everyone makes everything NQ seemed to be concerned about? Not in and of themselves obviously , but JC even stated they were just the first step in combating that problem. You still have self sufficiency as the primary problem in the game. In the current form you can mine, sell to a bot , get the quanta to turn around and give to a bot for the schematics to make what you want from the ore that you did and never touch a market or interact with another player. This is exactly because of the first step where you can mine and sell to a bot. If you had to sell to a player then ore prices would reflect how people valuate having X item it costs that ore to make. With the bots buying ore there can never be this price discovery because you are effectively short circuiting the entire price discover mechanism by allowing people to skip interacting with other player entirely. In the game as it stands now if they removed bots without a wipe what would happen? The price of ore would collapse through the floor because far more people mine then produce. People would suddenly find themselves unable to 'make money' outside the daily allotment. This would mean most people would find mining not worth their time and stop doing it. Terrible for DU as right now because outside of industry and playing legos thats the only other major activity players engage in. The orgs / individuals that have past the schematic gating and are making stuff for themselves would be largely unaffected because they have excised themselves from the market already. This is why any economy discussion has to start from the perspective of a wipe. You take the same no bot scenario with a full wipe and pricing of ore would simply have to be based on demand from producers, or value the players place on time and effort required to mine said ore. In turn the pricing of those goods would find a natural low point at the start with all production / consumption based on Alioth/Sanctuary. Then as time went on and more and more quanta was injected in the economy by daily allotments the prices of these forces would naturally flux and rise like every other fiat currency and some level of inflation would take hold based on NQ's money sinks compared to money generation. Production would be stimulated by the low ore prices slowly over time driving up demand for them and thus the price, slowly making it more valuable for people to spend their time mining. Naturally this only works well if there is some cost associated with the production of good outside of the schematic gating mechanism. You need something for the economy to hang it's hat on so to speak. If industry machines required power that had to be generated by the consumption of fuel for example then the economy would be based on the price of said fuel and everything else would naturally be priced around that. Your middle ground you seek is not really necessary. The only thing that is necessary is to get out of the way of the natural market to develop. Then they could focus on more creative ways involving player activities to inject money into the economy outside the mine->sell loop. So long as those mechanics are not directly tied to the market the only serve as an inflation mechanism to provide players whom don't want to participate in the mine->sell->produce loop to have a way to 'earn' money to buy the things they wish from players who do. Without some pin to valuate goods and such like the price of fuel to run industry you cannot properly stabilize anything because as things stand today it's to easy for players to opt out of the economy by bots. Perhaps the middle ground you seek is just wait till they put in a cost associated with running industry and then wipe the world and restart with no bots. The issue is the longer they go without a wipe the greater the likelyhood that players will quit over feeling they saw all DU has to offer and have no desire to repeat the process. Without a wipe any attempt to remove bots in an already hyper-inflated economy with people completely detached can only lead to the haves playing , and the have not feeling like they can't. Hence the outcry this patch which basically did a small version of that.

The only consideration that cannot be translated from a RL economy and that of an in game economy , is you cannot ever choose not to participate in a RL economy or you die. That cannot be modeled here as if a player is dissatisfied they can simply opt out of the game. Having bots for a period of time is overall destructive to a game world with supposedly finite resources as it infers an enormous advantage to those present during the magical money fairy days. If the game is to be a PvP / TW focused as they seem to claim this would put a huge stone wall in front of anyone arriving after the bot era that everyone was able to partipate in easy $$ mode with rich resources to gobble up. The schematics I don't really have an issue even if they were left as a purchase from the AI for all. I would like to at least see player activity able to perhaps enhance said schematics but I can be swayed on the argument of that either way depending on implementation. There is no middle. It's either a player driven economy , or it's not. There is a reason what we have now is utterly failing economy wise even pre 0.23. It's the bots.

The simple reality is it can't function properly with bots. It's really only a question of how long it will take NQ to realize this and wipe the game and restart with 0 bots.

You don't need to "jump start" an economy. Thats where all these problems originate is thinking this way. You have cash injection for every player every day. Cash is only an exchange mechanism, it has no value in and of itself in a free market. The actors in that market set the value of goods/services based on the overall cash supply and perceived value of goods. If you wiped out all bots, all in game cash, removed all taxes and then in turn gave everyone a one time 100,000 credit infusion what would happen? The only thing that can. People would exchange that based on the overal wealth level of the populus. Entire big ships would be sold for like 1,000 quanta , ore would be priced in the single digits or lower. Point is it all scales based on the average amount of money the average players have. On top of this the game already gives you a nanocrafter where you can make out of thin air and some ore the ability to make basic ships and systems to fly them. People didn't start real economies by having magical tooth fairies offer $ for rocks, or selling things before a single person ever made the thing. This is a broken way of thinking and it will forever destroy an actual player economy. Free markets work for a reason , only when governments or in this case NQ think they know how to control such markets better do problems arise.

There is NEVER a money problem in a game where all players are given a cash injection every day. The only thing that would happen is a re-pricing of goods given the average money flow around the game. Also the intended purpose of the schems to gate people out of making everything themselves would actually function if everyone couldn't make 10's of millions with a bit of mining. Ore and goods would be prices appropriatly so long as there was a wipe with no bots buying or selling at all. It's really that simple. You don't NEED a quanta injection mechanism past free money for logging in. You just need to wipe out the vast oversupply of quanta with a wipe and start everyone at ground zero and let price discovery happen. What your asking is for different ways to 'earn' a different daily quanta injection with the mission system and the like, but those are not needed to support the economy. It's like any fiat currency , the natural inflation of everyone getting money every day would slowly drive prices up over time as money flow becomes more and more. Then you reach the point like EVERY MMO on the planet where the devs spend more time worrying about how to get money OUT of the economy to put new player balances within ranges of typical goods. Even that is largely skipped here by new players being able to make whatever for the effort it takes to mine a little in the nanocrafter for starting equipment. This entire idea that "quant injection" is required by the bots is utter folly. Bots should be removed (yes you keep the for systems such as selling schematics temporarly, though in reality those should be player craft able things that given value through player discovery / imporvment and competition). You will NEVER have a working player economy if this bot nonsense stays.

That utopian future would be nice. I like star trek too. If you think the only builders creations should be bought and sold you will have a mass exodus. The problem with the 'economy' is largely that they insist on the stupid bots buying and selling products / ore.

As I have said elsewhere DU has an identity crisis going on. It's either a minecraft sandbox with no risk and the sole objective of getting youtubers to show off their "creations" to a fanbase, or it's meant to be an MMORPG where you actually have to strive to achieve something , with risks and challenges. Right now it appears to be leaning heavily one way , and if voxelcraft in space is not your cup of tea you will likely be dissapointed in the end. The whole single shard idea can be thrown out the window once creatives spend all time time in some solo sandbox where they can access everything in the game without effort. Why would they bring BP's into the game world to sell? What on earth do they need money to spend on they have a whole solo world to build their ships and fly them around a little and never have to lift a finger to get resources, participate in the market etc. The unintended consequences of deviating from the more hardcore MMO vision presented before is likely to turn the game into something many here won't like to play. Doesn't mean it will die, solo sandbox games have been popular for a long time. It just means those wishing for a universe full of life, drama, consequences and challenges will find themselves looking elsewhere eventually. Just wait till TW is announced as 'opt in' to make sure no one is 'forced to stay in the safe zone'. I have no inside info on that, just my feeling given how fast they capitulated full stop on 0.23.

The sticking to the 'no wipe unless it's unavoidable due to the servers being nuked' sort of attitude is going to continue to bite NQ in the rear. You have paying customers now that think you will never wipe their stuff away while having major fundamental changes in the works that would warrant such a wipe in any other Alpha. 0.23 is exactly that kind of case, but now ya'll are stuck in rock and hard place of having to put Band-Aids on things to make them 'backwards' compatible etc wasting valuable dev time rather then on progress to the next thing. There is nothing to be done at this point really , it's very clear to everyone that screamed murder at this patch that NQ will never be able to issue a patch thats 'good for the game , but will upset a lot of people'. NQ's biggest hurdle moving forward will be if their game vision as described before is the vision, or if they want a Minecraft in space esq creative sandbox where no one really has to work for anything or risk anything in game. My money seeing this immediate reversal is we get the latter. I would be deeply concerned about how all this has gone down if I were an avid PvP'er as I can't at this point see any scenario where they 'force' the creatives into any sort of combat situation.

I would wipe the game , remove bots, let people keep their skill points and empty blue prints (no magic spawn for free nonsense). Then the new model would work fine for what they described it's intent.

Yup agreed the system I suggest could easily be griefed to essentially trick the hauler into a trap , get your stuff back and thus get his deposit money as well as any salvage as you then know his destination. PvP will prevent any trade outside of safe space to be non exploitable.